G Y A L T O N   R I N P O C H E

A NEW 3-YEAR STUDY & PRACTICE PROGRAMME

"DISCOVERING THE BUDDHA WITHIN"

Level 1: Inner Peace

August 17 – 20, 2023

BUDDHIST CENTER PALPUNG

 

 

Dear Dharma friends!

We are absolutely delighted to let you know that this sacred, new 3-year study and practice programme "Discovering the Buddha Within" will be starting at Palpung Slovenia this coming Summer. We have been waiting for this for a long time!

This sacred transmission is open to everyone.

This is an amazing opportunity to connect with the lineage, deepen the knowledge and understanding of the Buddhist path along with gaining practice experience in a step-by-step manner. There will also be regular practice / follow-up group meetings throughout the year led by a resident Lama Karma Wangmo.

 

PRE-REGISTRATION

Please read the details of the curriculum below and let us know if you are interested in attending this programme, by submitting your pre-registration. This will help us know approximately how many people would attend, and we can plan accordingly.

Once you pre-register, we will keep you updated regarding the programme details, suggested donations. We are doing all we can to make this programme accessible for all who want to attend.

 

ACCOMMODATION

In the Palpung Center we offer accommodation in a dormitory. The number is limited, so we recommend you make a reservation as soon as possible.

There are quite a few private accommodations available in the vicinity of the Center, but it is also possible to set up a tent in the Center.

 

GENERAL INFO ABOUT THE CURRICULUM

Discovering the Buddha Within is an experiential learning program of the Buddha Dharma created as part of the vast vision of Guru Vajradhara His Holiness the 12th Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa.

For many years resident lamas and students of Palpung Dharma Centers worldwide have been requesting His Holiness the 12th Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa to create a step-by- step Dharma study curriculum adapted to foreign students that can be taught and practiced in all Palpung Dharma Centers. Following this request, His Holiness has designed a three-year study curriculum.

The aim of this curriculum is to explain the essence of the Buddha's teachings in an easy and understandable yet comprehensive way. The Buddha Shakyamuni has shown the nature of beings' minds and phenomena on three different levels, each consecutive level being deeper and wider than the former one.

This three-year curriculum follows the Buddha's teachings on the Three Turnings of the Wheel of Dharma, followed by the sacred transmission of four tantras that correspond to three gradual levels of discovering the ultimate nature of the mind and phenomena. The best way for a foreign audience to be able to acquire a proper understanding of these basic three levels of the Buddha Dharma is to approach it through one's own direct experience of various meditations connected to each of the three levels.

For each level, the teacher will explain the view (intellectual understanding), meditation (experiential understanding), and application (applying this understanding to change one's daily habits) of the topics according to Shravakayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. Through these three aspects: View, Meditation, and Action, one will discover the Buddha within oneself.

Meditations that form the core part of each level are divided into two sections: Shamatha (calm abiding) and Vipashyana (advanced insight).

 

TEACHERS OF THE PROGRAMME

The main masters who will teach the Discovering the Buddha Within curriculum are His Eminence Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and other masters including His Eminence Gyalton Rinpoche and senior khenpos of Palpung Sherabling Monastic Seat.

H.E. Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche has accepted to lead the program, which started at Palpung Sherabling Monastic Seat in November 2022.

From 2023, H.E. Gyalton Rinpoche and four venerable senior khenpos will also travel to Palpung monasteries and Dharma Centers worldwide each year to teach this curriculum. (For Slovenia the teacher who will teach here this year is H.E. Gyalton Rinpoche.)

Following the annual teachings, resident Lamas from each centre will be offering follow ups with regular practice gatherings at each Palpung Centre.

After receiving the teachings by any of the appointed teachers and for a proper follow up of this study curriculum, each student will be granted a username and password to access an online study platform, via which they will be able to send questions to the khenpos.

 

DETAILED CURRICULUM

The Discovering the Buddha Within curriculum consists of three levels (3 years):

1. Inner Peace

2. Awakened Heart

3. Original Purity

 

LEVEL 1, INNER PEACE:

Focuses on calming the mind and developing insight and wisdom through some simple yet profound study, meditations, and contemplations derived from the Shravakayana teachings of the Buddha.

Awareness meditations and precise knowledge will allow students to discover inner peace, accept and let go of worldly concerns without grasping at or rejecting them, and develop a stable aspiration for genuine freedom.

Guided meditations and question-and-answer sessions will help students learn how to start a daily meditation practice at home.

In this level students will:

1. Learn the essence of meditation

• Develop and nurture awareness and inner peace using breath, body, feelings, thoughts, emotions, and phenomena as a support for meditation.

2. Learn the basics of Buddhism through knowledge and advanced insight meditation

• Understand the shortcomings of one's life and the world, the origins and cessation of suffering, and the means to reach that cessation, along with understanding refuge -the starting point of the path to an everlasting state of well-being, rich with innate goodness and radiant pure qualities.

• Develop advanced insight meditation mainly based on experiential observation of the natural flow of everything as being impermanent.

 

LEVEL 2, AWAKENED HEART:

Through meditations on loving kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity, and so forth, students will learn to awaken their hearts and discover their innate goodness, further enriching the calm state of mind and deepening their meditation through recognition of emptiness, which is the essence of the Mahayana.

In this level students will:

1. Discover their inner goodness

•             By discovering and cultivating love, compassion, appreciation or joy, and equanimity.

•             By developing their potential through six perfect states of mind, the six paramitas.

•             By training their mind to transform defilements into love and compassion.

2. Widen their motivation and outlook and gain deeper insight

•             By learning about and meditating on bodhicitta, the awakening mind.

•             By gaining an advanced insight that understands selflessness through direct experience.

 

LEVEL 3, ORIGINAL PURITY:

Meditations connected with buddha nature, which is the basis of Vajrayana, the last of Buddha's teachings, will allow students to discover their enlightened nature, the primordial purity of the mind and the universe, and to experience pure perception of everyone and everything.

In this level students will:

1. Discover the primordial purity of their own mind and the universe

•             By discovering through advanced insight their own buddha nature and the original purity of everything.

2. Learn how to reveal that purity

•             By appreciating and developing gratitude for one's own enlightened mind, by meditating on guru yoga, and by learning about creation and completion stage meditations according to the Vajrayana.

 

For more information feel free to contact us on info@palpung.si. 

You Are Cordially Invited!

Palpung Slovenia