more on losar

i forgot to mention one of the best things about the geshe ceremonies and spending all the time in the gompa around losar: the hats. tibetan monks have some of the coolest headwear i've ever seen. during the geshe ceremonies, they wore the yellow hats that i had always associated with the gelug sect of tibetan buddhism. (made me wonder which aspects of buddhism have been taken from bon and which aspects of bon have been taken from buddhism... maybe a potential thing to research later on in my academic career.) anyway, these yellow hats are my favorite ones. they basically look like giant, fuzzy mohawks, and when the geshes weren't wearing them, they draped them over their shoulders. then there were the traditional bonpo hats. they're big, white, pointy things with red triangles on the sides and a big red swastika on the front. on the sides are either two or three blue stripes, representing sutra, tantra, and dzogchen, the three main areas of study in bon. there were other hats that the geshes wore on the last day of their ceremony, that were bright blue on top with panels around the bottom that looked like lotus petals. they can only be worn by high lamas and people who have received their geshe degree, and the lotus petals are symbolic of the fact that even though these geshes live in an impure world, they themselves are pure (just like a lotus grows in muddy swamps but isn't defiled by mud). and then of course, the masks for the cham dances. my favorite ones were the masks of wrathful dieties. red, blue, black, green faces, with bulging eyes, sharp teeth, tongues sticking out, and tiny skulls decorating the tops of their heads. it was all really cool, and i'll try to find photos somewhere to put up here.

in other news, so far i've gotten into the M.A. programs at U New Mexico in philosophy (with fee remission + a TA-ship in English for $12k), and at U Chicago in the Divinity school (with a $16k scholarship). I still have 4 more schools to hear from, but now I have to make big decisions, about whether I want to go into philosophy or religion, how much debt i'm willing to put myself into, how/where i want to get a Ph.D. after 2 years, in addition to geography and all that. Philosophy folks are pushing me toward UNM, religion folks are pushing me toward Chicago, and right now I'm really torn. It's good to know, though, that come September I'll be back in school.