Welcome to the MAITRIPA RABJUNGMA COMMUNITY:
Nurturing Our Future Leaders
Dedicated to the empowerment of Buddhist women into service and leadership through an education based in scholarship, meditation, and service within a monastic and practice-based community, this project seeks to enrich the American Buddhist community by developing a modern model of monastic life that stays true to the fundamentals of the traditional approach, one that flourishes here in Oregon and can eventually be a curriculum to be shared worldwide. This is a three to seven-year program for nuns-in-training that follows a monastic model of ethical discipline as well as in-depth training in practices to benefit the greater community such as Buddhist spiritual care and traditional rituals in modern settings. The long term goal is to offer access to well trained and deeply committed women in leadership and service roles to support the flourishing of the Dharma in the western world.
RABJUNG?
What is it to “rabjung” or to step forth from the householder/lay life? Monastic life is a key component to many world religions as a means to support the broader community through having fewer individual relational ties and more material simplicity. This way of life can be a sacrifice or bring a sense of freedom, depending on how you look at it. Our program supports the latter. Traditionally the relationship between the ordained sangha and the lay practitioners was one of mutually beneficial symbiosis – our program seeks to find modern applications of this model while staying true to Buddhist monastic ethical discipline and development of models for community harmony.
Tara Farms in Corbett, Oregon
The Maitripa Rabjungma Community project is dedicated to the empowerment of Buddhist women into service and leadership through an education based in scholarship, meditation, and service within a monastic and practice-based community.
A project of Maitripa College in Portland, Oregon, and situated at Tara Farms in nearby Corbett, this experiential program will include a three year period of monastic ordination and training (with options to extend that timeframe).
During this time, the “nuns-in-training” will learn and be supported in offering Buddhist spiritual care for the community on the basis of the integration of Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, with a focus on an in-depth and living practice of the bodhisattva vows, lojong (thought transformation techniques), and deep meditation practice.
Yangsi Rinpoche and Venerable Yönten
This program will be residential and full-time, led by senior nun Bhikshuni Lozang Yönten and supported by Yangsi Rinpoche, as well as a number of senior lay and monastic practitioners connected to our broader Maitripa community.
The women in the program will undertake the “rabjung” or “stepping forth” vows of a trainee monastic and undergo a 3-7 year training in diverse ways of offering service to the Buddhist community, including familiarity with leadership roles such as that of a Chanting Master, a spiritual caregiver for Dharma students and for the dying and bereaved, Ritual Celebrants, and Meditation and Philosophy Instructors. There will be a focus on living compassionately and interdependently with the land as this project is developed, as well as an emphasis on the body and mind connection through food, Tibetan Medicine, and movement practices such as Qi Gong.