Gyalwang Karmapa inspects the Korean-style Altar Offerings

January 10, 2009, report by Jo Gibson, photos taken by Karma Norbu, Pema Orser Dorje

This year, for security reasons, His Holiness was unable to take part in the Kangyur procession, but he was able to use the opportunity to take a closer look at the altars, including a special feature of this year’s Kagyu Monlam, Korean-style offerings which he commissioned himself.

In November 2008 His Holiness saw a Korean Buddhist thangka which showed a display of traditional Korean offerings. He immediately requested the Korean sangha to prepare special offerings for this year’s Monlam. His Holiness designed the layout of the altars himself. He chose the colour of the cloth and the decorative blue frieze of the dharmachakra symbol.

The top row of the altar holds Tibetan torma, but the rows below contain traditional Korean offerings.

The second row contains gwei-im-s’hei – the Korean name means ‘accumulating’. They may look like large containers of sweets, nuts etc. but they are not. Instead they are carefully arranged layers of ingredients, hence the name gwei-im-s’he , stacked and shaped in cylinder form and then covered with cling film to keep them clean. Sometimes the sweets or nuts are arranged into decorative patterns, and examples of this can be seen in the photograph. The third row comprises traditional Korean offerings of fruit.

Usually, the offerings are placed on a distinctively shaped base but there was no time to obtain the correct bases from Korea, so, in a display of ingenuity, the Korean sangha glued together white china plates and bowls to make their own!