RYI STUDENT BLOG

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...

             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...

My classmates and teachers during the summer I had the wish to learn Sanskrit since quite a long time. With the help of a generous  sponsor and much needed motivation, I was finally able to join Beginning Sanskrit  Course during Summer 2016 at RYI. Fortunately, on the first day of orientation, Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche-la invited all the  students for a talk and lunch. He gave us motivational speech regarding how fortunate  we all are to get this chance to learn Dharma by one way or the other. I had been learning Tibetan language too. So, at the end of the talk, I gathered the  courage to go forth to him and ask for blessings in Tibetan language to complete the  course. He was amazed to see me do so and gave me his blessings. I left with the smile  on my face and with confidence that I will be able to do the course no matter what  obstacles may occur. Prayer flags at Namo Buddha So, the classes began. I and my classmates were doing f...

Do you have memory problems? Join the Shedra Do you have concentration problems? Join the Shedra Guaranteed anti-aging and anti-Alzheimer program! Study Tibetan, and when you come home, your work will feel like a holiday playground. You will appreciate it so much and also think that you get paid without doing any effort! Study Tibetan and encourage your brain, combine it with prostrations at the magnificent Stupa, and get fit to fight all the demons in this and next-coming life's challenges! If you, on top of that, do some regular meditation in-between, you will be unbreakable and guaranteed a wrinkle-free mind!" Ingrid from Sweden Beginning Tibetan Summer Program 2012

Hello out there, I would like to share my experience of this year’s summer course.  As you may or may not know the Rangjung Yeshe Institute offers several summer courses on Sanskrit, colloquial Tibetan, and Buddhist Philosophy.  The year before I did the “Intermediate Tibetan” and this summer I went for the “Advanced Tibetan”.   We were about ten students in the course and I have to say that the level of Tibetan-skills in the group was pretty high (I personally, being really bad with languages, was clearly on the lower end of the class).  The course-program was split into two: One part was thought by Phuntsok, the main Tibetan teacher in the Shedra.  It covered a traditional perspective on Tibetan grammar plus several readings, mainly from his Holiness the Dalai Lama’s autobiography (in English: “My Land and my People”).   Phuntsok has a very light way of teaching and many times we had a good laugh in class.  Nonetheless we covered in the 8 weeks...