The spiritual leadership of Dzongkar Choede rests with the Abbot, known in Tibetan as the Khenpo. The abbot guides the religious life of the monastery: its study program, its ritual calendar, the ordination and training of monks, and the preservation of the monastery’s lineage and traditions.
The present abbot of Dzongkar Choede is Khenpo Thubten Tsering. The monastery also honors the abbots who preceded him: Khenpo Jampa Sopa Rinpoche, Ex-Abbot Jampa Kalsang Rinpoche, and the late Ex-Khenrinpoche Ven. Thupten Tsondue, who led the monastery through its re-establishment in exile.
Khenpo Thubten Tsering is the present abbot of Dzongkar Choede, holding the spiritual leadership of the monastery and its community of more than 300 monks.
A fuller account of his life, ordination, and work at the monastery is being prepared and will follow.
Khenpo Jampa Sopa Rinpoche was enthroned as abbot of Dzongkar Choede on the 2nd day of the 8th month of the royal year 2140 in the Tibetan lunar calendar, corresponding to 6 October 2013.
He was born in 1962 in Dharamsala and was admitted to the monastery at the age of fifteen. He received Sramanera (novice) ordination from His Holiness Ling Rinpoche in 1982, and Bikshu (full) ordination from His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1985.
Within the monastery he served as chant master for seven years, and in 2003 he was appointed ritual master (Lopon). From 2004 until 2013 he served as abbot of Kyidong Thukchoe Nunnery in Nepal, where he carried through a program of administrative reform.
His teaching covers Buddhist philosophy, the tantric arts, and the creation of sand mandalas — traditions described further under Buddhist education and the pillar of rituals. He has taught internationally in Europe, America, Canada, and Japan.
His support for the monastery has been practical as well as spiritual: a donation from him covered teachers’ salaries at a time when the school had no other funding for them.
Ex-Abbot Jampa Kalsang Rinpoche entered the monastery at the age of seven and studied for twenty-two years.
He served the monastery in a succession of senior roles: thirteen years as chant master, three years as disciplinarian master, and four years as Acarya (Lopon). He completed the Yamantaka retreat of three years, three months, and three days.
He was appointed abbot by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2005 and took his oath of office on 3 December 2005.
Ex-Khenrinpoche Ven. Thupten Tsondue became a monk at the age of fifteen and escaped from Tibet following the Chinese invasion of 1959.
In 1972, with the kind guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he helped re-establish Dzongkar Choede in exile at Hunsur in southern India. That rebuilding — from mud walls and bamboo thatches to a functioning monastery — is described in the history of the monastery.
He afterwards led fundraising efforts abroad for the construction of a new temple, which was completed and opened by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in late 2004.
The community operates under a transparent hierarchy designed to support practice rather than exert power. Spiritual leadership is guided by the Abbot, while day-to-day discipline, coordination, and communal organization are managed by the disciplinarian (Gegu or Gegeu) and an administrative committee appointed by the monastery’s general board.
How that structure works in daily practice is described under life together, and the administrative bodies themselves under administration.