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Monastic Leaders' Program

Our Monastic Leaders' Program Vision

The IBA's Monastic Leaders' Program trains talented graduates of monastic philosophy colleges to become text translators, oral translators, administrators and teachers. Our program focusses on language courses in English and Chinese, along with computer literacy and translation classes, and additional courses in Sanskrit, Spanish, administrative methods, and leadership effectiveness.

Our specific aim is to prepare many of these scholars for leadership roles within their own monastic communities, while those with the keenest aptitude for text translation will receive opportunities to apprentice within IBA's Translation and Publishing Department.

This Monastic Leaders' Program is intended to work in tandem with our School of Translation Intensive Program training courses for international scholars. We foresee that teams of translators drawn from both our Schools will form the working foundation of our Translation Department.

Under the guidance of our experienced Khenpos and distinguished guest scholars, our translation teams will endeavour to make the Buddha-dharma more widely available in non-Tibetan languages, through translation into English, Chinese and Spanish.

We hope that our efforts will also enhance the vitality of the international community of Buddhist scholars (of which IBA is part) with significant numbers of new translators and scholars who are deeply rooted in the authentic Buddhadharma, and who moreover, have the communications skills to help in its transmission.
 
 
Program Description
Though in the past we have attracted dedicated and talented volunteer teachers, our current policy for the Monastic Leaders' Program is to employ professional teachers capable of working together under the clear guidance of a curriculum designed especially for our monastic scholars' unique needs.

Since a central goal of our program is the acquisition of English for the use of our highly-educated future Dharma teachers and translators, we are fortunate to have the expert curriculum development assistance of Dr. Clea Schmidt, Professor of English as an Additional Language (EAL), at the University of Manitoba, Canada. She has been working with us since June 2010, and has made a 5 year commitment to oversee our development of a program not only for our own use, but also as a fully-documented potentially transferrable pilot-project for other monastic institutions.

Academic English language acquisition, as opposed to conversational English, is of vital importance for IBA monks preparing to teach the Dharma, to assume high leadership positions, and to study post-secondary subjects in English. For this reason, our program will focus primarily on the acquisition of academic English.

This will be accomplished through:
  1. language features such as grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, spelling, structure and discourse
  2. strategies for academic learning like effective listening, note-taking, summarizing, paraphrasing and editing
  3. relevance to contexts in which our scholars will be working: dharma teaching and learning, translation, leadership in monastic communities (e.g., administration; communication with sponsors, staff, and students) and western academic studies in a monastic setting
  4. inter-culturalism – self-awareness of world views; engaging with diversity (religious, cultural, linguistic, ethnic, gender) and working collaboratively

While offering techniques and exercises for acquiring academic English, our program will make use of academic content drawn from the following subjects: Dharma teachings, basic science, environmental science, psychology and western philosophy.

Almost no resources exist specifically to guide EAL curriculum development in monastic settings, let alone for use with monastic college post-graduates. For this reason, in addition to the careful adaptation and use of existing academic English text resources, Dr. Schmidt, working with IBA, plans to produce a textbook especially written for teaching English in the monastic college setting, for use at IBA and other high-level monastic institutions.

Our program is ambitious. It's aimed at helping Buddhist scholars to make the important leap that will allow them to share their depth of Dharma understanding with you and with others, in your own languages.

We can not accomplish these goals without your practical help, your participation with us in gathering support funding and letting others know about our unique initiative.  Our present staffing will allow us to begin to accomplish this goal in English. But we will need your help to envision, as well as to support, future efforts to place us in a position to offer translation programs for Chinese, Spanish and other languages.

How well we will be able to develop each of these academic language programs, is largely up to your far-sightedness and your willingness to invest in our initiative to make the Dharma more accessible to you.
 
Our MLP Donors and Sponsors

The practice of generosity is a core virtue for those practicing the Buddha Dharma, and is a means of accumulating great merit, particularly when one financially supports the Monastic Sangha.

 Currently, individual sponsors from the United States, Switzerland, Canada, France, Taiwan, Germany, Chile, Singapore and the Netherlands have generously helped cover the living costs of a number of our resident monk scholars. However, there are a number of monks who are without sponsors, and need the generosity of practitioners to help them continue their studies to benefit Dharma pracitioners across the globe.

Our sponsored students write to their sponsors, fostering and strengthening Dharma friendships that are beneficial for each participant.  

Even though we have pledges of support for the basic living costs of some of our monastic scholars, we still need to find support for fourteen new monks. We therefore invite you to help us by supporting the living costs and educational costs of for these monastic scholars.

Sponsoring a monk can open the door to a meaningful exchange between you and your sponsored student, who will correspond with you. It is also possible to visit him here at the IBA. Sponsoring a monk also benefits you, and is means of accumulating great positive merit for yourself.

You  may make an educational sponsorship pledge of a year or more, or alternatively, you may be interested in giving a one-time donation for an amount of your choice.



Here are some examples of ways your resources can translate into benefits for our scholars:



$50. will buy good quality writing pens for all thirty students



$150. will buy school stationery for all thirty students' use



$300. will buy reference books for the use of each of the three class levels



$500. will buy textbooks for each student in the three class levels



$1200. will sponsor research and translation-tool computer software and storage hardware for the use of monastic translators



$1800. will completely support the annual educational costs of one individual scholar (one thirtieth of our total annual educational costs for the thirty monks in the program).

If you would like to help or have any questions, please feel free to correspond directly with our Fundraising and Development Manager, the Ven. Kunga Dondrup, who will be delighted to hear from you.

For information on individual monks who are in need of educational sponsorship please send your contact details using our form e-mail
For general donations to our program, along the lines of the above examples, Please use the Donate button below

 

 

 
 
Your Prayer Requests and Puja Sponsorships

Our monk scholars assemble every morning for their group prayer session, taking the time to align their motivations with the very highest goal, for the sake of all others, and to offer prayers for the benefit of their sponsors, their teachers, and all who request us to pray on their behalf.



We receive regular requests from sponsors to pray for their health or for the well-being of family members
during times of crisis. 



Many sponsors choose IBA for these prayer requests because of the enhanced effectiveness of having pujas and prayers performed by mature monks who are skilled in visualization and who, because of their understanding of the philosophical basis of the pujas, are able to perform them as rituals in their full context, and not merely as memorized recitations. 

We invite you to sponsor pujas for yourself or for family and friends who need spiritual support.



Please contact us with your requests for specific pujas that you would like to sponsor, or with a specific beneficial goal in mind, and we can recommend pujas for you that are structured to accomplish your goal. Since different pujas require different degrees of elaboration in their preparation and performance, we will try to help you to determine which one is right for you, and to help you plan your donation to cover the costs to us of this helpful service, at a level appropriate to your personal circumstances.


Please use our form e-mail for this purpose: