Butter Lamp Festival 2025 in Tibet
The last day of the New Year's celebrations features one of the most colourful festivals
Dates: March 14, 2025
The 15th day of the Tibetan New Year is marked by the celebration of the Butter Lantern Festival. This is one of the happiest and most popular events. The festival is celebrated in every monastery of Tibet, making it a huge temple fair. The greatest celebrations are held at Barkhor Street in Lhasa.
Butter Lamp Festival Highlights
During the day people usually make pilgrimages to the local temples and monasteries, while at night streets are filled with amazing yak butter sculptures and the light of lanterns.
Traditional dancing, chanting, and puppet shows are also part of this event. Local people prepare for this festival for several months making unique lanterns with their own hands. These are usually in the form of birds, flowers, various figures, and even gods. They vary in size and colour creating a spectacular view making the streets as bright as day.
Butter Sculptures
Monks prepare amazing yak butter sculptures. Creating these artworks takes tons of butter and almost two months of hard work. Some of them are as high as three-story buildings. They are placed on a gorgeous flower stand as gifts and devotions to Buddha. Some of the best yak butter sculptures can be seen at the Ta’er Monastery of Qinghai province.
Butter lamps, integral to Tibetan Buddhist rituals, are made using clarified yak butter or vegetable oil with a wick in a bowl. They emit a smoky, subdued light, believed to aid in meditation and mental focus. This practice draws from Buddhist teachings like the Root Tantra of Chakrasamvara, which emphasizes the spiritual merit of offering lights: "If you wish for sublime realization, offer hundreds of lights."
During special occasions, thousands of these lamps are lit, often placed on multi-story scaffolds, creating a stunning visual display. Tibetans contribute butter and oil to monasteries as an act of devotion and to gain merit. Symbolically, the transformation of butter or oil into light reflects the potential for human enlightenment and the banishment of ignorance.
