Celebrate the Tibetan New Year with the Dalai Lama
A breaking news was brought by a messenger from Lhasa when our village was preparing our Tibetan New Year celebration. His Holiness Dalai Lama wanted to invite us to Lhasa to join him in celebrating the New Year at the Potala Palace. The messenger said that because of our great achievements in the past year, such as helping the neighbor village from the Naga illness, inviting a lama to the village, building the medicine factory, the printing press, and the library, our village became very well-known in Lhasa, and the Dalai Lama himself was aspired by our great undertaking and thus wanted to meet us. Upon receiving this message, we did not even bother to hold a meeting to discuss whether we should take this offer — who will refuse an offer from the Dalai Lama? After a few days of packing and preparing, we departed to Lhasa.
Lhasa, as the capital of Tibet, was indeed a magnificent place. I looked around and found out that even the smallest temple here was bigger than our central monastery. When we reached the Potala Palace, it was close to dinnertime. The mundane officials there welcomed us by a well-prepared dinner party, and we took the chance to ask them a few questions regarding the procedure of next day’s New Year celebration and some rules that we should be mind of. They told us that most of the procedure and rules regarding the New Year celebration was set by the Fifth Dalai Lama hundreds of years ago. There were actually two types of New Year’s day that took place on January 1st and January 2nd (all in terms of Tibetan calendar) respectively. The first one was called “The Priest’s New Year” and the second one was “The King’s New Year,” which reflect the Dalai Lama’s status as the Chosi Nyiden, the master of both the Church and the State. It would take place very early in the morning while the sun was in the ascendant, so the officials kindly suggested us to sleep earlier than usual. But we were all very excited and could barely sleep when our mind was fully occupied by tomorrow’s events.
After a seemingly super long night, in the morning, we finally heard the peculiar sound of the ceremonial drum-roll that only belonged to the Dalai Lama; he must be awakened now and the ceremony would take place very shortly. We were led into the great hall in the second floor of the Potala Palace, while the Dalai Lama was still with the high officials in his private chamber. After a while, he came into the hall accompanied with abbots, lamas, and lay officials. We all stood up upon seeing him and only sat down again after the Dalai Lama sat down on the elevated chair placed in the middle of the hall. The Lord Chamberlain at this time went around and greeted us in behalf of the Dalai Lama, then tea that was poured from great silver pots was served. While we were still drinking, two Geshes suddenly stood up, faced each other, and started to debate. By realizing our confusion, one of the officials came to us and explained to us in a low voice that such kind of debate resembled to those debates in Buddhist colleges in ancient India; the conversation would be heard with attention by the religious dignitaries. After the debate broke off, tea was served again and the Dalai Lama’s troupe of dancing boys came into the hall for performance. Then, after the dancing, there came another debate, followed by another dancing performance. Since we all got up and came here very early without eating any breakfast, we started to feel a little bit uncomfortable caused by hunger after the second dancing performance. The Dalai Lama seemed to know what we were considering, or perhaps he did not eat anything either, a large group of servants now came in with plenty of food including Tibetan pastries, bread, dried fruit, sweets, joints of mutton and whole carcasses of sheep and yaks. After the delicious meal, dancing was resumed and tea was served again. The whole celebration finished by a long prayer for good fortune.
The rest of the day was left for family celebrations, therefore we decided to go shopping first and then came back before night to watch the New Year TV show. I went to visit a few monasteries around the Potala Palace and bought some rare books from a bookstore.
The next day was the King’s New Year. The procedure of the King’s New Year had no large difference from the first day’s Priest’s New Year, but it was more emphasized on the tradition of long-standing temporal sovereignty. Instead of inviting a variety of people, the abbots and lamas were not invited today, but there were more lay officials. Tea serving, debate, and dancing performance followed the same order as the first day, the only different and special occasion worth of mentioning was the offering to the Dalai Lama. At this time, the Dalai Lama was offered the Eight Auspicious Signs and the Eight Auspicious Objects, which was not offered on the day before. After the celebration, our villagers were invited by the Dalai Lama into his private chamber located on the top floor of the Potala Palce. He told us that he had heard a lot about the great jobs we had done in the past year, and he was happy to receive us in his palace. We took the chance to offer him the greeting scarf that was handmade by ourselves, with patterns depicting all the activities we had experienced since last September. After another night at the Potala Palace, we said goodbye to the Dalai Lama and returned to our village.
This was indeed a very special New Year, not many people had the chance to stay at the Potala Palace and joined the ceremonies there. We were lucky to be invited and thus be able to observe both the Priest’s New Year and the King’s New Year. I have to share my great experience with my master and wife in China. Oh, when speaking of them, I started to feel a little homesick.
