08 December 2011

Happy Bo Day!

Sorry for not posting lately, but I have a good excuse. I've spent the last couple weeks in Hawaii.

And here's what I have to show for it.

A Bo (or Bodhi) tree, the tree that the Buddha sat under when he achieved enlightenment.

Well, OK, it wasn't this tree that Buddha supposedly sat under on the eighth day of the 12th lunar month (December 8th this year, I guess) in 596 BCE while being tempted by Mara (the Buddhist version of Satan) and his daughters, before driving them all away with an earthquake. But it was a tree of this species: Ficus religiosa.
(The tree in my picture was taken at the Foster Botanical Garden in Honolulu.)

After getting enlightened, the Buddha stood in front of the sacred tree and stared, without blinking, for an entire week.

Me, I just took a picture.

1 comment:

Stephen said...

Surely that can't be the self-same fig tree Jesus cursed in Matthew 21:19... maybe a distant cousin.
;-)
Steve Weeks

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