Until the Mountain of Stone Wakes

Before dawn, while the mist still drifts low over the ground, a dark shape lies across a basin in the heart of Java. It looks like a mountain, and yet it is not one. Gentle tiers of stone, laid one upon another, rise quietly toward the rim of a sky that is only beginning to pale. This is Borobudur. Between the 8th and 9th centuries, the people of the Shailendra dynasty raised this Buddhist sanctuary from more than two million blocks of andesite — each one carried, carved and set in place by hand. There is no mortar. Stone simply holds up stone, and for twelve hundred years it has stood without falling. But this mountain of stone did not always keep its eyes open. In time, a nearby volcano rained down ash, the jungle stretched out its branches, and earth and green slowly swallowed this place of prayer. The people went away, the name was forgotten, and for centuries it was nothing more than a hill, asleep beneath the forest. When the first of these stones was laid, ancestors dozens of generations back from anyone alive today were living out their days beneath skies that had never looked down on this island. And the same morning light that rose over them now runs once more along the edges of these stones. The way to the summit was never simply a climb over stone. What the pilgrims inscribed here was a map — the map of a journey from the world of the earth to the heights of the mind. Even after twelve centuries of sleep, that map is still written in the stone. And now, slowly, the mountain of stone begins to wake. Official name: Borobudur Temple Compounds Location: Magelang Regency, Central Java, Indonesia Built: 8th–9th century (Shailendra dynasty) Structure: A three-dimensional mandala of stacked andesite, about 2 million stones Inscription: UNESCO World Heritage Site (1991) Map: Location of Borobudur Official Site: Borobudur Park Photo: Rowan Heuvel / Unsplash (unsplash)