On Monday, the Tibetan Studies Student Association under the department of Central Eurasian Studies held a Losar celebration dinner open to all students and faculty within the ?department.
“If I didn’t come, who will?” said Tenzin Thutod, a School of Public and Environmental Affairs graduate student and one of the only two fully Tibetan students that he knows of at IU. “This is a time for celebration and happiness, a time for ?family.”
The celebration included a variety of Tibetan food and songs to help add to the cultural aspect of the holiday. The three-day celebration is a mixture of both sacred and secular practices, so this event portrayed both sides of the tradition.
The year 2015 marks the year of the female wood sheep.
It symbolizes the most feminine signs of the zodiac; the more kind and compassionate heart of the sheep offers an opening to recognize how interconnected we really are, and urges humanity to choose peace over separation.
This is in balance with the 2014 horse that tested many levels, centering more on an individual’s soul-searching.
The Tibetan New Year and Chinese New Year always fall around or on the same day because both follow a lunar calendar consisting of 12 or 13 months, depending on leap years.
The event started with a traditional prayer facilitated by a local Bloomington Tibetan monk, Geisha.
The prayer was given in traditional Tibetan tongue and lasted around two minutes with the room in complete silence as a motion of respect for the religious aspects of the night.
Following the prayer, a scholarly professor of Tibetan studies, Professor Elliot Sterling, gave a short lesson on the traditions of Losar and the year of the female wood sheep.
“I traveled throughout Asia during my undergrad and fell in love with the culture and traditions,” ?Sterling said.
Sterling has been a professor at IU for more than 30 years and is very active in the local Bloomington Tibetan community.
The event concluded with a large meal with ?traditional Tibetan foods such as dumplings and khapse, a special fried dough biscuit prepared weeks in advance for the holiday.
All food was provided by local Tibetan families that wanted to celebrate their holiday with a community. They decided to share in the experience by cooking traditional food for the group.
A circle dance with the entire community ended the celebration accompanied by festive music and cheering by all.
“We think about the positive and things in the past year and focus on the erasing of the negatives for this coming year,” Thupten Anyetsang, local Tibetan dignitary and a close friend of Sterling, said.
The IU Tibetan Studies program is one of just six in the country. Students participate in local weekly language practices at local restaurants and are immersed to an extent into the Tibetan culture found in Bloomington.
“Everyone is so busy in their own lives, so this is a platform for everyone to congregate together,” said Ten Tsepak, president of the Tibetan Studies Student Association.
