Project 108 Masters: The Je Khenpo and the Buddhist World Gather in Gelephu

Profiles of each master and title are collected in Masters.

On 1 November, the morning the 108 chortens rise along the Mau Chhu, some of the most senior figures in the Buddhist world will be on the riverbank in Gelephu. Upon the Royal Command of His Majesty The King, Buddhist spiritual leaders from across the world have been invited, and for four days, from 1 to 4 November, they will join the prayers and the consecration of what Bhutan will have built.

Who will be in Gelephu

The Project 108 office has said more spiritual leaders have confirmed and will be introduced in the coming weeks; this list will grow. Profiles of each are in Masters.

A gathering without easy precedent

Bhutan gathered the Buddhist world once before, a year ago: the Global Peace Prayer Festival of November 2025 brought more than 150 masters to Thimphu. What sets Gelephu apart is who will stand together, and for what. Alongside His Holiness the Je Khenpo will be the throne-holder of the Gelug school; the Karmapa of the Karma Kagyu; three generations of the Sakya throne — the 41st, 42nd and 43rd Sakya Trizins; masters of the Nyingma; a Theravāda monk from the United States; and the senior lama of Buryatia, beyond Lake Baikal. They come for the consecration of a single monument, raised by a whole country in a single day.

The heads of the great schools of Himalayan Buddhism meet rarely, and almost never all at once. It is hard to find an earlier occasion on which the throne-holders of so many of them have gathered for one consecration, and it may well be the first time it has happened anywhere. That it is happening in Gelephu, at His Majesty The King’s invitation and with His Holiness the Je Khenpo at its head, says something about the place Bhutan now holds in the Buddhist world.

Many of them have arrived long before the day, as givers. Over the months since His Majesty The King announced Project 108 in February, masters and monasteries across Asia and beyond have offered chortens, relics, prayers and money — about twenty of the 108 chortens among them. The list of who has come, and who has given, reads like a map of the Buddhist world.

His Holiness the Je Khenpo and the Zhung Dratshang

The gathering begins at home. The Je Khenpo is the Chief Abbot of Bhutan’s Central Monastic Body, an office that has existed since 1651, in the Zhabdrung’s time. The office does not pass by reincarnation: the Je Khenpo is appointed by His Majesty The King on the recommendation of the monastic body’s five senior masters, and only he and the King wear the saffron scarf. The present, 70th Je Khenpo, Trulku Jigme Choeda, enthroned in 1996, is the longest-serving in the office’s history; in 2022 and 2025 he restored full ordination for women. More on the Je Khenpo.

His Holiness the Je Khenpo will be in Gelephu from 21 October, leading prayers and rituals of purification and blessing to prepare the ground. His support began long before: he offered 120 sacred Ringsel — relic pearls — to be sealed inside the chortens, and has offered support for a chorten of his own, during an empowerment at Kuenselphodrang.

The Central Monastic Body has carried the sacred work throughout. Three of its senior Lopons broke ground simultaneously in June at three points along the corridor — Chortens 1, 92 and 108. Some forty masters of the practice spent more than four months at Sarpang preparing the relics that will give each chorten its heart, and at the end of September forty-three masters from Bhutan’s meditation centres began a twenty-one-day consecration of them. The Laytshog Lopon, one of the monastic body’s five senior masters, offered a chorten and invited his students around the world to join him; between them they offered thirteen. The zung is described in The Zung Inside Every Chorten.

Two Karmapas, one project

The Karmapa is the head of the Karma Kagyu, one of the great schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The line began with Düsum Khyenpa (1110–1193), founder of Tsurphu, and is generally regarded as the first line of reincarnate lamas in Tibet; the 5th Karmapa received the famous Black Crown from the Ming emperor in 1407. The 16th Karmapa’s ties to Bhutan were close: he performed the Black Crown ceremony in Bumthang, came through Bhutan when he left Tibet in 1959, and in 1967 was given the Tashi Choling palace in Bumthang by the King and the Queen Mother.

Today two masters hold the title, each recognised by different senior lamas and followed by his own students. Since 2018 the two have met and issued joint statements for the unity of their lineage. Both have made offerings to Project 108. More on the Karmapa.

His Holiness Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje is offering three of the 108 chortens through the Karma Leksheling Foundation and its sponsors — and, beyond them, the illumination of the whole complex and the lighting along the twelve-kilometre path that devotees will walk around it. He dedicated the offering as an expression of gratitude to His Majesty and to the wellbeing of all beings, and will be in Gelephu from 1 to 4 November.

His Holiness Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje has offered support for the construction of one chorten.

Other senior masters of the Karma Kagyu have joined as well. The Tai Situpa title dates from 1407; the 8th Situpa founded Palpung and edited the Tibetan canon, and the 11th taught Bhutan’s Third King. The 12th Tai Situpa, Pema Dönyö Nyingche, who as a boy of six came first to Bhutan when he left Tibet in 1959, came to Sarpang Dzong on 30 August, offered sacred relics for the chortens, and presented to His Majesty two ringsel said to be more than nine hundred years old (more on the Tai Situpa). Sangye Nyenpa Rinpoche, born at Taktsang, offered his prayers. And Thrangu Monastery in Nepal found a place here for a chorten it had been waiting to build: after the passing of Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche three years ago, the monastery resolved to build eight chortens in his memory. Seven found their places. The eighth, its lama wrote, belonged in Gelephu.

Three Sakya Trizins: the 41st, 42nd and 43rd

For the Sakya tradition, the gathering is rarer still. The Sakya Trizin — the Sakya throne-holder — has come from a single family, the Khön, since Sakya Monastery was founded in Tibet in 1073; its lamas taught Kublai Khan. Since 2017 the throne has rotated among the family’s senior members. Sakya Gongma Trichen held it for nearly six decades and made his first visit to Bhutan in 2024. More on the Sakya Trizin.

