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In the east, the religion plays, an important role in the life of people. It determines the way of living, business, politics, code of conducts, the constitution and in essence almost all parts of life. It is interesting to have basic information regarding the eastern philosophy and the religions practice in Nepal. We have been involved in tourism and particularly in tour business since two decades and noted that almost 90% of the visitors to Nepal have curiosity of our way of life, rituals, religions, meaning, and some symbolic expressions. We are trying to provide the information regarding to meet your interest and information during the visit of our monuments of Nepal. Please go through all the information explained in brief.

Three animals in the wheel of life         Comparision of Hinduism and Buddhism
Five Dhyani Buddhas                                 Eight fold path in Buddhism
Eight auspicious sighs.                            Creation Theory in Hinduism. 
Symbol of Light                                          Formula of dependent origination
Four Noble Truths                                      Buddhist cosmology
Kundalini Yoga                                            Mahayana Buddhism.
Jhankrism in Nepal                                   Bon religion. 

Avalokiteswora          Confusianism                          Hinduism.   

Buddhism.                  Samsara.                                  Jainism.

Sikhism.                      Taism.                                     Shinto.  

Lamaism.                     Meditation.                             Mantra.

Tantra.                        Saktism.                                  Vajra.  

Islam.                          Lotus.                                      Mane.  

OM.                             Kali.                                        Shinto.

 Siva.                           Tara.

Three animals in the wheel of life

The religion is descriptive, this is not prescriptive as a medicine. It does not tell us how we have to be, but it tells how things really are. According to the enlightenment theory, there are three main reasons for unhappiness and dissatisfaction. They are the primary reason or the poisons of human life. These three afflictive states of mind are known as a negative or conflictive or unhealthy emotions. We can see this pictorial representative of the wheel of life in most of the monasteries painted on the murals or in the sanctum or hanged on the wall of monasteries some paintings on the cotton canvas. The entire picture of the wheel of life contains many different segments and each of them carry the meaning. Now we are talking about the three animals of the wheel of life which you can see in the core of the picture. These three animals are Snake, Pig, and Cock. They are the symbol of our negative emotions in our mind which leads us towards the miseries of life and also it affects in our next life.

Ignorance of the truth

It is difficult to say that we all are ignorance without knowing the truth, in Buddhism the concept of ignorance is refered to the age old problem of delusion and confusion. Until we reach to the enlightenment, we are all at least a bit ignorant of the truth or out or touch with reality. We do not perceive the truth of how things actually are directly without illusion. Instead we insist on seeing things as we would like them to be. We tell ourselves stories and we live in our fantasies.

Attachment

There are many different mode of attachment we experience, sometimes we are attached to a person, to an object, to habit, to desires and money, ambition, status, or habit of doing things as going to the prostitution or alcoholics, to girls, to house, to pet? Etc. often our attachment takes our life, it is as if we are possessed by our possessions. For the sake of success we give up our real life and dedicate on work and do not care of the family, to our family life, to our own life and dedicate to success our career. We want beautiful things so much that, we only see imperfections in what we have, we become so attached to others that we try to control them, we become totally dependent and forget who we are. The religion teaches that the pride and jealousy are the two poisonous things. From our success and possessions becomes the source of pride and this pride causes to define ourselves by our attachments. We often think internally that I am the president of the company, organizations, the business house, am the best politician, best person in the society, have studied best subject in the best university, here the pride plays the vital role in maintaining a rigid persona and it fixes us in a place, entangling and entrapping us, deadening the living flow of authenticity and spirit. Jealousy like pride, is one of the component of the dualistic world view. He or she has more than I have, other is the best them myself, he has better house, better business, better life and better family etc. I knew a person who always used ask about the other and their job and success. If you say that all is well and doing the best in life which is a successful person, than this is poison for the jealous person. Someone can not hear the success of other as that is unbearable. I do not want give anything to others as this the best and valuable and best thing in the world and that have to be with me. Hanging on to a pride and jealousy are the manifestations of ego clinging, purifying oneself and diminishing our ego centered and incorrect view of reality and bringing harmony and reconciliation into our lives.

