The Global Life: The Buddhist Trail

It appears on your right as you go around the temple, and you wonder at once if that is the tree: an ancient-looking, sprawling tree with a massive trunk and a zone of deep, hypnotizing shade at its center. A middle-aged Japanese man dressed in white, wearing a mask, is meditating in its shadow. Behind him two Tibetan monks are counting off their prayer beads and whispering. But as you walk to the back of the temple, you see another tree, even larger, with green metal beams holding up its branches. There is a stone fence around it; a sign says, PRINCE SIDDHARTHA ATTAINED BUDDHAHOOD [FULL ENLIGHTENMENT] ... SITTING UNDER THIS PEEPUL [BODHI] TREE.

So 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.

The 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 the nearby country, preaching and making his first converts. For hundreds of years after his death, as Buddhism spread, pilgrims came from as far away as China and Central Asia to see the places where the master lived and preached.

The 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, and the Buddhist pilgrimage circuit slowly revived.

These days it is again becoming a booming tourist trail. Officials of the temple at Bodh Gaya estimate that 15,000 foreigners come each year to see the holy tree. Peak season is from November to March, when the temperature drops, but there are pilgrims year round. "It's very peaceful here. It's easy to meditate," says Sato Yuji, 41, a Buddhist from Japan who has visited Bodh Gaya regularly for the past decade.

Most pilgrims are from East Asia, but Americans and Europeans also visit. "You can feel thousands of years of prayers vibrating in the air," says Manu Hari, a Swiss-born convert to Buddhism who is meditating near the temple. With every major Buddhist community from Sri Lanka to Japan having constructed a monastery in the city, Bodh Gaya has virtually turned into a United Nations of Buddhism; at night, as Tibetan monks cycle around to buy groceries, the streets resound with gongs being struck from inside the various monasteries.