The earth is alive and humanity, both bodily and architecturally, grows out of the earth – upwards; as a species, human beings are evolving. Both separately as individuals and collectively as a society we are ‘growing up’ and each generation discovers something new about the material world it lives in. The religous path exists as away to investigate beyond the material world, beyond the limits of sense experience.

IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH?
IS THERE ONE GOD OR MANY?
WHAT IS MY TRUE NATURE?

Religion suggests that there is something beyond this physical, material existence. It is this going-beyond, this growing-up, that the stupa represents and developments in its construction parallel humanity’s progress on many levels.

Differences have evolved over time, and between countries but the elements we have been considering are fairly common to all stupas, although more emphasis might be placed on one and less on another. Certainly the name varies and a stupa is known as a dagoba, a cedi, a ceitya, and a pagoda depending on the country. Without exception though all stupas are symmetrical: a symbol of balance, unity, constancy and strength.