By Eve Johnson
LHASA – Unfurling a giant cloth painting of the Buddha over a mountainside beside the great Drepung monastery, monks gave Tibetan pilgrims an annual glimpse Sunday of one of Tibet’s great ceremonies.
Chanting mantras and spinning prayer wheels, pilgrims gazed up in awe.
Few of the 150,000 pilgrims gathered for the annual Shoton, or Yoghurt Festival, questioned whether the ritual represents real religious freedom for the deeply Buddhist region of communist China or is as transient as the incense smoke burning from their offerings.
China’s destruction of religion during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when most Tibetan monasteries were dynamited to the ground has been replaced by a tentative relaxation that tightens swiftly at a first sign of anti-Chinese sentiment in the restive Himalayan region.
The Communist Party says it made a mistake by persecuting monks and nuns in the Cultural Revolution, and that officials no longer interfere in religious life.
Tension simmers between the Tibetans’ profound faith in a mystical form of Buddhism and the Chinese vision of Tibetan culture and religion, colorful but firmly under Party control.
In a display of devotion, tens of thousands of pilgrims gathered by dawn to watch the unfurling of the cloth picture of the Buddha, or thangka, many clinging to rocks to gain a vantage point, others squatting on the hillside in the hope the sacred cloth would be unfurled over their bodies.
Families of three generations made up the crowd of faithful, although some Tibetans complained that the young were losing their faith.
“I think young people have more freedom today than they used to have, but they are definitely not as devout as before,” said Padma Tsering, a 23-year-old Lhasa office worker. “Being part of this ethnic minority, I think it’s too bad.
“I’m a Buddhist myself because I believe Buddhism has great significance, not only reaching this place but in the whole world.”
INCENSE AND PROPAGANDA
This 200 square-meter thangka, an embroidery by monks of Drepung monastery using gold silk thread on a cotton background, may be only seven years old but it takes center stage in a ceremony dating back hundreds of years. More than 100 monks from the monastery — once the largest in the world with a population of 10,000 — carried out the rolled up thangka and set it down at the foot of a nearby hill.
The crowd roared with joy as monks at the top of the hill pulled the thangka open with ropes to display an image of the Sakyamuni Buddha, or Buddha of the Present. They tossed hundreds of white silk scarves onto the picture.
Pilgrims chanting mantras and spinning prayer wheels circumambulated the thangka, almost hidden by columns of choking smoke that swirled into the air from piles of fragrant juniper branches burned as offerings.
Officials tried to link the ceremony to the Communist Party.
“The Buddha of the present is the most important because he represents current society and social development,” said Thundup Dorje, assistant director of the Lhasa foreign affairs office. Other officials nearby giggled as the director spoke the official line on a ceremony dating back more than 400 years.
Ethnic Tibetan officials are not supposed to have a religious affiliation because most are Communist Party members, but that rule is increasingly quietly ignored in Tibet.
“I believe that more and more people are starting to believe because materialism is becoming more rampant around the world so people are increasingly seeking spirituality,” said a 16-year-old Tibetan construction worker, a rosary around his neck.
“So I think there are more Buddhists today,” he said. “The Buddha has been in my heart since i was born and watching the Buddha unfurl has made me very happy.”
The Shoton, or Yoghurt Festival, was originally a purely religious festival marking the time when monks and nuns finished their annual summer retreat. Lhasa residents would offer them Yoghurt to drink because they were not allowed to eat meat.
It developed into a five-day pageant featuring the unfurling of the giant thangka, Tibetan opera, wrestling and archery, performed in the grounds of the Summer Palace of the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile since fleeing to India in 1959.
