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)
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