Swoyambunath Stupa, Nepal

In Octo­ber, 2008, my part­ner and I spent a week in the Kath­mandu Val­ley. We stayed at the Hyatt over­look­ing the Boud­nath Tem­ple, more cor­rectly spelled Boud­hanath stupa, although you’ll find it both ways. I’ll do another post on Boud­hanath, this post is to write about our visit to Swayam­bunath stupa.

Swoy­am­bunath Stupa

Both Boudhnath and Swayam­bunath have sim­i­lar­i­ties. Devo­tees cir­cum­am­bu­lat­ing (big word for walk­ing around) the tem­ples. Both of these tem­ples attract a large Tibetan fol­low­ing. While I was sweat­ing in my short sleeves and light pants, many of these folks were wear­ing heavy parkas. Ok, not all, but it’s always inter­est­ing to see what the weather does to peo­ple. Inter­est­ing, too, because it was fairly warm in Nepal, where I under­stand it’s pretty damn cold in Tibet.

I bought a lit­tle book after I returned because I wanted to learn more about Swayam­bunath and I’d taken so many pic­tures as usual. The book was writ­ten by an Eng­lish­man named Richard Joseph­son who lived there for three years and learned about “Swoy­ambu” from the locals and the pil­grims who con­tin­u­ally come to visit in great numbers.

“The ori­gin of the Swoy­ambhu Val­ley and its human habi­ta­tion, with its first town, Man­ju­pat­tan, is based on the pre­his­toric leg­ends of the Swoy­ambhu Maha-chaitya.

Among all the estab­lished chaityas and stu­pas in the Asian con­ti­nent, the Swoy­ambhu Maha-chaitya is one of the most ancietn ones, and it is dis­tin­guished by its uniquely sig­nif­i­cant and artis­tic struc­tures. It is a cen­tral sym­bol of the Bud­dhist her­itage of Nepal.“

–page 1, Swoy­ambu “The Ori­gin of the ‘Swoy­ambhu Mahachaitya’

So, I think it’s in order to start off with a def­i­n­i­tion of stupa, which is (usu­ally) a dome shaped archi­tec­tural mon­u­ment pro­tect­ing some aspect of the Buddha’s per­son­hood, such as ashes, hair or tooth. In Nepal, where Tibetan Bud­dhism is widely prac­ticed, the stu­pas are wor­shipped by cir­cum­am­bu­la­tion, as men­tioned above.

When we arrived there a monk was chant­ing while flip­ping the pages of a small Bud­dhist canon. I appre­ci­ated his gra­cious­ness to allow me to take a video of him. I watch this over and over and never get tired of it.

Mani Wheels (Prayer Wheels)

As Tibetan Bud­dhists walk around the stupa, they twirl each mani wheel while recit­ing mantras, such as ‘Om Mani Padme Hum’ stim­u­lat­ing compassion.

Shakya­muni Buddha

Adshob­hya Bud­dha statue

Deva Avatar Bodhisattva

Shuka­vati Lokesvara

Prayer Flags (Every­where, they’re so won­der­fully col­or­ful and alive)

Tagged as: Buddha, Buddhist art, Buddhist Temple, Nepal, Swoyambunath Stupa