Buddhist Pilgrimage

All you want to know about Buddhist Pilgrimage

devotional
Lay Buddhist Practices
Offerings · Bows 3 Refuges · Chanting
precepts
5 Precepts · 8 Precepts Bodhisattva vows
other
Meditation · Giving Supporting Monastics Study · Pilgrimage
view • talk • edit

The most important places of pilgrimage in Buddhism are located the Gangetic plains of Northern India and Southern Nepal, in the area between New Delhi and Rajgir. This is the area where Gautama Buddha lived and taught, and the main sites connected to his life are now important places of pilgrimage for both Buddhists and Hindus. However, many countries that are or were predominantly Buddhist have shrines and places which can be visited as a pilgrimage.

Pilgrims, Tsurphu Gompa, Tibet, 1993

1 Places where Buddha lived
2 Other pilgrimage places
3 Notes
4 External links

Places where Buddha lived

Four main pilgrimage sites

Gautama Buddha is said to have identified four sites most worthy of pilgrimage for his followers, saying that they would produce a feeling of spiritual urgency. These are:^[1]

Lumbini: birth place (in Nepal)
Bodh Gaya: the place of his Enlightenment (in the current Mahabodhi Temple).
Sarnath: (formally Isipathana) where he delivered his first teaching.
Kusinara: (now Kusinagar, India) where he died (Parinirvana).

The Eight Great Places

The Four Main Sites
Pilgrimage to Buddha's Holy Sites

Lumbini · Bodh Gaya Sarnath · Kushinagar
Four Additional Sites
Sravasti · Rajgir Sankissa · Vaishali
Other Sites
Patna · Gaya Kosambi · Mathura Kapilavastu · Devadaha Kesariya · Pava Nalanda · Varanasi
Later Sites
Sanchi · Ratnagiri Ellora · Ajanta Bharhut
view • talk • edit

In the later commentarial tradition, four other sites are also raised to a special status because Buddha had performed a certain miracle there. These four places, partly through the inclusion in this list of commentarial origin, became important Buddhist pilgrimage sites in ancient India, as the Attha-mahathanani (Pali for 'The Eight Great Places'). It is important to note, however, that some of these events do not occur in the Tipitaka and are thus purely commentarial.

The first four of the Eight Great Places are identical to the places mentioned by Buddha:

The last four are places where a certain miraculous event is reported to have occurred:

Sravasti: Place of the Twin Miracle, showing his supernatural abilities in performance of miracles. Sravasti is also the place where Buddha spent the largest amount of time, being a major city in ancient India.
Rajgir: Place of the subduing of Nalagiri, the angry elephant, through friendliness. Rajgir was another major city of ancient India.
Sankasia: Place of the descending to earth from Tusita heaven (after a stay of 3 months teaching his mother the Abhidhamma).
Vaishali: Place of receiving an offering of honey from a monkey. Vaishali was the capital of the Vajjian Republic of ancient India.

Other sites

Some other pilgrimage places in India and Nepal connected to the life of Gautama Buddha are: Pataliputta, Nalanda, Gaya, Kapilavastu, Kosambi, Varanasi, Kesariya, Devadaha, Pava and Mathura. All these places are located in the Gangetic plain.

Famous pilgrims

A few influential historical Buddhist pilgrims are:

King Ashoka the Great (250 BCE)
The Liu Song and Tang pilgrim monks Faxian (399–412 CE), Xuanzang (630–646 CE), and I Ching (673–687 CE)
The Silla monk Hyecho (723–727 CE)
The Tibetan monk Dharmaswamin (Chag Lotsawa) (1235 CE)
The Sri Lankan national Anagarika Dharmapala (1891)