Beginning of an uncommon school year
At first glance, this might seem like the beginning of a school year in any common university, albeit in a monastic setting. Agendas are filling up with deadlines, and heads with all the different tasks at hand. Students and teachers alike are busy processing information and organizing thought. In and out of class, time is studiously consumed. But come Saturday, we meet with the uncommon spearhead of all this academic busyness. Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche has returned to ‘office’ and welcomes students with his hallmark, precious advice: his ambition is for us all to become scholar-practitioners, and not just “dry scholars.” The knowledge we accumulate here is not meant to merely fill up our brains, but should also enter our lives. Dharma, according to Rinpoche, means change. It is meant to transform us into kinder, happier human beings. There isn’t a line of the texts we learn that is not meant to be put into practice in our daily lives. Rinpoche reminds us once again th