Circumambulation
ritual of moving around a sacred object or idol, found in various religions
Circumambulation (from Latin circum around and ambulātus to walk) is the act of moving around a sacred object or idol.
Circumambulation of temples or deity images is an integral part of Hindu and Buddhist devotional practice (known in Sanskrit as pradakśiṇā). It is also present in other religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Indian religions
In many Hindu temples, the temple structure reflects the symbolism of the Hindu association of the spiritual transition from daily life to spiritual perfection as a journey through stages. Passageways for circumambulation are present through which worshipers move in a clockwise direction, starting at the sanctuary doorway and moving inward toward the inner sanctum where the deity is enshrined. This is a translation of the spiritual concept of transition through levels in life into bodily movements by the worshipers as they move inwardly through ambulatory halls to the most sacred centre of spiritual energy of the deity. It is done in a clockwise direction and in an odd rather than even number of times. Circumambulatory walking around the shrine, by keeping time, is a common form of Hindu prayer. The ambulatory pathway made of stone around the shrine is called the Pradakshina path.
Buddhism
Circumambulation (pradakṣina or caṅkramaṇa in Sanskrit) is a ritual practice widely attested across Buddhist traditions, in which practitioners walk clockwise around a sacred object or space as an embodied form of reverence, recollection, and cultivation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Circumambulation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.