Bylakuppe, December 19, 2015: His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama today inaugurated the New Assembly Hall at Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, at the Bylakuppe Tibetan Settlement in Mysore District, Karnataka. The ceremony was graced by Chief Guest the Governor of Karnataka, Shri Vajubhai Rudabhai Vala. The monastery hosted an audience of over 30,000 monks, nuns and laypersons from the Tibetan community as well as foreign guests.
In his keynote address, His Holiness the Dalai Lama emphasized the importance of preserving the Tibetan linguistic and religious culture, saying “In exile, it is our responsibility to preserve our culture – the spoken and written Tibetan language as well as Buddhist traditions. We have a guru-chela relationship with India and I can say we are quite reliable chelas. It is the Tibetans who preserve the teachings of Nalanda to this day.”
His Holiness, who arrived at the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery on Friday, was moved to tears as he addressed the monks and supporters of Tashi Lhunpo Monastery during the ribbon-cutting ceremony. His Holiness was greatly moved as he spoke about Dromtön or Dromtönpa Gyelwé Jungné’s life and legacy, and also spoke about the special emotional attachment he shares with Tashi Lhunpo — a monastery that was established by Gyalwa Gendun Drub, His Holiness the 1st Dalai Lama.
Earlier today, the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery presented His Holiness the Dalai Lama with a special statue made of sandalwood of Gyalwa Gendun Drub, along with a conch-shell ornament and a gold-encrusted memento as a mark of gratitude and on the auspicious 80th birth anniversary celebrations at the monastery.
Addressing the gathering at Tashi Lhunpo, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, Governor Shri Vajubhai Rudabhai said, “The 10th Panchen Lama was a courageous man who worked his whole life for the cause of Tibet and the Tibetan people. The 11th Panchen Lama was taken by the Chinese at just six years of age and his whereabouts remain unknown even today. It is our hope that he will be returned swiftly and safely.”
With Karnataka being home to the largest number of Tibetan refugees in India, the Governor added, “I believe that one day, Tibetans will no longer need to live in exile. They will be able to return to their homeland, through means of non-violence and compassion, just as Mahatma Gandhi obtained independence for India.”
The ceremony began with a Tibetan opera performance of the Tashi Shoepa or Long Life Dance, followed by a rendition of the Tibetan and Indian National Anthems led by students of the Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) School.
Special guests included Sikyong Lobsang Sangay (Head of the Central Tibetan Administration), Mr. Penpa Tsering (Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile) and His Eminence the Gaden Tri Rinpoche (Head of the Gelug sect of Tibetan Buddhism).
Sikyong, in his address, expressed great joy at the fact that all the four great monasteries of the Gelug tradition, including Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, have been rebuilt in India, particularly given that many monasteries in Tibet suffered great destruction at the hands of the Chinese forces. It was of even greater importance that many of these monasteries have also been able to revive the rich Nalanda Buddhist traditions.
On this occasion, His Holiness also inaugurated the museum at Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, which houses a photographic exhibition documenting the lives of the 14th Dalai Lama and the 10th Panchen Lama, through the launch of a pictorial book and highlighting the special relationship they share and their many contributions towards the people of Tibet.
His Holiness will continue to stay at Tashi Lhunpo until January 2, 2015. On the afternoon of Dec 19, He will give a short teaching on Dharmakirti’s Commentary on Pramana-samuccaya. From December 20 to 29, He will continue his teachings on the 18 Great Stages of the Path (Lamrim) Commentaries, organized by the Jangchup Lamrim Teaching Organizing Committee. On December 30 and 31, He will confer the 16 Drops of Kadam Initiation at Tashi Lhunpo Monastery. To know more about these teachings, please visit the official Jangchup Lamrim website www.jangchuplamrim.org
About Tashi Lhunpo Monastery:
Tashi Lhunpo monastery was founded in 1447 in Shigatse in Tsang, Tibet, by His Holiness the First Dalai Lama, Gyalwa Gedun Drup. In the 17th century, His Holiness the Fifth Dalai Lama gave his teacher, Lobsang Choekyi Gyaltsen, then the abbot of Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, the title of Panchen Lama, and declared that he would be reincarnated and continue to be reborn in an unbroken lineage of successors. When the Great Fifth Dalai Lama identified his teacher as the Panchen Lama, his three previous incarnations were posthumously recognized as Panchen Lamas, reaching back to the first in 1385.
Since the 15th Century, the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery has been the seat of all successive Panchen Lamas, under whom the monastery grew to become one of the great monastic seats of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. The monastery has housed thousands of monks and the three great Colleges within it have produced many distinguished scholars who have excelled in Buddhist philosophy, including the five great treatises of Tibetan Buddhism, and dialectics. However, over a thousand of Tashi Lhunpo’s monks, including many senior lamas and scholars, died as a result of Chinese oppression following the invasion of Tibet in 1959 and the ensuing destruction by Chinese forces during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. During this period, more than two thirds of the monastery’s buildings were destroyed.
In 1972, a few monks of Tashi Lhunpo who fled Tibet re-established the monastery in exile in Bylakuppe Tibetan Settlement under the guidance and patronage of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama with the aim to continue to preserve the legacy of this great monastic seat in Tibet. Today, the monastery in exile houses almost 400 monks from all three provinces of Tibet and other Himalayan regions, as well as foreign students, who undertake the study of Buddhist philosophy, traditional Tibetan sciences and a modern education.
