Wiktionary
n. A Buddhist ecclesiastical fortification of learning, lineage and sadhana in Tibet, India, Nepal, or Bhutan.
Wikipedia
Gompas, Gönpas, or Gumbas ( "remote place", Sanskrit araṇya), also known as ling , are Buddhist ecclesiastical fortifications of learning, lineage and sādhanā that may be understood as a conflation of a fortification, a vihara and a university associated with Tibetan Buddhism and thus common in historical Tibetan regions including parts of China, India, Nepal, Ladakh and Bhutan. Bhutanese dzong architecture is a subset of traditional gompa design.
Design and interior details vary from region to region; however, all follow a general sacred geometrical mandala design of a central prayer hall containing a murti or thangka, benches for the monks or nuns to engage in prayer or meditation and attached living accommodation. The gömpa or ling may also be accompanied by any number of stupas.
For practical purposes 'Gompa' is an imprecise term used by westerners traveling in Tibetan regions to refer to a variety of religious buildings, generally correlating to what might be described as a church but including small temple buildings and other places of worship or religious learning.
Usage examples of "gompa".
I tried to follow you from Ladong Gompa last night and got caught in the blizzard.
They have rented the old Red Hat Sect gompa near Rhan Tso, the Otter Lake, near the Phallus of Shiva.
They have sanctified part of the gompa as a chapel to their triune God.
One by one, the monks and holy men and riggers and carpenters and stonemasons and gompa abbots and mayors and bricklayers were asking soft questions of the young woman, and she was answering.
The Dorje Phamo travels in a palanquin carried by four heavily muscled males because she is the abbess of Samden Gompa, an all-male monastery some thirty klicks out along the south wall of the same ridge that holds the Temple Hanging in Air along its north wall.
She is a woman of immense importance and a separate monastery for women -- the Oracle Gompa at Yamdrok Tso, some sixty klicks farther along the dangerous ridge wall -- has held her as its prefect and avatar for more than seventy standard years.
Oracle Gompa at Yamdrok Tso several times to meet with the Sow and that the two are fast friends.
Dorje Phamo has recently told her female priests and monks at the Oracle Gompa and the male monks at Samden Gompa that it is Aenea, not His Holiness the current Dalai Lama, who is the incarnation of the living Buddha of Mercy.
It was not that long after first light, in the old gompa beneath the Phallus Shiva now turned into Christian enclave, where John Domenico Cardinal Mustafa, Admiral Marget Wu, Father Farrell, Archbishop Breque, Father LeBlanc, Rhadamanth Nemes, and her two remaining siblings met in conference.
In the great gompa at the center of the City of Peace, more than twelve hundred red-robed monks sat cross-legged in patient files, waiting for Aenea.
There was only one pass through those mountains, and it was protected by the dreadful fortress-city of Batmunkh Gompa, the Shield-Wall, beneath whose guns a hundred cities had come to grief in the first few centuries of Traction.
Below him the rooftops and terraces of Batmunkh Gompa stretched away into the shadows below the white shoulders of the mountains, and he found himself trying to imagine what it must be like to live here and wake up every day of your life to the same view.
News of MEDUSA was spreading fast through Batmunkh Gompa, and already a lot of the houses and shops were shuttered, their owners fled to cities further south.
It must have dropped Valentine off in the crags near Batmunkh Gompa, and he had come the rest of the way on foot, creeping into the city like a thief.
Around him the terraces of Batmunkh Gompa were speckled with lamps and lanterns, and the envelopes of balloon-taxis glowed from within as they rose and fell, like strange sea-creatures swimming around a coral reef.