Living in the Path Online
Realizing the Lamrim, All Topics: Advice for Realizing the Lamrim

Overview

Living in the Path is an online program taught exclusively by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the spiritual director of the FPMT. Many of the modules are extracted from Rinpoche’s explanations of the topics of the lamrim – the teachings on the stages of the path to enlightenment according to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Lama Tsongkhapa (Gelug). Other modules cover specific practices intended to help us purify our negative karma and create the merit necessary to actualize the lamrim topics.

Prerequisites

Living in the Path is ideal for anyone who wishes to deepen their personal practice and develop the realizations of the path to enlightenment by relying on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s heart advice and teachings. However, as Rinpoche’s teachings often assume familiarity with the topics of the lamrim, it is advisable to have done some prior study of the lamrim, such as by having completed some or all of the modules of Discovering Buddhism.

Course Contents

In this module of Living in the Path, Lama Zopa Rinpoche clearly sets out the steps for achieving the realizations of the lamrim. Rinpoche advises us to begin by choosing a lamrim text and then studying it thoroughly, up to three times. When the topics have become familiar, we should divide the topics into one or more meditation sessions a day ranging over the period of a year. We, then, train in these meditations with effort until we get the “effortful experience,” the thought, "Now, if I really meditate, I can get realizations." At this point, we can begin to meditate on each of the topics for as long as it takes to get the “effortless experience” of it. When this experience proves stable for weeks, months, and years, we have achieved its realization.

Course Materials

The course materials consist of 31 pages of lightly edited transcripts accompanied by the short corresponding videos of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings (3-20 minutes) drawn from the Light of the Path Retreat 2014 held in North Carolina, USA.

Chapters:

Preface

Introduction: The Mind Can be Trained

1. Lamrim is the Most Important Thing

2. Choose and Study a Lamrim Text

3. Meditate Until You Achieve the Effortful and Effortless Experiences

4. Meditate Until You See the Guru as All the Buddhas

5. Meditate on the Precious Human Body and Death to Complete the Realizations

6. Without Renunciation, Meditation on Emptiness and Bodhichitta is Very Shallow

7. Meditate Until You Have Stable Realizations of the Three Paths

8. Meditate Until You Realize the Prasangika’s View of Emptiness

9. Lamrim Lays the Foundation and Protects the Mind

10. Lojong: The Quickest Way to Lamrim Realizations

11. A Summary of the Advice

To help you implement Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice, this module also includes:

• a step-by-step PowerPoint guide to achieving the realizations of the lamrim that has been excerpted from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings
• a proposal for an annual meditation schedule based on the lamrim text Essential Nectar
• the outlines of Essential Nectar to use in your meditation sessions

Important information about your order of online materials: Following your order, you will receive an email with a link to a webpage to download a PDF document which will contain the enrollment key for the course and instructions on how to access the course on the FPMT Online Learning Center.