Vikramshila: A Long Poem Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Vikramshila: A Long Poem


Preface

Vikramshila is one of the older topics which I sought to dwell upon earlier, but the lack of records could not permit me to do it earlier, as liked I to visit the place before jotting it down, so the poem could not materialize and my images too could not take wings. I too had been struggling for my poetry and really had been in trouble. Even I had left the hope of living, as I continued to be sick and ailing, disturbed and exhausted completely. Nothing seemed to bail me out. Serious studies seemed to be baffling in the lack of resources available to me. Poverty in the midst of plenty had been the case of our family. People too were not there to support me. Even without any grant and aid, I went on studying and laboring, pursuing my serious studies at the risk of living.
Whatever be that, the small book of verse is before you to see and peruse as the fulfillment of my long-cherished dream coming to a standstill. The word ‘Vikramshila' itself is just like the toll of a bell as I am so much drawn towards as it so closer to my heart.
A Buddhist vihara, one of the citadels of ancient learning, it is still resplendent in our hearts as the spirit of it invincible, indomitable whoever tries to wipe out the relics and memoirs of its legacy and standing will feel befooled ultimately. Vikramshila is Vikramshila, was it so in the past, will remain in future too, however be the nomadic tribe barbaric and brutal in attacking and raiding it.
But the pleasure is mine that I have finally turned out successful in giving poetic touches to my long-cherished, ever nourished dream of putting the idea into a poetical reality and the aftermath of it is this that the long poem is before you to go through and browse in the form of a historical poem. But my efforts will be rewarding only then when the readers will like it. I am just putting it before them to adjudge and assess it as a work of literature based on history.



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Vikramshila

Vikramshila the Buddhist monastery,
Mahavihara
Talk I, dream I
In my poesy,
Vikramshila its heyday
Full of hectic activity,
Vikramshila in the ruins
Telling of the raids
And the plight thereafter
And of an age bygone
Of splendor and excellence.

The two-terraced stupa, the gate,
The fort-like projections,
The cells, the housing complex
Residential,
The walls with the murals,
The terracotta plates,
Sculptures and figurines,
Carvings beautiful and decorating,
Surrounded by innumerable temples,
But the main stupa aloft
And the mandapa to reach.



















I see the monastery in ruins
And think about the builders,
The masons at work,
The planners and the architects,
Kingly orders and their presence,
Who had been he,
How the people of his,
What the faith,
How the teachers and pupils,
Indian and foreigner?

People would have seen the students
Coming from Tibet, China,
Mongolia, Siam, Farmosa,
Cambodia, Myanmar,
The North-east,
The Indo-Chinese, the Tibeto-Chinese
From the Himalayan kingdoms
And across the ranges
When darkness would not have set in
To grip in.






















Introduction

Vikramshila as a long poem is the outcome of my sittings based on my readings of history, Indian history, art and culture, my comprehension of it and its assimilation into the poetic spirit culminating which I have striven to give touches to and to put down while imagining about, dreaming and culling facts to hinge upon. Rightly said, the child is father of man, and the images and habits formed in childhood haunt a being till manhood still holds true in this context of delving and deliberation. I shall feel happy if the destroyed and devastated varsities of India are refurbished and refurnished in the same architectural get-up and maintenance, a replicating of the replicas as to turn into the places of museum studies and historical researches.
Medieval Indian history you accept it or not is the darkest period of Indian history when the lamp of light extinguished it, leaving us to grope in darkness, when the purdah system uprooted it all that was good in our society. Religious fanaticism and blindness seconded by bigotry, orthodoxy and conservatism wreaked havoc and we failed to distinguish light from darkness.
Without thinking about scansion and prosody, I have structured it as they came to the stanzas of verse, floating and flowing in their own way, with the dreamy glides and launches of mine fed up with historical facts and truths.
The small text is into the hands to see with what angle the book has been written, what the perspective and dimension it, the spectrum and assimilation doing the rounds herein. I never could imagine that I would be able to do a booklet of verse on it. But the Almighty wished it otherwise, choosing me to dispense the job and I did it rightly.
It is not at all acceptable to us if the invaders invade India to have their sway, mind and mentality over the populace who could have driven them so easily had they been united, but never did we do as it is not in our blood.
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Vikramshila

The ancient seat of learning,
The mahavihara
Of monistic Buddhism,
Mahayana concept
With the strupa
Two-terraced
In a cruciform
And the square complex
Surrounded by
The temples
With the terracotta plaques
And the entry gates
With the gate scholars
To be laid in
To be taught.

