Spring 2012 Lecture Series

Drepung Monastery was founded in 1416 near Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. Gomang Dratsang or College is the oldest of the 4 colleges of Drepung. In 1959, before the invasion of Communist China, Drepung monastery had more than 10,000 monks. Gomang alone had about 5,500. Since its beginning, Gomang College has produced many eminent Buddhist masters and has been a very important Tibetan and Buddhist learning center. Each of the colleges of Drepung has its specialty and the focus of Gomang is philosophy: logic and debate.
In 1949 the army of the People's Republic of China invaded the country of Tibet. No one came to the aid of this sovereign territory and by 1959, the political and spiritual leader of Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, was forced to flee his country. He was immediately followed by 80,000 refugees. Refugees continue to stream from Tibet, often at great peril to their lives. Since 1949 more than 1.2 million Tibetans have died at the hands of the Communist Chinese. These oppressors are destroying the environment and culture of Tibet and are displacing the population of Tibet. In many areas, Chinese settlers now outnumber the Tibetan population. During the past forty years of their occupation, the Chinese Communists whose motto is "Religion is Poison" have destroyed more than 6,000 of Tibet's monasteries, including Drepung, and have imprisoned, tortured, and executed thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns.
Escape from Tibet: Only about 100 monks managed to escape with His Holiness the Dalai Lama when he fled Tibet in 1959. They lived first in Boxa, North India, and then, in 1969, 62 of the surviving Gomang monks were given 42 acres of land in Mundgod, south India. There they started to rebuild Drepung Gomang Monastic Dratsang in its present location. Today approximately 2,000 monks live on these few acres. Source: http://www.gomang.org/history.html.

For more information
contact Cornelia Tsakiridou (215-951-1558).

All events of the Diplomat-In-Residence Program are free and open to the public.