Dalai Lama offers prayer at Mahabodhi temple

Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama Friday offered special prayers at the Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya after a gap of a couple of years.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner arrived in this pilgrim city on Thursday resuming his annual tour of Bodh Gaya, which had been suspended for the past couple of years due to the pandemic.

The Buddhist leader is slated to spend close to a month in Bodh Gaya, where he will give public discourses between December 29 to 31. According to Bodh Gaya Temple Management Trust member Arvind Singh, the Dalai Lama used a battery-driven automatic car to commute from the Tibetan monastery where he is staying.

He was greeted by a large number of Buddhist monks and lay devotees en route, and upon reaching the temple was escorted to the sanctum sanctorum by priests.

The Mahabodhi Temple, a UNESCO world heritage site, is situated at a place where Buddha is said to have attained Enlightenment more than 2,000 years ago.