Vikramshila,
The Buddhist varsity,
The ancient of learning,
Historical and antique
Founded during the time of
The Pala King Dharmapal
Now lying in ruins
As for medievaistic raids
And destruction.

I think
How they would have raided
The complex,
Would have toppled,
How the scholars would have
Fled and taken refuge
Or subjugated,
Absconding and deserting
Or giving life.

How the barbarians,
The fanatics and blind bigots
As the foreigner barbaric hordes
Would have damaged and destroyed it
Vikramshila,
The ancient seat of learning,
The centre of Buddhist studies,
Vajrayana Buddhism. 1


Were they not educated,
Not civilized and cultured,
Isn't it,
Isn't it, say you,
Were they barbaric, brutal and bloody
That destroyed they,
Destroyed they, Vikramshila,
A central university
Which drew students from far,
Unheard places even then
When darkness persisted in?

Were, were they not educated,
Cultured, cultured
And civilized,
I mean uncivilized and uncultured,
Were, were they barbarians,
Just barbarians,
Bloody, brutal and bestial,
Were, were they medieval
And superstitious?

Whose sons had they been,
Whose, whose,
Why, why so dark and desolate
Seeing not the light,
The light of hope and education,
Whose lineage, heritage
Was it in them?

How, how had it been the hordes,
The nomadic tribes
With the horses galloping,
Galloping with the hooves,
Warring and destroying,
Raiding and raiding
And destroying,
How, how the nomadic tribes
Medievalistic and dark?

I just think, think,
Dream, dream about
The time of the raid,
I think, think,
Just think about
The plight of the scholars and students,
The hordes looting, plundering and destroying.
2

The organization orderly
From the dwarpapala interviewers
To bhikus
To punditas
To mahapunditas
To upadhyayas or acharyas
To the adhyaksha.

A red-shaped,
Saffron or ochre-coloured complex
Sprawling over a wider landscape
Into the midst of nature
And natural surroundings,
Hilly and by the banks of the river Ganges
A Buddhist centre.

The teachers taught it
Subjects like philosophy, grammar,
Metaphysics, Indian logic,
In addition to Tantrism
Whose seat was it really,
They taught it Buddhist studies,
The forms and trends of it.

A seat of Tantric Buddhism
It was stupendous,
A centre of the learning of yore
With the supposed to be
A huge temple, adorned with
A life-size copy of the Mahabodhi tree
And approximately 108 temples constructed around it,
Out of which, almost 53 temples dedicated
To the study of the Guhyasamaja Tantra.
As it is said
With the statues of Nagarjuna and Atisa Dipankara
At the entrances of the main temple.

I see the mahavihara and its ruins
And think about
The dome and the square,
The building complex
And the use of small bricks, red soil,
Plastering and painting,
Fittings with the murals,
Sculptures and figurines,
The terracotta plates
Telling of an age gone by. 3


The ruins of the Vikramshila Mahavihara
Dug out and excavated,
The ancient seat of learning,
A Buddhist university emerging out
From the mound of good earth
Lying unattended and unknown,
Hidden from the pages of history.

I see the university and think about
The square,
The temple and the housing complex
For both
The acharyas and the bhikkus
Housing them circularly,
Adjacent to
And opening up and unfolding to
The hall of prayer
With their meditational cells
Private and personal sometimes.

Vikramshila,
The shisyas going to,
On their way to the mahavihara
From far-flung parts,
Tibet and its beyond,
Just imagine you,
Think you
When the motorable ways
Were not,
When the roads too were not
Many.

How had been it,
How,
The seat of learning,
The ancient varsity
Stood it
Offering
Education and knowledge,
How,
How did it!





4
Vikramshila the Buddhist vihara
Think I,
Imagine I,
The ancient seat of learning,
Flourishing at a time,
Imparting education to,
Knowledge and light
Just as a citadel,
A light house.

The main stupa at the centre of the monastery
Built for the purpose of worship
Is a brick structure
Laid in mud mortar
Lies it two-terraced
In a cruciform,
15 metres high from the ground level.

