Geshe Dhonam, a Tibetan monk for over thirty years, is the teacher and spiritual director at Trashi Gomang Centre in Auckland and Trashi Ge Phel Ling in Wellington.

 

Geshe Dhonam became a monk at Gomang College of Drepung Monastery, India, in 1970 when he was 13 years old. In Tibet, Drepung, Sera and Gaden were the three great Gelukpa monasteries. At one time Drepung was the largest with 10,000 monks. When the communist Chinese invaded Tibet, many monks fled with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and, on the destruction of their monasteries in Tibet, rebuilt them in South India. It was the rebuilt Drepung in South India Geshe Dhonam entered as a boy. Over the 22 years he was at the monastery, he studied and graduated from all the major topics studied by the monks and attained the monastery’s highest qualification, Geshe Lharampa, in 1992.