Ron and Sally Jo Blog

A new city, a new country.  Fascinating people, history, and scenery.  We are able to sample only a small part of Kathmandu and an even tinier fraction of the country of Nepal in our 12 days here.  We spent the first 5 days in the city on our own as tourists.  We visited many, many temples, walked miles and miles of winding busy and quiet streets, and saw lots of damage – and repairs — from the 2015 earthquake.

The first temple we saw was one of the largest and is a World Heritage Site — Swayambhunath Temple or commonly known as monkey temple because there are many monkeys living in parts of the temple.  We climbed the 365 steps to the top.  At the bottom of the steps is a brightly painted gate and a very large prayer wheel.  There are three painted Buddha statues from the 17^th century at the beginning and part way up are three more Buddha statues from the 20^th century.  Along the stairs are carvings and stones with Tibetan mantras.

The temple complex consists of a stupa, a variety of shrines and temples, a Tibetan monastery, museum and library.  The stupa has Buddha’s eyes and eyebrows painted on.  Wikipedia says this about some of the symbolism of the stupa:

The dome at the base represents the entire world. When a person awakes (represented by eyes of wisdom and compassion) from the bonds of the world, the person reaches the state of enlightenment. The thirteen pinnacles on the top symbolize [the feelings that humans have to go through] … of spiritual realizations to reach enlightenment ….

There is a large pair of eyes on each of the four sides of the main stupa which represent Wisdom and Compassion. Above each pair of eyes is another eye, the third eye. It is said that when Buddha preaches, cosmic rays emanate from the third eye which act as messages to heavenly beings, so that those interested can come down to earth to listen to the Buddha.

The yellow paint that you see in the photo, represents petals of a lotus flower.  According to mythology, the valley was filled with water out of which grew lotus.   A gorge was cut to drain the water so that the land could be used for settlement.  The lotus was transformed into a hill, and the flower became the stupa.   (Science has found evidence that this valley was under water at one time.)  All in all it was a fascinating area.  Too bad that we could not see out from this hill.  We understand usually one can see mountains and the city of Kathmandu.  The dust pollution from dry season and construction has been particularly bad the last several months (so said our B&B host).

We walked from  Swayambhunath Temple to  the Thamel area along interesting and windy streets.  It seems that one cannot go more than 50 metres without seeing a temple, stupa, or other religious site.  We also recognized the great Tibetan influence.  We saw much that reminded us of our time in Lhasa in 2009.

We visited Kaathe Swyambhu ShreeGha Chaitya in the Thamel area.  This is a popular Tibetan pilgrimage site with the stupa a small copy of the great Sayambhunath complex we had just visited.  It has a busy courtyard.  To the side is a Tibetan monastery which has a lovely temple and a very large prayer bell.

To be continued!

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 19th, 2017 at 9:57 am and is filed under Nepal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.