RYI STUDENT BLOG

Learning, exam, exam, essay, exam….Done! The last weeks of a study semester at Rangjung Yeshe are – probably like at most universities, full of effort, eagerness and emotion. Like walking the last stretch of a steep mountain slope, there are pain and excitement mixed with fear, while just following each step with a sense of purpose to reach a goal.- How refreshing is it then to then, to make the last step onto the reached plateau and experiencing the new view! And that I did reach a new perspective became especially palpable after this last semester in Madhyamaka reasoning. Through the help of the Indian Buddhist pandit, Chandrakirti’s text the Madhyamakavatara and especially through our wonderful Lopon Shedrup Gyatsho, I can’t help but notice now a subtle difference that is hard to pin down or communicate. Yet, imagine the following: Imagine you had had an eye disease since the beginning of your life, which made you see small purple flowers anywhere you looked. Like ever...

As a reader there are innumerable books to get yourself immersed into. Books can bring us everything, namely; wealth, power, merriment, grief, humility, desire, wisdom, ultimate bliss, as well as hell, and so forth. Yet, without reading books no one improves or reaches merriment or blissful states. As human beings we are by nature supposed to creep towards the virtuous life without any pause. This whim or vigor to do so is the best gift we have for all other beings. To be a virtuous and kind loving person towards others, reading books takes precedence for every single one of us. Well then how to be a virtuous and kind loving person through reading books is to be selective between right and wrong. Just one right book one can bring us all the ample insights that we could ever need.  Since the fact that we are all caught up in this samsaric marsh, all we have to do is just to follow or read the books by those great saints who have already extricated themselves from the marsh...

From when our friendship begun, he gives no clue, and even I know not whence this  beginningless started its voyage. But, I am curious to know how all this began, because I have  already started to look for cessation. When all I have is that friendship alone as a support, I  wonder if this search is meaningful. However, though it looks crazy, I have chosen the pursuit to  unshackle the chain of this friendship. When bed, the mother calls me at night, I soon disappear  to nowhere—with no clue where I had been, and for how long! It feels like I have gone to the  rest into the lap of my mother, giving up the indulgence that my friends make me do, at least  for a while. But soon, they wake me out from that blissful sleep, and once again under the  persuasion of habit, ego turns to repeat its naughtiness. I know that they are playing with me  and all they had given is but the betrayal. Though it is clear that these doors of senses take me...

Homage to Three Jewels May all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas live long until all sentient beings reach perfect enlightenment     LIFE The   battle for life is a spiritual one. We should be committed to saying a prayer daily for human life The enormity of death is felt by people when they lose someone close to them Knowledge and spirituality are often the light at the end of the tunnel in such moments A human being who has died feels like a torch extinguished. Life is not always freedom, Life is worthless without compassion, Life is what you live today and die beneath, Life depends upon peace, emotions, and happiness, Life is meaningless only if we allow it to be. Religion is not something separate and apart from ordinary life Life is what you make of it Life is not just for enjoying; it allows you to be in any emotion, problem, sickness, death, Every one of us takes our own path in life, We all should know and ask ours...

I have spent most of my adult life in an American university, first as an  undergraduate student, then as a graduate student, then a post-doctoral fellow, and  finally, a professor. Last year, fulfilling a heart-felt wish, I became a full-time student  at Rangjung Yeshe Institute. Despite being a degree-granting institution, a part of  Kathmandu University, RYI has revealed itself, in my experience, to be almost  entirely unlike any university I have ever been involved with before. If I say,  “almost,” this is because, of course, at RYI, many of the activities and structures  appear to be just like those of other institutions of higher education: there are  classes and classrooms, homework, tests, papers, grades, rules and regulations,  administrative procedures, and so forth. So what accounts for the vast difference  that I experience here? Certainly, the setting and the combination of traditional  monastic education and Wes...