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.