The chorten on Cerro Gordo Road, Khang-Tsag Chorten, was built in 1973 to commemorate the 1972 visit to Santa Fe of Yeshe Dorje Dudjom Rinpoche. Construction was supervised by the Ven. DoDrup Chen Rinpoche, who performed the consecration on the new moon of October 1973. In the following spring it was dedicated and blessed by the Ven. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
In 1975 work was begun on a temple building, with an open courtyard to surround the chorten. This building was about half-completed at the time of Dudjom Rinpoche's second visit to Santa Fe, in 1976. Rinpoche divided a relic which he held of a fragment of the brain of Longchenpa (Klong-chen rab-'byams- p), and this fragment was placed, in a glass vial wrapped in silk, between bricks in the center of the north wall of the shrine room of the new temple.
According to a letter from DoDrup Chen Rinpoche, this chorten is of the kind "called Khang-Bu-brTsegs-Pai-mChod-rTen after a sutra by the same name. The chorten is based on descriptions given in the sutra and incorporates mandalas and dharanis of two other sutras: gTsug-gTor-Dri-Med-mDo and Od-Zer-Dri-Med-Kyi-mDo."
The chorten contains many offerings, traditional ones and others particular to the donor, David Padwa, and also from the many local practitioners who helped with the construction. We have been told that it is a chorten designed for the pacification of all hostility; and that the site chosen is especially auspicious because it has a mountain shaped like a turtle to the north, a river to the south, a wide view to the west, and a great rock to the east.
In July of 1984 the temple was donated to Dharma Sangha of Santa Fe, and became the daily practice center for Zentatsu Myoyu Richard Baker-roshi and his New Mexico students. The shrine room was used as their zendo for daily meditiation, and one or more Zen monks lived there continuously for the next twelve years. Both Zenshin Ryufu Philip Whalen and Issan Dorsey lived and practiced with Baker-roshi during the years when this temple was his primary teaching seat. The first ordination ceremony was performed at the temple in January 1986, and another in October of 1990.
Over time Baker-roshi moved his teaching to the Crestone Mountain Zen Center near Crestone, Colorado, and in August 1992 a ceremony was held handing over the care and responsibility for the temple and its ongoing practice to the Maha Bodhi Society. Baker-roshi's Santa Fe students continued for several years to hold daily morning zazen as they had since 1984. Later Upaya used it for daily practice. Since Upaya dedicated their new zendo in December, 2001, it is very quiet in the little temple.