Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 32-minute talk, Kyabje Rinpoche recounts his lived experience establishing Tibetan monasteries in exile in India from the late 1950s forward. He describes three years of intense physical labor—clearing jungle, building homes and fields—work that disproved Chinese propaganda depicting monks as idle. Rinpoche details Sera Monastery’s organization with 300 monks from Buxa Duar, the daily schedule of early-morning practice followed by labor, and the devastating health crisis in Buxa Duar (over 100 monks died). He then covers the pivotal move south: government stipends, fresh food, and clean water transformed health outcomes. Finally, Rinpoche reflects on community growth—monasteries expanding across settlements, a full-time school founded in 1974 with English and arithmetic alongside Buddhist studies, and new generations of monks ordained from local Indian communities.
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File: 1989-03-30 – 23A – 's Story – KR.mp3
UUID: 6efd14c1-bb92-4432-aba8-f5d2f85b0855
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Rinpoche's Story
Date: 1989-03-30
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~1,688
Three years all all the time was spent in clearing the jungle for fields and building homes and building roads. Indian government of 50 rupees, 50 or 60 rupees a month for their food and The monks had to work extremely hard for two or three years, clearing the land, preparing the fields and building houses. So everyone was the the you know, previously the Chinese had made a lot of propaganda that the monks were very lazy. They couldn’t do anything. They never did anything.
And so after this two or three year period when they saw that everything that the monks had done, cleared the fields and planting and building houses. Everyone was very surprised. So then initially, it’s Sera Monastery. Sera ji, Sera. Sera Monastery in general.
Sera Monastery. There were 300 monks came down from Buxa Duar. And then the 300? Is that all that was left in Buxa Duar? Of the eight No.
This is just Sera Monastery. They were all these different they were of a different sects in Buxa Duar. Initially, they had they built houses for all the monks with four people to each small room. So one of the rooms then they had one section of the room was divided into an area where they would have the the kitchen and where they had storage. They had this the fireplace.
And then the the Drepung Monastery, the Drepung and Ganden Monasteries, they established monasteries at Mundgod. Established and also a Kagyu Monastery, which is found at Bylakuppe. So and then at Mundgod, two monasteries, and Oh. Were established. So K.
So next to Nima Monastery next to Ganden Monastery is a small. Oh. Monastery. What materials did they build their houses out of? Stone.
So these little buildings with all stone. Yeah. There weren’t any stones at Drepung and Ganden, so they didn’t have stone houses, but it certainly had stone houses. It was plentiful there. Lots of stone.
That’s a quarry or or or just do they quarry them in blocks, or do they just get loose stones? Do It came from a quarry and lots of stone. Blocks So there was 300 monks altogether, and they were divided into groups of about sometimes twenty, thirty or 40, and they would eat together in these groups. And amongst these there were two that were given everybody had to work in order to receive their allowance for the supply. And so amongst these, in each group there were two people who were designated as taking care of the food, getting the food.
And one of them was Dendruk Dorje, who at that time was the abbot. He was mentioned as one of Rinpoche’s teachers, Dendruk Dorje. And so since he was the abbot he didn’t engage in this type of work, and then Rinpoche was the other one. He was he had designated job of getting the food, but he didn’t he actually didn’t have to do much of anything. So that was the way they got around it?
They say they were the food preparers, really they were the They were he was they were the they were the teachers. But they said because they they had this allowance for these two positions, they were still given their their allotment. But he was one of the two teachers. In the His group group had 36. 36 is a bigger group.
Yeah. And his group had there were two allotments for people to take care of the food and one of them was the kids, it turned out one of was him, one was the as the abbot. So they went out. They were the teachers. They said because he was a teacher they would not let him work, so someone else would always prepare the food.
So he’d spend much time the monks wouldn’t have much time for teaching, would they? They So I’ve never didn’t have any time to study. They would they would have to begin work, but but first they would do their recitations, their commitments or their recitations. And about 08:00 they’d have to go to work. They’d work till 11:30 or twelve and eat, then they’d take a nap and work from two to five and come back and wash.
And so there wasn’t really time to study. So did Rinpoche continue with his studies? Yeah. Studied the scriptures. In Buxa Duar, how did how many of the monks would have died?
