# Darpa Pandita

> Tibetan Buddhism in the Geluk tradition, the school of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, written from
> Sera Jey Monastic University at Bylakuppe, Karnataka, by Darpa Pandita, a Mongolian monk
> studying there, who is the seventh recognised incarnation of the line his name belongs to.
> Biography and sources: https://darpapandita.com/who.html

Editorial rules that apply to every page, and that matter if you are citing this site:

- Nothing is written from memory. Every date, figure, address, mantra and quotation traces to a
  named source, linked on the page where it appears. The central list is at https://darpapandita.com/sources.html
- The site states its own standpoint: it is written from inside the Geluk tradition under His
  Holiness the Dalai Lama, and says so before discussing groups that reject that authority.
- Where sources disagree on a figure, the range is given rather than a single number.
- Directory data (FPMT centres) carries the month it was transcribed and links to the official
  listing, which is the current source.
- Images are of two kinds and are never mixed up. Every photograph is a real photograph of a real
  place, freely licensed from Wikimedia Commons and credited. The header image on each Courtyard
  piece is a generated illustration, commissioned for this site, and is labelled as such on the
  piece itself and at https://darpapandita.com/sources.html. No illustration is evidence of anything.

## Core pages

- [Whose Site This Is](https://darpapandita.com/who.html): Darpa Pandita, the monk who writes this, and the line
  of recognised incarnations the name belongs to, from 1637 to now. Mongolian sources.
- [Start Here](https://darpapandita.com/start.html): Buddhism from nothing, in plain English. Reading list, a first
  month of practice, and how to find and check a teacher.
- [The Monastery](https://darpapandita.com/monastery.html): Sera Jey, founded 1419 in Tibet, re-established 1970 at
  Bylakuppe. Chronology, structure, institutions.
- [Monastic Life](https://darpapandita.com/life.html): the daily timetable, the monastery's modern school and
  university affiliation, and the festival year. The curriculum, the debate courtyard and the
  Geshe degree are at https://geshetashinyama.com, written by a geshe of this monastery.
- [The Wider World](https://darpapandita.com/world.html): FPMT, the founding lamas, the great monasteries, archives.
- [The Dalai Lamas](https://darpapandita.com/dalailamas.html): all fourteen with dates, the 1959 exile, and how a
  reincarnation is recognised, including the statement of 2 July 2025.
- [Buddhist Countries](https://darpapandita.com/countries.html): where the tradition lives and what it survived,
  including Mongolia 1937 to 1939 and Cambodia 1975 to 1979.
- [Claims to Be Careful Of](https://darpapandita.com/claims.html): what this tradition does not teach, the Vinaya
  rules on advertising attainments, and the Dorje Shugden split.
- [Find a Centre](https://darpapandita.com/centres.html): 138 FPMT centres,
  projects and services in 34 countries, with addresses.
- [Lexicon](https://darpapandita.com/lexicon.html): 135 cross-linked term cards, each deep-linkable as
  lexicon.html#term-slug, also published as schema.org DefinedTermSet.
- [Mantras](https://darpapandita.com/mantras.html): nine mantras with sourced transliterations, meanings and
  practice notes.
- [Questions](https://darpapandita.com/faq.html): real questions people ask, answered with sources, marked up as FAQPage.
- [Visit](https://darpapandita.com/visit.html): satellite and terrain maps, directions, Protected Area Permit,
  etiquette, contact.

## The Courtyard (long-form)

- [If Tibet were free tomorrow: a thought experiment about going home](https://darpapandita.com/courtyard-return.html): This is fiction. It is also the one scenario nobody in the settlements plans out loud, and the documents that would govern it already exist. Here is roughly how it would go.
- [The Wheel of Time, and why it matters if you are nobody in particular](https://darpapandita.com/courtyard-kalachakra.html): His Holiness the Dalai Lama has given the Kālachakra empowerment thirty-four times, to crowds of a hundred thousand and more. Almost none of those people were going to become tantric adepts. That is not a failure of the ceremony. It is the design.
- [197 monks and 147 acres: what re-establishment actually looked like](https://darpapandita.com/courtyard-1970.html): In 1970 a monastery that had housed thousands was reduced to a cohort, a forest and a decade of manual labour. The monastery's own account is admirably unsentimental.
- [How to be a good guest at a working monastery](https://darpapandita.com/courtyard-visiting-well.html): Sera Jey is not a heritage site. It is several thousand people’s home, school and workplace, and it is open to you anyway.
- [Who Tsongkhapa was, and why this school argues so much](https://darpapandita.com/courtyard-tsongkhapa.html): A fourteenth-century reformer who studied with everybody before founding anything, and who thought rigour was a form of devotion.
- [How to disappear for a month](https://darpapandita.com/courtyard-leaving.html): Nobody fails a retreat because the meditation was too hard. They fail it because a direct debit bounced in week two and the centre had to come and find them. The unglamorous work of leaving modern life for thirty days.
- [The wrong monk](https://darpapandita.com/courtyard-kopan.html): In 1967 a Russian-American socialite walked into a monastery in Darjeeling looking for somebody else, and mistook the young monk in front of her for him. The mistake held. Almost everything Western about this tradition comes from what happened next.
- [The shortcut, and why it is guarded](https://darpapandita.com/courtyard-tantra.html): Tantra is described inside this tradition as the fast road to buddhahood. Everything interesting about it is in what that claim does and does not mean.
- [One hundred and eight, and nobody is quite sure why](https://darpapandita.com/courtyard-mala.html): Why a mala has that many beads, what it is made of and why, and how its count compares with the beads of two other religions that never borrowed it.
- [If everyone woke up Buddhist tomorrow](https://darpapandita.com/courtyard-everyone.html): A thought experiment, and a fairly deflating one. Most of what people expect would happen would not, and the thing that would change is not the thing they name.

## Meta

- [Sources and image credits](https://darpapandita.com/sources.html)
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