Tibet: Impossible yet existent?

A confusion of sounds: the gurgle of two-stroke engines, big-truck roars, bicycle bells, the crunch of pickaxes breaking earth. A band of musicians sits in a line on the roadside playing flute, tabla, and tambourines. A traffic policeman yells instructions into a bullhorn. Speakers installed on lampposts carry sounds from the main prayer ground: the sombre drone of Tibetan monks in chant, or more upbeat Indian Buddhist prayers, returning every few minutes to the Dalai Lama's deep voice, audible everywhere, explaining what the monks have just chanted or dispensing life advice, occasionally breaking into that famous good-natured laugh. During the final four days of the fortnight's proceedings, between 10 and 14 January, 2017, the Dalai Lama delivers the Kalachakra empowerment, a series of esoteric tantric initiations and visualisations which hardly anyone can understand but everyone is here for. His words are clipped, as if spoken in meter. The reverb on the PA system saturates the careful pauses in his speech with cascading trails of the previous syllables, like after-images from an intensely bright light.

The Cham dance

After the preliminary teachings end, a day is set aside for the propitiatory Cham dance. Weighed down in richly brocaded costumes, with silver ornaments and ritual instruments in their hands, a group of monks walks on stage with great gravity. Unlike on other days, the Dalai Lama is seated to one side: the Cham is to be the main act. The monks take their positions, commence a sonorous chant; they raise their right legs, angle their instruments just so; with a clash of cymbals, the dance begins. They are erecting an invisible vajra fence which will prepare the ground for the main Kalachakra empowerment. Arms trace magical shapes with hypnotic regularity. The figures move from one formation to another. Their chant swells, then ebbs, again and again. The air comes alive; some energy is shifting.