Mongolian Sangha Food Offering

The Mongolia Sangha Food Fund was established to provide nutritious meals to Sangha members of the Idgaa Chiozinlin College within the Ganden Monastery in Ulaabaatar. The meals are an important part of creating a communal life centered on intense Dharma study. Without the food fund, the colleges would find it very difficult to maintain the attention and dedication of their young Sangha members who would, understandably, leave the monastery grounds to find meals.

Therefore, your contribution to the food fund will help Sangha members not only study longer, but much more effectively, because they have enough food to concentrate on their studies. For more information on the food programs in each college, please read below.

Each month an offering is made to the monastery to provide a nutritious lunch to over 50 monks six days per week, which works out to approximately 18 cents per lunch per monk per day.

Unfortunately the monastery is not yet in the financial position to be able to offer the entire cost of the lunches. It is the FPMT Mongolia's long-term goal to work closely with the monastery, assisting it to raise sufficient local and international sponsorship to establish a food fund which can be invested at attractive interest rates here in Mongolia. The interest will provide sufficient income to provide lunches to all the monks.

A bit of history: In 1910 Trultim Zansrum Idgaa Choizinling Dratsang was founded by the order of the 8th Bogda Khan in Ikh Khuree (the capital city now known as Ulaanbaatar).

In 1937 the monastery was completely destroyed. At the beginning of 1990, when Mongolia began to revive its historic traditions, Idgaa Choizinling restarted its activities and the process of rebuilding its Dratsang began in 2002 and was completed in 2003 with support from the FPMT.

FPMT Mongolia has sponsored the lunch in Idgaa Choizinling since October 2001. Prior to this sponsorship, lunch was not provided to the monks and there was no formal structured Buddhist philosophy education in place. Due to the lunch offerings, Idgaa were able to provide a formal teaching structure in the monastery with all the monks remaining at the monastery for the entire day without leaving the monastery for lunch.

With your help, we can continue to offer lunch to the monks on a daily basis to help them continue their monastic education and training and gain deeper understanding of the Buddhadharma which is vital to the long term development of Buddhism in Mongolia.

FPMT Mongolia is now donating $780 every month to cover the cost of two meals a day.

FPMT has established Mongolia, FPMT (MGN) as a designated purpose fund, which with the support of generous benefactors, supports the work of FPMT's affiliate, Mongolia, FPMT (MGN). All donations made to the fund are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.