The Buddha of the future, Maitreya, has a green horse in Mongolia. On the 19th May, a ceremony to welcome Maitreya to appear in this world was held at Shankh Monastery, located about 20km from Kharkhorin. The ceremony is one of the most important of the year. A statue of Maitreya is drawn around the temple on a cart headed by his green horse. The cart is brought to face the four directions around the temple - south, west, north, east - and prayers are said to welcome the future Buddha to appear and liberate beings in all directions.
The ceremony lasted about 3 hours in the freezing rain and wind. The monks blessed people approaching the cart with small statues of deities on the end of sticks. In each direction, the lay people offered a small temple shaped glass box fulled with offerings to the Buddha. Khatags are attached to the offering box and each person holds part of a Khatag to symbolise carrying the offering.
Shankh Khiid is one of the oldest and most important
monasteries in Mongolia. Zanabazar, the great mystic, founded the
monastery in 1648, at the age of 13. Up until the communist purges in
the 1930s, Shankh Khiid was a large debating monastery visited by many
of the the best scholars. There was no system of registration at that
time, but it is estimated that there were approximately 1,500 Gelong
monks and 2,500 Getsul and Rabjung monks. The monastery covered a large
area of land, with eleven temples in the complex. The present temple,
which is now being restored, was originally built between 1710 and 1790.
In
1990, it became free to practice religion once again. Some of the monks
had secretly continued to practice Buddhism throughout the years and it
was these monks that began to re-establish the monastery. The old lamas
preserved Buddhist traditions of conducting prayers that
may well be have been lost in other places in Mongolia. Some important
artifacts were also preserved hidden and buried.There are now around 20 monks at Shankh monastery; they conduct regular prayers and ceremonies.
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