Today, March 5th, 2011, exiled Tibetans living in India’s Dharamsala began a 3-day celebration of their New Year—a holiday they call ‘Losar’. It’s their biggest holiday. Welcome to the year 2138!
Today also marked the first time since leaving Korea that I was awoken by an alarm clock. In the cold, predawn darkness, I recalled dismally the robotic pattern of so-called ‘real life’, namely that work-a-day trance of inflexible schedules that will consume my life again after this vacation.
So…why does today mark the beginning of the year 2138? Actually, it is also the year 1757 and the year 985, since Tibetan calendars have three different beginnings.
According to the most popular system of notation (called ‘Bot Gyalo’), the first year of their calendar coincides with the ruling of the first king of Tibet, Nyatri Tsenpo, (in the year 127 BC by the Gregorian calendar), who ruled 2138 years ago.
Under the inky blackness of a moonless sky and directed by only a flashlight’s narrow beam I ascended a long crumbling set of concrete and muddied stairs, alongside which the hissing of exposed plumbing was like an angry snake. But not until reaching the road above did I actually become nervous. Usually teeming with people and vehicles, now it was eerily silent, empty and dead dark except for shifty shadows in the alleyways that were nothing but stray dogs without rabies, I told myself. It was a long 10 minute walk to Tsuglagkhang (pronounced 'Tsuglagkhang'), the town’s main temple belonging to 14th Dalai Lama where festivities were to be held early today. I kept wondering why the streets were so empty.
Upon reaching the temple gates, I felt safe and stupid. Stupid because I was an hour and a half early with nothing to eat and no caffeine inside me. I calculated how many more minutes of sleep I could have claimed. Futile, I know.
By around 6:30AM, a sun without warmth was finally creeping over the eastern Himalayan foothills, casting long shadows in this concrete temple which, for the most part, lacked walls. People began trickling in, many ritualistically circumambulating the temple clockwise, spinning prayer wheels and humming mantras. Since it is part of Tibetan tradition to receive a new piece of clothing for the New Year (called a ‘chuba’), the Tibetan people were beautifully dressed in their new gifts, often silk dresses of exquisite design and rich color. I, in my broken shoes and muddied pants and Caucasian skin, felt out of place—a feeling that I barely notice anymore.
But nothing about anything was particularly photo-worthy. Dutifully, I worried about the publication I was to do for Rogpa, a charitable organization that wanted from me a Losar story with photos for their Korean newsletter. I found myself propping my camera against the cloudy windows of a walled off little room where countless butter candles were being lit. It was this or the people walking in circles…
Then something occurred to me. That I’m a Canadian, in India, writing for a Korean publication, about Tibetans celebrating their New Year, is a fact that testifies to how small the global village is becoming. The temporal bewilderment of it all must speak to something else; it is simultaneously the years 2138, 1757, 985, and 2011,plus I was celebrating the third New Year this year—one during each month of 2011, so far. The first on January 1st, the second during February in Korea (Korea has its own New Year), and now Losar, in March. If I go north to Nepal, I can celebrate their new year too, in April. Space and time: they just ain’t what they used to be. . .
It wasn’t until 7 AM that something happened. Ceremonial horns emanated deeply from upstairs where few were allowed entrance to the hour-long consultation with the Nechung oracle as well as offerings to and invocation of the protector goddess of Tibet, Palden Lhamo, by the monks of the Namgyal monastery. The ceremonial horns didn’t seem to be attempting music, exactly; rather, they were punctuating the prayers—a blow of a horn stood in for a comma here, a paragraph break there. The low, drawn-out honks sounded like heavy furniture being moved. I wasn’t allowed up to watch.
By the time this finished, the crowds were thick and those that were ritually circling the temple often became stuck in pedestrian jams. Most others got seated around the main altar room where decorated monks of the Namgyal monestary chanted prayers for a long, auspicious life of the Dalai Lama. Unbelievably deep and baritone, the monks chanted in a way that reverberated at the depths of my bowels like the growl of a Harley Davidson or the colon-rattling protests at poorly digested chili. A clash of cymbals and a short blow on a conch shell could be heard between each short prayer—more audible punctuation. The cymbals sounded like an exclamation point and I bemused myself by wondering how they would make a question mark sound? 
Following the chants, two of the highest ranking monks of the Geluk monastery debated Tibetan Buddhist philosophy with one another while another monk distributed rice into the open hands of the hungry crowd. Since they debated in Tibetan, I understood nothing. I wondered how many Tibetans could really understood… … Tibetan Buddhism can be abstract, subtle and dry (and wrong, in my opinion).
A ritual dance of good wishes was then staged by four colorfully dressed young men with swords. This dance, called ‘gar’, is performed only on Losar.
After this, the two scholarly monks debated once more, an act which closed the prayer ceremony. I went home, ate chocolate pancakes, drank hot chai tea, and slept. Best part of my day, it was.
Interesting Factoids about the Tibetan Culture and Losar:
- Tibetans use a lunisolar calendar. This means that the duration of each month is calculated by the position of the moon, making them shorter than solar months. A 12 month year, then, is only 354~355 days. Consequently, an extra month is added every few years to compensate for the shorter years. The year that just ended consisted of 13 months.
- Oracles and predictions are important to both Buddhists and the government, in Tibet, and a consultation with the Nechung oracle is an annual tradition. This is also reflected, to a lesser extent ceremonially, by Tibetan folk tradition. Every Losar, it is custom to eat a dumpling with a secret ingredient inside, which is supposed to light-heartedly comment on the year ahead. To find a chilly in one’s dumpling signifies that the eater has a hot temper and a sharp tongue. Butter represents a soft heart, while coal represents a black heart. Anything white represents purity, etc. This is usually a source of amusement and even playful teasing.
- Tibetans celebrate not only the beginning of a new year, but also the end of the old year. One way they do this is by a ritual called 'zor tarma', carried out during the days before Losar. For this folk rite, a sacrificial cake is made with kneaded dough, sometimes containing bits of clothing from the family's wardrobe. The cake is then burnt as an offering to the spirits at some secluded place. Sometimes the cake is blasted with fireworks, which, in Dharamsala, could be heard exploding like bombs and echoing thunderously off the snow-capped Dhauladhar mountains. Cleansing then done, they don't look back as they return home--thereby banishing yesteryear's misfortunes and ill-karma.
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