Monastery Information

Me in front of the Sera Jey Monastic University! There are two monastic universities here, Sera Jey and Sera Mey. The monks are divided between the two, based on their origin of where they came from. Yesterday, Alistair and I spoke to one of the translators for a science class and he was sharing his story of escaping the Chinese government who overthrew Tibet. On his journey from Tibet to Nepal he almost died three times. It is crazy to imagine what the monks who have escaped went through. Monks who were born in Tibet belong to Sera Mey while those who were not belong to Sera Jey. The two monastic universities seldomly intertwine except for in the ETSI program, or their science classes. The other night we were able to watch a debate between the two monastic universities. We tend to imagine that Buddhist monks are very quiet and have reserved personalities but I was very surprised once I started spending more time with them because most can be very outgoing and have a great sense of humor. The debate was even more surprising because they raise their voices, push each other, and clap fervently to get their point across. Below is a picture of the debate.