Award-winning photographer Kevin Bubriski captures in stunning detail the sacred places of Nepal's Kathmandu Valley. Noted scholar Keith Dowman provides history and commentary on the significance of the sites.

Homeland of the Buddha is a guide for those visiting the major sites of Buddhism which lie on the great plain of the Ganges in India and Nepal. The main emphasis is the life of the Buddha; how each location was significant during his time; and how that history came to be known in the modern world. The book is useful for those wish to travel, as well as those who seek to know where and how the Buddha taught, two and a half thousand years ago. Although it discusses some aspects of the Buddha's teachings, it does not seek to be a book about Buddhism. Detailed maps and numerous colour images enliven the text. A chapter is devoted to each Buddhist site. The first section of each chapter summarises the reason why that place has significance and details how the Buddha, and other individuals contributed to our knowledge of that place. The 'Today' section of each chapter details what the modern traveller can see in each location, in the sequence that they experience them. Every visitor to India is changed, no matter how much, or how little, they may be cossetted by luxury, or how little they are attuned to the realities of life which India forces on them. It is a truism that India alters the way people think about themselves and their lives. In that sense any travel to India is a pilgrimage. How much more so therefore, when your travel is directed to walking the same paths as one of the world's greatest teachers and more so, if your intent is towards self-awareness. Whether you plan to travel in person, or in the mind, 'Homeland of the Buddha' will inform your journey. So that, whatever your intention, the one who returns will be different from the one who set forth. When touring the country of the Buddha, we all carry the metaphorical staff of a pilgrim. The author has visited the holy Buddhist places numerous times since the 1960s and has travelled extensively in Asia, the Himalaya and Tibet. For more than twenty years he has been a practitioner of Zen Buddhism. As a young man, he worked for several years as a doctor in the Mount Everest region of Nepal and has been involved with Sir Edmund Hillary's development work in Nepal since that time.'Homeland of the Buddha' brings this lifetime experience of Asia into focus as a practical, informative guide to the major Buddhist sites of India and Nepal.

This guidebook highlights multiple stupas, temples and other Buddhist holy sites spread throughout Nepal as told in Sutras and Tantras. I am impressed that a detailed explanation of these holy sites, their principal deities, and historical significance are clearly presented in this work. In particular, this book describes in detail three major Stupas and centuries old historical accounts of the Tibetan Lamas who restored and instilled the gilded copper ornamentation of these hallowed sites. Information otherwise not widely known is also covered in this book such as the fact that the great 5th Dalai Lama granted a stipend for a Stupa caretaker, as well as the fact that the great 13th and 14th Dalai Lamas made contributions towards the major restorations of the revered Swayambunath and Boudhnath Stupas. In addition, there is a particularly well researched section on the temple built by Lichavi King Shiva Deva, the grandfather of Princess Bhrikurti, the Nepalese wife of King Songtsen Gampo. It includes the related history of the arrival of Bhrikuti's father King Udaya Deva to Lhasa for sanctuary and her brother, Narendra Deva's successful return to Nepal, fully supported and led by King Songtsen Gampo and his soldiers. I highly recommend this book, "The Marvelous Music of Narratives.” It is worth reading and indeed is a required companion for all pilgrims, especially those new visitors looking for fuller experience of these sites. Lobsang Shastri, Senior Librarian of Buddhist Digital Resource Center and teacher of Tibetan language in the South Asian Studies Department, Harvard University

A pithy guidebook for Buddhist pilgrims to the four holy sites of India. “The aim of all Buddhist practice is to catch a glimpse of the awakened state. Going on pilgrimage, soaking up the sacred atmosphere of holy places, and mingling with other pilgrims are simply different ways of trying to achieve that glimpse.”—from chapter 1, “Holy Buddhist Sites” Pilgrimage is a powerful method for remembering the Buddha’s teachings and putting them into practice. For Buddhists, the most important holy places are the four sites associated with the Buddha’s life: • Lumbini, where Siddhartha was born as an ordinary human being • Bodhgaya, where Siddhartha became enlightened • Varanasi (Sarnath), where the Buddha taught the path to enlightenment • Kushinagar, where the Buddha passed into parinirvana While it may be an inconvenient, chaotic, and even dangerous journey, traveling to these places can be profoundly affecting and transformative for a practitioner. In his fourth book, Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse skillfully lays out how we can make the most of our experience as pilgrims. He explains what makes a person or place “holy,” what pilgrimage is all about, and what we can do when visiting the four holy sites of India and Nepal—or any holy place. This manual shows us how to partake in one of the most potent practices available to remind ourselves of the entirety of the Buddha’s teachings.

