Travel Day 1079 – Kopan Monastery, NEPAL One thing I was really looking forward to while coming to Kopan Monastery was the great vegetarian food… This was almost a bit surprising, because when I was looking at my diary from two years ago, I was finding that the biggest complaint I had about Nepal was […]

Travel Day 1078 – Kopan Monastery, NEPAL While a lot of things at Kopan Monastery were exactly the same as they used to be, one thing was different: There was some construction going on… The first time I noticed the construction site was when I walked over to the teaching Gompa and I found that […]

Travel Day 1077 – Kopan Monastery, NEPAL Besides the general conduct at a Buddhist monastery, there was also a certain dharma etiquette that wanted to be observed… In general, the dharma etiquette was mainly concerned about some basic rules of respect for the teachings of the Buddha. While some rules were focused directly on the […]

Travel Day 1076 – Kopan Monastery, NEPAL Besides the big debate if one should really take refuge or not, the last days of the second course were mainly focused on Emptiness. But the real meaning of emptiness I only came to experience after the class had finished… Well, actually what I came to experience was […]

Travel Day 1075 – Kopan Monastery, NEPAL After spending a couple of weeks in a Buddhist monastery and while finishing up the second class, the question arose if it would make sense to take refuge in the three jewels: Buddha, Dharma and Sangha… Officially becoming a Buddhist seemed to be almost the most logical consequence, […]

Travel Day 1066-74 – Kopan Monastery, NEPAL Besides our discussions about emptiness, we had also received the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation, by Kadampa Geshe Langri Tangpa, this obviously became another main part of our course… This short little pamphlet was about the Everflowing Nectar of Bodhichitta, Annihilating the Demon of the Self-Cherishing Mind, translated […]

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… While it seemed somewhat easy to follow the concepts and to understand the ideas about ego and attachment, actually using […]

Travel Day 1058-62 – Kopan Monastery, NEPAL We talked yesterday in our discussion group about how to identify attachments in our own life and with that, ego, attachment and liberation became the main focus of all the teachings over the next couple of days… Actually the concept that ego and attachment were the root cause […]

Travel Day 1058-62 – Kopan Monastery, NEPAL Since we went to bed early yesterday and I was still used to the trekking schedule, by 6am I was already awake, washed my face and went down for the morning tea… It was funny because everything reminded me of my Discovering Buddhism experience form two years ago […]

Travel Day 1057 – Kathmandu to Kopan Monastery, NEPAL After spending my last day in Kathmandu yesterday, I was off to Kopan Monastery, my final destination in Nepal… About two years ago I had already stayed at this nice Buddhist Monastery and while everything had been a mixed bag of experiences, I still felt that […]