Pilgrimage as a significant practice in Buddhism: HSC Studies of Religion

What this dot point is asking

Each Religious Tradition Depth Study asks you to choose ONE significant practice from the syllabus list. For Buddhism the list is Pilgrimage, Temple Puja, Wesak. For your chosen practice you must:

1. Describe the practice.
2. Demonstrate how it expresses the beliefs of Buddhism.
3. Analyse its significance for both the individual and the Buddhist community.

This page covers pilgrimage. It is a strong choice: it has a clear scriptural basis in the Buddha's own words, it links to more beliefs than almost any other practice (every major site is tied to a key event and teaching), and it was the practice NESA used in its 2025 sample answer for "Describe how ONE significant practice expresses ONE belief of Buddhism". Pilgrimage has been an option in the practice question every year from 2023 to 2025.

Treat the practice respectfully and accurately: Buddhist pilgrimage is an act of devotion and practice, not tourism, and Buddhists across the Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions understand it in partly different ways.

The answer

What Buddhist pilgrimage is

A pilgrimage is a journey undertaken for religious reasons to a place regarded as sacred. In Buddhism the Pali expression in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta is cetiyacarika, "wandering to the shrines". Pilgrims travel to places associated with the life of the Buddha, with his relics, or with great teachers of later tradition.

The practice rests on the Buddha's own words. Shortly before his death, Ananda worried that once the Buddha had passed, the monks would no longer be able to come and see him. The Buddha replied:

"Ananda, a faithful gentleman should go to see these four inspiring places." (DN 16, 5.8, trans. Sujato)

The four are the places where the Buddha was born, where he "became awakened as a supreme fully awakened Buddha", where "the supreme Wheel of Dhamma was rolled forth", and where he "was fully quenched in the element of extinguishment with no residue". He adds that "faithful monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen will come" to them, and that "anyone who passes away while on pilgrimage to these shrines will, when their body breaks up, after death, be reborn in a good place, a heavenly realm" (DN 16, 5.8.8 to 5.8.10). The Pali word for the places, samvejaniya, describes sites that arouse samvega: a sense of awe and spiritual urgency.

Pilgrimage is recommended, not required. There is no single pilgrimage all Buddhists must make, and many never travel to India or Nepal. It is also a practice for all four groups of the Buddhist community: monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen.

The four great places

Later tradition added four more sites associated with the Buddha's life and teaching (Rajgir, Vaishali, Sravasti and Sankasya) to make eight great places.

Emperor Asoka (3rd century BCE) is one of the earliest recorded pilgrims, and his own inscriptions survive. His Rock Edict VIII says that "ten years after Beloved-of-the-Gods had been coronated, he went on a tour to Sambodhi [Bodh Gaya] and thus instituted Dhamma tours", replacing royal "pleasure tours" of hunting. His Lumbini pillar records that "twenty years after his coronation, Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, visited this place and worshipped because here the Buddha, the sage of the Sakyans, was born", and that the village of Lumbini was exempted from tax (trans. Dhammika). Lumbini was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 and the Mahabodhi Temple Complex at Bodh Gaya in 2002.

Pilgrimage beyond the four sites

Pilgrimage takes different forms in different traditions:

• Theravada. In Sri Lanka, pilgrims visit the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy and the sacred Bodhi tree at Anuradhapura, which Sri Lankan chronicles say grew from a cutting of the Bodh Gaya tree. Relic shrines (stupas and pagodas) across South-East Asia are also pilgrimage places.
• Mahayana. In Japan, the Shikoku pilgrimage of 88 temples is associated with Kobo Daishi (Kukai), founder of the Shingon school. Pilgrims (henro) often wear white and carry the phrase dogyo ninin, "two travelling together", expressing the belief that Kobo Daishi accompanies them.
• Vajrayana (Tibetan). Pilgrims make a kora (circumambulation) of sacred places such as the Jokhang temple in Lhasa or Mount Kailash, sometimes by full-length prostrations along the route, and receive the blessing of sacred places and teachers. Large Tibetan prayer gatherings (monlam) are held at Bodh Gaya.

