The festive days of Mani rimdu celebrate the completion of ten days of prayers for the benefit of all beings

The story and purpose of Mani rimdu
The Mani purpose of Mani rimdu is the prayers which worship phakpa Chenrezig the god of compassion his blessing brings peace and good fortune to everyone during mani rimdu we invoke phakpa blessing on the rilbu the long –life –pills and perform the dances which showing former times worship this deity .

Mani rimdu is a fairly recent tradition in khumbu for the opening ceremony of the tengbuche Zatul ngawang tensing Norbu of rongbuk came to consecrate the monastery and the monks performed the dances here to the first time then since that event mani rimdu continues at the same time of year it used to be in the tenth month but that was very cold for spectators and because of bad weather difficult for preparations

Now mani rimdu is held in the ninth month unless a double month shifts it to the ninth.Each sect and monastery have their own style of dancing the dances at tengbuche came from rongbuk before the Chinese came these particular dances were done at rongbuk and started at tengbuche later the lama at chiwong gompa in solu started mani rimdu there when thame became established as a celibate monastery they started performing mani rimdu there also it is held in the ninth month at tengbuche, tenth month at chiwong and fourth month at thame .there is no other identical mani rimdu anywhere else in Tibet.

The Cham Masked Dance
On the sixteenth day are the dances that worship phakpa chenrezing each dance relates to a pujah done during the previous days. The dance come from when guru rinpoche blessed samye the first monastery in Tibet he pretended to be his favorite god by imitating its body and danced the blessing .since then some lamas think they will see these dances in dewachen. Cham means sacred dance.

There are many gods in Tibet who use to wear these costumes. The black hats were the costumes of the phembu gods. Then it became the dress of original ngapas married lamas when they did the thu-duph a powerful pujah .later it became the dancing dress of monks and ngagpas. Rol-cham is the grand entrance of the monks wearing yellow hats and playing pujah instruments. Serkyem is the first dance with dancers wearing costumes and black hats.This dance invokes tse- gyepa (improving one's life, longevity appearance health and intelligence) whang (providing spiritual power) and thub (the ability to fight bad spirits). The black hats represent ngagpa or vajrayana priests capable of using spiritual power .ging-cham are dance by four attendants of dorji trollo. Two females carry nga (drums) and two males carry buk-chal (cymbals). They make offerings of tsog to dorjie trollo.Guru Dorje trollo is a single masked dancer representing one of the fierce forms of guru rinpoche's. He is preceded by monks playing instruments. nga-cham originated as guru rinpoche's dance when he blessed samye gompa. the six dancers wear golden hats with peacock feathers and carry drums in the past Tibetan officials wore the golden hat durdag-cham is a complicated dance with two skeletons and two black-hats dancers. the skeletons carry a dough figure, representing evil,on a rope between them. it is symbolically destroyed by black-hat dancers.

Mi tsering ,the long life man ,is a comic interlude. here is many more gods of name: maha-kal dance,Zurra-rakye dance,thog-den makes dance,ti-jumis dance this makes the country peaceful and in the future will help everyone

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