Since the monastery’s consecration in 1498, Sanctum Tathaa has adhered to the core principle: “No reliance on reincarnation, only upon realization.” Consequently, the passage of its abbatial seat has become a unique historywoven from sacred oral transmission and stone inscriptions. After the founder Dechen Gyatso witnessed three radiant apparitions of Padmasambhava in the Yazegang ravine, he inscribed in his own blood upon the cliff the Founding Vow: “The seat belongs not to one man; the lamp must pass to a thousand lamps,” thereby establishing the custom of elective succession.

Nearing death, Gyatso entrusted his robe, the bell-and-vajra, and a crimson seal to his chief disciple Chökyi Dorje, who subsequently transmitted them to his nephew Jampel Gyatso, thus inaugurating an early tradition of uncle-to-nephew succession. By the time the seventh abbot, Rinchen Namkha, saw the Gorkha armies sweep through the valley and the temple doors consumed by fire, he fled into the snow ranges with the seal clasped to his chest; three years passed with no word. The remaining monastics maintained the precepts beneath an “empty throne,” ritualistically placing the bell and vajra upon the vacant seat each dawn and dusk to ensure the lineage remained unbroken.

Then in 1825 the wandering reciter Könchok Namdrol discovered the bones of Rinchen Namkha, who was still clasping the seal, in an ice-cave. Namdrol carried the cracked bell back to the ruins. The community purified him with spring water, and Namdrol was enthroned as the eighth abbot. He immediately re-erected the temple hall on the rubble and instituted the “cavern ordeal”: every new abbot must spend seven winter nights in sealed retreat; only if confirmation is received through dreams or the spontaneous ringing of the bell may he ascend the throne.

In the late nineteenth century the ninth abbot Sonam Wangdu, versed in the arts, hewed a “perfume chamber” beside the retreat cave, thereby integrating the secret incense formula with the tantric liturgy. Consequently, the abbatial seat came to embody both “dharma succession” and “aromatic succession.” During the 1920s the tenth abbot Ngawang Chökyi travelled to Drepung Monastery in Lhasa and was awarded the degree “Lopön”; upon his return he erected the lecture hall and replaced the succession system with the “Khenpo Council.” Annually, on the tenth month of the Tibetan calendar, the ten Khenpos convene in the protector chapel. A copper bell is shaken three times over inscribed lots, and the name that resonates becomes the successor. This rule endured until 1959, when Nepal’s centralization decrees forced the temple to close; the bell and vajra were locked in a cedar chest, and the throne hung empty once more.