Experiencing the Lamrim
Emily Hsu
Experiencing the Lamrim with Emily Hsu Thursdays, 7:00pm – 8:30pm September 11, 2014 – April 30, 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: A mere semblance of listening, study, and understanding 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' Karin Valham, Lam-Rim Outlines, available from the FPMT shop , or from buddhanet.net