Author Archives: Writer

As they do every year, the Gebchak nuns spent ten days before Losar performing intensive dispelling rituals, based on yidam (tantric deity) practices from the nunnery’s sixteen retreat divisions. These annual end-of-the-year rituals function to clear negative energy and habitual patterns through prayer, deity visualization, ceremony and profound meditation. With the threshold to the lunar […]

Gebchak’s eldest nun, Dondrub Chomtso (see a video interview with her here), passed away on January 25th. She was 91 years old, and the last nun to have lived at Gebchak before the Cultural Revolution. Dondrub Chomtso was a deeply joyful, toothless character who loved mouthfuls of sugar, and had more than 600 pages of […]

Gebchak Gonpa is the mother nunnery to over 40 branch gonpas (nunneries, monasteries and hermitages) throughout Eastern Tibet. Last July-August Gebchak hosted a summer training camp for nearly 200 nuns and monks from these gonpas to refresh their practical knowledge of Gebchak’s tradition. Gebchak Gonpa’s annual curriculum includes 20 drubchens – extended group ritual practices […]

For the start of the Western, Tibetan and Chinese New Years, the nuns and lamas of Gebchak Gonpa send a resounding Tashi Delek to you all! The nuns have begun their spring schedule of drubchens, beginning with a 9-day Mahakala drubchen to prepare for the ‘Losar’ Tibetan new year. A group of nuns is in […]