Sera Monastery

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SERA MONASTERY

José I. Cabezón and Penpa Dorjee
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The definitive history of Sera Monastery, one of the great monastic universities of Tibet, from its founding to the present. 

Founded in 1419, Sera Monastery was one of the three densas, the great seats of learning of the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism. With over 9,000 monks in residence in 1959, it was the second largest monastery in the world. Throughout its history, Sera has produced some of Tibet’s most important saints, scholars, and political leaders.

The scholars José Cabezón and Penpa Dorjee begin Sera Monastery with the history of monasticism from the time of the Buddha through its early development in Tibet and then tell the 600-year story of Sera from its founding to the present. They recount how the monastery grew and evolved during the centuries, how it has fared under Chinese rule, and how it was transplanted in the Tibetan refugee camps of South India. We are introduced to some of Sera’s most important lamas and hermits, as well as its curriculum, yearly calendar, the daily life of scholar monks, and the role Sera monks played in the political history of Tibet.

Former Sera monks themselves, Cabezón and Dorjee demonstrate their firsthand knowledge of the monastery, its traditions, and daily life on every page. Scrupulously researched over decades, Sera Monastery is the most comprehensive history of a Tibetan monastery ever written in a Western language.

About Author

José Ignacio Cabezón (author of Sexuality in Classical South Asian Buddhism and co-author of Freedom from Extremes) was co-chair of the Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism series from 2005 to 2022. He is XIVth Dalai Lama Professor of Tibetan Buddhism and Cultural Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. Cabezón studied physics as an undergraduate at Caltech, trained as a monk at Sera Monastery in India, and translated for the Dalai Lama into Spanish on several occasions. He earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1987. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books on Indo-Tibetan scholasticism, Madhyamaka philosophy, Buddhism and sexuality, and Tibetan ritual. His co-authored Sera Monastery, also published by Wisdom, is a history of one of the great monastic universities of Tibet from its founding to the present. Cabezón served as president of the American Academy of Religion in 2020.

Penpa Dorjee is associate professor and head librarian of Shantarakshita Library of the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, Sarnath, India. He received the acharya degree from Sampurnanada Sanskrit University in Varanasi and his PhD from the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies. He has seventeen books to his credit as author, coauthor, translator, or editor.

Book Information
  • Hardcover
  • 6 x 9 inches
  • $52.95
  • ISBN 9781614296119
  • eBook
  • $38.99
Praise

Tibet’s Buddhist monasteries were deeply embedded in the life of the nation, encompassing the religious, the educational, the political, the economic, and the diplomatic. Their centrality has not been fully explained, until now. In this groundbreaking work, José Cabezón and Penpa Dorjee trace the history of Sera—the great monastery just a few miles from the Potala—from its Indian antecedents, to its founding, to its centuries of influence, to its struggle under Chinese occupation, to its renaissance in exile. There is no other work in a European language that explores Buddhist monastic life in such fascinating detail.

Donald Lopez, Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies, University of Michigan

This wonderful work bears witness to one of the most important aspects of Tibetan tradition, its high monastic culture. By examining in detail Sera Monastery, Cabezón and Dorjee provide a unique perspective on the life and culture of a Tibetan monk in premodern Tibet and an excellent description of a distinctive institution. Their account is all the more convincing in that they locate the remarkable culture of Tibetan scholasticism within the trajectory of the history of Buddhist monasticism, thus providing not just a view of the daily monastic routine but also an in-depth understanding of its singular intellectual achievements. Not limiting themselves to the cultural and intellectual aspects of Sera monastery, they also carefully lay out its history and the place that it has played in the real world of Tibetan politics. A wonderful book to immerse oneself in the world of traditional Tibet.

Georges Dreyfus, Jackson Professor of Religion, Williams College

Sera Monastery is an exceedingly important and authoritative source for both Western and Tibetan students and scholars. Cabezón and Dorjee have long standing personal and professional ties to the monastery, giving them all the necessary credentials to write this important book, which opens up for the reader the world of Tibetan Buddhist higher education both in Tibet and in exile.

Yangsi Rinpoche, president, Maitripa College

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