Swayambunath Cleaning Campaign

In the last few weeks, we were so lucky to meet some really nice people who are organizing a cleaning campaign at one of Kathmandu’s most famous temples, Swayambunath. The event happens every Saturday from 7 to 9 am, during which time a whole lot of people with very different backgrounds, but in a way all of them interested in the area, gather together, to do some full power cleaning in the area of the temple.

The more time I’m spending here in Nepal, the more I’m starting to realize that here everything is more than what you can see... For example the message of this campaign is way behind the idea of cleaning the temple. It’s also a lot connected with the Buddhist way of thinking: according to this, everything always come back to a full circle, everything is about clearing our mind, which instead of emptiness will result in a kind of fullness. According to this way of thinking, working full power on the cleaning is a great way to get rid of all the thought and rush of everyday life, as well, as by cleaning our environment we also get to clear ourselves at the same time... Besides this, another message of the campaign is to emphasize our responsibilities while also changing the way of thinking of the traditional caste roles in the community. While traditionally cleaning was associated as a lower caste job, especially done by the lowest caste of all, called the Dalits, by participating in this campaign, people also say that in a way, we are all equal, which doesn’t only provide freedom, but also responsibilities – such as taking care of our own environment.  

New Years, then Easter..? :)

Here’s another example of how time and traditions are mixed up here: I think not that long ago I wrote, that we were writing 2070 here. Well, according to this calendar, the New Year starts on 14^th April in our time, meaning that now it’s already 2071! It turned out that celebrating New Years here is a little bit different than at home. On one side, it can be thanked to the fact that in Nepal, there are so many different nations and cultures that they actually have at least 3-4 New Years in a year! On the other side, for Nepali people this day is not as much about going out or partying, but they are more likely to spend the day with family and friends over a delicious lunch or dinner. Despite all this, there were still a few places in Kathmandu where they organized special parties or concerts for New Years. For example, on Durbar Square of Kathmandu, we got to listen a bit of a concert of a Nepali band, who was performing on a stage set among the famous monuments, while the square itself and other buildings of the square was crowded with the audience.

Only one week after Nepalese New Years, just to totally mix cultures and traditions, we celebrated Easter, as a part of European and Christian tradition. It was a really interesting experience to try to bring our traditions to Nepalese context: we painted eggs, cooked European food just so that after, we could invite our Nepali friends and have a great dinner with them while sitting on the floor, drinking good Nepali tea and talking about some important issues of the Nepalese society and the culture itself... I think these are what you can call multicultural experiences! :)

Bouddhanath – Another Buddhist temple

It was already more than a week ago that we had a great experience in the world’s biggest Buddhist Stupa, called Boudhanath (or Boudha). Well, it’s really-really a place that is worth visiting! Imagine a huge square with colourful shops all around where it’s pretty difficult to pass without at least thinking about shopping and with a giant white stupa in the middle that takes about five minutes to walk around! During this five minutes, you can meet all kinds of people walking around the monument – from the Buddhist monks living in the stupa, to tourists from all around the world, as well as Buddhist people who came from far away to get a chance of experiencing the atmosphere of this monument. While walking around, you can see prayer wheels all over the wall of the temple that people touch and spin while walking around and praying in order to avoid rebirth in a similar body. At the other side, there is a small fire burning where Buddhists are supposed to wave the smoke on themselves which’s meaning – as far as I understood – is just about the same as spinning the prayer wheel. When you go closer, you can also walk up to the top of the stupa from which there’s a pretty nice view on the square and on the mountains further away. Also, if you are lucky, you can also see some monks and other Buddhist people praying on the floor and practising some ritual motions there.   

After taking our time to explore this monument – also during sunset! – we had a nice dinner at a vegetarian restaurant with a great view on the stupa – which was a perfect ending of the day, too. 

First Impressions, Conversations About the Changing Nepal

During the time I have spent here, we had quite a few very interesting conversations with locals about the real culture of Nepal, about how tradition meets modernity and for example how Buddhism and Hinduism can exist by each other in a very peaceful way here. I think I still understand just a very little about this rich culture, probably also misunderstand few things, but still, I would like to share some of these experiences with you.

