[You can see more photos of our time in Nepal by viewing our Flickr album. If you like, you can even see them as a slide show.]

Nepal

In September of this year Vessantara and I joined some of Dagyab Rinpoche’s German students for a pilgrimage to Tibet.

I am not really sure how this came about. We saw the pilgrimage advertised in a Buddhist magazine and started to joke about going. At some point the joking turned serious and we booked our places. Although I have for a long time wanted to visit the Himalayas and see Tibetan Buddhist practitioners there, I have never really wanted to go to Tibet. I was under the impression that there was more Tibetan culture outside the ‘Autonomous Region of Tibet’ than there was left inside it. I was also concerned about the damage and evidence of inhumanity I would find. However Elke Hessel who was leading the trip is a very experienced Tibetan Buddhist practitioner who has also visited Tibet every year for the last 8 years and even been on retreat there, so I felt that we would be in very good hands and that it might be the last opportunity to see something of the birthplace of Tibetan Buddhism, which has been a strong interest of mine for the last 25 years.

Vessantara had his own reservations along similar lines and an added concern about the effects of altitude on his unpredictable health, so it was not without mixed feelings that we boarded the plane to Kathmandu.

After a long bumpy ride through the brightly chaotic Kathmandu traffic we arrived in an oasis of green and colonial style verandas – the beautiful Vajra Hotel. It was not long before we were out again walking up to the nearby Swayambunath Stupa which presides over Kathmandu city from the top of a steep climb of steps lined with monkeys and vendors. The stupa itself stands in the middle of a small complex of temples and other stupas. In entering its grounds, one also enters a massive mandala, with the broad white stupa, its big eyes and golden spire as a very concrete central presence. The Stupa has a shrine to the Jinas for each direction of the mandala and also a shrine to each of the Female Buddhas at each mid point. These last I found particularly moving as I had been involved in painting and bringing out images for these figures to support Vessantara’s recent work on the ‘queens of the mandala’ and I had not realised that I would find such beautiful and prominent examples so soon on our trip.

We spent two days in Kathmandu before flying on to Lhasa. We could hardly do justice to such a large and culturally layered place in such a short time, but Pushpa, an old friend Elke’s, was acting as our guide and managed to organise an impressive dip into the city’s delights, including a trip to the burning ghats at Pashupatinath, and an exquisite 7 course roof-top meal. We could not have left Kathmandu without visiting the Tibetan quarter at Baudhnath, another, much bigger and more widely spread mandala focused around a stupa. Although there were pilgrims at Swayambunath it was here in Baudhnath that we saw the most. Every morning and evening local residents combine with travellers from further afield to circumambulate the stupa. Moving always in a clockwise direction, vast crowds – mainly Tibetans – would turn the ring of prayer wheels, and say mantras as they walked. They were all ages and different shapes and sizes, some just out for a stroll and some full of concentration and devotion. The net effect was that of a constant ring of beneficent energy sweeping round the stupa. We happily mixed our blessings with those of so many generations of pilgrims.

Tibet – Day One

The flight across the Himalayas passed in a blur of whiteness and strange Chinese snacks, but we emerged into some beautiful mellow light effects over the Tibetan plateau. I was not expecting such wide valleys between the mountain ranges. When I think of Tibet it’s always the majestic mountains that come to the fore, even though we spent most of our time driving through long flat stretches. This is partly due to the thinness of the atmosphere and the clarity of the light – it brings the mountains so close, when in fact they can be quite a distance away.

I couldn’t help feeling just a little subversive as we passed through Chinese customs. I didn’t have any pictures of the Dalai Lama, or even many Dharma books, but just to be a practising Buddhist felt like I was somehow slipping through the net. I had expected to struggle for breath immediately; it didn’t happen quite like that. Instead I felt rather elated – light headed, I suppose. Initially I walked around very gingerly, and drank the ever appearing bottles of water that were being urged on us.

On the way to Lhasa we stopped at two monasteries, the first I can remember little about except the earthenware buildings surrounded by ever present mountains and the brightness of the air. The second was called Drolma Lhakang (or Tara’s temple), it was founded by Atisha a very dedicated Tara practitioner, and was associated more recently with Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche a highly regarded Lama by all schools of Tibetan Buddhism and one of Sangharakshita’s teachers from his time in Kalimpong. There were many beautiful wall hangings and murals here, but it was standing in a small side room where Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche had spent many hours in meditation, that really moved me. This was an experience I was to have in different ways all over Tibet: Walking through the rich tapestry of colour and experience depicted on the walls, shrines and in the hangings of the main meeting halls, into small, relatively sparse and simple, side rooms which were imbued with meaning through the hours of dedicated practice that had been performed in them.