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Kagyu Samye Dzong London Tibetan Buddhist Centre
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Learning Tibetan - my journey so far, I started to learn Tibetan with Lama Zangmo in 1998, and I think this was the first language course she taught at the Centre. I was fascinated with the beauty of the Tibetan script and I wanted to learn more about it. I also had been a practicing Buddhist for some time and felt dissatisfied with using phonetics for my practice. Phonetics is definitely a useful tool in the beginning, but I always felt it acted rather like a filter, or a smokescreen. I remember looking at a text and realizing that words, which appeared the same in phonetics were spelt differently in Tibetan and had a completely different meaning. I wanted to have a much more immediate relationship with the original text. Over the years, Lama Zangmo has taught on many of the Tibetan texts and prayers, which are used regularly at the Centre. Studying a text word by word has helped me enormously with all aspects of the practice. Initially it is useful to familiarise oneself with the pronunciation and reading. Then, there are many parts in a sadhana which are actually straight forward descriptions of what one is meant to do, so it helps to understand this as one is chanting. And most visualisations include Tibetan seed syllables and mantras, which hopefully become much clearer as one becomes more acquainted with the Tibetan script. Also, Tibetan is often so condensed, that even just understanding a single word or phrase can shed light on the Buddhist teachings in general. To give an example, as Lama Zangmo has explained in many of her classes, the Tibetan word for Buddha is Sangye. The first half of the word “sang” means purified, the second half “gye” means to increase, expand or grow. So a Buddha is a being who has completely purified all faults and delusions and has perfected all knowledge and wisdom. For me the real breakthrough came when I decided to switch all my prayers and sadhana practices to Tibetan. It was hard at first and sometimes all I could do was just try to follow the text. But then I began to have moments of recognition when a word, the sound and its meaning would suddenly, almost magically come together. It was a real joy to recognise words and phrases as I was chanting. It also meant that whenever I wasn’t able to set aside time for language study, at least I wouldn’t forget what I had learned, because I was using the Tibetan text in my daily practice. With time I have become much more confident in my reading, and my dharma vocabulary is expanding. And, of course, my greatest inspiration is that I have learned how much there is yet to learn. |
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Kagyu Samye Dzong London Tibetan Buddhist Centre Web-site: www.samye.org/london |
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