Padmasambhava at Hemis

Padmasambhava at Hemis

The monastery of the Dragon, and the birth of a tantra

Hemis Monastery lies in the valley of the Bsti Lung — "the valley of the dragon" — below the Hemis La pass in Ladakh. It is among the oldest, largest, and wealthiest monasteries of Ladakh, and it holds a library of manuscripts that is a treasure of the Tibetan world. It belongs to the Drukpa Kagyu lineage, and the foundation of the present monastery is conventionally dated to the seventeenth century, with a recorded restoration in the early twentieth under the Ladakhi and Dogra state. The specific year given for the founding in earlier versions of this entry is a traditional or documentary date that has not been verified here; the monastery had earlier establishments, and the "founder" and the "restorer" of the seventeenth-century foundation are themselves part of the monastery's own record.

The monastery is dedicated in part to Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche), the eighth-century tantric master whose activity in the Himalaya is the founding narrative of Tibetan Buddhism's Vajrayana. Ladakh's relation to his memory is a wide, layered thing rather than a single cult: he is not the "founder of Tibetan Buddhism" in a straightforward sense — the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet preceded him by centuries, and the Nyingma tradition holds him as its great master rather than as the founder of Buddhism in Tibet. The tradition holds that he came to Ladakh at several points, and the geography of his supposed travels is a large part of Ladakh's sacred map.

The Hemis Tse-chu, the annual festival, is the principal celebration of Padmasambhava's birth. Its most famous feature is the cham — the ritual masked dance of the Drukpa Kagyu monastic dance tradition, in which monks in silk masks and brocade costumes enact the subjugation of harmful forces. The cham is not a show: it is a ritual performance tied to the Kagyu lineage's transmission, and its repertoire and its lineage of performers are the substance of the tradition. The "2-day" and day-counts and the characterisation of the dances in earlier drafts should be given from the monastery's own calendar. Once in twelve years, a very large thangka of Guru Rinpoche is unfurled; this is a rare and much-anticipated event, and the interval and the last date should be given from the monastery's own record.

A note on lineage classification. The earlier version of this entry listed the tradition as "Drukpa Kagyu, Nyingma." Hemis is a Drukpa Kagyu foundation, and that is what the monastery's lineage is. Padmasambhava is revered across all Tibetan Buddhist schools, but the tshe-chu at Hemis is a Kagyu festival. The entry should not present a Kagyu monastery as a Nyingma one.

Sources and what is still unverified

This entry is grounded in the standard scholarship on Tibetan Buddhism and the Drukpa Kagyu lineage, in the monastery's own published record, and in the Leh district gazetteer. A human guardian from a Ladakhi or Drukpa Kagyu source should supply and check: the monastery's own account of its foundation and restoration; the lineage of the cham performers; the tshe-chu calendar; and the date of the last thangka unfurling. The dating in earlier drafts is flagged above. The Tibetan and the local Ladakhi calendar positions should be given from the monastery's record rather than approximated. The audio placeholder, where present, is machine-generated and is not a faithful recitation.