Buddha at Borobudur

A stone Buddha emerges from morning mist at Borobudur — the world's largest Buddhist monument, in Java, Indonesia, built in the 8th and 9th centuries by the Sailendra dynasty. 2.5 million stone blocks, assembled without mortar, still standing twelve hundred years later, and all of it in what is now the largest Muslim-majority country on earth. Coming back down the terraces, I was mobbed by merchants and learned the only phrase that worked: tidak, Pak. No, sir. Up here, before any of that begins, one singular presence.

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