Spiritual Identity Formation and Learning in Tibetan Buddhist Communities: A Qualitative Study on Group Rituals in the Nyingma Tradition
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study examines how spiritual identity is formed and transmitted through ritual-based learning within Tibetan Buddhist communities, with a specific focus on the Nyingma tradition. Drawing on qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with monastic and lay practitioners, the research explores how communal rituals—particularly Dharma assemblies—serve as informal educational spaces where participants engage in embodied practices, symbolic communication, and collective memory. Central to the study is the role of Dzogchen meditation and teacher-disciple interactions in facilitating spiritual transformation and reinforcing group identity. The findings reveal that these rituals foster a shared spiritual consciousness, cultivate a sense of belonging, and function as dynamic sites of cultural learning and identity formation. By framing these religious gatherings as educational processes, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of how spiritual communities sustain cohesion, transmit cultural values, and support lifelong learning beyond formal institutional settings.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".