Mahabodhi Temple - Buddhist Legends Concerning The Site of The Mahabodhi Temple

Buddhist Legends Concerning The Site of The Mahabodhi Temple

The site of the Bodhi tree at Bodhigaya is, according to the Buddhist commentarial scriptures, the same for all Buddhas. According to the Jatakas, it forms the navel of the earth, and no other place can support the weight of the Buddha's attainment

According to Buddhist mythology, if no Bodhi tree grows at the site, the ground around the Bodhi tree is devoid of all plants for a distance of one royal karīsa and nothing can travel in the air immediately above it, not even Sakka.

Buddhist mythology also states that when the world is destroyed at the end of a kalpa, the Bodhimanda is the last spot to disappear and is the first to appear when the world emerges into existence again. The myth also claims that a lotus will bloom there, and if a Buddha is born during that the new kalpa, the lotus flowers in accordance with the number of Buddhas expected to arise. According to legend, in the case of Gautama Buddha, a Bodhi tree sprang up on the day he was born.

Read more about this topic:  Mahabodhi Temple

Famous quotes containing the words legends, site and/or temple:

    Therefore our legends always come around to seeming legendary,
    A path decorated with our comings and goings. Or so I’ve been told.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    That is a pathetic inquiry among travelers and geographers after the site of ancient Troy. It is not near where they think it is. When a thing is decayed and gone, how indistinct must be the place it occupied!
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I have often felt as though I had inherited all the defiance and all the passions with which our ancestors defended their Temple and could gladly sacrifice my life for one great moment in history. And at the same time I always felt so helpless and incapable of expressing these ardent passions even by a word or a poem.
    Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)