Journey to the First Buddhist Landscapes
What sacred landscapes inspired the gardens that were used to clear the mind and open the heart...gardens that could express the spiritual teachings in the landscape? What was the spiritual foundation that gave insight to designers of the various forms of gardens for meditation, various forms of the gardens of Japan and China - gardens to which I look for inspiration?
The origins of the sacred Buddhist landscapes were the holy places, the buildings and gardens where Buddha Shakyamuni lived and first taught the Dharma to disciples more than 2500 years ago. These landscapes were not merely backgrounds; the Buddha purposefully sited and designed them as integral components of the discourses, blessed with the qualities in which to most effectively present the wide range of teachings. Because of that, they provide clues to the artistic expressions produced by the fully awakened mind of a Buddha - basis for opening the heart.
In this journey, through the vehicle of Buddhist practice, to the origins in India of the sacred Buddhist landscapes attributed to Buddha Shakyamuni, two basic themes are to be found: 1st) the inspiration of the Buddha's teachings and the importance that the Buddha gave to the landscape as the foundation for the gardens; 2nd) the importance of the Buddha-nature within as the container holding the ability to design gardens for meditation and cultivate the awakening mind. Meditation is key - especially when entering a sacred landscape, it is good to create some space … clear the mind and open the heart.
At the beginning, sitting on the ghats of the Ganges River in Benaras, a holy place for Hindus and Buddhists: sunrise is generally a time of awakening, but I don't think this city sleeps at any time. Non-stop music and noise, street vendors and beggars, bicycle rickshaws, motor scooters, motorcycles and taxis, children playing everywhere doing everything, cow pies and pig pies, dust and smoke in the air, sadhus and monks, the countenance of the people. On pilgrimage in India, I continually asked, which was the figure, which was the ground?
My research into these first sacred landscapes designed for the Buddhist practices led me on a path to the holy sites in India themselves - Bodhgaya, the site of the Buddha's enlightenment (See 2:2001); Deer Park at Sarnath, the site of his first teaching; Rajgir, the site of the first monasteries and the teaching of the Perfection of Wisdom; and the Jetavana of Sravasti, where the Buddha resided for twenty-five rainy seasons and taught all sutras and most of the tantras.
Towards the last week of the Buddha's engagement at Bodhgaya, scene of the enlightenment, (see 2:2001) he decided to teach. He sought out the five ascetics with whom he had lived during his years of austerity, and found them near Sarnath under a Banyan tree at the Mrigadawa Deer Park. Once, the park was a great forest inhabited by a herd of deer - 500 deer, continually threatened by death. The king, an avid hunter, set fires to the woods to flush out the deer. Because the shrubs and saplings on which they fed were burned, the deer died of starvation, as well as by the hunt. Worried about the plight of his kin, while at the same time aware of the king's need to eat, the deer's leader - an incarnation of the Buddha in a previous lifetime - offered to provide to the king one deer each day.
One day, the lottery picked a doe carrying an unborn fawn. Not fair, because two deer would be killed instead of one. Instead of offering the doe, the deer's leader offered himself as the daily sacrifice. The king heard about this altruism, and came to the cage where the deer's leader was being held. "Was this story true?" he asked. The leader told him that it was true, and the king responded, "Well, although I have the body of a man, I seem to act more like a vicious animal; whereas you have the body of a deer, and you act more like a man of virtue." So, the king released the deer, decided to become a vegetarian, and no longer needing the daily sacrifice, he turned the forest into the deer conservation area in which Buddha Shakyamuni was to teach.
The Deer Park lies within the terrain of the Ganges Plain. The expansive land has almost no topographic relief as far as the eye could see. Practically all under cultivation, the landscape is punctuated by hedgerows and small stands of trees. Small villages dot the countryside. Above the surrounding plains and fields, rises the wooded area of Deer Park. Although a mere twenty-five feet above the Ganges Plain, such a height above the fields appears to be significant.
