RYI STUDENT BLOG

John Pickens who we all know as 'Zim', successfully defended on Friday his Master of Arts thesis.  Zim's dissertation title is:  I Remember Seeing Blue: Reflexive Awareness and Memory in Dignāga Pramāṇasamuccaya . Zim's dissertation supervisor was Karin Meyers ( PhD, University of Chicago), and the external examiner was John Dunne ( PhD, Harvard University ) . Zim joined RYI in 2009. He is also an active member supporting Phakchok Rinpoche's activities.  Congratulations, Zim, we will miss you a lot! 

I never understood the value of learning valid cognition until taking John Dunne’s class on the Facets of Mindfulness this fall.  By observing the process through which our mind makes coherent the vast array of sensory information it receives, the negative emotions which form based upon our feelings about these sensory experiences lose their foothold.   By seeing through analysis that no two experiences can ever be the same, all the expectations of attachment and fears towards aversive experiences —which are based on comparison to “similar” experiences that caused such reactions in the past—no longer have a basis for arising.  All negative emotions necessarily rely on memory of the past and expectation for the future, thus learning to look at the present moment with more and more subtle levels of awareness yields mindstates that are more free and open to see our experience with less and less mental and emotional baggage attached. One example that John used in...

Congratulations to Morten Ostensen for passing his MA thesis defense on December 11!  The title of his thesis is:  "In the Presence of the Dharmakaya: Dzogchen Practice According to Khangsar Tenpe Wangchug’s Notes on Dza Paltrul’s Extraordinary Teaching of the Wise and Glorious King (mkhas pa shri rgyal po’i khyad chos)".   The thesis supervisor was Dr. Douglas Duckworth and the External Reader was Dr. John Dunne from Emory University, USA.  We are all so proud of you, Mort! So, what's next on your horizon?