Sera Monastery
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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 monasteries near Lhasa, with more than 8,000 monks before 1959.
Colleges
Originally there were five colleges at Sera: Gya (rgya), Drom (grom), Döpa ('dod pa), Mépa (smad pa) and Jépa (byes pa). These were eventually absorbed into Jépa and 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 & Penpa Dorjee, Sera Monastery, Wisdom Publications 2019, ISBN 978-1614296119
- 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.