The Saga Dawa Festival in 2013 starts from May 10 and will last to early June, 2013. It is the most solemn annual religious festival for Tibetan religious believers. Now, Tibetans are celebrating Saga Dawa Festival in May, 2013.
The "Sagya Dawa Festival" usually lasts for one month from every April 1 to 30 on the Tibetan calendar. During the festival, the Tibetan religious believers from different parts of Tibet give alms to the poor, do good things for others and other religious activities.
Give Alms
In the noon, streams of pilgrims will gradually disappear. On the footway on south side of Lingkhor Road, west side of Potala Palace, there is a row of old man and women and some young men and women with sick face sitting on road. Giving alms is an important content of Saga Dawa Festival. People think that Buddha can find which men of wealth have the will of taking across sentient beings universally and accumulating merits through alms giving and make fair judgment and sanction about them.
Sermon
During Saga Dawa Festival, there is a special Buddhist tent for holding religious activity. It is a splendid and bright large tent. It is as large as a volleyball court. It can contain several hundred persons at the same time. In Saga Dawa Festival, this tent is the place to do sermon.
Weisang
The high platform for Weisang (burning incense) is covered by dark smoke, and the burning cypress branches crackle. People will take out tsmaba from their pocket and throw on the burning cypress braches. Then, they will take out one or two branches of cypress and add to the burning cypress braches. At the same time, they will pray loudly. After that, they will kowtow on a holy rock. As time goes by, it shows believers' gratefulness to Buddha.
Buddhists believe that the karmic merit of prayer and good deeds is multiplied during Saga Dawa. Pilgrims from all over Asia will journey to holy sites in Tibet this May, where they will perform rites such as prostration, circumambulation of holy sites and stupas, abstaining from eating meat, giving alms to the poor, and praying and spinning prayer wheels.
As the holiest temple in Lhasa, Jokhang temple is the center of Saga Dawa religious activity. If you make a Saga Dawa Festival tour, you will see over thousand pilgrims in front of Jokhang Temple every day. Many visitors will also venture to Drepung Monastery, located a few kilometers outside the city at the foot of Mt. Gephel. Pilgrims climb the mountain to burn juniper incense. The night of the festival city residents will light thousands of butter lamps under the full moon. These lamps symbolize the wisdom of Buddhist teachings illuminating darkness and ignorance.
Many pilgrims will make the journey to remote and beautiful Mt. Kailash in southwest Tibet, too. The most dedicated pilgrims will Kailash Kora in one day on a 52 kilometer trail over uneven terrain, some even performing full body prostrations for the entire route.
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