Monlam Chenmo

The story behind the day

Monlam Chenmo, the Great Prayer Festival, is the season of massed prayer that follows Losar in the first Tibetan month. Lama Tsongkhapa founded it in Lhasa in 1409, although one reference work gives 1408. It was set at fifteen days and closes on the full-moon Day of Miracles, Chotrul Duchen. Butter sculptures and masked dances belong to it. The Lhasa festival was observed until 1959, and in exile it has continued on a smaller scale.^[1–5]

Origins

The festival's calendar recalls a story from the Buddha's life. Tibetan tradition holds that at Śrāvastī the Buddha answered the challenge of six rival teachers by working miracles, and the fifteenth day of the month, the full moon, remembers that day. Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug school, gave the gathering its form as a New Year festival of offerings to the gathered clergy and to the Jowo, Tibet's most famous Buddha statue.^[7–8]

How it came to be

In Lhasa the festival became the stage for the monastic world's greatest public tests. The Geshe Lharampa, the highest doctorate in Buddhist philosophy, was examined during it for monks of the great Gelug monasteries of Sera, Drepung and Ganden, and the 14th Dalai Lama sat his own final examination at the Jokhang during Monlam in 1959. The Lhasa festival was observed until that year; in exile it has continued on a smaller scale. Accounts differ on how the days are counted: Himalayan Art Resources places the start on day three or four of the new year, while the Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices gives day four and a length of twenty days. The New Year festival and the prayer festival, meanwhile, have run into each other since Tsongkhapa's time.^{[5–6, 9–10]}

How it is kept

Ganden monks debating, Jokhang crowdsIllustration · AI-generated

Monks make torma offerings out of flour and butter and shape butter sculptures of Buddhas, deities and animals, which are displayed in the main temple. Masked cham dances, usually performed by monks, are often part of New Year and the Monlam festival, and are performed for the benefit of the whole community.^[4]

Across traditions

Monlam is not only a Gelug rite. The Kagyu school holds its own Kagyu Monlam each year in Bodh Gayā, the place of the Buddha's awakening, a gathering for aspiration prayers led by a Karmapa.^[11]

Sources

Each statement above was checked against published sources; the verdict says whether it stood as written, was corrected or was hedged.