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Rakhadrak Hermitage
Rakhadrak Hermitage (''Ra kha brag ri khrod'') is a historical hermitage belonging to the Sera Monastery. It is northeast of Sera and north of Lhasa in Tibet Autonomous Region. It is just up the mountain from the Keutsang Hermitage. History The historical fame of the hermitage is two-fold. One is that Tsongkhapa created there his great classic treatise, "The Essence of Eloquence that Distinguishes Between the Provisional and Definitive Meaning of the Scriptures" (''Drang nges legs bshad snying po''). The second aspect is that a letter, "bearers of the golden letter" (''gser yig pa''), was formally handed over to Tsongkhapa here, brought by a delegation from the Emperor of China. The letter was an invitation from the Chinese Emperor to Tsongkhapa to visit his court. In the 18th century, the hermitage was also established by Sgrub khang dge legs rgya mtsho (1641–1713) as a formal monastic institution with twelve ordained monks. The hermitage is also part of the "Sixth-Month Fourt ...
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Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism (also referred to as Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Lamaism, Lamaistic Buddhism, Himalayan Buddhism, and Northern Buddhism) is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet and Bhutan, where it is the dominant religion. It is also in majority regions surrounding the Himalayan areas of India (such as Ladakh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and a minority in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand), in much of Central Asia, in the southern Siberian regions such as Tuva, and in Mongolia. Tibetan Buddhism evolved as a form of Mahāyāna Buddhism stemming from the latest stages of Indian Buddhism (which also included many Vajrayāna elements). It thus preserves many Indian Buddhist tantric practices of the post-Gupta early medieval period (500 to 1200 CE), along with numerous native Tibetan developments. In the pre-modern era, Tibetan Buddhism spread outside of Tibet primarily due to the influence of the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), founded by Kublai Khan, which had ruled China, ...
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Lhasa Prefecture
Lhasa is a prefecture-level city, one of the main administrative divisions of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It covers an area of of rugged and sparsely populated terrain. Its capital and largest city is Lhasa, with around 300,000 residents, which mostly corresponds with the administrative Chengguan District, while its suburbs extend into Doilungdêqên District and Dagzê District. The consolidated prefecture-level city contains additional five, mostly rural, counties. The city boundaries roughly correspond to the basin of the Lhasa River, a major tributary of the Yarlung Tsangpo River. It lies on the Lhasa terrane, the last unit of crust to accrete to the Eurasian plate before the continent of India collided with Asia about 50 million years ago and pushed up the Himalayas. The terrain is high, contains a complex pattern of faults and is tectonically active. The temperature is generally warm in summer and rises above freezing on sunny days in winter. Most of the rai ...
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Tibet
Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, Monpa, Tamang people, Tamang, Qiang people, Qiang, Sherpa people, Sherpa and Lhoba peoples and now also considerable numbers of Han Chinese and Hui people, Hui settlers. Since Annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China, 1951, the entire plateau has been under the administration of the People's Republic of China, a major portion in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and other portions in the Qinghai and Sichuan provinces. Tibet is the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of . Located in the Himalayas, the highest elevation in Tibet is Mount Everest, Earth's highest mountain, rising 8,848.86 m (29,032 ft) above sea level. The Tibetan Empire emerged in the 7th century. At its height in the 9th century, the Tibet ...
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China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and borders fourteen countries by land, the most of any country in the world, tied with Russia. Covering an area of approximately , it is the world's third largest country by total land area. The country consists of 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two Special Administrative Regions (Hong Kong and Macau). The national capital is Beijing, and the most populous city and financial center is Shanghai. Modern Chinese trace their origins to a cradle of civilization in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. The semi-legendary Xia dynasty in the 21st century BCE and the well-attested Shang and Zhou dynasties developed a bureaucratic political system to serve hereditary monarchies, or dyna ...
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Sera Monastery
Sera Monastery ( "Wild Roses Monastery"; ) is one of the "great three" Gelug university monasteries of Tibet, located north of Lhasa and about north of the Jokhang. The other two are Ganden Monastery and Drepung Monastery. The origin of its name is attributed to a fact that during construction, the hill behind the monastery was covered with blooming wild roses (or "sera" in Tibetan). The original Sera Monastery is responsible for some 19 hermitages, including four nunneries, which are all located in the foothills north of Lhasa. The Sera Monastery, as a complex of structures with the Great Assembly Hall and three colleges, was founded in 1419 by Jamchen Chojey of Sakya Yeshe of Zel Gungtang (1355–1435), a disciple of Je Tsongkhapa. During the 1959 revolt in Lhasa, Sera monastery suffered severe damage, with its colleges destroyed and hundreds of monks killed. After the Dalai Lama took asylum in India, many of the monks of Sera who survived the attack moved to Bylakuppe in ...
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Hermitage (religious Retreat)
A hermitage most authentically refers to a place where a hermit lives in seclusion from the world, or a building or settlement where a person or a group of people lived religiously, in seclusion. Particularly as a name or part of the name of properties its meaning is often imprecise, harking to a distant period of local history, components of the building material, or recalling any former sanctuary or holy place. Secondary churches or establishments run from a monastery were often called "hermitages". In the 18th century, some owners of English country houses adorned their gardens with a "hermitage", sometimes a Gothic ruin, but sometimes, as at Painshill Park, a romantic hut which a "hermit" was recruited to occupy. The so-called Ermita de San Pelayo y San Isidoro is the ruins of a Romanesque church of Ávila, Spain that ended up several hundred miles away, to feature in the Buen Retiro Park in Madrid. Western Christian tradition A hermitage is any type of domestic dwelli ...
