Samding Dorje Phagmo Samye (Tibetan: བསམ་ཡས་, Wylie: bsam yas, Chinese: 桑耶寺), full name Samye Mighur Lhundrub Tsula Khang (Wylie: Bsam yas mi ’gyur lhun grub gtsug lag khang) and Shrine of Unchanging Spontaneous Presence,[1] is the first Tibetan Buddhist and Nyingma monastery built in Tibet, during the reign of King Trisong Deutsen.

Shantarakshita began construction around 763, and Tibetan Vajrayana founder Guru Padmasambhava tamed the local spirits for its completion in 779.

A seminal text of Vairocana is the Mahavairocana Tantra, composed in India in the seventh century and translated into Chinese and Tibetan soon after.

[7] This records the building of temples at Lhasa and Brag Mar (i.e. Samye), and that the king, ministers and other nobles made solemn oaths to preserve and protect the endowments of the monastery.

The text has been translated as follows:[9] "Queen Rgyal mo brtsan, mother and son, made this bell in order to worship the Three Jewels of the ten directions.

And [they] pray that, by the power of that merit, Lha Btsan po Khri Srong lde brtsan, father and son, husband and wife, may be endowed with the harmony of the sixty melodious sounds, and attain supreme enlightenment."

When Shantarakshita's contemporary Padmasambhava arrived from northern India, he was able to subdue the energetic problems obstructing the building of Samye.

According to the 5th Dalai Lama,[11] Padmasambhava performed the Vajrakilaya dance and enacted the rite of namkha to assist Trisong Detsen and Śāntarakṣita clear away obscurations and hindrances in the building of Samye: The great religious master Padmasambhava performed this dance in order to prepare the ground for the Samye Monastery and to pacify the malice of the lha [local mountain god spirits] and srin [malevolent spirits] in order to create the most perfect conditions.

The dance was memorialized by the construction of Vajrakilaya stupas — monuments honoring the ritual kilya (purba) daggers — at the cardinal points of the monastery, where they would prevent demonic forces from entering the sacred grounds.

[17] The 18th century Puning Temple built by the Qianlong Emperor of Qing China in Chengde, Hebei was modeled after Samye.

Samye Monastery is laid out on the shape of a giant mandala; in its center lies the main temple representing the legendary Mount Meru.

Other buildings stand at the corners and cardinal points of the main temple, representing continents and other features of tantric Buddhist cosmology.

Heinrich Harrer quoted his own words he said to the 14th Dalai Lama of what he saw in 1982 from his airplane en route to Lhasa, "On our approach, in the Brahmaputra valley, the first terrible sight we saw confirmed all the bad news about Tibet's oldest monastery, Samye; it was totally destroyed.

"[18] Each time it has been rebuilt, and today, largely due to the efforts of Choekyi Gyaltsen, 10th Panchen Lama from 1986 onward, it is again an active monastery and important pilgrimage and tourist destination.