A word-book, tsigdzö, a treasury of terms. 135 cards, cross-linked like a wiki. Tap any card to open it; follow the see also links to wander.
ཆོས་མངོན་པ།Study
Abhidharma
The systematic inventory: mind, matter, karma, realms, paths.
Skt. ‘higher doctrine’
Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakośa: a catalogue of everything the system contains, mental factors, material elements, karma, the afflictions, the realms of rebirth, the stages of meditative absorption. If Madhyamaka is the view, Abhidharma is the furniture the view gets applied to.
འོད་དཔག་མེད།Deity
Amitābha
The Buddha of Boundless Light, and of the western pure land.
Tib. Öpame
Also: Öpame
Red, seated in meditation posture with an alms bowl, presiding over Sukhāvatī, the western
pure land. Aspiring to be reborn there is one of the most widespread devotional practices in the
Mahāyāna world, and his short mantra is among the ones recited for the dying. Amitāyus, the Buddha
of Boundless Life, is the same figure in a long-life aspect.
པི་དིབ་བུད་བིད།Deity
Amitāyus
Amitābha in long-life form, holding a vase of nectar.
Skt. ‘Boundless Life’; Tib. Tsepame
Also: Tsepame
Not a separate buddha but Amitābha in the aspect of boundless life, crowned and ornamented rather than plain, holding a vase of deathless nectar. One of the three long-life deities with White Tārā and Namgyalma. He appears in long-life pujas, the ceremonies students most often request on behalf of their own teachers.
དཔྱད་སྒོམ།Practice
Analytical meditation
Thinking a conclusion into your bones, rather than emptying the mind.
Tib. chegom
Also: chegom
The characteristic Geluk method, and the reason the courtyard is loud. You take a proposition, that this life will end, that the self is not findable, and reason through it repeatedly until it stops being information and becomes conviction. Stabilising meditation then holds the result. Debate is analytical meditation done out loud, with someone else looking for your mistakes.
སྤྱན་རས་གཟིགས།Deity
Avalokiteśvara
The bodhisattva of compassion, and the patron of Tibet.
Tib. Chenrezig
Also: Chenrezig
Depicted with four arms, or with a thousand arms and eleven heads, the heads having split, in the traditional account, from the sheer difficulty of the vow to empty the realms of suffering. His mantra is the one carved across the Tibetan world. Successive Dalai Lamas are understood within the tradition as emanations of Avalokiteśvara.
དྲིལ་བུ།Object
Bell
Held in the left hand, wisdom, paired with the vajra's method.
Skt. ghaṇṭā; Tib. drilbu
Also: ghaṇṭā, drilbu, dril bu
A hand bell with a vajra handle, rung in liturgy and held throughout tantric ritual. The bell is wisdom, the realisation of emptiness; the vajra is method, compassion and skilful means. Neither is practised without the other, and the two implements in the two hands are the tradition's most compact statement of that.
བེྱུ་རྱབས།Practice
Blessing
Not a magic transfer. A push, which still needs you to move.
Tib. chinlab; Skt. adhiṣṭhāna
Also: chinlab, adhiṣ
The Tibetan chinlab is often rendered ‘blessing’, but the sense is closer to ‘transformative waves’ or an uplifting influence. Touching your head to a throne, receiving a khata back round your neck, wearing a blessed cord: none of these do the work for you. They are held to create a connection and to make the mind more workable. The tradition is consistent that what changes a mind is practice over time.
བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས།Core idea
Bodhicitta
The wish to become a buddha for the sake of every being.
Skt.; Tib. jangchub sem
Also: jangchub sem
Not a mood but a resolve, and the exact thing that makes a practice Mahāyāna. Two methods of cultivating it are taught: the seven-point cause-and-effect instruction, and equalising and exchanging self with others. Everything else in the tradition is described as either a preparation for bodhicitta or an application of it. His Holiness the Dalai Lama describes it as the most useful thing he has ever learned.
བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ།Core idea
Bodhisattva
One who has generated bodhicitta and trains in the six perfections.
Skt.; Tib. jangchub sempa
Also: jangchub sempa
A being aiming at full buddhahood rather than personal liberation, and willing to stay in samsara indefinitely to get everyone else out. Ten grounds or bhūmi mark the progression, mapped in detail by Maitreya's Abhisamayālaṃkāra, the longest block of the Sera Jey curriculum is essentially the study of this map.
སངས་རྒྱས།Core idea
Buddha
One in whom every obscuration is cleared and every quality expanded.
Skt. ‘awakened’; Tib. sangye
Also: sangye
The Tibetan translation is a two-part gloss: sang, cleared away, every obscuration, both the afflictive and the subtle, and gye, expanded, every capacity fully unfolded. Buddhahood is a state, not a job title, and the historical Buddha Śākyamuni is one among countless. The entire Geluk curriculum is a description of how an ordinary mind gets from here to there.
བདེ་གཤེགས་སྙིང་པོ།Core idea
Buddha nature
The capacity for awakening present in every mind, without exception.
Skt. tathāgatagarbha; Tib. de-shek nyingpo
Also: tathāgatagarbha, de-shek nyingpo
The claim that the obscurations are adventitious, they colour the mind but are not the mind, and that the clear, knowing nature underneath is not damaged by them. This is why the tradition can say without hedging that every being will become a buddha. Practically, it is the answer to the beginner's objection: not whether you can, but how long you intend to take.
མཆོད་མེ།Object
Butter lamp
A lamp of clarified butter, the standard offering of light.
Tib. chöme
Also: chöme
Rows of them burn in front of every shrine, offered for the living and the dead, and lit in enormous numbers on Gaden Ngamchö. Light offerings are associated with the dispelling of ignorance, which makes the symbolism straightforward. Modern monasteries often use vegetable ghee or electric lamps for fire safety, and nobody regards this as a compromise worth arguing about.
བོད་ཇ།Practice
Butter tea
Tea churned with salt and butter, savoury, and constant.
Tib. pöchá
Also: pöchá
Brick tea boiled long, then churned with salt and butter into an emulsion. Drunk all day, and poured for the whole assembly repeatedly during long pujas. A guest's cup is topped up the moment it is lowered, which visitors discover is not a question.
རི་བོ་ལཆེ་བགི་གུས།Deity
Cakrasaṃvara
One of the three principal Geluk tantric deities. Initiation required.
Skt.; also Heruka; Tib. Khorlo Dompa
Also: Khorlo Dompa
Also called Heruka. Dark blue, in union with Vajravarahi, standing on prone figures representing what is overcome. The Geluk tantric colleges practise the Luipa system, with sixty-two deities in the external mandala and sixty-two in the body mandala.
ཆོ་འཕྲུལ་དུས་ཆེན།Calendar
Chotrul Düchen
The full moon of the first Tibetan month, closing Monlam.
Tib. ‘Day of Miracles’
Commemorates the fifteen days of miraculous displays with which the Buddha is said to have answered rival teachers at Śrāvastī. One of the four great holidays on which the karmic weight of actions is traditionally held to be multiplied.
ཆོས་ར།Monastery
Chö-ra
The debate courtyard, the loudest and most important ground in the place.
Tib. ‘dharma enclosure’
The open, usually tree-shaded courtyard where daily debate is held, often with a covered colonnade along one side. At Sera Jey it fills every afternoon and again after dark. This site's journal takes its name from it.
ཆོས་འཁོར་དུས་ཆེན།Calendar
Chökhor Düchen
The first turning of the wheel of Dharma, at Sarnath.
Tib.
Marks the Buddha's first teaching, the four noble truths, given to the five ascetics in the deer park, on the fourth day of the sixth Tibetan month. The gilded wheel and deer on every temple roof refer to this event.
སྐོར་ར།Practice
Circumambulation
Walking clockwise around a holy object, the most common practice in Tibet.
