Tibetan New Year celebrations continue

Wisdom Quarterly, Chinahighlights.com, Wikipedia

The center of the Tibetan universe, Potala Palace in Lhasa, capital on the plateau

Tibetan New Year, Losar, begins March 5 this year and continues to be celebrated for two weeks. It is an important Buddhist festival on the Tibetan calendar. It usually falls during December or January (Tibetan New Year dates).

Losar is marked by merriment and the pageantry of ceremonies representing the struggle between Good and Evil. People dance and chant as they pass fire torches through the crowd through the din of period instruments excitedly playing in celebration. The dance of the deer, for example, recounts amusing battles between the king and his ministers.

Heap of money, Lama Temple, Beijing, China 2011 (Valeria Gentile/Flickr.com)

The the last two days of the year leading up to Losar, called Gutor, is when preparations begin in Tibet. Gutor begins with house cleaning, particularly focusing on the kitchen. The chimney is swept free of dirt. Special dishes are prepared: a sweet desert called dresyl/deysee, momo (dumpling) soup, wheat, rice, sweet potatoes, cheese, peas, peppers, vermicelli, and radishes.

The second day of Gutor is when religious ceremonies are held. Tibetans visit local monasteries to worship and give gifts to monastics. Firecrackers are set off to rid the area of harmful spirits (haints, banshees, ogres, demons, reptilians) that may be lurking around.

Chinese Army troops march in a show of force since usurping, colonizing, and destroying Tibet. Human rights abuses are rampant. And the players and subterfuge in this game of geopolitical intrigue is staggering. It involves not only the CIA and CIA operatives like the world-revered Dalai Lama, but China, India, Pakistan, Islamic insurgents, but ancient technologies and unearthly entities as well.

On New Year's Day, Tibetans get up early, bathe, put on new clothes, and recollect the devas by placing sacrificial offerings in front of their household shrines. The offerings usually consist of animals and demons made from a kind of dough called torma. Family members exchange gifts and have a reunion dinner, which usually includes a kind of cake called kapse, a strong drink called changkol, and a beer called chang used with the excuse of keeping warm.

The Origins of Losar
Lo-Sar is Tibetan for "New Year," lo meaning year or age, sar new or fresh. Its celebration goes back to Tibet's pre-Buddhist era. Prior to Buddhism's arrival, Tibetans followed a kind of voodoo called Bön, a set of indigenous beliefs and practices that have now fallen into obscurity and been merged with Buddhism the way the original beliefs of South America survived by merging with colonial Catholicism while retaining worship of "pagan" deities.

Bon encouraged a large spiritual ceremony every winter during which people burned massive amounts of incense to appease local spirits, devas, and protectors or wrathful deities. This religious festival developed into an annual Buddhist festival during the reign of Pude Gungyal, the ninth king of Tibet.

The festival is thought to have begun when an old woman named Belma introduced the measurement of time to Tibet based on the phases of the Moon. It was held in autumn when the apricot trees blossomed. It may have been the first celebration of the traditional Farmers' festival when the art of soil cultivation, irrigation, metallurgy, and other technologies were first introduced. Religious ceremonies began to celebrate these important cultural milestones that eventually became the Losar festival.

Tibet was once a sovereign power extending its influence far beyond the enormous Tibetan plateau all the way down to the shores of Bangladesh, encompassing much of the Himalayan region and its peoples.

The New Calendar
The Tibetan calendar consists of 12 lunar months, with Losar beginning on the first day of the first month and major celebrations beginning on the 29th day of the 12th month in Tibetan monasteries. On the day before Losar's Eve, monasteries hold a special ritual in preparation making a special noodle dish called guthuk made of nine ingredients including dried cheese and various grains.

Various ingredients and items such as chilies, salt, wool, rice, and coal are placed in dough balls then handed out. What one finds hidden is supposed to be a lighthearted comment on one's character. For example if a person finds a chili, that means one is talkative. White-colored ingredients, such as salt or rice, is believed to be a good sign. Coal is like finding a lump of coal in a Christmas stocking, the Pagan origin of which was shamans distributing hallucinogenic mushrooms dried near warm hearths in Siberia. This gift reveals a "black heart" or dark past.

On the first day of the New Year, housewives get up very early, cook a pot of barley in a cauldron for their family, and sit by a window waiting for sunrise. As the first ray of sunshine touches the earth, she takes a bucket and heads for the well or river to fetch the year's first bucket of water, which is seen as the clearest and most sacred. The first family to do so is believed to be blessed with good luck for the coming year.

Women are crucial to the first day of the New Year as the center of the household.

The Days of Losar
Lamas at Ta'er Monastery hold religious celebrations, which include worship and a banquet. On the second day, people visit friends and relatives. At night, Tibetans whirl burning torches at home to drive away evil spirits. On the third day of Losar Tibetans visit local monasteries, where Tibetans make offerings, particularly in the capital city of Lhasa with the great Potala Palace. Tibetans continue celebrating for two weeks, with many major events now taking place in exile in India.