Kirti Monastery 格尔登寺

About Kirti Monastery

Kirti Monastery (格尔登寺) is a Gelug-school Tibetan Buddhist monastery at the northwestern corner of the county town of Aba County (阿坝县), in Sichuan's Ngawa Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture (阿坝藏族羌族自治州). Xinhua describes it as the largest Gelug monastery in the county.

English Wikipedia puts the monastery on the Tibetan Plateau at an elevation of 3,200 m. Its name comes from the Kirti line of reincarnate lamas. Chinese Wikipedia records that the fifth Kirti lama of the mother monastery at Taktsang Lhamo (纳摩格尔登寺), Dengbi Jianzan (登比坚赞), came to Aba in 1693. The eighth, Luosang Chenglie (罗桑程烈), founded the Aba house in the Guangxu reign of the Qing and gave it his title. Another account dates the founding to 1870, with Donggou Monastery (洞沟寺) as its forerunner. English Wikipedia instead traces Kirti Gompa to 1472 and Rongpa Chenakpa, a disciple of Tsongkhapa (宗喀巴).

The monastery was rebuilt in 1988 and now has a scripture hall, a protector-deity hall, a college of doctrine and a debating college. Chinese Wikipedia gives it 18,000 m² of grounds, more than 1,000 monks and 14 reincarnate lamas in the early 2000s. The whole community gathers for six large ceremonies a year, among them Monlam (莫郎节), the summer retreat festival (安居节) and the lamp festival (燃灯节). Its main gate, on Qiatang West Street (洽塘西街), is a Tibetan-style arch of three openings between four large pillars.

The monastery has also been caught up in unrest. Monks from Kirti took part in protests in the county town on 16 March 2008, and on 16 March 2011 a monk named Phuntsog (彭措) set himself on fire, one of several self-immolations by monks and former monks of the monastery that year.

The Great Stupa (大佛塔), completed and consecrated in October 1987, rises 49 m from a square base 25 m on each side. A walkway of prayer wheels, hundreds of small ones and more than ten large ones, runs around it, and 24 small stupas stand in a ring. Each of its five floors is a shrine: a carved wooden thousand-armed Avalokiteshvara with images of Songtsen Gampo (松赞干布), Princess Wencheng (文成公主) and Princess Bhrikuti (赤尊公主) in front of it on the first, then Amitayus, Tsongkhapa, Padmasambhava with images of the first to eleventh Kirti lamas, and a four-armed Sitatapatra at the top.

What to look for

• The Great Stupa (大佛塔), 49 m high, with a shrine on each of its five floors and a prayer-wheel walkway around the base
• The assembly hall (大经堂), carried on 120 pillars and large enough for thousands of monks
• A statue of Maitreya (强巴佛) about 20 m high, modelled in medicinal clay, with more than a thousand scripture volumes inside it
• Walls of the assembly hall hung with appliqué, paintings and thangkas, among them six thangkas each representing a thousand Shakyamuni images
• Stone slabs carved with scriptures and Buddha images beside the Great Stupa, and a mani stone pile in front of it
• The protector-deity complex, with a thicket of offered arrows, a smoke-offering (煨桑) platform and a sacred grove; ordinary visitors may not enter the protector hall itself, and women are barred from it

Location & getting there

Getting to Kirti Monastery

• Search for 格尔登寺 with 阿坝藏族羌族自治州 and 阿坝县.