Buddha statue in the Erdene Zuu monastery, Karakorum.

Buddhism in Mongolia has been influenced by Tibetan Buddhism. Traditional Mongols worshiped heaven (the "clear blue sky") and their ancestors, and they followed ancient northern Asian practices of shamanism, in which human intermediaries went into trance and spoke to and for some of the numberless infinities of spirits responsible for human luck or misfortune. In 1578 Altan Khan, a Mongol military leader with ambitions to unite the Mongols and to emulate the career of Chinggis, invited the head of the rising Yellow Sect of Tibetan Buddhism to a summit. They formed an alliance that gave Altan Khan legitimacy and religious sanction for his imperial pretensions and that provided the Buddhist school with protection and patronage. Altan khan gave the Tibetan leader the title of Dalai Lama (Ocean Lama), which his successors still hold. Altan Khan died soon after, but in the next century the Yellow Sect spread throughout Mongolia, aided in part by the efforts of contending Mongol aristocrats to win religious sanction and mass support for their ultimately unsuccessful efforts to unite all Mongols in a single state. Monasteries (momg.datsan) were built across Mongolia, often sited at the juncture of trade and migration routes or at summer pastures, where large numbers of herders would congregate for shamanistic rituals and sacrifices. Buddhist monks carried out a protracted struggle with the indigenous shamans and succeeded, to some extent, in taking over their functions and fees as healers and diviners, and in pushing the shamans to the fringes of Mongolian culture and religion. Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (3072 × 2304 pixel, file size: 2. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (3072 × 2304 pixel, file size: 2. ... The stupas and wall around Erdene Zuu Temple at Erdene Zuu monastery. ... Harhorin (Хархорин), or Khara Khorum in Classical Mongolian, is a town in Övörhangay aymag, Mongolia. ... Tibetan Buddhism is the body of religious Buddhist doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet, the Himalayan region (including northern Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and Ladakh), Mongolia, Buryatia, Tuva and Kalmykia (Russia), and northeastern China (Manchuria: Heilongjiang, Jilin). ... The name Mongols (Mongolian: Mongol) specifies one or several ethnic groups. ... For other uses, see Heaven (disambiguation). ... A shaman doctor of Kyzyl. ... Trance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Altan Khan (1507-1582), whose given name was Anda, was the de facto ruler of the Right Wing of the Mongols and exercised his power over whole Mongolia. ... For other uses, see Genghis Khan (disambiguation). ... The Geluk (dge lugs) School was founded by Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), Tibets best known religious reformer and arguably its greatest philosopher. ... The 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso (1876-1933). ... Not to be confused with Llama. ... Aristocracy is a form of government in which rulership is in the hands of an upper class known as aristocrats. ... Buddhist monastery near Tibet A monastery is the habitation of monks. ...

