Ladakh - Gompas and Festivals (New)



Cham Dancers at the Hemis Guru Setchu

Ladakh is the only Tibetan Buddhist area which did not come under Chinese rule. Because of the vegaries of the Empire of the British-Raj in the 19th century, it has remained in India.

Despite its Buddhist population it is officially part of the Indian province of Jammu and (Moslem) Kashmir. Since the 13th century it was neither under the control of the Eastern Tibetan government in Sakya or later Lhasa. Yet the first (9th cent) and second (11th cent) Buddhification of eastern Tibet passed along the caravan routes of Ladakh and left its exquisite traces in Alchi and elsewhere.

A certain distrust against Lhasa's rule still exists among the Buddhist religious establishments in Ladakh, which are primarily of the reformed Kargu persuasion. Only the populariity of the present Dalai Lama has welded the monastic factions to a common Tibetan cause.

As a result many of the old Tibetan religious practices are alive in Ladakh. This is especially true of the religious festivals. In former times the gompas and the festivals were supported by the local communities and the royal house in Leh. Both are impoverished. Luckily, western interest in Buddhism has sent an increasing number of tourists to Ladakh. They effectively saved the gompas and their festivals from financial doom ! For this reason most gompas have now moved their festivals from the holy first Tibetan month into the summer.

Zanskar, separated by dry and wild mountain ranges from India and Ladakh, is even more isolated and old-fashioned than the Upper Indus Valley. Before the road from Kargil to Padum was built, the main access was along the frozen Zanskar river in Winter. Today this is still one of the most daring and dangerous adventure trips in the Himalyan. Definitely not recommended .

This is a very good roundup of info about Ladakh & Zanskar.

My only quibble has to do with the statements linking "caravan routes" and "silk route" to the early temples and gompas in this region.

Surely, to give a rounded impression of this part of the world, sPiti's great gompas and temples such as Tabo and Kyi must be included. These structures date back to the era when Guge included sPiti, much of Kinnaur, and Zanskar.

While Chinese references to the silk route date back some 2 millenia -- according to references to Yarkend I've just been reading -- surely that silk route ran through Xinjiang, considerably to the north of Guge. While my memory is a little hazy, I'm under the impression that Lotsawa Rincchen Zangpo made three trips from Tsaparang to Srinigar for his Buddhist studies. The best route for this would have been through sPiti, over the Kunzum-la, along the Chandra to the confluence with the Bhaga, and then along the Chenab which, when it came out of the mountains, would have left him very close to Srinagar. (I find it interesting to note that by the thirteenth century there were fine temples along this stretch of river, namely the Mirkula at Udaipur, nearby Triloknath, and on the Bhaga side of the confluence, Gungrang and Gandhola.

What was the nature of the trade between Tsaparang and Srinagar? I'm curious.

Question: If you've seen the early gompas in Zanskar (I haven't), what was your impression of them? Is the art Kashmiri, or Tibetan? If Kashmiri, then Tsaparang's influence can be deduced. Something else: A French friend, Patrick Kaplanian, who spent a month trekking through Zanskar in 1976, told me when we met in Keylong after this trek that one of the Zanskari gompas was founded by Naropa -- which would date the structure to around 900 CE. Unfortunately, another good friend, the excellent scholar Glenn Mullin, who knows all of the knowledgeable lamas, isn't easily reachable because he's living in Mongolia, so I can't ask him.

Since Rincchen Zangpo and Atisha created the Kadampa Order, I would expect these earliest gompas to be (or originally to have been) Kadampa. I'm under the impression that the Drukpa Kagyu only became active in the Western Himalaya in the seventeenth century (Tatstang Repa & Hemie, for example) so I wouldn't expect the Drukpa structures in Zanskar to date back a thousand years -- unless they were originally something else, and then taken over by the Drukpa.

Oh well, lots of questions, few answers...

Adrian

Hi,

I read with interest the topics about Buddhism in Ladakh.

My great-aunt was a missionnary in Yunnan which has nothing to do with this area but is also the same trend of overseas Americans out doing their good in the world.

I work on dictionnaries compiled by missionnaries when I translate Tibetan.

I know the lama of Matho well being of the same school as him : Ngor since the last thirty plus years.

I thought that the people writing here might be interested in getting more information about this little-known school among the four main Tibetan sects.

My master is not actually that lama (he who is Luding) but the other head of the school that is still alive.

Ngor is a very interesting subject and I see by the posts that little is known or spoken about it although it was much greater than the Kagyus or Nyingmas in Tibet and only is rivalled by the Gelugs there and in the world.

The Tibetan sources also seem to me, if I may say so, to be more appropriate to track Tibetan history i.e. Buton.

Thanks for your nice posts and hope to hear from you 'all.

Geir (Gerhardt) Smith, Normandy, France.

I'm not familiar with Ngor. But if it's a Sakya offshoot, I would expect the Sakya pontiff, Sakya Trizin, to have helpful info. Your lama from Matho should know where he's currently located -- at the Sakya Centre in Dehra Dun, perhaps.

Salutations, Adrian

Hello both Adrian and Rolf,

Very happy to get your feedback on my post.

Yes, well about the Ngorpa school, you must look at the history of this phenomena.

