By Wasfia Nazreen
Dharamsala, March 3 – After a grand Losar celebration followed by monlam (The Great Prayer Festival), Mcleod Ganj and it’s inhabitants were once again blessed when His Holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama began his Spring teachings in the Main Temple courtyard earlier this morning.
In today’s introduction, along with monlam’s offerings he gave readings from the Jataka Tales. He also made a special speech dedicated towards the Tibetan who had come here from Tibet only for this auspicious occasion. Tomorrow onwards (till the 14th of March with a break on the 10th to commemorate the 48th Tibetan Uprising Day), His Holiness is scheduled to give his annual spring teachings on Shantideva’s Guide to the Boddhisattva’s Way of Life (chodjug) along with the 3rd Dalai Lama Gyalwang Sonam Gyatso’s The Refined Gold – The Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (lamrim sershoonma).
Monlam originated as a festival of Buddha’s competence over the six non-buddhist teachers at Saavasti from the 1st to 15th of the second Tibetan month. The Great Tsong Khapa (founder of the Gelukpa Tradition), instituted this festival in the form of Great Prayer Festival in Tibet in the Earth-Female-Ox year (1409). This ageold Tibetan tradition and the yearly celebration of monlam finally came to a stop when the Chinese Army forcefully took over Tibet in 1959.
His Holiness reminded the grand audience this morning the significance of Shakhyamuni Buddha’s victory of positive over negative forces, and how we human beings can always get strength reflecting on stories like that, in order to promote world peace. He also stressed on accumulating merits and contibuting to the welfare of all sentient beings.
With an ongoing increasing number of foreign tourists, along with nuns and monks arriving from different regions of India, the streets of Mcleod Ganj are currently the most chaotic the year has seen so far! The small town have been facing water crisis since Losar, however, for the past few days, rain along with hailstorms have washed away quite a bit of the dryness. On the 2nd of March, Mcleod Ganj saw a sunny day in a long time, as if nature was marking the beginning of His Holiness’s coming teachings.
Phayul will webcast the audio teachings live in Tibetan, Russian and English. Stay tuned for more updates and images from the upcoming days.
Information on ‘festivals of tibet’ kindly given by Lobsang Jinpa, from Institute of Buddhist Dialectics (IBD), Dharamsala.
