India – Indochina – Indonesia
Atma Ananda. India – Indochina – Indonesia: A Personal Way of Integration // “Ubud Community’ (Bali, Indonesia), №37 | Sep 2009.
I was born in Saint-Petersburg – the cultural capital of Russia, a beautiful city, famous world-wide for its elegant architecture and classic literature (especially Dostoevsky), and also well-known in academic community for serious oriental studies. After completing my education and getting three diplomas in related fields (western, social, and eastern philosophy) I worked as an editor in the state university, and learned to write both scholastic articles and popular books. Since many spiritual practices became popular at that time, I explored them intensively and as result traveled to their sources.
For five years my life in India was a mix of inspiring and challenging experiences. I was based on Rishikesh – an ancient Yogic town at the foot of the Himalayas where I visited many sacred Hindu temples following the paths of pilgrims. My philosophical background was broad enough so as to be able to include different styles of Yoga into my personal practice and to work with thirty-forty Indian teachers. I wrote twenty books on spirituality, and they were printed and reprinted in a total publication of hundred thousand copies (mostly in Russia and partly in USA and Europe).
Developing and feeling somewhat “cramped’ I left India and continued my researches through the whole of Indochina (visiting China too). Actually, centuries ago Indian culture itself spread in the same way, so I spent two years in order to assimilate this broader area which was mostly Buddhist. At that time I was based in Thailand, especially its northern monasteries and mediation centers spending my time in lengthy Vipassana retreats. Traveling all around, I observed ruins of Hindu-Buddhist temples like Angkor-Wat in Cambodia or Myson in Vietnam, finding alive analogue later in Bali.
My story manifests that by going to Indonesia I felt like not so much an individual as extensive “Space & Time’ in which was contained the great history and reality of Asia. However, the island of Bali was still a “gap’ in my inner cultural map. What I have found here is as amazing as a kind of “synthesis’ linking some separate parts together. You see, first Hinduism pushed Buddhism from India, later it was crushed by Buddhism in Indochina, but this contradiction was solved in Indonesia (Bali). It is remarkable because Indonesia played a role of alternative “Indo-China’ on seaway.
So, this Balinese combination of Hindu and Buddhist cultures is not just an original local phenomenon!!! The origin of Buddhism in ancient India 2500 years ago was basically reaction against Hindu Brahmanism which finally conquered in the spiritual battle. But contradiction just moved to Indochina where the greatest Hindu Empires (Khmer and Champa) tried to incorporate Mahayana Buddhism which came back from China. It worked for some centuries – not longer… Well, until now there are Hindu-Buddhist temples in Nepal – but quite few of them…
Balinese people found synthetic solution which works as a system during many centuries and still alive. The result is very important as a critical point for the whole of Asian history. Let me remind you that the great Buddhist master Atisha traveled to Indonesia in the 10-th century in order to learn Buddhism and bring back to India and Tibet while it was already integrated with Hinduism. The cycle was finished, and Balinese temples still preserve an orbit of cultural movement between India and China in form of the Hindu-Buddhist religion thereby becoming a unique centre of Asia.
