Buddhist: cheese and tradition
Yak cheese and butter offerings of Tibet and Bhutan, and the dairy of monastery kitchens.
Buddhist traditions differ on diet. Many Mahayana monks and nuns in China, Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan keep a strict vegetarian diet, while Tibetan, Bhutanese and Mongolian Buddhists, living where few crops grow, have long eaten dairy and meat. On the Himalayan plateau, butter and cheese are part of religious life: yak butter fuels the lamps of monasteries and is shaped into offering sculptures, and dried cheese travels with pilgrims and herders.
Butter lamps and torma
In Tibetan Buddhism, butter lamps burn before sacred images in temples and homes, and the butter traditionally comes from the dri, the female yak. Torma, ritual offering cakes of barley flour and butter, are decorated with coloured butter. On the fifteenth day of the first month of the Tibetan year, the Butter Lamp Festival, Chunga Choepa, displays great sculptures of coloured butter, lit by lamps, at the Jokhang in Lhasa and at monasteries across the Tibetan world.
Cheese of the monastery and the herder
The dri's milk is churned for butter, and the buttermilk is heated to make soft cheese and dried cheese, chura in Tibetan and churpi in Nepal and Sikkim. Herding families bring butter and cheese to monasteries as offerings, and monks eat dried cheese with tsampa, roasted barley flour, and butter tea. In Bhutan, where Buddhism is the state religion, datshi is part of almost every meal, from the farmhouse to the monastery kitchen.
Vegetarian traditions and milk rice
In Chinese Buddhist vegetarian cooking, dairy has never been a large part of the table, and since the precepts concern taking life, strict vegetarians may avoid cheese made with animal rennet. In Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, Buddhist food offerings use milk rice rather than cheese. Milk rice is linked with Sujata, who offered the future Buddha a bowl of rice cooked in milk before his enlightenment, and in Sri Lanka kiribath is made for new year and other auspicious days.
Worth knowing
- Chhurpi: Soft or hard cheese of Himalayan herders
- Datshi: Bhutan's everyday cheese
- Ema datshi: Bhutanese chillies and cheese
- Butter tea: Salted tea churned with butter
- Torma: Offering cakes of barley flour and butter
- Kiribath: Sri Lankan milk rice for auspicious days
Sources and further reading
Original text by the EveryCheese desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Customs are described as tradition, not as advice. If we have something wrong, tell us.
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