Kasauli — The Going Forth, 18 August 1947
Himachal Pradesh, India · 1947
30.89220°N, 76.96830°E
Key Facts
- ◆ Date: 18 August 1947, three days after Indian Independence Day.
- ◆ They took the decisive step of becoming wandering ascetics, renouncing possessions, identity, nationality, and caste.
- ◆ They donned gerua (ochre) robes and shaved their heads.
- ◆ They left Kasauli with no money and no fixed destination, heading south — the beginning of years of wandering across India.
- ◆ This is the biographical turning point marking the start of Sangharakshita's monastic life.
Three days after Indian Independence, at Kasauli in the Himalayan foothills, Sangharakshita and his companion Satyapriya renounced everything — possessions, identity, English nationality, social standing — donned ochre robes, and walked out into India with no plan and no money. They had “gone forth,” in the ancient phrase of the Buddhist texts. The journey that would take Sangharakshita to Kalimpong and eventually to the founding of a new Buddhist movement in the West had begun.
— The Rainbow Road
Source: The Rainbow Road
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