The lower terrace about 2.25 metres high
From the ground
And the upper too the same
From the lower level
With the path
Cutting across
To reach the topmost
Through a flight of stairs.

One among Nalanda, Odantapuri, Somapura,
Jagaddala universities,
Vikramshila flourished at a time
When we could not have imagined
The worth and excellence,
People forgot it
The history and tradition
For fear of raids and incursions.

But finally it fell into the hands
Of the barbaric invaders,
Plunderers,
Into the uncouth hands
Of the medievalist raiders,
Intruders intruding upon,
Pouncing upon to destroy
And finish it all
What good it was in civilization.


5
The barbaric hordes came in,
Raided and plundered
And looted they
The treasure,
Tarnishing and ravishing it all,
Throwing and destroying
What it was good in them,
Killing and murdering the priests
And the disciples,
The bloody barbarians
Uncivilized and uncultured.

Vikramshila,
The Buddhist monastery,
The mahavihara,
The ancient varsity of learning,
I see the ruins
And think of its heyday,
The people coming from
Far off places,
Wanting to learn Buddha and Buddhism.

They coming from far off,
Traversing the impregnable domain and terrains,
The acharyas and bhikkus
In search of knowledge and wisdom
Learning,
Reaching Vikramshila
To get light
And to give light
To others.

Had the Tibetan scholar Taranath not
Written about,
Had it not been in Tibetan
And other texts,
What we would we have about
Our history and culture,
Art and tradition?

In search of Buddhist texts and references,
The readings and writings
Of the Buddhists,
Where to move to,
Where to search for,
How to know the languages
Not known?
6
How did they remain cut out
And unknown
From the circuit of ours,
Nagaland, Assam, Manipur,
Mizoram, Tripura,
Arunachal Pradesh
And Sikkim
And Tibet?

How did the bhikkhus kept
Coming and going,
Passing through valleys wild,
Hilly terrains,
Densely forested,
I think,
Think,
The shisyas of Buddha
From China, Tibet?

And all through the medieval times,
The dark age
Of superstitions and purdah,
The lamp of light extinguished it
And languished we in darkness,
Believing blindly,
Unreasonably
As lost we reasoning power,
The logical faculty.

Buddha, Buddha
And his Buddhism,
What could we know about,
What, what could we feel about
Buddha, Buddha
And his Buddhism!

Leave the disruptive things,
The fissiparous tendencies,
What drew the daggers drawn
In bad blood and animosity
As we too tried to impose one's thoughts
Upon another
Rather secularly.



7

India is India,
The land of Rama and Krishna,
Buddha and Mahavira,
Sufis and missionaries,
The sadhus and sadhakas,
Leave you not its legacy
And heritage,
Sidetrack you not!

Had there been someone
Who would have enlightened upon
The topic,
Had there been some about
The times full of the activity
Of the acharyas and the bhikkus,
Has someone come from,
But alas, there is none!

Holding the hand, I would have asked him
About Vikramshila,
Had there been some guest from,
I would have,
Would have
All about Vikramshila,
The great centre of learning.

How had it been the routes of then,
Wherefrom they used to come
And go by,
Crossing over the rivers and the hills,
Returning back to the Northeast
Or through it to Tibet
And the territories beyond
Leading to China, Myanmar,
Mongolia, Siberia?

O Bakhtiyar, destroying the varsities,
What did,
Did you get,
Slaying the monks,
The disciples
Running for cover
Helter-skelter,
You rascal,
Tomnoddy!


8
Murdering the bhikkus,
Acharyas,
Burning books and manuscripts,
Texts,
What did you,
Did you, Balkhtiyar,
Burning the library,
Destroying the varsity?

The acharyas running for cover,
Running helter-skelter,
The disciples too,
The acharyas and bhikkus,
How painful would it have been,
How pathetic,
A bigot, zealot driving them away,
How idiot was he!

The forces in attack,
The nomadic people,
The medieval tribe
With swords and spears
And lances,
Slaying acharyas,
Punditas
And bhikkus
And the blood spilling
Would have drenched
The vihara!

Bakhtiyar, history will not pardon,
Pardon you,
Bakhtiyar,
Bloody bastard,
You, Bakhtiyar,
History will not pardon you,
Bakhtiyar,
As a fanatic stand you,
An illiterate and uncivilized fellow!

