Tashilhunpo is one of the six great Gelugpa monasteries along with Drepung, Sera and Ganden. Founded in 1447 by a disciple of Tsongkhapa, Genden Drup, who was retroactively named the first Dalai Lama. When the fifth Dalai Lama declared his teacher, then the abbot of Tashilhunpo, to be a manifestation of Opagme (a deification of the Buddha's faculty of cognition and perception), the monastery's importance rose and Tashilhunpo became the seat of the Panchen Lama. 'Panchen' literally means 'great scholar' while 'lama' means 'higher monk'.
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