A stupa is not entered but walked around, a devotional practice called pradakshina or circumambulation, performed clockwise so that the worshipper's right side, considered the respectful side, stays turned toward the monument. This act of walking, sometimes repeated many times and sometimes accompanied by prostration at intervals, is understood in Buddhist practice as generating merit, and stupas built at pilgrimage sites are often ringed by a railing and gateways, as at Sanchi, specifically to define and mark this circumambulatory path. In the earliest phase of Buddhist art, before figurative images of the Buddha became acceptable, the stupa itself, along with symbols such as the empty throne, the wheel and the footprint, stood in for the Buddha's presence, making the aniconic stupa the primary object of Buddhist devotion for several centuries.
Relics enshrined inside a stupa range from the traditionally attested bodily remains of the Buddha himself, distributed among early stupas, to relics of later teachers, sacred texts, and consecrated objects placed inside stupas built long after the Buddha's lifetime as a means of extending the same sanctifying logic to new monuments. The practice of walking around a fixed sacred point, rather than facing it from a stationary position, distinguishes stupa worship structurally from the mosque, church or synagogue, none of which are built to be circled.