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Sacred Correspondences
Denominations

Gelug

Buddhism

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Origin 1409 to 1419

The Gelug, the Way of Virtue, also called the Yellow Hat school, is the youngest and today the most influential of the four principal schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Founded by the reformer Tsongkhapa, it stresses monastic discipline, a graded path to enlightenment set out in his Lamrim, and rigorous study of Madhyamaka philosophy and logic before the practice of tantra. The Dalai Lamas and the Panchen Lamas belong to this tradition, and through their offices the Gelug came to hold the political leadership of Tibet from the seventeenth century until 1959. Its great monastic universities, Ganden, Sera and Drepung, trained monks in the Prasangika interpretation of emptiness.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1409 to 1419 1
Place of Origin
Central Tibet: Ganden, Drepung and Sera 1
Founder
Tsongkhapa (1357-1419). 1
Organisation
Governance
Authority through monastic ordination lineage and its seats 1
The Ganden Tripa, the school's actual head, holds the throne by scholastic attainment for a fixed term and is not a reincarnate lineage.
Governance
Authority in recognised reincarnate lineages 1
Ordination
Celibacy required of the ordained 1
Ordination
Ordination is into a monastic order, not to a congregation 1
Belief
Defining Doctrinal Position
Awakening through graded cultivation 1Tradition: Buddhism
Defining Doctrinal Position
Rangtong: emptiness of self-nature 1Tradition: Buddhism
Defining Doctrinal Position
A staged curriculum from the first motivation to buddhahood 2
Practice
Liturgical Language
Classical Tibetan 1
Cultural Restriction
Restricted Tradition
Gelug confers its higher tantric curriculum, centered on the Guhyasamaja, Chakrasamvara and Yamantaka tantras, only on monks who have completed its exoteric philosophical training and received formal empowerment, taught at its own tantric colleges and not published for outside readers. The school's exoteric philosophy and monastic curriculum are described in detail in academic scholarship, and the atlas draws on that scholarship without supplying the tantric colleges' own empowerment bound instruction. 3
History
Separation or Divergence
A new order founded by Tsongkhapa out of the Kadam and Sakya traditions in which he trained 1
Separation or Divergence
It became the dominant power in Tibet after 1642 1
Separation or Divergence
No schism 1
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 1
Disputed
Ordination
The full female ordination lineage is held lapsed; revival contested 1
The full bhikshuni ordination lineage of the Mulasarvastivada vinaya followed in Tibet is held to have lapsed. Whether it can be revived, by ordination from the surviving East Asian Dharmaguptaka lineage, or by monks alone, has been argued within the tradition for decades. The 2007 Hamburg congress convened on the question and ended without a ruling.
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Tsongkhapa's Reform, and the Primacy of Study

The Gelug ("virtuous ones") is the youngest of the great Tibetan Buddhist orders, founded on the reforming work of Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), who established Ganden monastery near Lhasa in 1409 and set out a renewed emphasis on monastic discipline, on the gradual path (lamrim), and above all on rigorous philosophical study.

Gelug identity is bound up with the great scholastic curriculum of its huge monastic universities, Ganden, Drepung and Sera, through which a monk works over many years toward the geshe degree, debating the classic Indian treatises on logic, epistemology, monastic discipline, the perfection of wisdom and, at the centre, the Madhyamaka "middle way" as Tsongkhapa interpreted it. The order is sometimes called the "Yellow Hats" from its ceremonial headgear. Its distinctive claim is that tantric practice must rest on a thorough intellectual and ethical foundation, reason and study first, the swift methods of tantra built upon them.

The Dalai and Panchen Lamas

From the seventeenth century the Gelug order became the dominant religious and political force in Tibet, and it is the school of the Dalai Lamas and the Panchen Lamas, its two most famous reincarnation lineages. The turning point came when the Fifth Dalai Lama, the "Great Fifth," with Mongol military backing consolidated religious and temporal authority over central Tibet in the mid-1600s, establishing the Ganden Phodrang government that the Dalai Lamas headed until 1959.

The institution of the tulku, the recognised reincarnate lama, is central to how the order transmits its highest authority, and it has become a point of sharp modern contention: the Chinese state now asserts a right to approve reincarnations, including the next Dalai Lama, which the exiled Tibetan leadership rejects. The Gelug is thus at once a school of monastic scholasticism and the tradition whose leadership carried, for three centuries, the government of Tibet.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Gelug directly: "rather than a specialist study of Gelug thangka iconography or of this specific painting's workshop origin."

Source The Life of Tsongkhapa, accession 1533A-D4 (National Gallery of Victoria)National Gallery of Victoria, catalogue entry

Belongs to Tradition

Buddhism, Religions

Branch Of

Buddhism, Religions

Contained In

Holds Element

The text is a root of the Gelug teaching on the bodhisattva's conduct, and its chapter on wisdom is the ground on which the school's Madhyamaka is taught.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Cham, Sacred Dances

Danced at the great Gelug monasteries at the turn of the year, before the assembled lay population.

The geshe has completed the long scholastic curriculum of the Gelug monasteries, a training in debate and doctrine that can take twenty years.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Held with the sceptre in the ordinary paired gesture of the tradition.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The Lamrim Chenmo, completed by Tsongkhapa in 1402, is this school's foundational text and remains its curriculum's master map of practice.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Recited before study and before examination, in a school whose whole training is formal debate and examination.

The palace was the winter residence of the Dalai Lamas, who are the most prominent line of incarnate teachers in the school.

The Gelug scholastic tradition treats the outcome as settled doctrine, since Kamalashila stages of meditation are foundational to its account of the path.

