Hemis Festival Celebrated by Drukpa Buddhists with Much Fanfare

Hemis Festival Celebrated by Drukpa Buddhists with Much Fanfare

LEH, India, June 29, 2012/PRNewswire/ --

Tourists from across the globe gather to witness this mesmerising festivity



The 2-day annual celebration by the Drukpa Buddhists - the Hemis festival began today
at the Hemis Monastery, Ladakh with much fanfare. The festival was blessed by the
spiritual head, His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, and was attended by over 25000 guests
from across the world. The courtyard of Hemis Gompa-the biggest Buddhist monastery in
Ladakh is the permanent venue for the famous festival which commemorates the birth
anniversary of Guru Padmasambhava, the 8th century Indian guru revered for spreading
Tantrayana Buddhism throughout the entire Himalayas.



(Logo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20111228/503947 )




Drukpa Buddhists celebrate the legendary Hemis Festival with great enthusiasm
annually. The colourful two-day pageant falls on the 10th day (Tse-Chu) of the Tibetan
lunar month. The festival duration is marked as a local holiday, and involves the entire
city. Locals dress up in their finest traditional garb for the occasion and throng the
festival venue.



On the first day, People from a cross section of societies and countries jostled with
each other to watch Lamas called 'chhams' perform splendid masked dances and sacred plays
to the accompaniment of cymbals, drums and long horns. Sacred plays accompanied by
cymbals, long horns and drums were also performed. The highlight of the Hemis Festival is
the Masked Dance, performed by the monks, demonstrating good prevailing over evil. The
performers wear elaborate and colourful costumes and brightly painted masks. These masks
are the most vital part of the dance. The dance movements are slow, and the expressions
grotesque. The music is characteristically punctuated with sounds of cymbals, drums, and
unwieldy trumpets. The monks with trumpets, Rgyaling i.e. pipe drums, cymbals, rounded
shaped bells enthralled the gathering. The entire festival arena smelled heavenly because
of incense sticks and other sweet smelling herbs. The first dance was setting limit or 13
black hat dancers, followed by sixteen dancers wearing copper gilded masks. Then there was
the eight different forms of Padmasambhava followed by Guru Padma Vadjra .



Some of the pictures for the same may be accessed at



https://www.yousendit.com/download/QlVqbUpmcGtUME5vZE1UQw



On the second day, the monks will continue their traditional performances on various
instruments, put on exhibition the thanka-painting of silk patwork of great Gyelsey
Rimpoche. The monks afterwards assembled in hall & started the worship of Maharaja Pehara,
a protector of Buddhist teaching. At 11 am the eleven Acharyas came out in the retinue of
Maharaja Pehara.



About Drukpa Buddhists



The Drukpa Buddhists follow the Mahayana Buddhist tradition in philosophy, i.e. the
philosophy of "getting enlightened for the benefit of others" and the methods are based on
the Tantrayana teachings passed down from the great Indian saint Naropa, who was born in
1016 in West Bengal royal family. "Druk" in Tibetan means "Dragon" and it also refers to
the sound of thunder. In 1206, more than 800 years ago, the first Gyalwang Drukpa Tsangpa
Gyare Yeshe Dorje saw nine dragons fly up into the sky from the ground of Namdruk, and he
named his lineage "Drukpa" or "lineage of the Dragons" after this auspicious event.



For more details, please visit: http://www.drukpa.org or
http://www.drukpa-hemis.org




For further press information please contact:
Shreeya Roy
Communications @ Drukpa communications@drukpa.com
Mob: +91-9350335761.





Photo:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20111228/503947

Source: Drukpa Lineage




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