Samye

History

The Testament of Ba provides the earliest date for the construction of the temple, recording that the foundation was set in the "hare year" (either 763 or 775) and the completion and consecration of the main shrine taking place in the "sheep year" (either 767 or 779). The Blue Annals of 1476 use later dates of 787 and 791, but those dates contradict the historical dates of Shantaraksita's ordination of monks in 779, and his arrival in 763. All accounts concur that the patron was King Trisong Detsen.

Design

The building plan of Samye Monastery follows the arrangement of a mandala depicting the Buddhist cosmos, which is also the source for the design of Odantapuri, in present-day Bihar, India. The arrangement of the monastery had a main shrine building in the middle, enclosed by four symmetrical stupas of four different colors, and the whole surrounded by a circular wall with four openings at the cardinal points representing the Buddhist universe as a three dimensional mandala. This idea is found in a number of temples of the period in South East Asia and East Asia such as the Tōdai-ji in Japan. As at the Tōdai-ji, the Samye temple is dedicated to Vairocana. A seminal text of Vairocana is the Mahavairocana Tantra, composed in India in the seventh century and translated into Tibetan and Chinese soon after.

The Samye Pillar, རྡོ་རིང་ and its inscription The few accessible Tibetan historical records are pillar inscriptions of treaties and events, found in Lhasa and elsewhere. Samye Monastery has a stone pillar belonging to the eighth century proper—but not carrying an actual date— (རྡོ་རིང་) preserved in front of Samye. The pillar records the building of sSamye and other monasteries at Lhasa and Brag Mar, and records that the king, ministers and other nobles had made solemn oaths to preserve and protect the endowments of the monasteries. The term used for these endowments is 'necessities' or 'meritorious gifts' (Tib. ཡོ་བྱད་ Sanskrit deyadharma).

The Samye bell inscription A second dynastic record at Samye is on the large bronze bell in the entrance to the monastery. This gives an account of the making of the bell by one of the queens of King Trisong Detsen. The text has been translated as follows: "Queen Rgyal mo brtsan, mother and son, made this bell in order to worship the Three Jewels of the ten directions. And pray that, by the power of that merit, Lha Btsan po Khri Srong lde brtsan, father and son, husband and wife, may be endowed with the harmony of the sixty melodious sounds, and attain supreme enlightenment."

Samye Monastery's founding

According to the Testament of Ba and other accounts, such as that compiled by Bsod-nams-rgyal-mtshan (1312–1374), the Indian scholar and philosopher Khenpo Śāntarakṣita began constructing the monastery c.763 after accepting the king's invitation to come to Tibet, where he also taught his synthesis of Madhyamaka philosophical thought. Finding the Samye site auspicious, he set about to build a structure there. However, the building would always collapse after reaching a certain stage. Terrified, the construction workers believed that there was a demon or obstructive spirit in a nearby river making trouble.

Following his advice, the king invited Shantaraksita's contemporary Padmasambhava to come to Tibet, and he arrived from the Nepali border and was able to subdue the energetic problems obstructing the building of Samye. According to the 5th Dalai Lama, Padmasambhava performed the Vajrakilaya dance and enacted the rite of namkha to assist Trisong Detsen and Śāntarakṣita clear away obscurations and hindrances in the building of Samye:

At the time in which Samye Monastery was built, it automatically became a Nyingma school monastery since this original school of Tibetan Buddhism was the only school, while the king, queens, students and subjects all belonged to the Nyingma school sangha. Padmasambhava's Tantra Vajrayana thus became the third vehicle of Buddhism, after the Sutra Mahayana.

Author Ellen Pearlman suggests a chart of the origin of the institution of the Nechung Oracle as it relates to Samye Monastery:

The Great Samye Debate

Main article: Samye Debate

One of the important events in the history of Samye occurred after Shantaraksita passed and a dispute began among his followers,}}

Jeffrey Broughton identifies the Chinese and Tibetan nomenclature of Moheyan's teachings and identifies them principally with the China's East Mountain Teaching:

A commemorative annual cham dance is held at Kumbum Monastery in Amdo (Ch. Qinghai) when the great debate of the two principal debators or dialecticians, Mahayana (Moheyan) and Kamalaśīla is narrated and depicted.