What pilgrims do

• Preparation. Pilgrims often undertake additional precepts for the journey. In Theravada groups lay pilgrims may keep the eight precepts and wear white. Travelling in a group led by a monk or nun is common.
• Circumambulation (pradakshina). Walking clockwise around a stupa, temple or Bodhi tree, keeping it on the right, as a gesture of respect, while chanting or reciting mantras.
• Prostration and offerings. Bowing three times (to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha); offering flowers, incense, lamps and water; in Tibetan practice, offering prayer flags and white scarves (khata).
• Chanting. The Three Refuges, the Five Precepts and, at Sarnath, passages from the first sermon.
• Meditation. Sitting beneath the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya is, for many pilgrims, the heart of the journey.
• Dana. Giving food and requisites to monastics and supporting the monasteries and the poor.
• Listening to the Dharma. Talks by teachers at each site relate the event to the pilgrim's own practice.

How pilgrimage expresses the beliefs of Buddhism

This is the section that earns most of the marks. Link each feature to a named belief.

The Three Jewels

• The Buddha. Standing where Siddhartha Gautama was born and became awakened shows that the Buddha was a human being who attained enlightenment, not a god. Pilgrims honour him as the teacher who found the path, the first Jewel.
• The Dharma. At Sarnath the pilgrim stands where the Buddha "rolled forth the Wheel of Dhamma" (SN 56.11). Chanting that sermon on the spot expresses refuge in his teaching, the second Jewel.
• The Sangha. Monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen travel and practise together, exactly the four groups the Buddha foresaw coming to the sites (DN 16, 5.8.8). The pilgrimage community is a living Sangha, the third Jewel.

The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path

The first sermon at Sarnath taught the Middle Way between "indulgence in sensual pleasures" and "indulgence in self-mortification", the Four Noble Truths and "the noble eightfold path" (SN 56.11). Pilgrims enact the path on the journey: right speech and action through the precepts, right effort and mindfulness through meditation at the sites. The discomfort of travel itself becomes a reflection on dukkha, the first Noble Truth.

Enlightenment and nirvana

Bodh Gaya is where the Buddha attained enlightenment. Meditating beneath the Bodhi tree expresses the belief that nirvana is achievable by any human being who follows the path, and it renews the pilgrim's aspiration to it. This was the link NESA drew in its 2025 sample answer: pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya reflects "the pursuit of enlightenment".

Impermanence (anicca)

At Kusinara pilgrims remember that even the Buddha died. His last words were: "Conditions fall apart. Persist with diligence" (DN 16, 6.7). At his passing, the verse attributed to Sakka declared: "Conditions are impermanent, their nature is to rise and fall" (DN 16, 6.10). The ruins of great monasteries at Sarnath and elsewhere reinforce the lesson that all conditioned things, even the institutions of the Dharma, pass away.

Karma, merit and rebirth

The Buddha taught that there are "three grounds for making merit": "giving, ethical conduct, and meditation" (AN 8.36). Pilgrimage involves all three: dana to monastics, keeping the precepts, and meditation at the sites. Merit (punna) is believed to lead to a better rebirth, as DN 16 says of those who die on pilgrimage with a serene heart. Pilgrimage therefore expresses the belief in karma and samsara.

Differences between schools

• Theravada Buddhists typically emphasise pilgrimage as a way of recollecting the Buddha (Buddhanussati), making merit and arousing samvega.
• Mahayana Buddhists often dedicate the merit of pilgrimage to the enlightenment of all beings, expressing the bodhisattva ideal of compassion (karuna).
• Vajrayana Buddhists also value the blessing believed to be present at sacred places and in the presence of great teachers, and practices such as prostration pilgrimages purify negative karma.

Significance for the individual

• Samvega and pasada. The sites were chosen by the Buddha to inspire. The shock of recognising that life is short (samvega) is balanced by serene confidence (pasada) that the path leads to freedom. The Pali of DN 16 describes pilgrims who die pasannacitta, with a serene or confident heart.
• Deepened faith. Seeing the actual places of the Buddha's life makes the tradition concrete and strengthens saddha (confidence) in the Three Jewels.
• Merit and progress on the path. Giving, ethics and meditation on the journey generate merit and train the mind.
• A turning point. Many pilgrims make or renew commitments on pilgrimage, such as taking precepts or deciding to ordain.
• Inner journey. The outer journey mirrors the inner one: the Buddha told Ananda to live with "the teaching as their island and their refuge" (DN 16, 2.26), and pilgrimage is valued because it turns the pilgrim back to their own practice.

Significance for the Buddhist community

• Unity across schools and nations. At Bodh Gaya and Lumbini, temples and monasteries built by many Buddhist countries stand side by side, and Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhists venerate the same Bodhi tree. Pilgrimage makes the worldwide Sangha visible.
• Sustaining the Sangha. Pilgrims' dana supports monasteries and the monastics who teach at the sites.
• Preserving the heritage. Pilgrim devotion has repeatedly restored the sites. Asoka marked Lumbini with a pillar. In 1891, the Sri Lankan Buddhist reformer Anagarika Dharmapala, shocked on pilgrimage to find Buddhists excluded from worship at the Mahabodhi Temple, founded the Maha Bodhi Society to campaign for its return to Buddhist care. The campaign succeeded in part with the Bodh Gaya Temple Act 1949, which gave management to a committee of Hindu and Buddhist members. The site's joint management is still debated.
• Transmission of the Dharma. Teachings given to pilgrims at the sites, and large gatherings such as the Tibetan monlam prayer festivals at Bodh Gaya, spread the Dharma across national and school boundaries.
• Diaspora identity. For Buddhists living outside Asia (2.4% of Australians at the 2021 Census), pilgrimage connects them with the origins of the tradition and with Buddhists of other cultures.

Evaluating pilgrimage

• Strength. It is grounded in the Buddha's own recommendation and expresses a wide range of beliefs through direct experience.
• Limit. It is not required, and the Buddha warned against attachment to external rites: asked about venerating his body, he told Ananda, "Please, Ananda, you must all strive and practice for your heart's goal!" (DN 16, 5.10). Pilgrimage undertaken for sightseeing or merit alone, without mindfulness and ethical change, misses its purpose.
• Balance. Many Buddhists regard pilgrimage as a powerful support for the path, not a substitute for it. This contrasts with Hajj in Islam, which is an obligation for Muslims who are able.

In one sentence

Buddhist pilgrimage to the places the Buddha named in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, above all Lumbini, Bodh Gaya, Sarnath and Kusinara, expresses the Three Jewels, the Four Noble Truths, the possibility of enlightenment, impermanence and the making of merit, arousing samvega and confidence in the individual and uniting, sustaining and preserving the worldwide Buddhist community.

Try this

Q1. Identify the event associated with each of the four places named in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta. (2 marks)

• What the marker wants. Lumbini (birth), Bodh Gaya (enlightenment), Sarnath (first sermon), Kusinara (final passing), all correct for 2.

Q2. Explain how pilgrimage expresses the belief in karma. (4 marks)

• What the marker wants. Karma and merit defined; giving, precepts and meditation on pilgrimage as the three grounds for merit (AN 8.36); the link to rebirth (DN 16); Mahayana dedication of merit as an extension.

Q3. Analyse the significance of pilgrimage for the Buddhist community. (5 marks)

• What the marker wants. Unity across schools and nations, support of the Sangha, preservation of the sites (Asoka, Dharmapala, 1949 Act), transmission of the Dharma, with a judgement.