The sceptre is held in the Gelug ritual as in the other Tibetan schools, the school's distinctiveness lying in its curriculum and its discipline rather than in its implements.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Held Differently

Kasaya, Religious Dress & Vestments

The Tibetan robe is maroon rather than saffron, worn with a sleeveless upper garment and a heavy shawl, and in the Gelug assembly with the yellow crested hat that gave the school its common name.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
The Ten Perfections, Doctrines

The perfections are held in the Gelug school and are the content of the middle scope of the lamrim.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Rejected Here

The office of the Dalai Lama has stated that the recognition of a successor rests with the institutions of the tradition and not with a state administration.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

He trained at Drepung, took the Lharampa degree, and served the Thirteenth Dalai Lama as debate partner and envoy.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Buddhahood, Doctrines

Buddhahood through the graded path culminating in tantra is this school's organizing goal, per its Lamrim curriculum.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Buddha-nature is affirmed and read by the Gelug as the mind's emptiness of inherent existence rather than as a positive presence within it.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Senior leadership office of Gelug.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Tsongkhapa's Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path sets out the Gelug curriculum as a graduated sequence, and the school's character as a scholastic order follows from taking that order seriously.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The Lamrim Chenmo, completed by Tsongkhapa in 1402, is this school's foundational text and remains its curriculum's master map of practice.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Senior leadership office of Gelug.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The Gelug position is rangtong: emptiness is the absence of inherent existence in a thing itself, and any account making buddha-nature empty only of what is extraneous to it is rejected as a self under another name.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The Gelug school holds firmly to the gradual side of the question settled at Samye, that awakening is reached by staged analysis and cultivation and not by a single non-conceptual leap.

Sunyata, Doctrines

Emptiness is affirmed without residue, including of the ultimate itself, which is what the rangtong position amounts to.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Founded in 1447 by Gendun Drup, later recognized as the first Dalai Lama, within the Gelug school he helped establish.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

The Two Truths structure this school's systematic philosophical curriculum, studied through its monastic debate tradition.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Tantric practice is undertaken in this school only after its extensive sutra-based philosophical training is complete.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Staffed since its 1744 conversion by Gelug monks from Mongolia and Tibet.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

Recognised in 1650 by the Fifth Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama.

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Originated In

Tibet, Regions

The Gelug school was founded in central Tibet.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Originates in Language

Source The Princeton Dictionary of BuddhismRobert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Position On

The three poisons are held in the Gelug school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Anatta, Doctrines

Not-self is held in the Gelug school, and the school reads it through Prasangika Madhyamaka as the absence of inherent existence rather than as the absence of a person.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Anicca, Doctrines

Impermanence is held in the Gelug school and is the second of the four thoughts that turn the mind.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Bardo, Doctrines

The intermediate state is held in the Gelug school, and the completion stage of highest yoga tantra is described as taking the three bodies onto the path of death, the intermediate state and rebirth.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Bodhicitta, Doctrines

The bodhisattva motivation is held in the Gelug school and is taught in the lamrim as the gate to the great vehicle.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Dana, Doctrines

Giving is held in the Gelug school as the first of the perfections.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

Dependent origination is held in the Gelug school, and Tsongkhapa treats it as the reason for emptiness rather than as a consequence of it, which is the hinge of his whole reading.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Dharma, Doctrines

Dharma is held in the Gelug school in the Mahayana sense, with the tantras counted among the Buddha's word.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Dukkha, Doctrines

Suffering is held in the Gelug school as the first of the four truths.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Karma, Doctrines

Karma is held in the Gelug school, and Tsongkhapa's insistence that emptiness leaves cause and effect intact rather than dissolving it is the school's characteristic emphasis on the point.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Mahamudra, Doctrines

Mahamudra is held in the Gelug school in a transmission of its own, the Ganden oral tradition, distinct from the Kagyu presentations and read in the school's own Prasangika terms.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Nirvana, Doctrines

Nirvana is held in the Gelug school as the cessation the Mahayana path passes through on the way to full buddhahood, which is the goal the school actually sets.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Samadhi, Doctrines

Collected absorption is held in the Gelug school, taught as calm abiding paired with insight and treated at length in the lamrim.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Samsara, Doctrines

Samsara is held in the Gelug school, and the contemplation of its defects is one of the four thoughts that turn the mind at the head of the lamrim.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The five aggregates are held in the Gelug school as the analysis of a person.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The four immeasurables are held in the Gelug school and are cultivated in the lamrim sequence that leads to the bodhisattva vow.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The four truths are held in the Gelug school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The eightfold path is held in the Gelug school as the content of the fourth truth.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The six realms are held in the Gelug school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The six sense bases are held in the Gelug school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The three jewels and going for refuge are held in the Gelug school and open the lamrim.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The three marks are held in the Gelug school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers

The Prasangika reading, taken as the school's settled interpretation.

Trailokya, Doctrines

The three realms of desire, form and the formless are held in the Gelug school.

Source Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismJohn Powers
Sources
1. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., Princeton University Press, 2014s.v. Dge lugsView the Source
2. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism
John Powers, Snow Lion Publications, 2007On the Gelug order and TsongkhapaView the Source
2. Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism
John Powers, Snow Lion Publications, 2007On the Gelug school and Tsongkhapa's reformView the Source
3. The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk
Georges B. J. Dreyfus, University of California Press, 2003View the Source
Tibetan Religious Dances: Tibetan Text and Annotated Translation of the Chams Yig
Rene de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Mouton, 1976
Le concile de Lhasa: une controverse sur le quietisme entre bouddhistes de l'Inde et de la Chine au VIIIe siecle de l'ere chretienne
Paul Demieville, Presses Universitaires de France, 1952
Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and Their Tibetan Successors
David L. Snellgrove, Serindia Publications, 1987
Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies
Geoffrey Samuel, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993On Gelug monasticism and the Dalai Lama institutionView the Source
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