FPMT Online Learning Center

Buddhist Meditation 101 is an introductory course to Buddhist meditation. It is suitable for people encountering both meditation and Buddhism for the first time, as well as for people who have done some meditation in other traditions but would like to know more about how meditation is practiced in the Tibetan Buddhism. It provides an overview of meditation in general and specific meditation techniques including breathing, mindfulness, visualization, and analytical meditations. It explains what kinds of skills are developed in meditation and how to apply them in daily life.

The course is taught by Ven. Connie Miller, a senior American teacher of Tibetan Buddhism known for her accessible teaching style.

Buddhism in a Nutshell is an FPMT introductory course that provides an overview of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and practice. It is suitable for people encountering Buddhism for the first time, as well as for people who have heard or read some Buddhist teachings but would like a more structured approach to understanding the path to enlightenment as taught by Shakyamuni Buddha. It consists of five sessions that cover topics including the life of Shakyamuni Buddha, the four noble truths, and the three principal aspects of the path to enlightenment—renunciation, bodhichitta, and the right view of emptiness. The course also provides a brief presentation of meditation and five guided meditations suitable for beginners. The course book, Buddhism in a Nutshell: Essentials for Practice and Study, includes teachings by Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Lama Thubten Yeshe. The course is taught by Ven. Amy Miller, a senior American teacher of Tibetan Buddhism known for her accessible teaching style.

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

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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 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.

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.”