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...

“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...

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 ...

For my family back in the west, in their minds “living in Nepal and studying Buddhism” is defined as “studying this crazy ancient philosophy, under the guidance of elderly monks (who would never in their life eat meat) and practice kungfu – in Tibet”. A girl at work gently reminded me how Buddhists- especially the monks- do not eat meat . As great as it sounds, in reality as all of us who study at RYI know, this is really just not the case. Somehow for them ‘Ne paul ’ is a country very much off their mental radar. I am frequently asked by distant family members who have heard rumours of ‘someone in their family’ who lives in Nepal. “What’s it like living in Tibet?” they say. And once I finally convince them I actually live in Nepal, they ask where it is. It’s like when we hear names of countries such as Mali or Angola, we know they are in Africa, however many of us do not know exactly where. Once I explain it’s a tiny country, smaller than the UK, tucked nicely between India an...

Nepal is nice in many ways but there is one way in which it is more wonderful and nice than many other places in the world and that is when it comes to the momos. All momos are nice, but one kind is superior to pretty much all food in all of Nepal, the buff momo.  It is the perfection of food, really. It is cheap, fast and available all over Boudha, and elsewhere. In fact, there are so many places that make nice momos that it would be impossible to list them all. It is enough to say that there are big places, small places, ugly places, decent looking places, shady places, hidden places and so forth that are full of spectacular momos, on every street and in every corner. And there is more than just food and eating to momos! There are so many other benefits also that I have experienced around momos. It is perfect to eat before studying, and also after studying, like a unique fuel for midterms and finals and quizzes . After long empowerments, days, weeks, classes, years ...

Sindhupalchowk  ‘’Mero gau maa jaane ho?’’  The only question I have been asked more times than this is  whether my hair is real or not.  ‘’Will you visit my village?’’ everyone asks after a short  conversation and getting to know each other.  Having grown up in Nairobi, the capital city of  my country, I had become accustomed to people having rather condescending views of the  more rural areas. I and a lot of my friends viewed them as boring places where life was  generally harder and, as such, most of my generation born and raised in Nairobi would not  enjoy trips to the villages where our respective tribes are concentrated.  Here in Nepal  though, I have encountered that more often than not, people take pride in their homelands  and villages, regardless of how simple or humble a background they may come from. It’s  quite a refreshing experience to say the least. It makes me wonder how people from the...