Nepal during most of its history used to be a monarchy. In ancient and medieval times there very many smaller kingdoms in the territory of current Nepal – for example Kathmandu, Patan and Bhaktapur all used to be separate kingdoms rivalizing with each other in their architecture as well (this is why today all these areas have a center Durbar Square where the most magnificent pieces of architecture can be found). It was only in the mid 18^th century that the king of the Gorkha Kingdom conquered these territories and united them, forming the current area of Nepal. After long-long years of Gorkha ruling, finally after a civil war, Nepal became a democratic republic in 2008. As I got to know from a descendant of the Gorkha kings, not everybody is satisfied with this state either... There are some people, who believe that by giving up the monarchy Nepal also lost one of its heritage, since it used to be just about the only Hinduist monarchy in the world. Also, the king is still not completely lost: he is still travelling around the country, and worldwide, too, as well, as he still has an important role in religious traditions that cannot be taken away by ministers.

As I see, Nepal is pretty much in a changing period at the moment: it’s partly caused by caused by the newly formed republic, but globalization, the western culture flowing in, and the growing cities have a great forming power on this originally very traditional and very spiritual country. This means that while in the past used to have their calm, peaceful way of life, which was closer to nature and less crowed, today – besides the existence of all these – by first sight you can see a city full of people, dust and crazy traffic. This is a crazy, changing world, where apart from the approximately 2.5 million official citizens of Kathmandu there are about another million who have migrated here from other parts of Nepal in the hope of getting a visa and work permits to work abroad and there is also another pretty big amount of visitors coming from the western world in the search of the ancient knowledge of the Nepalese people. In this world the locals – highly influenced by their families and their possibilities are all trying to find their balanced mixture of their ancient spiritual world and the western modernity coming in. You can see this in the roles of men and women, their ways and thoughts about marriage, or the in the existence of Buddhism and Hinduism here.

There are many-many ways of thinking about marriage for example they also all differ cast by cast (even though cast is said not to matter as much anymore as it used to...). There are some that are supposed to carry on their father’s path and choose somebody from the same cast (or not get married at all), for others, it’s even possible to marry a foreigner. There are some who believe in love marriage, others stick to the arranged one, saying that parents have more experience in choosing the right person for them, since enjoyment is not everything, it doesn’t guarantee a good match for the entire life so they trust their parents’ choice more their than own... The most interesting conversation about marriage that we had, was with a girl from Newari culture (indigenous inhabitants of Kathmandu Valley). She said that for her marriage consists of three ceremonies: first she has to marry the bel fruit, symbolizing marrying Shiva, then comes a marriage with the sun, and only after this can the marriage with a man take place. Also, at the time of the first too ceremonies, they don’t the man yet, who they are going to marry. She said, she has already done the first two ceremonies and was just waiting for the man to enter her life. By the way, the changing tendencies can be also seen looking at the average age at marriage: while in the last generation people usually still got married as teenagers, nowadays the age of 25-30 years for a woman to get married is absolutely acceptable.

Connected to this, family roles are also a bit changing in Nepal. Some people say that in the past, Nepal used to be a calm place where if one of the family members worked, was enough to set up a good living for the family. In contrary to that, nowadays by modernity and western culture, too, the needs of the people has changed, resulting in all family members working more and more ours with less and less time to spend together...

Still in this changing context, the everyday life is very much filled with spirituality and spiritual activity – practicing meditation, yoga, getting connected with themselves, their present, past and future. I guess here all these take the role of the psychologists in our world... These people are still more connected inside and outside as well, no matter whether they belong to Buddhists or Hinduists. It seems that this is one of those rare countries where there has never been any conflict about religion... The locals say, that the key of this might be that the goal of their religions are very similar: reaching a peaceful state of mind, finding a unity inside yourself, concentrating on present experiences... They celebrate life in all their rituals and festivals – for example in Hinduism they have all kinds of celebrations even for animals (like the cow) and natural phenomenons (like the Sun or the Wind). Also, these religions are very tolerant, just like the people themselves. They also say that the background can be also the way most people are here: they consider themselves very honest, and at the same time avoiding any source of conflicts... Well, whatever the reason is, it’s for sure that in Kathmandu the two religions with all their rituals and traditions and beautiful temples and stupas seem to complete each other in a very nice way.

