Purbuchok Hermitage (Purbuchok Ritrö)

Purchok Hermitage (Purchok Ritrö) as viewed from the mountain behind it.

Purbuchok Hermitage (Purbuchok Ritrö), one of the most beautiful and best restored of the hermitages of Sera (Seré ritrö), is located halfway up the northern mountains in the Lhasa suburb of Dodé at the northeastern corner of the Lhasa Valley. It takes about two hours to walk to Purchok from Lhasa, and almost as long from Sera, but most people today take a bus to Dodé and then walk north (up the mountain) from there. Purchok is the last hermitage (ritrö) that pilgrims visit on the “Sixth-Month Fourth-Day” (Drukpa Tsezhi) pilgrimage route. (To see images of this pilgrimage taken in 2002, please click here.)

As with most of the hermitages of Sera, the surrounding landscape is considered blessed (jinchen), and this blessedness or holiness is inscribed into the natural landscape around the monastery. Given its historical association with the so-called “Three Protectors (Riksum Gönpo)” – Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī and Vajrapāṇi – it is not surprising that several aspects of the landscape surrounding Purchok are associated with these three deities. Here is a summary of one account of the mountains around the hermitage:

• To the west is a mountain in the shape of two auspicious golden fish (trashi sernya)
• To the north, the Soul-Mountain of Mañjuśrī (Jampelyangkyi Lari), known as Moktogo
• On the side of that mountain there is a rock-outcropping that resembles a drawing of a white conch
• The mountain to the east is associated with the palace of Avalokiteśvara
• Another mountain, that appears as if it had a flag on its pinnacle, is considered the mountain-abode (neri) of Vajrapāṇi, who serves as watchman or “door-keeper” (gosung) for the entire area.

As for the actual site on which the hermitage was built, different meditators have had different visions of it. In what we have elsewhere called the “metaphysical rhetoric of sacred space,”2 sometimes Purchok is claimed to be identical to the six-syllable mantra (ngak) (oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ), sometimes it is seen as the Palace of Cakrasaṃvara (Demchokgi Podrang), and at other times as the paradise of the Three Protectors.

The history of the different buildings at the site is described in the History section below. What follows here is a description of the hermitage as it existed in 2004. Purchok Hermitage has three basic sections:

• The main compound houses the main temple (dukhang) and the Temple of the Three Protectors (Riksum Gönpo Lhakhang)
• Another compound presently contains the new library building and the debate courtyard
• The large open area west and southwest of the library compound contains individual monastic dwellings/huts.

The Temple of the Three Protectors.

The main temple.

With the exception of a portion of the Temple of the Three Protectors – whose original walls remained intact up to the height of the top of the windows – the main compound has been rebuilt from the ground up. Informants report that there has been an attempt to maintain the original layout of the compound as a whole.

Like many of the mountain hermitages, this main temple compound is built in a tiered fashion that conforms to the landscape. Beginning from the highest (and easternmost) point, we find a large yellow building that towers over the rest of the monastery. This temple was built under the direction of Drupkhangpa, the founder of the hermitage.3 It is the Temple of the Three Protectors. All of the original images on its main altar were destroyed, but they have been replaced with new images of the Three Protectors – Avalokiteśvara, Mañjuśrī, and Vajrapāṇi – as well as other minor images. Adjacent to the temple is a room for the temple caretaker, with an adjoining kitchen.

The interior of one of the monks’ rooms off of the middle courtyard in the main temple compound.

As one follows the steps down from the Temple of the Three Protectors, one arrives at the next major tier of the compound, which contains a courtyard with several doorways:

• On the northern side of the courtyard are two monks’ rooms that have ornamental yellow windows. In former times these may have been the quarters of high-ranking members of the Purchok Lama’s estate (Purchok Labrang). Today ordinary monks live there.
• On the southern side are the private rooms of Purchok Rinpoché (easternmost), and a reception room (westernmost).

If one proceeds towards the west past the monks’ rooms, one passes through an entryway that leads to a much smaller courtyard with two doorways: to the right (north) is the doorway to Scripture Chapel (Kangyur Lhakhang), a room that houses the portion of the canon that is considered the Buddha’s actual word. Across from this is a doorway that leads to residential rooms atop the main temple. These rooms are presently being used by an elder teacher who is responsible for providing instruction to the junior monks of the hermitage.

Below this level where the residential and reception rooms are found, there is a small area where firewood is kept. Here there also hangs the gong used to call the monks for prayers and meals.