His Holiness Sakya Gongma Trichen, the 41st Sakya Trizin, together with the 42nd Sakya Trizin, Ratna Vajra Rinpoche, and the 43rd, Gyana Vajra Rinpoche, have offered one chorten from their household, the Sakya Dolma Phodrang, calling the 108 chortens enduring sources of blessing for generations. All three will be in Gelephu from 1 to 4 November. The next generation has given too: Khöndung Avikrita Vajra Sakya Rinpoche, who is to be enthroned as the 44th Sakya Trizin this autumn, has offered a chorten of his own.

The Nyingma masters

From the Nyingma, the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism, Kathok Situ Rinpoche and Trulku Kencho Tshering have offered a chorten together and will be in Gelephu from 1 to 4 November. Kathok, founded in 1159, is one of the great mother monasteries of the Nyingma; its fifth Situ incarnation, born in 1978, is a grandson of both Dudjom Rinpoche and Bhutan’s Second King, and teaches from Wangdue Phodrang (more). Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, heir to a lineage reaching back to the nineteenth-century Rimé master Jamgön Kongtrul and teacher of Pema Chödrön, will also be in Gelephu (more).

Bhutan’s own treasure-revealer lineage has given as one. Pema Lingpa (1450–1521), who is said to have dived into Bumthang’s Burning Lake with a lamp and come up with it still lit, is the ancestor of Bhutan’s royal house; his spiritual legacy continues through three lines of incarnate lamas. Their present holders — Gangteng Trulku Rinpoche, Sungtrul Rinpoche and Thuksey Trulku Rinpoche — have offered a chorten with the sangha of the Pema Lingpa lineage (more). Dungzin Garab Rinpoche, born in Trashigang and a grandson of Dudjom Rinpoche, the twentieth-century head of the Nyingma, sponsored a chorten, writing that it was not for his own merit but in gratitude; the monasteries under his guidance added more than Nu 9.5 million (more). Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche, grandson of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche — who made Bhutan his home, taught its royal family and was cremated in Paro in 1992 — offered Nu 1.39 million (more). Palchen Galo Rinpoche offered a chorten in memory of his father, the Phowa master Ayang Rinpoche, who taught in Bhutan many times. Dudjom Yangsi Rinpoche, Tingkey Gonjang Rinpoche, Namkhai Nyingpo Rinpoche and others have made offerings or prayers.

The Drukpa, and the Gelug

The Drukpa tradition that shaped Bhutan is present at every level, from the Je Khenpo down. Gyalwa Dokhampa, of the Khamtrul line that has carried the Drukpa tradition in eastern Tibet since the sixteenth century, came forward with his Thimphu monastery and followers (more); Zigar Choktrul Rinpoche, Bhutan-born, said that when His Majesty had envisioned such an undertaking he could not remain outside it. A Lam Neten from Lhuentse carried across the border the offering of his students in Hong Kong.

From the Gelug tradition — the school of the Dalai Lamas — its highest throne-holder is coming. His Holiness the Gaden Tripa, Jetsun Lobsang Dorjee, appointed the 105th holder of the Gaden throne in November 2024, will be in Gelephu from 1 to 4 November (more). The 79th Abbot of Gaden Jangtse, Khen Rinpoche Tenzin Wangdi, committed a chorten, describing the project as a response, in uncertain times of war and epidemic, for the cause of peace.

Beyond the Himalayas

Some of the gathering’s most striking figures come from far outside the Himalayan world.

• Venerable Bhikkhu Paññākāra, a Vietnamese-American Theravāda monk and former engineer, led the 2,300-mile, 108-day Walk for Peace from Texas to Washington, D.C., in the winter of 2025–26. He will be in Gelephu from 1 to 4 November (more).
• Khambo Lama Tsyren Dondukbaev, a senior lama of Transbaikalia in Russia, will be in Gelephu from 1 to 4 November, bringing the Buddhist tradition of the Buryat people, which survived Soviet repression to revive after 1991 (more).
• Pong Re Rinpoche, born in New Zealand and recognised as a reincarnate master by the Tai Situpa, offered a chorten on his first visit to Bhutan — dedicating it in part to the wellbeing of his home country — and will be in Gelephu from 1 to 4 November (more).
• Kruba Boonchum, a Thai forest monk revered across Thailand, Myanmar and Laos — known for years-long cave retreats and for praying at Tham Luang in 2018 — visited the site in Gelephu to offer prayers and contributed a chorten (more).
• Lay Buddhist groups in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore have given chortens, often through Bhutanese teachers they have known for years.

What the gathering says

It is unusual for leaders of so many traditions to plan to gather in one place for one purpose. It is more unusual still that so many of them came first not as guests but as givers — offering chortens, relics and prayers to a project in a country most of their students will never visit.

Bhutan has been here before, recently. In November 2025 the Global Peace Prayer Festival brought Mahayana, Theravāda and Vajrayana masters to Thimphu, and 265 nuns from fourteen countries received full ordination. Project 108 extends that confidence: the Buddhist world treating a small Himalayan kingdom as a place where its offerings will be honoured. Why that trust matters is its own story.

Beside the masters will stand tens of thousands of volunteers, and behind them givers of every kind. One of them, an elderly man who sells scarves and incense on the steps of Changangkha Lhakhang in Thimphu, offered his savings and the coins visitors had given him over many years — including foreign coins he had never counted, since the chortens are not only Bhutan’s. Between the Je Khenpo’s prayers on the riverbank and a vendor’s coins, the gathering on the Mau Chhu will be the whole of what Project 108 set out to be.