ITHACA, N.Y. — Someday soon, Ithaca will be home to a truly unique and culturally significant site — His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama’s Library and Museum. No other place in the world will house such documents and relics that will share and preserve Tibetan cultural and religious history.
On a winter afternoon, the Namgyal Monastery Institute of Buddhist Studies is a quiet sanctuary on Ithaca’s South Hill. The warm-colored walls, quiet music playing in the background, orchid-lined windows and ornate shrine room make it easy to forget the gray, snowy outside. The monastery is tucked down 210 Tibet Drive in Ithaca on 28 acres of land, about three miles south of Downtown Ithaca.
The planned library and museum will be located next to the monastery. It may be years before the building is complete, but when done, the library will contain hundreds of books and thousands of hours of talks by the Dalai Lama. It will also include the entire volume of Sutras, which are direct translations of the Buddha’s teachings and the entire volume of Shastras, commentaries from Indian masters. It will “become a treasury to house all works related to His Holiness the Dalai Lama,” the monastery says on its website.
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