Discoveries of the week: Thamel, Ram Gumba, Patan Swayambhunath

This week we continued with our Nepali classes which sometimes start to sound just like Chinese to us. By now, besides introduction we have already learnt a bit about shopping, food names, how to bargain and how to talk with a taxi driver. I find it very interesting: it’s another challenge to learn a bit of a language like this.

Besides the lessons and romantic nights spent talking by candlelight (in the lack of electricity), we also got to see some of Kathmandu and take part in some cultural events this week.

One day for example we walked to Thamel, which is one of the most touristic area of Kathmandu. It’s a really vibrating place full of shops, bazaars and bars. It took quite a long time to walk there from the office (about 1 hour), but I think we are pretty much getting used to walking a lot, and also, walking gave us a chance to discover the city a bit and bump into amazing places that we didn’t even know about. For example we found a huge market hidden under some kind of tents that was full of amazingly beautiful materials for kurtas and saris (traditional Nepali dresses). It was just like being in a tale again!

Another day, it just turned out that it was festival: it was the day of Ram Navami festival on which Nepalese people celebrate the birth of Lord Ram, who is the seventh incarnation of Lord Vishnu. For this event after Nepalese classes we went together to a temple for Ram (Ram Gumba), where a huge crowd gathered. After taking off our shoes and taking a long path under like tents, we reached the temple itself. Walking around the temple on one side of it we could see a stage set up, lots of Nepalese people sitting in front of it and singing, while some elder ones were dancing in front of the stage, too... Then inside the temple there was a big crowd, with a highly decorated front part where I think the people could bring their offers. On the other side of the temple there were people giving us tikka (the red thing on your forehead which means blessing) and also cute children coming up to us, asking for our names and all that. It was really an amazing experience! It was also on this today that we got to try out the tempo (or tuk-tuk) which are little local buses that you just have to wave to so that it stops for you and in which there are like 15 people sitting at a place that at home would be suitable maybe for 8... It’s really-really funny! Getting off from it works just about the same way: you just have to knock on the top of the tempo to make it stop. 

Again, on another free afternoon we decided to walk to Patan which is an area of Kathmandu full of temples – both with Buddhist and Hinduist ones. During this trip we found out that typical Buddhist temples are always white with stupas, golden top with strings of flags hanging from it – which’s purpose is that wind can blow away all problems and blow blessing to the people instead. At the same time, Hinduist temples are all carved from wood usually with a shape that reminds us Chinese and Japanese architecture – but as we got to know: it’s more ancient than those. In one of the Buddhist temples we even made some little friends – a 14 year old boy and his neighbours and friends – who explained us a lot about the history of the temple and with whom we had a very interesting conversation for example about the place of religions in different cultures. It’s very interesting how easy it is to get in touch with people here compared to how it works in Europe. Honestly first I didn’t trust them so much, I was afraid that they would ask for some money or something like that, but at last it turned out that this was all just my preconception: we even got a book from the guy that was about Nepalese culture – which he said, he also found on the street. 

To widen our experiences with Buddhist culture even more, today we also visited the amazing Swayambhunath temple. Actually there was a campaign as a civil initiative to clean Swayambunath that we also wanted to take part in, but having this Saturday as our first actual free day, we weren’t able to get up in time – this way we missed the cleaning part, instead got to know quite a few great people taking part in this initiative and got the chance to take a tea with them in a really nice cafe just top of Swayambunath. Anyway, the temple itself is even more amazing then the Buddhist temple we went to last weekend (Seto Gumba)! It’s really huge, with an amazing stupa in the middle and lots of houses for the offers around it, as well as lot’s of little statues – which as we got to know symbolize lots of different possible ways of enlightment, since all Buddhist people believe in different ways of reaching this state of mind... Well, it’s for sure that it is a place that is still worth visiting several times, but for now you can get a little insight about the place looking at the pictures below. :)