Mask Dance and Hemis Monastery

Have you ever seen a real Buddhist Mask Dance? I guess you haven’t because they are practiced very rarely and even more seldom for tourists. We were among the lucky ones to be part of the Chhams/Mask Dance that took place during the Ladakh Festival. We left the hotel at 10am to get sitting places in the courtyard of the Ladakh Buddhist Association.

The Tung players

Before the real event started, there were Tung players (Tung is a horn similar to the alphorn) who called everyone to come. A woman told the audience in English that the monks that were going to perform the dance came from another monastery and that the Festival was very thankful that they had agreed join the event.

The program included several different dance sequences. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand much of their meaning although our guide did his best to explain. There was one dance where four masked monks represented the protection gods which you can find at the entry of every monastery. Another dancer cut something, I think it was tsampa, to symbolize the destroying of bad energy.

An interesting fact for everyone who likes to clap their hands: It is not common to applaud after Buddhist performances. Although the speaker said that after the first applause, some people didn’t get it and clapped their hands every time...

I filmed some parts of the dance, maybe I can upload it.

In our lunch break we went to a restaurant called Penguin where I had my first Momos. Momo is a traditional Tibetan dish that is similar to German Teigtaschen or Austrian Schlutzkrapfen or Kärntner Kasnudeln. It was really good.

From the office of our travel agency, we started our jeep journey to Hemis. It was quite a long drive and I got really hot because the sun was beaming right through the window. We passed some villages and monasteries which we will visit later.

Hemis is known as the richest monastery in Ladakh. This is because it was built hidden in a valley and therefore has never been found by invaders. In addition, lots of land belongs to Hemis and the farmers who grow crops there give a part of their harvest back to the monastery.

The monks in Hemis belong to the Red Head School, which is one of the most popular schools in Buddhism.

Our guide explained a lot about the philosophy of Buddhism and I tried to keep as much as possible by taking notes but still it is difficult to understand. I’ll tell you some of the things he told us about the wheel of life. This painting can be found at the entrance to every prayer hall. Maybe you have seen it before.

The wheel of life in Hemis

The parts of the wheel represent the following (starting from above, going clockwise): the world of gods, the world of humans, the ghost world, hell, the animal world and the world of demigods. The upper three are the happy part while the lower three stand for suffering and problems.
In the middle you can see a snake, a hen and a pig. Those are symbols for the three poisons: the snake is anger, hatred and ill-will, the pig is desire, and the pig ignorance and delusion. If one overcomes those poisons, they can be enlightened and go to paradise which is called nirvana.

We had a look at the statues in the prayer room and at the most famous statue of Hemis: the Guru Rinpoche or Padmasambhava. He was a Lama who was invited to bring Buddhism to Tibet and who is said to have had supernatural powers.

After visiting the museum of Hemis where they show some of their valuable objects like old statues, paintings or prayer rolls, we walked down the valley and were picked up by the jeeps again. Before we left, some of us had a small snack. I wanted to offer a snack to another group member when an old man came over and wanted one too. I would have given him one of the two in my hand but he just took both and left! Never mind, I had a third one and he was quite happy with his. :)

The trip back was interesting because our guide explained a bit as we passed by some sights. For example we drove past the Dalai Lama’s residence in Ladakh.

So tomorrow we are leaving Leh and I guess that I won’t have any Internet connection until we come back in four days.

4. September 2011