Samye Monastery

Samye Monastery, in the Chonggye Valley of Lhoka in the Tibet Autonomous Region, was founded around 779 CE under the Tibetan king Trisong Detsen, with the Indian tantric master Padmasambhava and the Indian monk scholar Shantarakshita, and is recognized as the first Buddhist monastery built in Tibet with a fully ordained monastic community. Its central temple and surrounding structures were laid out as a mandala, representing Mount Meru at the center of the Buddhist cosmological universe ringed by continents, oceans and the sun and moon. In the late eighth century Samye hosted a debate, remembered as the Samye Debate or the Council of Lhasa, between an Indian gradualist teacher and a Chinese Chan master over sudden versus gradual paths to enlightenment, a dispute that shaped the direction Tibetan Buddhism took afterward. The monastery has been damaged and rebuilt more than once, most recently after severe destruction during the Cultural Revolution, and functions today as an active monastery and a major pilgrimage destination.