24th Kagyu Gunchoe Day 14,
Kagyu Monlam Grounds, Bodhgaya
6 December 2023
༄༅། །བཀའ་བརྒྱུད་དགུན་ཆོས་སྐབས་ཉེར་བཞི་པའི་ཉིན་བཅུ་བཞི་པའི་སྣང་བརྙན་ཁག་ཅིག དགེ་འདུན་པ་རྣམས་དམ་པའི་ཆོས་ཀྱི་རིག་རྩལ་ལ་འགྲན་ཞིང་། སངས་རྒྱས་ཀྱི་བསྟན་པ་ལུང་རྟོགས་གཉིས་ཀྱི་འོད་ཟེར་འགྲོ་ཁམས་ཡོངས་ལ་ཁྱབ་བཞིན་པའི་དགེ་ལེགས་ཀྱི་ཉིན་མོའོ །
The monks have settled into a very full daily programme of memorisation, private study, group study sessions with a teacher, debate practice, and the evening grand debate, when groups compete against each other.
The debate competition is organised into three ‘leagues’: Collected Topics, Tsema and Pharchin.
Collected Topics contains three sections: Collected Topics, Types of Evidence, and Mind and Awareness. Each section has three teams—nine teams in total—and each team debates with the other teams in their section twice.
Tsema and Pharchin are each divided into two sections, upper and lower, and there are four teams competing in each section, a total of sixteen teams. Again, they debate twice against their competitors.
Each team comprises eighteen monks. When the teams debate, they take it in turns to be the responders and the presenters. Only three monks from the team are chosen as responders, and nine monks from the team are chosen to be presenters, the remaining six are substitutes.
This year, there are so many teams competing that the competition debates have to be split between Tergar shrine room and the Monlam Pavilion.