Tibetan background

Tibetan Buddhism, which combines elements of the Mahayana and the Tantric schools of Buddhism with traditional Tibetan rituals of curing and exorcism, shares the common Buddhist goal of individual release from suffering and the cycles of rebirth. The religion holds that salvation, in the sense of release from the cycle of rebirth, can be achieved through the intercession of compassionate Buddhas (enlightened ones) who have delayed their own entry to the state of selfless bliss (nirvana) to save others. Such Buddhas, who are many, are in practice treated more as deities than as enlightened humans and occupy the center of a richly polytheistic universe of subordinate deities, opposing demons, converted and reformed demons, wandering ghosts, and saintly humans that reflects the folk religions of the regions into which Buddhism expanded. Tantrism contributed esoteric techniques of meditation and a repertoire of sacred icons, phrases, and gestures that easily lent themselves to pragmatic (rather than transcendental) and magical interpretation. The religion posits progressive stages of enlightenment and comprehension of the reality underlying the illusions that hamper the understanding and perceptions of those not trained in meditation or Buddhist doctrine, with sacred symbols interpreted in increasingly abstract terms. Thus, a ritual that appears to a common yak herder as a straightforward exorcism of disease demons will be interpreted by a senior monk as a representation of conflicting tendencies in the mind of a meditating ascetic. Relief image of the bodhisattva Kuan Yin from Mt. ... Tantra (Sanskrit: loom), tantric yoga or tantrism is any of several esoteric traditions rooted in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. ... Saint Francis exorcised demons in Arezzo, fresco of Giotto Exorcism (from Late Latin exorcismus, from Greek exorkizein - to adjure, correctly pronounced exercism) is the practice of evicting demons or other evil spiritual entities from a person or place which they are believed to have possessed (taken control of). ... Rebirth may refer the following spiritual/religious concepts: Reincarnation Buddhist Rebirth The experience of being born again in Christianity Rebirth may also refer to: Rebirth, an album by Pain Rebirth, an album by Jennifer Lopez Rebirth, an album by Gackt Rebirth, an album by Angra ReBirth RB-338, software synthesizer... Media:Example. ... Bodhi (Pali and Sanskrit. ... This article is about the Buddhist concept. ... Polytheism is belief in, or worship of, multiple gods or divinities. ... A mudrā (Sanskrit, मुद्रा, literally seal) is a symbolic gesture usually made with the hand or fingers. ... Maya may refer to: // The Maya, Native American peoples of southern Mexico and northern Central America Maya peoples, the contemporary indigenous peoples Maya civilization, their historical pre-Columbian civilization Mayan languages, the family of languages spoken by the Maya Yucatec Maya language, specific and most widespread Mayan language, frequently referred... Buddhist meditation encompasses a variety of meditation techniques that develop mindfulness, concentration, tranquility and insight. ...

In Tibet Buddhism thus became an amalgam, combining colorful popular ceremonies and curing rituals for the masses with the study of esoteric doctrine for the monastic elite. The Yellow Sect, in contrast to competing sects, stressed monastic discipline and the use of logic and formal debates as aids to enlightenment. The basic Buddhist tenet of reincarnation was combined with the Tantric idea that buddhahood could be achieved within a person's lifetime to produce a category of leaders who were considered to have achieved buddhahood and to be the reincarnations of previous leaders. These leaders, referred to as incarnate or living buddhas, held secular power and supervised a body of ordinary monks, or lamas (from a Tibetan title bla-ma, meaning "the revered one)". The monks were supported by the laity, who thereby gained merit and who received from the monks instructions in the rudiments of the faith and monastic services in healing, divination, and funerals. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... This article is about the theological concept. ...

In Mongolia

Zezerleg Monastery.

Buddhism and the Buddhist monkhood always have played significant political roles in Central and Southeast Asia, and the Buddhist sangha in Mongolia was no exception. Church and state supported each other, and the doctrine of reincarnation made it possible for the reincarnations of living Buddhas to be discovered conveniently in the families of powerful Mongol nobles. Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1600 × 1200 pixel, file size: 801 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Source: He-ba-mue Description: Lama-Kloster Zezerleg, Mongolei File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (1600 × 1200 pixel, file size: 801 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Source: He-ba-mue Description: Lama-Kloster Zezerleg, Mongolei File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert... Buddhism is a religion and philosophy focusing on the teachings of the Buddha Śākyamuni (Siddhārtha Gautama), who probably lived in the 5th century BCE. Buddhism spread throughout the ancient Indian sub-continent in the five centuries following the Buddhas death, and propagated into Central, Southeast, and East Asia...

Bogd Khan, khan of Mongolia between the rules of the Chinese Empire and the Mongolian republic.

Tibetan Buddhism is monastic. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Outer Mongolia had 583 monasteries and temple complexes, which controlled an estimated 20 percent of the country's wealth. Almost all Mongolian cities have grown up on the sites of monasteries. Yihe Huree, as Ulaanbaatar was then known, was the seat of the preeminent living Buddha of Mongolia (the Jebtsundamba Khutuktu, also known as the Bogdo Gegen and later as Bogdo Khan), who ranked third in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, after the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. Two monasteries there contained approximately 13,000 and 7,000 monks, and the prerevolutionary Mongol name of the settlement known to outsiders as Urga, Yihe Huree, means "big monastery". Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... September 2004 Ulan Bator, or Ulaanbaatar (Улаанбаатар, [Ulaɣan Baɣatar]) in Mongolian, is the capital of Mongolia. ... The Khalkha Jebtsundamba Khutughtu (standard Mongolian: Javzandamba Hutagt; Tibetan: རྗེ་བཙུན་དམ་པ་ Jetsun Dampa; literally, Holy Venerable Lord) is the spiritual head of the Gelug lineage of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia. ... The 9th Panchen Lama (1883–1937) The Panchen Lama (Tibetan: པན་ཆེན་བླ་མ་; Chinese: 班禪喇嘛) is the second-highest-ranking lama after the Dalai Lama in the Gelugpa (Dge-lugs-pa) sect of Tibetan Buddhism (the sect which controlled Tibet from the 16th century until the Communist takeover). ...

