The Reformer of Tibetan Buddhism

Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), born in the Amdo region of eastern Tibet, is the founder of the Gelug school, the tradition to which the Dalai Lamas and Panchen Lamas belong, and one of the most important figures in the whole history of Tibetan Buddhism. He lived at a time when many felt that monastic discipline had grown lax and that tantric practice was being pursued without the ethical and philosophical grounding it required, and his life's work was a great synthesis and reform. He insisted on three things held firmly together: strict monastic discipline (the Vinaya) as the foundation; rigorous study of Buddhist philosophy, above all the Madhyamaka of Nagarjuna in its most thoroughgoing form; and the practice of tantra undertaken only on that ethical and intellectual basis.

In 1409 Tsongkhapa founded Ganden Monastery near Lhasa, which became, with the later foundations of Drepung and Sera, one of the three great Gelug monastic seats, and in the same year he inaugurated the Monlam Chenmo, the Great Prayer Festival held at the Jokhang temple over the first weeks of the Tibetan new year, drawing monks from across the region for a fortnight of communal ritual and debate; the festival, now observed for more than six centuries, remains one of the most visible living expressions of the reform he began.