Transmission cannot occur without first there being contact or a meeting of minds. Such encounters may happen face-to-face—the words or gestures of a teacher acting like a well-thrown stone, finding its mark and leaving tell-tale ripples upon one’s mind-stream. Such moments of sparsa may also bring with them a deep and abiding sense of the sacred. In her work The Buddhist Holy Land author Sally Wriggins astutely comments upon the journey of Chinese monk Xuanzang who, in the 7^th century CE, made the pilgrimage to India famously documented in his work Great Tang Records on the Western Regions. Both Xuanzang’s and Wriggins’ writings prove poignant, illustrating how the past can also speak to the present.

Each shrine and stupa encountered by Xuanzang would come with their own story.  One such example, located near Jetavana monastery, was said to mark the place where the Buddha had performed miraculous healings (of both a sick monk and of once blinded criminals). Another marks the place where the Buddha was said to have proved mastery over both fire and water and to have performed “an even more popular miracle…that of the Buddha multiplying himself thousands of times”. Tales of such miraculous occurrences, though quite common in later South Asian hagiographies, no doubt did much to further enhance the popularity of early Buddhism following the death (parinirvana) of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni. One might well argue that the true bones of the Buddha are not those fabled ashen relics of his burnt body but the very shrines and stupas scattered throughout Asia and the world. Similarly, it may be argued that the teachings themselves form the very marrow of the Buddha.

The sites, symbols, and stories encountered on his pilgrimage are reported to have had a profound effect upon Xuanzang, who is said to have fallen to ground and wept upon seeing the Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya. The life of the Buddha and the transmission (and translation) of the Buddhist teachings are not abstract stories but contextual narratives, bound by the very strata of historical time and space. Sites serve to anchor stories, particularly in an ancient world where literacy was rare and artistic representation and its associated symbols often served to anchor narrative and facilitate instruction. In recalling the lighting of small oil lamps within Mahabodhi temple at Bodh Gaya or the famed statuary of Sarnath we perform a sort of mental pilgrimage alongside Xuanzang and those who followed.

As Valerie Hansen points out in her work China’s Religious Landscape, there was great concern that Buddhism within China be authentic. The historical journey by Xuanzang to obtain such Indian authenticity should be seen as less a concern involving a most harmonious path (wuwei) than one of incalculable risk and unforeseen reward. It is in this spirit that Xuanzang, following in the footsteps of Faxian, began his pilgrimage. The Buddhist religion, offered a more optimistic alternative regarding both impermanence and the afterlife–no longer a bleak, judiciary affair involving eternal imprisonment for many. It was not the mere bones of the Buddha that Xuanzang brought back with him to China but the Buddha’s very marrow—teachings that liberate.