Over the centuries, the monasteries acquired riches and secular dependents; they gradually increased their wealth and power as those of the Mongol nobility declined. Some nobles donated a portion of their dependent families--people, rather than land, were the foundation of wealth and power in old Mongolia--to the monasteries; some herders dedicated themselves and their families to serve the monasteries either from piety or from the desire to escape the arbitrary exactions of the nobility. In some areas, the monasteries and their living buddhas (of whom there were a total of 140 in 1924) also were the secular authorities. In the 1920s, there were about 110,000 monks, including children, who made up about one-third of the male population, although many of these lived outside the monasteries and did not observe their vows. About 250,000 people, more than a third of the total population, either lived in territories administered by monasteries and living Buddhas or were hereditary dependents of the monasteries. With the end of Chinese rule in 1911, the Buddhist church and its clergy provided the only political structure available, and the autonomous state thus took the form of a weakly centralized theocracy, headed by the Jebtsundamba khutuktu in Yihe Huree.

By the twentieth century, Buddhism had penetrated deeply into Mongolian culture, and the populace willingly supported the lamas and the monasteries. Foreign observers had a uniformly negative opinion of Mongolian monks, condemning them as lazy, ignorant, corrupt, and debauched, but the Mongolian people did not concur. Ordinary Mongolians apparently combined a cynical and realistic anticlericalism, sensitive to the faults and the human fallibility of individual monks or groups of monks, with a deep and unwavering concern for the transcendent values of the church. Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

The suppression of Buddhism

Ruins of the Ongiin Monastery.

When the revolutionaries--determined to modernize their country and to reform its society--took power, they confronted a massive ecclesiastical structure that enrolled a larger part of the population, monopolized education and medical services, administered justice in a large part of the country, and controlled a great deal of the national wealth. The Buddhist church, moreover, had no interest in reforming itself or in modernizing the country. The result was a protracted political struggle that absorbed the energies and attention of the party and its Soviet advisers for nearly twenty years. As late as 1934, the party counted 843 major Buddhist centers, about 3,000 temples of various sizes, and nearly 6,000 associated buildings, which usually were the only fixed structures in a world of felt tents. The annual income of the church was 31 million Tögrögs, while that of the state was 37.5 million tögrögs. A party source claimed that, in 1935, monks constituted 48 percent of the adult male population. In a campaign marked by shifts of tactics, alternating between conciliation and persecution, and armed uprisings led by monks and abbots, the Buddhist church was removed progressively from public administration, was subjected to confiscatory taxes, was forbidden to teach children, and was prohibited from recruiting new monks or replacing living Buddhas. The campaign's timing matched the phases of Josef Stalin's persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1938--amid accusations that the church and monasteries were trying to cooperate with the Japanese, who were promoting a pan-Mongol puppet state--the remaining monasteries were dissolved, their property was seized, and their monks were secularized, interned or executed. Those monastic buildings that had not been destroyed were taken over to serve as local government offices or schools. Only then was the ruling party, which since 1921 gradually had built a cadre of politically reliable and secularly educated administrators, able to destroy the church and to mobilize the country's wealth and population for its program of modernization and social change. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 291 pixelsFull resolution (4644 × 1692 pixel, file size: 548 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File historyClick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. ... Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 291 pixelsFull resolution (4644 × 1692 pixel, file size: 548 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File historyClick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. ... A Yurt is a traditional home of the nomads who live on the cold, dry steppes of Central Asia. ... ISO 4217 Code MNT User(s) Mongolia Inflation 9. ... (Russian, in full: Ио́сиф Виссарио́нович Ста́лин [Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin]; December 18 [O.S. December 6] 1878[1] – March 5, 1953) was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s to his death in 1953 and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922-1953... The Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (Russian: ), also known as the Orthodox Christian Church of Russia, is a body of Christians who are united under the Patriarch of Moscow, who in turn is in communion with the other patriarchs and primates of the Eastern Orthodox Church. ...

