Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Larung Gar Buddhist Academy
Larung Gar Buddhist Academy
Larung Gar Buddhist Academy
LARUNG GAR
BUDDHIST ACADEMY
By
Acknowledgement:
Serthar means Golden Horse in Tibetan. Legend has it that horsehead-shaped gold was ever discovered in the vast beautiful grassland
around, or there is a golden horse imbedded underneath.
In Serthar, the average annual temperature is -1C, with sufficient
sunlight, long winter and no summer.
Serthar is a place where the Tibetan Buddhism is centralized, very wellknown for the Serthar Buddhist Institution (also Larung Gar Buddhist
Institution or Wuming Buddhist Institution) in Larung Monastery.
The campus of Larung Gar is enormous. Houses for monks and nuns
sprawl all over the valley and up the surrounding mountains. A huge
wall through the middle of Larung Gar separates the monk side from the
nun side. Monks and nuns are not allowed out of their designated areas
except in front of the main monastery assembly hall which is common to
both nuns and monks. The houses are all built in a wood style that is
traditionally found in this region, and built so close together that they
appear almost on top of each other.
The community has since recovered and thrives today under the tutelage
of Khenpo Sodargye Rinpoche, who has introduced online courses.
Jigme Phuntsok (1933-2004) was one of the key figures in the history of
20th Buddhism in Tibet, playing an extremely instrumental role in the
revival of the Dharma after the harsh religious persecutions of the
Cultural Revolution.
During this period Jigme Phutsok chose to remain with his people, but
managed to outlive Mao's destructive and fanatical social experiments
by returning to the high steppes where he was born and assuming the
role of the family he had been born into - that of being a simple nomad.
As the Cultural Revolution raged through the country, he quietly herded
sheep and goats through the remote mountains and valleys of Sichuan.
In this way Khenpo Jigphun was able to continue his Buddhist practice
in his homeland and maintain contact with a core of students even in the
darkest times, often teaching in caves at night.
For almost twenty years Khenpo Jigme lived his underground nomad
life, quietly herding animals across the steppes, always somehow
eluding the Tibetan Red Guards and the Chinese Army. Then, in 1976,
Mao Zedong died. Although hard-core Maoist cadres would retain their
grip on some remote areas for another decade, in large parts of Tibet the
religious situation began to improve immediately. As soon as this
became clear, Khenpo Jigme put on his monastic robes again and
resumed teaching and writing openly.
In 1978 he founded the Larung Gar WuMing (Five Science) Buddhist
Institute in an entirely uninhabited valley in his native region of Serthar.
from prison not long before. At the end of 1988, at the request of the
Panchen Lama, Khenpo gave a series of teachings at the Tibetan
Buddhist Institute in the Chinese capital, Beijing.
Soon after, Khenpo was invited to India to teach at the Nyingma schools.
While in India he also visited Dharamsala, where he and the Dalai Lama
resumed the guru-disciple connections they had had in their previous
lives. The Dalai Lama received Nyingma and Dzogchen teaching from
Khenpo. Once while they were walking together the entire Fire Puja
section of the practice of Vajrakilaya appeared in the sky above
Dharamsala.