Strange is the marriage of the cave and the sanctuary. We usually think of a sanctuary as a building made by human hands, and of a cave as a natural hollow. The cave sanctuary is a curious symbiosis of the two. The cave monasteries of Ajanta were founded fifteen hundred years ago. It is thought that once the entrance had been carved, they began to cut the interior deep into the rock face, working from the outside and from above. So they needed no scaffolding.
The largest cave sanctuary has a floor area of 19.5 x 22.25 metres and an inner height of 4.6 metres. From the vestibule a splendid colonnade opens out; in the sanctuary, which can be walked around, the Buddha proclaiming the dharma sits on a lion throne, flanked by bodhisattvas holding fans and celestial nymphs bearing a garland of flowers. The interior also holds further chapels and cells. The tall, bare columns may once have been painted, but the walls are still adorned with paintings of the Jatakas, the Buddha's former incarnations.
We might think that at Ajanta, besides the splendid narrative murals and the monumental statues, it is the smaller stone carvings, the proportions of the structures, and perhaps the view and the beauty of the natural setting that make an impression on the visitor. But cave sanctuary XXI makes not only a visual but also an auditory impression. Here, in the cave sanctuary shrouded in half-light, two strange carved stone pillars stand side by side in the colonnade. These are the speaking or singing pillars: tapped with the palm, the left one produces a rising crescendo, the right one a sinking one. Divining-stones, or a lithophone to brighten the monks' lives? Or else the two directions of the sound's vibration carry a far-reaching message: we must go deep into our meditation, so that our awareness may then rise…
The cave-sanctuary is no mere sacred structure. It is also a womb. That is why hermit-existence is foetal existence. A waiting for spiritual birth, which, seen from here, is rather a waiting for bodily death. Which is the world turned upside down? The hermit's, for whom the embodied state is foetal existence and who waits to be born into eternal life, or the worldly man's, for whom taking on a body, his actual coming into the world, is the enforced end of his foetal existence?
If you withdraw into a monastery-cave, you accept your own foetal nature and make it conscious, and if you become enlightened in your consciousness, that is, if you are born anew, then you step out of the cave's womb into the pure light of the transcendent world. This dying, dying to the world, is true rebirth, while being born into the world is in truth a perishing. Which is the world turned upside down? The waking of men is night to the sage who sees his soul…
The next cave holds the relief of the Buddha's parinirvana. Nearly eight metres long and lying on his right side, the Buddha reposes on a couch, his head resting on his right hand, laid upon a pillow. Departing into the final extinguishing, the Buddha lies between two trees; in the shade of the tree at his feet stands Ananda, his beloved disciple, who also looks towards the north. The north is the symbol of spiritual perfection throughout India… The Buddha's death – a true crossing into eternity.
North of Kushinara, on the bank of the Hiranyavati [Gandaki] river, between two sala-trees, it happened that the glory of the age, looking towards the north, entered nirvana. (Fa Hsien, Chinese traveller)
The natural cave is a natural place of rebirth, now giving shelter, now a source of danger. The man-made cave sanctuary or monastery is no source of danger. It evokes a sense of primal security, and although the rock couch is not about comfort, since in a monastery and in spiritual practice it is always worth stepping out of the comfort zone, a true monastery-cave, far from disturbing our security zone, widens and strengthens it. It gives security, shelters the soul, and prepares it for being born anew.