In the master’s program, we continue our imaginary journey through time that began in the BA program, now guided by the motto:
“”A king is honored only in his own country, but a wise man is honored throughout the world.” (Tibetan proverb)
Let us strive constantly to become wise. Let us discover the thousand faces of Tibet and its unexplored mysticism. One intriguing example is the image below. Its brief history: the image depicts a srin mo (Tibetan: སྲིན་མོ་, Wylie: srin mo), a demoness lying with her head facing east. Her body is pinned to the ground at her heart, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles by Tibet’s most famous temples and monasteries. At her heart lies the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, the most sacred of the thirteen.
The master’s program is more theoretical in nature. We aim to engage students in both prose and poetry, ensuring that the texts studied represent different periods of Tibetan language and literature.
When working with more complex primary sources, students must make independent decisions regarding word meanings using dictionaries. To fully understand the texts, they must examine them holistically and identify internal connections. As part of this process, students will critically analyze the texts both philologically and conceptually. They will also learn how to balance strict grammatical accuracy with the creative freedom necessary to produce fluent and stylistically appropriate Hungarian translations. The knowledge gained in the BA program must now be applied in a more complex and proficient manner.
We will study more challenging texts and passages from various periods and areas of Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan history, building on the Buddhist core curriculum as a theoretical foundation. Alongside root texts, we strive to include Tibetan-language commentaries. By translating these commentaries alongside the root texts, students will familiarize themselves with the genre characteristics of Tibetan exegesis while also receiving reliable guidance for interpreting difficult passages.
Throughout the master’s program, we will engage with texts of various genres and difficulty levels, analyzing their style and translating them into Hungarian based on grammatical instructions, while comparing them with parallel texts.
Some of the key texts we will study include (but are not limited to):
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama – The Yoga of the Inseparability of the Guru and Avalokiteśvara (Wylie: bla ma dang spyan ras gzigs dbyer med kyi rnal ’byor dngos grub ’byung zhes bya ba bzhugs so)
