Closing The Door To Hell

The Very Sight of the Six Bone Ornaments, Gifted to the Naropa, a Scholar/saint, Is Said to Confer Blessings So Great That the Doors to the Three Lower Realms – Animal, Hungry Ghost, and Hell – Are Closed. What Else Lies in Store at the Naropa Festival, Which Is Held in His Memory?

- Preeti Verma Lal

It was in a stark cold desert named Leh that I first heard of dakinis, the mythical creatures who carry the human soul into the sky. That is not their only job, though. They are also the spiritual muse, the guardians of the inner mysteries of the Self. I do not know what the dakinis look like. Perhaps pretty. Perhaps beatific. Sitting on a red carpet in the shadow of the 17th-century Hemis Monastery, I was listening to stories about them. Of how, about a thousand years ago, the dakinis gifted Six Bone Ornaments to an Indian scholar/saint called Naropa on the day he attained enlightenment.

The Naropa (1016–1100), who became the Chancellor of Nalanda University but later left the materialistic world and his family for the path of enlightenment. At the age of 40, he met his guru, Tilopa, and attained enlightenment 12 years later. His teachings of the Six Yogas of Naropa are considered to be one of the fundamental pillars of the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition.

It was for the five-day Naropa Festival that I had flown in to Leh. At 11,652 feet above sea level, my lungs should have been gasping for an ounce of extra oxygen. Instead, caught in the milling crowd of monks and nuns, the curious and the onlooker, my soul was packing piety. This was not the biggest of the Naropa Festivals, often called the ‘Kumbh of the Himalayas’. Held every 12 years, the festival is the largest Buddhist congregation in the Himalayas. This September, it broke from the 12-year routine to host a festival two years after the big Naropa.