Big <i>kora</i> in Dharamsala

Kora means 'circumambulation' in the Tibetan language. Kora is one of the main practices in Tibetan Buddhism performed daily by many. The ritual is performed by going around a place considered sacred or holy. It might be a small chorten (stupa) in the fields near to a village, a bigger stupa containing important Buddhist relics (like Sanchi Stupa, Bodnath Stupa in Kathmandu or Stupa in Sarnath), Mount Kailash in Tibet, Potala Palace in Lhasa or - finally - the Dalai Lama's house in exile in McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala, India.

There is the big kora and small kora in McLeod Ganj. If you go for a small one, you just go around temples at Namgyal Monastery (Tsuglagkhang and Kalachakra Temples) - so called Dalai Lama's Temple. If you go for the big kora, it means you walk around the hill with the Dalai Lama's residence atop. It is a beautiful 20-40 minutes walk across a kind of park or a forest with hundreds of prayer flags and dozens of prayer wheels. There always are some practitioners doing kora too.

There is a statue on the way. It used to be one man's statue in 2004 when I was there for the first time. His name was Thubten Ngodub. In 1998 he set himself on fire in Delhi protesting the police trying to stop the Tibetan hunger strike against Chinese rule in Tibet. He died a few days later in the hospital.

There is another man's statue on the monument today too. A 27 years old Jamphel Yeshi self-immolated on 26th March 2012 in central Delhi to protest the Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to India.

There is also a board which you pass on the way doing the big Kora. There are 120 portraits of mainly young Tibetans who self-immolated in the protest in recent years. In the few recent years this desperate protests intensified and they still go on!

It's quite impossible to fully comprehend or imagine the level of despair of the people protesting in this way. Easy to imagine there are tragic reasons behind that.

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I can't forget one of my clients who was with me on a trip to India. We started in Delhi, went to Amritsar and then arrived at McLeod Ganj. That was autumn of 2012, the self-immolation protests going on for a few months already. There was a striking banner with portraits of self-immolated martyrs. We were standing in front of it and I was saying some basics about the recent history of Tibet and the ongoing protests. And then one lady from my group commented saying something like: "If someone is insane then does things like that".

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There is another story too. It was a freezing evening in Warsaw of winter 2012/2013. Tibetns living in Poland organized a protest to commemorate the self-immolated Tibetans near to Kolumna Zygmunta in central Warsaw. Khalsang - one of the Tibetans - had a speech and I was handing out leaflets prepared by the Tibetans. One of the passers-by asked me what was that.
- "Information about current events in Tibet" - I said.
- "And what happens there?" - she asked.
- "People are being murdered there," - I answered.
- "Our people?" - she asked making me puzzled.
- "Tibetans," - I said and added something like: - "Tibetans are being oppressed and murdered by the authorities there."
- "OK then," - she said something like that handing me the leaflet back. - "Then I'm not interested. Cause, you know," - she added - "our people, the Catholics, they are being killed everywhere..."
That day the protesters marched to the Chinese Embassy in Warsaw. They set coffin-like boxes with images of the martyrs in front of the Embassy building and lit candles.

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Tibetans say you should say or think "may all sentient beings be happy, may all sentient beings avoid suffering". And many Tibetans and other Buddhist practitioners do so while performing kora.

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Radek Kucharski - Travel Photoblog

sobota, 6 grudnia 2014

Big kora in Dharamsala

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