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The famous all-seeing eyes of Boudhanath stupa gazed covertly down on us as my friend Rosa unwrapped her mysterious package on the rooftop of the Saturday Café. She had already told me what was in it but it was hard to believe. It seemed so gruesome, so – unBuddhist. I found myself watching her fingers untying the small, embroidered case with a knot in my stomach.

The ghostly mist of early morning made our assignation seem doubly surreal. Pigeons were fluttering by, landing on the great white dome whose sides had been splashed with arcs of saffron like the petals of a lotus. Down below, it was pre-work rush-hour and a vortex of worshippers was circumambulating the base of the stupa. Monks and nuns in magenta robes circled mindfully amidst a stream of lay Tibetans, Newars, Sherpas, Tamangs and – conspicuously - westerners in North Face and jeans; some spinning the perimeter prayer-wheels, others saying prayer-beads as they went. Many others were sliding along prostration boards, surrendering themselves before the great edifice, wooden chocks on their hands.

Boudha, the last stop before Kathmandu on the trade-route from Lhasa, has always been a particularly sacred place for Tibetan Buddhists. It is the largest Buddhist stupa in Nepal and one of the largest in the world. Some say it contains a bone of Shakyamuni, the last living Buddha. Others say it houses the relics of Kashyapa, the Buddha from the eon before. Either way, just being in the presence of the ‘Great Stupa’ is considered to be enormously good karma.

And never more so than now. Since the invasion of Tibet by the Chinese and the destruction of many of the ancient monasteries there, ‘Boudha’ (as it is affectionately known) has become a ‘Little Tibet’, home to thousands of Tibetan refugees including some of Tibet’s most revered reincarnate lamas. Brand new Tibetan monasteries, or ’gompas’, crown the tops of the surrounding hills. The narrow streets around Boudha itself are a riot of thriving antique stores, thangkha shops, carpet factories, tea-houses and momo – steamed dumpling – stalls; Tibetans being notoriously canny at business. Happily, Tibetan Buddhists strike a happy marriage between material and spiritual prosperity. It is not unusual to see monks piling out of a four-wheel drive wearing Feragamo shoes and gold Rolexes, nipping into the nearby Hyatt Hotel for a slap-up Indian.

There is Taiwanese and Singaporean money behind this wealth in exile, too; and also, increasingly, dollars, pounds and euros. Richard Gere, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson and Steven Segal are amongst the most conspicuous of a burgeoning western following that makes Buddhism one of the fastest growing religions in the world today. Every year hundreds of westerners flock to Nepal to study at the feet of a Rinpoche – a reincarnate lama, or ‘Precious One’.

Though the Dalai Lama himself could never visit Nepal – it would be diplomatic suicide for the tiny Himalayan Kingdom sandwiched ‘like a yam between stones’ amid the might of India and China, to entertain him here – the Nepalese government is tolerant of the little Tibet flourishing within its borders. The Kathmandu Valley contains some of Tibetan Buddhism’s most sacred ‘power-places’ and, for many of the 12,000 Tibetan exiles, as well as visiting westerners and ex-pats, this is the closest thing to being in Tibet itself.

From a gompa close by, the behemoth bellow of temple horns drifted across our café rooftop. Gingerly my friend lifted out the contents of the embroidered case. The object inside was a damaru of the type used in Tibetan Buddhist meditation. Shaped like an hour-glass, a damaru is most commonly made of wood, and is twisted very fast, backwards and forwards, so that tiny pellets suspended on two cords rapped the little drums on either side in rhythmic alternation, making a sound to lift the practitioner to a higher awareness. It is held in one hand so the other is free to follow a text or count prayer-beads.

Rosa had been asked to take this particular damaru back to England for some Buddhist friends and was understandably nervous about it. The hand-drum was just as she had described. It was made out of human skulls – children’s skulls to be precise. Over the highly polished crania was stretched a thin membrane of human skin. The waist of the drum was circled with a silver ring embossed with turquoise stones and red coral.

“One skull is female, the other is male”, she explained. “It symbolises the union of wisdom and compassion. It’s very powerful. If you get one made out of babies’ skulls that’s even better – something to do with the energy flowing through the opening in the fontanelles.”

Rosa was not, herself, a Buddhist, but she knew enough to be worried about ‘bad karma’. “If you don’t know where something like this has come from, you have to make sure it has the right energy – that it was made with the right intention. I’m not taking any chances. I’m going to take it to a Rinpoche to get it blessed. Don’t want my plane crashing or anything.” She was laughing but I could see she wasn’t joking.

The shops around Boudha are full of such bizarre trinkets, I discovered, as I wandered around over the next few days. In one shop I was shown a selection of skull offering bowls lined with silver; in another, half a dozen women’s thigh-bone trumpets. Dusting one off, the shopkeeper, a Tamang, put the hip-joint to his lips and blew, making a noise like a hunting-horn.

