Unlocking the door to the classical wisdom tradition

Comments from participants in Deer Park’s month-long Classical Tibetan Language course

Reading the Heart Sutra in a month? Impossible?

Yet it is what Deer Park is offering in its one month course in Classical Tibetan, with Prof. Kurt. Starting with learning the alphabet, we rapidly switched to the study of the grammatical constructions. Before jumping into our first phrases, we learned how to use efficiently the various dictionaries to access the vocabulary and how to juggle with the word order and put together the ‘bricks and cement’…

And in the fourth week… off we go! We started to read the Heart Sutra! Obviously, reading and understanding the words is not.. realizing its meaning, but it is a fair start and an encouraging first step in our discovery of a new, vast and profound world: the Dharma scriptures in Tibetan language.

Now it is up to us to use this precious baby-knowledge to explore further and improve our skills. Thank you Prof. Kurt and Deer Park, you gave us the keys to travel through a new world!

Highly recommendable!

Dana

Kurt’s class provides an excellent foundation, whether you want to learn to read texts or to speak colloquial Tibetan. His teaching style is patient, supportive and firm – you have to do your homework but he is always ready to provide any extra help you need, inside or outside the classroom.

In less than one month, I learned far more than I ever expected to learn. The most important thing I got out of the class was feeling I had a key to unlock the meanings of many of my own practice recitations.

Lois