Follow in the footsteps of the Buddha through India – and perhaps discover a little about yourself along the way.
Not all tours of India and Nepal are for the adventurer, the cool hunter, or those seeking pampering in gilded palaces. One journey, led by Shantum Seth (pronounced “Sait”), is a journey into self. You walk through the same rice fields the Buddha crossed 2500 years ago, through villages where cloth is still hand-woven on looms. You can listen to the ploughman singing just as the Buddha did, take a boat ride down the Ganges at dawn and watch a small girl offer rice to travellers, just as the starving Buddha was once offered rice at the end of a lengthy fast.
Seth’s mother, Leila, was the first female High Court chief justice in India; his brother, Vikram, wrote the best-selling A Suitable Boy. Shantum Seth has for the past two decades led tours to Buddhist pilgrimage sites, catering to the West’s ongoing love affair with Eastern spirituality.
While the advent of Mogul rule 800 years ago all but killed off Buddhism in its birthplace, it has in the past 50 years gained momentum in the West as people reject more formal religions. Globally, there are about 360 million Buddhists.
In the Footsteps of the Buddha pilgrimages aim to re-create the spiritual journey of Prince Siddhartha Gautama. Born into a wealthy family near the modern India-Nepal border in 563BC, he left home at 29 to spend seven years travelling India as an ascetic, eschewing physical self-punishment for meditation and proposing a path towards individual enlightenment through reflection on the nature of existence.
Today’s 10-day and two-week journeys through northern India and Nepal are by plane, train and luxury bus. They take in World Heritage monuments such as the Mahabodhi Temple, combining meditation and discussion in the town of Buddha’s birth, the caves where he sat, the parks in which he meditated and the place of his death. Groups number a maximum of 20 and Seth, a Buddhist practitioner and ordained teacher (Dharmacharya), turns the journey into a therapeutic, learning experience.
Seth’s knowledge of the local culture is holistic. Having worked for the United Nations, he doesn’t shy from the poverty that is the subcontinent’s dark underbelly, introducing his entourage to landless tenant farmers and beggars.
“When people are confronted by poverty at first they are afraid of it,” he says. “I try to remove the fear and disgust, and replace it with what I call the ‘wisdom culture’ of India.”
The Western desire for creature comforts is not overlooked. A two-week trip, costing around $6250, includes accommodation in five-star hotels as well as Japanese-run hotels with meditation rooms and communal spa baths known as ofuros. “The discussions and meditation can be quite tiring, so I want people to be as comfortable as possible,” Seth says.
The tour begins with museum visits before focusing on things meditative in the second week. “It’s easier for the group to begin with more external stimulations and get used to the journey before we focus on more inward thoughts,” says Seth who describes himself as a “cultural interpreter”, comfortable in both the Western and Indian mind.
But the journey is not without entertainment value. “We hear musicians in Varanasi, meet outstanding intellectuals, eat world-class sushi and buy some great silk,” he says.
Growing up in the Seth household – the family was, in fact, Hindu – religion was not a force except as a topic for dinner table discussion. Shantum, like many others of his age, was more passionate about social injustice than deities. He describes himself as “a burnt-out political activist” by the early 1980s, when he was introduced to Buddhism while a student of development studies at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.
Intrigued by its philosophy, he then studied Buddhism under Korean, Japanese and American teachers, and finally under the Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, whom he met on a retreat in Santa Barbara, California, in 1987. A year later, Seth took his master on a pilgrimage of Indian Buddhist sites. Impressed by the experience, and his student’s organisational skills, Thich Nhat Hanh advised Shantum to pursue this interest further.
“He suggested it would deepen my understanding of the Buddha and his teachings, and offer an opportunity to others to do the same,” says Seth who, in 2001, received the “transmission of the lamp” (insight) from his teacher and was awarded the title of Dharmacharya (Teacher of the Law).
Now a licensed guide, Seth is fastidious. He vets the hotel kitchens himself, hires the bus drivers and inspects all the bathrooms to make sure everything is up to standard. Not even the softness of the toilet paper escapes his attention.
The real pilgrimage, though, starts at the end of the tour when, he says, you see life through a different lens. “It’s the process of transforming yourself.”
Buddha stops
Patna
The historic town is built on the banks of the Ganges River in heritage-rich eastern Bihar state, known for colourful tribal art such as the Madhubani paintings. Sometimes referred to as the gateway to the Buddha circuit, Patna is home to the museum that houses relics of the Buddha, that were found close by, and some of the country’s finest sculptures, bronzes and Tibetan thangkas (religious paintings – usually watercolours on canvas or woven in silk). The Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library displays rare manuscripts and paintings offering insights into the ancient and medieval cultures of eastern India. The Agam Kuan (Unfathomable Well) abounds in legends of beheadings and mysterious disappearances, and is believed to have secret passages leading to Agra and Delhi.
