Many of us know that Newar Buddhism has preserved both textual and living elements of Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna Buddhism in its Sanskrit forms. As one of the main students of the late Rev. Paṇḍit Badri Ratna Bajracarya, Dr. Naresh Guruju is recognized as a highly qualified ritual specialist who is responsible for Newar Buddhist communities in all three cities of the greater Kathmandu Valley area. As founding chair and distinguished first professor of the Buddhist Studies Program at Tribhuvan University, he has played a crucial role in introducing the academic study of Buddhism to Nepal. Over the past decade, Professor Bajracharya has established and recently consecrated the first traditional Newar Buddhist Monastery located outside of the Kathmandu Valley; The Nepal Vajrayāna Mahāvihār of Lumbini. He has also published widely on a variety of Buddhist topics in English, Nepali, and Newar.

In short, a combination of conducive conditions came together which resulted in participants being fully immersed in a rigorous study of both ritual and academic aspects of this unique form of Sanskritic Buddhism seldom encountered in North America and which one is rarely permitted to participate in, in Nepal. Every minute of these events were recorded by Pushpa Acharya, a Ph.D. candidate and talented videographer who volunteered his time and energy for filming in collaboration with the Munk School of Global Affairs.

The first event, on May 13^th, was a lively Green Tārā Maṇḍala Pūjā followed by a lecture and Q and A session. The day-long event included a delicious vegetarian meal organized jointly with participating members of local Newar and Nepalese communities. Before lunch, the maṇḍala of the female Buddha Tārā was materially and ritually constructed in approximately two and a half hours. With the help of around ten assistants from U of T and the local community, Dr. Bajracharya simultaneously directed the volunteers and acted on our behalf, leading us through the preliminaries, the invocation of Green Tārā, the making of offerings and the performance of all required rituals and recitations. In his afternoon lecture delivered in Nepali, Dr. Bajracharya explained the historiography and meaning of Green Tārā in the Vajrayāna Buddhist context; her origin from the tear of Avaloketiśvara and the significance of her green-hued manifestation related to elemental forms of prāṇa and enlightened activity. He also included some pertinent comments on the meaning of co-existence and interdependence in response to a question from the audience. Although it was the first time that this Brampton area Nepalese Mandir had ever hosted a Vajrayāna Buddhist pūjā, the local Hindu priest who stayed for the duration, and many of the more than 50 participants agreed—true to the spirit of Nepalese religion—that it was indeed an ideal venue to hold a Buddhist pūjā.

On Monday evening at the Institute for Traditional Medicine, Dr. Bajracharya introduced us to the meaning and practical functions of the dhāraṇī: Sanskrit syllables or sounds strung together which he explained possess more than a mere semantic meaning. Somewhat longer than the further encapsulated mantra, we learned that the dhāraṇī can either contain the pith meaning of an important text or effectively embody the essence of a deity. Dr. Bajracharya discussed how dhāraṇīs have been traditionally engaged, and even imbibed, through all five modes of sensory perception. After a preliminary commentary on the saptavidhānuttarapūjā a.k.a the samantabhadracaryāpraṇidhānam, he instructed us on several popular dhāraṇīs to be utilized at the time of death, healing, and even for the the generation of  empathy; the durgatipariṡodhana dhāraṇī, the aparimitāyu dhāraṇī and the āryāvalokiteśvara dhāraṇī to name a few.

On Tuesday, the first day of our formal Newar Buddhism Workshop at the St. George Campus, we all arrived ready to engage on a more intellectual level. Dr. Bajracharya gave a Power Point presentation along with many lucid descriptions and even utilized melodious traditional chants and gestures to explain the matter at hand, the Mañjuśrīnāmasangīti, in his trademark style. He conveyed how the Sanskrit Buddhist tradition of the Mañjuśrīnāmasangīti was historically conceived of; as providing complex textual correlates, and how it currently continues to persist as a living tradition in the Kathmandu Valley. More broadly, he discussed the trend of revitalization of this and other Newar Vajrayāna traditions as a whole and the role of the recent Nāmasangīti festivals and public initiations in that process. Not only did he explain the place of this crucial text in the history of Vajrayāna, we were also introduced to the future of this vibrant tradition which has currently evolved to incorporate significant concerns about inclusion and social activism as well as the preservation of oral transmission on a large-scale public platform. A certain highlight of this session was the gratitude shown to his wife, Rev. Nita Gurumaju, whom he mentioned had to work much harder than himself for the duration of the festival since she was called upon to initiate all of the female participants who happened to be the greater percentage of the more than 4000 festival attendees.