The Gandantegchinlen Monastery ( mn, Гандантэгчинлэн хийд, ''Gandantegchinlen khiid'', short name: Gandan mn, Гандан) is a Mongolian Buddhist monastery in the

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

n capital of

Ulaanbaatar Ulaanbaatar (; mn, Улаанбаатар, , "Red Hero"), previously anglicized as Ulan Bator, is the capital and most populous city of Mongolia. It is the coldest capital city in the world, on average. The municipality is located in north ce ...

that has been restored and revitalized since 1990. The Tibetan name translates to the "Great Place of Complete Joy". It currently has over 150

monks A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedicat ...

in residence. It features a 26.5-meter-high statue of

Avalokiteśvara In Buddhism, Avalokiteśvara (Sanskrit: अवलोकितेश्वर, IPA: ) is a bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas. He has 108 avatars, one notable avatar being Padmapāṇi (lotus bearer). He is variably depicted, ...

. It came under state protection in 1994.

History

The monastery was constructed by order of the 5th

Jebtsundamba Khutuktu The Jebtsundamba Khutuktu, , ; zh, c=哲布尊丹巴呼圖克圖, p=Zhébùzūn Dānbā Hūtúkètú; bo, རྗེ་བཙུན་དམ་པ་ཧུ་ཐུག་ཐུ་, Jetsün Dampa Hutuktu; "Venerable Excellent incarnate lama" ar ...

in 1809. The first temple was the Gungaachoilin Datsan. Only one wooden pillar remains from this temple. In 1838, the Gandantegchenlin Temple was built along with the private residence of the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu. The 13th Dalai Lama stayed in the residence in 1904. In 1840, the

Vajradhara Vajradhara (Sanskrit: वज्रधर. (Also, the name of Indra, because 'Vajra' means diamond, as well as the thunderbolt, anything hard more generally) Tibetan: རྡོ་རྗེ་འཆང། rdo rje 'chang (Dorje Chang); zh, t=金剛 ...

Temple was built. In 1869, the Zuu Temple was built. In 1913, the tall Avalokiteśvara temple was built. In 1925, the temple for keeping the remains of the 8th Jebtsundamba Khutuktu was built. It is now the monastery library. In the 1930s, the

Communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

government of Mongolia, under the leadership of Khorloogiin Choibalsan and under the influence of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...

destroyed Destroyed may refer to: * ''Destroyed'' (Sloppy Seconds album), a 1989 album by Sloppy Seconds * ''Destroyed'' (Moby album), a 2011 album by Moby See also * Destruction (disambiguation) Destruction may refer to: Concepts * Destruktion, a ...

all but a few monasteries and killed more than 15,000 lamas. Gandantegchinlen Khiid monastery, having escaped this mass destruction, was closed in 1938, but then reopened in 1944 and was allowed to continue as the only functioning Buddhist monastery, under a skeleton staff, as a token homage to traditional Mongolian culture and religion. With the end of

Marxism Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...

in Mongolia in 1990, restrictions on worship were lifted.

Statue

The original statue, made of copper, was built after appeals to the Mongolian public; its intent was to restore the sight of the 8th Jebtsundamba, also known as Bogd Khan), who had claimed the title of Emperor of Mongolia. The statue was built by Bogd Javzandamba's principal minister, Chin Wan Khanddorj. Russian troops dismantled the original statue in 1938. After the end of the Soviet era, the statue of Avalokiteśvara was rebuilt in 1996, funded by donations by the Mongolian people. It features 2,286 precious stones and is gilded with

gold leaf Gold leaf is gold that has been hammered into thin sheets (usually around 0.1 µm thick) by goldbeating and is often used for gilding. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of karats and shades. The most commonly used gold is 22-kara ...

. Since 1992, the Supreme Leader of the Centre of All Mongolian Buddhists and Abbot of Gandantegchinlen Monastery has been Lama Gabju Choijamts Demberel. The monastery is surrounded by the Gandan ger suburb.

References

External links

Official website of the Gandan Monastery

Article
on Ulaanbaatar with a section on the monastery
Buddhism in Mongolia After 1990An interview
with Tibetologist

Glenn H. Mullin Glenn H. Mullin (born Jun 22, 1949 in Quebec, Canada) is a Tibetologist, Buddhist writer, translator of classical Tibetan literature and teacher of Tantric Buddhist meditation. Mullin has written over twenty-five books on Tibetan Buddhism. Many ...

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