Word: buddhas
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...tree in Bodh Gaya, a town in eastern India, is the holiest place in all Buddhism. According to local lore, the tree is a direct descendant of the bodhi (a type of fig tree) where a prince named Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment 2 1/2 millenniums ago and became the Buddha. Today Buddhism is a religion associated with East Asia--with Thailand, China or Japan--where most of the world's Buddhists live. Yet Buddhism began in India at that very spot. The Buddha was born in Lumbini, Nepal, lived in eastern India, attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya and then wandered...
...that is the tree. A group of Sri Lankan monks in golden robes gather and sit down before it. They recite from their prayer books, and their words boom around the temple complex over loudspeakers: "Buddham Sharanam Gacchami"--I go for refuge to the Buddha...
...sacred tree at Bodh Gaya is holy ground, but pilgrims also went to see Sarnath, where the Buddha preached his first sermon; Rajgir, where he came to meditate during the monsoons; Vaishali, where the beautiful courtesan Amrapali made him a gift of a mango grove; and Kushinagar, where, lying on a bed under two trees, he died. Buddhism withered in India in the Middle Ages; the great temples and monasteries were destroyed by invaders and the pilgrims stopped coming. In the 19th century, pilgrims from Burma and Sri Lanka rediscovered the trail, renovated and rebuilt ruined monasteries and temples...
...another no-hope town: many of the sugar mills that employed the townspeople have recently closed, and unemployment is rampant. Yet the town is seeing a real estate boom, roads are markedly better than anywhere around and children go to well-maintained schools. Kushinagar is where the Buddha died, and pilgrims come to see the gilded statue that commemorates the spot where the Buddha attained nirvana as well as a brick monument built in the field where he was cremated. "The only improvement we have seen here is because of the monasteries and the Buddhists," says Laldhar Yadav, who owns...
Still, amid the hassles and dangers, there are, for the faithful, moments of transcendent beauty. Second only to Bodh Gaya in importance on the pilgrimage circuit is Sarnath, where the Buddha went after his enlightenment to meditate in a deer park and preach for the first time. By daytime the deer park is unimpressive. As the sun sets, though, the brick ruins of the monasteries glow incandescently amid the lush green grass. Just beyond the park's walls, a peacock climbs the roof of a Burmese Buddhist monastery to watch the sunset. In the other corner, near a statue...