Boudhanath Stupa

In the morning Naresh and the driver first took me to the Boudhanath Stupa, which Samaya had told me is “full of spiritual energy.” It is indeed, although I feel a difference between going to Buddhist temples with Shantum and a sangha I’ve gotten close to and going to temples with a Hindu travel agent who’s just doing his job and doesn’t speak English clearly. There I go, griping again—but overall, I really enjoyed it and sensed the energy that Samaya had mentioned, though I would have preferred live chanting to the recorded New Age-ish “Om mani padme hum” chant that I could hear presumably coming from a merchant’s booth or shop.

After the car stopped, we walked past many tall buildings and many people and under a colorful, elaborate gate reminiscent of the gate to a Shiva temple in India, or of the Chinatown gate in San Francisco. Straight ahead was the Boudhanath Stupa, which is surrounded by shop faces that could have fit in a German or Swiss city, though the merchandise was primarily related to Tibetan Buddhism, such as ritual tools, prayer flags, statues, and thangkas. It was all like a colorful and lively square around the stupa.

The sky was blue at last and the sun was shining! Under this bright blue sky, the stupa’s most noticeable feature, seen from a distance, is the huge whitewashed dome, upon which sits a square structure with big Buddha eyes gazing in all directions, and above that a pointy roof. Colorful Tibetan prayer flags are strung around the stupa. I’ve read that Kathmandu has many Tibetan exiles, and indeed I saw some, particularly women in dark chupas and spinning prayer wheels as they circled the stupa.

While we circumambulated the temple, a young woman in a sari and carrying a baby approached me and begged for milk for her baby. One of the Garys in Dharamsala had talked about a scam artist who begged for milk for a baby in hopes that someone would get the milk at a specific store, so that the beggar could return the milk for money; in other words, this was a scam. What would the beggar use the money for—drugs? I remembered that situation but I also remembered the woman I had given money to in Dharamsala, and so I went ahead and gave this woman a one dollar bill so that she could go buy the child milk. She reluctantly took the money and continued to indicate the grocery store where she wanted me to get her a package of milk, but I kept circumambulating and thought she gave up with me.

We went around the Boudhanath Stupa three times total and came across a staircase leading to the first roof; the higher levels had stairs blocked by potted plants and bilingual signs saying “No entrance.” But before we got up there, I started turning rows of prayer wheels set into rectangular niches in the whitewashed outer wall; the wheels were about six in a row and a gold-black color and some one foot high. Naresh said, “Faster,” and demonstrated a quicker way to spin the wheels and get them really going. I got the hang of it, until I came to larger and heavier prayer wheels and decided against trying to spin them so fast.

At a Hindu shrine that is part of the outside wall of Boudhanath, Naresh stopped to put his palms together and put a red mark on his forehead. He explained that the stupa was for both Buddhists and Hindus. I rather like that, the tolerance and the mixture and all; and Buddhism originally branched off of Hinduism.

Still on the ground level, we stepped through an entrance and saw a mixture of both Buddhist and Hindu shrines. A wall was awash with red paint and ancient-looking carved stone artwork. To the left was a room filled almost entirely with a huge prayer wheel, which I walked around and spun. I stepped back out and looked at a brightly painted wall. We went back through the doorway, and on the outer white walls of the stupa, not only were there many prayer wheels but also very small niches containing little Buddha reliefs. At least one person was going around and painting these little niches, so that before my eyes a little Buddha went from a terra cotta color to pure white.

I liked walking around on what was sort of the roof, where we were on a more or less flat whitewashed surface and circled around, looking at prayer flags and at the steps covered with potted plants and flanked by grand elephant sculptures. I saw a few people prostrating, Tibetan style, on a nearby roof. I saw many pigeons flying or walking around. I saw a mound of red, yellow, white, blue and green prayer flags on top of a little roof to the my left, as I walked slowly and took in my surroundings and continued listening to the recorded chant. The temple is beautiful and peaceful, and I smiled gently as I walked.

Perhaps part of my reluctance to shop comes from shame: the shame of having materialistic values, combined with a general sense of being ashamed of myself, a feeling I usually only have in Kansas. At Boudhanath, I briefly looked at the many little shops around the stupa, where you can buy thangkas, malas, etc, but while I was in a better mood I certainly wasn’t in the mood to shop. I can get Elaine a statue after I get back to Kathmandu from Tibet. I’d also like to get some other gifts—I saw Dalai Lama postcards, a shop that sells Tibetan women’s paper crafts, and countless shops that sell statues, all in the Thamel neighborhood, a short walk from the hotel. I think I could get to like the Thamel neighborhood, though it would have been more fun to travel with Cara, or it would’ve been great if Etiel had decided to come instead of staying in Dharamsala; I hope I didn’t make a bad impression and scare her off. I have a knack for making bad impressions, except on cats.

Amid the many shops surrounding the stupa, we saw a typical Tibetan temple, reminiscent of those I’d seen in Dharamsala, with steps leading up to a rectangular red building with a gold roof.

While Naresh and I headed back to the car, the beggar who had accosted me earlier returned, with her baby (surely that kid was getting heavy), and she again begged me to buy milk at that particular store. She tried to guilt trip me by asking, “Don’t you care if my baby wants milk?” She also tried to give me back the one dollar bill that I had given her earlier, and she claimed, “I don’t want your money” and insisted that she wanted the milk instead. The driver opened the car door for me and I got in quickly, and he closed the door on the woman. This situation was not a stellar moment in my spirituality; I felt very embarrassed and helpless and incompetent, under the circumstances, rather than blissed out from circumambulating the temple. But at least I was mindfully embarrassed, helpless, uncomfortable, and incompetent.

As I told Naresh in the car, “Now I kind of wish I hadn’t given her the money,” and went on to say that I’d totally forgotten that this wasn’t like India, that I was in Nepal and that this country strongly discourages giving money to beggars. It’s all rather frustrating—it’s so tempting to give money to beggars. Naresh said that the beggar woman is from India; I didn’t ask how he could tell and wondered if he was just prejudiced, assuming that since she was begging surely she wasn’t from Nepal.