This afternoon I wrote about Gutman's Cave in Sigulda [1] and took a break in between. I sat down in the garden. Behind the house it was pleasantly cool, with little white clouds drifting across the blue sky and all the green of bushes, meadow and trees. The air war so fresh. Suddenly my thoughts were drifting off to the Chendebji Chörten in Bhutan, which I had visited twice and had a picnic there in the year 2000. That came back to mind, so I picked out the pictures again and looked at the Chendebji Chörten in Bhutan.
The Chendebji Chörten [2] is a Buddhist stupa west of Trongsa at an altitude of just under 2500 meters. It was built in the 18th century in the Nepalese style, similar to the Swayambhunath Stupa or the Boudhanath Stupa, which I wanted to write about last year but have neglected to do so. Lama Shida from Tibet had the chörten built to conquer the remains of an evil spirit. According to other sources, it was Lama Ngesup Tshering Wangchuk. This is difficult to determine from the information available.
Like the two named stupas in Kathmandu, the Chendebji Chörten [3] has four pairs of painted eyes near the top. These eyes symbolize Maitreya, the coming Buddha. According to tradition, the chörten contains the skull of Tenzin Lekpai Dhundrup, who is considered the guardian of Tibetan Buddhist teachings. At the time (October 2000), I had cut out a picture from the Kuensel (Bhutan's National Newspaper) with the note "The disfigured Chendebji Chhorten after the robbery attempt." In the picture one can see a hole in the dome section, which is not or was not empty. The robbery attempt took place in May 1999 and in October 2000 the hole was of course closed again. In any case, the relic remained in its place. The chörten attracts a large number of pilgrims to the Sambha Lhundrup Molam Chenmo Festival in the ninth month of the Bhutanese calendar.
Links and Annotations:
[1] Sigulda 5 – Gutman's Cave and the Rose of Turaida https://rheumatologe.blogspot.com/2024/08/sigulda-5-gutmans-cave-and-rose-of.html
[2] Chörten Chendebji https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%B6rten_Chendebji
[3] The chorten is a local (Tibet, Ladakh, Zanskar, Bhutan) development of the stupa. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%B6rten
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