Tib. khora
Also: khora
Around a stupa, a temple, a monastery or a mountain, always clockwise, keeping the sacred object on your right. Often combined with mantra recitation or a hand-held prayer wheel. At Bylakuppe, the circuit around the assembly hall is busiest at dawn and dusk, and it is the practice a visitor is most likely to be quietly folded into.
སྙིང་རྗེ།Core idea
Compassion
The wish that beings be free of suffering, trained, not merely felt.
Skt. karuṇā; Tib. nyingjé
Also: karuṇā, nyingjé
Distinguished carefully from pity, from distress at others' pain, and from attachment to those close to you. Great compassion extends without partiality to every being, including the ones you find intolerable, and is deliberately constructed through analytical meditation rather than waited for. Paired with loving-kindness, the wish that beings have happiness, it is the ground bodhicitta grows from.
ཏཱ་ལའི་བླ་མ།Monastery
Dalai Lama
The foremost figure of the Geluk tradition, and of this monastery's world.
Tib./Mong. ‘ocean of wisdom’
His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, understood within the tradition as an emanation of Avalokiteśvara. He guided the re-establishment of the great monastic seats in exile in southern India, founded Sera Jey's health care committee in 1989, inaugurated its great assembly hall in 1997, and has given the Kālachakra empowerment thirty-four times. Sera Jey studies and practises within his tradition.
ཌ་མ་རུ།Object
Damaru
The small two-headed hand drum, turned with a flick of the wrist.
Skt.; Tib. damaru
An hourglass drum with two knotted strikers that beat the heads as the wrist rotates. Used in specific liturgies alongside the bell, and instantly recognisable in the sound of a Tibetan ritual. In the great pujas it sits within an ensemble of long horns, oboes, cymbals and drums that is deliberately overwhelming.
སབིཔ་ས།Practice
Dana
Generosity. Also the envelope you hand over at a teaching.
Skt.; Tib. jinpa
Also: jinpa
The first of the six perfections, and in practice the reason teachings are usually free. Teachers in this tradition do not charge for Dharma; centres cover their costs from donations, and at the end of a teaching an offering is made to the teacher in an envelope. FPMT's own instructions suggest the amount should be an uneven number, for example 101 rather than 100. Nobody checks, and nobody is turned away for giving nothing.
བར་དོ།Practice
Death & bardo
The stages of dying and the interval before the next rebirth.
Tib. bardo ‘intermediate state’
Also: bardo &lsquo
Dying is described as a sequence of dissolutions ending in the clear light of death, the subtlest mind, which for an accomplished practitioner is the most productive moment of a lifetime. The bardo is the interval that follows before the next birth. Meditation on the death process is standard in Highest Yoga Tantra, where the stages of dying are rehearsed deliberately while alive.
བསྔོ་བ།Practice
Dedication
Giving away the merit at the end of every practice, so it cannot be lost.
Tib. ngowa
Also: ngowa
Every session, teaching and puja closes by dedicating whatever merit has been created to the awakening of all beings. Two reasons are given: undedicated merit can be destroyed by anger, and dedication converts a limited good act into a cause aligned with an unlimited goal. It takes thirty seconds and the tradition treats skipping it as straightforwardly foolish.
ལྷའི་རྣལ་འབྱོར།Practice
Deity yoga
Practising as the result: visualising oneself in enlightened form.
Tib. lhé neljor
Also: lhé neljor
The defining method of tantra. Rather than approaching buddhahood as a distant goal, the practitioner dissolves ordinary appearance and ordinary conception and arises as the deity, in the deity's mandala, with the deity's speech and mind. Two stages are distinguished: generation, in which this is imagined, and completion, in which it is worked through the subtle body.
རྟེན་འབྲེལ།Core idea
Dependent arising
Nothing stands alone: everything arises in reliance on something else.
Skt. pratītyasamutpāda; Tib. tendrel
Also: pratītyasamutpāda, tendrel
Three levels, each subtler than the last. Things arise from causes and conditions. Things depend on their own parts. And things depend on being designated by a mind. The third is the one the curriculum spends years on, because it is the level at which dependent arising and emptiness turn out to be the same statement, Tsongkhapa's central and most contested claim.
ཆོས།Core idea
Dharma
The Buddha's teaching, and, technically, any phenomenon at all.
Skt.; Tib. chö
Also: chö
Two meanings that sit oddly together until you get used to them. In ordinary use, the Dharma is the Buddha's teaching: the path he described and the truth it points at, the second of the Three Jewels. In technical Abhidharma use, a dharma is simply a phenomenon, any knowable thing whatever, a moment of consciousness or a particle of matter. The root sense, ‘that which holds’, covers both: a teaching holds you back from suffering, and a phenomenon holds its own defining character.
ཆོས་འཁོར།Object
Dharma wheel
Eight spokes for the eightfold path, flanked by two deer, on every roof.
Skt. dharmacakra; Tib. chökhor
Also: dharmacakra, chökhor
The gilded wheel on the roof of every Tibetan temple, flanked by a kneeling deer on each side, a reference to the deer park at Sarnath where the Buddha first taught. Its eight spokes stand for the eightfold path. ‘Turning the wheel’ is the standard idiom for giving teachings.
ཆོས་སྐྱོང་།Deity
Dharmapāla
Dharma protectors, wrathful in appearance, protective in function.
Tib. chökyong
Also: chökyong
Enlightened or worldly beings committed to guarding the teaching and its practitioners. Depicted wrathfully, in flames, because what they oppose is not people but obstacles and self-cherishing. Each monastery has its own protector practices; the protector chapel is often the one room where a visitor's access is restricted, and that restriction should simply be accepted.
གྲྭ་ཚང་།Monastery
Dratsang
A monastic college, Sera Jey is one; Sera Mey is another.
Tib.
A college within a larger monastery, with its own abbot, assembly, endowment and textbook tradition. Sera comprises the philosophical colleges of Sera Jey and Sera Mey together with a tantric college. Below the dratsang sit the khangtsen, the regional houses where monks actually live.
སྡུག་བསྔལ།Core idea
Dukkha
Unsatisfactoriness, not just pain, but the instability of everything conditioned.
Skt.; Tib. dukngal
Also: dukngal
Usually rendered ‘suffering’, which undersells it. Three kinds are distinguished: the suffering of pain, the suffering of change (pleasures that decay, which is why good things also ache), and pervasive conditioned suffering, the simple fact of having a body and mind produced by karma and afflictions, which is unstable by construction. The third is the one the path actually targets.
དུང་ཆེན།Object
Dungchen
The telescopic long horn, played in pairs, felt as much as heard.
Tib.
Copper horns up to four metres long, rested on the ground or on a stand and played in pairs to produce a low, slow, overlapping drone that opens and punctuates major ceremonies. The sound carries across the entire settlement at Bylakuppe and is, for most visitors, the single most memorable thing they take away.
བསྡུས་གྲྭ།Study
Düdra
The beginner's logic course, two or three years before the real texts.
Tib. ‘collected topics’
Deceptively small debates about colour, cause, contradiction and inclusion, whether a white horse is white, whether being a colour entails being red. It installs the formal grammar of definition, pervasion and consequence that every later debate runs on. Nothing in the curriculum is possible without it, and a monk who was sloppy here is exposed for the next twenty years.
The eight signs painted on temple walls, doorframes, furniture and chalk-drawn on courtyards for ceremonies. Each carries a gloss, the parasol as protection, the golden fish as fearlessness, the conch as the far-carrying Dharma, the endless knot as dependent arising. At Sera Jey they are chalked on the paving before major pujas and walked over by the time the day ends.
Core idea
Eightfold Path
Right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration.