This almost jocund familiarity with death is one of the first challenges a westerner faces when encountering Tibetan Buddhism. A tall American woman I met told me how she’d been travelling in the back of a taxi with a lama when he started measuring the length of her thigh with his outstretched palm. “What are you doing?” she’d asked him in amazement. “Your thigh-bones would make marvellous trumpets”, he’d exclaimed, “Would you like to leave them to our monastery?”

Slowly, as I became more familiar with them, these ritual implements made of human body-parts began to seem less macabre. There was something beautiful, even reassuring, in the touch of skull and bone, in the feel of another’s – and hence my own - mortality. But to Buddhists these artefacts were not simply reminders of impermanence – the illusory nature of life – they were power-tools, keys to a higher consciousness. There was tantric magic in them.

Rosa and I waited in the garden outside Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling monastery, a stone’s throw from the stupa, waiting for a break in the morning’s teachings and a chance to have an audience with the renowned Rinpoche, Chokyi Nyima. Chokyi Nyima had been born in Tibet in 1951 and at the age of eighteen months been recognised as the seventh incarnation of the Drikung Kagyu Lama, a Tibetan siddha – or tantric adept - and a spiritual emanation of Nagarjuna, the second-century Indian Buddhist philosopher. After the Chinese invasion, Chokyi Nyima fled with his family to Sikkim where he became aide to the 16th Karmapa. It was the Karmapa who, in the early 1970s, instructed Chokyi Nyima to establish a monastery in Boudha and to turn his efforts, specifically, towards instructing Western practitioners.

The doors of the shedra flew open and a hundred or so mainly western practitioners streamed out for tea. Rosa and I removed our shoes and entered the gigantic shrine-hall. Inside, the walls were riotously painted with dakinis and bodhisattvas, and the lives of the great buddhas and lamas and mahasiddhas; the floor littered with sitting-pads and notebooks. At the back of the atrium, on a high platform, sat the beneficent, walnut-faced figure of Chokyi Nyima - like Yoda but without the ears. A queue of supplicants was already inching its way around the walls for his blessing. One by one they approached the dais with yellow silk scarves, or ‘khattas’, some relaxed and talkative, others bowing obsequiously as though ducking bombs. As each came before him the Rinpoche leaned forward intently, sometimes muttering a mantra or blowing on their heads as if exorcising a demon.

When it came to my turn I found myself suddenly nervous. It’s not every day you stand in front of a reincarnate lama. Clumsily I thrust forward my gift – a box of Rococo creams.

“Ah, chocolates!” he smiled.

“From London,” I spluttered. It was only later I wondered what the Enlightened One would make of Passion Fondant and Venus Nipples. “I wanted to ask you”, I stammered, “what do you think makes Buddhism so appealing to westerners?”

He pouted his lips and thought for a moment. When he spoke it was with surprising clarity. His English had a distant American twang. “It is because Buddhism is not a religion so to speak. It is a science, a way of understanding the world. It is very practical. The wisdom side is very sharp; and the compassion side is beautiful. Even so, it is difficult for westerners to understand the east, just as it is for east to understand the west. It takes a lot of hard work, and patience.” His eyes twinkled as though with the glint of distant glaciers. It seemed an incredible feat – to be transmitting the philosophical Everests of Buddhism to the western world; almost as incredible as the western world’s magnetic attraction to a vision so totally not of its ken.

Outside Rosa was looking distinctly more relaxed. “Rinpoche said the damaru has good karma. I shouldn’t be worried. It will bless my flight back. And he said it’s good it’s going to be used for its proper purpose.” It seemed a miracle in itself to think of the rat-tat-tat of that little skull-drum soon to be conjuring peaks of higher consciousness from a backroom in Battersea.


Boudhanath (Boudha), Kathmandu Travel Brief

Best time to go to Kathmandu is from September (post-monsoon) to April (pre-monsoon). Tibetan New Year falls on Feb 28, 2006 when the climate is perfect – bright, warm sunny days and cold nights. But every full moon is an auspicious time for Tibetan Buddhists and the stupa at Boudhanath is lit by thousands of butterwick candles.

Qatar Airways is the most direct and cheapest way to fly to Kathmandu. Flights are daily from Gatwick and Heathrow via Doha.

The Rangjung Yeshe Institute at Boudhanath in Kathmandu is an international centre for higher Buddhist studies under the guidance of the reincarnate lama, Chokyi Nyima.

The Himalayan Buddhist Meditation Centre (affiliated with Kopan monastery) in central Thamel is a lovely place to drop in for meditation during a stay in Kathmandu. Guided meditations – in English – are held three times daily.

Spitting distance from the Himalayan Buddhist Meditation Centre is Kathmandu’s famous pizza parlour Fire & Ice serving the best pizzas and cappuccinos in town, a favourite hang-out of Buddhist monks and ex-pats alike.

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