Abbot Face Arrest and Clergy of a Unique Buddhist Institute are Expelled
DHARAMSALA, 20 June 2001: Reports indicate that Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok, the chief abbot of an important new Buddhist institute in eastern Tibet, might be arrested.
“This is very strange because Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok was a very spiritual lama and did not involve himself in any political activity,” said kalon T.C. Tethong of the Department of Information and International Relations of the Central Tibetan Administration, based in north India.
“If this report is true we appeal to the Chinese government to desist from this course of action, especially in view that the lama has not committed any crime or involved himself in any activities that may be viewed as political by the Chinese state,” said Tethong.
However, thousands of monks and nuns of Serthar Buddhist Institute or Larung Gar are in the process of being expelled. The Serthar Buddhist Institute is based in Kanze, in eastern Tibet, now incorporated into the Chinese province of Sichuan.
These reports come in the wake of increased official Chinese monitoring of the growing clergy population of Serthar Buddhist Institute. In the spring of this year, officials from 13 different districts of Kanze, Dartsedo, Derge, Nyarong, Sershul and Serthar (Serta) districts of Kham descended upon the massive Serthar Buddhist Institute or the Larung Ngarig Nangten Institute The officials claimed they received direct instructions from both the central Chinese government in Beijing and the provincial government in Chengdu that the Institute’s massive clergy population of more than10,000 must be reduced to 1,500. The authorities said the excluded members of clergy must be returned to their respective districts or countries and the vacated monastic cells demolished.
The officials were acting upon the command of the Chinese President Jiang Zemin. According to a report that was widely circulated among the clergy population of Serthar Buddhist Institute in 1999, Jiang Zemin had made it clear to the Sichuan provincial leadership that he wished that such a large centre for the training and nurturing of students of Tibetan Buddhism be done away with.
This was not the first time that the institute was visited by Chinese officials. According to the London-based Tibet Information Network (TIN), in June 1999 a group of local Chinese officials paid a visit to the institute and told the abbot, Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok, “This Institute is allowed only 1,400 students. Therefore, you will have to ensure that within a period of three years, you take the necessary action to bring down the numbers within the prescribed limits.”
In response, Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok said, “All these students have come and joined the Institute of their own accord. I have neither invited nor recruited them to come here. Therefore, I don’t feel it right to expel them now. Besides, if the sudden forced expulsion of several thousand students from the Institute, both Tibetan and Chinese, were to lead to ethnic conflicts between Tibetans and Chinese, I wouldn’t like to be held responsible.”
According to the initial plans of the Chinese government, the reduction of the Institute’s then 8,800 student population was to be carried out according to the following ethnic ratio – 4,00 of the then 7,00 Chinese monks and nuns to be retained, while 1,000 Tibetan monks and nuns, out of over 8,000, would be retained, TIN reported.
TIN reported that then the Chinese government was not able to carry out its intentions because of the high standards of teaching at the institute. The contents of the curriculum, the quality of teaching and the availability of books and texts both in Tibetan and Chinese are considered excellent.
So after a gap of two years, the officials have once again visited the institute. Why this sudden but delayed official Chinese fuss over an institute which is tucked in a remote corner of Tibet?
Official China fears the popularity of the institute and the international following it is able to attract.
Official Chinese concern stems also from the fact that the Serthar Buddhist Institute is at the heart of a little known renaissance of Tibetan Buddhist learning that is attracting an alarming number of followers. The growing clergy population of Serthar Buddhist Institute cuts across nationalities. There are about 1,000 Chinese monks at Serthar from China itself. There are students from Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, including 4,000 nuns who live and study at a nunnery, affiliated to the institute. The bulk of the population of Serthar Buddhist Institute is made of Tibetan followers from all over the three traditional provinces of Tibet.
SERTHAR BUDDHIST INSTITUTE OR LARUNG GAR
Official China, already suffering from Falun Gong-phobia, is alarmed at the popularity of the Serthar Buddhist Institute, which is outside official Chinese control. It is a unique religious institution in Tibet. Serthar Buddhist Institute was founded in 1980 by Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok as a personal hermitage where he taught a few students. Over the years the student population grew considerably. They came across different parts of Tibet to live and study under the ecumenical Khenpo Gagmen Phuntsok.
The 10th Panchen Lama secured official approval of Serthar Buddhist Institute in 1987. The Panchen Lama certified as an “academy.’ Although the monks and nuns are required to live strictly according to monastic rules, the institute is not a formal monastery. Students build own accommodation as they arrive at the institute. There are no monastic colleges and the institute is open to all traditions of Tibetan Buddhism.
According to TIN, the status of Serthar as an “academy,” rather than a formal monastery, could be a reason why, while the first wave of Patriotic Education hit the monasteries of Tibetan areas incorporated into Sichuan from 1997 onwards, religious life at Serthar appeared to have carried on with minimal interference from the authorities till mid 1999.
Despite the relative autonomy enjoyed by the institute till 1999, there were fears as early as 1991 that Serthar would eventually be affected by restrictions that were being introduced in monasteries throughout Tibet as a part of the Chinese state’s attempt to re-assert its authority over the expanding monasteries.
One nun who escaped to India told TIN that she escaped not because of the quality of teaching was higher in India but because there were fears that religious activities in Serthar would be cracked down upon.
According to TIN, there are reports that Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok had aroused official Chinese suspicions when he declined to attend the enthronement ceremony of the Chinese-recognised Panchen Lama. in December 1995. He was one of the few senior religious figures to do so.
Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok was born in 1933 in Golok in Amdo, now renamed Qinghai. At the age of two he was recognised as the reincarnation of Terton Sogyal, an important finder of hidden treasures or religious texts. Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok was an ecumenical spiritual leader and received teachings from all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. When he was twenty-two he took the vows of a fully ordained monk from Thuga Yeshin Norbu. He also became the chief disciple of Konchok Chophel, who was a great master of the old and new transmissions. From the age of twenty-four Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok studied monastic discipline and the knowledge of the five major sciences, poetry and grammar at Nubsur monastery.
When Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok was twenty-six he established a retreat centre called Senggey Yangtsang in Amdo. However, around this time the Chinese authorities tried many times to subject him to struggle sessions.
With the introduction of more liberal policies in China with the assumption of power by Deng Xiaoping, Tibetans in Tibet were also granted a greater degree of cultural and religious freedom. Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok took advantage of this to build the Serthar Buddhist Institute, which became an instant success because of the ecumenical character of the place. It attracted students from all over Tibet and from the four different lineages of the Tibetan Buddhist heritage. Despite the different lineage teachings, the students were made by Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok to abide by the following three vows:
1) Never forsake the interest of all sentient beings, irrespective of their differences.
2) To hold the aspiration to achieve enlightenment as unwaveringly as a rocky mountain.
3) Never to give up one’s refuge in the Three Jewels even at the risk to one’s own life.
In 1986 Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok gave his first Kalachakra teachings. In 1987 he made a pilgrimage to Wutai Shan in China, the place Buddhists believe to be the abode of Manjushri, the Buddha of Wisdom. Afterwards he visited Beijing and met with the Panchen Lama. In Beijing he also gave numerous teachings to Tibetans, Chinese and Mongolians. Since then he made extensive pilgrimage to all the holy places in Tibet.
In 1990, Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok visited India. Since then Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok travelled to Nepal, Bhutan, America, Canada, England, France, Germany, Taiwan and Hong Kong to give religious teachings to thousands of followers and believers.
Contacts:
Kesang Y. Takla
Thubten Samphel
Tel: (1892) 22457/22510