DrePung Monastery
The Drepung Monastery is one of the six major Tibetan Buddhist Temple of Gelug Sect and the largest temple in the world. The Drepung Monastery is the largest of all Tibetan monasteries and is located on the Gambo Utse mountain with an elevation of 3800 meters, 10 kilometers from the western suburb of Lhasa. The Drepung Monastery was founded by Jamyang Chojey Tashi-pelden, one of the main disciples of the founder of the Gelug Sect in 1416 during the Ming Dynasty. The Drepung Monaster, literally known as Rice Heap Monastery in Tibetan language, is one of the 'Three Great Monasteries' (the other two are the Ganden Monastery and the Sera Monastery. The Drepung Monastery covers an area of 250,000 square meters, holding 7,700 monks in total and sometimes as many as 10,000 monks. When the Drepung Monastery was first built there was only one building, but more were built as time passed. The founder maintained the monastery for 32 years and taught discourses on the Three Baskets.
From this, many monks gathered there to live and finally divided themselves into seven groups, forming sever colleges. Due to the large increase in monks, the Drepung Monastery became one of the greatest in Tibet. Later, three of the colleges combined with the others and then only four remained. Each college has an abbot responsible for every aspect of the college. Drepung Monastery was so important that the name of the Tibetan government derives from the name of the residence at Drepung. After the fifth Dalai Lama, the subsequent ones were only temporal religious ruler because the no longer had their permanent residence at the monastery. There were more than 8,000 monks living at the monastery that taught at the schools and also did the menial work of the monastery, as well as some leaving to become abbots at other monasteries. The Drepung Monastery is the largest temple to travel. Location: 10 km from the western suburb of Lhasa Tickets: CNY 55 Opening Hours: 09:00-17:00
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