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Lhasa
Lhasa (; Lhasa dialect: ; bo, text=ལྷ་ས, translation=Place of Gods) is the urban center of the prefecture-level city, prefecture-level Lhasa (prefecture-level city), Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet Autonomous Region in Southwest China. The inner urban area of Lhasa City is equivalent to the administrative borders of Chengguan District (), which is part of the wider prefectural Lhasa City. Lhasa is the second most populous urban area on the Tibetan Plateau after Xining and, at an altitude of , Lhasa is one of the List of highest large cities, highest cities in the world. The city has been the religious and administrative capital of Tibet since the mid-17th century. It contains many culturally significant Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhist sites such as the Potala Palace, Jokhang Temple and Norbulingka Palaces. Toponymy Lhasa literally translates to "place of gods" ( , god; , place) in the Standard Tibetan, Tibetan language. Chengguan literally tra ...
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Tibet Autonomous Region
The Tibet Autonomous Region or Xizang Autonomous Region, often shortened to Tibet or Xizang, is a Provinces of China, province-level Autonomous regions of China, autonomous region of the China, People's Republic of China in Southwest China. It was overlayed on the traditional Tibetan regions of Ü-Tsang and Kham. It was formally established in 1965 to replace the Tibet Area (administrative division), Tibet Area, the former Administrative divisions of China, administrative division of the People's Republic of China (PRC) established after the annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China, annexation of Tibet. The establishment was about five years after the 1959 Tibetan uprising and the dismissal of the Kashag, and about 13 years after the original annexation. The current borders of the Tibet Autonomous Region were generally established in the 18th century and include about half of historic Tibet, or the Tibet, ethno-cultural Tibet. The Tibet Autonomous Region spans ov ...
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Keutsang Hermitage
Keutsang Hermitage (''ke’u tshang'') is a historical hermitage, belonging to the Sera Monastery, about northwest of Lhasa in Tibet Autonomous Region. The hermitage was in a precariously perched cave once inhabited by the great Tibetan guru Tsongkhapa. However, the original cave collapsed in a landslide. What is present now was rebuilt, adjoining the ruined Keutsang West Hermitage, at a safer location. As it exists now, Keutsang is to the east of Sera on a hillside above Lhasa’s principal cemetery. Rakhadrak Hermitage is above and close to this hermitage. The hermitage is one of the pilgrim sites on the Sera Mountain Circumambulation Circuit (se ra’i ri ’khor) of the ‘Sixth-Month Fourth-Day (''drug pa tshe bzhi'')’ celebrations that devotees visit. Topology The word ‘Keutsang’ spelt ''ke’u tshang'' denotes “cave,” “cavern,” or “overhang.” Thus, the hermitage is pre-fixed with this word suggesting that it was a cave monastery. Geography Keutsang mon ...
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Tsongkhapa
Tsongkhapa ('','' meaning: "the man from Tsongkha" or "the Man from Onion Valley", c. 1357–1419) was an influential Tibetan Buddhist monk, philosopher and tantric yogi, whose activities led to the formation of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism.Tsong khapa (2006), pp. ix-x. He is also known by his ordained name Losang Drakpa (, Skt. Sumatikīrti) or simply as "Je Rinpoche" (, "Precious Lord"). He is also known by Chinese as Zongkapa Lobsang Zhaba or just Zōngkàbā (宗喀巴). Tsongkhapa was born in Amdo, the son of a Tibetan Longben Tribal leader who also once served as an official of the Yuan Dynasty. As a monk, he studied under numerous teachers of the various Tibetan Buddhist traditions which flourished in central Tibet, including Sakya, Jonang, Kagyu and Kadam. Tsongkhapa was a prolific author with a broad knowledge of Buddhist philosophy, logic, hermeneutics and practice. He wrote numerous works on madhyamaka philosophy (such as ''Ocean of Reasoning,'' a comment ...
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Chinese Emperor
''Huangdi'' (), translated into English as Emperor, was the superlative title held by monarchs of China who ruled various imperial regimes in Chinese history. In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was considered the Son of Heaven and the autocrat of all under Heaven. Under the Han dynasty, Confucianism replaced Legalism (Chinese philosophy), Legalism as the official political theory and Succession to the Chinese throne, succession in most cases theoretically followed agnatic primogeniture. The lineage of emperors descended from a paternal family line constituted a Dynasties in Chinese history, dynasty. The absolute authority of the emperor came with a variety of governing duties and moral obligations; failure to uphold these was thought to remove the dynasty's Mandate of Heaven and to justify its overthrow. In practice, emperors sometimes avoided the strict rules of succession and dynasties' ostensible "failures" were detailed in Twenty-Four Histories, official hi ...
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Fifth Dalai Lama
Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (; ; 1617–1682) was the 5th Dalai Lama and the first Dalai Lama to wield effective temporal and spiritual power over all Tibet. He is often referred to simply as the Great Fifth, being a key religious and temporal leader of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibet. Gyatso is credited with unifying all Tibet under the Ganden Phodrang after a Mongol military intervention which ended a protracted era of civil wars. As an independent head of state, he established relations with the Qing dynasty, Qing empire and other regional countries and also met early History of European exploration in Tibet, European explorers. Gyatso also wrote 24 volumes' worth of scholarly and religious works on a wide range of subjects. Early life To understand the context within which the Dalai Lama institution came to hold temporal power in Tibet during the lifetime of the 5th, it may be helpful to review not just the early life of Lobsang Gyatso but also the world into which he was born, as Kü ...
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