dolanji

I just got back from two and a half weeks at Menri Monastery in Dolanji, a little village in the Himalayan foothills just south of Shimla. I had a WONDERFUL time. My friend Yangri grew up there, and invited me to come spend Losar (Tibetan New Year) with her family and watch her brother's Geshe ceremony.

We spent most of our time at the monastery, hanging out with Yangri's brother Nyidhon and his friends. On the first day of Losar, it's considered auspicious to stay at home with your family, to show that you don't need to rely on other people for things. We spent the day at the gompa, visiting all of Nyidhon's friends in their rooms. Every room (like every Tibetan home during Losar) had an altar with piles of food - kapse (Tibetan cookies), tsampa (flour), fruit, sweets, biscuits, chips, candy, soda, bottled water, and just about any other kind of snack food you can find in India. As soon as we entered a room, the monks would jump up and say, "Sit! Sit! Eat some kapse! Have some tea!" And they would literally push us down onto their beds and shove cups filled with Tibetan tea into our hands. Tibetan tea is essentially milk mixed with melted butter, so after visiting 3 or 4 rooms, you can imagine how my stomach was beginning to feel.

The second day of Losar is the day to visit friends and family. Dolanji is a tiny village in a valley, with the gompa at the top of one hill, and Yangri's childhood home and relatives' homes scattered along the side of the hill on the other side. So on the second day, we walked down and crossed the river that runs through the valley to see her family. On the way, we stopped at a small nunnery that just opened up two years ago. About half of the nuns there are from Nepal, and under the age of ten. I had fun trying to talk to them, especially since their Tibetan is about as good as mine. The rest of the day was spent walking/hiking around to visit Yangri's grandparents and aunts and uncles, where more kapse and tea was forced upon me.

The third day of Losar also conincided with the birth anniversary of the first abbot of the gompa, so there was a big puja (prayer ceremony) performed by all of the monks, where they unveiled a HUGE thangka (cloth painting) of Dolma Sherab. [Menri is a Bonpo monastery - Bon is the religion that preceeded Buddhism in Tibet, and while it's similar to Tibetan Buddhism in a lot of ways, there are some fundamental differences, like the fact that they don't worship the Buddha but rather a guy called Dolma Sherab.] After the puja, all of the monks and laypeople from the village circumambulated the gompa grounds, led by monks wearing hats and playing cymbals.

Then the geshe ceremonies began. Out of about 400 monks in the monastery, 10 received their Geshe degrees this year. It requires 12 years of study, and a monk has to be well-versed in philosophy, poetry, astrology, medicine, debate, and a few other things that I can't remember. The ceremonies lasted a total of 11 days, with 2 monks participating at a time. For the first five days, in the morning the geshes had to recite prayers that they had memorized for about 20 minutes. Then in the afternoon, the monks had to recite more memorized prayers, this time while walking back and forth in the temple, scattering candy and money to all of the monks and laypeople who came to watch. One day, Yangri, our friend Tsechu, and I got to be "main guests" of one of the monks. Every Geshe was allowed 5 guests to sit inside and present kata (traditional tibetan scarves) during the ceremony, and since one of Yangri's friends didn't have any family members who could be there to see him, he invited us. Before his turn to recite prayers in the morning, we had to walk through the temple and present kata to the statue of Dolma Sherab, as well as all of the important lamas and rinpoches. It was pretty amazing to walk through the temple, being surrounded by 400 chanting monks.

The next five days involved an oral test, in which each geshe had to recite texts from memory for about an hour, and then in the afternoon they had to debate. Tibetan monastic debate is an absolutely amazing thing to see. I've never seen philosophy presented in such a dramatic way before. Usually debate takes place in a courtyard, with individual monks or groups of monks jumping up and down, clapping their hands, yelling, and swinging their prayer beads around. For the geshe ceremonies, two geshes sat in front of the altar, and for four hours, had to debate with all of the other monks in the monastery. One by one, a challenger would approach them and begin to debate on any topic that he chose. If he was able to stump the geshes, he beat a huge drum and all of the other monks shouted something, that was basically equivalent to publicly shaming them. They talked so quickly that I couldn't understand most of what they were debating, but it was still a phenomenal thing to watch.

Before the last day of ceremonies, there were cham dances. Cham dances involve monks wearing elaborate masks and beautiful costumes, usually dressed as wrathful deities to keep evil spirits away. The whole village turned out to watch the dances, which began at 9am and didn't end until about 6:00. Sadly, my camera is broken and I didn't get to take pictures of any of this.

On the last day, all ten of the geshes recited auspicious prayers, and, while walking up and down among the monks, again scattered candy and money to all of the monks and lay people. I collected about a pound of gum, coins, and hard candy, which I later gave to all of the small nuns that I had made friends with.

A lot more happened that isn't really fitting to write about. The village was so beautiful, people were so friendly, and I learned so much that I can't really convey it all in my blog.

Now I'm back in Sarnath and the weather is hot. I heard back from a few graduate schools, and things aren't looking promising. I still have 4 or 5 more programs to hear from though, so everybody keep your fingers crossed for me.