THE SNOW LION NEWSLETTER

As illustrated by these first three books, the series will include a wide range of graded educational materials that include translations of key texts from the Buddhist tradition, both those unique to the Kagyü and Nyingma lineages and those common to the wider scope of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism; modern commentaries by notable lineage scholar-practitioners; manuals for contemplative practice; and broader studies that deepen understanding of particular aspects of the Buddhist view. At the core of the series will be a systematic collection of the texts studied in the shedras. A key element in the translation and publication process is collaboration with Tibetan scholars knowledgeable in the tradition. Here the insights provided by Ponlop Rinpoche and his fellow acharyas are essential.

These texts include those that introduce the main topics of the curriculum as well as the advanced texts. The introductory texts include Collected Topics (Dudra), Classifications of Mind (or Mind and Awareness, Lorik), Philosophical Systems (Truptha) for the four Nikaya ("Hinayana") and Mahayana schools (the Vaibhasikas, Sautrantikas, Cittamatra, and Madhyamaka), Classifications of Reasons (Tarik), Grounds and Paths (Sa lam), and Debate (Tsöpa). The advanced texts include the classics such as Vasubandhu's Treasury of Abhidharma (Abhidharmakosa), Dharmakirti's Commentary on Valid Cognition (Pramanavarttika), Chandrakirti's Entry to the Middle Way (Madhyamakavatara), Asanga's Ornament of Clear Realization (Abhisamayalamkara), and so on.

Nitartha Institute (www.nitarthainstitute.org) is part of Nitartha International founded in 1994 by Ponlop Rinpoche for preserving living traditions of Asian culture-particularly traditional Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, art, and science-through the preservation, publication, and translation of Tibetan texts. Nitartha International directly supports traditional Tibetan educational institutions by publishing critical editions of Tibetan-language texts used in the shedra curriculums of Asia. Through Nitartha Institute, Nitartha International also seeks to transmit fully the shedra tradition of contemplative inquiry and learning of the Karma Kagyü and Nyingma lineages to Western students, through translating and teaching important shedra texts in English.

Nitartha Institute was itself founded by Ponlop Rinpoche in 1996 under the guidance of the Venerable Thrangu Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, the leading contemporary teachers of the Karma Kagyü tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. The Institute holds month-long summer programs and introductory weekend programs in North America, and two-week-long programs in Germany. The classes are taught by Ponlop Rinpoche who is the head teacher at the Institute, as well as by four Tibetan acharyas-who are all graduates of the Karma Shri Nalanda Institute for Higher Buddhist Studies, which is the shedra located at the seat-in-exile of the Karmapas at Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, India-and by senior Western translators and teachers authorized by the Institute.

The Institute is open to all who are interested in deepening their study and practice of Buddhism. Students who attend Nitartha range from those relatively new to the Buddhist path but who are eager to get a thorough foundation in the teachings, to senior practitioners of many years who feel that renewed in-depth study will strengthen their practice. In general, it is recommended that students have at least two years of Buddhist practice and study (though a few completely new students have successfully attended the program).

The Institute makes its materials available to all interested parties. Nitartha Institute is working with Snow Lion Publications to bring more and more of these materials out in book form. These materials are currently being used at the Vidyadhara Institute, the monastic college of Gampo Abbey in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. Nitartha Institute has also given approval to the Religious Studies Department of Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado to teach a systematic sequence of courses based on the Nitartha materials that students of its Masters degree programs may choose to take. These courses can be taken in conjunction with studying Tibetan and/or Sanskrit langauge. The department is regularly sending its top language students on to major doctoral programs in the U.S. while some choose to work towards becoming independent translators. The students of the Tibetan Tradition sequence attend one of Nitartha Institute's month- long summer programs as part of the Naropa degree program. All its M.A. degree students are also required to engage in an intensive meditation practice program.

Currently, Acharya Tenpa Gyaltsen - a graduate of the Karma Shri Nalanda Institute and the lead acharya at Nitartha Institute - and Phil Stanley - co-director of Nitartha Institute, co-chair of the Naropa Religious Studies Department, who was trained in the University of Virginia doctoral program - are the authorized teachers of the Nitartha Institute materials at Naropa. Ponlop Rinpoche himself teaches at Naropa each Spring. Naropa students and graduates have begun assisting with translations and the development of new materials for Nitartha and Naropa, such as new methods for teaching debate to Westerners.

While the materials taught at the Institute are primarily from the Kagyü, and secondarily from the Nyingma traditions, the Institute upholds the importance of non-sectarianism. Students of any tradition who are exploring Buddhism are welcome. While it is important to establish a strong grounding in one's own tradition, when studying the shedra curriculum of any Tibetan school it is beneficial to study the interpretative traditions of the other schools, especially since the schools have been in conversations with each other over centuries.

The strength of American Buddhism is its insistence on the importance of meditation practice. However, the Buddhist path is classically described as consisting of the three trainings in study, meditation, and conduct in daily life. The study aspect of the path is often under-developed in American Buddhism. It is for this reason that a good portion of the Institute's student body are senior practitioners who feel a desire to balance their practice with the precision and insight that intensive study provides. Westerners typically have well-developed intellectual skills due to the nature of our educational system but this training is often divorced from the heart, from intuition, from personal experience. It is the goal of Nitartha Institute to integrate conceptual understanding with personal experience.

To this end, the teaching style of the Institute is a unique blend of Western and traditional Tibetan approaches, suited to Westerners. This reflects Ponlop Rinpoche's unusual grasp of Western culture, his idiomatic command of English language, and his quick wit. In addition, as the Institute authorizes senior Western students to teach more and more of its courses, the Western teachers are developing new styles of teaching that at the same time remain faithful to the traditional explanations of the topics.

A major example of innovation in teaching methods is the daily use of analytical meditation sessions intimately tied to the specific classes students are taking. Such meditation was rarely part of the Tibetan shedra curriculum as a regular formal practice, though students' daily study could naturally include elements of such practice. Both Tibetan and Western teachers are in a creative collaboration for developing new approaches to analytical meditation to help students connect the content of their classes to direct experience. Indeed, the teaching methods used in the classes often have this experiential flavor while at the same time presenting the full traditional details of the subjects at hand. The Institute also continues to develop the teaching of Tibetan-style debate to Westerners. A new approach is currently under development to simplify the introduction to Tibetan debate.

Through the support of the Tsadra Foundation, the entire first two years of the Foundation Curriculum, called "Mind and Its World" is being transferred into an interactive digital format that will be utilized in classrooms through a digital projector and be made available in CD format for private study. Mind and Its World includes the majority of the introductory texts noted above. With this project textual references are for the first time being presented in a graphic format that brings greater comprehensibility and clarity to the material of the Foundational Curriculum. Related concepts are hyperlinked for easy reference and exploration of relationships. In addition, Tibetan and English versions are both displayed side by side. In the future the entire Intermediate and much of the Advanced curriculum of the Institute will be converted into digital format as well.

The summer 2005 program, recently held on Vancouver Island, Canada, marked the tenth anniversary of the Institute. In addition to the range of courses drawn from the model of the shedra curriculum, a university-level literary and spoken Tibetan language class was offered for the first time, taught by both Western and Tibetan teachers. In addition, a Compassion in Healing module, first taught in 2003, was offered to health professionals who want to apply insights of the Buddhist view and meditation to their practice of working with others. Other activities of Nitartha Institute include year-round translation of root texts and commentaries, which afford an opportunity for language students to become involved in translation projects in conjunction with acharyas, as well as the Teacher-In-Training program which will train and authorize a new generation of Westerners as teachers of the tradition.