2024 Road Scholar VI: Lhasa Barkhor Bazaar and Sera Monastery (10/9/2024)

Wednesday, October 9, 2024 (continued)

Before Jokhang Temple, we were dropped off
by this lamp post, in order to walk through a
local section of the Bharkor Bazaar, the
commercial district around the temple

Clothing store

Metalware

Yak butter, which seems to mostly to be used as donations
in temples to fuel the many yak butter lamps

Bakery

Produce

Butcher with yak meat; only male animals are killed
for the meat as the females provide so much more;
in Tibet, yak is the male and dri is the female

Dried yak meat/jerky

Snack shop; we do not know what the
horned containers contain (top left)

Personal prayer wheels use the dangling weight
to rotate the wheel clockwise

Embroidered boots

Prayer flags are mostly bundled up; they are
printed with auspicious symbols, prayers,
invocations, and mantras, and are also called
"Wind Horses" that spread goodwill to all beings

Our next unexpected stop was Sera Monastery (est 1419
by Sakya Yeshe, a disciple of Tsongkhapa who founded the
Gelug order/school of Tibetan Buddhism); note the statue
of the Four Harmonious Friends: the story follows:

The Four Harmonious Friends is a Buddhist tale of friendship and respect where a bird or pheasant, a rabbit, a monkey and an elephant declared that although they had a harmonious friendship, it was sad that the young showed no respect for the old. In one version to show who was eldest, the elephant claimed to eat the top branches of a mature tree, while the monkey said he climbed the tree when it began to have branches. The rabbit claimed to eat from the sprout of the tree when it was young, and the bird said he dropped the seed that became the tree. To show respect. each allowed the older to stand on his back.

Another version illustrates how the animals helped each other to eat from the tree as it grew.

Pat P liked to insert himself into the photos of others

Sera Monastery once had five colleges and 6,000 monks,
but are now down to three colleges and a few hundred monks;
here in the debating courtyard the older monks throw
questions with a gesture and a clap at the sitting monks;
in this way they are tested on what they have learned

A questioner is pointing and about to slap/clap his hand

Tsogchen/Main Assembly Hall (1710, restored); after the
1959 revolt, the monastery was subject to bombardment
and lost many important manuscripts and books,
as well as other artifacts, and tragically, monks

Buddhist Wheel of Life, a visual
representation of the Buddhist belief in the
cycle of life, death, and rebirth

In the center are a pig, a rooster, and a snake, representing the three poisons and causes of suffering, being ignorance, greed, and hatred. The circle that is half white and half black shows virtuous and non-virtuous actions that represent karma. The main circle illustrates the six realms into which one can be reincarnated: at the top are the deva/gods, to their left are the asura/demi-gods, and to the right are manusa/humans. Continuing clockwise from the humans are the tiryak/animals, the naraka/deizens of hell, and the preta/hungry ghosts.

The outer circle has 12 allegorical representations of conditions that are interdependent and linked as a chain. Basically, these conditions are 1) ignorance, 2) volitional actions and thoughts, 3) consciousness through interaction of the senses, 4) combination of thoughts and senses, body and mind,, 5) the sense organs, 6) contact where the senses and consciousness result in perceptions, 7) feelings, 8) cravings, 9) clinging or attachment to material things, 10) actions driven by craving and clinging result in becoming, 11) birth or rebirth, 12) aging and death. The only condition that is not interdependent is nirvana, which is not seen in the above photo in the top left corner.

The wheel is held by Yama, the god of death, who symbolizes impermanence.

Virūpākṣa, Guardian King of the west;
here he holds a serpent and a stupa (KSS)

Dhṛtarāṣṭra, Guardian King of the east
playing a pipa instrument

Veranda of the main assembly hall

No photography allowed inside, which had wall-length thangkas/paintings on cloth, and the throne of the 13th Dalai Lama.

Broom made with twiggy branches

Local guide Yudon with a Buddhist nun
who is twirling her prayer wheel
and holding her prayer beads

Back at the hotel we had a presentation by a thangka
painter, interpreted by Yudon

Thangka (painting on cloth) of a
Mantra Mandala, with the words of
the mantra (a word or sound repeated to
aid concentration in meditation)
written clockwise in a circle

Sakyamuni or Present Buddha with
Boddhisattvas and Arhats

The thangka is first sketched according
to some specific measurements,
then meticulously painted

Samvara

Is this one of the AI anchors on Chinese television? (KSS)