Aversion

Aversion in another term is dislike, this arises in our mind when our favored things leaves us such as our girlfriend or our wife leaves us and goes to other, we start disliking her and her new boyfriend. If your house owner hikes the price of your apartment than you start disliking him. So dislike or aversion is the response to a frustrated attachments. Insecurity and unsafe in life and also the feeling of being alone in life also leads us towards the aversion. We do not like it when we do not get what we want, we all do not like any unpleasant experiences in our life, when we dislike something or someone than the anger, hate and enmity will succeed our friendliness, love and kindness.

The three poisons usually functions together to create pain, because we are ignorant of truth, we think we can be made happy by fulfilling our attachments to a specific person, place, thing, feeling. Inevitably we are disappointed and the aversion rears its ugly head. This tragic cycle plays itself out in myriad ways from the mundane to the cataclysmic. When you go to the supermarket with an idea that you will buy a pound of ripe fruits and the fruits you find there are all green and tasteless, than you become visibly angry. You are allowing to the three poisons to perform negative cycle in your life. Simple friends or lover or couple quarrels and escalates confrontations which may extend to the state to state violence. The resistance to change is another ingredient or poison in our mind. We all have tendency to resist change, particularly in that are where we need transformation. According to the fraud, resistance to change for the better is one of the defining characteristics of neurosis. The fact is that we all want hang on to our negative habits. We would like to follow the same steps as before and keep walking in same circular pattern.

You can look for the further information of the wheel of life in our other headings of the spiritual segment such as “The formula of dependent origination” for further information and queries please email us.

The formula of Dependent Origination

While the six realms depict the unfoldment of the samsaric world under the influence of those motives or driving forces, which form the centre of the wheel of life, its outer rim shows the unforlment of these principles in individual life. Ignorance is here represented by a blind woman feeling her way with a stick. On account of his spiritual blindness man blunders through life, creating an illusory picture of himself and the world, due to which his will is directed upon unreal things, while his character is formed in accordance with this direction of his will, his desire and his imagination. This form creating activity is adequately symbolized by the picture of a potter. Just as a potter creates the shapes of pts, so we form our character and our destiny or, more correctly, our karma, the outcome of our deeds in works, words and thoughts. Samskara is here volitional action synomymous with cetana and karma in contradistinction to samskara skanda, the group of mental formations, which, as a result of those volitional acts, become a cause of new activity and constitute the activity directing principle or character of a new consciousness.

For character is nothing but the tendency or our will, formed by repeated actions. Every deed leaves a trace, a once-troden path exists, there we find, when a similar situation arises, that we take to this path spontaneously. This is the law of action and reaction, which we call karma, the law of movement in the direction of the lease resistance, of the frequently trodden and therefore easier path. It is what is commonly known as the force of habit. Just as a potter forms a vessel out of formless clay,so we create through deeds, works, and thoughts, out of the still unformed material of our life and sense impressions, the vessel of our future consciousness, namely that which gives it form and direction.

When departing from one and entering into another life, it is the consciousness that formed which constitutes the nucleus or germ of the new embodiment. This consciousness which stands at the beginning of a new life, is represented in the third picture, in form of a monkey grasping a branch. Just as a monkey restlessly jumps from branch to branch, so our consciousness jumps from object to object. Consciousness, however, can not exist by itself. It has not only the property of incessantly grasping sense-objects or imagination and to let go one object for the sake of another, but it has also the capacity to crystallize itself into material forms and body combination, the pre-condition of the psycho-physical organism, in which the close relationship between bodily and mental functions is compared with two people in a boat. This is shown in the fourth picture, in which we see ferryman propelling a boat with two people in it. The psycho-physical organism is furthermore differentiated through the formation and action of the six senses namely the faculties of thinking, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling. These faculties are like the windows of a house through which we look upon the world outside. They are therefore, generally depicted as a house with six windows. The artist, however, who painted the wheel of life which we have reproduced here, took the liberty to depict the front of the temple whose porch this fresco was traced.

