Main interior of the Siri Gautama Sambuddharaja Maligawa
You are now entering the main interior of the mansion. The wonderful incident of our Gautama Supreme Buddha’s attainment of the Supreme Buddhahood at the Vajjrāsana under the shadow of the Bodhi Tree at the bank of the River Nēranjarā in India is beautifully depicted here. He attained the Supreme Buddhahood from His own wisdom without any guidance of any teacher. Sitting under the Bodhi Tree He attained the enlightenment by defeating Mara and his fierce army. One can see that this statue of the Supreme Buddha displays a strong equanimity and a great power of merits reminding the living Supreme Buddha. Here the Vajjrāsana is made on top of Gajāsana (a base consists of a group of lively elephants). You shall offer flowers to the Supreme Buddha faithfully by remembering His astounding Supreme Buddhahood and worship remembering His great qualities. You shall perform the Buddhanussati meditation.
The painting to the left: This beautiful painting displays how the Earth god is worshiping the Supreme Buddha at the Vajirāsana. The Great Sage Siddhartha Gautama put His finger on earth and mentioned about His right to the place He was sitting on the day of His Enlightenment as an answer to the question asked by the Mara. At that moment, the Earth god appeared from beneath the ground to witness the powers of the Supreme Buddha acquired in His past lives. Now take a look at this painting. When you see this image of Bodhi Tree, which is emanating the rays of six colors, your mind will be filled with happiness about our Great Teacher the Gautama Supreme Buddha.
The painting to the right:
This painting depicts how Brahmas and gods were enjoying the victory of the Supreme Buddha – He attained the Supreme Buddhahood by defeating the Mara and his army. These Brahmas and gods are playing various musical instruments, singing, dancing, and shouting in joy.
Paintings inside the interior of the temple
The painting in the interior of the mansion displaying the Anuttaro Purisadamma Sarathi quality of the Supreme Buddha
1st painting: This painting shows how Elephant Nālāgiri was tamed by the Supreme Buddha. The elephant was intoxicated and sent to kill the Supreme Buddha by Devadatta, but Nālāgiri was tamed in front of the Supreme Buddha’s great loving-kindness and compassion.
2nd painting: Angulimāla killed many people (999) and made a necklace of fingers of the people who he killed. He went out again to kill the Supreme Buddha and get the last finger to complete his 1000 fingers neckless. But the Supreme Buddha tamed Angulimāla with His great compassion and power. Angulimāla became a Bhikkhu afterwards. This story of the Angulimāla is depicted in a special way in this painting. It shows a painting of Angulimāla dropping the neckless of fingers and his sword. It also shows he is being wrapped by roots of a gigantic Bōdhi tree implying that Angulimāla’s life is being wrapped by the Dhamma by the Supreme Buddha’s supernatural powers.
3rd painting: Next painting shows how a fearsome snake staring at the Supreme Buddha trying to harm Him. This is the ferocious snake named Apalhāla who resided in a hut which was given for the Supreme Buddha to reside a night by the Uruwēla Kāssapa. When the snake tried to harm the Supreme Buddha by puffing out flames, the Supreme Buddha also exhaled flames with His loving-kindness thoughts and tamed the snake. The Supreme Buddha made the snake peaceful.
4th painting: This painting displays the taming of Yakkha Ālawaka who used to eat flesh of humans. When the Supreme Buddha came to Ālawaka’s abode, he tried to hurt the Supreme Buddha physically in various ways. Even though he tried different things, he could not hurt the Supreme Buddha even a bit. At the end, he thought to ask difficult questions and defeat the Supreme Buddha emotionally. But instead, the Yakkha Ālawaka tamed from the answers that the Supreme Buddha gave him for his questions. Ālawaka became a disciple of the Supreme Buddha.
5th painting: This one shows something that happened in a Brahma world. There was a Brahma called Baka. He had a deeply rooted false view of soul because of his very long life time. As a result of that, he used to say that the Brahma world he lives is free of aging and death. In order to free him from that wrong view, the Supreme Buddha went to that Brahma world. This painting depicts that incident: the Supreme Buddha disappears from Baka Brahma’s sight and preaches the Dhamma to him. By listening to the Dhamma, the Baka Brahma was tamed in front of the Supreme Buddha.
6th painting: Now you are looking at a rare sight – the story of the three Brahmin brothers, Uruvēla Kassapa, Nadi Kassapa, and Gayā Kassapa. They were hermits and have been practicing strict asceticism with thousand followers in City Urevela. By seeing the merits they had, the Supreme Buddha came to them and tamed them by performing many miracles. These tamed Jatilas later took refuge of the triple Gem together with their thousand followers. They were also lucky to get the monkhood from the Supreme Buddha’s ‘Ēhi Bhikkhu’ ordination. That is, they received the monkhood with robes and bowls from the empty sky as the Supreme Buddha addressed them to become Bhikkhus. That wonderful incident is depicted in this painting.
Now take a look at the upper wall of the doorway to the outside of the interior of the mansion. There is another beautiful painting on that wall. It displays how Brahmas, Nāga, Suparnhas, and gods came to see the Supreme Buddha and five hundred of His Arahant disciple monks to the great forest in City Kibulwat. The Arahants are sitting there in a meditational posture with a deep concentration.