View source for Sera Monastery

'''Sera Monastery''' (Tib. སེ་ར་དགོན་པ་, Sera Gönpa; [[Wyl.]] ''se ra dgon pa'') — founded by [[Jamchen Chöjé Shakya Yeshe]] (1354-1435), a close disciple of [[Tsongkhapa]], in 1419, Sera Monastery was the second largest of the [[three great Gelugpa seats|three great Gelugpa monasteries]] near [[Lhasa]], with more than 8,000 monks before 1959. 

===Colleges===
Originally there were five colleges at Sera: Gya (''rgya''), Drom (''grom''), Döpa (''<nowiki>'</nowiki>dod pa''), Mépa (''smad pa'') and Jépa (''byes pa''). These were eventually absorbed into [[Sera Jé|Jépa]] and [[Sera Mé|Mépa]], which became the two philosophical colleges (Tib. མཚན་ཉིད་གྲྭ་ཚང་, ''tsennyi dratsang''; Wyl. ''mtshan nyid grwa tshang'') while, a third college, the Tantric College (Tib. སྔགས་པ་གྲྭ་ཚང་, Ngakpa Dratsang; Wyl. ''sngags pa grwa tshang'') was added for studies of [[vajrayana]] topics.

==Further Reading==
*Cabezón, José Ignacio. “The Regulations of a Monastery.” In ''Religions of Tibet in Practice'', ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.

==External Links==
*[http://www.thlib.org/places/monasteries/sera/ Multimedia Database of Sera Monastery on new THL website]

[[Category:Gelugpa Monasteries]]