FPMT Masters Program
The Graduates
The voices of three graduates from the seven-year Masters Program that has now concluded – and has changed lives.

Emily Hsu: The Masters Program years have been an invaluable and formative period in my life, spending so many years with a lama who embodies the qualities of the teachings, who can transmit the Dharma purely, who is living within his vows and commitments, who is dedicated to helping others, who is extremely knowledgeable, who has given up his own attachments and serves as a living example of what we can achieve if we would only practice. Geshe Jampa Gyatso has provided all of this and more. He has been unceasingly kind and patient, answering our questions day after day, listening to our endless problems without judgment, offering us guidance on our spiritual practice, and basically showing us how to live in the Dharma, how to love and help others with wisdom and without engaging in idiot compassion. Thank you, Geshe-la!

Glenn Svensson: The Masters Program seems to have just begun very recently, and yet at the same time it seems like an eternity since I did anything else. Unlike finishing university where there was the exhilaration of finally completing 15 years of study, in finishing the Masters Program there is a deep sense of achievement in having completed a course that is only the initial part of the much bigger overall process. Also, I am very much looking forward to the next phase, that of retreat, where hopefully some of the understanding gained can be deepened and brought into personal experience…

Jonathan Chu-nyi: I found this program extraordinary, challenging, and at times blissful. This has easily been the best seven years of my life. Studying the Dharma is not some dry intellectual exercise that leaves one counting the minutes until class is over. Rather, it is like getting together with your best friends ever, life-long friends, one’s spiritual friends, one’s beloved root lama, and working out the intriguing questions in life of what makes us happy, how do we get through those difficult moments, and what makes the life meaningful. If we apply ourselves in Lama Tsongkhapa’s tradition, generating the three wisdoms of hearing, contemplating, and meditating, I sincerely feel that we can change our minds, generate good hearts, and become more compassionate and kind human beings…. And finally, perhaps even to my own surprise, I find life as a monk more enjoyable and a bit easier than life as a layperson.

This article can be read in its entirety in Mandala