Travel Day 1063, 64 – Kopan Monastery, NEPAL
Our class about dealing with disturbing emotions passed by rather quickly, but to me it seemed that we had learned quite a lot during this short time…
Monks debating at Kopan Monastery
While it seemed somewhat easy to follow the concepts and to understand the ideas about ego and attachment, actually using them in practice seemed to be whole other story. But obviously the practicing part was what really counted in the end, as not only the intentions were important, but also the resulting actions. For me in that sense, when we talked about thought transformations and observing the ego as it interprets situations, it was very interesting to read how valuable angry people are…
While we were in a peaceful environment like a monastery, yes it was obviously much easier to study and focus, but on the other hand it was actually impossible to practice some of the teachings. Only if we had an angry person in our life, or we were confronted by such an individual who was overwhelmed by his or her emotions, we would actually be able to practice patience and observe our own ego plus the arising emotions. Thinking like this, Lama Yeshe mentioned, an angry person was actually something really valuable and we would have to be thankful for this person to allow us to practice the dharma teachings…
Monks chanting at Kopan Monastery
This kind of thinking and attitude towards other people seemed really valuable to me as one would all of a sudden not only refrain from getting involved in an argument, but also see the situation rather as an opportunity to grow than receive it as something negative. With so much positive thinking, we also ended our class on a positive note as every single discussion group had to perform a little play of what we had learned during the class and the results were rather uplifting and amusing to say the least…
Then after lunch time a bunch of taxis arrived and like rats jumping off a sinking ship, everybody seemed to run away from the monastery as fast as they could. It was almost a bit of a comic scene, but within one hour only a fraction of the westerners remained and Kopan Monastery turned into a peaceful oasis. For me personally it was finally time to check my emails, write my diary, practice some Tabla secretly and finally have long conversations with my fellow class mates, which had never really been possible due to the mandatory silence during class times…
Monks during Puja at Kopan Monastery
Besides that, it was really great to just simply enjoy being at Kopan Monastery. I still didn’t feel the need to leave the monastery compound and so I rather enjoyed what was happening inside and it mainly involved the residing Buddhist monks. Every morning the monks were holding their one hour morning puja, then there were the frequent monk debates on the open plaza in front of the main Gompa in the evenings and every now and then the monks were meeting up for a communal chanting and reading of texts…
Since all of these events were held by the monks in public, I spent quite some time just observing them and taking in the atmosphere. But out of all the ongoing activities around the monks, I still liked their deep chanting the most and it always gave me a nice shiver just to watch and listen to them…
Find all Kopan Monastery 2013 Photos here.
Leave a Reply