RYI STUDENT BLOG

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...

Among the philosophy classes at Rangjung Yeshe, I often like the Khenpo classes the most, and this year I have the opportunity to attend two of them. With these classes one gets to understand well the traditional perspective of the various topics of Buddhist philosophy, which can be not only very meaningful in themselves, but also necessary in order to really know what Buddhism is. There is no ‘a real Buddhism’ separate from its traditions, and whether ancient or not, other than knowing them, there is no study of Buddhism. Yet its topics are far from being easy, which combined with the structure of Sanskrit and Tibetan languages make the oral explanations from the Khenpos even more important, as they avoid both misunderstandings and non-understandings.  One of the texts we are studying, the 'Gateway to Knowledge' from Mipham Rinpoche, is regarded as a foundational text, dealing with Abhidharma material. At first one may think the foundation should be easy, but desp...

      In the field of Tibetan Buddhist studies many scholars focus almost exclusively on religion, ignoring aspects of culture beyond what directly bears relevance to the history and development of Buddhism. It is true that, if it were not for Buddhism, most of us would not be nearly as concerned about Tibetan issues. I can also see this partial attitude reflected in my own thinking at times and, considering the looming gap dividing western and Tibetan cultures, I would not be surprised if others can also relate to this. Some local customs often strike us as impractical, illogical, or mere superstition. Does tossing rice around and burning butter really please the three jewels?  Conversely, other scholars are merely interested in the material culture of the Tibetan people. This is equally dissatisfying. Some peers, absorbed by everything Tibetan (merely by the fact of it being Tibetan), appear to be under the spell of western romanticism.  Yet if we adop...