Potala- Tibetan LocationLocation · Realm"Chenrezig's Pure Land"

The Mountain in the Southern Seas

The Gaṇḍavyūha chapter of the Avataṃsaka Sūtra describes a mountain called Potalaka in the southern seas, where the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara sits on a diamond throne surrounded by pools of healing water and forests of fragrant trees. From this mountain he surveys all suffering beings across the six realms and responds with whatever form will help them. The Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra elaborates: Potalaka is neither a fully transcendent realm like Sukhāvatī nor an ordinary place on the earth. It exists where the bodhisattva's compassion meets the human world.

The Monkey and the Demoness

According to the Maṇi bKa’ ’bum, the Tibetan people are Chenrezig's children. He manifested as a monkey bodhisattva on the slopes of a mountain and encountered a rock demoness. She threatened to mate with demons and flood the land with demonic offspring unless he took her as his consort. Out of compassion, he agreed. Their six children became the ancestors of the six original clans of Tibet. The wilderness that Chenrezig's monkey form had entered became, through his act, a land destined for the dharma. Tibet itself was Potalaka.

Red Hill

The emperor Songtsen Gampo, regarded as an emanation of Chenrezig, selected Marpo Ri, the Red Hill above the Kyichu River valley, for his palace and meditation caves around the mid-seventh century. Two caves within the hill, the Chogyal Drubphuk and the Phakpa Lhakhang, were preserved as sacred through every construction that followed. In the Phakpa Lhakhang stands a statue of Avalokiteśvara called the Arya Lokeshvara, believed to be self-arisen rather than carved by human hands.

A thousand years later, the Fifth Dalai Lama ordered a monumental palace built on the same hill, beginning in 1645. He named it the Potala. The statement was deliberate: the palace was the earthly manifestation of Chenrezig's celestial realm, and its occupant, the Dalai Lama, was the living emanation of the bodhisattva. The structure rises thirteen stories above Red Hill. Its White Palace houses the Dalai Lama's quarters; its Red Palace contains temples and the gilded funerary stūpas of past Dalai Lamas, the largest nearly fifteen meters high and covered in gold. Over a thousand rooms look out across the valley where Chenrezig's monkey once met the demoness.