Tibetan New Year nears bearing a sweet dish (wn.com)
It's the year of the Iron Hare
Tibetan exile Lhendup G. Bhutia
INDIA - As children the Tibetan New Year Losar began not at the stroke of midnight or dawn. It began somewhere in between. In new clothes and shoes, my sister and I, carrying chima (a mound of barley offered to people on the occasion) and changu (beer brewed from millet), went from house to house in our little town of Kalimpong (Darjeeling) rousing people from their sleep and wishing them a prosperous new year.
No one minded. It was Losar after all. In return, we were given money to celebrate. And celebrations carried on for 15 days.
Bombay's Tibetan community wishes "blessings and good luck" as Losar arrives
Strictly speaking, the joys of Losar did not even begin on the first day. It began two days before with what Tibetans call Nishugu (29th of the 12th month in the Tibetan calendar). That night, Tibetans eat guthuk, a kind of noodle with broth. It is mixed with dough balls that resemble a peja (Tibetan book), or contain cotton, charcoal pieces, chili, and so on, each one foretelling what the following year would be like for the diner. More>>
(Chinahighlights.com) Losar is the most important Buddhist festival celebrated by Tibetans.
The Story of Losar
The word of Losar, Tibetan for New Year, is composed of two characters, LO and Sar. Lo means year, and sar means new. The celebration of Losar can be traced back to Tibet's pre-Buddhist past. At that time, Tibetans were followers of the Bon religion and held a spiritual ceremony every winter. During the ceremony, people burned a large quantity of incense to appease the local spirits, deities, and protectors. Later, this religious festival developed into an annual Buddhist festival, solar, in the reign of Pude Gungyal, the ninth King of Tibet. More>>
The word of Losar, Tibetan for New Year, is composed of two characters, LO and Sar. Lo means year, and sar means new. The celebration of Losar can be traced back to Tibet's pre-Buddhist past. At that time, Tibetans were followers of the Bon religion and held a spiritual ceremony every winter. During the ceremony, people burned a large quantity of incense to appease the local spirits, deities, and protectors. Later, this religious festival developed into an annual Buddhist festival, solar, in the reign of Pude Gungyal, the ninth King of Tibet. More>>
BOSTON - Losar, the Tibetan New Year, begins with a spoonful of dessert. Dresyl, also known as deysee, is a warm dish of sweetened rice that women make for their families on the morning of this festive day. “In Tibet, we would add droma, which tastes like a chewy sweet potato. But here raisins work as a good substitute,’’ says Yeshi Lokyitsang, owner of the House of Tibet Kitchen. She pulls out a Ziploc stash of the miniature root vegetable with traces of Tibetan soil still sticking to it.
Shambhala, the wildly popular if slightly cultish organization founded by controversial guru Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (a modern Milarepa-character whose riches and influential Western followers like Pema Chodron have forced Shambhala's acceptance into mainstream Vajrayana culture in the Tibetan diaspora) celebrates its own day in honor of the Tibetan New Year.
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