Tibetan Buddhist Monks' North American tour bringing cultural pageant to Glencairn Museum

Buddhist monks from the Drepung Gomang monastery in South India will share their rituals and pageantry in a Tibetan Cultural Pageant, Dec. 2 at Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn.

Featuring costumed dances, traditional prayer chants and music, the pageant will be held at 8 p.m. in Glencairn’s Great Hall. The presentation by the Monks, whose mission on their North American tour is to “share the compassion and wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism,” features the harmonic overtone chanting of traditional prayers to the accompaniment of such temple instruments as horns, flutes, bells and drums. Delicate hand gestures accompany mystical rituals and multiphonic singing in which each monk chants a chord of three notes. The pageant also includes dances, with rich costuming including masked animals. Together with the narration accompanying each piece and monastic debate, the pageant provides a glimpse into ancient and current Tibetan culture.

The Drepung Gomang Monastery was established in India more than 30 years ago after the 1959 invasion of Tibet by communist China forced some 5,500 monks studying at Drepung Gomang University– founded in 1416 AD near the capital of Lhasa - to flee. Only about 100 of them were able to follow His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, into exile in India where their goal was to preserve and maintain cultural identity and religion. Ten years later, 60 monks reestablished the monastery in a Tibetan settlement on land donated by the Indian government. Today, nearly 1,500 monks study at the monastery which draws about 150 new students each year.

The tour, according to the “Friends of Drepung Gomang,” based in Glenside, generates funds to insure the survival of a “culture in exile,” and to house, feed and educate anyone wishing to study at the Drepung Gomang Monastery. That includes, the group says, orphans and refugees – some as young as six – who have fled Chinese-occupied Tibet. The Monastery, the group says, provides refugees the opportunity to freely study their own language, culture and religion.

Study, however, is rigorous. Six days a week for more than 46 weeks a year, students memorize texts for an hour and debate for two hours each morning. After lunch, they spend three hours in the classroom and another two hours in debate. Debate practice continues after dinner, sometimes stretching into the morning. To earn a “geshe” degree – the equivalent of a Ph.D. in philosophy – monks spend more than 20 years studying Pramana, Madyamika, Abhidarma and related subjects before sitting for the Gelukpa Board Examination.

Admission to the Tibetan cultural pageant is $8, $4 for students and museum members; children 5 and under are free. Glencairn, a museum of religious history housed in a 10-story Romanesque-style mansion, is located at 1001 Cathedral Road in Bryn Athyn. Information: 215- 938-2600 or www.glencairnmuseum.org.

Contacts:

Media information: Rebecca Felten
215-672-3152

Glencairn: Reuben Bell Events & Public Relations
215-914-2984

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