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India Pilgrimage December 2024
Bunks
Australia Veteran
Just got the itinerary through for India trip with monastic and lay friends at Newbury.
Dec 4 to 22.
Start in Bodghaya - visit Mahabhodi temple where the Buddha was enlightened.
Next to Rajgir - visit Sattapattani Caves the location of the first Buddhist Council. Visit Vultures Peak and Bimbisara Jail.
Next to Varanasi and the Deer Park where the Buddha gave the first sermon to the five ascetics.
Then to Kushinagar where the Buddha was cremated.
Next to Lumbini where the Buddha was born.
Then on to Kapilavastu to visit where the Buddha spent his first 29 years.
Then to the Jatavana Monastery in Sravasti where the Buddha spent 19 rains retreats.
Then finally fly to Delhi to visit some museums and sightseeing then fly home.
🙏🙏🙏
5
Comments
Sounds wonderful, I think you will have a great time!
That's exciting! I'd offer advice and suggestions, but its now been 25 years since I visited many of those places and I imagine things in India have changed quite a bit.
I think you're part of a Theravada group, so maybe this wouldn't be particularly of interest from that point of view. But in Rajgir the ruins of Nalanda monastery are pretty cool, very vast. Nalanda was sort of the height of Indian Buddhism and a main source of the transmission of the Dharma to Tibet. It was the home of Nagarjuna and Shantideva, along with others more well known in TB.
The last time I was in India was in 1997, and I remember staying in a little apartment next to the burning ghats where all the cremations were held. There was at least toilet paper. But I never did go to the Buddhist places of pilgrimage.
Looks amazing @person . if we have some free time there I’ll check it out.
AN 4.118 Saṁvejanīyasutta: Inspiring
“Mendicants, a faithful gentleman should go to see these four inspiring places. What four?
Thinking: ‘Here the Realized One was born!’—that is an inspiring place.
Thinking: ‘Here the Realized One became awakened as a supreme fully awakened Buddha!’—that is an inspiring place.
Thinking: ‘Here the Realized One rolled forth the supreme Wheel of Dhamma!’—that is an inspiring place.
Thinking: ‘Here the Realized One became fully extinguished in the element of extinguishment, with nothing left over!’—that is an inspiring place.
These are the four inspiring places that a faithful gentleman should go to see.”