A message from the monastery:

“Tashi Delek! Drubwang Sanggye Nyenpa Rinpoche is in Bhutan and very fine. Rinpoche sent a message to the Benchen community along with his prayers. All of us should help whomever is in need in whichever way we can (on the picture you can see Tashi Özer and other monks listenig to the message).
Here after the earthquake on Saturday there is a lot of damage to buildings in the Benchen Monastery and neighborhood but nobody is badly injured and it is very safe. The monastery has been badly damaged as you can see on the pictures. In the meantime there are still many small tremors. There was a big aftershock on Sunday afternoon but everybody is staying on the ground safely and nobody got hurt.

We here at the monastery try to help as much as we can to provide food and medicals for everybody. Of course it is difficult even for ourselves as there is a growing shortage of food, water and other necessities. If anybody would like to help us, kindly contact Lotus Direkthilfe. Thank you very much for your support.

Namaste,

Tempa and Tashi”

As you can see there is structural damage in the monastery. The monks are sleeping outside in provisional tents. There is neither electricity and not enough water. Despite that our monks are serving free hot tea to thousands of the local community and are helping wherever they can.

Please lend your support by sending a donation with the reference “Erdbeben”!

Banking details:

account name: Lotus Direkthilfe

account no: 5104880

Commerzbank Köln

IBAN: DE74 3704 0044 0510 4880 00

BIC: COBADEFFXXX

Thank you for your generosity !

Photos by Tashi Sautter