The First “Lotus”

These two thangkas with the handprints of the 14th Dalai Lama are kept as a relic by the residents of the village of Dzhalykovo, Lagan district. They were presented by His Holiness 30 years ago, in September 1992. Then, during his second visit to Kalmykia, the Dalai Lama visited the Dzhalykovo prayer house, consecrated it, and gave the religious structure the name “Galsang Khurul.”

“In our khurul we also still keep, from the visit of the Great Teacher, the shaft of his fan, the chair where he sat… We treat all these truly sacred things with great care,” a resident of the village of Dzhalykovo, Svetlana Ubushaeva, tells us.

It is worth noting that this is the building of a former shop, and it was chosen as a religious site not by chance: at one time, during its construction, materials from the khurul of the village of Berguta — destroyed in the 1930s and located 10 kilometers from Dzhalykovo — were used.
According to witnesses of the visit of the 14th Dalai Lama, His Holiness, upon seeing the furnishings of the prayer house, was pleasantly surprised and said that this was the first khurul in Kalmykia to have genuine burkhans and ritual objects. “They say that he figuratively compared our khurul then to the first lotus — the sacred flower of Buddhists, thus expressing the hope that after the first ‘lotus’ others would appear as well,” Svetlana Nikolaevna continues her account.

In the Galsang Khurul, indeed, to this day ancient thangkas are kept, passed down from ancestors, along with various Buddhist scriptures, prayer wheels, burkhans…
This is a true heritage not only of the residents of this village, but of the district and the entire republic.

This autumn, the people of Dzhalykovo will widely celebrate the 30th anniversary of their khurul. Ceremonial events are already being prepared, a plan is being drawn up…
And as His Holiness foretold, after the first “lotus,” others too have bloomed.

OM MANI PADME HUM