Tashi Jong and Monastery trying to mummify monk

By: Avnish Katoch

Tashi Jong is making a lot of news because the monastery is trying to mummify a monk there. Here is the link to the story on Times of India.

Tashi Jong, is 15 kilometers(almost 10 miles) from Palampur and 2 kilometers from Baijnath. This is a small village in between Paprola and Tara Garh (famous for its Taragarh Palace hotel and beautiful tea gardens and main indian Army base (Alhilhal)).

Tashi Jong is a famous Tibetan monastery and set on beautiful Dhauladhar mountains.

Tashi Jong is home to The Drukpa Kagyu tradition, which is one of the schools of the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. It has a few sub-schools, though they are very similar and transmit the same core of teaching.

In the late 1950′s, the eighth Khamtrul Rinpoche, Dongyu Nyima, seeing that a great problem was imminent, left Tibet with many of his followers just prior to the Communist Chinese invasion. He led his followers to North of India in Himachal Pradesh and started a new Khampagar which they called Tashi Jong. At Tashi Jong, Khamtrul Rinpoche did everything he could to re-establish the various traditions that he and his followers carried with them from Tibet so that they would survive for posterity. Amongst many things, he envisaged a project for the complete restoration of the texts of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition and began the work by having copies of the texts that had been carried out of Tibet freshly transcribed and re-printed in Delhi. He also began work on a new edition of one of the most important written works of the Drukpa Kagyu tradition, The Collected Works of All-knowing Padma Karpo which has become hard to obtain. He assembled good editions of the texts, supervised the cutting of new wood blocks, and did the correction and editing himself. The new edition was not completed before he died but the wood blocks that had been cut were taken to the Bhutanese National Library where they became the basis of a completed work that was published in February, 2000. This is the best edition readily available.

Tashi Jong is also home to Dongyu Gatsal Ling .This Drukpa Kagyu Tibetan Buddhist Nunnery was founded in 2000 for young women from Tibet and other Himalayan regions like Ladakh, Spiti,and Kinnaur. http://www.gatsal.org

Diane Perry a British who became the first fully ordained Western Buddhist nun, Drubgyu Tenzin Palmo, runs this nunnery. She is a multi dimensional personality and has written many books. Her biography tells all about her and her 12 year solitary retreat in a cave in the snowy mountains of northern India, and the effects of her Buddhist experiences on her life thereafter.