• About Us
  • Projects
    • Surmang Shedra
    • Children’s Education Program
    • Surmang Nunneries
    • Support for Trungpa XII & Retreatants
  • Get Involved
  • Updates
    • News Archives
    • Video Archives
  • Galleries
  • Donate Now

Nuns already moving into new Surmang Kyelaka Nunnery

October 20, 2020 by Konchok Foundation in News
Nuns already moving into new Surmang Kyelaka Nunnery

Astonishingly rapid progress has been made at Surmang Kyelaka nunnery.

Surmang Dutsi Til monastery, the home monastery for the Trungpa lineage, received permission just over a year ago to reopen the nunnery that was close to the monastery, for the first time since 1959. At the time of the blessing ceremony for the Kyelaka location in June 2019, the site was a yak pasture (the yaks are still close by, calmly watching the construction while they graze).

The arrival of approximately one hundred nuns, all of whose families live in the Surmang area, from the institution where they had been studying, Yachen Gar, gave impetus to this project. The nuns are highly diligent practitioners and have been living, meditating, and studying at the Surmang shedra on the Dutsi Til monastery grounds while the nunnery site, several miles south of the monastery, is being developed.

Fortunately, there have been no cases of covid at all so far in the local area. All group gatherings and group practices were prohibited by the government for a couple of months last winter—the nuns practiced in their rooms—but that restriction was relaxed last spring.

Konchok Foundation and its donors are providing financial support to Surmang Dutsi Til to make the nunnery possible, led by major donations from Scott Wellenbach and the Pema Chodron Foundation, and with contributions from many additional donors. Thank you to everyone who is participating.

The nuns are so excited about moving into the nunnery that they’ve now begun to do so even while construction continues. The lhakhang (shrine hall, above) for the nunnery, although it has plastering and painting still underway and all furnishings and artwork yet to come, already has its second floor in use by the nuns as a shrine room.

More than one hundred small houses for the nuns, all of the same design similar to the one captured here, are in various stages of construction. In addition to the lhakhang, the donors to Konchok Foundation have supported the site preparation, including roads, electrical lines to all of the houses, and water lines from up the mountain, with outlets for each group of houses. The small houses will be heated in the winter with stoves that burn wood or dried yak dung.

Portable propane tanks are provided for use with propane cooktops when the main stove for each house isn’t in use. Help with the foundations and basic building materials were provided for each house. The nuns and their families are providing all of the rest of the labor for the houses, and their families are buying the interior furnishings. Enough houses already have complete interiors that the nuns have moved in, with up to four nuns living in a house until more are completed.

At this moment, the nuns are in the midst of a one-hundred-day practice cycle. The particular segment they are doing now, in mid-October, is a Dzogchen practice conducted outdoors, further up the mountain. In the photos above, one can see groups of nuns returning in the late afternoon from their practice, and congregating at the lhakhang to help out with finishing the work of the day. On this day, that was removing and stacking the exterior scaffolding materials.

Kyelaka Surmang Nunnery
Tweet
Share
Pin it
Previous StoryChogyam Trungpa’s Collected Tibetan Works Next StorySpring at Surmang Kyelaka Nunnery
  • Latest
  • Popular
  • Comments
  • Surmang Programs Running Strong 28th April 2022

    Surmang Programs Running Strong

  • Spring at Surmang Kyelaka Nunnery 5th June 2021

    Spring at Surmang Kyelaka Nunnery

  • Annual Chakrasamvara Dance 25th March 2015

    Annual Chakrasamvara Dance

  • Welcome to our New Board Members 10th March 2015

    Welcome to our New Board Members

  • Announcing the Surmang Shedra Consecration 10th January 2018

    Announcing the Surmang Shedra Consecration

  • Surmang Programs Running Strong 28th April 2022

    Surmang Programs Running Strong

  • Tribute to Ginny Lipson 29th November 2021

    Tribute to Ginny Lipson

  • Nuns Celebrate at Surmang Kyelaka 9th October 2021

    Nuns Celebrate at Surmang Kyelaka

  • Spring at Surmang Kyelaka Nunnery 5th June 2021

    Spring at Surmang Kyelaka Nunnery

  • Nuns already moving into new Surmang Kyelaka Nunnery 20th October 2020

    Nuns already moving into new Surmang Kyelaka Nunnery

  • 2017 Year End Report 10th March 2018

    2017 Year End Report

  • Consecration Now Planned for Summer 2017 10th March 2016

    Consecration Now Planned for Summer 2017

  • Another Successful Year for the Children’s Program 24th March 2016

    Another Successful Year for the Children’s Program

  • Thank you, Ginny Lipson! 25th July 2016

    Thank you, Ginny Lipson!

  • Rebuilding the Kargenma 13th September 2016

    Rebuilding the Kargenma

Archives

  • April 2022
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • June 2021
  • October 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • March 2019
  • October 2018
  • June 2018
  • March 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • September 2017
  • July 2017
  • April 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • September 2016
  • July 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • July 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2012
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • April 2010
  • November 2009
  • April 2009
  • December 2008
  • September 2007

Find Us Elsewhere

Categories

  • Letters
  • News
  • Reports
  • Retrospectives
  • Updates
  • Video

What we do

  • News Archive
  • Surmang Shedra
  • Donate

Who we are

  • About Us
  • Surmang Monastery

Get in touch

  • Contact Us

Find us elsewhere

Konchock Foundation