Uzzal Barua Basu: Buddhist lent of three month is over. It is ended with celebrating Holy Probarona Purnima festival. From the next day of Holy Probarona Purnima another month long festival is started which  is called Kathina robe offerings.

This is the suitable time for pilgrimage. The idea of a pilgrimage came from the Buddha himself. Before He passed into Mahaparinibbana, the Buddha advised pious disciples to visit four places that may be for their inspiration after He was gone. They are Lumbini, Buddhagaya, Sarnath and Kusinara.

After the death of the Buddha, the relics of His body were collected from the funeral pyre and divided into eight parts. These were distributed to the claimants and stupas, or burial mounds, were erected on the relics.  This is the suitable time for pilgrimage because the Buddha relics of Sarnath is opened  in a specific day of this month. The pilgrim who goes to India in this month makes schedule in such a way that they can see the holy relics of Sarnath in this specific day.

The purpose of pilgrimage is to honor the great master who shows us the way to ultimate salvation, as well as it gives opportunity to achieve personal advantage to become free from rebirth by getting Nirvana. According to the Lord Buddha the four sites are most worthy of pilgrimage for his followers, because they can produce a feeling of spiritual urgency.

A pilgrimage is a journey to a holy or sacred place where pilgrim shows his deep devotion and faith. In the scriptures, faith or saddha is the professing of confidence in and the sense of assurance based on understanding that one places on the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. Here, saddha is the leader of moral mental states because its chief characteristic is the purification of the mind.

There is a custom in most of the Buddhists countries that the people go to visit these holy place in their old age. Because of their old age they cannot even walk properly so how they will visit the place properly. They miss lots of place. That is why I think young age is the proper age for pilgrimage. These good feelings of visiting the holy places can show a person a new way of living with doing good deeds.

The four sacred places-

Lumbini –Siddhartha Gautama, the Lord Buddha, was born in 623 B.C. in the famous gardens of Lumbini. It is situated in Nepal.

Bodh Gaya- Bodh Gaya is associated with the Mahabodhi Temple Complex in Gaya district in the Indian state of Bihar.This is the sacred place of Enlightenment of Lord Buddha.

 Sarnath- Sarnath is a city located 13 kilometres north-east of Varanasi near the confluence of the Ganges and the Gomati rivers in Uttar Pradesh, India. The former name of Sarnath is Isipathana where Buddha delivered his first teaching.

Kushinagar- Kushinagar is a town and a Nagar Panchayat in Kushinagar district of Indian state of Uttar Pradesh located around NH-28, being 52 km east to Gorakhpur city where Buddha died.

There are four another sacred where a certain miraculous event is reported to have occurred:

Sravasti: Place of the Twin Miracle, showing his supernatural abilities in performance of miracles. Sravasti is also the place where Buddha spent the largest amount of time, being a major city in ancient India.

Rajgir: Place of the subduing of Nalagiri, the angry elephant, through friendliness. Rajgir was another major city of ancient India.

Sankassa: Place of the descending to earth from Tusita heaven (after a stay of 3 months teaching his mother the Abhidhamma).

Vaishali: Place of receiving an offering of honey from a monkey. Vaishali was the capital of the Vajjian Republic of ancient India.

Some other pilgrimage places in India and Nepal connected to the life of Gautama Buddha are: Pataliputta, Nalanda, Vikramshila, Gaya, Kapilavastu, Kosambi,Amaravati, Nagarjuna Konda, Sanchi, Varanasi, Kesariya, Devadaha, Pava andMathuraMandaver(Bijnor U.P),Hapur(ghaziabad U.P).