Karma is dharma,
What you do so will reap you,
You would have definitely got
What you did
Which but the people it not,
Bakhtiyar, a sinner will to sin,
But to heaven.
9
Bakhtiyar, your cruel and callous people
Will remain cruel,
The bloody bloody,
Can never be good Samaritans,
Charitable and philanthropic,
Merciful and kind,
The bigotic bigotic.

The history of earth will not remain static,
It keeps changing,
Where it is golden statues
Earthed into the foundation
Of the mouldering heaps
Of the fallen temples,
Who can but say it,
Where is it diamond
Lying?

History,
Medieval history,
Is it of plunderers,
Looters,
Nomadic tribes and ruffians,
The bloody people
Raiding, intruding upon,
Killing mercilessly,
Even not sparing the universities?

But wait, wait for,
They will,
They will be punished,
Will get retribution,
Wait, wait you for,
Their doom is pertinent,
Imminent,
Their Judgement Day yet to.

Mark it, mark,
The victory of the sword
Last it not,
The victory of
The sword dangling,
Clashing, clinking with,
The bloody will remain bloody,
The bastard bastard,
Those who nurture it not love
For art and craft. 10

Those who are not civilized,
Those who are not cultured,
Illiterate and uneducated,
Underdeveloped,
Nomadic and medievalistic,
What, what to say about them,
Those, those people
Filled not with the milk of human kindness,
Those, those who?

They are not men, men
Who kill it mercilessly,
Slay it,
Believing in the victory of the sword,
The might of strength,
The strength of the muscle power,
All those ruffians
And illiterate people
Believing in prowess
Those are not men, men.

They are not at all men,
Men,
Who spare it not the varsities
The centres of excellence,
Learning,
The varsities extraordinary
Attracting students from far,
Overseas,
They are not men, men,
But animals, animals.

The invaders from Central Asia,
The nomadic tribes,
They could never know,
Know
The spirit of culture,
Art and philosophy
The nomadic races,
The ethnic tribes
Callous and hardhearted,
Bloody and brutal.


11

The people of deserts and barren lands
Know it not
What it is in culture,
What it in civilization
And refinement,
The people of the deserts,
The rough and tough people,
The invaders invading,
Destroying culture.

The intruders intruding upon,
The looters looting,
The plunderers plundering,
The sinners sinful,
The culprits guilty,
Those of guilty conscience,
The criminals bloody,
Even failing animals
In brutality, bestiality.

Vikramshila as I saw you,
As see I
The university,
The ancient varsity
Attracting students from far,
The Northeast,
Skkim, Tibet, China,
Myanmar,
Cambodia, Thailand,
Japan, Korea.

Vikramshila,
Vikramshila,
How the history of it,
How the time
When stood it
As a structure,
A specimen of architectural,
Sculptural specimen,
Vikramshila,
Vikramshila
With the history and tradition of its own!





12
A centre for Vajrayana
Tantric preceptors engaged the space,
Buddhajñānapād to be followed
In succession one by one
Or to be taken together collectively,
Dīpaṁkarabhadra,
Jayabadhra,
Śrīdhara,
Bhavabhaṭṭa,
Bhavyakīrti,
Līlavājra,
Durjaychandra,
Samayavajra,
Tathāgatarakhhit,
Bodhibhadra,
Kamalrakhhit.

Vikramshila
The ruins of it show
The flaunting campus of it,
100 acres in its radius and circumference,
A university with
The main stupa,
Two terraces,
The side cells
And ante-chambers,
The terraces sculpted with
Opening to the hall
To the main stupa
With the stuccos of Buddha.

Vikrmasjhila,
Vikramshila,
The idea,
The image,
The reflection,
The dream,
The aspiration,
Hiding them
Going,
But where,
Ask you not,
As don't know,
Where am I really,
I can't say them
As I myself know it not?

13
Well, if they have broken,
Broken and destroyed,
Ravaged and ravished,
Let it be,
Let it
As there is nothing that lasts it here,
There nothing is permanent.

If things have been destroyed,
Destroyed and deserted,
Let it be,
Let it
As they have been,
Can never be reverted back,
Restored and renovated
As it was.

The history of the earth is so,
As it was,
As it will remain,
The history of earth,
The history of time
And history of nature
And man,
Strange is it,
The history of the earth.

