Sacred Places
27 places found
BuddhismLalitgiri
Lalitgiri · India · monastery
The oldest known Buddhist monastic complex in Odisha, Lalitgiri rises on a low hill in Jajpur district where excavated stupas, monasteries and sculpted Buddha images mark a site continuously inhabited by monks from around the first century BCE to the thirteenth century CE.
BuddhismMahabodhi Temple
Bodh Gaya · India · temple
The Temple that rises over the spot where the Buddha attained enlightenment beneath the Bodhi tree. Its 50 m brick tower, raised in the 5th to 6th century CE on the site of Emperor Ashoka's shrine, stands beside a living descendant of the original tree and the Vajrasana, the Diamond Throne.
BuddhismMaha Stupa at Amaravati
Amaravathi · India · stupa
A ruined Buddhist mahachaitya on the banks of the Krishna River in Andhra Pradesh, once the most richly carved stupa in the Buddhist world and now a protected archaeological sanctuary.
BuddhismMarichi Temple
· India · monastery
A rare sacred space in Baleswar district, Odisha, where Hindu and Buddhist devotion meet under one roof, sheltering tantric, Jain, and Buddhist icons carved in the late eleventh century alongside an actively worshipped form of Goddess Durga.
BuddhismParinirvana Temple
Kushinagar · India · stupa
The shrine at Kushinagar marking the ground where the Buddha died and entered parinirvana, sheltering a six-metre gilded reclining Buddha carved in the fifth century.
BuddhismPemayangtse Monastery
Pelling · India · monastery
Perched on a ridge in western Sikkim with views toward Khangchendzonga, Pemayangtse is among the oldest and most revered Nyingma monasteries in the Himalaya, its name meaning Perfect Sublime Lotus.
BuddhismPhensang Monastery
Phodong · India · monastery
A Nyingma Buddhist monastery on a forested ridge above Phodong in North Sikkim, founded in 1721 and home today to one of the largest gatherings of monks of any monastery in the state.
BuddhismRelic Stupa of Vaishali
Vaishali · India · stupa
The Relic Stupa of Vaishali is the oldest stupa yet identified through archaeological excavation, raised in brick and clay by the Licchavi people to enshrine a portion of the Buddha's own relics after his parinirvana. Today it rests within a simple domed shelter on the Bihar plain, its waterlogged core still bearing the outline of the shrine the Licchavis built.
BuddhismRinchenpong Monastery
Rinchenpong · India · monastery
Rinchenpong Monastery is an eighteenth-century Tibetan Buddhist monastery set on a ridge above the villages of Rinchenpong and Kaluk in west Sikkim, the third oldest gompa in Sikkim and home to a rare image of the Adi-Buddha in Yab-Yum union. Prayer flags and spinning wheels line its approach, and novice monks still study within its halls.
BuddhismRumtek Monastery
Gangtok · India · monastery
Rumtek, the Dharma Chakra Centre, is the Karma Kagyu lineage's principal seat in exile, rebuilt in the Sikkim hills by the sixteenth Karmapa after his flight from Tibet, and today the largest monastery in Sikkim.
BuddhismShanti Stupa
Leh · India · stupa
A white-domed peace pagoda crowning a hilltop above Leh, built in 1991 by a Japanese Buddhist monk to mark twenty-five centuries of the Buddha's teaching, enshrining relics of the Buddha at its base.
BuddhismSujata Garh
Bakraur (Senanigrama) · India · stupa
A weathered stupa of ancient brick in the village of Bakraur, across the Phalgu River from Bodh Gaya, marking the place where the milkmaid Sujata offered rice-milk to the fasting Bodhisattva and opened the way to the Middle Path.