From the Gate to the Funeral

Tonsure. When a boy enters, the family first shaves his head, leaving one tuft on the crown. The khenpo shaves that off himself and gives him a dharma name. This is not a courtesy. It is a formal taking of a teacher: from then on, this root teacher is responsible for your studies, your discipline, your life.

Novice vows (getsul). The traditional phrase is "old enough to chase off a crow" — from about seven or eight. The common count is 33 precepts. Some sources say 36.

Full ordination (gelong). You must be at least 20 and already hold novice vows. 253 precepts. At least five masters must be present; the Vinaya originally asks for ten (three masters, seven witnesses), but Tibetan practice often allows the "five for border lands" rule.

Tea and food. The monastery serves tea during morning chanting, refilled four times before noon. When a sponsor commissions chanting, the sponsor supplies tea, food and a cash distribution.

Shares. Donors' offerings and income from rituals are divided per head, by monk's share. This is not a wage. It is a distribution.

Monastery businesses. Some run shops, host guests, or take a cut of ticket sales. It varies a lot from one monastery to the next. No general rule.

A student monk's living costs traditionally come from his family. This is a long-term structure, not emergency help. A family that sends one child to the monastery often supports him for a decade or more.

Going home for the farming season and the caterpillar fungus season is also part of the household economy: he watches the house and the livestock so the family's labour is free to go up the mountain.

In 2006, at Gongga Lamoling Monastery in Daocheng, monks brought their rice and chillies from home. That sentence says more than any statistic.

In Tibetan it is yarne, "sitting the summer". In spring and summer plants grow and insects hatch; going out risks killing living things and breaking the vows. So the whole monastery closes and practises, and the khenpos take turns serving tea and gruel.

The day it ends — the 30th of the 6th Tibetan month — is Sho Dun. The name means "yoghurt feast": the faithful, having watched the monks shut in for over two months, carried fresh yoghurt up to offer, and opera troupes came to perform. Over time it became today's festival.

The only real holiday is the 15 days from the 1st of the 8th Tibetan month. Out to the lingka: picnics, washing, singing, dancing, Tibetan opera, horse racing, wrestling.

From April to June, young monks take leave in large numbers. What do they do at home? Mostly not dig for themselves — they watch the house and the livestock, freeing the family's labour so parents and brothers can go up the mountain for caterpillar fungus and medicinal herbs.

Some do dig, or pick mushrooms, or perform rituals in villagers' homes, or help in a guesthouse kitchen. A counter-intuitive thing happens in monasteries: the quietest season is often the busiest. At Losar and the great festivals everyone is on duty; in the farming and herding peak the monastery is half empty.

Places are allocated by school and by region; one intake is only a few dozen people. In 2017 the Nyingma intermediate class took 35 people from the whole province (Aba and Ganzi). In 2018 the Sakya class took 31. Hundreds of monasteries and tens of thousands of monks across the prefecture, for a few dozen places.

You can get in and be sent back. The entrance medical follows ordinary university standards. Once in, if you fall behind, break rules, or are ill for more than two months, you are returned to the monastery that nominated you — not expelled, sent back.

The college is not a springboard. You finish and go back; you still belong to that monastery. Only students with a strong all-round record are recommended by the college to the relevant departments. The curriculum is 60% Buddhist studies, 20% general subjects, 20% culture.

One more thing many people do not know: one of the exam sites for the higher college is Dajin Monastery in Ganzi County. You can sit it inside the prefecture without going to Beijing.

Finishing only earns the honorary title "garampa". Your teacher must still nominate you and the khenpo must review before you are allowed to sit for geshe.

Lharampa — debates at the Great Prayer Festival in Lhasa. The highest grade; sources give the number as 16, 18 or 20.

Tsorampa — debates at the second Prayer Festival in the 2nd Tibetan month. Quota 10 a year; some say 8.

Lingse — defence inside your own monastery. 5 to 8 a year.

Dorampa — defence inside your own dratsang. No quota.

The grade is not ranked by depth of learning. It is ranked by where you debate, and before how many people.

After lharampa you enter the Upper or Lower Tantric College and study tantra for 3 years or more. Pass the tantric exams, then serve as disciplinarian (4-month term), lama umdze (3 years), khenpo (3 years). A khenpo who finishes his term steps down as "khensur".

