practice from fengyi

My practice is about Chinese (Tibetan) Buddhism.

When I went to Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture as a volunteer teacher, my local teaching partner invited me to Langmu Temple which is one of the most famous Tibetan temples in China. There, I learned that Tibetan temples are colleges for those who believe in Tibetan BUddhism. The believers go to the temples and live there for a whole life until in order to become a master. However, in these colleges, the masters do not teach the believers Buddist texts: they do not have lectures or seminars, and what they do in the “class” is merely reading and transcribing the texts even without understanding the meaning (for most of the texts are linguistically translated). According to their belief, if someone has Pannindriya, he will be able to understand the texts without explanation. So I decided to write a piece of Buddhist texts (though not in Tibetan) everyday during this week with Buddist music. This is the link to one of the songs I listened to when writing:https://youtu.be/0pqx5mDNRIQ.

And this is what I wrote:

Actually, I am still confused with the meaning of these words, but to some extent I feel more peaceful and less anxious. Meanwhile I am more energetic than before both metally and physically. 


Comments

  1. Ethan PhilbrickOctober 19, 2022 at 9:32 AM

    I really love this practice Fengyi -- I don't know much about the specifics of Tibetan Buddhist pedagogy and monastic practice but I'm very curious about this concept of transcribing as a practicing of learning... it brings up really interesting questions about what might it mean to learn if it's not about understanding or the top-down transmission of meaning... or about forms of non-linguistic meaning... or about embodied knowledge... lots to think about here! I'd be excited to see what kinds of next steps could be taken with this --- maybe ways to think about it formally a bit? ways to do this transcription bigger? or with very specific texts that have their own political and artistic significance?

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