Yarchen Gar

Yarchen Gar (Tibetan: ཡ་ཆེན་སྒར་, Wylie: ya chen sgar, ZYPY: Yaqên gar ), officially known as Yaqên Orgyän Temple (Tibetan: ཡ་ཆེན་ཨོ་རྒྱན་བསམ་གདན་གླིང་།, THL: Yachen Orgyen Samden ling ), is a Buddhist monastery complex in Sichuan, China. It lies in an isolated valley 4000 m above sea level in Pelyul County in the Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. The monastery is associated with the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. With an estimated more than 10,000 sangha members now, it's the largest concentration of monastics in the world; the majority are female.[1]

Established in 1985, Yarchen Gar lies 400 kilometres (250 mi) west of Chengdu in the Tibetan historical region of Kham. It is reported to have 10,000 monks and nuns,[2] making it possibly the largest monastery in the world. Larung Gar is (or was) even larger, but is considered a monastic encampment rather than a monastery and its population has recently declined due to demolition of housing.[3] Many of the displaced monks and nuns from Larung Gar have been relocating to Yarchen Gar.

Abbot Achuk Rinpoche (1927 - 2011), [4] was one of the senior-most Nyingma masters in Tibet and mainly practiced Dzogchen. He taught in both Tibetan and Chinese and attracted students from all over China. The community also draws visitors seeking to be cured of illnesses.

As of 2018 the road to Yarchen Gar has been paved and the complex has built amenities for visitors, including a restaurant and at least two hotels, but the number of beds sometimes falls short during summer when many tourists visit. At times, foreign visitors have reported harassment and/or being forced to leave. As of late 2018, a police checkpoint at the entrance to the settlement was checking the identification of all visitors but was not preventing them from entering. Men are not allowed to enter the nuns' area on the west side of the river.

Yarchen Gar institute was again closed to foreigners in April 2019. Throughout 2019, a large number of monastics have been forced out by the Chinese authorities, with reports of some nuns being sent to "patriotic re-education" camps. As of August 2019, a large swathe of the complex has been demolished, likely to pave the way for tourist infrastructure.[5]