Skt. āryāṣṭāṅgamārga
Also: āryāṣṭāṅgamārga
The content of the fourth noble truth, grouped into three trainings: ethical conduct (speech, action, livelihood), concentration (effort, mindfulness, concentration) and wisdom (view, intention). The Tibetan presentation folds these into the lamrim's graduated stages rather than teaching them as a standalone list, but the three trainings remain the underlying architecture of the whole path.
དབང་།Practice
Empowerment
The ritual permission and transmission that opens a tantric practice.
Skt. abhiṣeka; Tib. wang
Also: abhiṣeka, wang
A ceremony in which a qualified lama introduces the disciple to a mandala and its deity, ripening the mind's capacity and authorising the practice. It is not a certificate; it establishes a relationship and a set of commitments. Where an empowerment is given publicly to enormous crowds, as with Kālachakra, those who are not ready simply receive it as a blessing, which is explicitly allowed for.
སྟོང་པ་ཉིད།Core idea
Emptiness
The absence of inherent existence, and the reason anything can work.
Skt. śūnyatā; Tib. tongpa nyi
Also: śūnyatā, tongpa nyi
Nothing whatsoever exists from its own side, independently of its causes, its parts and the mind that designates it. This is not a claim that things do not exist. In the Prāsaṅgika Madhyamaka view the Geluk tradition upholds, emptiness and dependent arising are two ways of saying one thing: a seed can become a sprout because neither is a fixed, self-contained essence. Holding both halves without slipping into nihilism on one side or eternalism on the other is the razor a monk spends twenty years learning to walk.
དཔལ་བེའུ།Object
Endless knot
A closed line with no beginning and no end, dependent arising, drawn.
Skt. śrīvatsa; Tib. palbeu
Also: śrīvatsa, palbeu
One of the eight auspicious symbols, and the most quietly philosophical of them: a continuous interwoven line with no start, no finish and no independent segment. It stands for the interdependence of everything, and for the inseparability of wisdom and compassion. It is carved on gates and railings throughout the Bylakuppe settlement.
The five Indian root texts on which the entire Geluk curriculum is built, studied in sequence over roughly twenty years: Dharmakīrti on valid cognition, Maitreya on the grounds and paths, Candrakīrti on the middle way, Vasubandhu on the Abhidharma, and Guṇaprabha on monastic discipline. Each is circled for years rather than read once. Set out in full by a geshe of this monastery →
འཕགས་པའི་བདེན་པ་བཞི།Core idea
Four Noble Truths
Suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path, the Buddha's first teaching.
Skt. catvāri āryasatyāni; Tib. phakpe denpa zhi
Also: catvāri āryasatyāni, phakpe denpa zhi
The framework of the first sermon at Sarnath, and the skeleton of everything after it. There is suffering; it has an identifiable cause in craving and ignorance; that cause can be removed, which is cessation; and there is a method for removing it. Presented in the structure of a diagnosis: symptom, aetiology, prognosis, treatment. His Holiness the Dalai Lama returns to it in almost every public teaching.
དགའ་ལྡན་ལྔ་མཆོད།Calendar
Gaden Ngamchö
Tsongkhapa's anniversary, butter lamps on every roof in the settlement.
Tib.
The twenty-fifth day of the tenth Tibetan month, marking the passing of Je Tsongkhapa in 1419. Lamps are lit along every roofline, wall and windowsill across Bylakuppe. It is the warmest evening of the monastic year, and the least argumentative.
དགའ་ལྡན་ཁྲི་པ།Monastery
Ganden Tripa
Holder of the Throne of Ganden, the formal head of the Geluk school.
Tib.
An office filled by seniority and scholarly attainment rather than by recognised reincarnation, occupied for a fixed term. The holder sits on Tsongkhapa's throne and is the formal head of the tradition, distinct from the Dalai Lama's role. Several Ganden Tripas have come from Sera Jey.
དགེ་རྒན།Monastery
Gegen
The class teacher who takes a group through the day's text, line by line.
Tib. ‘teacher’
A monk's immediate teacher, to whom he stays attached for years. The gegen reads the day's passage of the college's yigcha with the class, checks their memorisation, and hears their debates. Most gegens are geshes who have returned to the courtyard from the other side.
དགེ་སྐོས།Monastery
Gekö
The disciplinarian, keeper of order in the assembly.
Tib.
The officer responsible for discipline in the hall and the grounds, carrying a staff and a great deal of authority. He enforces attendance, posture, silence and the vinaya in daily practice. In an institution of several thousand young men, the gekö is the reason things run at all.
དགེ་སློང་། དགེ་ཚུལ།Monastery
Gelong & getsul
Full and novice ordination, the two levels of monastic vows.
Skt. bhikṣu & śrāmaṇera
Also: bhikṣu &
A getsul is a novice, holding the novice vows; a gelong holds full ordination, traditionally from the age of twenty. Boys often enter a monastery years before either, as lay students. The vows are individual-liberation vows, the base layer beneath bodhisattva and tantric commitments.
དགེ་ལུགས།Study
Geluk
The school of Tsongkhapa and of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Tib. dGe-lugs, ‘system of virtue’
Also: dGe-lugs
Founded by Je Tsongkhapa around the turn of the fifteenth century, and distinguished by two commitments held together: strict monastic discipline, and an intensive scholastic curriculum taught through formal debate. Its three great seats near Lhasa were Ganden, Drepung and Sera. Everything on this site describes Geluk practice as it is carried on at Sera Jey.
བསྐྱེད་རིམ། རྫོགས་རིམ།Practice
Generation & completion
The two stages of Highest Yoga Tantra: imagined first, then actual.
Tib. kyerim & dzokrim
Also: kyerim &
In the generation stage the practitioner constructs the deity and mandala in imagination, with increasing stability and detail, purifying ordinary appearances. In the completion stage the practice works with the channels, winds and drops of the subtle body to bring the winds into the central channel and manifest the clear light mind, the subtlest level of consciousness, and use it to realise emptiness directly.
དགེ་བཤེས།Study
Geshe
The scholarly degree, examined by public debate, not by thesis.
Tib. ge-shé, ‘spiritual friend’
Also: ge-shé, dge bshes
Awarded after roughly twenty years of study. There is no dissertation and no closed viva: the candidate stands before the assembled monastery and defends positions from across the whole curriculum against challengers who have spent two decades learning where the weak joints are. It runs for days, in public, and everyone present can hear exactly how it is going. Venerable Geshe Dashnyam Byambatseren, personal secretary to the Darpa Pandita, completed the five treatises here between 2003 and 2021 and defends his degree at Sera Jey before more than four thousand monks in October 2026. He writes the degree up himself at geshetashinyama.com.
དགེ་བཤེས་ལྷ་རམས་པ།Study
Geshe Lharampa
The highest grade of the Geshe degree, conferred on a few each year.
Tib.
The top rank, requiring the longest study and the most demanding examination setting. Below it sit Tsorampa, Rigrampa and Lingse, distinguished by the level and venue of the final debates. Many Lharampa geshes then enter Gyütö or Gyümé for tantric training before teaching.
དགེ་བཤེས་མ།Study
Geshema
The same degree, for nuns, first conferred in 2016.
Tib.
The female equivalent of the Geshe degree, opened to Tibetan Buddhist nuns after decades of groundwork and encouragement from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, with the first Geshemas graduating in 2016. Nunneries in India now run the same five-treatise curriculum and the same debate examinations that the great monasteries do.
དགོན་པ།Monastery
Gompa
A monastery, or the assembly hall at its centre.
Tib.
The word covers both the institution and, in common use, the main temple or assembly hall within it. The root sense is ‘solitary place’, which says something about where monasteries were originally built and very little about a settlement of several thousand monks in Karnataka.
གསང་བ་ཞུས་ཕ།Deity
Guhyasamāja
The foundation of the Geluk tantric system. Initiation required.
