New Year, new me ?
New Year is almost here!
To those who don’t know what Tibetan New Year, Losar, is I want to begin by explaining some of the basic outlines of the celebration before I get into how myself and the rest of the village prepared for the welcoming of a new year. Losar, is the most important celebration in Tibet. It is considered to be a time that we can rid ourselves of the bad karma that has accumulated through the past year, prepare for the coming year and It is also a time of caution because it is believed that actions performed during Losar will effect the upcoming year. The celebrations begin with the winter solstice. Even though it is significantly cold in Tibet at this time of the year, Lhasa, the capital, gets flooded with people from all over Tibet and the rest of the world. Travelers from all around the world come to Lhasa not only to witness celebrations but also take part in them. Interest of visitors mainly are,circumambulation, an ancient tradition of clock wise circling of a holy site or relic, Lama’s speech and the ritual daces performed by the monks. During the time of Losar, new products are brought in with the diversity of visitors coming into the country and many products of Tibet like mementoes of the visit are taken back to the visitors country of origin. Traders benefit from this time of year and help the spread of Tibetan Buddhist culture through their trade. Preparation for this celebrations start many days before usually celebrations lasts fifteen days or even more, however, the central religious ceremonies are carried out in the first three days.
Our village has gone through many misfortunes this passed year like the hailstorm, haunting of the medicine factory, the library getting ruined and our dear fellow villager Shelby’s terrible accident at the cave expedition. Although our fortunes had risen after the delightful visit of the Lama, funding for the building of a new library and the scrolls found on the expedition preparing for a new year was exciting. Most of the main preparations for the celebration were going to be at the monastery and nunnery. Since many people from the village had gone on a pilgrimage to Lhasa there were’t as many people to help prepare the town, monastery, the cairn of the local deity, Amitayus, recently found a little outside the village and the nunnery all in the last two days of the year. The preparations started two weeks before Losar, the streets needed to be cleaned, prayer flags had to be put up around and at the cairn site, purification rituals had to be carried out all around the village, bowls in which juniper branches can be burned had to be put around main centers. The monastery and the nunnery were extremely busy too. At the monastery monks were, conducting purification rituals and smoke offerings, practicing the ritual dances for the religious ceremonies of the celebration, cleaning up the monastery, putting up auspicious signs and prayer flags around the monastery. The nunnery didn’t have as many hands on deck for the preparation so I decided to help the nuns get ready. Everyone in the nunnery was running around trying to prepare food, tidy up, set up rituals and ceremonies, so I jumped in. I had spent a lot my time in the nunnery, going to the newly built library to study ritual texts to perfect my abilities in carrying out important rituals for the pilgrimage I was planing to take, therefor I navigated around easily didn’t get in anybodies way.
As the new year came closer and the main preparations for the town as a whole were set up and ready the villagers, myself included started doing our own preparations. In the last two days of the passing year is when villagers start to prepare for the new year celebrations. The last two days spent in preparing for Losar is called Gutor. The first day the house is cleaned especially the kitchen where special dishes were prepared and in the evening the monastery is visited. I spent my first day of Gutor packing up all my stuff to give away to those in need. As I was putting my whole life into sacs and boxes to give away I came to the realization that subconsciously my pilgrimage had become a more permanent state in my mind like wandering off and never coming back. Leaving everything behind and never looking back because I felt that I was being held back from being a part of the natural harmony of existence. When I caught my mind from wandering off I was done packing. I left out a few things I would need for the last day of Gutor and the first three days of Losar to participate in religious rituals to gain merit before taking off. One last thing on my mind as something I wanted to do was to cook Guntuk, a traditional soup made up of meat, wheat, rice, sweet potatoes, cheese, peas, green peppers, vermicelli, radishes and dumplings. Each of the dumplings in the soup contains a mystery object like scraps of wood, paper or pebbles that is assumed to reflect the personality of the person who has it. This soup has been my favorite aspect of new years as growing up because as a child I felt like every year I would learn a new aspect of myself and would love the idea of becoming more aware of myself. After loosing both my parents I hadn’t carried out this tradition of cooking Guntuk soup because it would reminded me of the suffering I endured, and that was not the best mindset to enter into a new year in so I avoided it. I’ve carried this around this burden of the loss of my parents all these years of my life, wishing and desiring for things to be different, I had to come to terms with my loss. I knew that letting go of my desires and wishes of things to be different than they are was the first step to liberation of this world of suffering, which was exactly what I wanted to do. I cooked the Guntuk, with one dumpling with nothing inside because I felt like finally I knew who I was and wanted to do with my life, and went over to my neighbor Becky’s house to ask for a cup of her famous Chang. Chang is an intoxicating liquor made from fine aged barely of our own town and Becky hand picks the best dried batches of barely and ferments it to perfection.
I took home a cup of Chang after I joined Becky and his family for a cup in their home. They have been great neighbors, dear friends of mine and welcomed me into their family as I had no family of my own this relationship has been precious to me it will be very hard to leave. Sitting in the middle of my now empty house with a bowl of Guntuk, a cup of strong Chang and burning juniper branches in a bowl taking in all the memories I had in this house. This year its a new year new me.
