Eight good reasons for engaging in Tibetan and Buddhist Studies in Vienna

Eight good reasons for engaging in

Tibetan and Buddhist Studies in Vienna - Buddhist Studies, Part 2

 

Introduction

This post will give you a good idea what it’s like to engage in Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna. In an earlier post on Buddhist Studies I tried to answer the question why one would at all engage in Buddhist Studies. So, in case you still take that into consideration, you might wonder what would be a good place for doing so. 

Suppose you want to dedicate yourself full-time to studies, you basically have two options: you can either enroll in a Buddhist Studies program at a Western university or enter a private institution run by a Buddhist society. Both approaches do have their pros and cons, but I am planning to dedicate a separate post to this subject at a later time.

ISTB, Vienna

Let’s say for the moment you consider studying at a Western university. There are of course a lot of Buddhist Studies programs worldwide to choose from, but only a few of them belong to the circle of leading institutions of the field. I will not make any judgment, stating which University belongs to this group and which doesn’t. Still, the program of the Institute for South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (ISTB) of the University of Vienna is certainly among them.

I have chosen to introduce this particular institute simply for the reason that I’ve spent a large part of my studies there. Therefore, I really do have an idea how the program is like. No doubt, other institutes might have an equally good offer, and I am very interested to learn about that.  

Please, feel free to share your own experiences, either about the program in Vienna or your own institute! You can do so by commenting at the end of this post, but you can also send me a short article about your institute by Email. I will do my best to publish it here in near future.

Eight good reasons for choosing Vienna

 

1. The location

If you have never visited Vienna before, you really should. It is for good reason that Mercer has ranked Vienna for the fourth time in a row as the number one most livable city in the world.  

Not much to add, it is really a wonderful place to be. You can get some impressions here. If you do not come here for your studies, you should at least come for some sight-seeing once. 

Buddhism is also a state-recognized religion in Austria which goes along with a lot of benefits. It for example means that schools are obliged to offer Buddhist religious classes upon demand. Hence, some students may already have a good knowledge of the subject prior to their studies.