The lowest level of the main temple compound contains (from west to east):

• The main temple
• The monastery’s main kitchen
• Storage rooms
• The cave temple of Purchok Rinpoché
• The protector deity chapel (gönkhang)
• A mani [wheel] temple (mani lhakhang), where there is a large manual mani wheel (mani khorlo).

The interior of the main temple

Proceeding west out the principal door of the main temple compound, one comes immediately to the entrance of the compound that contains the Dharma enclosure (chöra) and the new library. That library, which in 2004 was just being completed, is being built so as to house a collection of the Tengyur. The vast open space that is the Dharma enclosure once housed the famous “Dharma Enclosure Assembly Hall” which we know was much bigger than the other temple at Purchok. This temple, however, was destroyed and has not been rebuilt. Today only a few of the murals along the base of one of the walls in the Dharma enclosure remind us of the existence of such a building.

Exiting from the Dharma enclosure compound and proceeding west once again, we come to the area of the individual monks’ huts. It seems that before 1959 most of the administrators and workers of the Purchok Lama’s estate lived in the main temple compound. Many other monks, however, lived in these individual huts. In the early history of the hermitage, these huts were most likely the residences of meditators, and even today oral lore has it that some of the greatest masters of the Geluk school lived in one or another of these various buildings.

According to tradition, the site where Purchok was built was originally a place where Padmasambhava (Pema Jungné) meditated. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama (Dalai Lama Kutreng Chuksumpa), in the biography of his teacher, the third Purchok incarnation Yongdzin Jampa Gyatso (Purchok Kutreng Sumpa Yongdzin Jampa Gyatso), says that the main cave at Purchok was the practice-place of Padmasambhava known as the Cavern of Dochung Chongzhi (Dochung Chongzhi Pukpa).4 Later, the founder of the Tselpa Kagyü school, Zhang Drowé Gönpo Yudrakpa (1123-1193), founded a practice center here in the twelfth century, and it is from this time that the site came to be known as Purchok (literally, “a dagger at its pinnacle”5 because the top of the mountain behind the hermitage resembles a dagger).6 At the time that Drupkhangpa (see Introduction to the Hermitages) built the Temple of the Three Protectors at the site (more than five centuries after Lama Zhang [1123-1193]) there could still be seen vestiges of the original Kagyü institution, like the so-called “Little White Stūpa” (Chöten Karchung).

A detail of an eighteenth century painting in the collection of the Rubin Museum of Art (Image no. 105 on the www.himalayanart.org website) identified as Drupkhangpa.

During Drupkhang Gelek Gyatso’s (1641-1713)7 peregrinations throughout Tibet in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, he decided to visit Zangri, the place where, several centuries earlier, the great female saint Machik Lapdrön (twelfth century) had founded her famous center of Zangri Karmar. On the night before he was to visit Zangri, Drupkhangpa had a dream in which a man wearing a black hat communicated to him that in a place called Dodé there was a white stūpa. The man told him that a house was to be built there, and then a great light filled the area around the stūpa. The next day, when he visited the temple at Zangri Karmar, he saw that the man in his dreams was depicted in a statue on the main altar, and he learned that it was none other than Machik Lapdrön’s son, Tönyön Samdrup (twelfth century). Later, after Drupkhangpa moved back to Sera – to the hermitage that he made his permanent home, Sera Utsé – he began to search for the exact site in Dodé where the white stūpa of his dreams was to be found. After a long search, he finally identified it as Purchok. He blessed the site with the necessary preparatory rituals and prayers. The sources disagree as to the precise date, but it seems that these events took place sometime between 1701 and 1706.

The first Purchok incarnation Ngawang Jampa (Purchok Kutreng Dangpo Ngawang Jampa, 1682-1762), one of Drupkhangpa’s chief students, made a cave at the site his home. Building apparently started after Purchok Rinpoché was able to garner the support of various sponsors. The first structure built at Purchok was a residence (zimkhang), perhaps as an extension of Ngawang Jampa’s cave. Monks came from Drupkhangpa’s hermitage of Sera Utsé to celebrate the completion of the first building, and Ngawang Jampa himself gave an extensive teaching on bodhicitta at this time.

An old statue of Purchok Ngawang Jampa preserved in the Cave Temple at Purchok Hermitage.

The entrance to Purchok Ngawang Jampa’s cave.

