Shel dkar Chos sde Monastery of Ding ri, Tibet
Shel dkar Chos sde Monastery of Ding ri, Tibet

The Tradition of the Monastery Before 1959 and Its Revival in Exile

Author(s): Thupten Kunga Chashab
Subject(s): Theology and Religion
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: abbot; monastery; subsidies; recitation; Dge lugs pa; donations; exile; Sherpas; Sollu Khumbu; Baudhanath
Summary/Abstract: The Shel dkar chos sde Monastery is located in the Southwest of Tibet, close to the Nepalese-Tibetan border at Kodari, Nepal. The monastery was founded and sponsored by a chieftain of La stod Lho, Si tu chos kyi rin chen in 1385 AD, on Rgyal mo shel ri Mountain in Ding ri Shel dkar. Prior to Si tu’s involvement in the establishment of this monastery, in the times of Dpang lo tsa ba in the 13th century, there was a small temple at the location. Before it was transformed into a Dge lugs pa school in the middle of the 17th century there were twenty-one colleges (grwa tshangs) of different Tibetan Buddhist traditions: the Sa skya pa, Bo dong, and Dga’ ldan pa practitioners. In 1959 the monastery was destroyed and the monks were resettled by the Chinese army. Out of around three hundred monks of the Shel dkar Monastery in Tibet, only forty-seven were able to escape into exile in Sollu Khumbu, Nepal. Thanks to donations given by the Tibetans, Sherpas, and Westerners the settlement monastery in Sho rong bde legs gling camp was built at Sollu Khumbu and assigned for the Shel dkar and Chu bzang monks to live in and continue their religious practices. In the middle of the 1980s, the Shel dkar monks decided to move to Kathmandu, Nepal. Nowadays the Shel dkar Monastery is in the vicinity of Tintsuli Baudhanath, Kathmandu. At present, there are around a hundred and ten monks at the monastery and the majority of the monks are from the Himalayan regions of Nepal and India. Only one-third of the monks are Tibetans from Tibet and the Tibetan community in exile.

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