CURRICULUM

Bodhisattva Vow & Study

The bodhisattva vow is the basis of the Mahayana Path. In taking and maintaining the Bodhisattva vow we acknowledge our inseparability with all beings. We extend our loving kindness, compassion and efforts on their behalf as well as our own. We vow to fully awaken in order to liberate all sentient beings. Shantideva said that our bodhisattva vow is constantly being compromised by our habitual patterns of self-centeredness and delusion. As aspiring bodhisattvas, we continually open our hearts to ourselves and others, train our mind through meditation, and engage in actions that benefit others.

Mahayana Meditation Practice

• Niguma’s Extraordinary Shamatha

  • This practice develops and enhances our ability to rest in calm abiding through use of the 5 elements and the 5 female buddhas.

• Tonglen

  • Tonglen (taking and sending) is the primary bodhisattva meditation practice on the Vajrayana path. One develops compassion for the suffering of oneself and others. This suffering is liberated into awakened love, awakened mind, and healing energy.

  • In the Shangpa lineage there is a special form of Tonglen practice that comes from Niguma which serves to transform the way we experience and interact with our fellow sentient beings and greatly enhances our capacity to experience our buddha nature.

Lojong (Mind Training)

Lojong (mind training) are a collection of teachings that Atisha received from Serlingpa in present-day Indonesia and brought them to India and Tibet in the 11th Century. These teachings that help us to open our hearts and untrain ourselves from the tendency to think of ourselves before and above others and to then engage in actions that benefit others.

• Seven Point Mind Training - Seven Point Mind Training are Geshe Chekawa’s organization of Atisha’s mind training teachings into seven points that guide us in understanding, implementing, and committing to Atisha’s teachings.

• Lojong Slogans - These are 59 phrases composed by Atisha and compiled by Geshe Chekawa in his Seven Point Mind Training that we work with that help us to understand the extent of the bodhisattva path and to focus and engage in conduct that benefits others.

• 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva

  • 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva is a core text of the bodhisattva path written by Gyalse Tokme Zangpo in 14th Century Tibet.

  • These are 37 different statements/practices that help us to understand the extent of the bodhisattva path and to focus and engage our bodhisattva conduct

5 Buddha Families

The 5 Buddha Families are a representation of 5 ways wisdom manifests. We explore the different characteristics of these 5 energies as means to understand that the entirety of our ordinary experience is an obscured experience of what is actually awakened wisdom. The teaching of the 5 Buddha Families is a way for us to understand our potential and recognize the wisdom that lies dormant within the difficult emotions of delusion, anger, pride, desire, and jealousy. We learn that when we liberate the contracted energy of emotions we experience boundless clarity, spaciousness, equanimity, discernment, and capacity to act.

Two Truths

The Two Truths teaching makes it possible for us to recognize and experience the freedom that arises when we are not subject to being tossed about each wave of life experience. This teaching distinguishes between conventional/relative truth, the way things appear to be, and the genuine/ultimate truth, the way things truly are. An understanding of the simultaneity of the Two Truths allows us to fully embrace, engage with and experience this human life with all its joys and sorrows while simultaneously recognizing it all to be the illusory play of awakened mind, wisdom and compassion. 

Complete and Perfect Purity

In the Prajnaparamita Sutra, we learn that our desire for the pleasant, our aversion to the unpleasant, and our bewilderment regarding the neutral, as well as all afflictions are, in actuality, perfectly pure. We learn that the entirety of all phenomena is perfectly pure. All that we experience arises from our mind and when directly looked at, we recognize that our mind is none other than Awakened Mind, emptiness and clarity inseparable. The complete and perfect purity teachings and practice help us to untrain ourselves from the habit of viewing our lives through the lense of relative truth and habituate ourselves to an awakened perspective.

Other Topics Include:

• Chandrakirti, 7th Century Madhyamaka Scholar

• 37 Factors of Enlightenment

• Death and Dying

• Dohas: The Inspired Poetry of Lineage Masters

• Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind to the Dharma

Vajrayana Meditation Practice

• Green Tara in depth

  • Green Tara is a Vajrayana practice that engages our body, speech, and mind through chanting, mudras, visualization, mantra, and meditation.

  • Green Tara's primary activity is one of protection from fear and danger, and she is committed to responding swiftly the moment that we call upon her.

  • Green Tara, and all Vajrayana practice, transforms our distorted view of self, others, and all of our human experience and helps us to recognize our innate radiant, compassionate nature and that of others.

  • Green Tara practice deepens our experience of the divine feminine while simultaneously awakening the quality of compassion that is innate to our being, yet often obscured.

• Chenrezig in depth

  • Chenrezig is a Vajrayana practice that engages our body, speech, and mind through chanting, mudras, visualization, mantra, and meditation.

  • Chenrezig is the embodiment of awakened love and compassion.

  • Chenrezig, and all Vajrayana practice, transforms our distorted view of self, others, and all of our human experience and helps us to recognize our innate radiant, compassionate nature and that of others.