An article published in the Asia Times this month* reminds us what an awful mess Lumbini is:
Mired in corruption, it evokes despair rather than spiritual upliftment.
[…]
“The monastic zone is dominated by Japanese Mahayana sects. Vajrayana, the Himalaya’s own distinctive contribution to Buddhism, is the most neglected,” Pathak pointed out.
[…]
This has “sparked competition among sects” and encouraged “factionalism – that, too, based on nationality”, Rachana Pathak wrote in Himal magazine.
[…]
But crass commercialization and ostentation evident in new buildings prompted a Western scholar of Himalayan Buddhism to lament that Lumbini was on its way to becoming a “religious Disneyland”.
It’s a little late to complain about that. When you hitch your wagon to globalized culture, which the McBuddhism at Lumbini epitomizes so well, false taste and colonial structure is what you inevitably get. It’s a small world, after all:
* Sudha Ramachandran. ‘Buddha’s birthplace courts controversy’. Asia Times, November 17, 2011. [link]