Spiritual pursuits and alternative therapies

illness. However, before leaving the country you can donate unused medicines to the destitute through the dispensary at Kathmandu’s Bir Hospital, or to the Himalayan Buddhist Meditation Centre in Kathmandu, which gives them to monks.

Children

Throughout Nepal – principally along the tourist trails – children will hound you. Repeatedly shouting “namaste” or “hello” at the weird-looking stranger is universal and often kids will ask you for “one dollar”, “chocolate” or “pen”. They’re not orphans or beggars, just ordinary schoolkids who’ve seen too many well-meaning but thoughtless tourists handing out little gifts wherever they go. A firmbut-gentle hoina holaa! (“I don’t think so!”) is usually enough. Few children would ever ask a Nepali for money, so reacting like a local will quickly embarrass them. Sometimes, however, they will tag along for hours; the best defences are a sense of humour and/or a strategic lack of engagement.

Street children are a different case. Don’t give (or not directly – donations to a children’s charity will do more good – see box, p.72), and watch your wallet.

Buddhist meditation and study

Nepal has a multitude of traditional and progressive disciplines, and though the country can seem something of a spiritual supermarket, its tolerant atmosphere makes it a great place to challenge your assumptions and study other systems of thought.

The past thirty years have seen an explosion of outfits teaching yoga and meditation to both foreigners and locals. The allied health fields of ayurvedic and Tibetan medicine are also an attraction for many travellers to Nepal. Many programmes don’t require a lengthy commitment, although any residential courses are worth booking well in advance. For more detailed background on Hinduism and Buddhism, the spiritual bases for many practices, see “Religion” (p.396).

Yoga

Yoga is more than just exercises – it’s a system of spiritual, mental and physical self-discipline,

designed to unify the individual’s consciousness with the universe. Techniques include Karma yoga (basically altruism), Bhakti yoga (devotion, recognizable by the chanting) and Jnana yoga (deep meditation, best practised only after mastering one of the other kinds). What most Westerners would recognize as yoga springs from Raja yoga, probably formulated around 600 BC. It has eight astanga, or limbs (not to be confused with the yoga style with the same name, Ashtanga), each a step to realization. Three of these have a physical emphasis, and it is from this root that yoga’s reputation for pretzel poses and headstands comes. Whatever the name of a particular variation, be it Bikram, Kundalini, or Ashtanga, all types of yoga that use asanas (or positions) as an aid to developing the self are generally referred to as hatha yoga. Most practices also include Pranayam – breathing exercises. You’ll find several kinds in Nepal, including the Sivanand school (a slow style with asanas and lots of spiritual guidance), Iyengar (a very exacting school that uses some props and focuses on alignment) and practices that follow particular gurus from India, usually including elements of Raja, Bhakti and Karma yoga. There are reviews of yoga centres around Kathmandu (see p.100) and Pokhara (see p.216) in the relevant sections of the guide. Meditation is closely related to yoga, and the two often overlap: much of yoga involves medit ation, and Buddhist meditation draws on many Hindu yogic practices. However, meditation centres in Nepal generally follow the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Buddhist meditation is a science of mind. To Buddhists, mind is the cause of confusion and ego, and the aim of meditation is to transcend these. Vipassana (“insight”) is the kernel of all forms of Buddhist meditation; related to hatha yoga, it emphasizes the minute observation of physical sensations and mental processes to achieve a clear understanding of mind. Another basic practice common to most schools of Buddhism, shamatha ipi8hfBu+Fu1Tqp6g5eaALs= (“calm abiding”) attunes and sharpens the mind by means of coming back again and again to a meditative discipline. Several centres in the Kathmandu Valley run rigorous residential courses in this practice. Tibetan Buddhist centres start students out with vipassana and shamatha as the foundation for a large armoury of meditation practices.