Shortly after the first building went up at Purchok, several sponsors committed to providing the funds necessary to build the Temple of the Three Protectors. Drupkhangpa once again took to the road to garner further financial support for the project. Meanwhile, construction on the temple began. In the spring of 1705, with the temple just about completed, the construction of the statues began, and Drupkhangpa entered into retreat. When the statues were finished, extensive offerings were made and elaborate rituals were performed in order to consecrate them. At several times during these events it rained flowers (metog charbap), a sign of the power of the prayers, and of the efficacy of the rituals. While the consecration was taking place, Drupkhangpa had many auspicious dreams, including one in which he saw the site of Purchok as being of the same nature as the six-syllable mantra of Avalokiteśvara (oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ), and another in which Padmasambhava arrived to bless the site. By 1706, there were eight8 fully ordained monks living at the site, fulfilling Drupkhangpa’s original plan for the hermitage. In that same year Drupkhangpa ordered the building of the assembly hall (dukhang)9 and kitchen complex. In the summer, the Queen Tsering Trashi (Gyelmo Tsering Trashi) donated the funds for the statues inside the assembly hall. The next year, Drupkhangpa himself filled the statues with the appropriate substances zungbül, and, together with his eight monks, spent many days performing the consecrations. Throughout all of this, Purchok Rinpoché, rather than assuming the privileged position of the great scholar that he was, took part in the actual construction work – hauling earth, stones and water, mixing mud, painting, and so forth – all of this so as to fulfill his teacher’s vision of creating an institution at Purchok.10

The first monastic confession ritual (sojong) was held in the new assembly hall in 1708. In that same year, Penchen Lozang Yeshé (1663-1737), Ngawang Jampa’s ordaining abbot, wrote the constitution (chayik) for the new monastery. With all of the work of founding the monastery having reached its conclusion, Drupkhangpa called for Purchok Rinpoché, and revealed to him that Purchok Mountain (Purchok Ri) was in actuality the Palace of Cakrasaṃvara. He advised Purchok Rinpoché to institute the practices of this deity at the hermitage, for, given the auspiciousness of the site, “accomplishments were within easy reach.” He advised him to institute a system of examinations and of giving “public admonition” (tsoktam)11 to the monks, and, with these words, he handed the monastery over to him. Drupkhangpa, in preparation for his impending death, had his personal library of over two hundred volumes moved to the Temple of the Three Protectors around this time. He died at Purchok on the seventh day of the first Tibetan month in the year 1713.

Purchok Rinpoché had been initiated into the practices of the deity Penden Lhamo by Drupkhangpa, and at this time he did a five month retreat on this deity. He had many visions during his retreat, and from this point forward, Penden Lhamo has been considered the special protector deity of the hermitage. Her statue, found in the protector deity chapel in the hermitage, is considered extremely holy.

The protector deity chapel at Purchok, the site of the famous statue of Penden Lhamo.

Under Purchok Rinpoché’s abbacy, the hermitage flourished. Tremendously devoted to the institution, he left it only when absolutely necessary. Otherwise, he was continuously in residence, maintaining an extremely active teaching schedule from the time he was thirty-six years of age until he died at the age of eighty. His lectures focused mainly on graded stages of the path (lamrim), and he was especially fond of two texts: the Fifth Dalai Lama’s (Dalai Lama Kutreng Ngapa) famous graded stages of the path, The Revelations of Mañjuśrī: A Lamrim (Lamrim Jampel Zhellung), and The Easy Path: A Lamrim (Lamrim Delam). These two texts he taught, respectively, every spring and autumn. Ngawang Jampa also gave tantric teachings at Purchok, but the emphasis clearly was on graded stages of the path.

As might be expected, under Purchok Rinpoché’s tenure the number of monks grew. With the patronage of the Tibetan king Polhané (1689-1747),12 in 1733 work began on a “Dharma enclosure/courtyard”13 and (next to it) a new and larger assembly hall. Within the span of a few years, however, the Dharma enclosure once again proved too small to hold the large numbers of monks and laypeople that came from all over Tibet to listen to graded stages of the path teachings at Purchok,14 and it had to be expanded once again.

The Dharma enclosure, the site of Purchok Rinpoché’s graded stages of the path teachings. There used to exist another large assembly hall here, but it was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.

Other major renovations and additions to the hermitage continued to occur throughout the years of Ngawang Jampa’s tenure. In 1735, with the patronage of a Lhasa family known as Padrong Shakpa, he ordered a major renovation of the Temple of the Three Protectors, and in 1742 he commissioned a set of scriptures written in gold for the monastery, which he housed in the new, larger assembly hall next to the “Dharma enclosure.”15 One source16 states that toward the end of Ngawang Jampa’s life there were about one thousand monks in residence at the hermitage, though this seems like a tremendous exaggeration.17

After Purchok Rinpoché’s death, the monastery passed into the hands of the second Purchok incarnation Lozang Jampa (Purchok Kutreng Nyipa Lozang Jampa),18 and continued to flourish as an institution. However, without the charismatic leadership of Ngawang Jampa – who was a committed contemplative – the hermitage began to take a different path from this point in time, emphasizing tantric ritual cycles19 rather than graded stages of the path teachings and meditation.

