Tibetan Buddhist nuns make history with
Geshema Degrees (Doctorates in Buddhist Philosophy)
July 15,
2016
Justin
Whitaker Patheos
Seattle, WA: Twenty
Tibetan Buddhist nuns have just made history, becoming the first
Tibetan women to successfully pass all the exams for the Geshema
degree, equivalent to a Doctorate in Buddhist philosophy. Exam
results were announced by the Department of Religion and Culture of
the Central Tibetan Administration. All 20 candidates for the
degree passed.
Their
success fulfills a longstanding wish of His Holiness the Dalai Lama
and marks a new chapter in the development of education for
ordained Buddhist women and is a major accomplishment for Tibetan
women.
The
Geshema degree (a Geshe degree when awarded to men) is the highest
level of training in the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism. These
women pioneers have accomplished a level of scholarship and
Buddhist training that, until recently, was only open to
men.
The
Geshema examination process is an extremely rigorous one that takes
four years in total, with one round per year each May. During the
12-day exam period, the nuns must take both oral (debate) and
written exams. They are examined on the entirety of their 17-year
course of study of the Five Great Canonical Texts. In 2011, a
German nun, Kelsang Wangmo, who spent 21 years training in India,
became the first female to receive the Geshema title.
The new
Geshema nuns will formally receive their degrees from His Holiness
the Dalai Lama at a special ceremony at Drepung Monastery in
Mundgod in southern India.
This
occasion is also a milestone for the Tibetan Nuns Project, which
was founded in 1987 to provide education and humanitarian aid to
Tibetan Buddhist nuns living in India. A number of the Geshema
candidates were illiterate when they escaped from Tibet. To reach
this historic milestone, the Tibetan Nuns Project had to build an
educational system from the ground up.
“Educating women is
powerful,” says Rinchen Khando Choegyal, Founder and Director of
the Tibetan Nuns Project. “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.”
Earning
the Geshema degrees marks a turning point for the nuns. This degree
will make them eligible to assume various leadership roles in the
monastic and lay communities, previously reserved for
men.
The
Tibetan Nuns Project supports 7 nunneries in India as well as many
nuns living on their own for a total of nearly 800 nuns. Many 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.
For
more information, see the Tibetan Nuns
Project.