Not subjected to massive erosion from high waters during the annual flooding of the Ganges River during the summer monsoon season, the luxurious woods growing on the higher grounds gave the Deer Park even more prominence. At the time of the Buddha's presence such a distinguishing feature was also considered rare and very special.
In the landscape where all the 1000 Buddhas present the first series of discourses, the Buddha taught. He taught in a landscape where the ascetics would have minimal conflict with the natural and social environment in somewhat of a "middle ground" or middle way between the Mahavana, the great jungle wilderness, which most people feared, and the villages filled with bustling human activity.
This landscape was neither completely alien to humans nor lavishly hospitable, so his first students would not have to be overly concerned with their survival. It was a perfect place for the Buddha to teach the First Turning of the Wheel of Dharma. In a clearing made by the browsing of deer in a conservation area, he taught the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination, he taught the Middle Way between the extremes of wanting it all or wanting nothing (the extremes between belief in inherent existence and belief in nihilism), identified as the Eight-fold Path and he taught the Four Noble Truths.
Since the Buddha himself taught, there was no need for reliance on symbols nor other design devices that make references and allusions, pointing to something else, to aid in the presentation of the teachings. Because there was no other human activity in this landscape, there was no garden, so to speak, and consequently no design ascribed to this park. There was only Nature - the law of cause and effect - actively at work in a landscape in which the Buddha's first disciples would become an integral part.
Two hundred eighteen years after the Buddha's passing, King Asoka built the structures marking places of significance. He built the Dhamekh Stupa on the site of the first teachings. He built the thirty meter high Dharmarajika stupa, today, a hole marking its location, in which to put relics of the Buddha. To the north of the Dharmarajika stupa is the place where the Buddha supposedly meditated. The Chaukhandi Stupa, marking the spot where the Buddha first met the five ascetics.
On New Year's Day 1987 at four in the morning I had come out to meditate. It was still dark. Moonless. Clear black sky. Stars brilliant. Looking for a place to sit, almost falling into the excavated courtyard of the stupas, I came to a spot that seemed comfortable. When the sun rose, I discovered that the place where I found myself sitting was perfectly in alignment with all the major structures in the cardinal directions.
* * *
The Buddha's band of disciples soon grew from the original five; they needed places to gather the six times each month to recite the discourses, and for the annual Vassa rainy season retreat. King Bimbasara, a disciple of the Buddha, donated the Veluvana, his pleasure garden at Rajgir, for the ordained community. In this Bamboo Forest, the first temporary residential compound, called the avasa, was built, sixty huts of thatch and straw built in one day.
It's likely that the King's pleasure garden was similar to the landscapes used by the Brahman hermits who, when retiring from the world, simply selected a beautiful spot in a woodland or a sequestered valley and built a simple cottage. Some were so beautiful and ideally situated as if built by Vessakamma, the heavenly architect. Simple, peaceful and serene, according to the Buddhist principles of the Middle Way, the Veluvana was suitable for the Buddhist community retreats, neither austere nor extravagant, where one of the Buddha's first teachings - the inevitability of impermanence - was expressed in the bamboo forest, whose growth and dying changed the patterns throughout the landscape each day
The prototype for the layout of the avasa was probably the small village of the region. Huts built near one another for defence against wild beasts or enemies, laid out in an ellipse or an amorphous pattern. The front doors faced inward towards an open space, the common ground of the community used for festivals, assemblies, public meetings and photos taken by Ingees.
* * *
Overlooking the valley of Rajgir is the mountain known as Vulture's Peak. Here the Buddha presented the Perfection of Wisdom, the profound discourses on the nature of reality and the reality of nature. An extremely dramatic setting, the mountain had been produced by tremendous upheaval and geological displacement during the collision of the Indian and Asian continental plates, causing the metamorphic layers of quartzite and gneiss to tilt almost vertically. The landscape of Vulture's Peak is like an apparition overlooking the valley below … reminding me of a place called Shangri-la.