Skt. ‘Secret Assembly’; Tib. Sangwa Düpa
Also: Sangwa Düpa
One of the three principal tantric deities of the Geluk tradition, and treated as the system that explains how the others are to be read, which is why it comes first in a tantric college. The form emphasised here is Akshobhyavajra, dark blue, three faces and six arms.
རྒྱུད་སྟོད། རྒྱུད་སྨད།Monastery
Gyütö & Gyümé
The Upper and Lower Tantric Colleges of the Geluk tradition.
Tib.
The two institutions where geshes go for advanced training in tantric ritual and practice after completing the philosophical curriculum. Entry effectively requires the Geshe degree, and the route to the Ganden Tripa's throne runs through them.
མི་རྟག་པ།Core idea
Impermanence
Everything conditioned changes, moment by moment, not just eventually.
Skt. anitya; Tib. mitakpa
Also: anitya, mitakpa
Gross impermanence is that things end. Subtle impermanence is that nothing lasts even into a second moment: what appears to be a continuing object is a sequence of momentary arisings. Meditation on impermanence is placed early in the lamrim because it is the lever that loosens attachment, and because it makes the shortness of a human life operationally rather than sentimentally real.
བྱང་དགུན་ཆོས།Study
Jang Gönchö
The winter inter-monastic debate session, the hardest weeks of the year.
Tib.
A gathering at which students from the great Geluk seats come together and debate continuously for weeks. Reputations are made there. For a Sera Jey monk it is the moment his own college's yigcha meets another's head on, in front of everybody.
བཀའ་འགྱུར། བསྟན་འགྱུར།Text
Kangyur & Tengyur
The Tibetan canon: the Buddha's word, and the Indian commentaries.
Tib. ‘translated word’ & ‘translated treatises’
The Kangyur collects the discourses and tantras attributed to the Buddha in roughly a hundred volumes; the Tengyur collects the Indian commentarial literature in around two hundred more. Together they are the single largest body of Buddhist literature surviving anywhere. A complete set is a fixture of a monastery library and is treated as an object of reverence in its own right.
ལས།Core idea
Karma
Intentional action and the dispositions it leaves behind.
Skt. ‘action’; Tib. lé
Also: lé
A causal account, not a moral ledger kept by anyone. An intentional act leaves a trace on the mind-stream which conditions later experience. Four features are taught: results are certain, they increase, what was not done is not met with, and what was done is not lost. It follows that karma is workable, purification is possible, and the whole confession and dedication apparatus of the liturgy assumes it.
ཁང་ཚན།Monastery
Khangtsen
A regional house, where a monk eats, sleeps and belongs.
Tib.
Every monk belongs to one, usually determined by where he comes from. The khangtsen provides lodging, food and the immediate community that stands behind him, and it has its own officers and finances. They are the social skeleton of the institution, and the reason a monastery of thousands does not feel anonymous from the inside.
ཁ་བཏགས།Object
Khata
The white ceremonial scarf, offered in greeting and farewell.
Tib.
Also: kata, khatag, kadag
Offered to teachers, to shrines, to guests arriving and departing, and at every significant threshold. White for purity; in Mongolian practice, sometimes blue. Offered with both hands and a slight bow, a lama will often place it straight back around your neck, which is a blessing, not a refusal.
མཁན་པོ།Monastery
Khenpo
The abbot, spiritual head of a college, and ordination preceptor.
Tib.
The abbot of a monastic college, responsible for its spiritual direction and the preceptor who confers ordination. Sera Jey enthroned its 75th abbot, Jetsun Gedun Choephel, in 2016, in a line of succession running back to the college's founder.
དུས་ཀྱི་འཁོར་ལོ།Practice
Kālachakra
The Wheel of Time, the tantra His Holiness gives publicly, for world peace.
Skt. ‘wheel of time’; Tib. dükyi khorlo
Also: dükyi khorlo
A Highest Yoga Tantra system that maps three wheels of time onto each other: the outer world of planets and seasons, the inner world of breath and channels, and the alternative, the practice that transforms both. Its literature is unusual in containing astronomy, calendrics and medicine alongside meditation instruction.
It is also the one tantric empowerment conferred in public, before crowds of a hundred thousand and more. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has given it thirty-four times between 1954 and 2017, most recently at Bodh Gaya. Attendees may take the full commitment, or simply receive it as a blessing and spend the days generating compassion. Both are provided for by design. Read the full piece →
བླ་མ།Monastery
Lama
A spiritual teacher, a function, not automatically a rank.
Tib.; Skt. guru
Also: guru
The Tibetan rendering of guru, meaning one who is heavy with qualities. A lama is someone qualified to guide others; the title is not equivalent to ‘monk’, and not every monk is a lama. In tantra the relationship with one's lama carries specific commitments, which is why the tradition urges taking years to examine a teacher before accepting one.
ལམ་རིམ།Practice
Lamrim
The whole path arranged in order, so you always know what is next.
Tib. ‘stages of the path’
A genre, not a single book: the entire Buddhist path graded into stages for practitioners of small, middling and great capacity, so that nothing is attempted out of sequence. Tsongkhapa's Lamrim Chenmo is the classic statement, and lamrim teachings are the form in which the Geluk tradition most often reaches lay audiences, including the long Jangchup Lamrim series His Holiness the Dalai Lama has given in the South Indian settlements.
ལམ་རིམ་ཆེན་མོ།Text
Lamrim Chenmo
Tsongkhapa's masterwork, the whole path in one graded structure.
Tib.; ‘Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path’
Written in 1402, it arranges the entire path from reliance on a teacher through to insight into emptiness, for practitioners of three capacities. Its final section on vipashyana is among the most demanding philosophical writing in Tibetan. It remains the text a Geluk teacher reaches for first when asked where to begin.
ལྷ་བབས་དུས་ཆེན།Calendar
Lhabab Düchen
The Buddha's descent from the Heaven of the Thirty-Three.
Tib.
Commemorates the Buddha's return to the human world after teaching his mother in the god realm, on the twenty-second day of the ninth Tibetan month. The fourth of the great holidays, and another day on which the effects of actions are held to be multiplied.
བློ་སྦྱོང་།Practice
Lojong
Pithy slogans for turning adversity into the path.
Tib. ‘mind training’
A tradition of short, memorable instructions, ‘Drive all blames into one’, ‘Be grateful to everyone’, brought to Tibet by Atiśa and transmitted through the Seven-Point Mind Training. Its speciality is what to do when things go badly: the person who is wrecking your day becomes the only available teacher of patience, which is a perfection you cannot otherwise practise.
ལོ་གསར།Calendar
Losar
Tibetan New Year, in February or March.
Tib. ‘new year’
Days of ritual, cleaning, new robes, guthuk soup on the eve, and visiting across the whole settlement. In the monasteries it is preceded by protector rituals and followed immediately by Monlam. At Bylakuppe it is the point in the year when the settlement is most visibly Tibetan.
དབུ་མ།Study
Madhyamaka
The view: emptiness, established without falling into nihilism.
Skt. ‘middle way’; Tib. uma
Also: uma
Nāgārjuna's school, studied at Sera Jey through Candrakīrti's Madhyamakāvatāra. The Geluk tradition upholds the Prāsaṅgika sub-school, which refuses to assert any position of its own and works purely by drawing out the absurd consequences of the opponent's. It is the philosophical heart of the curriculum and the subject of its fiercest debates.
བྱམས་པ།Deity
Maitreya
The buddha of the next age, and the author of a curriculum text.
Tib. Jampa
Also: Jampa
The bodhisattva who will appear as the next buddha of this world, usually depicted seated in Western fashion with both feet down, waiting. He is also, in the tradition's account, the author of the Abhisamayālaṃkāra, dictated to Asaṅga, which makes him not only a future teacher but a present one, for every monk in his fifth year of study.
ཕྲེང་བ།Object
Mala
The 108-bead cord used to count mantras.
