Photos

Swayambhunath ( The Monkey Temple) is, I think, one of the great religious sites of the world. It stands on a hill outside Kathmandu and is sacred to Mahayana, Tantric and Theravada Buddhism as well as to Hinduism. An ancient stone inscription, on the site, records that King Manadeve ordered the building of the stupa in 640 CE, but it is recorded that the Indian emperor Asoka visited a shrine here in the 4th century BC. This picture shows one of a pair of Buddha images that guard the entrance to the stairway , leading to the shrine. They are in the Mahayana style. The Buddha images are show in the ‘mudra’ or pose of resisting evil. The legend is that the moment before his enlightenment an evil spirit ‘Mara’ appeared to the Buddha and tried to divert him. Mara challenged him not to deny his own objective existence. The Buddha touched the earth with his right hand and called upon the earth to bare witness that all things are transient and nothing, not even his spirit, has a permanent existence, at that moment the Buddha was enlightened. 635 stone steps lead the pilgrim from here to the sanctuary above.