Mundgod — a mini Tibet in Karnataka
Mundgod is an area about an hour’s drive from Jog falls in Uttar Karnataka. Mundgod is famous for the Doeguling Tibetan Settlement.
In the 1960s, India offered Tibetian refugees land to settle across a few locations. While Dharamshala is the most famous of these, Karnataka itself houses four such settlements.
The most famous one in Karnataka is at Bylakuppe, on the way to Coorg. However, the largest one by far is the Doeguling Tibetan Settlement at Mundgod.
The settlement has multiple schools, a hospital, health clinics and 7 monasteries.
It was raining quite heavily when we reached Mundgod, so we visited the most famous of these — the Gaden Shartse Monastery.
The Monastery itself was similar to the ones Sudha and I had seen in Bhutan.
Buddhism has two major schools, the Mahayana and Theravada.
Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia — all largely follow the Theravada school while Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan follow the Mahayana school.
As a lay person, the differences you observe are that the Theravada school has large pagodas dedicated to Buddha, often with multiple statues of the Buddha himself.
The Mahayana sect is a little more expansive. You come across smaller stupas and statues of prior incarnations of the Buddha (boddhisattvas). Many include Kashyapa, Sakyamuni (the current one we know), Maitreya (the Buddha of the future) and the fantastic Avalokieshwara (Goddess of compassion). Avalokiteshwara is often depicted as having 11 heads and a 1000 arms.
The Mahayana sect also has references to Tantric Buddhism. The Gaden Shartse Monastery has a statue of Buddha with a beloved on his lap, probably symbolizing the nature of fertility.
