Rahul stands perplexed in front of the Mayadevi Temple complex inside the Lumbini Gardens at Lumbini in Nepal. He has been part of a Buddhist pilgrimage group that started from Kolkata to complete a Buddhist pilgrim circuit trip touching Bodhgaya, Rajgir and Nalanda (Bihar), Kushinagar and Sarnath (Uttar Pradesh), and Lumbini (Nepal). This was his first visit to Nepal and the ambiance, serenity and deep unexplained divinity of the place suddenly capsized him in deep emotions. Suddenly he could see in front of his eyes the blessed Buddha sitting cross-legged in deep meditation. He felt a deep connection to this place and a mixed emotions going up and down his body. He felt that he had probably been to this place and location many times, a Deja Vu like experience. Flashes of his life with negative and positive emotions seem to flood together in an irregular sequence….

Rahul or more precisely Rahul Sengupta has been a non-believer of any faith from his young days. Rahul’s parents both engineers immigrated to the United States from West Bengal six decades back. Rahul was born and raised in a Western society and had very little connection to India overall. His grandparents still live in Kolkata in their ancestral residence on Lake Temple Road. Rahul use to visit them when he was a young f kid with his parents every couple of years. But as he grew up and reached adulthood his visits to the country of his parents become less and less over time. He got busy with his life, career, and friends in Boston, Massachusetts. His parents work for the city municipality’s engineering division. Rahul joined Fine Arts school and got slowly interested in ancient Indian art and art history. Rahul’s parents had an affluent lifestyle abs Rahul being the only child was pampered by his parents all his life.

So Rahul had everything he wanted in life. Branded dress, relaxation with friends at high-end restaurants, A-grade spas, and gymnasium for maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle, entry to premier art school, sports car, Ray ban sunglasses. expensive wristwatches and mobiles and whatnot. But he was not a spoiled brat in the real sense of the term. In spite of the affluence in his life, he was not an arrogant or rude individual. He was never a religious person and often questioned in his mind the existence of God. But a professor of ancient Indian art history in the school he is attending attracted his attention. At the very time, he was exploring ancient Indian art and sculpture in great detail. This slowly transformed his interest toward Tibetan studies, Indology, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. He slowly turned very appreciative towards ancient Indian art.

But his purpose of visit to their Kolkata residence in India has been entirely different. He got to Kolkata to see his grandparents after almost 15 years since he last visited them. His grandparents wanted to gift their property to Rahul. He needed to be present in person at Kolkata for legal purposes. But even that was not the very reason for his visit to India; neither was his passion for Indian art a reason either. Rahul has been very close to his high school sweetheart Amanda Schultz. He was emotionally and physically involved with Amanda for the past ten years. Both looked forward to marrying and settling down in the future together as a dedicated couple and raising their kids. Over the years, Rahul started to become increasingly possessive of Amanda and this slowly started to build a rift between them.

Amanda has been an independent woman and has started her new career as a real estate agent. She loved Rahul but his increasingly aggressive possessive behaviour was tearing her apart. Rahul in spite of having everything in his life had an underlying lack of confidence with respect to women. Possibly this comes from his South Asian heritage and his fear of not being able to hold back women of European descent successfully in life. Somewhere in his psychology, he suffered from a fear of losing Amanda. Ultimately, his fear turned into a fact when Amanda bid him goodbye after repeated quarrels and confrontations for over a year. She got extremely annoyed and frustrated with Rahul. She felt that Rahul is encroaching on the space between them and her independence and interfering too much with her personal life. To cut the long story short, Rahul tried to reach her back. But it did not go well as she filed a police complaint for harassment against him.

The whole incident impacted Rahul in a highly negative manner. He has never been rejected in his life and always got everything he wanted. This was the first time he felt his life went upside down. He was unable to face his friends too since Amanda dumped him and started getting into depression, drugs, and alcohol. Finding no other option, his parents decided to convince him to travel to India for a few months to relieve him from stress and anxiety with a medical leave from his school as a study break. Also, they insisted upon him that in India he will be better off away from his clumsy life in the US. They also encouraged him to explore Indian art and sculpture and travel around to help him get out of his negative emotional feelings as he started looking at himself as a failure in life.

