Living in the Path

Living in the PathLiving in the Path is an FPMT education program drawn from the unique teachings of Lama Zopa Rinpoche, one of the founders of the FPMT. It consists of transcripts and video clips of teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. These are supplemented by additional resources, such as guidelines for study and meditation along with daily mindfulness practices and a service practice, based on Rinpoche’s teachings. These are intended to help students gain a deeper understanding of and insight into the topics. Living in the Path is a constantly evolving program in that new modules are created based on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s teachings.

This program is ideal for anyone who wishes to deepen their personal practice and develop the realizations of the path to enlightenment by relying on Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s heart advice and teachings. However, as the teachings often assume familiarity with the lamrim (the stages of the path), participants are recommended to have previously received teachings in this Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

Individual modules of this online program can be obtained from The Foundation Store. You can also enjoy complimentary access to full FPMT online study programs by becoming a Friend of FPMT supporter. Instructions for creating a new user account and using this FPMT Online Learning Center site can be found in the Getting Started Guide

Living in the Path features standalone modules organized within the following topics:

TAKING THE ESSENCE: Essential advice for making a perfect human life meaningful in every moment (all these modules are complimentary)

PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS: Why and how to do certain prayers and practices (all these modules are complimentary)

REALIZING THE LAMRIM: Teachings on the lamrim topics and explanations of lamrim texts

All modules consist of video excerpts and lightly edited transcripts of teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche together with many additional resources.

Modules included in "Realizing the Lamrim" and some modules of "Practice Instructions" also provide points for reflection and guidelines for meditations, mindfulness practices, and a service practice, to help students gain a deeper understanding of and insight into the topics. Having completed the requirements for these modules, students qualify to receive a Certificate of Achievement.

Some of the "Realizing the Lamrim" modules require enrollment keys which are available for free as a benefit of becoming a Friend of FPMT at the Dharma Supporter level or higher. Alternatively, individual enrollment keys can be obtained from the Foundation Store.

An online forum provides a place to post questions and comments to fellow students and a Living in the Path facilitator.


Instructions for creating a user account and using the site can be found in the Getting Started Guide. Please contact the Site Administrator with any questions or comments.


 

Transforming a Suffering Life into Happiness

课程类别Taking the Essence

In this module, Lama Zopa Rinpoche explains three practices:

  • The Method to Transform a Suffering Life into Happiness (Including Enlightenment): specifically compiled by Lama Zopa Rinpoche as a way for his students to start their day with bodhichitta
  • Blessing the Speech: to increase the power of speech and prevent its power from being taken away by idle talk and black foods
  • Daily Mantras: the recitation of various mantras for specific purposes

Bodhichitta Mindfulness

课程类别Taking the Essence

Based on the Sutra of the Clouds of the Sublime Rare Ones taught by the Buddha and supplemented by his own additions, Lama Zopa Rinpoche presents specific mindfulness practices for taking the essence of every moment of our precious human life by keeping bodhichitta present when doing all our normal daily activities, such as waking up, going to the bathroom, dressing, and so on. This module also includes extensive bodhichitta practices to do when eating, bathing, and going to sleep, as well as a tonglen mindfulness practice.

The Eight Mahayana Precepts

课程类别Taking the Essence

In this module of Living in the Path, Lama Zopa Rinpoche inspires us to make our life meaningful - to take its essence - by taking and keeping the eight Mahayana precepts for one day. If you have never received the lineage of the precepts from a master/teacher, Rinpoche gives special permission to receive it by repeating the words of the ritual after him while watching the video of the precept ceremony. 

Making Offerings

课程类别Taking the Essence

This module of Living the Path contains a compilation of various teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche on how to take the essence of a precious human life by creating "the limitless skies of benefits" that come from making various types of offerings.

Offering Food and Drink

课程类别Taking the Essence

Lama Zopa Rinpoche places great importance on taking every opportunity of our perfect human life to create the causes of enlightenment, including every time we eat and drink. This module of Living in the Path contains practices for offering food and drinks as well as a compilation of teachings on different ways of offering them.

The Refuge and Bodhichitta Verse

课程类别Practice Instructions

This module contains Lama Zopa Rinpoche's explanations of the verse for taking refuge and generating bodhichitta that is commonly recited at the beginning of teaching sessions and many practices. Lama Zopa Rinpoche unpacks each word of these deceptively simple four lines to reveal their great profundity and tells us how to meditate on the whole path to enlightenment while reciting it.

The Seven-Limb Prayer

课程类别Practice Instructions

The Seven-Limb Prayer is found in, and is the basis of, many practice texts, including The King of Prayers and Lama Chopa. This powerful method was taught by the Buddha as a means to accumulate merit and purify negativities, whereby we create the cause to experience every happiness up to enlightenment. In this module, Lama Zopa Rinpoche teaches the benefits of each limb (Prostration, Offering, Confession, Rejoicing, Requesting to Remain, Requesting to Turn the Wheel of Dharma, and Dedication) and how to practice them in the most effective way.

Advice for Realizing the Lamrim

课程类别All Topics

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. 

Atisha's Light of the Path to Enlightenment

课程类别All Topics

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.

Guru is Buddha

课程类别Guru Devotion

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.

The Happiness of Dharma

课程类别Perfect Human Rebirth

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.

Cutting the Concept of Permanence

课程类别Death-Impermanence

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 is Going To Happen to You

课程类别Death-Impermanence

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.”

Everything Comes From the Mind

课程类别Karma

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.

The Secret of the Mind

课程类别Karma

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:

Any person who doesn’t know
The secret of the mind, the supreme principal of Dharma,
Even if desiring to achieve happiness and destroy suffering,
Will wander [in samsara], meaninglessly.

Abandon Stretching the Legs

课程类别Nature of Samsara

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.

Transforming Kaka into Gold

课程类别Lojong - Mind Training

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). 

Bringing Emptiness to Life

课程类别Emptiness

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. 

Are You Sitting on Your I?

课程类别Emptiness

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! 

Smashing the Delusions

课程类别Emptiness

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. 

Living in the Path Forum

课程类别Discussion and Technical Support Forums