Zhalu  (Shalu)

    1981, Source: *Tibet

    The Serkhang Tramo was built in 1040 by Jetsun Sherab Junge, who had promised to built a temple at the location where an arrow shot by his teacher Loton Dorje would land. Drakpa Gyeltsen and Burton Rinchen Drup remodeled it in the 14th century with funds provided by the Mongol emperor Oljadu.

    In the courtyard today there is a monastic residential compound where the 23 monks today live. At its high point, there were 3800 monks, most of who belonged to the Zalupa School founded by Buron based upon Sakya and Kadam teaching. On the south side of the courtyard there is a stairway leading to the former residence of Burton Rinchen Drup (1312-1364), a brilliant and prolific scholar, who was responsible for organizing the translations from the Sanskrit of the Tengyor (Tenjur) [T: bsTan-‘gyur], the translations of all available commentaries, literature, and discourses by Indian Buddhist scholars and yogins.  He gathered these commentaries together, classified them, and wrote them down in a single series of 227 volumes, which he wrote out by hand. Up to the time of the Cultural Revolution, the original handwritten volumes and his metal pen were kept in Zhalu, but the Red Guards burned them all. 

    Buton was a prodigious worker and also composed a history of Buddhism and wrote on topics such as the Perfection Wisdom and the Kalachakra Tantra. Hand written twenty-six volumes of his collected writing were kept in his personal residence near the monastery, and they too were burned during the Cultural Revolution.  Before 1959 there were some 500 monks in Zhalu and in 1994 there were 63.

    Zhalu was a training center for yogic skills such as inner heat (tummo), control of vital energy (lungom) and trance walking, which was described by Alexandra Devid-Neel in “Magic and Mystery in Tibet”.  Burton Rinchen Drup initiated the Yuldrub Barkor cross-country run, which was an extremely challenging two-week marathon through Utsang and Lhokla, starting and finishing at Zhalu. The marathon was run every twelve years on the year of the pig and was adopted by the Tibetan government as a national event.