The Debate Competition Begins
Shrine Hall, Vajra Vidhya Institute
1 January 2025
༄༅། །དཔལ་མཉམ་མེད་འགྲོ་མགོན་བཀའ་བརྒྱུད་པའི་དགུན་ཆོས་ཆེན་མོ་ཐེངས་ཉེར་ལྔ་པའི་ཉིན་གཉིས་པ། བཤད་གྲྭའི་མཁན་པོ་རྣམས་པ་དཔང་པོའི་དབུ་བཞུགས་མཛད་དེ། སྔ་དྲོ་ཕྱག་ཚོད་ ༩།༡༥ ནས་ ༡༠།༡༥ བར་ཚད་མ་ཀ་པ་དང་ཁ་པའི་དབར་རྟགས་གསལ་དང་། ༡༠།༣༠ ནས་ ༡༡།༣༠ བར་བསྡུས་པ་ཀ་པ་དང་ཁ་པའི་དབར་རྟགས་གསལ་གྱི་བརྙན་ཕྱོགས་བསྡུས་ཡིན།
The first round of the debate competition began on the second day.
This year, during the first half of the Gunchoe, there will be no grand debates in the evening, and so the debate competition is being held in the shrine hall in the morning.
The debate competition is organised into five sections: Prajnaparamita, Validity, Collected Topics, Types of Evidence, and Mind and Awareness.
In Prajnaparamita and Validity there are 8 teams competing in a round-robin style. In each topic, the four teams with the highest scores will go into the semi-finals, and then the two teams with the highest scores will go head-to-head in the final. There are only four teams competing in each of Collected Topics, Types of Evidence, and Mind and Awareness. After one round-robin, teams in first and second place go on to compete in the final.
Each team comprises twelve 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 assigned as presenters.
