Today we had a day off of class for the Dragon Boat Festival. To my disappointment, there are no Dragon Boat Races or any other real events to see for the festival in Beijing. It is a time where the Chinese people all go back home and visit with their families. According to the Chinese students, it is a good time to bring a new boyfriend or girlfriend home to meet your parents! :)
Since we had no family to visit, we went to the Lama Temple this morning.
People come to the temple with large packs of incense. They light the incense in a large burning pot. Then they offer their prayers like these women are doing. They finish their prayer by kneeling on the pad you see on the ground, and then place the incense in another area to burn all the way down. This symbolizes their prayers being sent up to the Gods. It was beautiful to see all of the people kneeling and praying, the smoke of the incense swirling about their heads, I couldn't help but wonderful what prayers people were offering up into those circles of smoke.
You were not allowed to take pictures in the worship areas with the different Buddhas. One Buddha was several stories high and made out of gold. He was quite impressive.
This is a prayer wheel. You spin the wheel and rub your hand along the characters and offer up your prayer. Here is my irony for the day, I wanted Catherine to take a picture of me with the wheel, but guess who forgot to pray? Yup, yours truly. I felt like a shmuck about that. "Yeah, get my picture with the prayer wheel. Let's get an action shot....you got it? Oh good!" Whoops! Forgot to pray...total vanity I'm telling you! It is embarrassing.
I am amazed by all of the different ways to pray, incense, prayer beads, food offerings to the Buddhas. It is really a beautiful thing, to travel across the world and witness another form of worship. I kept thinking of our trip with Kai, and how the monks at the temple we visited held a special blessing ceremony for the parents and children. We were allowed to take photographs of it as well, which is not normal. I couldn't help but think of that and indeed feel very blessed today, three years later.
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