RYI STUDENT BLOG

This is my last semester at RYI!!! Amazing, we are already at the second half of the spring semester. When I started my BA years ago, I thought this time would never come and four years felt like a lifetime. However, now I feel like it was only yesterday I arrived in Kathmandu, and I almost wish I could do the whole thing again. It was so nice to come to Nepal and know absolutely nothing about Nepal! At that time I did not even know that buff momos are better than vegetable momos, and I still enjoyed the Nepali traffic because it was “fun” compared to the traffic back home:) The only bad thing I can say about the early days was that I didn’t realize how amazing an opportunity it is to get to study Tibetan, Philosophy, and so forth in such an amazing monastery, and therefore I was quite lazy. I could have learned the basics of Tibetan and academic paper writing much earlier if I had been smarter back then. In spite of that however, I am so happy that I decided to stay in Nepal and...

I am a third year B.A student at Ranjung Yeshe Institute. Apart from studying at RYI, I also work as a freelance music therapist and musical artist. Last fall semester, I got an opportunity to facilitate music therapy sessions for RYI students at the newly built meditation room in Utpala Café. We would meet most Monday late afternoons and engage in an hour of musical activities. The activities included chanting, music and movement, and various self-reflective exercises. These sessions were open to all RYI students and occasional guests were also welcome to join us. It was a heart warming experience for me to offer my services to fellow student friends and their guests as this was the time where we could share our thoughts, connect with each other, or just sit silently in a safe musical space. The sessions were filled with enthusiasm and reverence for one another. It was a meaningful opportunity for us to get to know each other besides class room settings. During the sessions, ...

During th e F all 2018 and Spring 2019 semesters, a group of Rangjung Yeshe’s students had the good fortune to meet every day, during one and a half hours, to study the Uttaratantra-śāstra by Arya Maitreya [1] with Khenpo Karma Gyurme (also known as Tokpa Tulku). Approaching canonical Buddhist texts un der the guidance of the ordained sangha is definitely one of the highlights of studying at RYI. Below, I wish to share a reflection on the subject of Buddhahood as ultimately uncreated, which is one of the core teachings explained in the Uttaratantra-śāstra . The idea of Buddhahood as uncreated means that enlightenment is unconditioned, it is not a state produced by the path; and, accordingly, the path is not the cause of enlightenment. Such statement, however, seems to contradict the interpretation of a spiritual path leading to the state of awakening. In other words, can a path that has a conditioned, progressive nature and its sup posed outcome (Buddhahood) that is unconditioned...

I want to share about a Buddhist text I studied in RYI that has been extremely helpful for me to embark on the Buddhist studies. This text is The Way of The Bodhisattva. Since it is in verse, it was easier to study with a commentary. First of all, a Bodhisattva is a being who possesses bodhichitta, which is the mind that wishes to obtain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. This definition shows the main characteristic that a Buddhist (in the Mahayana tradition) must possess. In the broad view, Buddhas teach the dharma, the path  towards cessation of suffering. Meanwhile, they also help and protect sentient beings from immediate sufferings such as deprivations for survival and fear from the adversaries, through their generosity. The intention behind this, which is bodhichitta, is solely to relieve the beings from suffering in this life and future lives. That is the reason why bodhisattvas are called sometimes heroic beings. Heroic is their practice and supre...

“The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson Often, when a person settles in a location, one eventually becomes accustomed to his or her surroundings and can easily become complacent. I am grateful to reflect that, after almost three years living in Nepal, I still carry the same sense of awe that I had when I first arrived. On more than one occasion, I have walked down any road in Boudha with a friend or a colleague and wondered how strange and incredible it is that I (or we) landed here. This sense of awe is especially apparent when I walk with somebody who has never seen Boudha or Nepal before, for through fresh eyes can we revitalize our experience of the world. Life in Nepal provides a number of opportunities for students, but the most promising of those opportunities are the people we meet and the places we go to find inspiration. At RYI, we have a supportive community, and have the opportunity to work closely with...

Once every semester we get a week off, the so-called reading week. As the name suggests, I spent my reading week this semester reading academic literature and preparing for my classes in advance, as well as studying vigorously for my upcoming exams. Right? Well, wrong. Rather, I like to take my reading weeks as nature weeks – finally having the time to explore this beautiful country, because let’s be honest, apart from all the adventures it has to offer,  Kathmandu is probably the least physically attractive place of the entire country of Nepal. This time, I ended up going for a trek in the Langtang valley, which had been recommended to me multiple times by several people. Langtang valley was greatly affected by the 2015 earthquake, but since a couple of years tourism there is starting to thrive again. Yet in some villages on the trek, the shock and the trauma is still almost physically tangible. And every single local person we got to talk to during our trek had a person in...

Since RYI will conduct P ā li and Buddhist Literary Chinese in the coming Summer Program, I am happy to introduce these languages here, which I have studied before. In my opinion, the most difficult language to study is Chinese since there is no alphabet in Chinese characters. In other words, to read Chinese, we need to memorize each distinct character. From grammatical aspects, nouns and adjectives which do not inflect for case, definiteness, gender make Chinese is more challenging and difficult to comprehend. Moreover, verbs do not inflect for person, number, tense, aspect, or voice. To study Buddhist literary Chinese, usually students are firstly guided from the basic Classical Chinese text, such as Sanzijing .   Pali and Sanskrit are very closely related and the common characteristics of both languages are easily recognized. In fact, a very large proportion of Pali and Sanskrit word-stems are identical in form, differing only in details of inflection. Pali nouns inflect...