Dalai Lama skips prayer festival at McLeodganj
Tibetans offer prayers with butter sculptures and rituals
Exiled Tibetans on Tuesday celebrated Chotrul Duschen — the Great Prayer Festival of Tibet — at the Tsuglagkhang in McLeodganj with a grand prayer ceremony, even as Tibetan spiritual leader the 14th Dalai Lama skipped his customary sermon on the occasion.
The festival falls on the first full moon of the Tibetan lunar calendar and marks the culmination of Losar, the Tibetan New Year festivities. Traditionally regarded as a sacred full-moon day, it holds deep spiritual significance for Tibetan Buddhists.
On this occasion, the Dalai Lama usually leads prayers and delivers teachings centred on compassion, wisdom and the life of the Buddha. This year, however, he did not preside over the ceremony.
Though he skipped the festival prayers, the spiritual leader was present at his residence for the full ordination ceremony of young monks. Calls to his private office seeking clarification on his absence went unanswered.
Chotrul Duschen is one of the four major Buddhist festivals in the Tibetan calendar and was once observed with great religious fervour in Tibet. Monks, nuns, officials and lay devotees from all walks of life would gather at the revered Jokhang Temple — also known as the Tsuglagkhang in Lhasa — to participate in special prayers and receive blessings.
In McLeodganj, home to the Tibetan government-in-exile, hundreds of monks, nuns and devotees assembled at the Tsuglagkhang Temple Complex to offer prayers and mark the festival.
The Great Prayer Festival is also renowned for its intricate butter sculpture offerings, known as Chenga-chodpa — the full-moon display at the Tsuglagkhang. Butter sculpture is a distinctive form of Tibetan religious art in which sacred images of Buddhas, deities and symbolic animals are crafted from coloured butter and placed upon tormas or ritual cake offerings.
These elaborate and vibrant sculptures are displayed inside the main temple, allowing devotees to pay homage and witness an artistic expression of faith that has been preserved in exile for decades. Established in 1409 by Je Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, the festival lasts for two weeks and focuses on mass prayers, rituals and the accumulation of merit.
