Mahabodhi .....Beginning of Wisdom

Bodh Gaya is a religious site and place of pilgrimage associated with the Mahabodhi Temple Complex in Gaya district in the Indian state of Bihar. It is famous as it is the place where Gautama Buddha is said to have attained Enlightenment (Pali: bodhi) under what became known as the Bodhi Tree.[2] Since antiquity, Bodh Gaya has remained the object of pilgrimage and veneration for both Hindus and Buddhists.[3]
For Buddhists, Bodh Gaya is the most important of the main four pilgrimage sites related to the life of Gautama Buddha,[4] the other three being Kushinagar, Lumbini, and Sarnath. In 2002, Mahabodhi Temple, located in Bodh Gaya, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
  The main attraction for pilgrims at Bodh Gaya was the Vajrasana and the other six locations where the Buddha had stayed. Another attraction was the Mahabodhi Image, a statue in the Mahabodhi Temple that was believed to be an exact likeness of the Buddha himself. The legend concerning the origins of this famous statue is thus. When the Temple was built it was decided to enshrine a statue in it but for a long time no sculpture good enough could be found. One day a man appeared saying that he could do the job. He asked that a pile a scented clay and a lighted lamp be put in the Temple sanctum and the door be locked for six months. This was done but being impatient the people opened the door four days before the required time. Inside was found a statue of great beauty, perfect in every detail except for a small part on the breast that was unfinished. Sometime later a monk who slept in the sanctum had a dream in which Maitriya appeared and said that it was he who had made the statue. The Mahabodhi Image was the most revered statue in the Buddhist world and is mentioned in records for nearly a thousand years. The main temples at both Nalanda and Vikramasila had copies of this statue in them. When the Chinese envoy Wang Hiuen Ts'e returned home in the 7th century with a model of the Mahabodhi Image he was swamped with requests by people wanting to make copies of it. When the great Bengali pundit Atisa was in Tibet in the 11th century he sent a message back to Vikramasila in India asking that a painting of the Mahabodhi Image be made and sent to him. A Buddha statue the same dimensions as the Image is enshrined in the great stupa at Gyantse. The measurements for this copy were obtained from Sariputra, the last monk from Bodh Gaya when he was passing through Tibet in 1413. The Tibetan Tantric siddha Man-luns-po mentions seeing the Mahabodhi Image when he was in Bodh Gaya in 1300 and another pilgrim, Jinadasa of Parvata, came and worshipped it some time during the 15th century. But after that we here no more of it. The statue now on the Vajrasana inside the Mahabodhi Temple was found in the ruins and placed there by Cunningham in 1880. It dates from about the 10th century

  
Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you
forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.” -Buddha

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