Skt.; Tib. trengwa
Also: trengwa, prayer beads, rosary
A loop of 108 beads with a larger ‘guru’ bead marking the start, held in the left hand and drawn through the fingers one bead per recitation. At the guru bead you turn back rather than crossing it. Materials carry associations, bodhi seed for general practice, bone for impermanence, crystal for purification, and most malas carry small counters for tallying rounds into the thousands.
The count of 108 is given various explanations; the practical one is that a round is long enough to settle into and short enough to finish. A monk's mala is usually worn on the wrist, and is in near-constant motion during walking, waiting and listening.
དཀྱིལ་འཁོར།Object
Mandala
An enlightened environment, mapped, and also the offering of the universe.
Skt.; Tib. kyilkhor
Also: kyilkhor
Two related meanings. A mandala is the palace and pure realm of a deity, depicted in paint, in sand or in three dimensions, and entered in visualisation during deity yoga. It is also the offering: the entire universe with everything precious in it, gathered on a plate of rings or gestured with the hands, and given away at the start of every teaching.
དི།ཟོར་ཹཹོར།Practice
Mandala offering
Offering the whole universe, symbolically, usually to ask for teachings.
Skt. maṇḍala; Tib. kyilkhor
Also: maṇ, kyilkhor
A ritual offering in which the entire universe and everything good in it is offered to the objects of refuge, made either with a metal mandala set and heaps of rice or with a hand gesture alone. In FPMT's teaching liturgy it appears twice: a mandala offering to request teachings before the teacher begins, and a mandala offering of thanks afterwards. It is the formal reason a teaching is given at all, since in this tradition teachings are requested rather than advertised.
སྔགས།Practice
Mantra
Syllables recited to protect and shape the mind.
Skt.; Tib. ngak
Also: ngak
Literally ‘mind protection’. A mantra is not a request submitted to anyone; it is a sound bound to a meaning and a visualisation, recited until the association runs on its own. Counted on a mala, often in accumulations of a hundred thousand or more. The best known in Tibet is Avalokiteśvara's six-syllable mantra.
འཇམ་དཔལ་དབྱངས།Deity
Mañjuśrī
The bodhisattva of wisdom, sword in one hand, sūtra in the other.
Tib. Jampelyang
Also: Jampelyang
Orange-yellow, holding aloft a flaming sword that cuts ignorance, with the Perfection of Wisdom sūtra on a lotus at his left shoulder. The patron of scholars and debaters, and the deity most closely associated with Tsongkhapa, who is traditionally held to have received teachings from him directly. Monks entering debate recite his mantra.
སངས་རྒྱས་སྨན་བླ།Deity
Medicine Buddha
Lapis-blue, holding myrobalan, invoked for healing of every kind.
Skt. Bhaiṣajyaguru; Tib. Sangye Menla
Also: Bhaiṣajyaguru, Sangye Menla
Deep blue, with a sprig of the myrobalan medicinal plant in his right hand and a bowl of nectar in his left. His practice is performed for the sick, and his puja is one of the most frequently commissioned at monasteries, including at Sera Jey, where the health care committee and the ritual calendar overlap more than outsiders expect.
བསོད་ནམས།Core idea
Merit
Positive potential accumulated by virtuous action, and always dedicated.
Skt. puṇya; Tib. sönam
Also: puṇya, sönam
The favourable side of karma: potential stored on the mind-stream by generosity, ethics, patience and the rest. Merit is spoken of as one of two accumulations, merit and wisdom, which together produce the form body and the truth body of a buddha. Every practice at Sera Jey ends with dedication, because merit that is not dedicated can be destroyed by a single flash of anger.
སེམས་རྒྱུད།Core idea
Mindstream
The continuum of moments of consciousness that carries karma across lives.
Skt. cittasantāna; Tib. sem gyü
Also: cittasantāna, sem gyü
Not a soul. A stream of momentary cognitions, each producing the next, with no unchanging owner anywhere in it. Continuity of person across a lifetime and across lives is explained by this continuum rather than by a self. Every argument about rebirth in the Geluk curriculum turns on whether a moment of consciousness can have a purely physical cause.
སྨོན་ལམ་ཆེན་མོ།Calendar
Monlam Chenmo
Instituted by Tsongkhapa in 1409, the largest gathering of the Geluk year.
Tib. ‘Great Prayer Festival’
Held immediately after Losar. Days of massed prayer, teaching and ceremony, historically the occasion on which the highest Geshe Lharampa examinations were conducted before the assembled monasteries of Lhasa. It remains the high point of the Geluk ritual calendar in exile.
རན།་རྂ་བ་བ།Deity
Namgyalma
Three faces, eight arms. A long-life and purification practice.
Skt. Uṣṇīṣavijayā; Tib. Namgyalma
Also: Uṣṇīṣavijayā
One of the three long-life deities together with White Tārā and Amitāyus. Her mantra is among those recited over the blessing cords handed out at teachings, and her practice is done for the dying and for the recently dead.
སྔོན་འགྲོ།Practice
Ngöndro
The preliminary accumulations, usually a hundred thousand of each.
Tib. ‘preliminaries’
Refuge and prostrations, Vajrasattva purification, mandala offerings and guru yoga, each performed in accumulations of a hundred thousand or more. Undertaken before, or alongside, substantial tantric practice. The number is not arbitrary; it is large enough that no one completes it without the practice changing them.
མྱང་འདས།Core idea
Nirvana
The cessation of the afflictions, liberation from compulsory rebirth.
Skt.; Tib. nyangde
Also: nyangde
The extinguishing of the afflictions and the karma they drive, and with them the mechanism of uncontrolled rebirth. In the Mahāyāna presentation, personal liberation is not the destination: a bodhisattva aims past it at full buddhahood, in which even the subtle obscurations to omniscience are cleared. Nirvana is the floor, not the ceiling.
བདག་མེད།Core idea
Non-self
There is no findable, independent ‘I’ behind experience.
Skt. anātman; Tib. dakme
Also: anātman, dakme
Search for the self among the body, the feelings, the perceptions, the mental factors and the consciousness, and nothing is found that is any of them or separate from them. This does not abolish the person: a self exists conventionally, as a designation on a continuum. What is denied is a self that exists from its own side, the one everyone instinctively assumes when they are frightened or offended.
Study
Nālandā tradition
The Indian monastic-university inheritance Tibet received and preserved.
Nāgārjuna, Asaṅga, Dharmakīrti, Candrakīrti, Śāntideva and their successors, the analytical, argumentative Buddhism of the great Indian monastic universities. His Holiness the Dalai Lama consistently describes Tibetan Buddhism as the continuation of this tradition rather than as a folk religion, and the five great treatises are its direct inheritance.
ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུྃ།Practice
Om mani padme hum
The six-syllable mantra of Avalokiteśvara, carved on half of Tibet.
Skt.; Tib. om mani peme hung
Also: om mani peme hung
The most widely recited mantra in the Tibetan world, addressed to the bodhisattva of compassion. Traditional commentary maps the six syllables onto the six perfections and the purification of the six realms. It is carved on mani stones, printed inside prayer wheels, and stamped on prayer flags, on the reasoning that the meaning travels with the letters whether or not anyone is reciting.
དཔལ་ལྡན་ལྷ་མོ།Deity
Palden Lhamo
The principal protector of Tibet, of the Dalai Lamas and of the Geluk order.
Skt. Śrīdevī
Also: Śrīdevī
The wrathful female protector associated with Lhasa, with the Geluk tradition and with the Dalai Lamas personally, and with the oracle lake of Lhamo Latso where visions guiding the search for reincarnations have traditionally been sought. Her practice is performed regularly in the great Geluk monasteries, including Sera.
ཤེར་ཕྱིན།Study
Prajñāpāramitā
The grounds and paths, the longest block of the course.