The sixth picture stands for contact of the senses with their objects, in which the first contact between lovers, the feeling, resulting from the contact of the sense with their objects, is represented in the seventh picture by a man whose eye has been pierced by an arrow. The eight picture shows a drinker, who is served by a woman. It is symbolized the thirst for life, or craving caused by agreeable sensations,  ( it goes without saying that the arrow in the aye is not meant to indicate the pleasure but only the intensity of the feeling and perhaps also its future painful consequences, which overtake those who allow themselves to be carried away by agreeable sensations). From the thirst for life arises the grasping of and clinging t the desired objects. This is symbolized in the ninth picture by  man who plucks fruit from a tree and gathers it n a basket. Clinging leads to a strengthening of the bonds of life, to a new process of becoming. This is symbolized by the sexual union of man and wife, as seen in the tenth picture.

Becoming leads to rebirth in a new existence. The eleventh picture, therefore, sows a woman who is giving birth to a child. The Tibetan attitude towards sexual things is of a disarming naturalness and objectivity. The Tibetan therefore, does not hesitate to depict the sexual act and the act of giving birth undisguished and without ambiguity. He lays greater stress upon naturalness to life, than upon philosophical abstractions. Inspite of this he succeeds in his symbolism to express the finest shades of spiritual experience with an astonishing precision. His mysticism is never inimical to life, his philosophy never merely an expression of speculative thought, but the result of practical experience. Due to the same attitude, he endeavors to put religious ideas into such visible forms and similes, that even the simplest mind can grasp them and include them into the realm of concrete life. In order to avoid misunderstandings, each of the above mentioned symbolical pictures bears a short description, as for instance, monkey- consciousness, blind woman-ignorance etc. the twelfth picture shows a man who carries a corpse on his back to the cremation ground. It illustrates the last of the twelve links of the formula of dependent origination which says that all that has been born, leads to old age and death.

Creation theory in Hinduism

Among the various traditions in Hinduism, the creation of the universe and life itself is believed to have happened due to the interest or will of the supreme consciousness or knowledge, which is often named as Brahma. The description of the beginning of life in the universe is diverse, but classically the deity called Brahma is mentioned as the actor of creation in the universe and the other two deities being responsible for maintenance and destruction. Literally and often the creation stories themselves do not go into specific detail, so leaving open the possibility of incorporating at least some theories in support of evolution. Some Hindus find support for the idea of evolution in the text known as a Veda. According to the Vedas, the creation of the universe and life is mentioned as following.

There was not non-existence nor existence, there was no realm of air, sky beyond it. What covered in and where? What provided the shelter? There was neither death nor immortal, nor sign was there, nor days and night driver. The breathless breathed on its own nature, apart from it was nothing, darkness was prevailed and all was indiscriminated chaos. The universe was void and formless and nothingness. From the great power of warmth was born that unit. The desire rose in the beginning, desire is the primal seed and germ of spirit. Sages who searched with their hearts and thought discovered the existent and its kinship in the non-existent. What was above and what was below it? There was mighty force and creator, free action here and the energy prevailed. The mighty force in a form of Brahma and with his divine eye, controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it or perhaps he does not know.

Eight auspicious signs

White parasol, two fishes, Sankha, Dhvaja, Srivasta, Kalasa, Padma, Chamaru are called asthamangala or the eight auspicious and glorious emblems. These appear all together or singly as a frequent decorative motif in stone, wood, metal and paintings. These are believed to represent the gifts given by celestial beings to Sakyamuni on his attainment of enlightenment of Buddhahood. The white parasol protects one from evil desires, the two fishes symbolizing beings rescued from the ocean of misery of earth existence. Sankha, the conch shell, symbolizes the blessedness of turning to the right and proclaim the glory of the saints by its humming sound. Dhvaja, the banner signifies the victory of the Buddhism. Srivasta, endless knot or mystic diagram, symbolizing the endless cycle of rebirth. Kalasa, the vase, treasury of all spiritual wealth and it also helds amrita, the elixir or immortality, Padma sympolizes purity. Chamaru, made of yak tail attached with silver staff, is used during ritual recitation and fanning the deities on an auspicious religious ceremony. These eight auspicious symbols usually displayed during performances of vrata ceremony. Consecration of house and elaborate fire sacrifice ceremony marked on paper, cloth or metal.

