Nepal-India Days 3 and 4: Lumbini and Kapilvastu

Dateline: 23 & 24 November 2025. Anyone who has followed my occasional ramblings on this blog may recall a piece I wrote last year, inspired by my visit to the Mahāvana Forest near Kapilavastu in Nepal. It drew on the Mahāsamaya Suttam, which recounts how the Buddha, after intervening to prevent a war over water rights, offered spiritual guidance to 500 princes. This in turn became the occasion for an extraordinary celestial gathering. Despite Māra’s attempts to sow disruption, countless beings attained enlightenment, marking a rare moment of harmony and spiritual release on a truly cosmic scale.

Bodhi tree at Ramagram stupa

What I had not expected was how quickly those words would begin to find their way back to me once I arrived in Lumbini this second time. Our first visit was to Ramagram Stupa. When we entered the grounds, a large group of Thai monks, perhaps 80 of them, together with a smaller number of lay devotees, were already deep in meditation. Our own group settled roughly some 50 metres away, preparing to do the same. All except me. I remained alert, watching.

When the Thai group completed their meditation, they rose quietly and began walking along the boardwalk that encircled the stupa. They made three slow circumambulations before stopping and turning as one to face the shrine. Only then did I fully register the scene that had formed. My group was seated on the ground in silent meditation, facing the stupa, and behind us, an entire line of monks standing still, also facing it. No movement, no sound, just layered stillness.

The image struck me with unexpected force. My mind went immediately to the Mahāsamaya Sutta, to the account of 500 monks seated before the Buddha, surrounded by vast assemblies of celestial beings gathered to hear his teaching. I could see a parallel and it was uncanny.  In that moment, the physical arrangement mirrored the ancient account so closely that it felt less like coincidence than recurrence. The scene seemed to suggest that certain configurations of stillness, reverence and collective focus arise naturally, across centuries and cultures, whenever human beings gather around something they hold to be profoundly meaningful. Recognising that pattern, seeing the ancient narrative briefly reenacted in an entirely ordinary setting, left me awe-struck.

My second moment came at the Māyādevī Temple. On an earlier visit, the exact spot of the Buddha’s birth had never been clearly pointed out to me. I remembered only excavated ground and scattered stones. This time, a guide pointed out the marker itself. Standing there, looking down at that simple stone, I felt something quietly profound take hold. Later, as we sat within the temple to reflect, my eyes went damp not from sadness, but from a sudden, complete joy. This was where it had all begun, the first step in the Buddha’s journey on earth, and I was so thankful to be near it.

And so it led, almost inevitably, back to Mahāvana Forest and the Mahāsamaya Suttam itself. We walked along shaded paths until the trees opened into a small clearing. Today, a modest Hindu shrine stands there, marking the space where the Buddha is said to have addressed his 500 newly ordained monks. The setting was unassuming, even ordinary, yet it carried a certain weight as if the ground itself remembered what had once taken place there.

The monks in our group settled into position and began chanting the Mahāsamaya Suttam. We sat facing them, chanting books open in our hands. Once again, the arrangement felt strangely familiar: monks upright and composed, lay followers seated before them, the forest enclosing us in a stillness. There was no ceremony beyond the chant itself, no attempt to recreate anything.

What surprised me most was my own response. The Pāli text should have been alien to me. The words, the rhythms, even the translations. And yet, almost instinctively, I found myself following the chant line by line. I could locate the verses without hesitation, even pointing them out to Saw See, who sat beside me, thoroughly lost. It felt less like reading and more like recognition, as though something long stored had been unlocked.

Those moments, more than anything else on the journey, still stays with me. In the Mahāvana Forest, as earlier at Ramagram, the ancient arrangement surfaced once more. Monks and lay followers gathered in the same geometry described in the texts, not by design but by instinct. For a brief moment, the present felt like a continuation of the past, and the time distance between then and now seemed to fade away.

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Nepal-India Days 1 and 2: Kathmandu and Nagarkot