The 'Flame of Hope' (light of hope) has been lit by a mixture of lamps brought from 15 places in 9 countries in the old Rajkiya Vihar (Nepal Temple) in Lumbini. The lamp is lit from a mixture of lamps collected from various places in the Netherlands, Japan, America, Italy, France, Israel, India, Nepal and Palestine.
According to the Buddhist tradition, lamps are lit by Therabadi, Mahayani and Chinese monks in the royal vihara located east of the Mayadevi temple, the birthplace of Buddha.
Bhikkhu Sagar Dhamma said that the lamp always gives light one by one. "Such lamps are rare in the world," he said. In Lumbini, lamps have been brought from places like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the birth place of Jesus Christ and lit.
69-year-old Japanese monk Rekyu Indo did the job of collecting lamps and lighting them in Lumbini. He said that he came up with the idea of working for peace, even if it was small, while traveling abroad as an expert and instructor of Zen Shiatsu, a Japanese therapy treatment system. In 2014, it was very painful to see a 3-year-old girl's legs damaged by a bomb in Palestine. After that, I thought that we should conduct some campaign for peace,' he said.
In 2015, Rekyu did a peace cycling tour of Nagasaki-Hiroshima-Kyoto-Tokyo, which was destroyed by atomic bombs. He said that he had completed the 1,03 km bicycle journey in two weeks while preaching about peace from place to place.
He started collecting peace lamps from Nagasaki, Japan in 2019. Lumbini includes the Peace Lamp of Hiroshima, the nuclear flame burning in Hoshino, Japan, the Peace Light of Bethlehem from the Church of the Nativity where Jesus Christ is believed to have been born, the Flame of Commitment from Olympia to Nagasaki and the outer flame of Yad Basem Jerusalem.
According to monk Rekyu, the lamp of "The King Center" established in America named after the leader of the non-violent movement against apartheid and inequality and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King, the lamp of the apparition cave which is considered holy in Lourdes, France, the Kukai lamp which is believed to have been burning for 1200 years in the Recado Mandap on Mount Misen in Miyajima, Japan, and the Kukai lamp which is kept in the mausoleum of Mahatma Gandhi in Rajghat, Delhi, India. Deep and includes the Deep of Freedom Fire in Wageningen, Netherlands.
Similarly, the 450-year-old lamp in Japan's Hongan Ji Vihar, the symbolic lamp of peace in Assisi, Italy, the Akhand Shanti lamp in Lumbini, Nepal, the sacred aster flame brought from Jerusalem and the Akhand lamp placed near the statue of Bhimraj Ambedkar at the Oval Ground in Mumbai, India are also included.
