The Akshobhya Fire Ritual

January 10, 2009, report by Pi-Chun Chen and Jo Gibson, photos taken by Karma Lekcho


The whole ordained sangha recited the Akshobhya Saddhana for two afternoons (9th and 10th January), and on the evening of the 10th His Holiness completed the Akshobhya Ritual with a fire puja.

At 8.40pm His Holiness, with the sixteen retreatants who completed the fifteen-day Akshobhya retreat, gathered in the main assembly hall of Tergar Monastery to bless the deceased. In addition to the names proffered by individuals, the list included those killed in the Burmese typhoon, those killed in the Sichuan earthquake, those killed in the earthquake in Tibet, those killed in the Mumbai terrorist attacks, and those killed in the floods in Bihar. The ritual took three hours and concluded close to midnight.

There are strict requirements for those attending this puja, which meant that laypeople watched from outside.
The Akshobhya mandala was placed on a stand in the centre of the hall. The special ritual equipment, specially made in China and Japan for the 25th Kagyu Monlam, was used again. An Akshobhya thangka hung above and slightly in front of the mandala, and His Holiness sat facing the thangka, surrounded by the retreatants. Their chanting echoed around the hall and through the open windows to the people clustered outside.

At the end of the ritual Gyalwang Karmapa and the other monks, carrying a container of the names of the dead, came outside to the fire which had been burning for some time. The people who had been waiting quietly outside gathered around them. Again and again, His Holiness gathered a handful of name lists from the container, paused to bless them, then threw them into the fire.

Smoke rose and ashes and scraps of burnt paper spiralled into the air above the flames, as if the dead had been liberated from their suffering.