Using both hands, the red-robed Tibetan monk took a small shrine, filled with what are said to be the remains of Sakyamuni Buddha and placed it over Brahma Dipa's bowed head. 'It only lasted a few seconds. But I could feel the loving kindness power of the deceased,' he said.
Mr Brahma's experience was one of several similar occurrences that participants claimed they had had earlier this month, at the opening of the Heart Shrine Relic Tour in Bali, its first Indonesian stop.
The relics consist of bone and crystalline fragments, often pearl-like in appearance, called 'ringsel', that Buddhists believe form out of the remains of a cremated person who has achieved spiritual purity. Common people produce only ash.
According to the organisers, the display includes relics of Sakyamuni, who was born as Siddhartha Gautama 2,500 years ago and is recognised as the first Buddha. Also on display are relics of the Buddha's disciples, Maudgalyayana, Ananda and Sariputra, as well as relics of Lama Atisha and other saints from the Chinese, Indian and Tibetan traditions. Of the hundreds of relics on display, some were salvaged from statues destroyed in Tibet during the Chinese occupation, and others were gathered from museums and private collections, including the Dalai Lama's.
'The relics are highly respected but they are not divinities for us. In Buddhism we cannot pray to physical forms,' Mr Brahma, 35, said. 'But to see them is definitely a powerful experience.'
The event, held at the Buddha Dharma Vihara, a two-year old Buddhist temple in Seminyak, Bali's most upmarket tourist area, was a quiet, reverential affair, attended mostly by devotees and their friends. After the opening ceremony led by the Tibetan monk, 41-year-old Thubten Jangchub, attendees took some time viewing the ringsel, which were kept inside stupas - small golden shrines. Next some people meditated, while others prayed under the waft of burning incense. Several talked of having received blessings.
