Sankissa

It was 1999...

...I also had a marvellous time, on pilgrimage, on retreat and visiting friends. For pilgrimage I visited Sankissa, Sravasti, Pharphing and Sikim. Sankissa is one of the eight great pilgrimage places associated with Shakyamuni Buddha. It is here that the Lord descended from heaven after teaching his mother shortly after his enlightenment (some say it was the seventh rains season). It's in the middle of Uttar Pradesh and indeed in the middle of nowhere-I think I am the only member of the Western Buddhist Order ever to visit it, so far. I felt strangely drawn to the place.

Before I left for India I was unable to locate Sankissa on any map and noticing that the Lonely Planet guide has withdrawn their reference to it in recent editions began to have second thoughts about going. That is until I went to the February National Order Weekend. There I discovered in a book on Hsuan sTsang that he also had felt strangely drawn to visit the site, even though it was out of his way.

Once in India I had a further couple of nudges in Sankissa's direction. On my first day, I met through a series of bizarre chances a man who knew most of the eight great pilgrimage sites, he assured me that I could get there and reinforced my resolve to go. A day or so later on a bus in Delhi I found myself standing besides a man reading a magazine, he turned the page and there was a photo and an article about Sankissa! Oh how I love India, magical, mystical, Buddhist India!

So, out I set into the unknown, and after some culturally shocking experiences arrived at Sankissa. It's a very beautiful place, (mind you I find most of India very beautiful). Even the road that leads to the site is lovely. It's a simple lane that runs straight towards the Stupa from the main road for a couple of miles, fields and ponds either side. It is a strange fortune that the anti-Buddhist landowners that refuse to sell land to Buddhists have preserved the peace and tranquillity of this place.

The road runs past an old village devoid of electricity that rises above the plain on its own mound of ancient ruins, and ends beneath a great gnarled tree at the Stupa's foot. All around the site of the descent is nothing but fields and feathery leafed trees. It was evening when I arrived. A golden sun was setting in a red Western Hemisphere, peacocks' meowing as it went down. At the base of the mound near the huge old tree is an Ashokan column, this one unusually sporting an elephant capital.

Out of the of fields rises the remains of what once must have been a very big stupa, now a mound-not unlike Sillbury hill, but with what looks like, and probably once was, a brick castle on top. The castle or fort is now filled in or levelled off so that assenting the stairs up through the old portal one arrives on a terrace on which sit a couple of basic Hindu shrines. The Devi who inhabits the shrine here looks so similar to Avaloketeshvara one wonders if this isn't an instance of a farmer digging up a Buddhist rupa and beginning to worship him in the only way he knows how. The only image of the Buddha here is tucked away in a tiny temple at some distance before the Stupa. It is an ancient black stone image of the descent. On either side of the Lord are Indra and Brahma who accompanied Shakyamuni back to earth, each on their own stairs. Indra's was Blue; Brahma's was Silver, while between them the supreme Lord descended on stairs of gold. I preferred to imagine the stairs in more modern terms, seeing them descend through rays of light.

I learnt that the event that occurred here was called a Prattihara. Apparently a Prattihara is a very rare moment when the barrier between the Kammaloka (our realm of desire) and the Rupaloka (the realm of beauty, inhabited by gods) is removed, when the gods could see the world and the world could see the gods.

It must have been a very very beautiful moment.