Losing Its Karmapa: A Monastery Goes Dark

Once a beacon drawing pilgrims and tourists from across the world, Tsurphu Monastery now sits in darkness. The crowds and the beggars have gone and only a few monks remain. Even for nonbelievers it's difficult not to conclude that when Ugyen Trinley Dorje, the 17th Karmapa and the oldest reincarnation in Tibetan Buddhism, jumped from a monastery window and ran to a jeep waiting in the darkness of night on Dec. 28, 1999, to begin a 1,350-km journey over the Himalayas to northern India, he took all the light from what was then Tibet's living spiritual center. The 14-year-old went west. Few people have come east since.

Tsurphu, the capital of the Kagyupa (Black Hat) Tibetan Buddhist sect, is hidden at 4,480 m in the remote and desolate snow-capped peaks of central Tibet. Founded in the 1180s by the first Karmapa, it is a mere 50 km, but a rocky two-and-a-half-hour drive, from the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. The road is little more than a path distinguishable from the rest of the moonscape by the occasional tire track. My Lhasa-born Tibetan driver has to stop twice to ask farmers the way. Finally we reach a rickety bridge over a fast-running, turquoise river at the base of the monastery hillock. More than one monk has been swallowed up by the treacherous waters here as he leaned out to wash his clothes. Crossing, and ascending the last curve, we surprise a group of novice monks in maroon robes pelting one another with snowballs. Embarrassed, they run off, leaving us alone to enter the courtyard, which is deserted save for the occasional herder passing through with his goats. Clouds hang low, draping the gilded rooftop. Tsurphu, an imposing red-brown block complete with a blue and gold standard fluttering from the roof, looks every bit the abandoned castle.

The Karmapa's escape—eight days by jeep, horse, helicopter, train and car—to Dharamsala and the Dalai Lama's Tibetan government-in-exile was initially viewed as proof that a united fight for Tibetan independence endures. But then came the crackdown. China closed Tsurphu to visitors and arrested the devout. This February, the U.S. State Department reported that since the Karmapa's departure, "a large number of monks and nuns remain detained or imprisoned." The monastery is now open again. (The official Chinese explanation for shutting it: the peeling frescoes needed repair.) But the thousands of visitors who made the journey to be blessed by a young Karmapa and give alms to the poor have vanished, along with the legions of spies and informers who monitored the monastery for the seven years he was in residence.

The monks are back, however. Novices are again memorizing texts and scriptures, and their playful giggles are once more heard in the courtyard—we stood in silence, but then laughter erupts from one corner as a group of monks who had locked themselves out of the kitchen heave the smallest boy onto their shoulders to wiggle through an open window and unlock the door from the inside. Senior monks, too, have returned to their retreats, spending days, months and years in dark solitude, sustained only by food slipped into their cold rooms. Unlike the Summer Palace in Lhasa, where you can visit the former private rooms of the Dalai Lama, tourists don't get to see the Karmapa's old bedroom. Tsurphu hasn't become a museum: it is still a working monastery. We have arrived during a brief break in afternoon prayers and are able to walk inside the dim, main meditation hall and, with the aid of a flashlight, inspect the frescoes in the eerie silence. Between the singsong pujas (prayer sessions) that are punctuated by bells and drums, all Tibetan monasteries are quiet. Tsurphu feels more like it's coming back from the dead.

Getting to Tibet can be a chore. Even mentioning the name of such a sensitive region on a Chinese visa application will mean instant rejection. Also, Tibet can only be entered from Nepal (by road) or from Golmud (road) and Chengdu (air). In addition, all visitors must be registered as part of an organized tour and take official guides almost anywhere outside Lhasa. A package is the simplest way to handle the bureaucracy, but far cheaper is a three-day trip bought in China or Nepal after which sightseers can go off on their own as long as they take government guides. Hiring one in Lhasa to Tsurphu costs from $50 per day. Without the Karmapa to draw the crowds, these days you'll likely be the only visitors.