Hello…  :)

It has been an extraordinary few days here in Boudhanath and I am going to try to convey some sense of this in pictures and words over the next few day’s to week’s posts and pages.

This past week, from the 19th – 22nd of November ’08, we have seen the 4 day celebration of the Enthronement of Tulku Urgyen Yangsi Rinpoche.  The actual Enthronement ceremony was on the first morning, followed by a day and a half of continous offerings and other events at the White Monastery in Boudha, Ka Nying Shedrub Ling, which is the major seat of his lineage.  Then on the third day, Rinpoche travelled to Swayambunath, another major monastery in the area.  On the fourth day, the celebration travelled 2500 metres up into the mountains at the north of the Kathmandu valley, to Nagi Gompa, a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery, which is also under his care.

Tulku Urgyen Yangsi is 7 years old at the moment.  He is the fully recognised re-incarnation of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, who built the monastery where I am studying, and in fact the other places in the valley that I have mentioned above as well.  And this was his first return to his monasteries since his previous incarnation passed away in February 1996.

As such, it was an event of HUGE proportions for the existing masters of the lineage, Rinpoche’s students and the general Buddhist population here in the Kathmandu Valley, where Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche was well loved and greatly respected.  In fact people travelled from all over the world and from all over the valley to be there.  It was an extraordinary mixture of high ceremony, symbolism and a festival, blended with the strong faith and devotion of ordinary people.  Either way it was all celebration; a once in a lifetime moment, attended by (I think) 15 high Buddhist masters or Rinpoches, and by thousands of ordinary people who queued for hours in the sun to watch the video screens or to make offerings.

As for me, although I am billed by those nice STA Explorer people as ‘The Budding Buddhist in Nepal’, I have until now somewhat resisted going on about the inner aspect of what is happening out here in my own life.  It doesn’t seem my place, as a beginner in Tibetan Buddhism, to try to convey the sheer profundity of these teachings, some of which are millennia old.  Teachings in fact that a Khenpo (teacher-monk) will train for 13 years plus to be qualified to pass on to others.  However, the power of events in the past few days is inescapable and I have to say that I feel myself to be a different person from the one who wrote the last blog here on wordpress about the Himalayan Mountains.  Although I couldn’t articulate how… :)

This is going to take quite some time to settle in as an experience for me, but suffice to say that I am more convinced than ever that this is absolutely the right place for me to be and the right time for me to be here.  And I consider myself VERY lucky to have been here for this event.  :)

OK.  Enough ‘waffle’.  Above are some pictures from the day before yesterday’s events at Nagi Gompa, which mainly feature the crowd, as the Gompa was far too small for everyone to be inside (me included.   In fact, you can see pictures of people peering through the windows to see what is happening inside).

For more information and a growing archive of pictures taken by professional photographers over the past few days see:  www.shedrub.org  and follow the link on the right of the page.

Namaste… & Lots of love… :)

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