RYI STUDENT BLOG

  Are you new to the Shedra? Not having much money to spend? Have to study a lot? Here comes a brief guide and recommendation to some nice places in Bouddha suitable for the average Shedra student, old time favorites and newly rising stars. Double Dorje 5. Double Dorje:             A cozy small restaurant, run by a sweet old Tibetan woman. It is known to tourists and is a place visited frequently by westerners since it has been recommended by various travel guides as a nice, cozy, local restaurant. Particularly in the evening in the winter, it becomes a great place to study, since unlike the other restaurants it is completely closed and inside. Thus the place stays warm and as long as there are no power cuts the ballon lamps create a warm and home-like atmosphere.             Also if you wish to spend the afternoon there, it is known for its special ho...

Nepal is certainly not a rich country regarding the material properties of the people who live here. Sometimes it is simply heartbreaking to see how many hardships people have to undergo in their daily lives while we students from the West are so fortunate to be able to choose how and where we want to live. Nevertheless, Nepal is certainly very rich regarding spirituality and it is sometimes amazing to see how strong people can be in their minds. I would like to tell you about one person who I admire for her mental strength. She is one of these persons who have nothing, not even a family to rely on, which is so important for all Nepali people. I do not even know her name because she is not able to speak properly. Walking is also difficult for her, probably due to a Polio disease in her childhood. These are really bad conditions for a person living on the street, not only in Asia. She might be about my age, maybe younger, who can estimate the age of people who live on the stre...

Champa with a friend Casting a glance backwards, time has elapsed like a launched rocket. Although I came to Nepal half a year ago, I still feel like I just arrived a week ago. I am sure that this feeling indicates how joyful studying at RYI in Nepal is for me. Let me tell you how joyful it is by stating two reasons. First, as human beings we all have a strong desire for happiness and we are trying our utmost to approach it from all different angles. Yet very few can have even a single happy day without any worries or fears. This tells us that our approaches are incorrect. Well then, the right approach is to engage oneself in studies or practices which lead to the realization of the true nature of phenomena. For this realization the Buddhist studies are considered a universally good approach. As a Buddhist follower, after engaging in actual studies of Buddhism for a few months at RYI, I found that Buddhist teachings are really appealing in terms of being content and peacefu...

During last our reading week a group of RYI students went to Lumbini (in present-day Nepal), the birthplace of the lord Buddha Shakyamuni (563 BCE to 483 BCE) on pilgrimage by bus. It was 232 km from Kathmandu city, but the road there was very good quality. We left at 7:30 am from Kathmandu city and we arrived there around 8 pm, but as it was dark we could not see much further than the bus station. There was no electricity at that time but the sky was bright and full of stars. Then we contacted our friend lama Lhag Pa, and he welcomed us to his monastery, the ‘German Monastery’ (a Tibetan Buddhist monastery sponsored by Germans). He invited us to stay in his monastery until we returned, and the monastery cooked for us every day.   The next day I walked outside and looked around. The landscape was full of trees and grass, especially rich kusha grass. In Tibet kusha grass is a holy grass because the lord Buddha Shakyamuni achieved enlightenment while sitting on a b...

It is almost frightening how fast my three years of studying at RYI in the BA  program have passed by. Now there are only a few weeks of the final semester left and therefore, I would like to take the opportunity to share my experiences of my third study year with you. I made  two major decisions regarding my study plan which I have not regretted and which I would  like to  recommend to you because they have benefited me a lot.               The first is my decision to start with Sanskrit. If you are thinking about doing so, too,  please ignore  all  ominous voices whispering what  a  horribly  difficult language Sanskrit is. It is  not! In fact,  it  is  just  about singing. Kashinath  and  Paul  in  combination  offer  a  unique  way of  studying  this  beautiful  poetic  language  at  RYI...

My new path started at the end of he monsoon season of 2012, when I first entered the class in the monastery, grabbed myself a cushion, and tried to understand how I am supposed to cross my legs, and to make them stay crossed, for the next hour and a half. When the Lopon (a term which I had no idea at that time what it meant) entered the class, I stood up like everyone - but unlike everyone else, I stayed frozen in my place, amazed by what's going on around me. Amazed by this new world into which I stepped. When I first landed here my Tibetan vocabulary (or what I thought was Tibetan) was limited to two words: "dalai" and "lama", and honestly, even the meaning of those two I didn't quite understand (it turns out they are Mongolian loan-words), and the only connection I had to the dharma was a picture of me next to a stupa from a trip I once made to India. But still there was something that drew me to come here, to Nepal, to study Tibetan and to try ...

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...