Mata Tirtha Aaunshi /Mother's Day

Modern Day Mother's day gift

Mata Tirtha falls on the last day of the dark fortnight of April and is also the first festival of Nepali New Year. This year it is on the 16th of April (3rd of Baisakh-2075). 

I attended a week-long puja (ritual) called "Srimad Bhagwat Devi Saptaha" at Chundevi, my birth town, it was already the second last day for puja and fortunately, I made on time for the antim adhyaya  (concluding chapter) of the Devi Bhagwat. The Guru (Priest) read the antim adhyaya in sanskrit first and then translated the whole story in Nepali, Matara devo bhava  (Mother is God). According to him or the purana (Hindu religious texts) the roll is Matara devo Bhava, Guru devo bhava and Pitara Devo Bhava; (Mother is a god, Teacher is god and Father is god), and that is how the celebration of Mother, Guru and Father chronologically falls on Nepali Calendar. Purana says, children can be bad children, they can hurt their mother, but a mother is never a bad mother because she can never hurt her children back, hence, New Year starts with the celebration of Mother or motherhood in everyone's life. And every Nepalese must ‘look upon mother’s face’ as a formal duty, when affection and respect are displayed. Children give gifts to their mother, make mother's favorite food, bring her favourite fruits etc.

My mother's day celebration starts as early as two weeks before the actual date. We siblings take her shopping, she picks up clothes of her choice. She has sweet teeth and a huge love for whiskey, so liquor and sweetmeats are must gifts, besides regular delicacies. This time I made her pasta, my brother bought her 1 kg of India Sweets and my sister cooked her and oven roasted chicken. The "Ama ko mukh herne" ritual started late in the evening to schedule the timing with our youngest sibling living in UK. He hooted through Viber, as our mother sat in front of the huge delicacies table set in front of her wearing the new kurtha surwal of her choice. We fed her each delicacy one by one, taking turns. Nothing new happened this year, it's the same routine every year, only the timings vary.

For those whose mother dead considers it their sacred duty to make a pilgrimage to Mata Tirtha, mata meaning ‘mother’, tirtha a sacred site usually of pilgrimage and holy bathing. Mata Tirtha, six miles south-west of central Kathmandu, just off the Thankot road, actually has two ponds or pools, the larger for bathing, and small just up the hill, famous as the place where one ‘look upon one’s mother’s face’.

Note Nepalese whose mother are still living do not wash hair on this day, or it may bring bad luck on one’s mother.

Legend says that when the ancient cowherd kings ruled this region one of the cowherds became deeply depressed by the death of his mother. On Mother’s Day he went into the forest to pray at the edge of this water-storage pond. As he offered gifts, his mother’s beloved face miraculously appeared in the water and her hand accepted the food. Now it is called Mata Tirtha, where many hope to see the mother’s face in the water. It is said, however, that long ago a certain girl, when she beheld her mother’s image jumped into the pond to join her and disappeared in its depths. Since that event it is a matter of doubt that one will see the mother’s countenance, but worship performed and gifts left in her memory will bring peace to her departed soul.

Some families come from distant places, often walking many days to spend the night lighting wicks, singing and praying for the mother’s soul, performing sraddha, intricate prayer and offering ceremonies for the dead. Many arrive in the dark of early morning the bathe ‘while stars are still seen in the heaven’. By daybreak the worshippers form an endless stream of humanity bathing in the larger pond, stooping to murmur prayers before climbing stones steps to Mother’s kunda or sacred pond, which is fed by springs channeled down from the hilltop. On the way they stop to pray to Mahadev, Lord Shiva portrayed as a usual phallic stone lingam, leaving bits of food ginger coins.

