Living in the Path Online
Taking the Essence: Transforming a Suffering Life into Happiness

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 explains three practices that he would like all his students to do at the beginning of every day:

• The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment): specifically compiled by Lama Zopa Rinpoche as a wayfor us to develop a bodhichitta motivation at the beginning of the day
• Blessing the Speech: to increase the power of our speech and prevent its power from being taken away by idle talk andblack foods
• Daily Mantras: the recitation of various mantras for specificpurposes such as increasing our virtue

My wish is that all of you do this most important practice for generating a Dharma motivation, and especially a bodhichitta motivation, when you open your eyes in the morning. As soon as you wake up, whether your sleep has been positive or negative, you should begin this practice. (Lama Zopa Rinpoche)

Course Materials

The course materials consist of 45 pages of lightly edited transcripts accompanied by five video excerpts of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings drawn from the Light of the Path Retreat 2009 held in North Carolina, USA. The commentary to The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness is compiled from various teachings given between 2009 and 2015. The commentaries to Blessing the Speech and Daily Mantras are mainly extracted from teachings given during the Light of the Path Retreat 2009 held in North Carolina, USA.

Chapters:

1. The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment)
2. Blessing the Speech
3. Daily Mantras

Videos:

Video: 1: “Benefits of Blessing the Speech”
Video 2: “The Practice of Blessing the Speech”
Video 3: “Some Daily Mantras”
Video 4: “The Importance of Blessing the Feet”
Video 5: “Other Powerful Mantras”

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.