Skt. ‘perfection of wisdom’; Tib. sherchin
Also: sherchin
Both a body of sūtra literature on emptiness and, in the curriculum, the multi-year study of Maitreya's Abhisamayālaṃkāra, which lays out the hidden structural map of that literature: the stages a mind passes through between ordinary confusion and buddhahood. Commonly five or six years of a monk's life.
ཚད་མ།Study
Pramāṇa
Epistemology and logic, what counts as knowing, studied first.
Skt. ‘valid cognition’; Tib. tsema
Also: tsema
Dharmakīrti's Pramāṇavārttika: the analysis of reliable cognition, the difference between direct perception and inference, and the anatomy of error. It comes first among the five treatises because everything that follows is an argument, and a tradition that intends to settle metaphysics by reasoning must first say what makes a reason work.
རླུང་རྟ།Object
Prayer flags
Five-coloured cloths printed with mantras, hung for the wind to read.
Tib. lungta ‘wind horse’
Also: lungta &lsquo
Blue, white, red, green and yellow, sky, air, fire, water and earth, always in that order. Printed with mantras and with the wind horse carrying a wish-fulfilling jewel. The idea is not that the wind delivers a petition, but that the wind spreads the blessing of the printed syllables across everything it touches. Faded flags are not disrespectful; they are the point, and are renewed rather than removed.
མ་ཎི་འཁོར་ལོ།Object
Prayer wheel
A cylinder packed with mantras, turned clockwise.
Tib. mani khorlo
Also: mani khorlo
A drum containing tightly rolled scrolls printed with mantras, often millions of repetitions of om mani padme hum, mounted so it can be spun. Hand-held versions are weighted with a small chain; fixed rows line temple walls, turned by circumambulators; large ones are driven by water or wind. Always turned clockwise, with the right hand.
ཕྱག་འཚལ།Practice
Prostration
Full-length bows to the Three Jewels, body joining what the mind intends.
Tib. chak
Also: chak
Hands folded at crown, throat and heart, then the whole body to the ground. Done as an antidote to pride, as a preliminary in accumulations of a hundred thousand, and as the ordinary way of entering a temple. Three are conventional on arriving before a shrine. It is a physical argument, and monks who have done the full accumulation have the callouses to prove it.
Object
Protection cord
The blessed string a lama ties round your neck or wrist.
Tib. sungdü
Also: sungdü
A cord, usually red but sometimes yellow, white or five-coloured, knotted and blessed with mantra recitation, then given out at the end of a teaching or an initiation. Lama Zopa Rinpoche was blunt about what to do with it: “These blessing cords should not just be taken like a custom and put on your altar or in a container. They should be worn; the idea is for them to touch your body.” The knot is the point of it, so it is not untied. When it eventually frays and falls off, that is simply what happens; it is not an omen.
མཆོད་པ།Monastery
Puja
An offering ceremony, the collective liturgical spine of the monastery.
Skt.; Tib. chöpa
Also: chöpa, prayer ceremony
Chanted liturgy with offerings, accompanied by horns, oboes, drums and cymbals, performed daily by the assembly and at greater length on specific dates. Pujas are also commissioned by lay people for the sick, the dying and the dead. The morning puja at Sera Jey serves tea and tsampa down the rows while it runs.
སྐྱེ་བ།Core idea
Rebirth
A new life produced by karma, the continuation of a mindstream, not a soul.
Tib. kyewa
Also: kyewa
Argued for, not assumed. The classical reasoning is that a moment of consciousness requires a preceding moment of consciousness as its substantial cause, since matter is the wrong kind of thing to produce awareness, therefore this life's first moment of mind had a predecessor. Whether the argument succeeds is debated in the courtyard with some heat, which is precisely the point.
སྐྱབས་འགྲོ།Core idea
Refuge
Turning to the Three Jewels for protection, where Buddhism formally begins.
Tib. kyabdro
Also: kyabdro
Refuge is taken out of two things held together: a clear-eyed recognition that unexamined existence leads somewhere bad, and confidence that the Three Jewels can actually get you out. Without the first it is sentimental; without the second it is despair. The refuge verses are recited at the start of every teaching and every practice session.
མཚམས།Practice
Retreat
Sealed periods of intensive practice, from days to years.
Tib. tsam
Also: tsam
A defined period with defined boundaries, in strict retreat, no visitors, no travel, a fixed number of daily sessions. Undertaken to complete a mantra accumulation, to stabilise a practice, or in the classical three-year form. Sera Jey monks commonly do retreats between terms; a few undertake long retreats after the Geshe degree.
Study
Rigchung
The minor debate ceremonies held through the academic year.
Tib.
Public examinations in which a class is tested in debate before the assembly, punctuating the year alongside the annual recitation examinations and the supplementary sittings. They are a fixture of the Sera Jey calendar and the ordinary proving ground between one year of the curriculum and the next.
རིན་པོ་ཆེ།Monastery
Rinpoche
An honorific, usually, though not only, for a recognised tulku.
Tib. ‘precious one’
A title of respect placed after a name. Most commonly given to recognised reincarnate lamas, but also to abbots and to teachers of exceptional standing. It is an honorific rather than an office, and says nothing by itself about a person's scholastic attainment, a point His Holiness the Dalai Lama has made repeatedly and pointedly.
སྒྲུབ་ཐབས།Practice
Sadhana
The liturgical text a practitioner recites to run a deity practice.
Skt.; Tib. druptap
Also: druptap
A structured sequence, refuge, bodhicitta, dissolution, self-generation, mantra recitation, offerings, dedication, written out and recited daily, often from memory. A sadhana is the working script of a tantric practice, and the commitment taken at empowerment is usually to recite one a set number of times each day.
ས་ག་ཟླ་བ།Calendar
Saka Dawa
The Buddha's birth, awakening and parinirvāṇa, all on one full moon.
Tib.
The fourth Tibetan month, whose full moon marks all three events together. Considered the most karmically potent day of the year: merit and its opposite are both held to be enormously multiplied, so the day is spent in generosity, vegetarianism, circumambulation and the release of animals.
འཁོར་བ།Core idea
Samsara
The cycle of uncontrolled rebirth, driven by karma and the afflictions.
Skt.; Tib. khorwa
Also: khorwa
Literally ‘wandering’. Not a place but a condition: taking one contaminated set of aggregates after another, under the power of karma and the disturbing emotions, without choice in the matter. Six realms are described. The point of describing them is not cosmological bookkeeping but urgency, samsara is defined by having no exit unless one is deliberately made.
རྡུལ་ཚོན་དཀྱིལ་འཁོར།Object
Sand mandala
A mandala built grain by grain from coloured sand, then swept away.
Tib. dültson kyilkhor
Also: dültson kyilkhor
Constructed over days by monks working with metal funnels, to exact proportions, as the ritual ground for an empowerment, the Kālachakra mandala takes a week and is built inside a curtained enclosure. At the close of the ceremony it is deliberately dismantled and the sand poured into moving water. The dissolution is not a coda; it is the teaching.
དགེ་འདུན།Core idea
Sangha
The community, strictly, those who have seen emptiness directly.
Skt.; Tib. gendün
Also: gendün
In the strict sense the Sangha means Ārya beings: those who have gained direct, non-conceptual realisation of emptiness, and who therefore cannot mislead you. In everyday use it means the ordained monastic community, and by extension a Buddhist community generally. It is the third of the Three Jewels, and the reason a monastery exists at all.
སེ་ར་ཐེག་ཆེན་གླིང་།Monastery
Sera Thekchenling
The full name of Sera Monastery, founded 1419, re-established 1970.
Tib. ‘Sera, Great Vehicle Park’
Established on the slopes north of Lhasa in 1419 by Jamchen Chöje Shakya Yeshe, in the year of Tsongkhapa's death, and one of the three great seats of the Geluk order. Re-established at Bylakuppe in Karnataka in 1970 by the monks who carried the curriculum into exile. The name is now carried by the monastic site in southern India.
