by Alma | Feb 7, 2011 | Asia, English, reflections, Retreats
Is the buddhist district in Kathmandu, Nepal. After the Chinese invasion to Tibet in 1959, many Tibetan masters came to live and built their monasteries here.
Practitioners from all the world come here to practice meditation, study and debate complex philosophical texts and to receive the guidance and advice from living masters.
Our teacher Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche is the abbot of the White Monastery, which is also a university for westerners. Alma works for this institution, translating a study program into spanish.
Sechen Monastery is also nearby and is the home of renowned french scientist, monk and writer, Matthieu Ricard.
We are lucky to be in this place where thousands of people come to practice compassion, generosity, patience, discipline, concentration and wisdom.
by Alma | Jan 31, 2011 | Asia, English
The Korean monastery is located in an ancient town, Sravasti, where the Buddha spent several years of his life teaching and meditating. One of his disciples built phentermine a monastery for him and his followers, it was called Jetavana. The remains of it are frequently visited by pilgrims who stay in monasteries built around this area.
At the Korean monastery there is a Zen master who has great wisdom.
We would get up at 4am to meditate with Zen master silently until 5am. Then we would go to sit by the fire while we waited for the bell announcing breakfast. After the traditional prayer of the refuge we fed with exquisite Korean food cooked by an Indian cook.
At 8am we had tea with Zen Master sometimes over an apparently superficial topic of conversation, others in silence, but in the end he was always using whatever was arising in the present moment to give us a profound teaching.
At 10am we would recite the with the zen master whom we called Kun Sunim which means teacher in Korean. The sutra talks about wisdom and the immense merit that transmitting it has. Kun Sunim lives to transmit this wisdom in the same place where 2.500 years ago the Buddha first taught it to his disciples.
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