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</figure><p id="cdad">The interior of the temple was spectacular. I am always surprised and delighted by the artistry and beauty of the Myanmar (Burma) temples. They are true works of art.</p><figure id="2974"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*193isgqnwTXLUSg2mEfSTg.jpeg"><figcaption><b>Photo by Author — inside the Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><figure id="aa09"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*ueXrtgDu2e5hylhi5HC72Q.jpeg"><figcaption><b>Photo by Author — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><p id="2c57">When I was visiting the temple, some local children were being prepared to become monks and nuns. This is a very common ceremony across Myanmar (Burma) where, as part of Buddhism, all followers must spend some time being monks or nuns. In some cases, this may only be a week or two; in others, it may be until 16 or 18, as monks or nuns get free education.</p><p id="528d">Before the children enter the monasteries and nunneries, there are several ceremonies and a big party for family members and neighbours. I was lucky enough to be invited to one later in the trip, and it was a fantastic experience.</p><p id="37f4">The “monks and nuns in waiting” outfits are very elaborate and beautiful.</p><figure id="89d9"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*TqxZl7dUVrcLQQtQyq-_rg.jpeg"><figcaption><b>Photo by Author — “monks and nuns in waiting” — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><figure id="b279"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*6kKTYbs0GizfamTZzf-a4w.jpeg"><figcaption><b>Photo by Author — the mothers of “monks and nuns in waiting” — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><figure id="8370"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*nfgey6XxJOsTdKXS0WG1tA.jpeg"><figcaption><b>Photo by Author — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><p id="b0cc">Besides the procession of “monks and nuns in waiting”, other worshippers were also at the temple.</p><figure id="7f13"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*lDR3qQHBRhXLOZW1DojTRw.jpeg"><figcaption><b>Photo by Author — worshippers at the Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><figure id="3378"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*KzB88Yjdcc5HMwxNNeJMtw.jpeg"><figcaption><b>Photo by Author — worshippers at the Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><figure id="fc75"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*W6CLjfJQdBcuNStwNtLmZg.jpeg"><figcaption><b

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Photo by Author — worshippers at the Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><figure id="be0f"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*qontD9pevy6PIP6Lol14cw.jpeg"><figcaption><b>Photo by Author — large gong — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><p id="0ff2">Some statues brought good luck if you rubbed them (note the shiny areas).</p><figure id="6db5"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*B9jq_R9h8caClR1TKtFPqw.jpeg"><figcaption><b>Photo by Author — lucky elephants — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><figure id="f62e"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*xM50lrThP2YpTJ972ZjJYw.jpeg"><figcaption><b>Photo by Author — lucky stomach — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><figure id="1427"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*KgcL57TVJd6rHAf2ISYenA.jpeg"><figcaption><b>Photo by Author — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><p id="9e32">And there was a crazy number of bird nests in the roof of one part of the temple.</p><figure id="bc1a"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*sp9Nr-whaP9MW7EfT_Xn6w.jpeg"><figcaption><b>Photo by Author — bird nests — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar</b></figcaption></figure><p id="2479">It was great to visit the Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး.</p><p id="ab1b">I loved watching all the “monks and nuns in waiting” process in their finery, and it was also wonderful to explore the temple’s interior and admire the craftsmanship.</p><p id="5c09">Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး is a little off the beaten track. Still, it is worth visiting if you want to experience and see a Buddhist temple in Mandalay, Myanmar.</p><p id="4dea"><b>What3Words:</b> <a href="http://w3w.co/nicer.view.commuted">///nicer.view.commuted</a></p><p id="acf6"><b>Foursquare:</b> <a href="http://4sq.com/rR5QPz">Mahamuni Buddha Temple</a></p><div id="b072" class="link-block"> <a href="https://medium.com/@NicksWanderings/membership"> <div> <div> <h2>Join Medium with my referral link - Nick's Wanderings</h2> <div><h3>As a Medium member, a portion of your membership fee goes to writers you read, and you get full access to every story…</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*iOPrnaMZZnbdx1Tt)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

Myanmar (Burma) — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) (မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး), Mandalay, Myanmar

A fantastic event

March 2017

The next stop on my “Mandalay taxi tour” was the Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး.

As the taxi arrived at the temple, an astonishing display of carts pulled by white cows went by. These carts were all part of ongoing ceremonies for new nuns and monks entering the monasteries and nunneries.

The carts were stunning. But, I question the use of cows to pull them, as they seemed reluctant to take a driving instruction from anyone.

**Photo by Author — temple parade — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

**Photo by Author — a cow cart — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

The Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး was stunning.

There was the usual highly elaborate and decorated main entrance. There was a locker inside for storing my shoes (no shoes can be worn into the temple complex).

**Photo by Author — the entrance to the Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

**Photo by Author — the shoe locker at the Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

After I left the lockers and headed towards the main temple, I passed some shops and stalls selling statues, tourist trinkets, and offerings.

**Photo by Author — trinket shops — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

The interior of the temple was spectacular. I am always surprised and delighted by the artistry and beauty of the Myanmar (Burma) temples. They are true works of art.

**Photo by Author — inside the Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

**Photo by Author — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

When I was visiting the temple, some local children were being prepared to become monks and nuns. This is a very common ceremony across Myanmar (Burma) where, as part of Buddhism, all followers must spend some time being monks or nuns. In some cases, this may only be a week or two; in others, it may be until 16 or 18, as monks or nuns get free education.

Before the children enter the monasteries and nunneries, there are several ceremonies and a big party for family members and neighbours. I was lucky enough to be invited to one later in the trip, and it was a fantastic experience.

The “monks and nuns in waiting” outfits are very elaborate and beautiful.

**Photo by Author — “monks and nuns in waiting” — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

**Photo by Author — the mothers of “monks and nuns in waiting” — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

Besides the procession of “monks and nuns in waiting”, other worshippers were also at the temple.

**Photo by Author — worshippers at the Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

**Photo by Author — large gong — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

Some statues brought good luck if you rubbed them (note the shiny areas).

**Photo by Author — lucky elephants — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

**Photo by Author — lucky stomach — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

And there was a crazy number of bird nests in the roof of one part of the temple.

**Photo by Author — bird nests — Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး, Mandalay, Myanmar**

It was great to visit the Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး.

I loved watching all the “monks and nuns in waiting” process in their finery, and it was also wonderful to explore the temple’s interior and admire the craftsmanship.

Mahamuni Buddha Temple (Mahar Myat Mu ‘Ne’ Pagoda) — မဟာမုနိဘုရားကြီး is a little off the beaten track. Still, it is worth visiting if you want to experience and see a Buddhist temple in Mandalay, Myanmar.

What3Words: ///nicer.view.commuted

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