History
Sanga Monastery together with Ganden Monastery belong to the Geluk (Gelug-pa) order (also known as Yellow Hat Sect, lit. 'Virtuous'). The Yellow Sect rose and prospered primarily because of the personal prestige of its founder Tsongkhapa (Tsong Khapa or Lobsang Drakpa, also known as Jé Rinpoché, 1357–1419) who is identified as the manifestation of Mañjushri, bodhisattva of Wisdom. He earned a high reputation as a writer and teacher, and was later warmly received in the Lhasa region. He was strongly scholastic in orientation, and encouraged the study of the great Indian masters of philosophy and logic: Nagarjuna, Asanga, Dignaga, et al.. In 1409 Tsongkhapa founded his first monastery, Ganden Monastery. The two other great monasteries were later founded, Drepung in 1416 and Sera in 1419. Several of his disciples were able to evolve in distinct school separate from Geluk. From those disciples also came the line of Dalai Lamas such as the 2nd Dalai Lama Gendun Gyatso (see the statue of His Holiness The Fifth Dalai Lama Lobsang Gyatso in Sanga Monastery on your left).
In the 16th century the Geluk-school begun its rise to political preeminence when it came to enjoy the favor of a new generation of Mongol khans. In 1642, Gursi Khan installed Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (1617–1682), the Fifth Dalai Lama, as virtual leader of Tibet under overall Mongol protection.
Read more about this topic: Sanga Monastery
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)