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Humbly serve the Tibetan language, genuinely study the Tibetan language, and sincerely teach the Tibetan language to people all around the world.

– THE MISSION OF THE TRIKĀYA TIBETAN LANGUAGE ACADEMY

Our mission is to help dedicated students of Tibetan around the world attain their learning goals, spread awareness about Tibetan culture and literature, and promote Tibetan language around the world.

Through our Tibetan language courses, we accomplish our mission of increasing knowledge of the Tibetan language to students from a wide variety of backgrounds.

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About the Main Instructor of the
Trikāya Tibetan Language Academy

Erick Tsiknopoulos

Erick Tsiknopoulos has worked as a professional Tibetan-English translator, interpreter and Tibetan language teacher since 2008, and has been teaching Tibetan language online since 2011.

He is highly literate in both Classical and Modern Literary Tibetan (C2+), and has a very advanced level of fluency in Colloquial Tibetan (C2+).

He studied Tibetan language & Buddhism intensively while working as a full-time translator of Tibetan Buddhist texts while living in India from 2009 to 2019. Currently he both translates and teaches Tibetan language.

Tibetan Buddhist Texts, Tibetan Translation Services, Tibetan-English Translations, Tibetan-English Interpretation, Tibetan Language Online Classes & Online Courses

Erick Tsiknopoulos

Erick Tsiknopoulos first taught Tibetan language in 2008, has been teaching Tibetan online since 2011, and founded the Trikāya Tibetan Language Academy in 2020. 

Since then he has taught Tibetan language courses and seminars on Buddhist texts on a regular basis. 

He specializes in the development of learning materials and instructional methods for teaching Tibetan language to both Western and Asian students.

He is motivated by a strong aspiration to help others learn the Tibetan language in more effective and efficient ways — whether for their own personal spiritual practice or in meditation retreats, as future translators, interpreters, scholars and researchers of Tibetan, or just out of general interest in the fascinating language and culture of Tibet.

More About the Teacher

Erick Tsiknopoulos lived for 11 years in the Himalayan regions of India and Nepal among the Tibetan community, from 2008 to 2019. There he studied Tibetan language and Buddhist philosophy intensively in a culturally immersive environment. After many years of diligence in his studies of Classical, Colloquial and Modern Literary Tibetan, he mastered the art of Tibetan translation.

 

In India he studied Tibetan language, literature and Buddhism at various institutions of Tibetan learning. These include:

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  • The Manjushree Center for Tibetan Culture (Darjeeling)

  • Thosam Ling Institute (Sidhpur)

  • Dzongsar Shedra (Chauntra)

  • The Tibetan Library of Works and Archives (Dharamsala)

  • Esukhia (McLeod Ganj)

  • Namgyal Monastery (McLeod Ganj)

  • The Institute of Buddhist Dialectics (public classes in McLeod Ganj)

HOW WE STUDY

Experience personalized Tibetan learning sessions under the guidance of Erick Tsiknopoulos, a seasoned Tibetan translator and scholar of Buddhist texts. Trikāya Tibetan Language Academy: Study Tibetan with a Translator provides a powerfully effective online education experience for students of all levels. Our mission is to help students of Tibetan attain their language learning goals. ​ Connection methods for the classes include Google Duo, Zoom, Jitsi & Skype. English and Tibetan are the language mediums of instruction.

WHAT WE STUDY

​Courses are focused, but flexible by design. Every Tibetan course is specifically designed to suit each student’s personal learning goals. Students can choose to focus on Classical Tibetan, Colloquial Spoken Tibetan, Modern Literary Tibetan or Reading Buddhist Texts in Tibetan as their main subject of study. These subjects can also be taught at the same time in alternation or combination (depending on the course). Courses on several other topics are also offered. Special readings in Tibetan texts are available upon request.

TEACHING METHODOLOGY

Based on both modern Western academic and traditional Tibetan scholastic models of pedagogy and textual exegesis, the teaching methodology is unique, adaptable, inventive and well-suited to the needs of students in the modern world. This includes analysis and philosophical, historical and cultural commentary, contextualized within the broader spectrum of Buddhist and Asian Studies. Our courses explore topics and introduce material which is often relatively overlooked or even unknown outside the Tibetan communities themselves.  The cultural, social, symbolic, mythical, historical and psychological dimensions of Tibetan language and literature are explored in-depth.

Benefits of Studying with Erick Tsiknopoulos

Having studied Tibetan since 2004, including 11 years spent in the Himalayan region studying Tibetan language, literature and Buddhist philosophy in the Tibetan communities of South Asia, our teacher, Erick Tsiknopoulos, offers students rare insights into the Tibetan language itself, as well as its cultural background.

By drawing upon these first-hand experiences, he employs a distinctive cross-cultural teaching approach which is bilingual in nature, and adapted for English-speaking students.
 

Being familiar with most topics in Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, scriptural doctrine, he explains Tibetan texts to his students by way of both linguistic analysis and traditional Buddhist commentary. In this way, the literary meaning of each text is ascertained with reference to its specific context.

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