King Bimbasara built a walkway for the Buddha and his 500 disciples so they could more easily walk up to the top of the mountain; otherwise the climb up the rocks would have been too difficult for many of them. Today, pilgrims walk the path that meanders past the cave where the Buddha's disciple Ananda meditated; past the site of the monastery seen by Hsuan-tsang in the 7th century; up to the ridge where Tibetan pilgrims erect piles of stones as offerings to celebrate their arrival at the sacred mountain.
In the midst of the sharp quartzite rocks shooting up into space, the Buddha taught the assembly of disciples from many realms. In what other place could he have taught, for the first time, that ordinary appearances are like illusions; that they appear to exist inherently but they do not; that their apparent nature is to be questioned. In such contrast to the landscape of the Ganges Plain, this topography appears totally unreal and unbelievable and unimaginable.
According to sutras, the Buddha taught to a large community of monks and Bodhisattvas. A commonly held assumption is that the Buddha presented these profound teachings at the top of Vulture's Peak where the shrine is located. However, when you imagine the configuration of this incredible land form without the levelled concrete platform, placed some time after the Buddha's presence, where would there have been enough physical space for the Buddha and the large community of monks to sit for these discourses. It's too steep. It wouldn't have mattered for the large community of bodhisattvas - they were probably just flying throughout space.
It's possible that maybe they sat on the top of the main ridge of the mountain just across from the shrine. More likely they sat on the level plateau just below the peak on the south side of the mountain. Much stonework and brick was once carefully laid, perhaps by King Bimbasara, to level the grounds. Here was enough room to present these profound discourses without the Buddha's having to resort to "magic tricks" - like hovering over the sharp mountain peaks to prove their validity. These discourses were magic enough.
* * *
Gradually the ordained Buddhist community increased in number and they began returning to the same location for their retreats. Out of these rituals arose the development of the vihara, the residence of the ordained community, and the sangharama, their monastery.
Southwest of Vulture's Peak in a mango grove is the site of the first monastery, the Jivakarama. This was perhaps, the first of its kind: the first monastery with a common courtyard in the centre of a built complex as a focal point; the predecessor for the classical cloistered quadrangle since then used by religious orders in both eastern and western traditions.
This open space came about through the suggestion of the Buddha's physician, Jivaka Komara-bhakka. One day when he came to visit the Buddha, the good doctor found a community of monks sick after eating too many sweets - Oreos were a big item in those days, especially the day after Halloween. Greeting the Buddha, Doctor Jivaka suggested that the monks have the use of, first a steam room, and second the use of a kan'kama, or cloister: an open space cleared and levelled for the purpose of walking for exercise and for meditation. And so the Buddha prescribed that the cloistered courtyard be used in the vihara.
The monks certainly needed the exercise; once they had begun to sit and meditate they didn't seem to do too much walking. Although, there was one Sona Kolivisa. He was known as the monk whose feet were completely covered with hair. He did nothing but walk. He walked back and forth with complete fury that he just about destroyed the soles of his feet. After seeing the tracks of blood on the ground, the Buddha gathered the monks around him and gave his teachings on the middle way to practice - evenly, without excess, without laziness.
The second unique feature of the Jivakarama was the configuration of the assembly halls, disproportionately longer than they are wide, and rounded off at both ends, designed to enable the ordained community to sit together in long rows and face one other while reciting the discourses, as they do today. I'm not sure about the rounded ends. The Jivakarama was built before the stupa or other votive figure was placed at the end of the meditation hall. Maybe it was designed to enable the monks to more easily do more walking meditation.
* * *
It was obvious that while I was visiting the sites where the Buddha stayed and taught, I was not visiting the places. Uplift and denudation of the Himalayan mountains to the north, aggradation and degradation of the Ganges River systems, changes in weather patterns, land use patterns and intensity, to say nothing about the destruction from political conflicts - all have contributed to the changing physical features of the region.
And the places where the Buddha taught and the energy of the sacred atmosphere that penetrated the land, the waters and the winds by his presence - most deteriorated soon after his passing. When the Chinese monk Hsuan-tsang in the 7th century came upon the Jetavana at Sravasti, just the foundations remained. Only one solitary shrine containing a five-foot tall image of the Buddha stood in the midst of the ruins; all other buildings were entirely destroyed.
