RYI STUDENT BLOG

Lopön Urgyen Tenpel studied for 10 years in the Sangye Yeshe Shedra at Ka Nying Shedrup Ling and is now one of the philosophy teachers at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute. This year he is teaching the Uttaratantra Shastra (Eng. Sublime Continuum) according to the commentary of Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Thaye. The following is a short interview with him: Lopön Urgyen Tenpel  Tell me something about yourself? According to the Tibetan Calender I'm 30 years old, yet according to the western calender I'm not quite sure. I was born in Mugum, in north-west Nepal, which was part of Tibet before. Yet nowadays it's counted as part of Nepal. I have two brothers, one older and one younger as well as two younger sisters. My younger brother became a monk two years ago, also here at Ka Nying Shedrup Ling. When I was 13 years old my parents encouraged me to become a monk and I happily agreed. They then brought me here, where I was ordained at the end of 1995. My parents are students of...

In our “shedra”, these days are the busiest. We are about to finish the semester (only 2 more weeks to go!) and just today we finished the Annual Fall Seminar, where we received teachings from Ven. Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche and K. Phakchok Rinpoche.  Annual Fall Seminar During the seminar we spend all day –from 7:50 in the morning to around 5 pm– in the gompa. After that, we still had to engage in the usual homework and study workload. Even though it has been really challenging, it was such a wonderful opportunity!  Most of the people who joined the seminar these days had to travel from different parts of the world in order to receive these precious teachings from such realized masters. I just had to cross the street from home or walk downstairs from my classroom! This is my third semester studying Tibetan Language, both Colloquial and Classical, and I feel there’s still a long way to go to accomplish my goal, which is to be able to translate Dharma texts and oral ...

We are delighted to share the news that Anders successfully defended his thesis and has now graduated from the Master of Arts program in Buddhist Studies. The dissertation is entitled,  ' The Soteriological Epistemology of The Seventh Karmapa.'   His thesis supervisor was Dr. Karin Meyers and the external reader was Prof. Dr. Klaus-Dieter Mathes from the University of Vienna, Austria. Anders holds a Bachelors degree from Naropa University and joined the Centre for Buddhist Studies in 2006. At CBS Anders graduated with a BA in Buddhist Studies in 2010 and afterwards joined the MA program. Anders also secured a Tsadra foundation scholarship for his MA studies and recently took ordination. We wish you all the best for your future and are delighted that the world gained another "scholar-practitioner'.

Have you ever experienced a feeling “I don’t have enough time?” Last year I got quite stressed, even had to take the Tibetan medicine called “Agar,” because sometimes it was difficult for me to fall asleep. This year I’m using the system developed by Russian scientist Alexander Lubishchev. He used to calculate and write down how much time each of his actions takes, and he had been doing that every day for about 60 years of his life. At the end of each day, each month and each year he created the report showing how much time he spent doing what. In that way, he was able to know how much time exactly it takes to read each of the books he read, write each of the treatises and articles he wrote, how much time he had been communicating or resting or doing sport. As en experiment, I’m trying to do the same. At first glance, it might seem weird, complicated, boring, dualistic and so on, but it really helps you to get to know yourself better. The first aim of that is, of course, to ...

My favorite class at the  Rangjung Yeshe Institute was the philosophy class, which was very interesting. I experienced as I was in nirvana at that moment while listening to the Lopon. I compared every teaching with my own life, certain facts just matched with my own life. I was very lucky that I got an opportunity to study in the Rangjung Yeshe Institute. In the philosophy class I learned basic things of Mahayana Buddhism, such as the proper method of giving rise to Bodhicitta, practicing the six paramitas and so forth. Teaching of this kind will help me in my entire life to practice Buddhism. Lopon also mentioned in the philosophy class the right way to listen, meditate and reflect on those teachings. In the last chapter 'dedication' we learnt that in the Mahayana tradition, at first we must give rise to Bodhicitta, then follows the action and dedicate the virtue of this action for the benefit of all sentient beings. Whenever a practice contains these three...

            "Wooow! Here I am back again! And I will go for the second year!"                       This is what I thought last week when I found myself lying once again on my back-breaking Nepali mattress inside my tiny student's apartment that I had swapped for my fancy German  two-and-a-half-room-apartment one year before. At that time, since I had only arrived one day before classes started, I had not even had the time to think about getting settled in Boudhanath. Instead, I had been completely occupied with learning how to spell my first Tibetan words and how to cope with the whole bunch of literature that we had to read for the History class.             I had also been occupied by finding out how to get a new cell-phone (since my old one had dis...

Congratulations  to Alexander Yiannopoulos, who successfully defended his MA Thesis! " LUMINOSITY Reflexive Awareness in Ratnākaraśānti’s Pith Instructions for the Ornament of the Middle Way ". The thesis supervisor was Dr. Karin L. Meyers and the External Reader was Dr. John Makransky from Boston College, USA.  Alexander came to study at Centre for Buddhist Studies in 2005 as a visiting student from Boston College. After graduation he returned to Kathmandu as a Fulbright scholar in 2007 to research translation theory and Buddhist philosophy. In 2009 he started the Master of Arts program at the Centre for Buddhist Studies at RYI.  Our best wishes for you and we hope to see you again in Boudhanath!