The Tibetan poltical sphere exploded upon the invasion and some of the bits of it landed in Ladakh with the Luding master ending up there.

Luding Rinpoche, (Eminence) spent the mainstay of his years up in Matho and then headed down towards Dehra Dun (as you say Adrian...Luding couldn't stay up in Ladakh, in the boon-docks and it was arranged by his family links to Sakya Trizin to move on down to the Dehra Dun area, closer to the main streams.) in a place called Manduwala, but there's much more to say and the main part of it is still to say.

Apart from that, if you look at the mountains presence of this school, the main Ngorpa implantation is in Mustang about a thousand miles east of Ladakh where not only there is a strong presence with the founder Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo having made three prophetical trips in history, but also where it is the majority.

Sakya and Ngor are different and info about Ngor is not easy to get from Sakya. As Rolf says Kham is strong for Buddhist practise and it was so before too. Ngor is exclusively out in Kham while Sakya is a mere single temple, and that in the Centre in Tsang province, and then again under aristocratic influence - something Khampas abhor above all; so asking about Ngor to Sakya will not be relevant or beneficial and will all be lies. Aristocratic rambling and Khampa straightforwardness are two opposite extremes.

Thus also diferences between Houses of Ngor that are noble-dominated in the cases of Luding, Tartse etc....and not so in the cases of Phend� etc... makes a world of a difference because in one case one is in royal or noble casings, while elsewhere one is in frank, open-talking plainspeak. I'm not in royal, noble bent-speak.

Would you like some information about Ngor because this just here in the present subject deals with the Himalayas now and not about a. Ngor in Tibet, and b. Ngor in exile beyond the borders, in Europe and the US with its great major masters and the holders thus of its destiny and future ?

The stop-over of the Ngor school, with the episode up at Matho Gompa is just an epiphenomena, one must know this.
There is much else going on and great political maneuvers dealing with not only the Heads of Sakya, the heads close to the Yuan Mongol khans in China the Emperors of China, but also with Chinas present heads of state in Beijing that still consider the Sakyas (and Ngor first of all being 85% of Sakyas school) to be the second sect after the Gelugpas in Tibet. Sakya in Tibet is still the most important site after the Gelug sites of Tibet.

The presence of Luding at Matho must not be seen as a separate event, but in its real context of the political role of Tibet as the main outer correspondant of China in the world.

Tibet must always been seen as the twin-sister of China. Or else one misunderstands China and its world- role in the future.


Thank you for your interest Rolf and Adrian, as indeed, you may imagine how rare it is to find people that have this interest.

There is much to tell about Ngor and its implantation in Europe, apart from Luding. Ngor was constituted of four Houses of lamas i.e. Phende, of which I belong to, Tartse, Luding and Kansar.

The history of the regrouping of the heritage around Sakya Trizin in Dehra Dun in the early years around '65, and then the flowing out into the modern world is the theme for a great book to be written !!!

Especially for someone like me who has been a disciple of this school since 1970. This is also a historical duty towards the future. This story is still untold.

With hearty greetings. Julay ! from Geir.

NB. I have been studying the historical discrepancies of Tibetan chronologies for over twenty years and this is my main subject.

The mass of contraditions in the traditions and lineages of Tibet and particularly that of Kalachakra is what I have mostly concentrated on, so this is the area where I can be of most use to you both. G.

Hello again,

Now I've just given the general context of what I wanted to reply to your posts now but will give more particular facts here :

Rolf, you say " I have been in Sakya and in Shalu, and a friend is engaged in restoring the Sakya gompas in Lo Mantang. The great mandalas in those three places are particularly close to me."

I'm very happy to hear you interest yourself with the Ngor-Sakya tradition and Shalu among others is Butons base you know !

If you want more information about Buton and his falsified Tibetan and Buddhist history, (the later historians that followed in his footsteps were finally banned and their traditons razed by the Fifth Dalai lama, you know.) please let me know so we can exchange our information.

I'm from San Diego from my fathers side. I see you're posting from California. Is that Southern California ?

I've sent you my adress per mail. It's geir.smith@yahoo.fr


Kind regards. Geir.

Hello Geir & Rolf

A few recollections: In '72 I met Sakya Trizin in Delhi & then visited him in Dehra Dun with some friends. He suggested we go to Lumbini and request a particular wang from Chobgye Rinpoche, his initiation guru. When we got there in January '73, we found him in the middle of constructing a new gompa. The King of Mustang (Chobgye's nephew) was there with his Queen. The Queen attended the wang, making us dharma brother & sister! The King had brought royal gifts, including lots of dried cheese. I found out that he played the gyaling (monastic shawm) very well, something I hadn't expected. My memories of Lumbini are sitting in meditation on the steps of the white temple facing Asoka's pillar, horrendous diarrhoea, the two-day wang, and the kusa-grass-prompted third dream on the night between these two days.

Adrian

Finally I got around to completely renew this old post - one of my favorites. I replaced photos and added some new ones, changed the locations of place markers and paths to reflect the higher resolution of GE and updated the text.

In the interest of reducing the clutter on the GE map, it would be nice, if the old place markers could be deleted. Noisette, could you see to that?

Hopefully this work gives pleasure to viewers of GE.

Rolf November 2009
(RWFG)