Now they crowd around the mother’s pond, tossing in rice, sweetmeats, fruits, coins and red powder, bowing to prayer over the water for a moment and to leave small clay dishes of lighted oil wicks in her memory. All circumambulate the sacred tank, a display of adoration which Nepalese perform at all their idols and holy places, they leave gifts of near-by-idols of naraya and Buddha, and present coins and gifts to waiting priests who ask the mother’s name. Many believe their gifts will reach the dead mother, confident that her soul ‘knows’ her offspring have come to honour her memory.

They say that one day a child of the merchant class was so desolate over the loss of his mother that he cried out loud to Lord Vishnu, beseeching him for the sight of his mother’s face, without which he felt he could no longer live. Vishnu appeared before the distraught child disguised as a Brahman Priest, and on Mother’s Day led him by the hand to Mata Tirtha for holy bathing. When the mother’s face shone forth in the sacred waters the boy pleaded, ‘Oh Brahman, by your kindness I have seen my mother. Allow me to take her home.’ Vishnu assured him that he was asking the impossible, but promised that in his next incarnation he would again have the same mother. He assured the boy that by his pious performance of holy bathing and by offering gifts in his mother’s name, her soul was now at peace. Then the boy experienced a great sense of tranquility as he felt the warmth of his mother’s blessing, a boon so long-lasting that he eventually became and emperor.

Excerpt from:

The festivals of Nepal

Mary M. Anderson

Happy Mother's day to everyone

Mani Rimdu at Chiwong Monastery

Mani Rimdu is a 19-day sequence of sacred ceremonies and empowerments culminating in a public festival lasting for three days. It is an opportunity for Sherpa and Tibetans Buddhist to gather an­­­­­d celebrate together with the monastic community. Mani Rimdu takes place from the first day of the tenth month of the Tibetan lunar calendar, falling between mid-October and mid-November. It lasts until the nineteenth day of the month. From the beginning until the end of the festival, 24-hour pujas (rituals) are performed by the monks to consecrate the Mandala, the Mani Rilwu Pills (sacred pills), the Tshereel (pills for long life) and the Torma.

Amplified by the clear mountain air, the moon is full, the fall harvest gathered, and people are at ease. Some have walked two to three days to come to the social- three days event of the year at Chiwong Monastery. The Chiwong Monastery is perched in a cliff, at an altitude of 9,000 feet - a 3-hour walk from the Phaplu airport, in the Solu Khumbu district of eastern Nepal.

Solu, or Sho Rung as the Sherpas know it, extends from Jiri to Dudh Kosi River in the east. The climate is temperate, forests and pasturelands are well watered, the farmlands cultivated with maize, wheat, barley and apples. Buddhist lamas, monks and nuns led by Rinpoches (reincarnate lamas) serve the predominantly Sherpa communities from gompas (monasteries). Solu has two separate destinations, Pikey and the Dudhkunda Cultural Trail. While it is also a path to the high country of Khumbu, Solu invites a leisurely pace. Spring rhododendron and magnolia blooms are more profuse here than almost anywhere in Nepal.

Built in 1935 by legendry Sange Lama of Phaplu, the Chiwong Gompa is one of three monasteries in Solu Khumbu to play host to the Mani Rimdu festival. Mountains slope sheer to eighteen thousand feet and their hips and groins are clothed with fine tall trees. All the time there is the great roaring river, lurching and bulging dangerously. Dudh Kunda (Milky lake), a newly discovered trekking area below Number Himal witnesses the enchanting festival with panoramic view of Mount Everest range.

Mani Rimdu tells a story in dance. Supposedly the dancers reenact the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet. It is a re-creation of legendary events; the establishment of Buddhism in Tibet by the great saint Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava). Through the dances, symbolic demons are conquered, dispelled, or converted to Dharma Protectors, as positive forces clash with those of chaos. The dances convey Buddhist teaching on many levels from the simplest to the most profound. Yet hidden within this drama of cultural history, say many Sherpas, is the story of an individual's awakening. At its heart is a mystery play in which every event corresponds to a different aspect of an individual's spiritual awakening as he moves beyond greed, anger, and negligence to illumination.

