What to do at India’s Buddhist holy sites
Book Preview 17 February, 2010 – Maybe you are missing grandparents, relatives and friends, who are away on pilgrimage to Bodhgaya or Varanasi in India. Perhaps you have decided you might just accompany them the next time, but aren’t quite sure what a pilgrimage is all about, or what you’re supposed to do during one.
Breaking it down to the most minor details is the objective of “What to do at India’s Buddhist Holy Sites”, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche’s latest book.
Continuing on his quest to make Buddhism easier to comprehend, the author of What Makes You Not a Buddhist, provides readers with another explanatory work. This time Khyentse Rinpoche provides a very useful guide book, although he does not think it is a guide book, for Buddhists planning their first pilgrimage.
He begins by matter of factly writing that Buddhists do not necessarily need to seek out external holy places, because anything around you or even a moment in time can be ‘holy’. But then pilgrimage can be an “effective carrot” at getting Buddhists to practice, since they combine holidaying or pleasure with virtuous action, as opposed to some of the more “austere practices”, he writes.
The purpose of a pilgrimage, besides the pleasure of holidaying, is to remember and put into practice the teachings of the Buddha or the Dharma. “It isn’t just to visit a saint’s birthplace, or to gaze on the site of an extraordinary happening,” writes Khyentse. It is to contemplate and understand what the Buddha told his students just before he died: “You must tell the world that an ordinary person, Siddhartha, came to this earth, achieved enlightenment, taught the path to enlightenment, and didn’t become immortal but passed into parinirvana.”
So, as pilgrims visit the four most traditionally important holy sites of Bodhgaya, Varanasi, Lumbini, and Kushinagar, perhaps emulating Buddha’s experiences associated with these sites is one way to practice, writes Khyentse. For instance, while in Bodhgaya, “meditate under the Bodhi tree”, or in Varanasi, “Aspire to learn to appreciate old age, sickness and death in the same way he did, and to summon the courage to do whatever it takes to go beyond birth and death.”
This might not sound very helpful to the aspiring Buddhist, but Khyentse goes deeper by providing simple practices to help the pilgrim get started. He advises the pilgrim to clean up a small area around the stupa and to make an offering. Today, when many Buddhists tend to measure their devotion by their offerings, Khyentse provides a helpful tip: “Your offering doesn’t have to be enormous; if you only have one candle, it’s enough.” He adds, “The thing to remember is that the more effort you make, the more merit you accumulate.” The pilgrim then can follow this by reciting mantras or favourite prayers, or even make up your own, he advises.
And the motivation behind all this is “at best to develop wisdom, love, compassion, devotion and a genuine sense of renunciation,” writes Khyentse.
Although Khyentse’s book is quite short at a little more than 60 pages, it covers almost every aspect of the Buddhist pilgrimage, from what to do, to the teachings of Buddha, with even some stories, including anecdotes, interspersed within the pages. A significant portion of the book also provides a number of prayers written in English that can be recited during pilgrimage. Besides a useful guide book for beginner Buddhist pilgrims from the West, it will also fill a gap for younger Bhutanese Buddhists. The English, like his first book, is at the moderate level.
What to do at India’s Holy Sites is still in the editing stage but can still be downloaded at http://www.siddharthasintent.org/2010/01/preview-of-rinpoches-new-book.html or accessed directly at http://siddharthasintent.org/pubs/HolySitesDJKR.pdf. Readers will also be able to download the finalised copy free of charge. It will not be available in stores.
Source: kuenselonline