Our first stop after arriving in Mandalay was the Maha Muni Temple, aka the ‘Great Sage Temple’ and also spelled Mahamuni Temple. Buddha visited here and explained his teachings to the local king. The king was so impressed with Buddha and his teachings that he had a statue made of Buddha’s likeness while Buddha was there. Buddha saw the statue and touched it seven times. We visited the temple and saw the gold covered Buddha statue. Of course, this was really a temple complex with many buildings and spaces between buildings. This was another situation where you really need sound and smell to fully appreciate the photos. This will be but a small glimpse of the temple complex.

1. You can see Vicky about to enter the Maha Muni Temple complex. It was not particularly impressive from the outside.

2. This is the Buddha statue. It has so much gold on it, it’s hard to tell what Buddha looked like originally. People put gold leaf on Buddha to signify putting a robe on Buddha, so perhaps like ‘giving a monk a robe’. The area that you see in this photo was off limits to women. Only men could access this area of the temple. They had guards to see that only men went up to the alter, though a woman or two in our group might have pretended they didn’t understand or had failed to read the sign. They didn’t get in however…

3. I took the third photo from right behind the men in the second photo. I’m looking back along the temple entrance direction. You can see how close the women are allowed, the third kneeling area back from the statue. I don’t know why women aren't allowed any closer, other than long standing tradition.

4. Quite a few people asked me about how poorer families accomplished a Novitiation Ceremony, like I showed from Bagan. In the fourth photo, you can see the young novice-monk, dressed as a prince. We saw at least five or six Novitiation groups in this temple while we were there. They didn’t, of course, have any horses or carts. They just walked in a line in and around the temple complex. You can see a few others in his ceremony to the right of him and behind him.

5. In another building of the complex, we saw six old bronze statues that have a very long history as “war loot”. These were originally Khmer statutes from Angkor Wat in Cambodia. They have a long history of conquest and movement. Of the 30 that were originally brought to Burma from Siam (Thailand), all but six were melted down to make canons. The six remaining bronze statues are all in this temple. But the excitement and draw is that these statues are reported to have “healing qualities”. According to our guide and the written information, you are supposed to rub the part of the statue that you want healed. So, if you have a sore knee, you should rub the statue’s knee. The statue that Vicky is rubbing in the last photo is the Shiva statue. Vicky is rubbing the tummy, most likely to protect her stomach from any ailments while on the trip. You can see the areas of the statues that are most well rubbed. Along these lines, someone in our group asked our guide why it was that the statue’s groin area was completely rubbed away. Our guide smiled and gave an answer that I believe was something like taking the 5th Amendment…