Reading the temples

Syncretism, not coexistence

In the Kathmandu Valley especially, the two faiths are not separated by strict boundaries — they have been interwoven for centuries. This is not two religions politely sharing a country; it is one religious culture with two vocabularies.

• Shared sites. At Swayambhunath, and at the pilgrimage site of Muktinath, Hindu shrines stand directly beside Buddhist stupas with devotees of both praying side by side.
• Shared deities. Many gods are worshipped by both, under different names. The Kumari is the sharpest example: traditionally chosen from a Buddhist Newar family, and worshipped by Hindus as an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Taleju.
• Shared practice. It is entirely ordinary for a Nepali who identifies as Hindu to spin Buddhist prayer wheels, hang Tibetan prayer flags for good fortune, or hire a Buddhist monk for a family ritual.

A Nepali Hindu may visit a Buddhist monastery because they hold the Buddha to be an avatar of Vishnu; a Nepali Buddhist may pray to Ganesh to remove obstacles. Devotees rarely worry about the theology.

Bhutan is not like this

Cross the border and the picture changes completely. Bhutan is overwhelmingly Vajrayana Buddhist, with the Drukpa Kagyu school as the state religion and a Hindu minority mainly of Nepali descent in the south. There is no valley-style blending: what you see in a dzong is one tradition, institutionally organised, with a state monk body and a Je Khenpo at its head.

So the same trip gives you two very different religious experiences — an improvised, overlapping, domestic Hinduism-and-Buddhism in Nepal, and a single, formal, monastic Buddhism in Bhutan.

The gods you'll meet most

• Shiva — the destroyer and transformer, and Nepal's presiding deity. Pashupatinath, on the Bagmati, is his most important temple anywhere and the reason Nepal calls him Pashupati, "Lord of the Animals". Marked by the trident, the bull Nandi, and the lingam.
• Vishnu — the preserver, who descends in avatars (Rama, Krishna, and in Nepali understanding sometimes the Buddha). Look for the conch, discus and mace, and for Garuda, the man-bird, kneeling before his temples.
• Ganesh — the elephant-headed remover of obstacles, addressed first in almost any ritual. The small shrine with a worn red-orange statue at the corner of a courtyard is usually his.
• Durga and Kali — the fierce goddess in her martial and terrifying forms. Durga's nine-day battle with the buffalo demon Mahishasura is the whole story of Dashain.
• Hanuman — the monkey god and Rama's servant, guarding palace gates under a cloak of red sindoor paste. The Hanuman Dhoka in Kathmandu Durbar Square is named for him.
• Bhairab — Shiva in his most fearsome manifestation, all fangs and skulls. The huge Sweta Bhairab mask in Kathmandu Durbar Square stays hidden behind a lattice for most of the year.

What's happening at a temple

• Puja is the act of worship — offering flowers, rice, vermilion, incense, light and water to an image. You will see plates of these sold at every temple gate.
• Tika is the mark left on the forehead afterwards: red vermilion, or the rice-and-curd version given by elders at Dashain.
• Prasad is food that has been offered and returned blessed. Accept it with the right hand, and eat it.
• Darshan — "seeing" — is the point. The worshipper comes to be seen by the deity as much as to see it.
• Circumambulate clockwise, keeping the shrine on your right.
• Non-Hindus may not enter the main Pashupatinath temple and certain inner sanctums. The surrounding complex and the river terraces are open, and are where everything happens.
• The sadhus at Pashupatinath — ash-smeared ascetics in saffron — have renounced ordinary life. The photogenic ones near the bridge expect payment; agree it first or don't photograph.

The Four Noble Truths

The Noble Truth of Sorrow. Birth is sorrow, age is sorrow, disease is sorrow, death is sorrow, contact with the unpleasant is sorrow, separation from the pleasant is sorrow, every wish unfulfilled is sorrow.

The Noble Truth of the Arising of Sorrow. It arises from craving — the craving for sensual pleasure, the craving for continued life, the craving for power.

The Noble Truth of the Stopping of Sorrow. It is the complete stopping of that craving, so that no passion remains.

The Noble Truth of the Way. It is the Noble Eightfold Path.

The Eightfold Path

1. Right Views
2. Right Resolve
3. Right Speech
4. Right Conduct
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

Worth noticing how much of this is about conduct rather than belief. There is no article of faith to sign.

No monks, and 150 monasteries

In Nepal, Buddhism is practised by the Newars — the traditional inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley — by ethnic groups outside it such as the Sherpa and Tamang, and by Tibetan refugees. Together they are a minority among Hindus, with whom they share a great many socio-religious practices.

In contrast with Tibet, Valley Buddhism — Theravada excepted — has no institution of permanent celibacy and no monastic residence. There is instead a laity and a caste of part-time "monk-priests": the Vajracharyas ("Masters of the Thunderbolt") and the Shakyas. All males of these castes are hereditary members of institutions culturally defined as monasteries — bahah and bahi, in Sanskrit vihara — into which they are initiated by special rites, and to which they owe social and ritual obligations.

There are some 150 Buddhist monasteries in Patan alone, and almost as many in Kathmandu. Bhaktapur has scarcely any — which is part of why the three cities feel so different.

What a Vajracharya is

In the caste hierarchy, Vajracharyas occupy essentially the same position as Brahmans do in Hinduism. They are Vajrayanist. They hold occasional office in their monastery and may serve as domestic priests to families.

In effect they are mortal bodhisattvas — in that they help others attain nirvana — and siddhas, Tantric saint-practitioners who command the methods of attaining enlightenment here and now. Only Vajracharyas may minister to the esoteric deities.

And for lay Nepalese Buddhists, the theoretical aspiration to non-being in nirvana is largely superseded by the idea of "crossing over" — reaching the Sukhavati paradise of the Buddha Amitabha. Which is, in practice, not so far from what the Hindu next door hopes for.

Drukpa Kagyu, and the state

Bhutan's state religion is the Drukpa Kagyu school of Vajrayana Buddhism, established in the 17th century by Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, the Tibetan lama who unified the country, built the dzongs and created the dual system of government that still shapes it: a religious authority and a civil one, sharing each fortress.

That is why every dzong you enter has two courtyards — the district administration on one side, the monk body on the other — and why the visit feels like a government building and a temple at once. It is both.

What to look for

• Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava) — the 8th-century master who brought Buddhism to the Himalaya, and who flew to Taktsang on the back of a tigress. Bhutan's most important figure after the Buddha; look for the curled moustache, the trident and the skull cup.
• The Zhabdrung, bearded and hatted, in nearly every temple.
• The Wheel of Life at monastery entrances — samsara as a diagram, held in the jaws of Yama.
• Wrathful deities, flame-wreathed and multi-armed. Not demons: protective forms of compassionate beings, whose fury is directed at ignorance.
• The phallus painted on house walls — Drukpa Kunley's tradition, warding off evil and malicious gossip.