The khensurs of the two tantric colleges fill, by seniority, the post of chöje in the Shartse and Jangtse dratsangs of Ganden. The two chöje take turns becoming Ganden Tripa — the highest seat in the Gelug school, a 7-year term; a retired one is "trisur". By the time an ordinary student monk gets here, he is usually late in life.

tsanNyid (sutra) — the five great treatises, the ones above.

gyuPa (tantra) — the four tantra classes: action, performance, yoga, highest yoga; the rituals, initiations and mandalas of Guhyasamaja, Chakrasamvara and Yamantaka.

menPa (medicine) — the four parts of the Four Tantras; in summer, up the mountain to identify plants and their properties.

duKhor (kalachakra) — outer, inner and other kalachakra, with astronomy and calendrical calculation.

There is also a whole set of craft classes: Tibetan grammar, poetics, calligraphy, chanting tones and ritual instruments, cham dance, mandala drawing, butter sculpture. Traditionally these fall under the five sciences: inner science, logic, grammar, medicine and craft.

Chanting does the work of class. Two terms a year: from the 1st or 2nd Tibetan month to the 6th, a month and a half off, then from the 8th month to late in the 12th. In between there are debates, memorisation tests and class exams. The rhythm is much like a school's.

Most monasteries debate after morning chanting; some debate around the evening service. It varies. The clapping, stamping and flicking of prayer beads in the debate yard are not performance — they are the movements of logical argument.

The great majority are bechawa, student monks. Men in their twenties and thirties still memorising and still being questioned; most never pass geshe in their lives. How they live was counted earlier — family, monastery, faithful: three pillars.

The road has a real financial threshold for a family. That is why those who sit for geshe are always a minority.

Khenpo — the abbot, and head of teaching in the monastery. Gegu — the disciplinarian, in charge of rules, commonly called the iron-staff lama. Umdze — the chant leader, who sets the pitch and leads. Management committee — the elected body for administration, finance and outside affairs.

The head is clearest after early chanting. The challenger stands and questions; the defender sits and answers. Clapping, stamping and pulling the beads keep the rhythm and remind the other man not to drift. Most monasteries put it at ten to twelve; some at dusk.

Long retreat. Three years at a stretch, or for life. Into a hut in the mountains, no contact with outsiders.

College or Buddhist association. Teaching, research, administration.

Disrobing. Leaving the monastic order and returning to ordinary life. The clergy certificate is cancelled. The person is still a normal person.

The female order traditionally had no geshe system, so "graduation" does not really apply. Nuns work as teachers, chant leaders or managers in their nunneries, or go into retreat; some return to small local nunneries.

Nunneries are generally poorer than monasteries, and few can support a full-time teacher. This is a fact that can be said, but should be said with respect.

A Chinese Academy of Social Sciences field survey around Batang, Mangkang and Zuogong recorded a blunt line: in monasteries today, "apart from a monk being expelled for involvement with a woman, other rules are hard to enforce". In other words, other precepts may loosen; this one is still hard.

Administrative consequences follow: breaking the vows means losing the clergy certificate, the registration is cancelled, and the ordination certificate is taken back.

One core of Tsongkhapa's reform was strict Vinaya, with full ordination as the foundation. So the Gelug system has no category of "monk who may marry". At great Gelug monasteries such as Changqingchun Kel in Litang or Ganzi Monastery, this does not happen.

A ngakpa is not "a monk who broke the rules". He is a person ordained under a different set of vows. To treat him as an undisciplined monk is to get it entirely wrong.

Women take getsulma, novice nun vows. The Tibetan system has no lineage of full nun ordination, so they keep novice vows for life — not a passing stage, but the end state. A few go to Chinese monasteries for the triple platform ordination, but that is another system of vows.

Marpa, the Kagyu founder, was a lay yogin with a wife; Milarepa was his student. In the Tibetan lineage, lay status was never lower. This is very different from the impression Chinese Buddhism gives most people.

In the Gelug Upper and Lower Tantric Colleges a khenpo serves 3 years; after stepping down he is "khensur". The Ganden Tripa serves 7 years; a former one is "trisur". The same at the regulatory level: the Measures for the Administration of Religious Clergy (《宗教教职人员管理办法》) set the term of the principal clergy post at a religious site at 3 to 5 years.

