Visitors to the Holy Cross campus earlier this week might have been a little taken aback by the intensity of a gathering in the Hogan Campus Center led by a Nepalese Buddhist priest.
For three hours, 30 scholars and Holy Cross community members repeated vows and made offerings on chalk mandalas as part of a collective Buddhist ritual, performed not only for the first time at Holy Cross but for the first time in North America.
The ritual — the astami vrata — was performed by Naresh Bajracarya, one of the participants in a summer institute on Tibet and Himalayas hosted by Holy Cross for the eighth consecutive year. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the institute titled “Buddhist Traditions of Tibet and the Himalayas,” brings 30 college and university professors from the United States and around the world to Holy Cross from June 22 to July 10 to study with co-directors Todd Lewis, professor of religious studies at Holy Cross, and Leonard van der Kuijp, professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at Harvard University.
“Very popular in Nepal, the astami vrata is little known in the West but constitutes a meaningful ritual experience for renewing one’s vow to follow Buddhist moral precepts, seek enlightenment, and express unending compassion toward all beings,” says Lewis.
For more information, visit the institute’s Web site.
Pictured: Nepalese Buddhist priest Naresh Bajracarya performs astami vrata, a Buddhist ritual, on the Holy Cross campus.
As Part of International Gathering for Summer Institute on Himalayas, Historic and Rare Buddhist Ritual Celebrated at Holy Cross
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