Iconoclasm,
Iconoclasm,
The university razed to the ground,
The university which it held its sway over,
National not,
Of international fame
Was razed to the ground,
Vikramshila, Vikramshila
Lay hidden in earth
For ages and ages.

But it too was made from the good earth,
Cutting the boulders
Or from brick laying,
Bricks baked,
Hills overran
And the making took a toll upon
Mother Nature, Good Earth,
Nature and its surroundings.

14

So let it be,
Let it be,
Let us forget all that it happened,
As it happens, happens,
Here we have to live,
Here to die,
Where to go,
When man dies everything detaches it,
Degenerates and disintegrates.

Creation and destruction are two sides,
Aspects of nature,
Which will go
Turn by turn,
The creative process too continue
And the destructive too will
Keep following,
Creation and destruction side by side.

One day I too shall not be
In this world,
Shall go away
And it is also side by side correct
What I have
That is in others too,
This is just I have got to flourish and flower
But their genius has not,
I am not only talented
But they too are.

One day if I shall not
What to say,
What to say about it,
Leaving it all
I myself shall go away
Then
What to talk of,
My things will remain they here,
My things mundane.

Closing the eyes,
I shall bid goodbye forever,
Allowing me to go,
Asking you to pray for
God-speed,
I shall be heavenwards
Leaving it all here my mundane things. 15

Becoming a child again
I shall go to Vikramshila
To read,
Get education from
Sleeping in my cell
Of the square
Housing the bhikkus,
Shall rise to the upper terrace
To reach the main stupa.

As a child I shall go to Vikramshila
As do go the rural boys and girls
To schools
In torn and stitched frocks and shorts
Running under a tree
With the knapsacks and slates
And lime stick pencils
To read and write.

So wide campus
Built from red bricks and mud mortar,
With the paintings decorating
The walls,
The two-terraced square
With the flight of stairs
To reach the mandapa
And the main stupa
To pray.

I shall start for
In the simple shorts and shirt
Of mine
Bare-footed
With the jute knapsack
To sit upon
And the broken slate
And the lime pencil
To reach Vikramshila
To study.

Living at Vikramshila,
I shall see the varsity complex,
The design and planning of it,
Who the planners were,
How was it,
Who the artisans and artistes
At work,
How the king supervising or ordering? 16

With Vikramshila in mind and heart
And the images hidden,
Keep I gliding,
Taking imaginary flights,
The canvas taking the photo
Of the site,
The landscape of the ancient varsity
That was Vikramshila.

The photo of the square
Engaging and befitting,
The stupa, the votive stupas around,
The mandapa, the murals,
The terracotta art,
The small brick work,
The red painting really extraordinary
With the images of bhikkus and acharyas
Conjuring upon.

The walls of both the terraces are decorated
With sculptures and figurines
Denoting motifs,
The terracotta art,
The plaques depicting
Buddha, Avalokiteshwara, Manjusri, Maitreya,
Jambala, Marichi, Tara
And the Nath deities,
Adinath, Vishnu, Paddabati,
Parvati, Ardhanarisvara.

The human and animal figures
Of ascetics, devotees, preachers,
Drummers, warriors, archers,
Charmers,
Monkeys, elephants, panthers,
Horses, deer, boars,
Lions, wolves and birds
Can be seen over them.

Apart from Buddhist studies,
Buddha and Buddhism,
The curriculum included it the study of
Vedic texts, ritual
And Vedangas,
Linguistics, reasoning, law,
Astronomy and city-planning.

