Experiencing the Pilgrimage

June 4, 2012

This morning we had a unique opportunity. Tibetan Buddhists are celebrating the Full Moon Holiday today which means that Tibetans come from far and wide as pilgrims. They come to do the Kora which involves walking a large loop around the Potala Palace. The Kora around the palace can take two or three hours, and many pilgrims will do the Kora more than once.

As we drive to the point of the Kora at which we are to join in, we see thousands of Buddhist pilgrims already walking the route. The streets have been cordoned off to control the flow of the crowds.

The Kora is always walked in the clockwise direction...the same direction in which prayer wheels are spun. We are dropped off and we join in with the crush of pilgrims. The section of the route we are taking winds through the edge of the Potala Palace grounds. At times, thousands of people are shuffling forward, through very narrow passages and along narrow trails carved into the cliff side...we stay close together so we don't get separated in the crush...

All along the way there are places where pilgrims have placed offerings, or have drawn images of the gods or Buddha...pilgrims all around us are mumbling their prayers, they are spinning their prayer wheels, they are fingering their prayer beads...and the air is thick with the pungent smoke of the Juniper incense...

The first significant stop on our pilgrimage is this large monument...it started as a stack of flat stone tablets with scripture passages engraved on them that pilgrims purchased and then left in a stack on this small hill. What once was a growing stack of tablets has been turned into this yellow pyramidal monument. At the base of the monument is a long row of prayer wheels that we walk along and give each prayer wheel a spin.

This an example of another kind of offering...these cakes are made from barley, sugar and yak butter, then iced with colored yak butter...similar to the cakes we saw the monks making the day before...

As we descend from the large monument, we come upon a very small courtyard or square that is packed with pilgrims and alive with the sights, sounds, smells and activity of this pilgrimage. There is a large incense burner fully stoked with Juniper and producing dense, sweet smelling smoke. On one side of the square there is a wall painted with a large religious image, and on the ground in front of the wall are rows of pilgrims prostrating themselves. On the opposite side of the square were a few small vendor stalls selling predominantly religious items, and there was even a prayer wheel repair shop!

A short walk farther and we leave our new found pilgrim friends behind to complete the rest of their kora, and we board our bus for the Norbulingka or Summer Palace of the Dalai Lamas. In our next post, we'll describe our visit to the Summer Palace and the grand-daddy of them all, the Potala Palace.