Course Overview 

This sum­mer EasyT­ibetan (a com­munity of lan­guage exchange where every­one can learn Tibetan, from inter­ested new­comers to those with­in the Tibetan dia­spor­ic com­munity) will be organ­ising its second Tibetan Lan­guage Sum­mer School online from Oxford due to Cov­id-19.  This three-week intens­ive course con­sists of daily classes on Tibetan lan­guage and Buddhism, based on a work on Buddhist sys­tems of thought writ­ten by an 18th cen­tury Tibetan Buddhist schol­ar Choekyi Nyima. With a par­tic­u­lar focus on cre­at­ing com­plete lan­guage and cul­tur­al immer­sion, this course aims to build a found­a­tion for accel­er­ated lan­guage learn­ing and under­stand­ing of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy.

 Course Tutors: Ten­zin Cho­ep­h­el received his MPhil in Tibetan and Him­alay­an Stud­ies at Oxford. He is a highly exper­i­enced Tibetan lan­guage teach­er and co-author of “The Manu­al of Authen­t­ic Tibetan”. Kun­sang Thok­may, a cur­rent D.Phil. stu­dent at Oxford who stud­ied in Tibetan Buddhist mon­as­ter­ies will lead the main classes.  

In addi­tion, there will also be spe­cial talks and group dis­cus­sions by Oxford schol­ars and Tibetan Lamas. Dur­ing these three weeks.

We offer three main courses:

  1. Intens­ive Tibetan lan­guage Begin­ner­’s course
  2. Intens­ive Tibetan lan­guage Inter­me­di­ate course 
  3. Intro­duc­tion to Buddhism, based on a Tibetan work on Buddhist schools of thought

  

Intensive Tibetan

Tak­ing part in this intens­ive Tibetan lan­guage course is a unique chance to exper­i­ence Tibetan cul­ture through its lan­guage. The intens­ive Tibetan lan­guage course has two levels of classes: Begin­ners and Inter­me­di­ate level.

Begin­ners’ Course (Ten­zin Choephel)

The beginner’s course cov­ers the Tibetan alpha­bet, gram­mar, and vocab­u­lary to hone basic read­ing skills. At the end of the course, stu­dents will be able to read the Tibetan script and be famil­i­ar with the basic vocab­u­lary and gram­mar. We are proud to say that our last year begin­ner’ stu­dents learned how to read Tibetan with­in two weeks!

 

The begin­ners’ class fol­lows the “Manu­al of Authen­t­ic Tibetan” by Klara Hendry­chova and Ten­zin Cho­ep­h­el – this course’s teacher.

Two classes per day:

Timetable:

                    08:30–9:30

                    14:30–15:30


Inter­me­di­ate Course (Kun­sang Thokmay)

 The inter­me­di­ate course is designed for those who have a basic know­ledge of Tibetan lan­guage and gram­mar. The course teaches stu­dents both mod­ern and clas­sic­al Tibetan. There is a wide range of les­sons care­fully pre­pared for this class, from gram­mar to stor­ies to con­ver­sa­tion­al units. Stu­dents will have an oppor­tun­ity to prac­tice their spoken Tibetan with nat­ive Tibetan con­ver­sa­tion part­ners in the afternoons.

 The Inter­me­di­ate class fol­lows vari­ous les­sons extrac­ted from the “Manu­al of Authen­t­ic Tibetan” by Klara Hendry­chova and Ten­zin Cho­ep­h­el, the “Manu­al of Stand­ard Tibetan” by Nic­olas Tour­nadre and Sang­da Dor­je, and the school text­books pub­lished by the Edu­ca­tion Depart­ment of Cent­ral Tibetan Admin­is­tra­tion (CTA) in India.

 Two classes per day:

Timetable:

                   8:30- 9:30

                   1:30 — 2:30

 The par­ti­cipants are encour­aged to buy a copy of “ Manu­al of Authen­t­ic Tibetan” from us upon arrival and the rest of the course mater­i­als are provided by the organ­isers without any free.

