Dead Man's Puja

Since the old lama has died, the monastery has been flooded with visiting monks and Tibetan families. Each person who visits seems to haul with them up the hill about two tons of food as offerings to the monks, and the gods. Well yesterday (Friday) there was a big puja for the dead lama. The monks invited me to come and watch, and I readily accepted the invitation. A puja is when all the monks sit in the bit decorated room, and they recite Tibetan chants, and every now and then blow horns, conch shells, and bang gongs. It is all quite wonderful, I love the sounds of puja. All the visiting monks came to the special puja as well. Well they all chanted and blew the horns and banged the gongs for about two hours and I observed from the side. Much of the food brought up by the visitors was distributed to all the monks at the dead lama’s puja, and I was given just as much food. I was watching my younger students distribute it to everyone, and thought that there must have been just about enough apples, bananas, cashews, peanuts, dried fruits, candy, chocolates, puffed rice, biscuits, instant noodles, crackers, and other treats to feed the entire Nepalese army for about 7 or 8 months. My younger students who were at puja, kept cracking up with embarrassment everytime they looked back at me. The whole puja was very nice and now I am stocked with a year’s supply of instant noodles and coconut biscuits.