Rahul slowly settled in India and being encouraged by his grandparents joined a group for a Buddhist pilgrimage trip. Initially, Rahul tried his best to avoid this trip as he was not interested in joining a group of strangers also he never felt that he was religious enough to enjoy a pilgrimage trip far from his home. But somehow for an unknown reason, he later decided to join the group for this trip. Both his parents in US and grandparents in Kolkata were very happy with his decision as they felt that he needs a change desperately. For Rahul, it was an escape from the trauma of his life and the failure in his love life that he considered to be humiliating. His male ego was deeply hurt in this process and he started avoiding people and confining himself into a dark lonely circle away from everyone.

To get acquainted with Buddhism he immersed himself in reading. This was also helpful for him as it kept his mind engaged and away from thinking about Amanda. Rahul has turned quite bitter inside by this time and started reacting to even small provocations. Prior to his visit to India, he got involved in a couple of bar fights in the US that earned him another police case filed against him by the bar and restaurant owner for disturbing peace abs damaging property. From a highly colourful life, Rahul realized that he has been moving towards hopelessness, depression, frustration, and anxiety. His mood and attitude turned to be quite mercurial and he started getting provoked even with the slightest input from his adversaries at the gym, spa, swimming pool, and school as well as both in his social and personal life. He was slowly losing control of his life, attitude, and behaviour.

The pilgrimage trip slowly turned into a refuge or an escape root for Rahul from his worries, anxiety abs depression. Although silent at the beginning but he slowly opened up to his fellow travellers and soon became quite comfortable with them. Most members of this group were senior citizens and Rahul slowly got acquainted with them. Every day during this trip in addition to travel and worship the group went through a teaching and teasing session where various teachings of Lord Buddha were discussed, analyzed, and explained with real-life examples. The discussion started to have a positive impact on Rahul’s mind. He learnt that our life is subjected to loss and sorrow; but, there are ways to overcome that. We do not need to reinvent the wheel to figure out how to deal with the problems of life. Lord Buddha has discovered those paths for us through his devoted path to knowing the truth. We just need to have faith in him and follow those paths judiciously.

Rahul was never a religious person. But the vacuum and sadness in his life made him introspect the causes of his inner pain, sadness, bitterness, loss of trust in individuals, and above all a looming hurt ego. He immersed himself in Buddhist teachings and learning more about Buddha and His divine life. He started reading books provided to him by his fellow travellers and while travelling from one pilgrimage site to another he read them from cover to cover with great interest. Bodhgaya and Rajgir mesmerized him, Nalanda inspired him; while the visit to Sarnath and Kushinagar encouraged him to learn more about Buddha and his teachings. The Buddhist monk who accompanied them in the trip soon became Rahul’s teacher and mentor.

Bhante explained to Rahul that in spite of being an enlightened and divine individual Himself; Gautama Buddha worked extremely hard, educated himself under the guidance of legendary scholars, traveled huge distances in persist if the truth of life, meditated hard with extreme devotion and starved himself almost to death. At this juncture when He became extremely weak and got transformed into skin and bare bones, a village girl Sujata offered him rice pudding. Buddha accepted the offering and after consuming this simple food he found His strength back and mediated successfully under the Bodhi tree to achieve enlightenment. Bhante pointed that in spite of His outstanding qualities, devotion and mental strength; if he had to work extremely hard for six years to achieve enlightenment, then as ordinary humans where do we stand? Thus it is important to understand that Buddha has shown us the way to overcome grief in life and achieve ultimate happiness. But we as individuals need to work our way to that point through meticulous following of His divine teachings.

