It is said, "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." Of course this instruction is not meant to be taken literallly, only to remind a Zen practitioner that he or she is looking in the wrong place for enlightenment. An international team of archeologists lead by Robin Coningham of Durham University, UK is looking for Buddha in the sacred groves of Lumbini
[photo] where the oldest sacred texts say Queen Maya Devi gave birth to Prince Siddhartha Gautama who became the "enlightened one"--Buddha. They may have found his actual birthplace. A wooden structure some 2500 years old, surrounded by a courtyard, was located beneath a brick temple built three centuries later to honor the birth of the Buddha. Lumbini is in Nepal near the Indian border and has become a venerated site by the world's 500 million Buddhists. It was overgrown by jungle before its rediscovery in 1896 and is now a UNESCO world heritage site.
The structure found inside the sacred Maya Devi temple was scientifically dated to the sixth century. Oral tradition has it that Queen Maya Devi was traveling to her father's kingdom when she gave birth to her son beneath a sal tree at Lumbini. No date was associated with the tradition. If the carbon dating proves to be correct, it would put the Buddha's birth at 550AD given the wooden temple was built about then. Coningham and his team of searchers have spent three years excavating the shrine and work continues. While the archeologists worked, Buddhist monks and nuns continuously circled the site chanting prayers as the birthplace of their religious leader was exposed to 21st century sunlight.
Besides the obvious and important historical significance of locating the Buddha's birthplace, is the large economic impact of a major world religion's significant shrine. Villagers around Lumbini live on less than one and half dollars a day. Professor Coningham hopes they will benefit from the influx of wealth that is bound to come with the find. Hundreds of thousands already make the pilgrimage to Lumbini's sacred sites and that figure is bound to increase now that modern science has validated ancient religious tradition. The Asian Development Bank has provided nearly $90 million in funding to expand Lumbini's roadways and airport. The Gautama Buddha airport will be expanded to allow international flights and is scheduled to be completed by 2017. The Nepal government wants to develop Lumbini as a center for peace and has plans for 2 million visitors annually by 2020. Several Asian countries including China and Japan have already built monasteries at Lumbini. The Sacred Garden where Siddhartha was born is also used by local Hindus for celebrations.
