Rooted in Tibet and continuing today in South India, Dzongkar Choede is a living Buddhist monastery where study, spiritual practice and community life come together.
You are welcome to come closer — to listen, to observe, and perhaps to find another way of being.
Where Practice Meets Everyday Life
Community life is where practice and reality meet. Prayer and philosophical study are part of it, and so are preparing meals, teaching the younger monks, caring for elders, repairing buildings before the monsoon and taking a turn at whatever needs doing. Through these ordinary rhythms the principles take practical form.
Learn more about us
Learning Together
The younger monks study Buddhist philosophy, Tibetan and modern subjects side by side — a programme that runs between nineteen and twenty-five years.
Daily Rhythms
The small moments, responsibilities and occasions that shape a day at the monastery.
Life in Community
How monks of different generations live, learn and look after one another.
One Path, Expressed in Many Ways
The life of Dzongkar Choede rests on seven interconnected pillars. They are not seven programmes but seven aspects of one life, going on at once — cultivated in the individual, embodied in the community, and brought into relation with the wider world.
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Education & Intellectual Training
Nineteen years of philosophy, tested aloud in the debate courtyard rather than memorised. -
Meditation & Inner Practice
Turning the same analytical attention inward, on one’s own habitual sense of things. -
Rituals & Sacred Arts
Chant, mask dance and sand mandala: a philosophical position carried out with the body. -
Community & Daily Life
Three hundred people, assigned tasks that rotate, and no one exempt from the ordinary work. -
Compassion in Practice
Compassion becomes meaningful when it enters our choices, relationships and responsibilities. -
Ecology & Simplicity
Simplicity reminds us that less can leave room for a richer and more meaningful life. -
Buddhism in a Changing World
What remains distinctly human when machines can reason, remember and argue.
A Thought for the Path
The Unopened Gift
When anger is offered to us, we still have a choice: we do not have to receive it. What we decline to carry stays with the person who brought it.
Life at Dzongkar Choede
Ceremonies and teachings mark the important occasions, but most of monastic life happens in quieter moments. These are some of them.
Walk With Us
The monastery has stood since 1270 and will quietly continue on its path. If something here speaks to you, consider helping to maintain the conditions in which younger monks can learn, elders can be cared for, and the work of study and practice can go on.
There are many ways to walk with us: visiting, learning, subscribing, sharing what you find here, or contributing.
Support Dzongkar Choede
Stay Close to the Monastery
Receive occasional stories, teachings and glimpses of daily life from Dzongkar Choede. Occasional means occasional — a few times a year, when there is something worth sending.
If this resonates with you
The monastery has stood since 1270 and will quietly continue on its path. If something here speaks to you, consider making a contribution — and walking part of the way with us.
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