After several periods of revival and decline, the practice of Buddhism in India ceased with the annihilation of the Buddhist monasteries in the 12th and early 13th century. Their presence was completely unknown to the Western world until the 1860's, when the British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham discovered mounds of ruins swallowed up in the midst of the jungle.
When I arrived at the garden, I thought that perhaps the Jetavana was the one pilgrimage site that revived the energy and serene qualities of a landscape that the Buddha would have chosen and designed for presenting so many teachings. Thinking about the qualities that the Buddha described when he said: There I saw woods that were delightful, lovely, secluded, sequestered, remote from turmoil amid charming lakes ... When I saw all this my mind became exceedingly clear.
The Jetavana at Sravasti was the most famous of all the monasteries. The Buddha lived and taught there for twenty-five years and presented all of the discourses of the sutras and most of the tantras. Anatha Pindaka, the wealthy merchant and banker of the city of Sravasti, donated the land to the Buddha and the ordained community for their stay during the rainy seasons. Anatha Pindaka's name means "the feeder of the destitute." When the Buddha accepted the merchant's invitation to reside at Sravasti, Anatha Pindaka looked for a special place -
Not too far from the town and not too near, convenient for going and for coming, easily accessible for all who wish to visit the Buddha; by day not too crowded, by night not exposed to too much noise and alarm; protected from the wind; hidden from men (but not monkeys); and well fitted for a retired life.
These are key scriptural guidelines in choosing placement of sacred landscape for a spiritual community.
Anatha Pindaka had his eye on a particular tract of land; it sat higher than the surrounding plains, and had the advantages he sought: not too far and not too near... The land was the garden belonging to Prince Jeta, the son of Prasenajit, king of Sravasti. Anatha Pindaka offered to purchase it. Prince Jeta responded by stating the price: the amount of gold it would take to completely cover the land - approximately 27 acres today, some estimate that the garden may have been as large as 130 acres. When the merchant depleted his treasury - 180 million Rupees worth - one small parcel of land remained uncovered. Prince Jeta realized this development wasn't an ordinary business enterprise; so he kicked in the last bit himself.
Before any buildings were constructed, all vegetation was cut down except for the sandalwood and the mango trees, perhaps to clear the grounds in order to provide a layout suitable for teaching.
Anatha Pindaka must have had a way with money. Within a wall to protect the community from wild animals and other distractions, he then constructed as many as 120 structures including viharas, temples for meditation and teaching, libraries, residences and shrines in a luxuriously verdant setting of trees and shrubs and flowers and ponds. Another 180 - 360 million Rupees.
The garden was designed as if the landscape were a mandala, a physical expression of a divine and luminous environment purified of all obstacles and hindrances, perceived through the awakened mind of enlightened beings. Usually a mandala is visualized as a precise geometric form with references to the cardinal directions expressing the qualities and attributes of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
Accordingly, the garden layout at the Jetavana was designed with two major axis conforming to the orientation of the landform, with the intersection of the two axis in the centre of the site, where a depression in the ground is surrounded by a mound of bricks yet to be uncovered. This appears to have been the centre of the mandala of the Jetavana, perhaps the basement of the main seven-story vihara described by Fa Hien.
Perhaps it was the remains of a pond of the Pure Land, similar in concept and pre-dating the Japanese 11th century Pure Land mandala gardens by 1500 years. It was at the Jetavana where the Buddha presented the Shorter Sutra on the Description of Sukhavati, the Western Paradise of Amida Buddha (he presented the Longer Sutra at Vulture's Peak); both are major texts of the Pure Land schools of Buddhism.
