RYI STUDENT BLOG

Yummy, 'Khabsey' - the Famous Tibetan Losar Food! Let me give you an idea of what it means to celebrate Tibetan New Year - 'Losar' . First of all if you live with a Tibetan family you should know that the first day of the Losar celebrations, you are not allowed to go outside to meet friends at their homes. For this you will have to wait for the second day of Losar. But then it gets interesting. The second Losar day you must go and meet your friends. The visit usually begins by being served boiled 'chang' (local alcohol) in which they put something!!! Together with the 'chang' you will enjoy sweet rice with dry fruits. Then follows lunch: Here in Nepal this may well be local or Indian food according to where your hosts grew up. About the lunch is nothing very particular, except the quantity. You eat and eat and eat. When you feel full they will ask you to open your mouth and if they see some empty space they will serve you again more f...

With the recently ended fall semester in the back and the new semester in front, I feel a fresh wind of motivation blowing through my entire body and mind. It seems that this opportunity of study, leads me and my fellow students along a journey of unpredictable and spontaneously unfolding landscapes. Outwardly, in my meetings with fellow student we seem to maintain the ritual of reassuring, we are following a university program, through inquiries about the ‘landmarks’ of our path: “what course are you in?”, “Did you read X?”, etc. In the meanwhile, inwardly, paradigm of values, beliefs and visions shift like the stars do every night, almost unseen, above our heads. Or like the lava of a volcano might pour out of the earth, creating new landscapes and new layers of potential. I felt throughout my time studying at RYI, how the flow of information showered over me and steadily transformed my mind and body.    How much I treasure this opportunity to let myself be...

During the eleventh century, the great Indian master Atisha introduced the water bowl offering to Tibet. Thereafter this tradition spread widely in the Buddhist families.   The most important thing while offering anything is the motivation of the doer. Your motivation shouldn’t be selfish. Instead you should do it joyfully regarding all beings. A person should have seven bowls to do this offering. It is considered that these seven bowls signify the ‘seven limbed practice’, for purifying negative tendencies and accumulating merit.  Begin your offering early in the morning by freshening up yourself. It is necessary to offer to the Buddha’s before offering to yourself. As you are making offering for the Buddha’s hence it is good if you wear a mask to cover your mouth and nose in that way our defiled breath won’t make the offering impure. Then fill the first bowl with water and use water to fill the rest of the bowls by placing them to form a straigh...

Lopön Urgyen Tenpel studied for 10 years in the Sangye Yeshe Shedra at Ka Nying Shedrup Ling and is now one of the philosophy teachers at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute. This year he is teaching the Uttaratantra Shastra (Eng. Sublime Continuum) according to the commentary of Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Thaye. The following is a short interview with him: Lopön Urgyen Tenpel  Tell me something about yourself? According to the Tibetan Calender I'm 30 years old, yet according to the western calender I'm not quite sure. I was born in Mugum, in north-west Nepal, which was part of Tibet before. Yet nowadays it's counted as part of Nepal. I have two brothers, one older and one younger as well as two younger sisters. My younger brother became a monk two years ago, also here at Ka Nying Shedrup Ling. When I was 13 years old my parents encouraged me to become a monk and I happily agreed. They then brought me here, where I was ordained at the end of 1995. My parents are students of...

In our “shedra”, these days are the busiest. We are about to finish the semester (only 2 more weeks to go!) and just today we finished the Annual Fall Seminar, where we received teachings from Ven. Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche and K. Phakchok Rinpoche.  Annual Fall Seminar During the seminar we spend all day –from 7:50 in the morning to around 5 pm– in the gompa. After that, we still had to engage in the usual homework and study workload. Even though it has been really challenging, it was such a wonderful opportunity!  Most of the people who joined the seminar these days had to travel from different parts of the world in order to receive these precious teachings from such realized masters. I just had to cross the street from home or walk downstairs from my classroom! This is my third semester studying Tibetan Language, both Colloquial and Classical, and I feel there’s still a long way to go to accomplish my goal, which is to be able to translate Dharma texts and oral ...

We are delighted to share the news that Anders successfully defended his thesis and has now graduated from the Master of Arts program in Buddhist Studies. The dissertation is entitled,  ' The Soteriological Epistemology of The Seventh Karmapa.'   His thesis supervisor was Dr. Karin Meyers and the external reader was Prof. Dr. Klaus-Dieter Mathes from the University of Vienna, Austria. Anders holds a Bachelors degree from Naropa University and joined the Centre for Buddhist Studies in 2006. At CBS Anders graduated with a BA in Buddhist Studies in 2010 and afterwards joined the MA program. Anders also secured a Tsadra foundation scholarship for his MA studies and recently took ordination. We wish you all the best for your future and are delighted that the world gained another "scholar-practitioner'.

Have you ever experienced a feeling “I don’t have enough time?” Last year I got quite stressed, even had to take the Tibetan medicine called “Agar,” because sometimes it was difficult for me to fall asleep. This year I’m using the system developed by Russian scientist Alexander Lubishchev. He used to calculate and write down how much time each of his actions takes, and he had been doing that every day for about 60 years of his life. At the end of each day, each month and each year he created the report showing how much time he spent doing what. In that way, he was able to know how much time exactly it takes to read each of the books he read, write each of the treatises and articles he wrote, how much time he had been communicating or resting or doing sport. As en experiment, I’m trying to do the same. At first glance, it might seem weird, complicated, boring, dualistic and so on, but it really helps you to get to know yourself better. The first aim of that is, of course, to ...