Geshe Lamsang after a teaching in Ontinyent’s old gompa, 2023. Photo courtesy of Tekchen Choeling.

How do you move a Buddhist Center? That is the question that the team at Tekchen Choeling Buddhist Center in Spain had to ask themselves last month, when they had to relocate the center’s holy objects to a new location. Assistant director, Kelsang Bas, tells the story! 

How to Move a Dharma Center

By Kelsang Bas

As it turns out, you can’t just pick up the altar, put it in an Ikea box, and drive away.

Tekchen Choeling, aka The Land of the Mahayana Dharma, is a small yet robust FPMT center in Ontinyent, a town located in Eastern Spain between Valencia and Alicante. Like many small centers across the organization, we have been struggling with the challenges of an aging core team, lack of adaptation to the fast-paced digital environment, and difficulties to attract new people. However, there is something unique about Ontinyent’s center.

When Lama Zopa Rinpoche visited Madrid in 2018, Tekchen Choeling chartered a bus with almost fifty people—from a town of little over 30,000. We had rows reserved for them in the venue, and were welcomed with no shortage of hugs, cheers, and applause.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche greeted by students in Auditorio UGT, Madrid, Spain, October 2018. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.

Ontinyent is famous among Spanish FPMT centers for their devotion, perseverance, and tight-knit community. For example, the three founders who started the center as a study group back in 1986 are still among the most active members, acting now as director, SPC, and secretary. And there is something else that makes us special—we have also secured a generational change, with younger members taking on leadership roles and leading the center’s expansion and growth.

It is precisely that growth and expansion which led Tekchen Choeling to box up our gompa and move. In 2017, after experiencing a surge in attendance—barely fitting in our 70sqm apartment—we asked Lama Zopa Rinpoche for advice. Should we attempt to change locations?

Size wasn’t the only hindrance with our location. The tiny apartment was on a fourth floor with no elevator, and in a hidden and hard-to-access area of town with no easy parking. As the core team and many members grew older, the 4-story climb became a real obstacle. Some of the elder teachers also showed the aspect of having difficulties accessing the remote place. We wanted to move.

But Rinpoche cut our hopes sharp. It wasn’t the right time, he concluded after his investigations. “You must focus on creating a good harmony in the center,” he advised over and over. He also recommended the Sanghata Sutra as a practice for the center—a sutra with over 140 pages. “A thousand recitations,” Rinpoche instructed. By late 2022, we had finished the recitations and offered them to Rinpoche in Bodhgaya in January of 2023 and asked again. “Is it the right time to move?”

A couple of months later, shortly before showing the aspect of passing away, Rinpoche answered. The time couldn’t be better, according to his inquiry. With all of his blessings and words of encouragement, Tekchen Choeling could search for a new place for our center.

Fast-forward to September 2025. A dozen people wait standing in the small gompa—it just doesn’t look like a gompa anymore. The full lot of Kangyur texts are organized in fruit boxes—plastic boxes that can take more weight than cardboard. The walls depict no deities, no thangkas, no merit field, no images of beloved teachers—all of that waits wrapped and protected, to be transported, to the new location. And then Paloma Belda, the director, speaks with her sweet and tender voice, and everyone listens, solemnly. “The rest of the team are in the new venue, already reciting the Sutra of the Accumulation of Auspiciousness, ready to receive the Buddha and his entourage.”

Yes, that’s right. When you move a Buddhist center, you move the Buddha’s energy in it. When you move the holy objects, all buddhas and bodhisattvas come and watch. And if you are moving even the smallest statue, you are part of the buddhas’ entourage to the new location. Shivers. That’s what I felt when we heard the words of our director.

As with any procession, order matters. First, someone carrying incense. Any volunteers? Yes, you. Here, incense sticks and a lighter. Wait by the door. Second, the holy image of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The privilege was granted to Marisol, an 18-year-old volunteer who had just arrived in Ontinyent to help for a couple of weeks. She was flabbergasted by the honor of her task, His Holiness’s portrait was bigger than her! Third, the images of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Fourth, the box with the altar objects: the stupa, Buddha Sakyamuni’s statue, and other deities. Fifth… well, you get the point.

The altar right after the move, 2025. Photo courtesy of Tekchen Choeling.

Geshe Lamsang, resident teacher in Nagarjuna Valencia and one of the most acclaimed geshes of the FPMT organization, gave the precise guidelines and recommendations for the ceremony. We neatly followed suit.

