SURMANG PROJECT 

Ratna Foundation contributes financial support to the rebuilding of Surmang Monastery’s monastic college in eastern Tibet.  Surmang Dutsi-til is the home monastery of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. The Chinese occupation destroyed its original buildings and left a once prosperous area now among the world's poorest.  Two of every three babies born there die in infancy.  What little training in literacy the locals get is often in Chinese, and the transmission of Tibet's spiritual and cultural heritage has been seriously weakened.

Since the 1980's, when the Chinese loosened their regulation of religion in Tibet, Surmang has slowly been rebuilding itself.  Restoring the monastic college would be a tremendous leap forward for both the monastery and the local population.  The monastery is a natural center of leadership for the area.  A fully functioning college would provide an education not just in advanced studies, but from childhood through adulthood, and in far greater numbers than is currently available.  In fact, historically, this is how many Tibetans received an education, returning to secular life upon reaching maturity after being trained in a monastery. 

The spirituality of Tibetan Buddhism, so central to Tibetan culture and so seriously under attack for the past 45 years, has its own unique tradition at Surmang.  Rebuilding the monastic college will assure its preservation and reinvigorate the depth and detail of its transmission so that this way of life can continue for the local people who are profoundly devoted to it.

Therefore, rebuilding Surmang's monastic college provides: 

• a way to preserve and encourage the vitality of unique, indigenous, spiritual and cultural traditions

• an educational institution that will greatly raise the literacy of the local population, particularly helping to preserve endangered literacy in Tibetan, as well as educating children from youth to adulthood

• a cultural center for expanding the energy and economic prosperity of the area