The Great Stupa Boudhnath By Keith Dowman

The Great Stupa of Boudhanath
The Great Stupa of Boudhanath is the principal place of pilgrimage in Nepal for ethnic Tibetans. This little book contains all you need to know about the legends, history, symbolism and worship of this magnificent monument. The Tibetan "Legend of the Great Stupa" contains the prophecy of the ruination of Tibet - and its renaissance.

The Great Stupa of Boudhanath is a protective, purification and wish-granting stupa. But further, because of its antiquity - its origins beyond the recall of folk memory its foundation and fabric impregnated with the vibration of innumerable generations of devoted worship and powerful meditation, its awesome size and unique form, and its basis in myth and legend, it inspires vast devotion and has become one of the most significant objects of worship in the Buddhist universe. In myth the Great Stupa is said to contain the relics of the Buddha of the previous 'on, Mahakasyapa Buddha, and thus it is also a reliquary stupa.


Keith Dowman has spent the last twenty years in Nepal. He has been educated in the theory and practice of Tibetan Buddhism by eminent Lamas of Several Tibetan schools, and has translated several major Tibetan texts into English. He now lives with his family in Kathmandu, where he continues to explore the Tibetan tradition and to interpret it for people in the West.