I woke up to the sound of the temple bells. It was 5am and time for the devotees to go to the temple for their prayers. I sat up on my bed and peaked out of the window. The sun was starting to rise and I could see a stream of people in bright-coloured clothes walking through the corn fields towards the temple. They were chanting sacred chants. The sound of their chanting and the sun rising behind the green mountain created a rather mystical atmosphere.
Later on that day, the teenage girls from the orphanage that I was working at wanted to take me to the temple. They had a small festival for the Goddess of Women that day. It was all about celebrating the female Hindu Goddesses and we were all supposed to dress in red.
‘Come, we will help you!’ The oldest girl Shaheena told me. I sat down on the floor next to her. Within half a minute, I had five girls around me - one doing my hair with hair clips, one painting my nails with red nail polish, one highlighting my eyes with black eye-liner, one putting a red scarf around my shoulders and one putting red sandals in my feet. They were all laughing and speaking in Nepali.
‘Come, let’s go!’ Shaheena said once the girls were finished with decorating me. We all hooked out hands to one another and started walking towards the temple.
As we approach the temple, the sounds of bells and chanting intensified. We climbed the last stretch of the mountain and entered the courtyard of the temple. There were four tiny buildings that had been built with white stone. Each building had one side open, which had been turned into an altar. The altars had small statues of Gods and Goddess on them, surrounded by flowers and incense sticks that were burning slowly and releasing lovely aromas.
Shaheena took my hand and guided me into the biggest building. As we stepped in, I could see a group of people sitting down and listening to the main preacher who was leading a song with a harp. Shaheena guided me to the back of the room where we sat down. Within a minute, all the people stood up and joined the preacher in singing the song. They started dancing around the room. All of them seemed to be in sort of a trance.
Shaheena and the other girls joined in the dance and singing. I watched them, mesmerized and amazed at how they could lose themselves in the spiritual worship in such a short period of time. They were on another planet, so to say. They seemed to be very attuned to their emotional state of being and to their spiritual side. This was something that was very hard to find in the West where we were so used to being rational thinkers and using our minds rather than losing ourselves in anything.
After two hours, Shaheena took my hand again and we started out walk towards the orphanage. We had apples and bananas, which the preacher had given us before we left. They were filled with blessing and spiritual karma. Once we ate them, we would transfer the karma into our selves, if we just did this mindfully and while thinking about God.
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I looked up. I could just about the see the head of the giant Buddha Statue. It was painted with yellow-shades and surrounded by bells. Prayer flags were flying high above the bells. It took me at least five minutes to walk around the whole statue. It was the biggest statue of the Buddha in the whole of Nepal.
There were a number of people kneeling down, praying and offering their refugees to the Buddha at the base of the statue. They were performing their daily act of worship to their Guru and Life Essence.
I sat down by the statue for quite a while.The feeling I got out just sitting there is difficult to describe. I felt at peace, yet I felt that I was close to a powerful entity. I could feel energy oozing out of the statue and transforming the immediate surroundings. I felt a calming stillness that reached my inner depths.
Later on, I visited one of the spiritual bookshops in the centre of Kathmandu. There were a couple of Buddhist monks there browsing books. They wore dark red gowns with yellow linings. They had their heads shaved. One of them looked Tibetan or Mongolian, the other looked Western. The Western one had tatoos in his arms and scars on his arteries. I imagined that he had found Buddhism and a peace of mind later on in life. There were many Westerners similar to him in Nepal - individuals who had found their spiritual side and had had their spiritual beginnings away from the materialistic western culture.
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Here is a link to famous Buddhist and Hindu temples in Nepal:
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