Features
Pilgrimages to India – personal experiences
Four places of significance
I listened recently to a YouTube presentation by Ajahn Brahmali retailing his experiences on pilgrimage in India. That brought back vividly my own memories of three visits. I need to mention here that Ajahn Brahmali translated the sutta where the Buddha tells people to visit the four places of profound significance in his life. Ven Brahmali shared the usual interpretation of this statement to be the four places of significance in the Buddha’s life: Lumbini where he was born as Prince Siddhartha Gautama; Buddha Gaya where as an ascetic he attained enlightenment; Sarnath where he preached his first sermon as the Buddha; and Kusinara where he died – Parinibbana.
The Buddha always insisted he was just a human being, and deification and elevating him to supernatural states was wrong. But he wished people to visit places of significance in his life so they would be inspired and also draw closer to him. I heard Ajahn Brahm, mentor and teacher to Ajahn Brahmali, say that the four places the Buddha considered ought to be visited by his followers were the four jhanas reached when in very deep and absorbed meditation. I really admire this interpretation of the ‘four places’ since it tallies with the Buddha’s earnest request that people follow his Path, meditate and reach final relief.
Ajahn Brahmali
Deeply significant visits
My elder brother escorted my mother on pilgrimage in 1949 when hardly anyone braved entering notorious-for-bandits Bihar State. But my Aiya did. From Bombay (then), they entrained and went to the three sacred places in India, at that time very remote and undeveloped, and Buddha Gaya still under the supervision of the Hindu Mahantha resident within the premises of the Sacred Tree.
In 1956, Aiya suggested, nay obliged my second brother to take Mother on pilgrimage. Thus in late December 1956 and including the first week of 1957 – the Buddha Jayanthi year celebrating 2,500 years of Buddhism – my second brother fulfilled his obligation and included Aiya’s wife and me in the party. Pilgrimages were becoming common with concessions being given by India on travel to mark the historical event.
We registered with a travel agency in Colombo and booked first class train travel in India. Flying to Madras, we went to the railway station to obtain our booked seats first to Calcutta. We were told we would have to wait a fortnight for first class seats. Our entire trip was for two weeks. We were then advised to engage a porter, give him a bed sheet and he would reserve seats for us.
This we did, and the man jumping in to a third class compartment while the express train was approaching the station, spread our sheet on a seat alongside one side of the compartment, claiming it as our territory. A small bunch of school children with a teacher entered and the teacher took over. He gave mother a seat where she was able to lie down all through the journey; me and SIL a seat where alternatively we could lie down; my brother a luggage rack above; the school children on the floor, two Burmese ladies next to me and SIL. A lovely Kashmiri lady opted to sit and lie down on her large suitcase for the two nights’ journey. We were fine eating stuff sold on platforms, mostly mandarin, washing minimally and in the same Kashmir saris we had worn to fly in.
One misadventure: late the first night when I had to sit up, I found a man crouched near the door scratching himself violently and softly moaning. I called out to the Teacher-Commander.
Came over promptly, opened the door of the train now speeding, and pushed the intruder out. But miraculously he returned the next night too. This time Teacher saw to it he was thrown really out – no chance to swing onto the compartment ledge.
From Calcutta onwards the travelling was OK since our first class tickets were operable. We spent a super night in the restrooms of the New Delhi station where the station master’s niece escorted us on a spin around the city. Met loads of Tibetans who uncouthly would enter our station rooms to stare at themselves in the mirror
I was young, in love, and the astounding significance of places visited were rather lost on stupid me. Lumbini was not developed, only the Asokan pillar stood way up tall, indicating here Prince Siddhartha was born in a sal grove to Queen Mahamaya. The pond lay still, the one she is supposed to have washed herself in.
Buddha Gaya was reached in cycle rickshaws. Impressed, but when the other three crossed the Neranjana Ganga to visit the spot where Sujatha offered the Bhodisatva his last meal before he became the Buddha, I sat on the vast stretch of sand with the river reduced to a small stream, writing a letter to my boyfriend, posted surreptitiously by bribing hotel receptionists and waiters. We visited the Mahantha, plump and podgy, seated like a king receiving pilgrims who were obliged to pay him a respectful courtesy call.
