Asian Adventure: Cathay Pacific B777-300ER Business Class San Francisco to Hong Kong
Asian Adventure: Cathay Pacific Lounge Review: The Cabin at HKG
Asian Adventure: Cathay Dragon A330-300 Business Class Hong Kong to Beijing
Asian Adventure: Regent Beijing Hotel
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Dongcheng District
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Great Wall
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Run-ze Jade Garden
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Sacred Way of the Ming Tombs
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Legend of Kung Fu
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Tiananmen Square
Asian Adventure: Beijing - The Forbidden City
Asian Adventure: Beijing - Hutong Tour via Rickshaw, Tea Tasting, Flying to Xi’an
Asian Adventure: Hotel Shangri-La Xi’an
Asian Adventure: Xi’an - Qing Dynasty Terra Cotta Warriors
Asian Adventure: Xi’an - Tang Dynasty Dinner and Show
Asian Adventure: Xi’an Wrap-Up, Flying to Lhasa, Lhasa Home Visit
Asian Adventure: Shangri-La Hotel Lhasa
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Jokhang Temple and Barkhor Market
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Canggu Nunnery and Sera Monastery
Asian Adventure: Lhasa - Potala Palace
Asian Adventure: Leaving Lhasa and Flying to Chongqing
Asian Adventure: Viking Emerald
Asian Adventure: Shibaozhai Temple
Asian Adventure: Cruising the Three Gorges
Asian Adventure: Three Gorges Dam
Asian Adventure: Jingzhou City Walls Tour
Asian Adventure: Wuhan - Hubei Bells Performance and Provincial Museum
Asian Adventure: Shanghai - Shanghai Museum
Asian Adventure: Fairmont Peace Hotel, Shanghai
Asian Adventure: Shanghai - Old Shanghai and Yuyan Gardens
Asian Adventure: The New Otani Tokyo Hotel
Asian Adventure: Tokyo - City Tour
Asian Adventure: Mt. Fuji and Hakone Tour Returning by Shinkansen
Asian Adventure: ANA Suites Lounge Review, Tokyo Narita
Asian Adventure: All Nippon Airways B777-300ER First Class Tokyo Narita to Houston
Our tour includes a stop at the Tibetan Museum but it was closed for renovation so we made a brief stop at the Canggu Nunnery, which was tucked away in a quiet corner of the Barkhor Market. My knowledge of nuns is limited to those of the Catholic faith and while there may well be similarities, the differences in appearance were noticeable right away. While we don't see as many nuns in the "penguin" habits these days in the US, they often have their heads covered and are dressed in a business suit of sorts. Buddhist nuns shave their heads and their habits are very similar to the monks. It's such a different look that when we first encountered this nun washing a pot outside the nunnery, we didn't realize it was a woman we were seeing.
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| A nun washing a pot |
Canggu Nunnery
We waited in the courtyard for our full group to assemble and as I looked up at the balconies of the nunnery's second floor I realized they reminded me of the second floor of the private home we'd toured the day we arrived in Lhasa. Red, yellow and blue dominated the color scheme once again.
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| Colorful balcony at the nunnery |
The nuns were just about to start some sort of prayer or meditation service so we had to walk through the nunnery fairly quickly. They were all gathered in the center of the room in neat rows, speaking softly though I'm not sure if they were praying or what. Our group walked around the edges with all of us taking photos as we went. Now that I think about it I find it odd that we were asked not to take photos of the worshipers outside the temple, to respect their privacy, but I don't recall being asked not to take photos of the nuns. It never occurred to me not to take photos of the nuns though perhaps I was just so accustomed to taking photos of everything else that I just kept clicking away.
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| Note the old photo of the Dalai Lama at right |
As we were leaving we passed by the kitchen where one nun was working on lunch for the others.
Had this room been in a private home, I'd have described it as a den or family room.
After walking back through the courtyard we found more prayer wheels waiting.
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| Prayer wheels at the nunnery |
We went back to the hotel for a little while and some folks were having issues with the altitude and opted to skip the afternoon's tour. The rest of us got back on the bus to visit the Sera Monastery.
Sera Monastery
The bus took us to the closest parking lot and from there we began our walk up to the monastery grounds. Though it was only a slight incline to reach the gates, it felt like a more difficult climb thanks to the altitude. Like other doorways we'd seen the monastery's outer gates were decorated in red, yellow and blue.
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| Sera Monastery Entrance |
Our local guide, Pen, was talking to us as we walked and when we asked where we were going he pointed to this building high up on the mountain and indicated that was our destination. We were very relieved to learn he was joking. The Sera Chöding Hermitage was built not long before the Cultural Revolution of 1959. It's a retreat house built for a famous teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, Je Tsongkhapa, who lived in the late-14th, early-15th centuries. Once upon a time the only way to reach was to climb up from this angle but today a road on the other side winds its way to the hermitage.
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| Sera Chöding Hermitage |
A wide path leads up past some shops into the monastery proper and divides the buildings into two main sections: the Great Assembly Hall and dwellings on one side and the three colleges on the other side. We mostly stayed on the path with a couple of stops to look at various rooms where photos were not allowed unless you wanted to pay extra. We noticed the building exteriors had a common theme: highly decorated doors, white-washed buildings and lots of prayer wheels.
The monastery has been around since 1419 but when the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959, it was bombarded and hundreds of the over 5000 monks who lived here were killed. Many of the survivors followed the Dalai Lama to India where they were able to start new monasteries on land provided by the government. Today there are about 300 monks in Lhasa.
Unlike going to seminary for a few years, becoming a Buddhist monk is a process that takes about 20 years. Integral to that process is debate and the monastery actually has a debating courtyard. The monks pair up with a more experienced ("teacher", if you will) monk and a less experienced ("student") monk. The teacher, who stands, presents a case on a Buddhist topic and the student, seated, must answer within a specified amount of time. Based on the student's answers the teacher will use various hand motions to indicate how good the response is. We often saw the teacher raise his hand up by his head then slam it down into the palm of his opposite hand. I don't know what that meant, whether it was bad or good, but it was really interesting to see dozens of pairs of monks all doing this in the same place at the same time.
"Sera" means "wild roses" and it supposed that those once grew in this area. But today, except for the trees, there didn't seem to be much growing. The debates were interesting and this was quite an experience.
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| An entire area devoted to the prayer wheels |
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