Sera Monastery
Located about 2 miles north of Lhasa, and occupying an area of about 1/3 sq. km., Sera Monastery is one of the three great monasteries (grwa sa) or "seats" (gdan sa) of the Geluk (dge lugs) school of Tibetan Buddhism. According to tradition, Tsongkhapa (tsong kha pa, 1357-1419), the founder of the Geluk school, composed his commentary on Nāgārjuna's Root Verses on the Middle Way, entitled The Ocean of Reasoning (rigs pa'i rgya mtsho), in a small hermitage called Sera Chöding (se ra chos lding) in the foothills just above Sera around the year 1409. In the midst of writing this work, one of the folios of the text flew into the air in a gust of wind. It began to emit "A" letters (the symbol of the perfection of wisdom) in the color of molten gold. Some of the letters dissolved into a stone at the base of the hill and permanently imprinted themselves on it.
Originally a monastery for the study and practice of tantra, some of Sera's early preceptors steered the monastery in a more scholastic/philosophical direction shortly after its founding. Sera quickly began to attract large numbers of monks, causing the third Sera throne holder, Gungru Gyaltsen Zangpo (gung ru rgyal mtshan bzang po, 1383-1450) to partition the monastery into four colleges: Gya, (rgya), Dromteng ('brom steng), Tö (stod) and Mé (smad). An early reorganization consolidated these into two colleges, the Upper (stod) College and the Lower (smad) College. In the latter half of the 15th century the Tö College was absorbed into a new college called Jé (byes). For over two centuries, then, these were the only two colleges at Sera. But then in the early 18th century the last of Sera's colleges, the Tantric (Ngakpa) College was founded. Since that time Sera has had three colleges or Tratsang (grwa tshang): Jé (byes), Mé (smad) and Ngakpa (sngags pa).
The Jé and Mé Colleges are philosophical colleges (mtshan nyid grwa tshang), with a twenty-year-long curriculum of studies culminating in the prestigious Geshe (dge bshes) degree. The Ngakpa College is an institution dedicated to the practice of tantric ritual (sku rim grwa tshang). Before 1959 each college had its own administration, headed by its own abbot. The so-called Council of Ten Lamas (bla kha bcu) – under the leadership of the abbots of the three colleges – administered the affairs of the monastery as a whole.
Until 1959, monks from all over Tibet came to study at Sera's two philosophical colleges. These two colleges – Jé and Mé – eventually developed sub-units of their own, called "regional houses" or khangtsen (khang tshan). The khangtsens – 35 in number – are organized chiefly along geographical lines, and monks from different regions of the country usually entered the house that corresponded to their specific region. Khangtsen buildings take up the largest part of the monastery. Sera also has four major temple complexes: one belonging to each of the three colleges, and then the Sera Tsogchen (tshogs chen), or Great Assembly Hall, where the monks from all of the colleges would meet as a whole.
Before 1959, the monastery had a population of between 8000 and 10,000 monks, although not all of these monks were in residence in the monastery at any one time. By some estimates, only 25% of these monks were "textualists" or pechawas (dpe cha ba), that is, monks engaged in study. The remaining monks were workers, many of whom belonged to "punk-monk" – or dobdob (ldob ldob) – fraternities (gling kha).
Like all of the three Densas, the monastery subsisted financially through funding from a variety of sources that included (1) proceeds from its estates, (2) contributions from the Tibetan government, (3) contributions from lay patrons, and (4) business ventures of various sorts. Individual monks were supported by means of contributions from a variety of sources that included the monastery (Sera), the college, the regional house, lay patrons, their teachers, and their family. Many monks also engaged in private business ventures.
In Tibet, after the events of 1959, Sera's monks were forced to leave the monastery, and it became an army barracks for a number of years. When official Chinese government policy toward religion changed in the early 1980's, monks were allowed to return to Sera. It is largely through their efforts that most of the buildings in the monastery have been rebuilt or restored. Many of the buildings that were destroyed have been rebuilt.
In 1970, after a decade of living in temporary residences in various parts of India (principally in Buxador), refugee monks from Sera in India reestablished another Sera in the Bylakuppe settlement (Karnataka State).
These monks, only 200 of them originally, also reestablished the educational and ritual life of the college along traditional lines, and today it grants the various kinds of Geshe degrees in much the same way as the original monastery did before 1959. Sera-India has a governance structure similar to the original administrative structure of the monastery before 1959. The Ngakpa College was not initially re-established at Bylakuppe, but has recently been revived as a separate institution in a nearby settlement. Physically about the same size of the original Sera Monastery in Tibet, in 2002, the monastery in Bylakuppe had a monastic population of about 4000. Today, both in India and in Tibet, the monks who enter the monastery are presumed to be textualists – serious, full-time students. This means that the institution of the professional worker-monk is now all but defunct. Thus, as with much of Tibetan society today, Sera exists as a culturally bifurcated phenomenon: one version of Sera in Tibet, and the other in the Indian diaspora.
We should also note that Sera has had an impact far beyond the borders of either Sera-India or Sera-Tibet. In Tibet before 1959 the two philosophical colleges of Sera – Jé (byes) and Mé (smad) – each had several branch monasteries (yan lag gyi dgon pa) and temples under their control. These were sometimes located far from Lhasa, but many were located in (or in the environs of) the capital. For example, the various hermitages located in the hills above Sera all belonged to Sera, or to its high Lamas (bla ma). There was also the famous monastery/temple of Drabchi Lhamo, located between Sera and Lhasa, as well as the monastery of Tsemönling (tshe smon gling), located in Lhasa proper. Sera also had ties to other dGe lugs monasteries throughout Tibet. These were the institutions, sometimes quite large, that would send monks for advanced studies to Sera.
Before 1959 monks who came from these monasteries were called "continuing monks" (grwa rgyun) in so far as they were traveling from their home monasteries (gzhi dgon) for continuing education. (In today's parlance we might call these "transfer students.") In this way Sera enjoyed a variety of institutional relationships that radiated throughout all of Tibet. At least this was the case before 1959. Today, this web of relationships barely exists: in part because many of the branch monasteries have been destroyed, and in part because the Chinese government's method of partitioning ethno/cultural Tibet creates impediments for monks who must cross provincial boundaries to enter Sera.
Outside of Tibet, since the late 70's senior monks from Sera-India have founded a variety of monasteries and "Dharma centers" throughout the world. What was before 1959 a relatively culturally isolated community has, therefore, through the process of diaspora, globalization, and missionary activity achieved a transnational presence that would have been thought inconceivable just half a century ago.
In the months and years to come it is the goal of the Sera Project (link to this page) to document the full range of Sera's various affiliations: within Tibet, in the Indian diaspora, and globally. While the goal of the Sera Project is to create a digital archive that documents the phenomenon of Sera in all of its complexity, the project's initial emphasis has been on Sera-Tibet.
– José Cabezón