By Viradhamma

In February I had the opportunity to go on pilgrimage to many of the Buddhist holy sites in northern India and Nepal, after which I spent three weeks working with “New Buddhists” in central and south India. Among the pilgrimage places that I visited were Lumbini, where the Buddha-to-be was born; Kapilavastu, where he lived until age 29; and Bodh Gaya – the place where he attained Enlightenment. Other sites that I visited included the places where he spent much of his teaching career – Rajgir, Vaishali and Shravasti – and the site of his Parinirvana at Kushinagar.

Surprisingly, most of these sites – so central to the history of the Buddhist tradition – have only been re-discovered and excavated within the last two hundred years. In many cases the places were found by British archeologists using the records of Chinese pilgrims who visited India in the 6^th century. The brick foundations of the stupas, monasteries and temples have now partially restored so that one can easily imagine what the ancient structures looked like.

These places are now visited daily by tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world, and the sound of chanting in many languages can be heard as people offer flowers, incense and candles to the small shrines set up among the brick walls.

I began my pilgrimage at Sarnath, where the Buddha first taught the Dharma. Monks and nuns and laypeople from all over the world wander among the remains of stupas and temples. A large round foundation of bricks is all that remains of the Dharmarajika, the original stupa that marked the place where the Buddha and the five disciples talked about his experience of Enlightenment. Like at the other important holy sites, throngs of Buddhists from China, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand and Japan take turns reciting sutras and performing rituals that are led by monks in the distinctive colors of their tradition and culture.

My favorite site was the Jeta Grove at Shravasti, where the Buddha spent twenty-five rainy season retreats. This quiet park with lawns and trees was the place where famous disciples of the Buddha like Ananda, Kisa Gotami and Angulimala walked, meditated and mixed with hundreds of visiting monks and laypeople 2,500 years ago. The floor of the building where the Buddha lived was paved with small offering cups of red flowers. At the building’s entrance, where he would have met visitors and preached much of the Dharma found in the Pali Canon, a brick stupa just a few feet high was covered with gold leaf applied by visiting pilgrims. In this place I found it easy to imagine the Buddha himself and feel how real his presence was – and remains today. It is still possible to walk down the same road that he took when he went on his alms round in Shravasti, and the forests, fields and farmers probably appear the same way that he would have seen them.

After ten days and hundreds of miles of travel in a crowded van my trip came to an end at Bodh Gaya where the Buddha became Enlightened. I arrived just as the International Convention of the Western Buddhist Order/Trailokya Bauddha Mahasangha (what the WBO is called in India) got underway, and I was able to walk in procession with the Order from our retreat center to the center of the town where the Maha Bodhi Temple is located. Here we found ourselves gathered under the Bodhi Tree itself, which is descended from the original tree that Shakyamuni sat under. This is the heart of the Buddhist world, and it was crowded with people from dozens of different countries and practice traditions, all of whom were meditating, chanting, praying and doing ritual practices. The Temple staff reserved the space directly under the Tree for our Sangha to do meditations and prostrations in the mornings and rituals in the evening, and it was a remarkable experience to join with hundreds of Order Members in this sacred place.

Following the Order Convention I spent a week at the FWBO’s Nagaloka Center in Nagpur, Maharashtra, where I taught a series of classes on the American Civil Rights Movement to students involved in the ten-month training course for aspiring Buddhist social activists and Dharma teachers. As a result of my discussions with the staff I will now be coming to Nagaloka twice each year to assist with planning, administration and instruction at the school.

In Pune I met with activists at the Manuski Institute, a social advocacy group that is a key part of our FWBO activities in India. The activists at Manuski are involved in many different programs to create dialog between different Dalit (“untouchable”) sub-castes and protect the human and civil rights of these oppressed people. The staff is also directly involved in publicizing incidents of extreme violence against Dalits, helping with legal actions and providing direct support to victims of hate crimes.

At the end of my trip I went on retreat in the south of India in Tamil Nadu outside the city of Chennai with 80 people from the Dalit community. The retreat was led by Lokamitra, the senior Order Member in India and a principal architect of the Buddhist Revival there. The program included basic meditation instruction, Dharma talks and small group interactions, and it gave me a chance to talk to a variety of people about their experience of caste oppression. We were joined by social activists and monks from Sri Lanka who wanted to assure the retreatants that the war against the Tamil separatists is not a “Buddhist versus Hindu” conflict. The spoke from first-hand experience and pointed out that many Buddhists are actively trying to encourage peaceful conflict resolution and are providing relief to war refugees. Hopefully this retreat will represent the start of more organized Buddhist activities in this part of south India.

Order Member/Mitra retreat at Jikoji Retreat Center, Spring 2009

Photo: Gabe Branbury