17

An Afterthought

After having written Vikramshila, I want to work upon the rest universities of ancient India lying in ruins, imagining about their heyday and relevance. This is the first of its kind which I dreamt so long ago, but the idea could not materialize as for different reasons. Actually, I wanted to have a vis-à-vis with the relics and ruins of the historical structure, but it was not in my lot. I went nearer to that place, but could not to the site. Takshila had been the first choice of mine, but far, far away from. Again thought I of Nalanda standing at a distance from my place of birth and posting too.
The historical poems have a beauty of their own which but the people with interest in heritage and culture will like it. The commoners may not as these vary from man to man and his taste. Vikramshila here is my love of history and culture, heritage and legacy, tradition and temperament. Though one may call Vikramshila a poem based on history, but in reality it is my assimilation of classicism and the classical elements have been endowed upon no doubt. When I take the imaginary flights those hinge upon the element of romanticism, but when detail I in the light of scholarship, study and rumination that is but the whiff of classicism just like the golden wheat ears glistening in the sunlight. Admonishing Vedanto-Upanishadism, I am here in search of the excavated things to view in wonder and astonishment rather than taking it otherwise.
Let the world know that a university was there named Vikramshila just like Nalanda. Taxila too had been grand, but it is now a lost tradition. But poetic justice will not excuse the barbarians, mediaevalists who ravished and razed them to the ground. History will never forgive those bloody people and they will remain in the pages of history not as the makers, but as the destroyers, not as the civilized and cultured people but as the uncouth and dirty people. The nomadic tribes which looted, plundered, devastated and ravished the wealth and treasure had no love in their heart for the rich glory of India and the centres of learning they never feel about. They were in reality looters, plunderers, invaders, raiders, not at all the lovers of art and literature. The mediaevalist people were devilish and satanic from their within and were fanatical, dead to logic and reasoning. Had they hammered at our social evils and the superstitious beliefs, it would have been their great contribution. But they did not do it. They just tried to impose their thought and idea upon the vanquished people, but had the divided Indians fought, they would have driven them out.
The destruction of Takshila, the burning and loot of the varsity is a black spot on the forehead of the man who did it. Should a university be destroyed? , is the thing to be felt. How would they have raided? How would the devils and satanic people have planned for the loot and plunder? The ruins tell the plight of the imagery lying buried in the bed of earth. Had it been not earthed, they would not have left it too. My question is, were they barbarians, those from the nomadic races, the desert lands or bivouac people living under tents or in camps? Who were they? Were they not civilized, not at all cultured that burnt they books, desecrated faith, murdered and plundered it to miseries beyond?







The Art & Craft

Without opting for any structural rhyme or length, prosodic and rhetorical, the poem which is before you has been jotted down in an extempore style of writing. There is not a manual copy of it too as the poem has been typed directly on the computer keyboard. As a poet, I am not of any binding and the same liberative spirit has been used in to denote the things under deliberation. The verse-stanzas naturally tumble down one after another and the flow continues it till the matter exhausts it not, the ideas used in.
Some of the stanzas are longer, some shorter and some of a medium standard whereas some have been just adjusted with to fill in the gaps it therein. It is a meaningful poem and there is nothing as terse and tedious if one knows the history of India. Actually, the work hinges on archaeological explorations and excavations, historical facts and findings which but form the crux and thematic substance of it, but in reality the imaginative side has played a part in making it successful.
Writing it, I feel it quite satisfied, as it has fulfilled my long-cherished dream of taking to Vikramshila which I promised to give long back in the eighties, but something ordained me otherwise and I felt sick and ailing seriously and had even left the hope of living. But something saved me magically and I yearned for.
Actually, when I started the poem, I had no wish of lengthening it. I thought it to be a poem, but the inspiration seemed it not to be exhausting and I went on this particular Vikramshila poem to develop into a book format rather than keeping it small and so the turns and shifts in the thought-content will itself tell how the poem has been taken to a height dramatically, full of conflicts and coming to terms with the upheavals seen in terms thoughts, ideas and reflections oscillating on the graph chart of emotion and feeling.
There are several poems titled as Vikramshila written in different moods and recollections of mine which may be termed stray poems encircling the topic or the main poems wherein lay the kernels of thought and idea which I could not lengthen it for want of time and materials available.
Vikramshila University which came into existence in the late 8th or early 9th century by the Pala king Dharmapal. This is just what we know rather than anything else biographically or historically. The world recorded what we left and forgot, we mean the Buddhist scholars and travellers. Still now we know it not the value of Buddha and Buddhism, the Buddhist studies. Had it been we would have Tibetan, Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, Cham, Khmer, Japanese, Malay, Mongolian, Korean, Dzongkha, Ladakhi, Sikkimese, Mizo, Burmese, Balinese, Indonesian, Chinese and others to transact and transmit through, but failed we to move beyond, restricting ourselves to our coteries. Whatever be that, my small book of verse Vikramshila is before you to see what it is in it, what not, which matter borrowed from where. I cannot say that it is an original work of mine. What I can assure you is this that I have tried my utmost best to catch the spirit of the poem. What more do I know of Buddha and Buddhism?