About Larung Gar
Larung Gar, or “The Encampment of the Larung Valley”, is a magical, incredible place. Located in the remote high-altitude grasslands in the region of Golok in the far east of Tibet, outside of the Chinese demarcated Tibetan Autonomous Region in the province of Sichuan, it is has become home to the world’s largest Buddhist institute of study and practice. It is a striking place. Founded in the late 1800s by Dudjom Lingpa, the predecessor of Dudjom Rinpoche, it is most famous today for the community that grew around the incredible master Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche (1933-2004).
It is now filled with tens of thousands of Tibetan and Chinese. There are monks, nuns, yogis and yoginis, and many lay people studying Mahayana and Vajrayana, and there are people from all the Tibetan schools there. It has, with some ups and downs, been able to thrive and stay out of politics, focusing only on the Four Pursuits which Khenpo Sodargye describes as “to unite Buddhists in harmony; to uphold pure precepts; to study, reflect upon, and practice the sacred Dharma; and to propagate the Dharma and benefit all beings.”
The students of Jigme Phuntsok are having a huge impact on the spread of Dharma well beyond these remote grasslands. Here is a profile of some of the teachers: