Bodhi tree

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The Bodhi Tree ("tree of awakening" or "tree of enlightenment"), also called the Bo tree, was a large sacred fig tree (Ficus religiosa) located in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, India. Siddhartha Gautama, the spiritual teacher who became known as the Buddha, is said to have attained enlightenment, or buddhahood, circa 500 BCE, under that tree. In religious iconography, the Bodhi tree is recognizable by its heart-shaped leaves, which are usually prominently displayed.
The original tree under which Siddhartha Gautama sat is no longer living, but the term "bodhi tree" is also applied to existing sacred fig trees. The foremost example is the Mahabodhi tree growing at the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya, which is often cited as a direct descendant of the original tree. This tree, planted around 250 BCE, is a frequent destination for pilgrims, being the most important of the four main Buddhist pilgrimage sites. The tree's leaves can be bought by pilgrims as mementos.
Other holy bodhi trees with great significance in the history of Buddhism are the Anandabodhi tree at Jetavana near Sravasti, Uttar Pradesh, in northern India, and the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi tree in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka.
The Bodhi Tree at the Mahabodhi Temple is called Sri Maha Bodhi. Gautama Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment (bodhi) while meditating underneath a Ficus religiosa. According to Buddhist texts, the Buddha meditated without moving from his seat for seven weeks (49 days) under this tree. A shrine called Animisalocana cetiya was later erected on the spot where he sat.
The spot was used as a shrine even in the Buddha's lifetime. Emperor Ashoka paid homage to the Bodhi Tree and held a festival every year in its honour in the month of Kattika. His queen, Tissarakkhā, was jealous of the tree, and three years after she became queen (i.e., in the nineteenth year of Ashoka's reign), she cursed it to be killed by means of thorns. The tree, however, grew again, and a monastery was attached to the Bodhimaṇḍa, called Bodhimanda Vihara. Every time the tree was destroyed, a new one was planted in the same place.
In 1862, the British archaeologist Alexander Cunningham wrote of the site as the first entry in the first volume published by the Archaeological Survey of India:
However, the tree decayed further, and in 1876, what remained of it was destroyed in a storm. Cunningham wrote that the young scion of the parent tree was already in existence to take its place.
Since 2007, the Forest Research Institute of India has assisted in the upkeep of the Mahabodhi tree. Various measures have been taken to protect the tree's health of the tree, and cloning was considered in 2008.
It is said that in the ancient Buddhist texts, in order for people to make offerings in the name of the Buddha when he was away on pilgrimage, the Buddha sanctioned the planting of a seed from the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya in front of the gateway of Jetavana Monastery, near Sravasti. For this purpose, Moggallana took a fruit from the tree as it dropped from its stalk, before it reached the ground. It was planted in a golden jar by Anathapindika, with great pomp and ceremony. A sapling immediately sprouted forth, fifty cubits high, and in order to consecrate it, the Buddha spent one night under it in meditation. This tree, because it was planted under the direction of Ananda, came to be known as the Ananda Bodhi.
King Ashoka's daughter Sanghamittā Theri brought a piece of the tree with her to Ceylon, where it continues to grow in the island's ancient capital of Anuradhapura. It is named Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi. According to the Mahāvaṃsa, Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi was planted in 288 BCE, making it the oldest verified specimen of any angiosperm. In this year (the twelfth year of King Ashoka's reign), the right branch of the Bodhi Tree was brought by Sanghamittā to Anurādhapura and placed by the left foot of Devanampiya Tissa. The Buddha, on his deathbed, had resolved five things, one being that the branch to be taken to Ceylon should detach itself. From Bodh Gayā, the branch was taken to Pātaliputta and thence to Tāmalittī, where it was placed on a ship and taken across the sea. It finally arrived at Anuradhapura, staying on the way at Tivakka.
In 1913, Anagarika Dharmapala took a sapling of Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi to Hawaii, where he presented it to his benefactor, Mary E. Foster, who had funded much Buddhist missionary work. She planted it in the grounds of her house in Honolulu, by the Nuʻuanu stream. On her death, she left her house and its grounds to the people of Honolulu, and it became the Foster Botanical Garden.
In 1950, Jinarajadasa took three saplings of the Sri Maha Bodhi to plant two in Chennai, India: one near the Buddhist temple at the Theosophical Society and the other at the riverside of Adyar Creek. The third sapling was planted near a meditation center in Sri Lanka.
In 1959, to mark a visit to Vietnam by the first president of India, Rajendra Prasad, a cutting of the original tree in Bodh Gaya was gifted, and it presently stands on the grounds of Trấn Quốc Pagoda in Hanoi.
In 2012, the Bangladeshi philanthropist Brahmanda Pratap Barua took a sapling of the Bodhi Tree from Bodh Gaya, to Thousand Oaks, California, where he presented it to his benefactor, Anagarika Glenn Hughes, who had funded much Buddhist work and teaches Buddhism in the United States.
In 1989, the government of India presented the temple of Nihon-ji with a sapling from the Bodhi Tree as a gesture of world peace.
A Bodhi tree was planted at the Deekshabhoomi Buddhist monument in Nagpur, India, from three branches of the Bodhi Tree at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka. Bhadant Anand Kausalyayan brought the branches from Sri Lanka as a memorial of Buddha's enlightenment. The site is holy to Navayana Buddhism, as it is the place where the Indian political leader B. R. Ambedkar converted to Buddhism, along with 600,000 followers, on 14 October 1956, during the Dhammachakra Pravartan Din festival.
A sapling of the Bodhi Tree from Anuradhapura was planted on 15 May 2011 at Wisdom Park in New Manila, Quezon City, Philippines, by D. M. Jayaratne, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, and Mariano S. Yupitun, founder of Universal Wisdom Foundation Inc.
A sapling of the Jaya Sri Maha Bodhi tree was sent in 2022 to the Great Stupa of Universal Compassion, the largest stupa in the Western world, near Bendigo in central Victoria, Australia.
A sapling of the Bodhi tree from Anuradhapura was planted in April 2008 at Kurilpa Point, the site of the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art, by the artist Lee Mingwei, as the centerpiece to his "Bhodi Tree Project".
There are two descendants of the Bodhi Tree in Brazil: one in the Busshinji temple, the head temple of Sōtō in Latin America, in São Paulo, and another in the Sōtō temple Daissenji, in Florianópolis.
A sapling from the Mahabodhi tree in Bodh Gaya was given to South Korea in 2022 as a symbol of friendship between the two countries. It was planned to eventually be planted at a Buddhist temple.
Following is a list of the various Mahabodhi trees under which all of the Buddhas known to Theravada Buddhism attained buddhahood:
On 8 December, Bodhi Day celebrates Buddha's enlightenment underneath the Bodhi Tree. Those who follow the Dharma greet each other by saying, "Budu saranai!", which translates to "may the peace of the Buddha be yours". It is generally seen as a religious holiday, much like Christmas in the Christian West, in which special meals are served, especially cookies shaped like hearts (referencing the heart-shaped leaves of the Bodhi) and kheer, the Buddha's first meal ending his six-year asceticism.
The Bodhi tree is the main part of the Bihar state emblem. During British rule, the State Reorganisation Act of 1935 adopted the Bodhi Tree as the state emblem, following a recommendation to that effect being forwarded to the Royal Society.
Bodhi puja, meaning "veneration of the Bodhi tree", is a ritual to worship the Bodhi Tree and the deity residing in it (Pali: rukkhadevata; Sanskrit: vrikshadevata).