Influences

The 18th century Puning Temple built by the Qianlong Emperor of Qing China in Chengde, Hebei was modeled after Samye.

Architectural features of the monastery and their history

Samye Monastery is laid out on the shape of a giant mandala; in its center lies the main temple representing the legendary Mount Meru. Other buildings stand at the corners and cardinal points of the main temple, representing continents and other features of tantric Buddhist cosmology. The three-storied main building has been designed with the first floor in Indian style, the second in Chinese style and the third in Khotanese (Tibetan) style. The original building was completed in 780 CE.

In corners are 4 chörtens - white, red, green (or blue) and black. There are 8 main temples:

• Dajor ling བརྡ་སྦྱོར་གླིང་ (brda sbyor gling)
• Dragyar ling སྒྲ་བསྒྱར་གླིང་ (sgra bsgyar gling)
• Bétsa ling བེ་ཙ་གླིང་ (be tsa gling)
• Jampa ling བྱམས་པ་གླིང་ (byams pa gling)
• Samten ling བསམ་གཏན་གླིང་ (bsam gtan gling)
• Natsok ling སྣ་ཚོགས་གླིང་ (sna tshogs gling)
• Düdül ling བདུད་འདུལ་གླིང་ (bdud 'dul gling)
• Tamdrin ling རྟ་མགྲིན་གླིང་ (rta mgrin gling)

The original buildings have long disappeared. They have been badly damaged several times — by civil war in the 11th century, fires in the mid 17th century and in 1826, an earthquake in 1816, and in the 20th century, particularly during the Cultural Revolution. As late as the late 1980s pigs and other farm animals were allowed to wander through the sacred buildings. Heinrich Harrer quoted his own words he said to the 14th Dalai Lama of what he saw in 1982 from his airplane en route to Lhasa, Each time it has been rebuilt, and today, largely due to the efforts of Choekyi Gyaltsen, 10th Panchen Lama from 1986 onward, it is again an active monastery and important pilgrimage and tourist destination. Samye still preserves the original design of Trisong Detsen the 8th century Tibetan monarch (Van Schaik 2013:36).

Recent events

Imprisonment and suicide

In 2009, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) reports that after a protest held on 15 March 2008 at the Samye government administrative headquarters in Dranang County, nine monks studying at Samye Monastery had been sentenced to prison terms varying from two to fifteen years, for participating. The monks were joined by hundreds of Tibetans demanding religious freedom, human rights for Tibetans and the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet. The monks and others were held at the Lhoka Public Security Bureau (PSB) Detention Centre.

The TCHRD also reported that on 19 March 2008, a visiting scholar from Dorje Drak Monastery, Namdrol Khakyab, who claimed responsibility for organizing the 15 March protest had committed suicide, leaving a note speaking of unbearable suppression by the Chinese regime, citing the innocence of other monks of the monastery, and taking full responsibility for the protest.

Statue of Padmasambhava dismantled by Chinese Authorities

In May 2007, a 30 ft (9 metre) gold and copper plated statue of Guru Rinpoche, known as Padmasambhava, at Samye Gompa, and apparently funded by two Chinese devotees from Guangzhou in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, was reportedly demolished by Chinese authorities.

Gallery

File:Samye Monastery cropped.JPG|A view of Samye from above File:Entering the impressive Samye Monastery through its protective wall.jpg|The protective wall of Samye

Notes

References

• Dorje, Gyurme. (1999). Footprint Tibet Handbook with Bhutan. 2nd Edition. Footprint Handbooks Ltd. .
• Dowman, Keith. (1988) The Power-places of Central Tibet. Routledge & Kegan Paul. London & New York. .
• Rene de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Tibetan Religious Dances (The Hague:Mouton, 1976)
• Yeshe Tsogyel, The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava, 2 vols., trans. Kenneth Douglas and Gwendolyn Bays (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1978)
• Pearlman, Ellen (2002). Tibetan Sacred Dance: a journey into the religious and folk traditions. Rochester, Vermont, USA: Inner Traditions.
• Luke Wagner and Ben Deitle (2007). Samyé
• Schaik Van, S. (2013). Tibet: a History. London, Yale University Press.

