In eleven short videos—extracted from the Light of the Path Retreat 2014—Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains step-by-step and very clearly what we need to do to achieve the realizations of the lamrim. A short guide and other helpful materials based on Rinpoche's teachings have been compiled to help put this advice into practice. 

In this module of Living in the Path, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gives a commentary to Atisha’s Light of the Path to Enlightenment during a series of retreats, called Light of the Path, held in North Carolina, USA. Currently Lama Zopa Rinpoche's  introduction to the text is available. Additional teachings will be added as the commentary progresses.

The foundation of the path to enlightenment is the realization of guru devotion – seeing the guru as a buddha. On the basis of this, one makes offerings, offers service, and, most importantly, obtains advice and follows it. There is no quicker path to enlightenment than this. In this module, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gives pith instructions for how to generate this realization and how to take advantage of the guru-disciple relationship for maximum benefit.

In this module, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gives teachings on the subject of the precious, or perfect, human rebirth and shows us how all our happiness comes from practicing Dharma.

In "Cutting the Concept of Permanence" Lama Zopa Rinpoche points out the big mistake we make in not keeping the reality of death present. Like most reflections on death, these teachings are meant to inspire us to use our precious human life well, right now, while we still have it. But in particular these teachings bring us to develop bodhichitta through engaging in the practice of tong-len, or "taking and giving." It involves imagining that we take others' suffering upon our self-cherishing and give our happiness to them, and is done for the purpose of developing compassion and love. 

This teaching is based on Pabongka Rinpoche’s Heart Spoon (or The Most Essential Advice): Encouragement Through Recollecting Impermanence, perhaps one of the most graphic and heart-wrenching poems on death ever written. It is also a strong admonishment to stop postponing our practice of virtue and use our lives well. As Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, without meditation on impermanence and death, we will continue to wait for the perfect conditions, thinking, “Not now, but later I will practice Dharma.”

In this module of Living in the Path, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains how everything comes from our mind: everything that appears to us comes from our karma (the mental factor intention) as well as from our mind labeling it and our mind projecting the hallucination of true existence on it. The teachings also include a variety of methods to help stop anger and develop patience based on understanding karma and emptiness.

In this module of Living in the Path, Lama Zopa Rinpoche shows us that mind and karma – rather than external conditions – are the source of all our happiness and suffering. Rinpoche bases this teaching on two verses from the Dhammapada taught by the Buddha as well as the following verse from Shantideva's Engaging in the Bodhisattva's Way of Life:

In Abandon Stretching the Legs, Lama Zopa Rinpoche reflects on a short verse that tells us to give up being lazy and thereby "Abandon stretching the legs," to understand the nature of samsara and samsaric pleasures and thereby "Give up entering samsara," and to do as "Vajrasattva, urges again and again" by generating bodhichitta and striving to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.

In this module of Living in the Path, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains the essence of lojong, a Tibetan term often translated as “thought transformation” or “mind training,” which refers to practices for training the mind to use suffering and problems in the path to enlightenment, whereby we become able to transform kaka (suffering and problems) into gold (a method for attaining the lasting  happiness of full enlightenment). 

In this module of Living in the Path, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gives detailed and very clear teachings on the extremely important subject of emptiness, the realization of which is necessary to achieve both liberation from samara and full enlightenment. 

In this module of Living in the Path, Lama Zopa Rinpoche gives extensive teachings on how the I that appears to us and that we believe in is a TOTAL hallucination. It includes a wonderful debate with the Kopan November course teacher on not finding the merely labeled I anywhere. Rinpoche skillfully concludes the debate by saying: 

It doesn’t exist on the aggregates, but it exists down below the aggregates. According to you, your merely labeled I exists on your dingwa, down below your aggregates. So your aggregates are sitting on your merely labeled I! 

In short, you are sitting on your merely labeled I. There is your dingwa, there is your merely labeled I, and then your aggregates are sitting on [your merely labeled I]. So you have a double cushion: one is your dingwa and one is your merely labeled I, and your aggregates are sitting on them! 

In this module of Living in the Path, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains the meaning of an often recited verse: 

A star, a defective view, a flame,
An illusion, a drop of dew, a bubble,
A dream, a flash of lightning, a cloud:
See causative phenomena as such.

This verse, which comes toward the end of the Vajra Cutter Sutra, sets out nine analogies, five for impermanence and four for emptiness. In these teachings Rinpoche urges us to practice mindfulness in our daily lives of how we ourselves and all the objects of our attachment, anger, and ignorance are impermanent and empty of true existence.