RYI STUDENT BLOG

Nepal is truly a Shambala for me. In Nepal, you see dharma, you feel dharma, and you hear dharma all the time. Every day you are inspired to practice dharma by being around so many physical representations of the enlightened body, speech, and mind of the Buddha.  One of my favorite experiences here has been attending  drupchen , which means “great accomplishment.”  Drupchen  is a Vajrayana Buddhist practice in which the entire Sangha, including both monks and lay practitioners, gets together to read an important  sadhana.  The  drupchen  that I recently attended was called the  Ngakso drupchen . In this  drupchen,  we read a sadhana  that is a  terma  (treasure) hidden by Guru Rinpoche and revealed by the Great Terton Dechen Chogyur Lingpa. During the  drupchen,  while everyone is reciting the  sadhana , the monks play a rich symphony of religiously inspired music with a variety of instruments...

Nagi Gompa is a small nunnery situated above the Kathmandu valley in the Shivapuri National Park. It was home to one of the greatest meditation masters of recent times, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. He lived, practiced and taught in Nagi Gompa for more than 20 years. These days around 100 nuns live in Nagi Gompa, and about half of them stay in long-term retreat, dedicating their life solely to practice and deepening their meditation experience. Furthermore it is also home to the young reincarnation of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, who currently is deeply involved in his studies, education and training. Every year Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, Chokling Rinpoche and Phakchok Rinopche travel to Nagi Gompa for the annual Ngakso Drupchen, two weeks before the Tibetan New Year (Losar). This year for the first time also the young incarnation of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche joined and participated in the drupchen fully. The Tibetan term Drupchen is usually translated as “great or vast accomplishment”. A Drupc...

Every year, starting on the 8 th day of the 12 th lunar month in the Tibetan calendar—which usually falls in late January or early February—a nine-day ‘drubchen’ is performed at Nagi Gompa according to the Ngakso (Ocean of Amrita) sadhana belonging to the Chökling Tersar collection. These are the new terma texts discovered by the tertön, or "treasure revealer", Terchen Chokgyur Dechen Lingpa, a great Nyingma master of the 19th century. Some blog-readers may wonder: “What is Nagi Gompa? What is a drubchen?” Nagi Gompa is a beautiful nunnery located high above Kathmandu, lying in the midst of the jungles of the Shivapuri National Park.   Nagi is an hour’s drive by taxi or about three hours by foot from Boudhanath. To reach the nunnery, one can climb the pleasant path of the natural reserve or, if you prefer, taxi up on the bumpy unpaved road. If one decides to take a taxi up to the nunnery, one must officially enter the park by way of the big front gate, sign in ...