Qualla: Tsurphu Monastery

Tsurphu Monastery: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sanne Margarite from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, CC BY-SA 2.0. The walls were four meters thick and the complex stretched three hundred meters on each side. At 4,300 meters in the Dowo Lung Valley, 70 kilometers from Lhasa, Tsurphu Monastery was built to endure. It has endured -- but not continuously, and not in the form its founders intended. The traditional seat of the Karmapa, head of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, Tsurphu has been founded, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again, and rebuilt once more. Its most famous recent resident fled in the middle of a winter night in the year 2000.

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Image: Sanne Margarite from Amsterdam, The Netherlands | CC BY-SA 2.0

Tsurphu Monastery: The Karmapa's Seat

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit reurinkjan, CC BY 2.0. In 1159, Dusum Khyenpa, the 1st Karmapa Lama, visited this site in what is now Doilungdeqen District and made offerings to the local protectors -- the dharmapalas and territorial divinities who, in the Tibetan Buddhist worldview, must be honored before any sacred building can tak...

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Image: reurinkjan | CC BY 2.0

Tsurphu Monastery: A Valley Fortress

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Hill at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The geography of Tsurphu is defensive by nature. High mountains surround the complex on three sides, and the monastery faces south into the valley, catching whatever warmth the Tibetan plateau offers. The original main building had walls four meters thick enclosing an area of 90,...

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Image: John Hill at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tsurphu Monastery: Destroyed and Reborn

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit McKay Savage from London, UK, CC BY 2.0. In 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, the complex was totally destroyed. Not damaged, not partially dismantled -- totally destroyed. What had taken centuries to build was reduced to rubble in months. The 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, who had fled Tibet years earlier, beg...

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Image: McKay Savage from London, UK | CC BY 2.0

Tsurphu Monastery: The Escape of the 17th Karmapa

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ondřej Žváček, CC BY 2.5. Ogyen Trinley Dorje, born in 1985, was recognized as the 17th Karmapa by the Tai Situpa, the Dalai Lama, and -- unusually -- China's governmental offices. He was enthroned at Tsurphu and resided there through his childhood and adolescence. Then, in late December 1999, the fourtee...

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Image: Ondřej Žváček | CC BY 2.5

Tsurphu Monastery: What Remains in the Valley

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 归零者, CC BY-SA 4.0. Tsurphu today is a place of partial restoration and ongoing devotion. Monks chant in rebuilt halls. Elderly pilgrims circumambulate the complex as they have done for centuries. The valley above the monastery stretches toward peaks that carry snow year-round. A branch monastery, J...

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Image: 归零者 | CC BY-SA 4.0