Jambay Lhakhang Drup is an annual autumn festival held at Jambay Lhakhang, an ancient temple located in Bhutan’s sacred Bumthang Valley.
The festival serves as a ritual through which people accumulate merit, pray for peace and prosperity in the coming year, and align themselves with the cycle of life and death.
At the heart of the temple courtyard, the sacred masked dances known as Cham are performed with solemn devotion, their ritual gestures enveloping the passage of time. The festival itself is regarded as an offering to deities and buddhas, an expression of gratitude to the earth, and a symbol of purification and renewal.
Of particular significance is the “Fire Ritual” performed toward the festival’s conclusion. This is considered the spiritual core of Jambay Lhakhang Drup. Participants run through a gate of fire, symbolically burning away accumulated sins and impurities, so that they may greet the new year with purified body and spirit. Here, fire is not an emblem of disaster but a manifestation of healing, protection, and sacred cleansing.
As people repeatedly pass through the flaming gate, their bodies imbued with heat, light, and smoke, they trace circular paths that together form a living mandala. In this way, the festival comes to completion, imbued with the fragrance of samsara.