Uses of Buddhism

The Gandantegchinlen Khiid Monastery in 2006.

Since at least the early 1970s, one monastery, the Gandan Monastery, with a community of 100 monks, was open in Ulaanbaatar. It was the country's sole functioning monastery. A few of the old monasteries survived as museums, and the Gandan Monastery served as a living museum and a tourist attraction. Its monks included a few young men who had undergone a five-year training period, but whose motives and mode of selection were unknown to Western observers. The party apparently thought that Buddhism no longer posed a challenge to its dominance and that-- because Buddhism had played so large a part in the country's history, traditional arts, and culture, total extirpation of knowledge about the religion and its practices would cut modern Mongols off from much of their past, to the detriment of their national identity. A few aged former monks were employed to translate Tibetan-language handbooks on herbs and traditional medicine. Government spokesmen described the monks of the Gandan Monastery as doing useful work. Today the monastery has been reinvigorated as the Gandantegchinlen Khiid Monastery by the post-Communist governments of the country. Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (3072 × 2304 pixel, file size: 1. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (3072 × 2304 pixel, file size: 1. ... Main temple at Gandantegchinlen Khiid Monastery The Gandantegchinlen Khiid Monastery, formerly known as Ganden Monastery, is a Tibetan-style monastery in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar that has been restored and revitalized since 1990. ... Although people have inhabited Mongolia since the Stone Age, Mongolia only became politically important after iron weapons entered the area in the 3rd century B.C. In general, Mongolia at this point had a similar history to the rest of the nomadic steppe that lies between Siberia Northern Russia to... The Gandantegchinlen Khiid Monastery is a Tibetan-style monastery in the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar that has been restored and revitalized since 1990. ...

Buddhism, furthermore played a role in Mongolia's foreign policy by linking Mongolia with the communist and the noncommunist states of East and Southeast Asia. Ulaanbaatar was the headquarters of the Asian Buddhist Conference for Peace, which has held conferences for Buddhists from such countries as Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan; published a journal for international circulation; and maintained contacts with such groups as the Christian Peace Conference, the Afro-Asian People's Solidarity Organization, and the Russian Orthodox Church. It sponsored the visits of the Dalai Lama to Mongolia in 1979 and 1982. The organization, headed by the abbot of then-Gandan Monastery, advanced the foreign policy goals of the Mongolian government, which were in accord with those of the Soviet Union.

Baasan Lama is the head of the Ling Gesar Temple complex in Ganden. He was one of the original 13 leaders of the democratic movement in 1989.

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References

This article contains material from the Library of Congress Country Studies, which are United States government publications in the public domain. The Country Studies are works published by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress ( USA), freely available for use by researchers. ... The U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1789 by a constitutional convention, sets down the basic framework of American government in its seven articles. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...

[ Buddhism is a religion and philosophy focusing on the teachings of the Buddha Śākyamuni (Siddhārtha Gautama), who probably lived in the 5th century BCE. Buddhism spread throughout the ancient Indian sub-continent in the five centuries following the Buddhas death, and propagated into Central, Southeast, and East Asia... This is an alphabetical list of the sovereign states of the world, including both de jure and de facto independent states. ... The grounds of Koreas Buryeongsa Temple. ... The grounds of Koreas Buryeongsa Temple. ... The grounds of Koreas Buryeongsa Temple. ... In the International Religious Freedom Report 2007 of U.S. Department of State that estimated more than 8 million foreigners are living and working in Saudi Arabia, including Muslims and non-Muslims. ... Sri Lanka is the oldest continually Buddhist country, Theravada Buddhism being the major religion in the island since its official introduction in the 2nd century BC by Venerable Mahinda, the son of the Emperor Ashoka of India during the reign of King Devanampiya. ... A transcontinental nation is a country belonging to more than one continent. ...