His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaking to the crowd gathered at the Main Tibetan Temple in Dharamsala, HP, India to celebrate the Day of Miracles on March 18, 2022. Photo by Ven Tenzin Jamphel
March 18, 2022. Thekchen Chöling, Dharamsala, HP, India – This morning, on the fifteenth day of the new Water-Tiger Year, His Holiness the Dalai Lama came to the Tsuglagkhang, the Main Tibetan Temple, to celebrate the Day of Miracles that commemorates an episode in the life of the Buddha. Because of the intervening Covid-19 pandemic this was the first time he has appeared in public since leaving Bodhgaya in January 2020. He walked from the gate of his residence through the temple garden smiling broadly and waving to the excited crowd, young and old.
Today’s event was part of the Great Prayer Festival established by Jé Tsongkhapa at the Jokhang in Lhasa in 1409, the observation of which continues to the present. Each day of the festival was divided into four sessions: an early morning prayer, a teaching session, a noon prayer, and an afternoon prayer. Throughout the days of the festival, the teaching session was dedicated to reading from Aryashura’s Garland of Birth Stories (Jatakamala), a fourth-century poetic retelling of thirty-four of the most famous of the Buddha’s former lives. On the fifteenth day of the festival, a full-moon day, Tsongkhapa also performed a large public ceremony for the generation of bodhichitta, the aspiration to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. Read the rest of this entry »