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Monastic rulebooks, regulations, or codes exist wherever there are Buddhist monasteries. Rather than being commentaries to or explanations of the Vinaya or the pratimokṣa vows, these works mostly pertain to the physical space of the monastic compound and its inhabitants. Their rules are often perceived to be more provisional, more flexible, and more temporary than the rules or vows found in formal Vinaya literature. This makes these works valuable for a study of the historical development of Buddhist monasteries and t…

Although Tibetan lacks an emic term that might correspond to “philosophy”, there is certainly an indigenous conceptual domain that can broadly be characterized as philosophical. This territory is to some extent demarcated by terms such as lta ba (“view”; Skt. darśana), which has been understood in contradistinction to spyod pa (“conduct”; Skt. caryā). Some basic tenets of faith go unquestioned, including belief in the efficacy of the three jewels (the Buddha, his teachings, and his community), the workings of karma, the existence of past and futu…