Andy Graves

My blogs

About me

Gender Male
Industry Construction
Location NY, NY
Interests Mainly this serves as a travel blog while I visit Sera Monastery in South India. My main motivation for going is to improve my colloquial Tibetan. Secondarily to study classic Buddhist texts in a monastic setting. The monastery houses 5000 monks and was relocated to where it is now from Tibet in the early 70's. My main Buddhist Teacher, Khen Rinpoche was both schooled in this monastery as a young monk in Tibet and later served as Abbott of the monastery in the early 90's in India. His nephew, Geshe Lothar is the head of Khen Rinpoche's house in the monastery. The house has about 13 or 14 young monks staying in it who are currently working through the vigorous 20 some year monastic program. This is my second trip to the monastery. My first was in Nov 05' - Aprl 06'. I had planned on returning sooner but many obstacles have prevented me-admittedly mostly internal ones. Initially I am planning on staying for 6 months. However, I have arranged or rather am arranging my life in such a way so I could stay longer if the circumstances in India and within myself allowed it.