The great stupa of Boudanath is the largest stupa in the world. Boudanath lies to the east of
Kathmandu. It is a sacred site for
Buddhists, and circling it in a clockwise direction—kora—is good for one's
karma. It is optional to bring in motion the circa 300 prayer wheels that are
found in the outer wall of the stupa, hidden by curtains. In
Boudanath lives a large community of exile Tibetans.
The immediate environment of the stupa houses a large
colony of pigeons, they number in the tens of thousands. All day long people
will come and feed the pigeons. Some entrepreneurs have chosen position
immediately next to the feeding place with large stocks of grain, that they
sell by the cup. Sometimes the pigeons are startled by something and then half
of them exit the feeding frenzy and fly up as on command, to be replaced at
once by the same number of fresh pigeons.
Pigeons sit on the roofs and windows of adjacent houses,
they sit on anything that gives a foothold, they sit on the stupa, but they
don't sit on the nearby Tibetan-Buddhist Ghyanghuti monastery.
Why do people feed the pigeons. Aside from the few
tourist with selfiesticks who picture themselves with the pigeons in the
background and who by the way don't feed, the feeding population mainly
consists of young and middle-aged Tibetan women.
 |
| No pigeons on Ghyanghuti monastery |
For Buddhists life is sacred, they ordinarily don't kill
animals and they leave it to the Newari butchers to provide them with meat for
their dinners, as not all Tibetans are vegetarians.
So feeding the pigeons must have something to with the
reverence Tibetans feel for life. And since Tibetans as Buddhists also believe
in reincarnation, they could very well be thinking to feed a relative, or their
parents, or maybe themselves in a next or previous incarnation.
Popular belief learns that reincarnation is linear in
time, but I'm not so sure of that. I haven't gotten very deep into the Buddhist
concept of time, but I've read sources which suggest that reincarnation can be
circular, so that a next reincarnation may happen backwards in time. To me this
sounds very plausible, because bardo, the intermediate stage between two lives,
is timeless.
So what would these Tibetans ladies be thinking when they
feed the pigeons. I guess they won't have very deep philosophical thoughts
about afterlife and reincarantion. They may be just doing it out of habit, with a hidden thought
of gaining some karma.