Five Dhyani Buddhas

From the point of view of the five groups, or aspects of individual existence, this means as we have seen already, that in the process of enlightenment, or on the way towards it. The principle of corporeality, feeling, perception, karmically decisive mental formations or volitional tendencies and consciousness are transformed into the corresponding qualities of enlightenment consciousness. Through the knowledge and realization of the universal law, the narrow ego-bound individual-consciousness as represented in the figure of Vairochana, the radiation one, the illuminator. At the same time the principle of corporeality is converted into the universal body, in which the forms of all things are potentially present and are recognized, according to their true nature, as exponent of the great void by the consciousness of the mirror like wisdom, which reflects the forms of all things without clinging to them, without being touched or moved by them. This is represented by the figure of the Akshobya, the immutable as a sign of his unshakeable, steadfast, nature. He is touching the earth with the finger tips of his right hand, because the earth is the symbol of immutable, the concrete, the formed. And yet he is one with the wisdom of the great mirror which is Akchovya wisdom is as inseparable from him as the divine mother. Lochana, the seeing one, who embraces him. His Tibetan name is the Buddha eye, she is the embodiment of the great plenum void. In which things are neither existing nor non-existingin which things appear though one could not say either that they are within or outside the mirror. In a single way, self-centered feeling is converted into thefeeling for others, in to the compassion for all that lives, through thewisdom of equality, as embodied in the figure of Ratnasambhava, the origin of jewels namely the cause for the appearance of the three jewels in the world, the Buddhas, his teaching, and the community. Also Ratnasambhava is touching the ground with his right hand, however his hand is reversed, with the palm turned outwards, in gesture of giving as the plesser of gifts. He gives to the world the three precious things, in which Akshovyas wisdom of void or egolessness becomes the basis of the solidarity of all beings. Therefore is inseparably united with his prajya, the equalizing wisdom, who embraces him in a form of the divine mother Mamaki who looks upon all beings as her own children. The feeling of identity which is born from the knowledge of inner unity is the special foundation of the investigating knowledge, that is only on the basis with full awareness of the great synthesis, can we devote ourselves to the analytical knowledge of details, without loosing sight of the greater connections.

Four Noble Truths

When the Buddha realized the perfect enlightenment, the curtain of illusion fell from his eyes. Freed from all kinds of desires and finally achieved the everlasting happiness. His wisdom eye fully opened and the truth of what is became real. He remembered the hundreds of his past lives and knew and understood the intricate and precise laws of Karma and Rebirth. In the end he realized the cause of the trouble in life. You can imagine for a moment about sudden information which could be known about all things which is seen and unseen, what would you do if the curtain which stands between you and complete understanding is pulled back? It is also believed that the Buddha attained omniscience through his enlightenment experience. For a moment, try to imagine what Buddha must have felt when the clouds hide your vision suddenly opens and the ever-present shining light of reality comes through. For the first few weeks after attaining the buddhahood , he continued meditating under the fig tree, reflecting upon what he realized. He was not immediately sure what to do with this unique and remarkable truth, he could not decide whether to share the information with laymen or not, he thought of not finding anyone to understand his realization remembering that their eyes had been only thinly veiled by delusions. When he arrived to the Deer park after several days walk, he met five mendicants who would become his first disciples. To them he shared the Dharma talk and explained the Four Noble Truths, the facts of life from an enlightened perspective. The Four Noble truths are:

01.  Life is difficult.

02.  Life is difficult because of attachment.

03.  The possibility of liberation from difficulties exists for everyone.

04.  the way to realize this liberation and enlightenment is by leading a compassionate life of virtue, wisdom, and meditation. These three trainings comprise the teachings of the Eight fold path to Enlightenment.

