Borobudur temple
Borobudur temple is biggest budhist temple in the world. Borobudur temple was buit in 9th century. Borobudur temple built by Shailendra dinasty, start by King Samaratungga and finished by his daughter Queen Pramudawardani and take time more than 70 years. The architect of borobudur temple is Gunadharma.
Borobudur temple came from name Bhumi Sambhara Budhara with the meaning is holy place for praying.
Borobudur temple was restored at 1873 and finished at 1983.
Three main part of borobudur temple is
KAMADHATU : it's symbol of the life, human lifie in the world with all real obsession.
Relief on the floor level is description about this.
RUPADHATU : it's symbol of the life after the real world but before the nirvana, this is life in between the real world (now) and nirvana.
Relief on the first to fourth level is description about rupadhatu.
ARUPADHATU it's symbol of the nirvana, the life without obsession, the world of the god.
The cyrcle level with the stupa and the top stupa is symbol of arupadhatu.
Borobudur have 504 budhas statue in all level and have various positions and size. Borobudur also have 32 lion statue.
Borobudur have many stupa with different size. 1.472 stupas in mini size, 72 stupas with a hole/window and budha statue inside, and 1 biggest solid stupa as the top/head of the temple.
Overall the temple shape is square if we look from the sky/top with the wide is 123 meters and the high is 30.5 meters. Borobudur temple built with 55.000m3 of andesite stone.
Borobudur temple have 4 storyline on the relief.
From the bottom is KARMAWIBHANGGA.
Karmawibangga is a lesson story about karma, this is all aboout what you get is came from what you give/did before. If you do good karma you will get good karma at the next time, if you do bad some bad karma will comeback to you as your punishment. The relief on karmawibhangga story is 160 frame.
Then LALITAWISTARA . Lalitawistara is the story about life of the budha. The relief is start on the south side/stairs after 27 frame from the east side/stairs, the 27 frame have story about welcome preparation of the budha, the preparation is not only in the world but also in nirvana. Lalitawistara have 120 frame start from the born of budha as prince sidharta in arcapada and finish on the lesson about darma, darma laso have meaning law(law of life), with the symbol is a wheel.
Then next relief is JATAKA and AWADANA.
Jataka is story about budha before he born as sidharta. The story is like a fable, the story give us lesson to do the good things. Awadana is the similar story with jataka but the main character is not the budha, the story also give us example to do good thing and the story about jataka and awadana is mix together on same level.
Last is GANDAWYUHA . Gandawyuha is the story about sudhana, a character who do expedition around the world on the mission to learn the real truth. This relief have 460 frame base on the book with title MAHAYANA.
So to understand and learn the story on the relief you must start from east side/stairs and the go to the south make a clockwise cyrcle.
On the stupa with hole/window we can find six different budha statue.
First with the right hand down face on right leg it's mean touch the earth, we all came and living in same earth.
Second right hand up face on right leg, it's mean giving is better than taking, so share what you have to the other need it.
Third the right hand facing up above the left hand, the meaning is meditation.
Fourth the right hand face front, the meaning is don't worry about life, all problems have solutions, all bad thing will be end and change to be a good thing.
Fifth the thumb and index finger of the right hand meet together, it's mean learning and teaching, learn about something new on the life and also teach what you know about life.
Sixth the right hand face down above the left hand face up, it's mean turning the wheel of life, it's the law to do good darma during your life to get good on the next life.
And last the top solid stupa is symbolic of the highest place to reach nirvana, the Borobudur temple is symbolic how people must be do darma during the life to reach nirvana.
Take from some different book, writen and edited by wawan jogjadriverteam™