For most people who ever came to Indonesia, Borobudur temple usually becomes their favorite place to come, but there are only few people who discover or realize that there is something precious they can find from the temple besides its beauty or magnificent construction.
Built at the 9th century, Borobudur temple is the largest Buddhist temple at that time. Most people believe that this building is so amazing because at that time there is no advance construction technology that they can use to build the temple, yet they still could build this thing. Other people visit this temple because they heard about it from their friends or relatives, telling them that you still know nothing about Indonesia if you never visit Borobudur temple. Beside these two reasons, there are so many other reasons people use before deciding whether to visit Borobudur or not. However, among these reasons there are only few people who visit Borobudur temple to learn every life value recorded on the stone used to build the temple itself.
There are 10 terraces at Borobudur temple and you can easily find relief at each terrace. When the temple construction began, people also started to make the relief. They base the relief from Buddha’s life itself. From the first terrace up to the last, you can easily learn how Siddharta Gautama started his life as a royal prince, realizing that there was something missing from his life as a royal prince, escaping from the palace, discovering contrast life between what he had in the royal palace and his people had, taking meditation, until at the end reaching the enlightenment and achieve Buddha stage.
There are so many people who ever come to Borobudur temple, but there are only a few of them who ever had a willingness to learn about how Buddha lived his life, even though when there are so many life value they can get from the relief. Most people don’t give any attention to this because the only thing they want to get is relaxation. Most people treat this great Buddhist temple as a temple belong to Buddhism faithful, so they don’t need to pay attention for the Buddha’s life history.
At least, there are some important thing we can learn from Buddha’s life. First, we should not close our eyes with other people’s life. We may be a rich person, but our wealth should not make any border with anyone who needs our help, especially people who have nothing in their life, including something they can do to earn some money, just to buy some foods, drinks, and clothes for them and their family. Another thing is we should not be bound with any wealth we have. Whenever it is needed to spare what we have with other poor people, whether psychologically or physically, we should not keep our wealth at our hand. We should realize that the most important thing in this life is not how to get a prosperous life by ourselves, but how to achieve that life together, with everyone.
/// Written by Melisa Natasha Mumek, Indonesia
