A Buddhist abbot heads a monastery, exercising authority over its resident monks, its adherence to the Vinaya, the monastic code of discipline, and, in many traditions, its relationship with the surrounding lay community that provides the material support monastics traditionally depend on. The specific scope and selection of the office varies considerably across Buddhist traditions and countries: in much of Southeast Asian Theravada practice, an abbot is typically the monastery's senior monk by ordination seniority, selected informally by the resident community's consensus or appointed by a national or regional Sangha administrative body depending on the country; in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, the abbot, often but not always also a recognized tulku, oversees both monastic discipline and the monastery's often extensive program of philosophical study and ritual practice; and in Zen traditions, the abbot frequently, though not universally, holds the further distinction of Roshi, a teacher qualified through dharma transmission to guide students toward enlightenment rather than only to administer the monastery.
Across these varied traditions, the office shares a common core function largely absent from lay religious leadership: responsibility for maintaining the Vinaya's detailed rules of conduct within the community, a body of monastic law considerably more extensive and procedurally specific than the general ethical guidance Buddhism offers lay practitioners, making monastery governance a genuinely distinct skill from teaching or meditation instruction alone, even where a single abbot in practice provides all three.