group tour to Ladakh and Kashmir (part 2 - the Hemis Festival)

 

Per the tour group literature, one of the high points of this trip was the Hemis Tsechu (festival), held annually for the last 300 years or so at Hemis Gompa (the largest Buddhist monastery in Ladakh) to honour the birth of Padmasambhava, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism.  It didn’t figure particularly highly in my reasons for selecting this particular tour, but I have to admit that it was pretty impressive!

Over the course of this the second (main) day of the festival, there are some ten different sets of masked performers doing their dances in the central courtyard, accompanied by musicians playing a few different musical instruments, particularly various trumpet/bugle-type things – some of them also masked.  I did buy a guidebook to the festival, which enabled me to label my photos, but really … this is a sample extract describing the first set of mask dancers: “The thirteen black hats’ or evil terminators’ dance represents the Nagpa tradition of Vajrayana practitioners.  A Nagpa has a body of deity, a speech of mantra, and his mind rests in Mahamudra meditative state.  During the enactment of the great master Guru Padmasambhava’s life story and bestowing blessings, the Nagpas dispel obstacles and negative forces beyond the oceans, and eliminate them forever.”  The descriptions of this day go on for 21 pages!!  Our local guide was a very devout Buddhist and we had to be careful what sort of questions we asked him or we would receive similar answers.  I do struggle to understand why some people have managed to turn Buddhism into something so very complicated.

Anyway, it can certainly result in some pretty spectacular festivals such as this one.  This below is one of the five Shri Herukas – like the majority of the masks, it satisfied that little bit of me that has never moved on from my teenage fascination with skulls!


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