Drukpa Buddhists Rejoice in the Colourful Annual Hemis Festival

Drukpa Buddhists Rejoice in the Colourful Annual Hemis Festival

NEW DELHI, June 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --



Travellers From Across the Globe Spellbound by the Himalayan Celebration



The two-day annual Hemis Festival by the Drukpa Buddhists was celebrated at the Hemis
Monastery in Leh, with a roaring attendance of more than 75,000 guests from all over the
world and blessed by Ladakh's spiritual head, His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa. Celebrated
on the 10th and 11th day of the 5th lunar month, the Hemis Festival marks the birth
anniversary of Guru Padmasambhava or Guru Rinpoche, the 8th century Indian guru revered
for spreading Tantrayana Buddhism throughout the entire Himalayas.



(Logo:
http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120723/543830)




The courtyard of Hemis Monastery, the biggest Buddhist monastery in Ladakh, is the
permanent venue for the celebrations.



Drukpa Buddhists celebrated the legendary Hemis Festival with great enthusiasm. The
festival duration is marked as a local public holiday, and involves the entire city.
Locals dressed up in their finest traditional garb for the occasion and thronged the
festival venue.



People from a cross section of societies and countries jostled with each other to
watch monks perform splendid masked dances and sacred plays called 'Cham' to the
accompaniment of cymbals, drums and long horns. Sacred plays accompanied by cymbals, long
horns and drums were also performed. This series of mask dances, performed by the monks,
demonstrated good prevailing over evil. The monks put on elaborate and colourful costumes
and brightly painted masks, the most vital part of the dance. The dance movements are
slow, and the expressions grotesque. Healing scent of herbal incense filled the
atmosphere.



On the first day of the Hemis Festival, the first dance was setting limit or 13 black
hat dancers, followed by 16 dancers wearing copper gilded masks. Then there was the eight
different forms of Padmasambhava followed by Guru Padma Vajra.



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



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



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, born in 1016.
"Druk" in means "Dragon" and it also refers to the sound of thunder. In 1206, the first
Gyalwang Drukpa 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.



Primary Media Contact: Shreeya Roy, Communications@drukpa.com, 91-9350335761






Photo:
http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120723/543830


Photo:http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120723/543830
http://photoarchive.ap.org/
Drukpa Lineage

CONTACT: PRN


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