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They came to this nameless rock, but as it was less of an attraction than That Louang; the few who came did not stay for long. The stupa was the same one pictured in his guide book, the same one he had thought of wistfully when he was on the train, and sexual inclinations had not been the entirety of his yearnings there-at least so he wanted to believe.
A guest house or even a night under the stars with the base of a stupa as his pillow would be preferable. "Maybe you just like guest houses in foreign areas or something." Nawin did not say anything so the youth continued. "If you are trying to hook up with a foreigner why did you choose me?" "Why you?
It was a cynical assessment posed from a lack of self awareness of what he was in fact doing that he was wanting to revert or abscond to a more callow and ingenuous foundation inside himself: to plausibly sully his body on the ground near an ancient stupa, prop his head against its stone spiral, and stare out into clouds and distant space. What would it matter to him?
Târanâtha states that the last king of Orissa, Mukunda Deva, who was overthrown by the Mohammedans in 1568, was a Buddhist and founded some temples and monasteries. In the seventeenth century, there flourished a Buddhist poet named Mahâdevadâsa, and the Tibetan pilgrim Buddhagupta visited among other sites the old capital of Mayurabhanja and saw a stupa there.
Then the men of Kusinagara collecting all the ashes of the burning, raised over them a Kaitya, and called it "the Ashes Dâgoba." The eight Stûpas of the eight kings, "the Golden Pitcher" and "the Ashes Stûpa." Thus throughout Gambudvipa there first were raised ten Dâgobas.
Hsüan Chuang describes it as well as a stupa erected to commemorate Sâkyamuni's prediction that Maitreya would be his successor. On attaining Buddhahood he will become lord of a terrestrial paradise and hold three assemblies under a dragon flower tree, at which all who have been good Buddhists in previous births will become Arhats.
The relics may all be false, but the fact that they were venerated some 250 years after his death shows that the people of India thought of him not as an ancient semi-divine figure like Rama or Krishna but as something human and concrete. Seven persons or communities sent requests for a portion of the relics, saying that they would erect a stupa over them and hold a feast.
The drab stones of the stupa were probably erected in the nineteenth century and through the prodigious span of years, he thought, the unadorned city surrounded it in languid increments like the moss that had annexed its crevices. The encroachment no doubt diminished the distinct identity of the monument, making it less remote and secluded, like human life.
Often tourists would come to the stupa posing for pictures at its base. They seemed to come only in pairs to compound the quasi-reality of the experience of foreign travel into something more solid, for as pairs the dopamine was doubled for these mundane presences, leaving him alone in deprivation within the capsule of the rocket of the mind.
And yet he had agreed to paint him but the reason for doing so no facade of innocence could belie. He should be sitting next to that famous Phra Thuat Luang Stupa constructed in the year 1565 for the wisdom that might emanate from its gold and simplicity instead of hoping for did he dare to admit it himself? a ménage a trois. But what was there to be wise about?
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