Lhasa, Tibet

Trashi Chöling literally means “The Place of Auspicious Dharma” and is located about three kilometers from Sera Monastery in the mountains, northwest of the monastery. It takes about one hour to walk from Sera to Trashi Chöling.

As is typical of many mountain monasteries, Trashi Chöling is built in a tiered fashion on terraces that conform to the landscape. The first two tiers of the hermitage – the monks’ quarters and the main temple still exist today, although we know from old photos and informants’ accounts that they are only a fraction of their former size.

Unfortunately, the top two tiers – the private residence of Pabongka Rinpoche and the Dorje Shugden temple – are now in ruins, and have not been rebuilt. All of the images in the temple today are new, with the exception of one old statue of Chakrasamvara found on the altar in the northwestern corner of the temple, and this, in fact, may not have originally belonged to the hermitage.

The central figures on the main altar are Lama Tsongkhapa and his two disciples. To the left of these large one-storey-high statues are two smaller statues of the Buddha. To the right of the Tsongkhapa statue are life-size statues of Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche, Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo, and Jetsun Lama Ngawang Namdrol, the founder of the hermitage. To the right of these, along the eastern wall of the temple, are three funerary stupas of the same three figures.

One contemporary Tibetan author states that according to oral tradition, Trashi Chöling may date to the time of the 7th-Century Buddhist king of Tibet, Songtsen Gampo. The first real evidence we have of a monastic institution existing at the site, however, is much later.

According to a contemporary Tibetan historian, Trashi Chöling is the place where the Mongolian ruler of Tibet, Lhazang Khan, housed the monks of his private ritual college during the winter months.

We also know from different historical sources that monks from Lhazang’s ritual college – responsible for performing all of the necessary merit-making and protection rituals for the king – met in Northern Tibet during the summer months, and then moved to a site just north of Lhasa for the winter. Trashi Chöling, it seems, was that site.

Shortly after Lhazang came to power in Tibet in 1705, he came to an agreement with the monks of Sera. Seeing that the Sera Assembly Hall – the place where all of the monks gathered for communal rituals – was too small to fit the entire monastic population, he offered to build the community a new assembly hall. The monks, from their side, had to surrender the old assembly hall to the king, who proposed to use it as the permanent home for his private ritual college.

The king then built what is the Sera Great Assembly Hall. The old assembly hall then became the headquarters for Lhazang’s ritual college. After the death of Lhazang in 1717, his ritual college became the Sera Tantric College, an institution that continues to flourish to the present day.

Although the monks of Lhazang’s ritual college moved to Sera permanently, it seems clear that they did not give up their rights to their old winter residence at Trashi Chöling in the mountains northwest of Sera. When Lhazang’s ritual college became the Sera Tantric College, ownership of Trashi Chöling also passed to the Sera Tantric College. For 200 years, we know little about Trashi Chöling except for the fact that it was the property of the Sera Tantric College.

In the early twentieth century, Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo did an extensive retreat in some caves close to Trashi Chöling. This established Pabongka’s connection to this general area. Later, when Pabongka Rinpoche’s fame and reputation grew, Sera Tantric College offered the monastery of Trashi Chöling to him as his private hermitage or retreat. In return, Pabongka Rinpoche agreed to officially enter the Tantric College, a move that brought this institution a certain prestige, given the Lama’s reputation. From that point on, Pabongka had two affiliations at Sera: the Tantric College, and the Sera Mey College. Informants tell us that from then on, Pabongka Rinpoche lived at Trashi Chöling during the summer months, and in private rooms at Sera during the winter months.

Under Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo, the hermitage was extensively refurbished and expanded. It was perhaps under him as well that a very large temple to the Protector deity Dorje Shugden was built on the topmost tier of the complex. After the events of 1959, Trashi Chöling suffered the worst fate of all of Sera’s hermitages.

Over thirty years of neglect brought the site to the brink of complete collapse. Restoration did not begin until a monk – a student of Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo – undertook the labor of renovating the hermitage as a personal project in the early 1990s. Two elder monks who serve as caretakers of the site maintain the hermitage today. They also receive help from the nuns of Takten Hermitage, who live just up the hill.

Source : http://thlib.org/places/monasteries/sera/hermitages/pdf/sera_herm_trashi_choling.pdf