Mani Rimdu at Chiwong is presided over by a remarkable man called Tulshig Rimpoche, a tulku  (reincarnate Tibetan lama or teacher) who fled the Chinese occupation of his country during the 1950's and settled just over the Nepalese border among the Sherpas. Over the years, he first founded and then built up Thupten Choling Gompa at the head of the valley, it is now the largest Tibetan Buddhist institution in the region with over a thousand monks and nuns. But Tulshig Rimpoche (in Tibetan, tul: illusion, shig: kill, rimpoche: precious one - hence Precious Destroyer of Illusion) invariably travels once a year to the much smaller, much older monastery of Chiwong to conduct the Mani Rimdu ritual, of whose complexities he is an acknowledged master. He does this out of gratitude, because it was the monks of Chiwong who sheltered him when he first arrived in Sherpa country as a fugitive.

The 200 year old monastery precinct stands on the brink of a thousand foot drop, packed with expectant people, farmers and their families, russet-clad monks and nuns of all ages, hawkers of jewellery, shoes, nuts, and scarves. All the festival attendees wear their finest traditional clothing and exquisite jewellery of amber and coral. In the dim light, a rare moment of quite begins as every one awaits the appearance of the star dancer to signify the firm establishment of he Buddha's teaching.

The monks who perform the dances, first take vows at an empowerment ceremony with Tulshig Rinpoche. During the dances they become deities, rather than ordinary people. Because the dances are regarded as sacred, they can only be performed in the context of Mani Rimdu, and not for ordinary entertainment. Tulshig Rinpoche explains, “seeing Mani Rimdu is like receiving a blessing”.

The first step in awakening is the transformation of perception. At the beginning of the play, an alter is built, where the objects of sensory perception are sacrificed. As if one purchases wisdom by spending the sense, one offers sound in the form of cymbals, taste in the form of dough cakes, smell in the form of burning juniper, touch in the form of silks, sight in the form of a mirror, and the mind in the form of a book. Freed from these patterns of material associations, one can perceive symbolic patterns.

From inside the deity house of the monastery a group of Lamas emerge. They come to transform the indigenous beliefs of the people.

According to Tibetan histories, Buddhism came to that country in the first half of the seventh century A.D. The king at that time, Song-tsen Gam-po, had married both a Nepalese princess and a Chinese princess. He was attracted not only to these women, but also to the Buddhist practice they brought from their native countries. The Tibetans see him as a great civilizing figure who built their country's first Buddhist temples. Tibetan chronicles describe the period before his reign as dark and barbarous, and the arrival of Buddhist culture as light dispelling the darkness.

The decorative fire that tips the hats of the dancers' costumes represent this light, not material combustion. Buddhism conquered Tibet by uplifting, not by destroying.

Although the drama admits of an historical exposition, it reflects an inner process. When greed, anger, or ignorance controls action, one's vision becomes clouded. When these three emotions, represented by the three skulls on the dancers' hats, pass away, vision becomes clear. Thus the fire suggests a process of illumination.

When he officiates at the fire ceremony, Tulshig Rimpoche assumes the role of one who sacrifices without desire for repayment. The Fire Puja is an offering to Agni (the god of fire), and to the Gods of the mandala - to allay all harm in the world. The harm is visualized as dissolving into the grain and butter is burned. Dressed as such a Bodhisattva figure, he wears a crown decorated with painted images of Buddhas representing five categories of wisdom, the Jinas. To the sound of prayers being chanted, the concluding act involves the burning of rolls of parchment on which the ritual prayers are written. Any evil forces operating in the Valley that have escaped earlier exorcism should now have been thrown out. The end of the Mani Rimdu signifies the end of all evil. For another year, goodness and peace will reign over the region of the Sherpa people.

Location: Solu Khumbu

Getting There: Flights from Kathmandu to the Phaplu airport

                      : 8 Hourse bus ride from Jiri 

(source: Lord of Dance)