About one thousand years ago, the great Indian pandit and yogi, Dipamkara Shrijñana (Atisha), was invited to Tibet to re-establish the Buddha dharma, which had been suppressed and corrupted for almost two centuries. One of Atisha's main accomplishments in Tibet was his writing of the seminal text, A Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, in which he extracted the essence of all 84,000 teachings of the Buddha and organized them into a clear, step-like arrangement that makes it easy for any individual practitioner to understand and practice the Dharma. This genre of teachings is known as Lamrim, or steps of the path, and forms an essential part of every school of Tibetan Buddhism.

The beauty of studying the Lamrim and memorizing as much as you can of the outline is that whenever you hear a teaching from anybody on anything, you know where it fits into the whole path. So, in that way, you can say that everything the Buddha taught is in the Lamrim.

PDF Contents Include:

Preliminary Practices
-Visualization of the Guru Shakyamuni Buddha
-Beginningless Mind
-Guru Devotion

The Small Capable Being
-Perfect Human Rebirth
-The Eight Worldy Concerns
-Impermanence and Death
-Suffering in the Lower Realms of Existance
-Refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha

The Medium Capable Being
-Karma, The Law of Cause and Effect
-The Four Noble Truths
-The Realms of Samsara
-True Suffering
-The True Cause of Suffering
-Twelve Branches of Dependent Arising
-Drawing of the Wheel of Life

The Great Capable Being
-Equanimity
-Generating Bodhicitta: The Totally Open Heart
-Samatha: Calm Abiding Meditation
-Emptiness

Here the Lamrim outlines have been clearly and succinctly prepared by Anila Karin Valham of Kopan Monastery in a manner that is very practical for one wishing to meditate on these outlines. Each subject is broken down into a meditation session with instructions on how to use them as such, intermixed with inspiring quotes of the great masters. An important study companion for anyone on the path and for those following the Discovering Buddhism program this will connect all the dots of how each module fits into the larger framework of the stages of the path to enlightenment

115 pages. 2012 edition.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche has suggested that students meditate on the lam-rim daily. Click here to download a useful Resource Guide detailing different lam-rim materials.

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