Qualla: Larung Gar Buddhist Academy

Larung Gar Buddhist Academy: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chensiyuan, CC BY 3.0. The first prophecy came from the first Dodrupchen Rinpoche, who described a place and named a founder centuries before either existed. In the summer of 1980, Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok -- a Nyingma lama who had survived the Cultural Revolution by retreating into these mountains with a small band of loyal monks -- took over an old hermitage in the Larung Valley of Sertar County, Sichuan, and began teaching. He had fewer than a dozen students. Within two decades, nearly ten thousand monks, nuns, and lay practitioners would pack the valley in a sea of maroon-roofed wooden dwellings that became one of the most extraordinary religious communities on Earth.

Image: Chensiyuan | CC BY 3.0

Larung Gar Buddhist Academy: An Ecumenical Experiment

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chensiyuan, CC BY-SA 3.0. What made Larung Gar remarkable was not simply its size but its openness. Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok welcomed students from all traditions of Tibetan Buddhism -- Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, Gelug -- at a time when sectarian boundaries were typically firm. The 10th Panchen Lama officially...

Image: Chensiyuan | CC BY-SA 3.0

Larung Gar Buddhist Academy: A City of Maroon Rooftops

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chensiyuan, CC BY 3.0. The valley filled organically. Students arrived from across Tibet, China, Mongolia, and other Asian countries, building their own small wooden dwellings on the hillsides above the teaching halls. The result was a settlement unlike anything else in the Buddhist world: thousands of...

Image: Chensiyuan | CC BY 3.0

Larung Gar Buddhist Academy: Demolition and Defiance

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chensiyuan, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Chinese government's relationship with Larung Gar was adversarial from the start. In 2001, after Sichuan authorities demanded that Khenchen Jigme Phuntsok denounce the 14th Dalai Lama and he refused, mass demolitions began. Approximately 4,000 buildings were destroyed and 8,0...

Image: Chensiyuan | CC BY-SA 3.0

Larung Gar Buddhist Academy: What Persists in the Valley

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chensiyuan, CC BY 3.0. A mountain hermitage stood near this site as early as 1880, established by Dudjom Lingpa. The sacred geography predates the Academy and will outlast any particular arrangement of buildings on its slopes. Larung Gar has been closed to foreign visitors since June 2016, and the sett...

Image: Chensiyuan | CC BY 3.0