Drawing on textual and anthropological research, this book demonstrates how popular ritual texts and stories have shaped the religion and culture of the only surviving Mahayana Buddhist society, the Newars of Kathmandu.

With reference to Kathmandu Valley in Nepal; includes traveler information.

Lumbini, the Birthplace of the Lord Buddha, was inscribed on the World Heritage list in 1997. It is situated in an area commonly referred to as the 'Sacred Garden'. Archaeological remains testify to the authenticity of the place, which has become a major pilgrimage site. Nevertheless over two and a half millennia, the understanding of Lumbini has changed and different perceptions exist of what Lumbini might have been like at the birth of Lord Buddha. For the long-term safeguarding of this World Heritage site, overall understanding of the property is essential. This publication will provide a means for the various stakeholders to come to an understanding of each other's historical, religious, environmental and touristic perspectives of Lumbini.

In considering medieval illustrated Buddhist manuscripts as sacred objects of cultic innovation, Receptacle of the Sacred explores how and why the South Asian Buddhist book-cult has survived for almost two millennia to the present. A book “manuscript” should be understood as a form of sacred space: a temple in microcosm, not only imbued with divine presence but also layered with the memories of many generations of users. Jinah Kim argues that illustrating a manuscript with Buddhist imagery not only empowered it as a three-dimensional sacred object, but also made it a suitable tool for the spiritual transformation of medieval Indian practitioners. Through a detailed historical analysis of Sanskrit colophons on patronage, production, and use of illustrated manuscripts, she suggests that while Buddhism’s disappearance in eastern India was a slow and gradual process, the Buddhist book-cult played an important role in sustaining its identity. In addition, by examining the physical traces left by later Nepalese users and the contemporary ritual use of the book in Nepal, Kim shows how human agency was critical in perpetuating and intensifying the potency of a manuscript as a sacred object throughout time.

This innovative collaborative work—the first to focus on Buddhist tourism—explores how Buddhists, government organizations, business corporations, and individuals in Asia participate in re-imaginings of Buddhism through tourism. Contributors from religious studies, anthropology, and art history examine sacred places and religious monuments as they have been shaped and reshaped by socioeconomic and cultural trends in the region. Following an introduction that offers the first theoretical understanding of tourism from a Buddhist studies’ perspective, early chapters discuss the ways Buddhists and non-Buddhists imagine concepts and places related to the religion. Case studies highlight Buddhist peace in India, Buddhist heavens and hells in Singapore, Thai temple space, and the future Buddha Maitreya in China. Buddhist tourism’s connections to the state, market, and new technologies are explored in chapters on Indian package tours for pilgrims, thematic Buddhist tourism in Cambodia, the technological innovations of Buddhist temples in China, and the promotion of pilgrimage sites in Japan. Contributors then situate the financial concerns of Chinese temples, speed dating in temples in Japan, and the diffuse and pervasive nature of Buddhism for tourism promotion in Ladakh, India. How have tourist routes, groups, sites, and practices associated with Buddhism come to be possible and what are the effects? In what ways do travelers derive meaning from Buddhist places? How do Buddhist sites fortify national, cultural, or religious identities? The comparative research in South, Southeast, and East Asia presented here draws attention to the intertwining of the sacred and the financial and how local and national sites are situated within global networks. Together these findings generate a compelling comparative investigation of Buddhist spaces, identities, and practices.

Rebuilding Buddhism describes in evocative detail the experiences and achievements of Nepalis who have adopted Theravada Buddhism. This form of Buddhism was introduced into Nepal from Burma and Sri Lanka in the 1930s, and its adherents have struggled for recognition and acceptance ever since. With its focus on the austere figure of the monk and the biography of the historical Buddha, and more recently with its emphasis on individualizing meditation and on gender equality, Theravada Buddhism contrasts sharply with the highly ritualized Tantric Buddhism traditionally practiced in the Kathmandu Valley. Based on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and historical reconstruction, the book provides a rich portrait of the different ways of being a Nepali Buddhist over the past seventy years. At the same time it explores the impact of the Theravada movement and what its gradual success has meant for Buddhism, for society, and for men and women in Nepal.