The third Purchok incarnation Lozang Tsültrim Jampa Gyatso (Purchok Kutreng Sumpa Lozang Tsültrim Jampa Gyatso) served as tutor to both the Twelfth and the Thirteenth Dalai Lamas (Dalai Lama Kutreng Chuksumpa). Given his position as tutor to two Dalai Lamas, it is not surprising that during his tenure Purchok Hermitage received from the government the Dodé Lhomön estates for the support of the hermitage. Both the hermitage and the Purchok Lama’s estate greatly increased in wealth during the last half of the nineteenth century, and the number of monks at the hermitage itself grew, reaching a total of eighty by the end of the nineteenth century. Beginning in 1882, major renovations were done to several of the buildings at the hermitage. Some buildings were rebuilt from scratch, others gained second stories, and at least one new major temple – dedicated to housing a large statue of Maitreya (Jampa) – was constructed during this time.

In the last few years of the third Purchok incarnation Yongdzin Jampa Gyatso’s (Purchok Kutreng Sumpa Yongdzin Jampa Gyatso) life, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama visited Purchok Hermitage. This is seen as a major event in the history of the institution. After his teacher’s death, it was the Dalai Lama himself who took upon himself the responsibility of creating and consecrating the funerary stūpa and various memorial statues (including a statue of his teacher). All of these were placed inside the temple next to the Dharma enclosure.

Because of the extensive building and renovation done at Purchok by the third Purchok Rinpoché, very little had to be done at the hermitage by his successor. The fourth Purchok Lama did do some renovation on one of the assembly halls and he refurbished some older portions of the lama’s residence that were in poor condition. He also built a building at the so-called Pond Park (Chapdzing Lingkha).

In 1959, the hermitage housed somewhere between eighty and one hundred monks. Between residential rooms, kitchens, meeting and storage rooms, etc., the lama’s household ended up utilizing about fifty rooms. All together the various temples occupied a space the equivalent of “150 pillars.”20 There were about thirty huts in the vicinity of the main hermitage compound, and about ninety monks’ rooms inside the compound itself.

After the Cultural Revolution, most of these buildings were in a state of near total collapse. Then came the period of liberalization. Permission to rebuild the hermitage was requested from the local authorities in 1984. The preparatory rituals to ensure the success of the project were enacted the following year on the fifteenth day of the fourth Tibetan month. With some funds from the Chinese government and with considerable monetary contributions and volunteer labor from local people, the hermitage has been restored to about seventy percent of its former state.21 Several of the individual monks’ huts that lay outside of the main compound were never rebuilt, and rather than rebuilding the assembly hall that used to be located next to the Dharma enclosure, the residents of Purchok chose instead to build there a “library” to house a collection of scriptures (Tengyur). This library was still under construction in 2004.

Monks perform rituals during the Sixth-Month Fourth-Day pilgrimage day. Purchok is the last hermitage that laypeople visit when they make the Sera Mountain Circumambulation Circuit (Seré Rikhor) on this day.

Today, the monastery has about thirty-eight monks – thirty official and eight unofficial – and it is principally a ritual institution (just as it has been for most of the past two centuries). Its monthly ritual cycle includes the performance of the self-initiation (danjuk) rituals of Vajrabhairava (Dorjé Jikjé) and Sarvavid Vairocana (Künrik Nampar Nangdzé), as well as the rituals of the Medicine Buddha (Menla), the Sixteen Arhats (Neten Chudruk), and the monastery’s protector deities. In the year 2000, a class for younger monks that focuses on the classical philosophical texts was inaugurated at Purchok, and from that time a senior textualist has resided permanently at the monastery in a teaching capacity. This represents a departure from tradition, given that Purchok monks who wanted to study philosophy would have traditionally matriculated at Sera. However, it is consistent with the widespread shift in the ethos of contemporary Tibetan monasticism, where a basis in doctrinal studies is seen as necessary even for monks who are ritualists.22

Note: The glossary is organized into sections according to the main language of each entry. The first section contains Tibetan words organized in Tibetan alphabetical order. To jump to the entries that begin with a particular Tibetan root letter, click on that letter below. Columns of information for all entries are listed in this order: THL Extended Wylie transliteration of the term, THL Phonetic rendering of the term, the English translation, the Sanskrit equivalent, associated dates, and the type of term. To view the glossary sorted by any one of these rubrics, click on the corresponding label (such as “Phonetics”) at the top of its column.