His Holiness the Dalai
Lama to Award Historic Geshema Degrees Next Week
Craig Lewis
Buddhistdoor Global | 2016-12-14 |
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
will bestow Geshema degrees on 20 Tibetan Buddhist nuns at Drepung
Loseling Monastery in Mundgod, in the southern Indian state of
Karnataka, on 22 December, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA)
announced on its website yesterday. The certificates will be
awarded by His Holiness during the 600th founding anniversary
celebrations for the original Drepung Monastery—one of the three
largest Gelug monasteries in Tibet.
Geshe (feminine: Geshema)
is a Tibetan Buddhist academic degree for monastics. The
qualification is emphasized primarily by the Gelugpa lineage of
Vajrayana Buddhism, but is also awarded in the Sakyapa school. The
annual Geshema examination has been held only since 2013—until
2011, the Geshe title was awarded only to monks. Nuns who
successfully pass the Geshema degree are qualified to take on
leadership roles in monastic and lay communities that were
previously reserved for males.
“The conferment of the
Geshema degree is a historic development as it marks a new chapter
in [the] empowerment and education of Tibetan woman, particularly
in the spiritual sphere,” said Venerable Karma Gelek Yuthok, who
heads the CTA’s Department of Religion and Culture. “The degree
will open avenues of employment and opportunity to the nuns, as it
makes them equally eligible as monks to assume various leadership
roles in the monastic and lay communities.”
The Geshema exams were
carried out under the supervision of the Board of Geshema
Examination, which is comprised of representatives from the
Department of Religion and Culture, non-profit organization the
Tibetan Nuns Project, the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in
Dharamsala, and six nunneries in India and Nepal. The historic
graduation ceremony will be livestreamed via the website of the
Tibet Nuns Project, and on TTV, the CTA’s official website for
online video content.
The examination process is
extremely rigorous, taking four years in total. The nuns must
undergo oral and written examinations, during which they are tested
on the entirety of their 17-year course of study. The success this
year of the 20 nuns therefore marks a new chapter in the
development of education for female monastics and for Tibetan
women.
“Educating women is
powerful,” Rinchen Khando Choegyal, founder and director of the
Tibetan Nuns Project, which supports seven Buddhist nunneries in
India, said in July, when the 20 nuns successfully passed their
degrees.* “It’s not just about books. It is also about helping nuns
acquire the skills they need to run their own institutions and
create models for future success and expansion. It’s about enabling
the nuns to be teachers in their own right and to take on
leadership roles at a critical time in our nation’s history.”
(Tibetan Nuns Project)
The Tibetan Nuns Project,
established under the auspices of the Tibetan Women’s Association
and the Department of Religion and Culture, supports almost 800
nuns from all Tibetan Buddhist lineages living in nunneries and
elsewhere in India. Many of the nuns are refugees from Tibet, but
the organization also reaches out to the Himalayan border areas of
India where women and girls have had little access to education and
religious training.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
and His Holiness the Karmapa had advocated the establishment of a
Geshema program for many years. After seeing nuns participate in
traditional monastic debates during a festival in March 2012, the
Dalai Lama expressed satisfaction with their level of knowledge and
recommended that it was time to allow nuns to study for the
advanced qualification.
Nuns must take both written
and oral exams each year as part of the rigorous four-year Geshema
examination process. Photo courtesy of Venerable Delek Yangdron.
From tibet.net
Nuns must take both written
and oral exams each year as part of the rigorous four-year Geshema
examination process. Photo courtesy of Venerable Delek Yangdron.
From tibet.net
The title Geshe was first
bestowed upon masters of the Kadampa tradition, such as Geshe
Chekawa Yeshe Dorje (1102–76). The degree represents the highest
form of training in the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism. The
first female monastic to qualify for the Geshema title was German
nun Kelsang Wangmo, who was ordained in India and spent 21 years in
training before becoming the first female to receive the Geshema
title in 2011.