The first noble truth is known as a truth of Dukha, meaning hard to bear, dissatisfactory, of the mark, frustrating and hollow. Though it sounds that the word suffering is Dukha and it sounds as a pessimistic view but in Buddhism there is always a path and way to find the liberation. The message of Dharma is optimistic and it contains the promise, the real possibility of spiritual rebirth and the end of suffering, the deathless spiritual enlightenment as Nirvana. This religion does not teach that everything is suffering, it only says that by nature the life is difficult. There is an imperfection everywhere and everyone so we can not find anyone being happy ever and delighted. The fact is that, we all experience ups and downs no matter who we are. Buddhism is neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but it is realistic. For a moment, lets stop and thing about first noble truth, the truth of dukha from the Buddhist point of view. As a child and young adult, he was protected from the facts of life- the fact of illness, death, unhappiness, poverty etc. in his palace, sheltered from reality, he was taught that his richness, his beauty, his physical prowess, and his power would protect him from any hardship. In some point, Buddha must have always realized that the world was filled with suffering no matter how much his father tried to shield him from reality. It is interesting to note that the Buddhas mother died within weeks of giving birth, and Buddha must have had queries about what had happened to him, but was never answered. In this way, Buddha was raised to be denial, we all know that the denial is the psychological defense system which was used to protect ourselves when the truth seems too painful to bear. He recognized that no matter how much richness or how much power he had, ultimately he would not be able to avoid lifes inherent problems. He was challenged by his own attachment to worldly values like all of us. An essential part of his path to freedom was to put those values in perspective and recognize any residual clinging he might have to worldly pleasure. He had to get rid from dark side of his life and delusions, and see the reality of conditioned existence known as Samsara, with all its inherent shortcomings. Awaken your innate, inner Buddha, break through the denial systems in your life, see through the veils of illusion, recognize who and what you truly are and know the truth of things exactly as they are.

The second noble truth tells us that there is a cause for lifes difficulties and that cause is craving. We consistently desire hunger and thirst for various experiences and different things, we continue to suffer. Its not that we have to get rid of the things we desire. The objects are not the problem. It is our attachment and our identification with what we crave that causes suffering. It is not the outer objects that entangles us, it is the inner clinging that entangles us.

The third noble truth is that Nirvana exists, and that it can exist for you. Nirvana is inconceivable inner peace, the cessation of craving and clinging. It is the end of suffering. Nirvana is liberation, everlasting freedom, fulfillment and enlightenment. Where is nirvana? If it is not right here, it is nowhere. So how do we experience it? Christ taught that the kingdom of heaven is within and always available to everyone. We can actually experience Nirvana in a moment, its not something that we have to build up, it is available through spiritual practice. When we get rid of craving, attachment, greed and delusion, by waking up even for a moment from the dream of our semiconscious lives. The word Nirvana means extinction of thirst and the annihilation of suffering.

The fourth noble truth tells us that there is a tried and true path that leads us away from the dissatisfaction of conditioned existence and towered the end of craving known as Nirvana. This path is known as the Nobel Eight fold path to enlightenment, and it reflects the Buddhas specific instructions on how to purify ones heart and mind by living an impeccable and enlightened life. This is about living the Dharma day to day through everything you do.

Buddhist cosmology                                  

The concept of Buddhist cosmology which is represented in commentaries and works or the Buddhist holy texts and scriptures in different ways is the end product of an analysis and reconciliation of cosmological comments found in the Buddhist texts. No single formula sets out the entire structure of the universe. However, in several scriptures, the Buddha describes other worlds and states of being, and other describe the origin and destruction of the universe. The synthesis of these data into a single comprehensive system must have taken place early in the history of Buddhism, as the system described in the pali tradition agrees, despite some trivial inconsistencesies of nomenclature, with the Theraveda tradition which is preserved by Mahayana Buddhists. The picture of the world presented in Buddhist cosmological descriptions cannot be taken as a literal description of the shape of the universe. It is inconsistent, and can not be made consistent, with astronomical data that were already known in ancient civilization. However, it is not intended to be a description of how humans perceive their world, rather, it is the universe as seen through the divine eye, by which a Buddha who has cultivated this faculty can perceive all of the other worlds and the beings arising and passing away within them, and can tell from what state they have been reborn and into what state they will be reborn. The cosmology can be divided into two related kinds: spatial cosmology, which describes the arrangement of the various worlds within the universe, and temporal cosmology, which describes how those worlds come into existence, and how they pass away.

In the spatial cosmology, we can find two branches. The vertical cosmology describes the arrangement of the world in a vertical pattern, some being higher and some lower. The sahasra cosmology describes the grouping of these vertical worlds into sets of thousands, millions or billions.