Experiencing the Lamrim
Thursdays, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
September 11, 2014 – April 23, 2015
Thursdays, 7:00pm – 8:45pm
May 28, 2015 – July 2, 2015
The purpose of listening to the Dharma is to transform our
hearts and minds, and not merely to gain intellectual
knowledge. For the Dharma to be useful, for it to relieve our
problems and suffering, it needs to move from our head to our
heart. We need to gain inner experience of the teachings, and
then to make that stable. To do this we need to meditate on
the various topics of the path.
The focus of this course will be learning and practicing how
to meditate on the Lamrim in order to generate genuine
experiences of the path. Pabongka Rinpoche said that it is
extremely important to do this, and not merely settle for
intellectual understanding; otherwise it is possible for us to
become immune to the Dharma:
Can generate both strong faith and listening wisdom about the topics of leisure and fortune,
Impermanence, aversion, and so on; but they have not arisen through analytic meditation.
Such wisdom is nothing more than right judgment and so eventually it fades away.
You run a risk by failing to generate soon after this wisdom
The genuine experience that comes from reflection.
Many persons become insensitive to dharma when they allow
The former awareness to fade away before they can generate the latter.
Once you are overcome by insensitivity to dharma, your mind stream
Becomes ruined and you are incapable of being tamed,
Even by the Lam-rim or the blessed words of your guru.
So apply yourself to the profound method for avoiding insensitivity to dharma....
How, then do you generate the understanding that comes from reflection?
Analytic meditation is the exercise of eliciting experiential realizations.
Supporting Reading
- Geshe Rabten, The Essential Nectar, Wisdom Publications
- Pabongka Rinpoche, Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, Wisdom Publications
- Tsong-kha-pa, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, Shambhala Publications
- Karin Valham, Lam-Rim Outlines, available from the FPMT shop, or from buddhanet.net
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