We included Sarnath, Sravasti and Sanchi in our travel itinerary. At Sanchi we spent the night in a dak bungalow after me existing that day on peanuts and mandarin which moved within its skin and was sold shouting out its name – reyvela. The others lunched on chapatti and sambal, I paid for it that night in a tourist bungalow with all lights off, groping with mother to the toilet to throw up and also purge. However, fine in the morning. I found this was the way it was on my second trip too. Feeling feverish at bedtime but getting up fresh and energetic the next morning
Captain Wick’s luxury pilgrimage
In the 1970s a friend, my second sister and I joined a trip organized by Captain DA Wickremasinghe for a family group. Capn Wicks as we called him, was expert planner of this trip, having taken to it as his service after retiring from the Ceylon Army. He took us first to Kathmandu by Royal Nepal Airlines and then after a day of rest flew us in a small plane to Lumbini.
After excavation much development had been taken place. Sites were marked as per the birth of the prince of the Sakyan principality. I was much more in gratitude for having the good fortune to visit these places in congenial company with everything looked after efficiently. We had fun too with Capn Wicks choosing to spend the evenings before dinner with us three. He gave me a task – to accompany when sightseeing or shopping his ex-batman’s wife, to whom he was giving a free trip. I did it, enviously seeing my sister and my friend trotting off on their own.
We travelled around in a luxury bus from Lumbini onwards. Buddha Gaya was almost taken over by the Indian Tourist Board but the sanctity within the premises was still intact. In fact I went alone to the precincts of the Sacred Bo Tree and was immediately immersed in meditation. The others were crossing the river and my sister had to nudge me to get me to join them. This time I walked across village lanes which to me seemed to have remained thus from the time of the Buddha. All rituals such as offering early morning dane and going in procession with cloth torches lit, which we had brought from home, were fulfilled.
Kusinara sends most devotees to tears. The lying down large statue and recognizing it as depicting the Parinibbana at age 80 of the Buddha, is touching. But my most profound experience in this trip and the next was roaming around Sravasati where the Buddha spent most vas seasons: 19 in all. I distinctly felt an aura of serene sanctity pervading the place. Touchingly significant was meeting the Sinhala bhikkhu in charge of the sacred place and his taking us to view the kuti supposedly used by the Buddha, a few steps below ground level.
The Ananda Bodhiya in Sravasti has a beautiful story to it. The Buddha was preparing to go on a Dhammduta charikawa – mission of preaching. By then the Sangha was large in number. Hence the Ven Ananda Thera, Buddha’s assistant and close companion, asked the Buddha who would be venerated in the Buddha’s absence by the monks who remained at Sravasti.
The Buddha directed a bo sapling be brought from the tree in Gaya under which he sat and paid homage to, and planted in the grounds of Sravasati. This was to be his substitute. This Bo Tree flourishes unlike the Sacred Tree in Anuradhapura, the Ananda Bodhiya, the monk said, being third generation.
Captain Wicks gave us a bonus of three days unwinding in Katmandu, before flying back.
With the Bank of Ceylon
Pilgrimage Three was about 12 years ago, when the full impact of the places fell on a receptive mind now more sincerely religious and having been to meditation retreats. Chief organizer was friend Menik Dissanayake, excellent tour arranger and guide who engaged the Bank of Ceylon to arrange a pilgrimage for forty of us, including Delhi, the Taj Mahal and shopping. I was particularly happy as it gave me the chance to revisit the carpet sellers at Agra and send my son a small silk thread woven carpet.
Both interpretations of the word of the Buddha to visit the four places where he was, were valid for me though admittedly I was far far away from reaching even the first jhana. We live, we appreciate, we learn and very slowly progress on the Path to final Deliverance, which we need to sort out for ourselves.