But stepping down is not leaving. A khensur still lives in the monastery and waits by seniority for a "dharma seat"; above that lies the Ganden Tripa. Stepping down is not the end. It is the queue.

The 2010 Opinions on Properly Resolving Social Security for Religious Clergy (《关于妥善解决宗教教职人员社会保障问题的意见》) brought clergy into social insurance on three principles: local jurisdiction, voluntary participation, and matching rights with obligations. A monastery can enrol as a unit; an individual can enrol as a flexible worker.

In 2012 Tibet introduced an enrolment scheme for monastery monks and nuns, extending medical, pension and minimum livelihood cover across the region — the first time in the history of Tibetan Buddhism that monks and nuns received a government pension.

The monastery is home; the monks' quarters are his house, and fellow monks, students and family look after him. Policy covers the five guarantees, the minimum livelihood allowance, residential care in an old people's home, and home-based care.

An example from Sichuan's Tibetan areas: in Rangtang County, Aba Prefecture, 929 monks and nuns were enrolled in the five guarantees and minimum livelihood schemes, 36 elderly, weak, sick or disabled were taken into a care home, 631 joined rural basic pension insurance, and from 2015 home-based care was added — the old monk stays in his quarters or with relatives, and the government buys the service. (Rangtang is in Aba Prefecture, not Ganzi; the figures do not transfer.)

Before social insurance, an old monk was supported by: his own savings, his students, monastery income, family help, and offerings from the faithful.

None of the five was steady. One serious illness and he was borrowing money. That is why social insurance means far more to monks than outsiders assume.

You draw at the statutory age for your type of enrolment; urban-rural residents and urban employees are two different schemes. Retirement age policy has been under adjustment in recent years, so in a talk it is better not to fix a number — "drawn at the qualifying age under the local social insurance rules" is enough.

One hard edge: clergy benefits follow status. Disrobing or death stops them from that month.

Care in the monastery. Stay in your quarters; fellow monks and students look after you. The most common.

Residential care. The elderly, weak, sick or disabled go to an old people's home or a centre for people in extreme difficulty.

Home-based care. Back to relatives, with the government buying services. Rolled out in Sichuan's Tibetan areas from 2015.

Chanting. At the end and just after death, fellow monks take shifts at the bedside, chanting day and night without a break. Tibetan Buddhism puts great weight on the last thought; this is not a ritual but someone there to remind him.

The body. In Tibetan areas monks are mostly cremated — traditionally cremation was for tulkus and people of rank, while ordinary farmers and herders had sky burial; some follow local custom with sky or water burial. Stupa burial is only for great masters and tulkus.

49 days. A lama is invited to chant every 7 days, 7 times in all, and then the funeral is over. In doctrine these 49 days are the bardo, and most people are held to take rebirth within it. So the seven services are not a formality.

Ashes and belongings. Ashes may be scattered on a windy hilltop, poured into a river, or mixed with clay to make tsa-tsa, small clay images, placed in a stupa or a cave; practice differs by monastery. Belongings are usually handled by the monastery and the attendant under monastery rules.

Preserving the body. The body is prepared, filled, dressed and placed in a reliquary stupa. Stupas are gold, silver, copper, wood or clay, graded by rank; only at the level of the Panchen Lama is gold used.

Applying for reincarnation. Three conditions: the local body of believers and the monastery management body request it; the reincarnation line is genuine and has continued to the present; the monastery applying is the one where he was registered, and it has the means to train and support a successor.

Approval level by level. The monastery management committee or the local Buddhist association reports to the county religious affairs department, then upward, with approval by the provincial religious affairs department; more significant cases go to the provincial government, major ones to the State Administration for Religious Affairs, and especially major ones to the State Council.

Search and enthronement. The Buddhist association forms a guidance group, the monastery forms a search group; they read the lake, divine, and identify belongings. Where a tulku was historically recognised by the golden urn lottery, the candidate still goes through the golden urn. After recognition comes approval, then enthronement.

Walk clockwise around stupas, halls and prayer wheels — the same direction as a clock. Only Bön monasteries go the other way, anticlockwise. At a stupa courtyard, first see which way others are walking and follow. You cannot go wrong.

A stupa holds relics, scriptures, or tsa-tsa, small clay images. So do not climb a stupa, do not lean or sit against one, and do not move the offerings in front of it.