RYI STUDENT BLOG

Budhanilkantha Temple lies on the northern side of Kathmandu valley, just below the Shivapuri hill. The temple is associated with the Hindu god, Bishnu. A Bishnu statue of about 3m height in a sleeping position is the main attraction for people. The statue is wholly made out of stone and depicts the god, Bishnu with his four arms sleeping on the serpent-couch. The origin of the temple is yet unknown and unclear. But a famous myth tells that the present day temple was actually a field owned by a old guy named Nilkantha. While plouging the field, the second finger of the right feet of the statue was cut and blood started seeping out. After digging deep, the statue was excavated. The name Budhanilkantha was kept in accordance to the guy who found the statue. The temple houses a gurukul where the students are taught Sanskrit. The daily aarati of the statue that takes place two times a day, in the morning and evening is done by the young student of the gurukul. It seems th...

I took this photo when I finished school one day, chancing upon the monks who had just finished their evening Puja. Their yellow robes were rather conspicuous against the white walls and marble ground. This reminds me of some words said by previous masters in those commentaries, that one should respect even tiny piece s of red or yellow cloth , as they are representations  of the auspicious Three Jewels. In this so-called " time of degeneration " , we are still able to study full-time the dharma, the scientific method that brings mundane and super-mundane benefits to both ourselves and others, and get to call ourselves practitioners , I guess for this , or for this scene alone , I am already grateful. This is my first time in this country. As a first-year BA student at Rangjung Yeshe Institute, my focus here is on the Tibetan language and Buddhist philosophy. The language course here is very intensive: B efore I came here, I’ve finished the alphabet and pronun...

Halfway Through the Translator Training Program (TTP) This is my most happy and joyful year at RYI. Three years since starting with the Bachelor Program (BA) I adventured myself into the Translator Training Program (TTP) – a one-year course that trains students to orally interpret from Tibetan into English. The TTP includes: Ø   One course of your choice during the two-month Summer Program. Ø   The Fall Semester and the Spring Semester, where you have classes five days a week from 8am to 4pm. Ø   Six weeks of Translation Seminar (exclusive for TTP students): two weeks during the winter break and four-weeks after the end of the Spring Semester. During the Summer Program I enrolled into the Adv anced Colloquial Tibetan, a course that radically enhanced my capacity to both speak and understand the language. [1] The course was a great support to boost my Tibetan and be comfortable to start the first day of the Fall Semester, where the actual training in interp...

It’s been just slightly over a year since I first came to Nepal, and the question which comes to mind is the one which I was asked most when I was back in Singapore last December: 'What have you learnt?' I'm not sure what my friends were expecting - some kind of Buddhist halo around my head perhaps? 😊 They must have been disappointed, I think. Academically, it has been a tremendously enlivening (at times even tear-your-hair-out challenging) year at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute - from Prof Julia Stenzel, I learnt about the broad outlines of Buddhism's 2600 year-history (further back, if you count the past Buddhas!), and took a deep dive into Shantideva's 8th-century Buddhist classic, the Bodhicary ā vat ā ra ('The Way of the Bodhisattva') taught in the traditional Tibetan Buddhist style in which a lopon or khenpo (the Tibetan Buddhist equivalent of a university professor) reads and expounds on the text verse by verse, with the help of Lopon Drubgyud She...

Living in Boudha, the Tibetan neighborhood of Kathmandu, and studying at RYI, a very international community, one can sometimes become a little disconnected from the greater context of this unique country of Nepal. Kathmandu is a big city that attracts people from everywhere who want and need to make a fortune, people live in big houses in small expensive apartments, just like in all the big cities around the world. And of course there is nothing wrong with that, but sometimes I feel like I am living in some kind of parallel society, a bubble of RYI students from around the world, including Nepal, and some loose contacts to the shop keepers, restaurant owners, monks and beggars with whom I’ve been sharing the neighborhood for the last couple of years. That’s why I like to spend at least my reading weeks (a one week holiday that we get once every semester) in the countryside. Be it trekking in one of the many valleys in the region, or be it just hanging out in one of the little towns ...

(Photo credit: Tree:   Emily Polar)              In the middle of each semester at RYI there is a week long break called ``reading week.´´ Although some do use this time to focus on studying and reading, which is wonderful,   it is also known amongst certain students as the retreat or trekking week.             Not knowing whether I wanted to trekk or stay in retreat during this break, I ended up joining some friends who had plans of doing a pilgrimage to Helambu, also known as Yolmo. Which proved to be a great decision!             It is surprising how such an amazing place lies within a few hours from Boudhanath, and how easy it can be to get there! It only takes one (crazy and cozy) Nepali bus from a nearby bus station, which took us around 5 hours leaving early morning to get to Timbu ( a smal...