The importance of the Pure Lands is presented in the Avatamsaka Sutra, which relates how the Buddha turned the Jetavana into Pure Lands as an emanation of the awakening mind. Sitting before his disciples, the Buddha entered the concentration known as Coming Forth of the Lion, and caused the grounds to instantaneously appear as an indestructible diamond covered with flowers filled with illuminating pearls and other jewels. The groves of Jetavana became all the Buddha Fields, with innumerable rivers of fragrant waters, garlands of jewelled trees and radiant flowers. The skies of Jetavana were covered with inconceivable cloud-palaces of music and songs, and flower ornaments pervaded all of space.
Even though his disciples sat before the Buddha in the groves of Jetavana, they did not see this miraculous event. They had not yet cultivated the positive virtues enabling them to see, hear nor realize the qualities and wonders of the landscape as Buddha Fields. It wasn't possible for those who had not yet developed omniscient knowledge to become aware of the miraculous manifestations of the Buddha's mind. Some day, some lifetime, their diligent efforts would enable them to experience the perfection of the Pure Lands as a result of their virtuous thoughts and actions.
The axis to the east leads to the Bodhi Tree, planted by Ananda, the Buddha's disciple, and Anatha Pindaka. According to the Kalinga-bodhi Jataka, they planted the tree as a shrine near the gate. When the Buddha was away, people could leave garlands and fragrant wreaths as offerings. The steel posts in the front recently were set in place to support the 2500 year old tree branches - not bad for a 2500 year old.
Four principal buildings were built for the Buddha in the Jetavana. On the south side of the garden is the vihara built on the site of the Salala Tree House, with the classical plan of the vihara - a central courtyard roughly 50 feet square, surrounded by a quadrangle of apartments for the monks. The main gate of the quadrangle is open through a portico to the east and a shrine was located on the west side of the quadrangle directly opposite the main gate. The 10' wide covered verandah surrounding the courtyard protected the monks from the heavy monsoon rains. The well was placed in the centre of the courtyard.
Just as the domestic residential complex was used as the basis for the layout of the avasa, it also was used as the basis for the configuration of the sangharama. The domestic cottages of the complex generally were arranged together in groups of four, a house plan focused on an inner space or quadrangle, relying on the magic of the square. This configuration provided the best protection for the cattle of the household after being driven in from the pastures every evening. This configuration was also very practical in a tropical climate where artificial convection currents could be created, used in India for dwellings of all classes of people.
Questions - what could the original structures have looked like? Could the Buddha have been directly responsible for the classical design? Did the Buddha set the precedents here or were we to wait another 300 years for the classical geometry of the monastery? The remains of the existing viharas were built in the 11th to 12th century on the site of the original structure used by the Buddha's disciples. Directly underneath, the brick walls date to the 5th century. The Buddha lived at the Jetavana 900 years earlier. Although physical evidence of structures built during the Buddha's presence is well below the surface and difficult to excavate without destroying the structures above; it may well have been the same.
Once the design of the Buddhist monastery was established, subsequent structures were built almost identically. For example, at Nalanda University, each layer was built exactly like the one below it. The remains of several layers of vihara can be seen easily, rebuilt as many as three or four times. The abbot of the Sri Lanka Monastery just outside the Jetavana, where I stayed, has no doubt that the classical vihara was originally designed and built for the Buddha.
Early in the morning, around 3:30 under perfectly clear star-studded skies, I would come out to the Jetavana and meditate in the temple marking the Gandhakuti, the actual home of the Buddha. I would first sit in the assembly room, then move to the shrine room in front … sitting in the spot where the Buddha sat, in the house where the Buddha lived. I reflected how these places served as physical expressions of the teachings, themselves, keys to help explain the essential components of the discourses and practices, the Buddha gave practitioners, while they progress along the spiritual path, statements on the important value of the sacred Buddhist landscapes.
It was absolutely quiet. Seeing me, one of the caretakers walked in gently and lit candles and incense in front of the wall. The woods were still. For about an hour. At 4:30 the local community ghetto blaster, shrill with high-pitched song from the village on the other side of the rice fields boomed the morning news on full volume. What to do? Deep in meditation, on pilgrimage in India, which was the figure; which was the ground?
3:2001