All these experiences and philosophical discussions were percolating deep inside Rahul. The thoughts made him look inside or introspect himself more sincerely. Over the few days of following a pious, hard-working and routine life during the pilgrimage Rahul became a real observer and a dedicated student attempting to honestly dissect his life in the light of Buddhist teachings. He soon realized that the sadness and frustrations inside him have not been inflicted by Amanda or his destiny; but, he himself is actually responsible for this. His super ego, good look, privileged upbringing, family affluence and success in material life made him a much bigger individual than he actually is. Rahul slowly realized that his pain and passion are his own creation and he has been making repeated mistakes by blaming others instead of himself. He has been looking an easy way to happiness in life fuelled by his male ego. But happiness cannot be achieved in such simplistic terms just like we buy stuff in the grocery shop or in the mall. Rahul could see his past life in front of his eyes during his deep meditation practise. Bhante demonstrated to him the techniques of meditation and how to relax leaving inner worries behind.

Rahul started practicing meditation during the trip to open his mind. It was challenging for him in the beginning, but he soon started liking the experience. He noticed that as soon as he starts meditating various thoughts and distractions moved up like bubbles and clogged his mind. He could not keep his focus and motivation high; his mind started being bombarded by negative thoughts and he was finding meditation to be a painful process. But his meticulous following of Bhante’s guidelines helped him to cool down and he started enjoying the experience. Often he found tears dropping from his eyes with a wide range of emotions bubbling up from the darkest corners of his mind. Bhante asked Rahul to vow that he will never leave this practice throughout his life. Rahul agreed and took the vow. He slowly felt that his inner peace is coming back to him. His ego was tamed a bit to not allow it to fully control his mind, emotions, anger, depression, and frustration. He understood that Buddhism is not just a religion, but a way of life that one has to experience through the teachings of Buddha and by practicing Buddha’s teachings in one’s personal life.

Then on he started feeling the difference in his life. He felt that he is being charged like a cell phone through this process of meditation. Once he realized his mistakes made in life and the privileges he enjoy while millions of people are deprived of even basic needs of life. He felt his level of compassion went up and his distrust, hatred and finger-pointing towards others went down. The pilgrim sites, Buddhist monks, various statues of Buddha, monasteries, temples, people around him and his thoughts all seem to be absorbed inside his body. He was delighted to know that Rahul was the name of the son of Gautama Buddha. He was astonished to learn how much Emperor Ashoka of the Maurya dynasty contributed towards the spread of Buddhism in the continent of Asia. He was mesmerized to see the Ashoka pillars and the inscriptions on them. It inspired him to think that an ancient emperor significantly contributed so much to the spread of Buddhism across the traditional borders of India. He could connect himself to the emperor as he too is fighting with his grief.

The sequence of events has been transforming Rahul from inside. At Kushinagar he had a dream that he is standing on the shore of a vast ocean. In front of him was a massive gigantic statue of reclining Buddha in the middle of the ocean-facing him. Heavy fog and mist was interrupting his visit of the giant statue of Gautama Buddha. He looked at Him with great reverence while he saw pigeons flying across the sky. Another night he saw he is climbing a huge mountain along the curvy slope. The inclination of the mountain was so steep that he kept rolling downwards. But through his sheer determination and perseverance he was able to reach the peak of the mountain at last. But when he paid attention he found that actually it was a colossal Buddha statue that he was attempting to climb.

But his real connection was at the birthplace of Gautama Buddha at Lumbini in Nepal. When he looked at the marker stone inside the Mayadevi temple pinpointing the exact point where Buddha was born he felt an unseen force pulling him towards the site with great thrust. All these experiences has been slowly changing him from a frustrated and depressed individual to a person of wisdom and better understanding of human life. Rahul realized during the trip that it was not just him who suffered from pain and anguish only; but countless others has been suffering more than him from ages. It was just his selfish and self-centered thoughts that actually made him an egoistic, one-eyed individual suffering in the fire that he created himself. Rahul’s inner healing started through self-introspection and his faith on Gautama Buddha and his teachings was strengthened during this trip. He could connect himself better for the first time in his life by looking at himself internally rather than focusing externally. His experience and visions during the trip changed him internally. Rahul decided to focus on his passion for ancient Indian art and sculpture with a special focus on the evolution of Buddhist paintings and sculptures down the ages. It brought him the inner peace he longed for long as well as transformed into a dedicated art scholar with a promise of significant contribution to his discipline in the future.  

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