RYI STUDENT BLOG

             After three years of intense study at Rangjung Yeshe’ s BA program , I leaped into the Translation Training Program (TTP) – a twelve -month intensive course that trains for the capacity to orally interpret basic Buddhist teachings from Tibetan to English. The TTP adventure begins with the Summer Program – a highly concentrated curriculum that condenses a one-year syllabus into eight weeks. As such, I somehow did not choose to do the summer program; I just had to do it as the beginning of the TTP. Among the many courses available (Classical Tibetan, Sanskrit, Pali, and others) I enrolled in Advanced Colloquial Tibetan. Now, retrospectively, I feel very grateful for having had an incentive to step into the summer program experience; it was undoubtedly a great source of learning and it significantly improved my capacity to both understand and speak Tibetan. The intensity of the program is definitely challenging but if you can flow with...

The Lonely Mango or ‘How to share a terrace with three dogs, cockroaches, ants and other little critters and experience Boudha with eyes and ear, nose and mind.’ August 2014. Close to Boudha, on a roof, a 5th floor, between monasteries, views, a panoramic view, the Kathmandu valley view. Green hills, grey sky, green-grey, lead-grey, silver-grey, black-grey, dark  blue-grey. Light blue holes within the clouds allow a moment to realize infinity. It is the rainy season. The scent of sandalwood, cinnamon, patchouli, cloves and undefined herbs, drifting smoke, deep-fried  pastries, vegetable fried rice mixed with the odour of urine and burning trash are passing my sense of  smell. Peals of bells, garlings, couch shell trumpets and drumming noises swirl through the air, adding to the chanting of  monks and nuns. Birds are screaming, babies crying, dogs barking. One neighbour’s water pipe is  running and running and running....The bladder is calling. ...