References

1. Kapstein, Matthew T. ''The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 26.
2. Dorje (1999), 172; Pasang, Wangdu, Hildegard Diemberger, and Per K. Sørensen. ''Dba' Bzhed: The Royal Narrative Concerning the Bringing of the Buddha's Doctrine to Tibet''(Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), 63, note 201.
3. འགོས་ལོ་ཙ་བ་གཞོན་ནུ་དཔལ་. The Blue Annals (དེབ་ཐེར་སྔོན་པོ་) [Data set]. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.834036
4. Yeshe Tsogyal. (2004). "The Lotus-born: The Life Story of Padmasambhava". Rangjung Yeshe Publications.
5. Willis, Michael. "From World Religion to World Dominion: Trading, Translation and Institution-building in Tibet," in ''Religions and Trade Religious Formation, Transformation and Cross-Cultural Exchange between East and West'', edited by Peter Wick and Volker Rabens (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 231-59. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004255302_010
6. Stephen Hodge, ''The Maha-Vairocana-Abhisambodhi Tantra, With Buddhaguya's Commentary'' (London RoutledgeCurzon, 2003).
7. Hugh Richardson. ''A Corpus of Early Tibetan Inscriptions'' (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1985), online extract at: http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3564303. For text and translations, see SIDDHAM, https://siddham.network/inscription/བསམ་ཡས།-bsam-yas-pillar-inscription/{{Dead link. (August 2025)
8. The term is explained by Willis, Michael. " Offerings to the Triple Gem: Texts, Inscriptions and Ritual Practice," in ''Relics and Relic Worship in Early Buddhism'', edited by Janice Stargardt (London, British Museum, 2018). Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1249658
9. Doney, Lewis. (2014). Emperor, Dharmaraja, Bodhisattva? Inscriptions from the Reign of Khri Srong lde brtsan. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3560274. Also see Hugh Richardson. ''A Corpus of Early Tibetan Inscriptions'' (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1985).
10. Marie Friquegnon, "Santaraksita", ''Santaraksita References'', 2020.
11. Sørensen, Per K. (1994). The Mirror Illuminating the Royal Genealogies: Tibetan Buddhist Historiography : An Annotated Translation of the XIVth Century Tibetan Chronicle : rGyal-rabs gsal- bai me-long. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3559806
12. Pearlman, 2002: p.18
13. Rene de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, ''Tibetan Religious Dances'' (The Hague:Mouton, 1976) p.113
14. Yeshe Tsogyal, ''The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava'', 2 vols., trans. Kenneth Douglas and Gwendolyn Bays (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, (1978) p.384
15. Jamgon Kongtrul Lodoe Taye, "''Treasury of Knowledge:Buddhism's Journey to Tibet (1863)''. Translated by Ngawang Zangpo, Kalu Rinpoche Translation Group, Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 2010.
16. Pearlman, Ellen (2002). ''Tibetan Sacred Dance: a journey into the religious and folk traditions''. Rochester, Vermont, USA: Inner Traditions. {{ISBN. 0-89281-918-9, p.94
17. As is well known, the fate of Chan in Tibet was said to have been decided in a debate at the Samye monastery.Adamek, Wendi Leigh (2007). ''The mystique of transmission: on an early Chan history and its contexts''. Columbia University Press. {{ISBN. 0-231-13664-1, {{ISBN
18. (1983). "Studies in Chʻan and Hua-yen". University of Hawaii Press.
19. (October 1980). "The debate at bsam yas: religious contrast and correspondence". The University of Press of Hawaii.
20. Harrer, Heinrich. (1985). "Return to Tibet: Tibet After the Chinese Occupation". Penguin Books.
21. Dorje (1999), p. 173.
22. ''Nine monks sentenced, other committed suicide in Tibet'', Voice of America, (10 February 2009), http://nvonews.com/2009/02/10/nine-monks-sentenced-other-committed-suicide-in-tibet/
23. "Demolition of giant Buddha statue at Tibetan monastery confirmed by China." Downloaded from: http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=46,4316,0,0,1,0 on 28 October 2010.