dharmaśālā

Sanskrit dharmaśālā combined dharma (right conduct, cosmic order, duty) with śālā (hall, room, dwelling). A dharmaśālā was a public rest house maintained for travelers and pilgrims — a place where lodging was provided free or at nominal cost as an act of dharmic merit. The institution was ancient in India: wealthy merchants and rulers built dharmashalas along pilgrimage routes as both charitable acts and demonstrations of piety.

Dharamsala, the town in the Kangra Valley of Himachal Pradesh at 1,457 meters in the Dhauladhar range of the Himalayas, was a small British cantonment hill station before 1960. It had a modest church, some colonial bungalows, and a reputation for pleasant air. Then the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, arrived in April 1960 after fleeing Tibet following the 1959 Chinese crackdown.

The Tibetan government-in-exile established itself in Dharamsala — specifically in McLeod Ganj, the upper part of the town. The Tibetan parliament, monasteries, cultural institutions, and hundreds of thousands of Tibetan refugees built a community in this Indian hill town. McLeod Ganj is sometimes called 'Little Lhasa' — a city of exile that has preserved Tibetan culture in the Himalayas.

Dharamsala now draws a global audience: pilgrims, tourists, students of Buddhist philosophy, and political activists who come to attend teachings by the Dalai Lama. The Sanskrit word for a dharma hall names a place that functions, for Tibetans, as what the dharma hall was originally meant to be: a place of refuge on a long journey.