ཞི་གནས།Practice
Shamatha
Calm abiding, a mind that stays where it is put.
Skt.; Tib. shiné
Also: shiné
Single-pointed concentration developed through nine stages until the mind can rest on an object effortlessly, with physical and mental pliancy. Shamatha is not the goal; it is the instrument. A mind that cannot hold still cannot analyse well, and analysis is what actually removes ignorance. In the Geluk system the two are then joined in union.
The bodhisattva's training, in order. The first three accumulate merit, the last two accumulate wisdom, and joyous effort powers all of them. ‘Perfection’ is measured internally: the perfection of generosity is not a world without poverty but a mind with nothing held back. Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra, studied throughout the Geluk world, is the classic treatment.
གཱིོ།Deity
Six-armed Mahākāla
First of the three principal Geluk protectors. Black, six arms.
Skt. Śaḍbhuja Mahākāla; Tib. Gonpo Chadrukpa
Also: Śaḍbhuja Mahākāla, Gonpo Chadrukpa
The wisdom protector most widely practised in this tradition. The six arms are read against the six perfections. Wrathful in appearance and protective in function: the anger in the image is not the deity’s own, and the force is directed at obstacles to practice.
མཆོད་རྟེན།Object
Stupa
A reliquary monument representing the awakened mind.
Skt.; Tib. chörten
Also: chörten
Literally a ‘support for offering’. Its tiers encode the path: the base, the dome, the thirteen rings of the spire, the parasol, the sun and moon. Stupas contain relics, texts or consecrated substances, and are circumambulated clockwise. Eight classical forms commemorate eight events in the Buddha's life.
མདོ།Text
Sūtra
A discourse of the Buddha, as distinct from a tantra.
Skt.; Tib. do
Also: do
The teachings given openly, forming the basis of the five great treatises and of the entire graduated path. In the Geluk system the sūtra path is not a lesser vehicle to be transcended but the foundation without which tantra does not function.
རྒྱུད།Practice
Tantra
The Vajrayāna methods, the fast path, built entirely on the slow one.
Skt.; Tib. gyü
Also: gyü
A class of teaching and practice, sometimes called Vajrayāna or Mantrayāna, in which the practitioner trains by taking the result as the path: visualising themselves already in the form of an enlightened being, in an enlightened environment. Four classes are recognised in the Geluk system, of which Highest Yoga Tantra includes Guhyasamāja, Cakrasaṃvara, Yamāntaka and Kālachakra.
The tradition is emphatic about the order. Tantra is not an alternative to the sūtra path but an accelerator bolted onto it: without renunciation, bodhicitta and a correct view of emptiness it does not work, and Tsongkhapa's reform was largely about restoring exactly that sequence. Access requires empowerment from a qualified teacher and carries vows. It is studied at Sera Jey after the Geshe degree, in the tantric colleges.
ཐང་ཀ།Object
Thangka
A painted scroll, mounted in brocade, a support for practice, not decor.
Tib.
Buddhas, deities, lineage trees, the Wheel of Life or the stages of the path, painted in mineral pigment on cloth and mounted in silk with a covering veil. Proportions are fixed by iconometric grids, not by the painter's eye. A thangka is consecrated and treated as a support for visualisation: it is not hung for decoration, and it is never placed on the floor.
དཀོན་མཆོག་གསུམ།Core idea
Three Jewels
Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, the objects of refuge.
Skt. triratna; Tib. könchok sum
Also: triratna, könchok sum
The doctor, the medicine and the nurses, in the tradition's own analogy. Taking refuge in the Three Jewels is the formal boundary of being a Buddhist: not a belief you hold but a direction you turn in. Every session in the assembly hall opens by taking refuge, and every one closes by dedicating the merit.
དུག་གསུམ།Core idea
Three poisons
Ignorance, attachment and aversion, the engine of samsara.
Skt. triviṣa; Tib. duk sum
Also: triviṣa, duk sum
Depicted at the hub of the Wheel of Life as a pig, a cock and a snake biting each other's tails. Ignorance is the root: misapprehending how things exist. From it come attachment to what seems to help that imagined self and aversion to what seems to threaten it. Remove the ignorance and the other two lose their fuel, which is why the curriculum's cure for an emotional problem is an epistemological one.
གཏོང་ལེན།Practice
Tonglen
Breathing in others' suffering, breathing out your own happiness.
Tib. ‘giving and taking’
The central practice of lojong, and deliberately the reverse of instinct. On the in-breath you take on the pain of others, visualised as dark smoke; on the out-breath you send them everything good you have. It is not a transfer mechanism; it is a method for dismantling self-cherishing, run at the speed of the breath so it cannot be evaded.
གཏོར་མ།Object
Torma
Sculpted offering cakes of barley dough and butter.
Tib.
Shaped from tsampa dough and coloured butter into forms specific to each deity and rite, some plain cones, some elaborate constructions a metre tall with butter flowers. Used as offerings, as representations of a deity, or as ritual implements. Making them is a skilled discipline, and the large festival tormas are dismantled and distributed afterwards.
རྩམ་པ།Practice
Tsampa
Roasted barley flour, the staple food, served in the assembly hall.
Tib.
Barley roasted and ground, mixed with butter tea into a dough in the bowl. Portable, filling and requiring no cooking, it sustained Tibet for centuries and still opens the morning puja at Sera Jey, carried down the rows by young monks along with churns of tea.
ཙོང་ཁ་པ།Study
Tsongkhapa
The founder of the Geluk tradition; his students founded Ganden, Drepung and Sera.
Tib. Je Tsongkhapa, 1357–1419
Also: Je Tsongkhapa
A reformer whose project had two halves that look like opposites and are not: a return to strict vinaya observance, and an insistence that the Indian treatises be studied precisely and defended by reasoning rather than accepted by transmission. His Lamrim Chenmo remains the tradition's backbone, and his reading of emptiness and dependent arising as mutually entailing is its signature claim.
རྩོད་པ།Study
Tsöpa
Formal debate: one stands, one sits, and a clap makes the claim binding.
Tib. ‘debate’
Simultaneously the teaching method, the examination method and a contemplative discipline. The standing challenger may only ask; the seated defender may only answer, and only in three ways: I accept it, the reason is not established, or there is no pervasion. The clap that closes each statement timestamps the claim. A position you have never defended aloud is not yet knowledge. Written up by a geshe of this monastery →
སྤྲུལ་སྐུ།Monastery
Tulku
A recognised reincarnation of a previous teacher.
Tib. ‘emanation body’
A child identified as the continuation of a deceased master's mindstream, recognised through a search involving predictions, divination and tests, then educated for the role. The system is distinctively Tibetan and has been the tradition's main mechanism for institutional continuity. It is also one His Holiness the Dalai Lama has openly discussed reforming.
བདེན་པ་གཉིས།Core idea
Two truths
Conventional and ultimate, one reality described two ways.
Skt. satyadvaya; Tib. denpa nyi
Also: satyadvaya, denpa nyi
Conventional truth is how things appear and function: cups hold tea, actions have consequences, people can be helped. Ultimate truth is how things exist on analysis: empty of any findable essence. The Geluk insistence is that these do not compete. The ultimate does not cancel the conventional; it explains why the conventional works. A monk who concludes from emptiness that nothing matters has understood it backwards.
སྒྲོལ་མ།Deity
Tārā
The swift protector, Green Tārā for action, White Tārā for long life.
Tib. Drolma
Also: Drolma
Born, in the traditional account, from a tear of Avalokiteśvara, and vowed to awaken in female form. Green Tārā is invoked for immediate protection and swift action, her right foot already stepping down off the lotus; White Tārā for health and longevity. The Twenty-One Praises to Tārā are among the most widely recited verses in Tibetan practice, lay and monastic alike.