As I was descending down the stairs, these stairs I’ve seen since I was born, carrying the box with the statues, I felt for a moment as if hundreds of people were next to me watching. You know? Like when a row of smiley Tibetans cheer you up by the path when you do a pilgrimage with a lama. But way more intense. Skies filled with deities. Only for a brief moment, but I felt it. It was real.

And with the same order—incense first, His Holiness, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche…—they arrived at their new location. They had to traverse 300sqm of a construction site to get there, though.

Tekchen Choeling’s new center is far from finished. When Rinpoche gave us the green light to relocate, we scanned the real estate in Ontinyent for suitable options. It took us until November of that year to find a place that met all of the requirements—a large, light-filled commercial premise in a good area of town, and for a good price. This one came with a big plus: a backyard orchard with fruit trees and an ancient farmhouse—in the middle of town! Surrounded by buildings. It is surreal.

The center bought the property in January of 2024. Permits, paperwork, unexpected structural fixes in the building, and delays with the architects took around a year and a half. Now, the property is ready for renovation, with the gompa as the main priority. However, the garden countryside house is only accessible through the commercial premise, so renovating it in the future would compromise the venue—it had to be renovated before. So rather than waiting, our team renovated the “casita” themselves in an astonishing volunteer effort, with their own hands, skills, and money.

Incense leading the way, His Holiness first, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche following…

The ceremonial procession traversed the not-yet-renovated property all the way to the back, down the stairs to the garden, and into the little farmhouse, to find another dozen people—our friends and sangha—reciting the Sutra of the Accumulation of Auspiciousness, with a very auspicious surprise: Ven. Jesús Revert Champa Shempen was there. Venerable Jesús is an Ontinyent-born Geshe—the only Spanish geshe as far as we know—who spends nine months a year in retreat and only occasionally visits centers in Spain.

Venerable Jesús and center members recite for the moving ceremony, 2025..Photo courtesy of Tekchen Choeling.

With the revered monk as witness, a dozen people charged into the room with incense, portraits, and box after box of holy objects, including the complete Kangyur texts in fruit boxes, into a room that was already crammed to the limit. This room, it turns out, will only be the kitchenette of the “casita.” For now, though, it has become a temporary gompa stacked with wrapped holy objects until the renovation of the main part of the property is completed.

And why move from a small gompa to an even smaller one? Need. Tekchen Choeling has had to sell the apartment to start payments to the construction firm and begin the renovation. The precipitous relocation is only one of many inconveniences that Tekchen Choeling has faced to move this project forward. A major step for a small center, the renovation is pushing us all to the limits.

Director Paloma Belda confesses having many sleepless nights over worries that they might not finish it. “I would have never chosen this for myself,” she half-jokes. “But it’s my duty. For the center. For the town. For all sentient beings.”

They were left with no alternative. As Chelo, another long-term member of the center, explains, “there was no other way. In two or three years, I won’t be able to climb these stairs. And it’s the same for half the board. And half our teachers. It was either moving or closing down.” (Please watch a short video of video of  their Maitreya Buddha statue being transported down the stairs on a wheelchair!)

Despite the major uphill they face financially, the mood is bright as sunlight, and confidence is high as the sky. “Everyone supports us,” says Paloma. “Every teacher, every neighbor, every FPMT center… They all see what we are doing and are left amazed. Especially if they can see the benefit this will bring to the world. We are expanding our guru’s mandala. That’s it. That’s our job.”

Next year, the center will turn 40. For our 40th anniversary, we plan to finish the renovation just in time for an inauguration Mahayana party, complete with teachings, community building, and social impact activities. We will have to move our altar again—but now, at least, we already know how. And so do you.

Kelsang Bas is a writer and social entrepreneur from Spain. Born into an FPMT family—his parents founded the Tekchen Choeling center in Ontinyent—he now helps small centers innovate and grow despite today’s challenges. He is assistant director at Tekchen Choeling. 

Please watch an inspiring video Tekchen Choeling has put together on this move and how to get involved:

With grateful thanks to Kelsang for this story. We welcome the submission of news stories from those within the FPMT community. This can be a story about something you have personally completed or accomplished, about someone else who has done so, or about the FPMT center, project, or service of which you are a part. Ideal submissions will give readers reasons to rejoice, share ideas, and create connections between those in the international community. Have something to share? Please let us know!

Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.