 

Introduction to the schools of Buddhism 

 The intro­duc­tion to the schools of Buddhism is based on a Tibetan Buddhist philo­soph­ic­al treat­ise, briefly entitled “Thukan Druptha” (Tibetan: Thu’u bkwan grub mtha’), authored by a well-known Tibetan Lama and Buddhist schol­ar Lobz­ang Choekyi Nyima in the late eight­eenth cen­tury. This work cov­ers both philo­soph­ic­al and his­tor­ic­al devel­op­ments of Buddhism in India and Tibet, primar­ily based on Tibetan mater­i­als. In addi­tion to this, we will also con­sult oth­er schol­arly works such as “Buddhist Philo­soph­ic­al The­or­ies” by Dun­gkar Lob­sang Trin­ley, “The Found­a­tions of Buddhism” by Rupert Geth­in, “Mahay­ana Buddhism” by Paul Wil­li­am, “Intro­du­cing Tibetan Buddhism” by Geof­frey Samuel and more. The course has two classes:  1) Early Buddhism, and 2) Tibetan Buddhism.

 

 

Introduction to Early Buddhism (Kunsang Thokmay)

 

The course is based on the first part of “Thukan Druptha”. It is suit­able for those who have little know­ledge of early Buddhist philo­sophy and prac­tices. Each class will cov­er a spe­cif­ic top­ic which is essen­tial to build­ing a bet­ter com­pre­hen­sion of early Buddhism. Each class will have a ques­tion and answer ses­sion to address any doubts on the spot. The course aims to intro­duce the basics of early Buddhism and it also will briefly explain the social and his­tor­ic­al ele­ments that are cru­cial to mas­ter­ing a broad­er con­text of early Buddhism.

 

Major top­ics to cover: 

 

Buddha’s life story

Four Noble Truths

Sam­sara, Karma & Re-birth

Three Coun­cils of Buddhism

Divi­sion of Buddhist Schools

Hinay­ana and Mahay­ana vehicles

Buddhist Logic/ dialectics

Cit­tamatra and Paramita

Nagar­juna and Madhyamika

Four Tan­tric classes

 

Timetable: 10:00–11:00

 

 Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism (Tenzin Choephel)

This course is based on the second part of “Thukan Druptha” and cov­ers all essen­tial fea­tures of Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism inher­ited soph­ist­ic­ated philo­sophies and elab­or­ate tra­di­tions of Mahay­ana and Vajray­ana prac­tices. Tibet has many dif­fer­ent Buddhist schools with vari­ous lin­eages and philo­soph­ic­al doc­trines. So, each class will address these sig­ni­fic­ant devel­op­ments of Tibetan Buddhism and its rich social and cul­tur­al phe­nom­ena in chro­no­lo­gic­al order.

 

Major top­ics to cover:

Intro­duc­tion of Buddhism to Tibet

Tri song Det­sen and Buddhism

Atisha and later spread of Buddhism

Nyingma tra­di­tion 

Kagyu tra­di­tion

Sakya tra­di­tion

Geluk tra­di­tion

Dalai Lama/ Panchen Lama

 

 

Timetable: 1:00- 14:00

Supplementary Online Seminars

Besides the daily Tibetan and Buddhist classes, we will also organ­ize spe­cial sem­inars on Tibetan reli­gion, cul­ture, his­tory, civil­iz­a­tion and more. For these sem­inars, we have invited vari­ous spe­cial­ists to teach a wide range of topics.

 

One sem­in­ar on every second day: 17:30 — 18:30

 

To apply for this course please con­tact us through the fol­low­ing email address.

Ten­zin Choephel

Kun­sang Thokmay

Web­site: http://easytibetan.org

Face­book: Authen­t­ic Tibetan

Ins­tagram: easytibetan

Email: loplao.academy@gmail.com

Phone No: +44 7511095166

Phone No: +44 7576173339