The Erdene Zuu monastery in the early 20th century.

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KARAKORUM, MONGOLIA — Erdene Zuu, Mongolia’s oldest surviving Buddhist monastery, is a sprawling, windswept complex nestled in the Orkhon Valley, the ancient cultural crossroads where Genghis Khan chose to locate the capital of his empire, Karakorum, back in 1220. The monastery — which dates to 1586 and was built with stones from the ruined capital — once had 60 temples and 1,000 monks who lived in hundreds of gers dotted throughout the swaying grass. Now it has just 54 monks, none of whom live on the site, and 13 temples, only one of which — the Lama Temple — can be used for worship.

The Lama Temple is a sturdy Tibetan-style structure, white-washed with upturned eaves and flapping prayer flags. It is presided over by Baasansuren Handsuren, a charismatic, English-speaking monk who entered the monastery in 1991 at the age of 14 and has served as its head lama for seven years.

While at work inside the vermillion-pillared temple, Mr. Baasansuren sits on a raised chair emblazoned with a Buddhist swastika. Below him, pilgrims kneel in supplication and saffron-robed monks chant over unbound prayer books, the grown monks in voices low and guttural and the teenage novices in tones dulcet and higher-pitched. Wisps of incense smoke curl through shafts of sunlight, bowls of dumplings and fresh yogurt are passed around, and now and again a monk rises to check a text message or find his cellphone charger.

When not at prayer, Mr. Baasansuren fulfills more quotidian obligations, including overseeing a school for young monks, a meditation center, and eventually, if all goes according to plan, a community center.

He is preparing to publish his first book, “Erdene Zuu: The Jewel of Enlightenment,” a photographic record of his monastery’s tumultuous 20th-century history that he was inspired to compile after chancing on a few old photos.

“I was very excited to see them,” Mr. Baasansuren said in a conversation that began at Erdene Zuu and continued later by phone. “I did a little research in archives and I found more. Then I was thinking if had enough photos, I could print a history book. Photos are solid evidence. Oral history changes.”

Researching intermittently over four years, Mr. Baasansuren tracked down nearly 200 photographs for which he wrote captions and commentary. In documenting the story of Erdene Zuu, Mr. Baasansuren also tells the larger tale of flourishing, devastation and rebirth that is the history of Buddhism in modern Mongolia.

“There used to be 100,000 monks in Mongolia,” he explained, a figure that Vesna Wallace, a professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, notes was roughly 10 percent of the population.

Photos covering this era date from the 1900s to the 1930s and are grouped into chapters on monastic life and the Tsam ritual masked dances for which Erdene Zuu was famous.

“Tsam dancing is to push the bad energy out,” Mr. Baasansuren said. “It’s tantric. Tsam dance at our monastery was very different — at most monasteries only monks could dance, but at ours ordinary people could dance, too.”

The Tsam rituals at Erdene Zuu included 120 or more dancers, all dressed in Mongolian military costumes of yore. But, the last dance was performed in 1936, marking the end of Mongolian Buddhism’s age of prosperity and the start of its near-destruction in the Stalin era, when Mongolia became a Soviet satellite.

 “Mongolia couldn’t establish Communism because Buddhism was so strong — so they decided to destroy Buddhism, so they could establish Communism,” he said. “Our monastery was destroyed very badly. More than 1,200 monasteries in Mongolia were destroyed.”

The destruction of the monasteries, in 1938 and ’39, was accompanied by the murder, jailing, and forced secularization of Mongolia’s monks. By 1941, according to Ms. Wallace, there were only 241 monks left in the entire country, and Buddhism as an institutional religion had effectively been wiped out.

“From that year the government protected Erdene Zuu Monastery — they did reconstruction. And every year after they gave small budget.”

But even though Erdene Zuu was reopened as a museum, religious practice was not permitted.

“It was a big taboo to practice Buddhism during the socialist period — especially if you were a party member,” said Uranchimeg Tsultem, an art historian based at the University of California at Berkeley.

Indeed, it was only with the collapse of Mongolian Communism in 1990 — a year before Mr. Baasansuren’s arrival at Erdene Zuu — that public worship was again permitted. This led to a period of rebuilding that has lasted to this day.

“Buddhism is very emerging,” said Ms. Uranchimeg. “There are many monasteries being rebuilt. Sometimes it is amazing — the monasteries are built out of nowhere.”

Mr. Baasansuren documents this period with photos from the 1990s, concentrating as much on the revival of the ceremonies that give Erdene Zuu life as on the reconstruction of its physical infrastructure. Indeed, he believes that the focus on fixing buildings should shift to recruitment, education and service. “Now it’s not very important to build more temples. We need good monks,” he said.

It is to this end that he has established the school, a cozy low-ceilinged structure, built with local donations and support from the Himalaya Foundation, that currently has 30 students between the ages of 9 and 16. “Originally, so many monks were not well educated — they only knew Buddhism. But monks need to know science, too,” he said.

