This tree was probably growing 600 years before the Norman Conquest of England.
This helps to put our short and very tiny lives into perspective.
R
I am 46 years old, which means I could have lived my entire lifetime from birth up until this point 34.78 times over in the span of time that this tree has been growing.
And the tree is still alive, which is amazing. Of course, the tree only consists of rūpa, which is a fact that most Academic Buddhists would not be aware of. Although, a tree deva might live in it.
R
An interesting side note is that at 4:22 she shows the ledgerstone of the daughter of Sir Thomas Culpeper. Sir Thomas was beheaded by Henry VIII for allegedly having an affair with Catherine Howard, one of Henry’s queens, who was also a relative of Sir Thomas Culpeper. Thomas and his daughter were both related to Nicholas Culpeper. I recognized the name immediately. I have studied some of his medieval works on herbalism and astrology. His most famous work is The Complete Herbal, which was origianlly published as The English Physitian in 1652. It’s an important historical work.
R
288 BC, our Bodhi Tree in Sri Lanka.
The one in Buddhagayā was actually planted in 1881 by the British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham.
If you come to Sri Lanka and you miss this, you have missed a lot!
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