The Tibetan Nuns Project (TNP), a US-registered charity based in Seattle and in the Kangra District of Himachal Pradesh, India, has announced the results for the record cohort of 161 Buddhist nuns who underwent various levels of the geshema examination process in August. The results include 47 new geshemas who will formally graduate in November.

“The 2025 geshema exam results are in!” The TNP shared. “During the summer, a record number of Tibetan Buddhist nuns took various levels of the four-year exams for the geshema degree. Of the 161 nuns, 154 passed—this is a 96 per cent pass rate.”

The 2025 exams were hosted by Dolma Ling Nunnery and Institute of Buddhist Dialectics from 12 July–16 August, with the TNP covering the costs of the nuns’ travel, food, and the exam process once again paid for by the Tibetan Nuns Project’s Geshema Endowment Fund.

Inaugurated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2005, Dolma Ling Nunnery and Institute of Buddhist Dialectics is located in Kangra Valley near Dharamsala in northern India. This non-sectarian nunnery was the first institute dedicated to higher Buddhist education for Tibetan Buddhist nuns from all traditions, and is fully funded by the TNP.

Almost 300 nuns are fully engaged in study, practice, and nunnery work at Dolma Ling, as well as organizing self-sufficiency projects, such as tofu-making and producing handicrafts. In 2013, 10 of the Dolma Ling nuns made history when they took part in the first-year geshema examinations.*

“The nuns gathered in late June for a final one-month study period before the start of the exams,” the TNP explained.

The geshema degree is the highest academic degree in Gelugpa tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism and was only recently made available to Buddhist nuns.* Like the geshe degree for male monastics, it is roughly equivalent to a PhD in Tibetan Buddhist studies. The rigorous exams take four years to complete, with one set held each year. To date, 120 Buddhist nuns have earned this degree. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, geshema examinations were cancelled in 2020 and 2021, and resumed in 2022.**

“The geshema degree enables Tibetan Buddhist nuns to become teachers, leaders, and role models,” the TNP noted. “It makes these dedicated women eligible to assume various leadership roles in their monastic and lay communities reserved for degree holders and hence previously not open to women.”

Geshema candidates are examined on the entirety of their 17-year course of study of the five major canonical texts covering the Abhidharma (higher knowledge), Prajnaparamita (the perfection of wisdom), Madhyamaka (Middle Way), Pramana (logic), and the Vinaya (moral and ethical conduct). During the course of their studies, the candidates must achieve a score at least 75 per cent to be considered eligible to sit for the geshema examinations.

“The formal graduation ceremony for the 47 new geshemas will take place in November after the annual inter-nunnery debate in Bodh Gaya. This will bring the total number of geshemas to 120,” the TNP noted. “The geshemas are paving the way for other nuns to follow in their footsteps and the momentum is building.”

“The costs associated with the annual geshema exams are covered thanks to the 159 donors to the Geshema Endowment, including the Pema Chodron Foundation, the Pierre and Pamela Omidyar Fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the Frederick Family Foundation, and the Donaldson Charitable Trust,” the TNP emphasized. “We are also very grateful to all those who sponsor nuns and help them on their path.”

The TNP’s Founding Director and Special Advisor Rinchen Khando Choegyal has observed: “Educating women is powerful. . . . It’s about enabling the nuns to be teachers in their own right and to take on leadership roles at a critical time in our nation’s history.”

The Tibetan Nuns Project provides education and humanitarian aid to refugee nuns from Tibet and Himalayan regions of India. Established under the auspices of the Tibetan Women’s Association and the Department of Religion and Culture of the Central Tibetan Administration, the TNP supports hundreds of nuns from all Tibetan Buddhist lineages and seven nunneries. Many of the nuns are refugees from Tibet, but the organization also reaches out to the Himalayan border areas of India, where women and girls have little access to formal education and religious training. 

* The Central Tibetan Administration reached this unanimous and historic decision on 19 May 2012 after a two-day meeting in Dharamsala attended by high lamas, representatives of nuns from six nunneries, and members of the Tibetan Nuns Project.

** Dalai Lama Awards Historic Geshema Degrees to 20 Nuns (BDG), Twenty Tibetan Nuns Make History by Passing Geshema Degree (BDG), and Tibetan Nuns Project Announces New Record for Buddhist Nuns Taking Geshema Examinations this Year (BDG)

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Tibetan Nuns Project
Dolma Ling Nunnery and Institute
Pema Chodron Foundation

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