To this end, the young monks receive both Buddhist and secular education; in the classrooms where religion is taught, the walls are covered with posters that explain how to make butter sculptures and the meanings of Buddhist hand gestures. Students live in dorms above the classrooms — one room had bunk beds, a Buddha wall clock, and posters of the Dalai Lama and the basketball player Alan Iverson.

Mr. Baasansuren would like to extend his monastery’s capacity for education and service to the Karakorum community at large through a community center that will have a library, soup kitchen, and classrooms for coursework in Buddhist teachings and meditation.

Erdene Zuu, however, was saved from complete physical ruin because Mongolian government officials — apparently pressured by Stalin himself — decided to retain one or two monasteries to show foreign visitors. (The other was Gandantengchilin Monastery in Ulan Bator.) This decision was also sparked, Mr. Baasansuren explained, by the 1944 visit to Mongolia of the American vice president Henry Wallace, at the end of a 27,000-mile, or 43,000 kilometer, trip through China, Siberia and Central Asia. Mr. Wallace was accompanied by Nicholas Roerich, a Russian mystic and artist to whom he was in thrall, and together they inquired about the state of Buddhism in Mongolia.

“Usually religious organizations do a lot of social work,” he said. “Buddhist monks don’t do social work, and people think that’s bad. So there are critics who say lamas should do more. I agree.”

The local government has provided land for the center, with the stipulation that it is built within the next year. But since construction is slated to cost $60,000 — double the $30,000 annual budget on which Mr. Baasansuren must run the monastery and feed and pay all his monks — this plan may be hard to realize.

“My problem is Buddhist teachings are the opposite of material things,” he said. “But I am head of a monastery, and I have to think about money all the time. It is not good for inside me.”

몽고 카라코쿰에 있는 ‘에르데네 주’ 사원은 몽고에서 가장 오래된 현존 사찰로 오르콘 계곡에 바람을 맞으며 넓게 펼쳐져 있는 종합건축물이다. 오르콘 계곡은 고대 문화의 교차로이며 칭기즈칸이 건설한 몽고 제국의 수도 카라코룸이 있던 곳이다. 사원은 1586년 폐허가 된 수도에서 나온 돌로 지어졌다. 에르데네 주 사원에는 한 때 60개의 절과 초원에 지어진 수백 개의 게르(천막집)에 1,000여 명의 스님이 살았다. 현재 54명의 스님만 남아 있으나 이곳에 살지 않으며 13개의 절 중 하나인 라마사만이 예불을 모시고 있다.

라마사는 티벳 스타일의 견고한 건물이며 위로 향한 처마와 바람에 펄럭이는 기원 깃발이 있고 하얗게 칠해져 있다. 바산주렌 한드수렌 스님이 지키고 있는데 그는 1991년 14살에 출가해 현재 7년 동안 주지 소임을 보고 있으며 카리스마가 있고 영어를 할 줄 아는 스님이다.

스님은 기도하지 않을 때에는 젊은 스님들이 다니는 강원과 선원에서 지도를 하며, 때로는 지역사회 기관까지 돌보는 것 등 많은 일상 업무를 수행한다. 그는 '에르데네 주; 깨침의 보석'이란 책을 출판하려고 준비를 하고 있다. 격동의 20세기 절의 역사를 담은 사진 기록물로, 몇 점의 오래된 사진을 우연히 본 후 모으게 되었다. 공문서들을 보고 연구했고, 많은 것을 찾아냈다. 스님은 4년 동안 연구하면서 거의 200장의 사진을 찾아내 제목과 설명을 달았다. 에르데네 주의 역사를 문서화 하면서 몽골 불교 역사의 흥망성쇠와 환생에 대해 이야기한다. 1900년대부터 1930년대까지 이르는 사진들은 사원 생활과 에르데네 주에서 유명했던 ‘참’가면무의 장으로 묶었다. ‘참’무는 나쁜 기운을 몰아내는 의식이었는데 1936년에 마지막 공연이 있었고, 이때는 몽고 불교가 융성했던 시대의 종말과 몽골이 소련의 위성국가로 전락하던 시기였다. 1938년과 39년 사원 파괴는 몽고 스님들의 살해, 투옥 그리고 세속화를 동반했다. 1990년 공산주의가 붕괴한 이후에야 대중 예불이 허락되고, 재건축도 시작되어 오늘에 이르고 있다. 에르데네 주가 물리적 파괴를 면한 것은 스탈린의 압력을 받은 관리가 외국인 방문객에게 보여주고자 한두 개의 사원을 유지해야 한다고 했기 때문이다. 지방정부는 이 센터에 땅을 제공했고 내년 안에 짓도록 약정했지만 건축비용이 1년 운영비인 3만 불의 두 배인 6만 불에 육박함에 따라 이 계획은 이뤄지기 어려워 보인다. "불교의 가르침이 물질적인 것과는 반대인데 절의 수장으로써 항상 돈에 대해 생각해야 하는 것이 나의 문제이다. 내 내면의 수행에는 좋지 않다."라고 스님이 말했다.