Spiritual India & Pilgrimages > Buddhist Circuits - by S. Chatterjee

Most Important Buddhist Festival- Buddh Purnima

One of Buddhism’s holiest sites is Bodhgaya in Bihar, where Buddha gained enlightenment, but India’s Buddhist temples are mostly found on the slopes of the Himalayas, in Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh and Zanskar and Sikkim.
The trans Himalayan tracts of Spiti, Lahaul and Ladakh have been surrounded by the air of a grand mystic aura for centuries. In this area, veiled in geographical isolation and mystery, lie wonders that are unfathomable even today.

In the insurmountable heights of Spiti, lies the Buddhist gompa, monastery of Tabo, established in 996 AD. It was the Tibetan year of the Fire Ape and the founder was the great teacher Rinchensang Po, also known as Mahaguru Ratnabhadra. Tabo is often called 'The Ajanta of the Himalayas'. It is the most important, oldest living monastic complex outside Tibet and has a symmetrical mandala concept.

Changspa, an outlying village of Leh, has important Buddhist carvings from the 8th and the 9th century, when Ladakh was converted to Buddhism.Lamayuru gompa lies 15 km east of the Fatu La on the Srinagar–Leh highway, with its medieval village seemingly growing out of the rocky hillside below it. In the past, Lamayuru has housed upto 400 lamas, but now there are about 30 to 50 lamas living here. Other lamas stay and teach at Lamayuru’s smaller daughter gompas located in the outlying villages. Twice a year all the lamas gather at the gompa for general prayers, which are accompanied by three days of masked dancing. These gatherings occur in the second and fifth months of the Tibetian calendar (usually March and July). Belonging to the red–hat sect of Buddhism, Lamayaru was built in the 10th century by the king of Ladakh. In the 16th century, the Ladakhi king was cured of leprosy by a lama from Tibet. In gratitude, the king gave Lamayuru gompa to this lama and the area surrounding the gompa was declared a sanctuary where none could be arrested.

The Stok gompa is a subsidiary of the Spitok gompa and was found by Nawang Lotus during the reign of king Takpa Bumlde. It belongs to the yellow-hat sect of Budhism and has about 20 lamas. The oldest part of the gompa is about 550 years old. This is where the king of Ladakh died in 1974.

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