Lam-rim

Introduction In the first part of this series, we looked at the initial level of motivation where we aim to avoid lower rebirths and gain a higher rebirth. In particular, we want a precious human rebirth so that we can improve in our practice. The intermediate scope is when we...

Reaffirming the Motivation We need to have a proper motivation for listening to the teachings; otherwise we will miss an opportunity to build up a great deal of positive force and to incorporate this teaching in our mental continuum. We try not to be motivated by wanting...

Review of Day One Yesterday, we covered the smaller scope and looked at one of its primary topics, which is meditating on impermanence. That helps in reducing our attachment to the appearances of this life, because we see that nothing lasts. To recap, there are meditations on...

Review We have been speaking about the graded stages of the spiritual path, where we are trying to basically broaden and expand our motivation starting from a smaller scope until it becomes full. In this way, each stage builds upon the previous one. We also saw that there are...

Three Types of Spiritual Persons To continue with the text, the next verse reads:  (2) Since (practitioners) come to have small, intermediate, and supreme (scopes), they are known as the three types of spiritual persons. I shall therefore write about these specific divisions,...

Brief Review We’ve been speaking about the different levels of renunciation, and we have extended the traditional way of explaining it just in terms of the intermediate level of motivation in lam-rim to a much broader spectrum, as indicated by the Sakya teaching of Parting...

Questions about Visualizing Ourselves and Others as Deities If we are practicing tantra and one of the tantra practices is to try to view everything in a pure way – in other words, all beings as Buddhas and all environment as mandalas, and so on – isn’t that an obstacle to...

Now, in our final session we have quite a lot of text left to cover, so I will just read each of the verses and comment very briefly on them. Prayer for Inspiration to Develop the Graded Pathway Minds (Lam-rim) We start with the lam-rim review. And as I said, what we’re...

Following the Lam-rim Stages in Progressive Order We’ve been discussing the lam-rim, a scheme for organizing the basic sutra teachings. It presents three scopes of motivation that act as pathway minds that will lead to better rebirth, liberation from uncontrollably recurring...

Atisha’s “Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment” is the forerunner of the Tibetan lam-rim tradition. It places special emphasis on the bodhisattva vows and their necessity for successful tantra practice.