Living in the Path Online
Taking the Essence: Making Offerings

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

This module of Living in the Path consists of a collection of Lama Zopa Rinpoche's inspiring explanations on how to take the essence of our precious human life by making offerings to the Guru and the Three Rare Sublime Ones - Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

We are not aware of the limitless skies of benefits we achieve from the practice of offering, what we can achieve and enjoy from life to life. Even while we are in samsara, we will enjoy good rebirths, wealth, and every happiness. Even just the samsaric perfections are amazing, without adding all those incredible realizations that allow us to offer deep benefit to sentient beings, liberating them from the oceans of samsaric suffering and the cause: delusion and karma.(Lama Zopa Rinpoche)

Course Materials

The course materials consist of 16 pages of lightly edited transcripts accompanied by two video excerpts of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings drawn from the Light of the Path Retreat 2009 held in North Carolina, USA.

Practice Text:

Extensive Offering Practice

Chapters:

1. Offerings Cause Enlightenment

2. Ten Benefits of the Offering Cloud Mantra

Videos:

Video 1: “Offerings Cause Enlightenment”

Video 2: “Ten Benefits of the Offering Cloud Mantra”

These additional videos are also included in this module:

The Merit of Offering to the Guru

Offering Even a Single Flower to the Buddha

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.