The Shwedagon Pagoda of Yangon, Myanmar (ရွှေတိဂုံဘုရား) | SLICE

At the first light of day, a thousand-year-old golden building sparkles. The Shwedagon Pagoda. This sacred monument is located in the heart of the capital of Myanmar, Rangoon. Legend has it that 2,500 years ago, during his lifetime, the Buddha asked for the construction of a sacred shrine in the form of an inverted cone that in Asia is called a pagoda or stupa. This pagoda, the largest in the world, would house eight strands of his hair, making it unique and sacred. Timeless, it literally dominates a city it protects with its aura. Entirely covered in gold, the Shwedagon Pagoda symbolizes the importance of Buddhism in Myanmar, practiced by 90% of the population. Early morning, and the faithful come here to find inner peace before their day's work. Uo Nguyen has frequented the pagoda since childhood. He wouldn't miss this daily appointment for anything in the world. I came to Shwedagon regularly, as soon as I could get there by myself. At the time, I must have been 13 or 14 years old, and I lived in a district which is about 8 kilometers from the pagoda, and I always made my journeys on foot. All morning long, a large crowd gathers around the big stupa. On each side, a representation of the Buddha is placed for each day of the week. The faithful gather there according to their day of birth, so each one keeps within him a feeling of belonging to the monument. The octagon formed by the large golden stupa is surrounded by 64 small pagodans. At each of the compass points of the building, pagodas dedicated to the Buddha seal the enclosure. From the large marble platform, there are four covered stairs that connect the place to the alleys of the city. Wherever we are in Rangoon, the stupa is present and invites us to prayer. This emblematic sacred architecture, an assembly of squares representing the earth, and circles, symbols of the sky, has always fascinated historians. For Dr. Charlotte Galloway, an Australian specialist in Buddhist art, it is the most fascinating of the stupas. If we come back and look at the architecture itself and the form of this building, as it stands today, it's very much a representation of some of the core aspects of Buddhist cosmology. So we have a foundational base, the classic sort of eight-sided form, four main sides aligned to the cardinal directions, and as we move up the layers, we move also through a spiritual journey which takes us up through those layers of the earthly realms, into the spiritual realms of the gods, and right up at the very top, as we reach the spire, to the final goal which is represented here by all Buddhists, which is actually the void, a final attainment of enlightenment, as we reach that peak at the top of the building. Wherever you look, gold is omnipresent. No less than 20,000 gold plates cover the stupa, whose end is inlaid with 2,000 golden bells. A wealth all the more astonishing, as Buddhism advocates renouncing the material world. One of the things you can't help but notice when you come to the Shwedagon is that on all of the eight corners, we see these activities of people pouring water over images of the Buddha. What is the importance of this water? Water is actually, really has a very prominent place to play in Myanmar Buddhism. The legendary origins for this are associated with the Buddha's moment of enlightenment. And this has led to a ritual of pouring water, which is a way of washing away our anxieties, washing away our troubles, trying to bring us back to that sort of spiritual calmness that the Buddha had at that moment of enlightenment. In the many temples scattered on the marble platform, the figure of Buddha is everywhere. Famous throughout the world, this Shwedagon Pagoda holds a special place for all Buddhists, thanks to its history, which links it to the original Buddha. One of the reasons the Shwedagon is so important in the Buddhist world is tied up in its histories, which are both legendary and also have some foundation in more in historical fact. According to local legend, the stupa was actually built at the time of the Buddha, so well over two and a half thousand years ago. And we have a legend where two merchants, brothers from the Mon region, had traveled, traded to India, and they came to where the Buddha was seated just after he'd spent 49 days in meditation. And they offered him his first food, and the Buddha gave them eight hair relics. They brought the hair relics back here. They decided that this was the place where the relics should be interred, and the stupa was built here. The other really interesting thing about the stupa here is the stupa was actually the first sort of visual representation of Buddhism. The legend of its origins has remained alive in the hearts of Burmese people. However, archaeologists and historians place the construction of the central stupa between the 6th and 10th centuries AD and the construction of the annex buildings from the 16th century onwards. Another aspect we see here in visual form, which attests to its importance and legendary history of Buddhism here, is the Buddha footprint. The Buddha footprint, wherever we see, is meant to symbolize that the Buddha actually had physically been here at some point. Again, we cannot really know that for a fact, but it is what is believed. So when we see, like here, images of the Buddha footprint, it links this place back to the time of the Buddha and a really long historical past and spiritual connection.