དབུ་མཛད།Monastery
Umzé
The chant master who sets the pitch and leads the assembly.
Tib.
The monk who leads the liturgy, setting the extraordinarily low pitch that Geluk chanting is known for and holding the pace of an assembly of thousands. It is a specialist role requiring years of training, and in a hall of 3,500 the umzé's voice is the only navigational instrument anyone has.
རཕ།་བསེ།Deity
Vaiśravaṇa
Third of the three principal Geluk protectors. Gold, on a snow lion.
Skt.; Tib. Namtose
Also: Namtose
Guardian of the north and of wealth, riding a lion with a mongoose in his hand and eight horsemen below. The triad of Mahākāla, Yama Dharmarāja and Vaiśravaṇa was chosen by Tsongkhapa and his closest students, appears along the bottom of Geluk paintings, and is related to the three scopes of the Lamrim.
རྡོ་རྗེ།Object
Vajra
The ritual sceptre, indestructible, and held in the right hand.
Skt.; Tib. dorje
Also: dorje, benza
A small five- or nine-pronged sceptre symbolising method, skilful means and the indestructible nature of awakening. Held in the right hand and paired with the bell in the left; the two together represent the union of method and wisdom that the whole tantric system is built on. It gives Vajrayāna its name.
རདོ་རེྂ་ལཆང་།Deity
Vajradhara
Dark blue, arms crossed. The source of every tantric lineage.
Skt.; Tib. Dorje Chang
Also: Dorje Chang
The form in which the Buddha is held to have taught tantra. Every tantric transmission in this tradition traces back to him, which is why he sits at the top of refuge-field paintings and why a teacher giving an initiation is visualised as inseparable from him.
ཕྱག་ན་རྡོ་རྗེ།Deity
Vajrapāṇi
The bodhisattva of power, wrathful, vajra raised.
Tib. Chana Dorje
Also: Chana Dorje
Dark blue, in wrathful form, brandishing a vajra. He represents the power and energy of all the buddhas, and the protective force needed to carry a practice through obstacles. With Avalokiteśvara and Mañjuśrī he forms the triad of the Lords of the Three Families, compassion, wisdom and power.
རདོ་རེྂ་སེབས་དུཔ་།Deity
Vajrasattva
White, vajra and bell. The purification practice.
Skt.; Tib. Dorje Sempa
Also: Dorje Sempa
His hundred-syllable mantra is the standard purification practice in this tradition, and one of the four preliminaries a student completes a hundred thousand times. The premise is not guilt but workability: karma is held to be alterable rather than fixed, and purification is the method.
རདོ་རེྂ་རཕ་ལབྲྀོར་བ་བ།Deity
Vajrayoginī
Red, dancing, in a halo of fire. Initiation required.
Skt.; Tib. Dorje Neljorma
Also: Dorje Neljorma
A female buddha of the Cakrasaṃvara cycle, standing with her head tilted back. Widely practised in this tradition by monastics and by lay practitioners who have received the initiation. Her practice is not taken up from a book.
འདུལ་བ།Study
Vinaya
Monastic discipline, studied last, lived from day one.
Skt.; Tib. dulwa
Also: dulwa
Guṇaprabha's Vinayasūtra: the vows, the procedures of the community, and the reasoning behind each rule. Placed last in the sequence deliberately, so that by the time a monk formally studies the discipline he has been keeping for fifteen years, he can argue about why each rule exists rather than merely obey it.
ལྷག་མཐོང་།Practice
Vipashyana
Special insight, analysis that actually cuts, once the mind is steady.
Skt.; Tib. lhaktong
Also: lhaktong
Investigation of how things exist, carried out with a mind stabilised by shamatha. The Geluk emphasis is that insight is genuinely analytical: you reason your way to the conclusion that things lack inherent existence, and then rest in that conclusion. Meditation without analysis is, in Tsongkhapa's famously blunt phrase, not the path to liberation but merely a rest.
སྡོམ་པ།Practice
Vows
Three levels: individual liberation, bodhisattva, and tantric.
Skt. saṃvara; Tib. dompa
Also: saṃvara, dompa
Pratimokṣa vows govern individual conduct and are the basis of monastic ordination. Bodhisattva vows commit one to the welfare of all beings and to not abandoning bodhicitta. Tantric vows, taken at empowerment, protect the practice and the relationship with the teacher. They are held in that order, each built on the one below, which is why the tradition treats an interest in tantra without ethics as a category error.
སྲིད་པའི་འཁོར་ལོ།Object
Wheel of Life
The whole of samsara in one painting, held in the jaws of impermanence.
Skt. bhavacakra; Tib. sipé khorlo
Also: bhavacakra, sipé khorlo
Painted at the entrance of most temples. Three poisons at the hub, beings rising and falling in the next ring, six realms in the segments, and the twelve links of dependent arising around the rim, the whole disc gripped by Yama, the lord of death. A buddha stands outside it, pointing at the moon: there is a way out, and it is knowledge.
གཡིར་རེྂ་ཆོས་རྂ་།Deity
Yama Dharmarāja
Second of the three principal Geluk protectors. Bull-headed.
Tib. Shinje Chogyal; also Kālarūpa
Also: Shinje Chogyal
The Lord of Death in the aspect of one who has been subdued and set to work, standing on a buffalo. Closely linked to Yamāntaka, and the pairing is the point: what was feared has been turned into what protects.
རྡོ་རྗེ་འཇིགས་བྱེད།Deity
Yamāntaka
The wrathful form of Mañjuśrī, one of the three principal Geluk tantras.
Tib. Dorje Jikje
Also: Dorje Jikje
Buffalo-headed and terrifying, the wrathful aspect of the bodhisattva of wisdom, whose name means ‘destroyer of the lord of death’. Together with Guhyasamāja and Cakrasaṃvara, Yamāntaka practice forms the core of Highest Yoga Tantra in the Geluk tradition, taken up in the tantric colleges after the Geshe degree.
ཡིག་ཆ།Study
Yigcha
The commentarial textbooks a college follows, what makes Jey not Mey.
Tib. ‘textbook’
Each Geluk college debates from its own set of commentaries. What distinguishes Sera Jey from Sera Mey is not doctrine but yigcha: Sera Jey's were composed by Jetsun Chökyi Gyaltsen, and monks at Bylakuppe still defend them today. A student arriving now is joining an argument that has been running continuously for five centuries.
ཤཱཀྱ་ཐུབ་པ།Deity
Śākyamuni
The historical Buddha, at the centre of every altar.
Skt.; Tib. Shakya Thupa
Also: Shakya Thupa
Siddhārtha Gautama of the Śākya clan, who awakened at Bodh Gaya and taught for forty-five years. Depicted seated in the earth-touching gesture, right hand to the ground calling the earth to witness, left holding an alms bowl. The central figure in the great assembly hall at Sera Jey, as in virtually every Tibetan temple.
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A note on scope: every definition here reflects usage in the Geluk tradition, the school of Je Tsongkhapa and of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, which is the tradition of Sera Jey. Other Tibetan schools sometimes use the same words differently, and those readings are deliberately not mixed in. Sanskrit is given where a term is originally Indian; Tibetan is given in the phonetic form commonly used in English, with the script alongside.
Sources
References
Definitions follow Geluk usage as taught at Sera Jey. Where a term belongs to the curriculum, the monastery's own account governs; where it is a general Buddhist term, the reference works below do.
The four grades of the degree, the seventeen-year minimum at Sera Je, the twenty-three years for Lharampa, and the joint examinations of Sera, Drepung and Ganden.
The distinction between rebirth driven by karma and rebirth directed by a realised being, the methods of recognition, and the rejection of politically chosen candidates.
Every factual claim on this page rests on one of the sources above. Links
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