Sunrise, Day 8, Borobudur: Now That's What I Came For.

This morning I got up at 4 a.m. for the sunrise tour. I picked up my ticket and flashlight from the front desk...and I was the only one there. One of the porters, Agung (he and I are tight now) walked me to the base of the monument, making 4:30 in the morning small talk. At the gate I passed my ticket to the gate guys, and here pieced together that "Sunrise Tour" means, "Welcome to your flashlight, and good luck with all of THAT." Agung saw the stricken look on my face- we're talking pitch black darkness and a huge temple, people- and said, "Okay, I walk you up to the platform! " And we climbed these steep, dark stone steps up to the first wide, grassy plinth. Standing in the pitch black dark with my little plastic flashlight, I said, "Seriously Agung? It's just me, up in the pitch black dark?" And it dawned on me why, in our 4:30 am small talk, he'd suggested helpfully, "Maybe you bring a friend next time?"

Borobudur, mind you, is like a layer cake of winding paths, forming an extruded mandala. For a structure that is quite simple in concept, a stepped pyramid base with a bell-shaped stupa on top, it is surprisingly windy and disorienting inside. Because of the way the pathways zig and zag, you can't see very far in any direction, until you reach the wide round platforms at the top. If you shortcut the whole procedure and go straight up the stone steps to the stupa, it's a lot more direct, but still steep and dicey in broad daylight. And this was not, my friends, broad daylight.

I said meekly, "Can we walk one time around the bottom first?" And Agung affably agreed and said, "Ok. Maybe somebody else come soon. We wait." So we walked around the base and he pointed out the volcanoes and the villages and other landmarks which were barely visible in the black sky. Making small talk, I asked him what animals live on Java. "Tigers," he said. "Maybe up there near the top...temple tigers." And then my eyes got really big, and he said, "Got you." More walking- and I said, "Agung, I am sorry to be keeping you from your work!" And he was not even condescending at all, seriously, when he said, "It's ok. I tell them at the desk Miss Katherine too afraid alone."

Damn straight.

When we got back around to the east entrance, as my Dad used to say, it was time to fish-or-cut-bait. And I stood at the foot of this giant, beautiful, peaceful temple, faintly silhouetted against the black night sky, with cavernous black openings with their dim stone stairways threaded straight upwards, and I was met with the gaze of 126 east-facing Buddhas, meditating waves of peace in my direction...

And I was struck, there, with holy cosmic mortal sublime terror. For a moment, those radiating waves of peace rushed down over me like a wind. Black sky above me, misty black valley below me, and thick fog rising from the rice fields in every direction; I was frozen to my spot.

Even Agung, who sees this every day, was visibly shaken. He said, "This place...very mystic...I feel different here." And he rubbed his arms and shivered. Torn by the great fortune of having Borobudur all to myself, and the great misfortune of having it all to myself in the pitch black spooky cosmic darkness, I took a deep breath, and feared that I was too scared to take advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime.

More great good fortune- just at that moment, some other early risers appeared with cameras and I said too loudly, "FRIENDS!" and then shamlessly and cheerfully followed them straight to the top where, indeed, it was not spooky at all....it was minutes until the sky behind the distant volcano lit up the plume of smoke always billowing from it, and the clouds went pink and gold, and as I've dreamed for two years, I watched the sun rise, through the eyes of all of those Buddhas, radiating waves of peace into the valley below.

And the holy cosmic mortal terror of the sublime: it was real, and it was brief, and it was beautiful- and isn't that why these great works of architecture were built in the first place, in these mystic places? And why we're willing to fly halfway around the world to stand in front of them at sunrise?