^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Karma Ling Institute

Buddhist Institute, France

images by Ivan Sache, 3 May 2006

Karma Ling Institute, France

The Karma Ling Institute

The Karma Ling Institute is a center of "dharma" (study and practice of Buddha's teaching) located in the French Alps. In 1084, Saint Bruno founded the first Charterhouse near Grenoble, in Dauphiny. In 1173, his disciples founded an hermitage in an isolated valley of the massif of Belledonne, near the village of Arvillard, on the border of Dauphiny and Savoy. The hermitage was later transformed into the Saint Hugon Charterhouse. In 1979, a group of French Buddhists decided to revive the study and teaching spirit of the Carthusians and purchased the abandoned monastery. They asked Kyabdjé Kalou Rimpotché, the main keeper of the Changpa Kagyu lineage, to found a center of "dharma". He appointed his Western disciple Lama Denys Teundroup spiritual director of the community. The Karma Ling Institute, which depends on the Dachang Rimé Brotherhood (officially recognized by the French State since 1994), is today one of the main centers of "dharma" in France and Europe. The Dalai Lama stayed there twice, in 1993 and 1997. The Institute pays a particular attention to the transcription, translation and publication of Tibetan traditional texts

The Karma Ling Institute was featured in a short documentary part of the TV magazine "Chroniques d'en-haut" (France 3/TV5; Spring 2006). The garden of the Institute is decorated with two parallel rows of vertical banners hoisted from the long side (like Swiss "Knatterfahnen"). The banners have a main coloured field and a black stripe on top, charged with five white discs placed horizontally. The banners seen on TV were orange, yellow, blue, light blue and white. This list of colours might not be comprehensive.

Ivan Sache, 3 May 2006