Reading Tibetan Literature is dedicated to reading Tibetan Buddhist texts and literature from original source texts and commentaries in the Kagyü and Nyingma traditions. The choice of text for the 2026 Nitartha Summer Institute will be announced before the start of the Summer Institute.
This course assumes a general familiarity with Tibetan grammar. The level of difficulty is roughly equivalent to second year Tibetan at the graduate level. Students will be asked to prepare passages to present in class for review and analysis. The foci of the course are (i) developing familiarity with Tibetan grammar, (ii) cultivating reading skills and (iii) gaining facility with using commentaries to unpack a root text. Interesting and important grammatical points will be explained in the context of specific passages.
Opening and closing chants are done in Tibetan. Students are encouraged to practice reading aloud to learn the rhythms and feel of the phrasing of the language.