Rajgir
The small town, also in Bihar state, where the Mauryan King Bimbisara (reigned 543-491BC) was converted to Buddhism. He gifted the Buddha a bamboo grove, which became the site of the world’s first Buddhist monastery. The hot springs are said to have relieved the Buddha’s arthritic pain, and the beautiful Vulture’s Peak, or Griddhakuta, was said to be his favourite spot for sunset meditation.13km from Rajgir is the World Heritage site of Nalanda, the ruins of what was, between the fifth and 12th centuries AD, a centre of monastic learning in metaphysics, grammar, logic and medicine. Chinese traveller and chronicler Hiuen Tsang spent five years here both as student and teacher.
Bodhgaya
Where the young Siddhartha Gautama “became” the Buddha as he sat in meditation under the bodhi tree. The Mahabodhi Temple was built around the fourth century AD to commemorate this. Nearby are the Dungeshwari cave temples where the monk practised austerities before embracing the Middle Path (moderation, avoiding extremes between self-denial and indulgence). Seth’s pilgrims meet tenant farmers and learn about the sustainable “cow” economy.
Sarnath
Sarnath, in Uttar Pradesh, is where the Buddha gave his first significant sermon on the main tenets of Buddhist philosophy – the Middle Path, Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path – to five fellow seekers who became the first monks of the order. The Dhamekh Stupa, 34m high and 28m wide, marks the spot. Also of note is the statue of the Teaching Buddha (fifth century AD) and the Ashoka Pillar (third century BC), previously topped by the Lion Capital, now resident in the nearby Sarnath Archaeological Museum and on which the emblem of the Republic of India is based.
Varanasi
The Hindu holy city in the south-east of Uttar Pradesh, where Hindus have come to bathe, worship and die for thousands of years, is the midway point for Seth’s tourists. On the banks of the Ganges, the City of Light is a warren of alleyways winding around historic, carved temples where a steady stream of worshippers come to be blessed by the local priests. Exquisite silk saris are created here, and Varanasi is also home to the prestigious Banaras Hindu University. At night, sitting on the balconies of some of the larger temples, you can listen to classical musicians performing for the sacred river. Before dawn, take a boat ride and watch the sun rise against the backdrop of the ghats (steps). You may even see a Gangetic dolphin.
Kushinagar
This town in Uttar Pradesh is where the Lord Buddha passed away in 563BC. It is said he died after falling ill from eating a type of mushroom known as “pig’s delight”. Expect discussions on the continuum of life. Thais, Burmese, Japanese, Chinese, Japanese, South Koreans and Tibetans as well as Indians have all built temples here in close proximity to the ruins of old monasteries and stupas (mound-like structures containing Buddhist relics). Monuments of interest are the Mahaparinirvana Temple and the Mahaparinirvana Stupa, the 6m-long statue of the reclining Buddha and a shrine with a black stone image of Lord Buddha in the bhumisparsa mudra – a posture showing him touching the earth. The significance of this town as the Buddha’s final resting place was first discovered during British colonial rule around 1861 by archaeological surveyor General Alexander Cunningham.
Lumbini
In the Himalayan foothills of southern Nepal, near the Indian border, is the birthplace of the Buddha. A stone pillar built by the Emperor Ashoka marks the site. Ashoka, under whose reign much of India was mapped, lived in the third century BC and converted from Hinduism to Buddhism as a reaction to the bloodshed caused by war. Until a planned international monastic zone and cultural centre is completed, Lumbini’s main attractions include its Ashokan Pillar, temple of Maya Devi and a Sacred Pond in which it is said the infant Prince Siddhartha received his first purification bath. In 1997, Lumbini was declared to be a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Kapilavastu
The ancient capital bordering India and Nepal is where the Buddha spent the first 29 years of his life. Expect to see plenty of unusual birdlife. From the lodge, you can take walks to spot the sarus crane, the tallest flying bird in the world, and the massive blue bull antelope or nilgai (from the Hindi word for blue cow).
Sravasti
Buddha spent 24 of his rain retreats here. Sravasti is an ancient Indian city whose ruins can still be seen. There are two stupas worth visiting: one belongs to Angulimala the robber who made necklaces from the fingers of his victims before his enlightenment; the other belongs to a generous king, Anathapindika, a disciple who gifted 1.8 million gold coins to the Buddha. The city walls also contain the remains of a Jain (a minority Indian animist sect) temple dating back to the sixth century BC.
Source: Qantas The Australian Way September 2008