Sheila Rock: Sera, The Way Of The Tibetan Monk

Photo © Sheila Rock-All Rights Reserved

The Sera monastery is near Mysore (India) and houses 5,000 Buddhist monks living in exile.  It's one of the best locations to witness the monk debates on the teachings of Buddha and the philosophy of Buddhism. It developed over the centuries as a famous place of scholarly learning, training hundreds of Buddhist scholars.

Sheila Rock is based in London, and her photographs were published in TIME, Elle, Glamour, Rolling Stone, Architectural Digest and the Sunday Times. Her photographs were shown in various exhibitions in New York City, London and Turin. Her portraits form part of the public collection at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

The Way of The Tibetan Monks' gallery of duotone photographs depicts the way of life in this Buddhist community, and shows a fraction of the photographs published in the photographer's book of the same title.

Writing of monk debates reminded me that I photographed and audio recorded the lively monk debates in a monastery in Bhutan, titled Sangha Debates.