Visit to Anand Buddha Vihar

A plan to visit Buddhist temple in a foreign land was made months ago but we were able to make it come true only on 8 September 2013. Since, we are far from our home and the very fact that we have never visited any temple outside our own country inspired us to explore Buddhist temples in India. With the help of our Indian colleagues, we did some basic research and found one Buddhist temple, which was not very far from our college. The temple is named as Anand Buddha Vihar, it was consecrated by His Holiness Dalai Lama on 6 April 2003.  

Two Indians and three Bhutanese, all Buddhist followers filled with excitement went to visit the temple. The journey was not very long as expected. We started at 11:30 by our school bus, which took us until the junction from where we took an auto and made our way to temple. Upon reaching temple, we found that the temple is locked and there was a notice pasted on the door where it was written the time of opening and closing of the temple. We realized we were in the wrong hour. The temple opens from 5 am to 8 am in the morning and 5 pm to 9 pm during the evening. With a hope that they may consider, we went to seek permission from the monk who was residing just below the temple but then he was a man with principles and asked us to visit during evening. We lost our hopes; it was so disheartening because we hardly get time to come out of the college for such trips due to our packed schedules. It was a time of mourning, so we sat in front of the closed temple doors wishing it to be opened with a sad face.

Yes, miracle happened! The caretaker of the temple who saw us while having conversation with the monk came with the keys and opened the temple for us. I suppose it was blessing from the heaven above who was watching us praying them to bless us today to see them through temple. With a big smiles on our faces we entered into the temple bowed down to the statue of Buddha and the sat inside for a while. Since, it was off-hour, we made it quick and upon coming out of the temple, we thanked him with a big big smile.

The feeling of real peace, security and happiness can be found only inside the temple. Your heart tend to beat slow, you automatically gets relax, calm and you feel so secure, you feel like praying all your wishes, your heart tend to complain much. For instance, you will complain about about your health, your studies, your financial stability and so on. However, at the end of the day, one will never find a peaceful place than being inside temple.

We are planning to visit the temple ones in every semester and next time we will make it on time.