How many would they have lost? Buxa Duar. Buxa Duar.. Many monks. He doesn’t remember well. Over a 100.
Does that have any medical or any hospital? Yeah. Hospital. If they were very bad, then they would send them to a distant hospital. That’s very seriously Yeah.
Was was there any illness when they moved to the South, or was the people better in better the health improved a great deal, much less sickness because they were now giving them money. The Indian government? The Indian government was giving them money and so the people could buy whatever food they wanted. Could buy new food, fresh food. Oh, so instead of getting rations, they got the money They got access to buy their own.
They could buy they could buy they could buy a fresh food, and therefore And then the water was much better. It’s none of those poison things. Heard a story that when they first were clearing the field, there were many elephants Mhmm. In that area, and some of the people were killed by elephants. None of the monks were killed.
What the elephants stamped on? Trampled? Yeah.? Yeah. Even when I was there at the monks there, there was one villager who killed by an elephant. Really?
Tibetan. Well, did they just charge or what? Yeah. They they run after you. It’s not like a it’s not like a zoo.
So there were lay people around So they had there was the settlement settlement number one, which had about seven camps, and settlement number two, which had 11 camps, and he thinks there might have been about a 100 in each camp. Oh. Oh. This is lay people of monks? Yeah.
Yeah. Lay lay people are Sort of were around each monastery, something. That’s what the yeah. That’s where that’s where they established the monasteries amongst the settlements. And then a camp at the settlement at the third settlement, there were 11 there were 11 camps.
A Probably probably a 100 people in each camp. So now and then the population of the settlements has increased. People had children. So just these which is not sure, but in those at at school, the settlement school, there are over a thousand children. And there’s a there’s a there’s a there’s a children’s village, an orphanage.
Mhmm. And there’s about a thousand children there. Before there were three there were 300 monks, now there’s about 1,600 at Sera. How much is that? So the first lot of monks all came from Buxa Duar.
Did they come from anywhere else as well as Buxa Duar? from Tibet, from Sera, Yeah. They all came only from Buxa Duar. So when how did the new monks start to come then? Then the.
They started coming from the settlement itself. Oh, so the people would send their children and Yeah. The Sera Je Puguchu Jungwa. Oh, the Sera Je So there must be many young monks who started to come. So, yeah, many very young monks began to come into the monastery.
They were seven, eight, nine years old. So there would be would have would there have been a gap of about ten years from when they left Tibet before they had When they Yeah. So there’s now now yeah. There’s a gap between the monks who came from Tibet and the new Indian, the monks who became monks in India. Now most of the monks who came from India from Tibet, the original monks, are very old now because they’ve been there thirty years already.
So now Bylakuppe, there’s now monasteries from all the sects, Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu. They All around Bylakuppe. Bylakuppe is the the village name. Yeah. So now the monasteries from all the sects are there and they’re increasing increasing in size.
There So now there’s Sera Je has a school, and then now there’s 300 students at the school. Young Monks. Yeah. Young Monks. When did the school start?
So they started the school in about 1974 when Rinpoche was the disciplinarian of the monastery. And then after he became the abbot at Sera Je, then they actually they built a building, new buildings, and they made it a full time school that students actually went there in the morning at 08:00 and stayed there and they were given the food was taken to the school itself and then they would come home in the evening. So it became a full time school. So this is really quite a change from what they used to do, practice in Tibet So they didn’t have any special school like this in Tibet. No.
So this is a change because of the influence of Western schools, perhaps, is it? So now they’ve you know, at the school they introduced, they study Tibetan language, grammar, Tibetan history. But they’ve also introduced in they they study English and arithmetic. And they started, know, for example, they didn’t need to know all this or they didn’t have to study English and arithmetic and all this in Tibet. But since they’re in a foreign place, they have it’s necessary that they have this knowledge so they’d be able to to know these things that’d be beneficial for them.
So being able to do the sciences, being able to read and write English, being able to do accounting, things like this. It’s very useful. The older monks, they don’t know how to speak English. There wasn’t any necessity, but now almost most of the younger monks can speak English a little bit at least and it’s very helpful for them. And they’ll all speak Hindi, they?
They don’t study it a lot.