Ceremonies

Puja (devotional observances or offerings)

One of the interesting things about the lifestyle here is how events are scheduled. Very few things are advertised and even more are decided at the last moment. So word of mouth on the street is often the only way of knowing what is happening today. Then when you get there it might have already started or you might have to wait several hours. Most business is conducted in the same manner – I’ve been waiting for four weeks now for an airline reservation – first I went in every day, then every other day and now every other week. The travel agent says “Don’t worry madam, it is coming – you have very much time still”. I’m actually starting to enjoy this as it is very much being in the now.

When I got back from Tushita I heard, on the street, that there was a 7 day Puja going on at the Dalai Lama Temple (Namgyal Monastery) and that sometime between 3:30 and 5:30 PM there would be ceremonial dancers. So I grabbed a good book (Holy Cow) and made off for the

temple. I believe the monks spend the entire day going through the particular elements of the ceremony. They had the drums, cymbals, bell, and horns punctuating certain parts of the texts that they were chanting from.

At around 5:00 the two dancers came out, one with a black mask and one with a red mask. It takes a lot of training, balance, and leg strength to make the slow, stylized movements.

March 31^st: A group of us hired taxis and made a fieldtrip to visit the home in exile of the Karmapa. The Karmapa is the equivalent of the Dalai Lama only from a different lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, the Karma Kagyu lineage. He is in his mid-twenties and has only been in exile for about 6 years. His temple and monastery are beautiful and look fairly new. The process was similar to when the Dalai Lama held public teachings. You have to register with your passport and then have a body search before being allowed in the temple. The Karmapa gave about an hour teaching and then we presented our Katak or Kata (a white scarf given in greeting) to a monk who gave them back to us around our necks. Then we each walked by the Karmapa and he touched us and handed us a red cord which is usually either worn around the neck or wrapped around the wrist. And that was that – short, sweet and well organized.

The four of us in my taxi decided to go on to Norbulingka which was only about 10 minutes away. Norbulingka was built originally for the Dalai Lama as a summer home (named after the summer home in Tibet), but he felt it was too large and elegant for his needs. It has become an arts & crafts institute for preserving Tibetan traditional art such as Thangka painting (Tibetan religious painting or the literal translation is flat painting), wood carving, embroidery and fabric arts. The work is beautiful and very precise. For the painting there are specific proportional rules that must be followed – makes me wonder about DaVinci, Romans & Greeks. Genghis Khan did get around!

One of the things I really loved about Norbulingka, and I may have to go back, were the gardens, ponds and incredibly textured stone work. There was a little café in the gardens where we stopped for lunch. It was a nice place to hang out with a book and relax.

I probably didn’t mention that it is spring here and everything that wasn’t already in bloom is beginning to. It’s also hot especially at the lower altitudes where the Karmapa & Norblingka are located. I understand the plains of India are already sweltering. Needless to say I have picked out some light weight fabrics and ordered some summer clothes from a tailor – drawstring pants and Nehru style loose blouses. If he does a good job I will order some Tibetan style shirts. The fabrics in his shop are gorgeous so it’s difficult to make decisions.

Interesting fact: On the plains south of Dharamsala they grow two crops on a rotation basis. Wheat or barley during the dry season, then they let the animals loose in the fields to fertilize and eat up the stalks and then they use the same fields during the monsoons to grow rice.

Photo of the week: The sad thing is that all the animals are free range and they love eating paper, cardboard, and plastic from the streets. The plastic often wraps around the intestines and starves them.