Kagyu Thubten Choling Monastery: Enlightenment Stupa
Kagyu Thubten Choling Monastery
USA, New York, Wappingers Falls
Kagyu Thubten Choling, which means Garden of the Buddha’s Teaching, is a retreat center founded by Norlha Rinpoche in 1979.
The monastery occupies 7 ha and sits on a small hill overlooking the Hudson River. There is the main building and the Enlightenment Stupa. The Enlightenment Stupa was built in memory of Kyabje Dorje Chang Kalu Rinpoche. It houses a bronze statue of Sakyamuni Buddha and contains the Tibetan canon, the Kangyur and Tengyur. There are carvings of the mantra of Tara inside the stupa. The body and spire of the stupa are gilded. The harmika resembles that of Boudhanath Stupa in Nepal and is painted with the eyes of the Buddha that watch over the four directions, which is a representation of the boundlessness of the Dharma. Construction of the finely detailed stupa took six years to complete. Practitioners circumambulate the stupa during in the morning and evening as part of their daily practice.
For more details, go to the Encyclopedia of Buddhist Arts: Architecture G-L, page 568.
Cite this article:
author = Hsingyun and Youheng and Johnson, Peter and Mankuang and Lancaster, Lewis,
booktitle = {Encyclopedia of Buddhist Arts: Architecture G-L},
pages = 568,
title = {{Kagyu Thubten Choling Monastery}},
volume = 2,
year = {2016}}