RYI STUDENT BLOG

Generally speaking, the academic environment is consider to be a place of competition and incentive for  inflated egos. A place where the best ones are persons that, as having a superior status in comparison  from others, always keep a distance that shows and reinforce he or she superiority. As result, to the so  called lower ones there are only the hope to attain the same status, no matter what is necessary to do. Fortunately, in diametrical opposition, even the formal aspect of an university being sustained in RYI - Rangjung Yeshe Institute, here what we experience is a place where the teachers and colleagues support  each other and rejoice for others’ victories and achievements. A place where the role of the worldly identities are object of contemplation and gentle exercises of  transformation and purification. Nothing is discarded, everything is recognized in their wisdom aspect  and as skillful means to generate benefit to others. Who is in...

A few weeks ago our first year class took a field trip to Kathmandu University and to Namo Buddha, a holy Buddhist pilgrimage site. They are both about two hours from Boudha. It was my first time to really see Nepal outside of Kathmandu. It is quite ugly and at the same time quite beautiful.  There is so much poverty but there is also so much beautiful landscape. We passed through so many different environments: small country towns, crowded markets, breathtaking countryside.  Kathmandu University is interesting because it is so small and modest but at the same time so ambitious, it really took a lot of struggle and work to get it to the modest capacity it is at now. The director gave us a talk and a tour and he seemed very enthusiastic about our program, and very genuine. He was educated partly in a monastery. After going to Kathmandu University we went to Namo Buddha, where there is a monastery and a stupa. It is supposedly the place where in a former life the Bu...

The months of March/April are a really nice time to be in Nepal. The temperature in the last weeks has been on average 27 degrees Celsius throughout the day and thus the field trip organized by the shedra was a very much welcomed change of the schedule. The main destination of the two busses filled with students that left Boudha at 8:00 in the morning, was Namo Buddha.  This very important Buddhist pilgrimage site is related to one of the marvelous deeds performed by Buddha Shakyamuni in the lifetime directly preceding his enlightenment. It is said that the Buddha, at that time a young prince, after having seen a starving tigress that was unable to provide its cubs enough food, out of pure empathy and altruism, created a wound in his arm from which the tiger could drink to recoup her strength and then gave his entire body to the tigress, and was devoured. On the way to Namo Buddha one passes the actual campus of the Kathmandu University (KU) in Dulikhel and we used that oc...