Geden Sheddup Choikorling Monastery
Geden Sheddup Choikorling Monastery is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Elista, Republic of Kalmykia, Russia. it was opened on 5 October 1996 in the presence of more than 30,000 people and is the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery to be built in the region since its beginning as an autonomous oblast in 1920. The monastery also is the Republic's first Buddhist place of worship since Joseph Stalin ordered the destruction of all Buddhist temples and monasteries during the Collectivization era and the Great Purge in the 1930s.
Geden Sheddup Choikorling is a Tibetan name, translated as "A Holy Abode for Theory and Practice of the School of Gelugpa." This name was given to the monastery by the 14th Dalai Lama who also chose its location – on the steppes just outside the Republic's capital city, Elista, during his first visit to the Republic in the summer of 1991. It contains a statue of the Sakyamuni Buddha.[1]
The monastery is located just outside the city and is surrounded by the steppe.
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