The Jonangpa have longstanding historical and cultural ties to locality.^[1] So much so that their very identity is derived from and enmeshed within their place of origin. The term “Jonang” is an abbreviation of “Jomonang,” the name of the valley where the first Jonangpas settled.^[2]

Jonang historical texts as well as biographies of early Jonangpa masters reference this first settlement simply as, "Jonang Monastery" (jo nang dgon pa). These sources specify this as the founding site of the Jonang tradition.

Buton’s Kalachakra Statue, Zhalu

At Jonang Foundation, we host pilgrimages to power places in Tibet. These pilgrimages are fundraisers for our educational and preservation initiatives. The summer 2011 journey was the second of its kind and included stops at several of the most significant sites for the practice of the Kalachakra in Tibet. During the 2009 pilgrimage, Tulku Zangpo Rinpoche performed a Jonang Kalachakra empowerment at the base of the Jonang Stupa. The summer 2013 pilgrimage will continue along route to visit these sites and climax at Mount Kailash.

An extension of our sites database and interactive satellite map of Jonang sites, we are happy to announce the launch of our 3D map of the campus of Takten Phuntsok Damcho Ling Monastery in southern Tibet.

This map is the first in a multi-phased project that is visualizing Takten Monastery in an interactive three dimensional space. Takten Monastery was built by Tāranātha and completed in the year 1615. It served as headquarters for the Jonangpa until it was confiscated in 1650. This project utilizes digital architecture technology tools, images and blueprint sketches collected, and Tāranātha's own written descriptions to display a replica of this Buddhist cultural monument in Tibet.

Tsewang Norbu

The one who Hugh Richardson referred to in his 1967 article as “a Tibetan antiquarian” in describing his efforts to jot down stone pillar inscriptions in Lhasa and at Samye that date from the 8th and 9th centuries, the Nyingma master Rigzin Tsewang Norbu was a lover of rare books.^[1] In fact, it seems that he was a bit of a Buddhist bibliophile.

About a hundred years after Tāranātha's death in the spring of 1635, and seventy-five years after the confiscation of Takten Damchö Phuntsok Ling Monastery, the Dzogchen master from Kathog Monastery in Kham, Rigdzin Tsewang Norbu (1698-1755), made a visit to Jonang to print the books that were sealed-up in the printery. Most likely spurred by a conversation with his friend and disciple Situ Panchen Chokyi Jungne (1699/1700-1774), this particular trip was actually Tsewang Norbu's third visit to Takten Ling.^[2]

With her intuitive sense of the text, Vesna Wallace, one of the foremost Kālachakra scholars of our time, has eloquently deciphered and rendered the fourth chapter on the Sādhanā from the Kālachakra Tantra into the English language. Along with her previous publication of the second chapter on the Individual in this same series, this chapter on the Sādhanā or practice manual completes two of the Kālachakra Tantra’s five chapters in English. Both of these translations include the root tantra along with its explanatory commentary, the Vimalaprabhā or Stainless Light.^[1]