Training for Buddhahood

If you want to become an Olympic athlete, you train your body. You find out how your body works, how it can be trained, and what to expect as you keep up your training schedule. And you would need to know what not to do.

What if you want to train your mind? How do you join the ranks of the great spiritual teachers, yogis and saints? Is it really possible for an ordinary person to become fully enlightened? All these questions, and more, are answered in the lam rim teachings.

Literally, lam rim means a graduated path to enlightenment – it is a training manual, helping us achieve the utmost in human potential, no less than becoming a buddha. Like any other training manual, it has exercises for beginners and advanced practitioners, for people starting from different levels and with different motivations. There are brief outlines and lengthy details. And just as an athlete begins to experience benefits from the training long before running for Olympic gold, so do we also experience benefits from this spiritual training, long before achieving the “gold” of Buddhahood. Lam rim is a training manual for Dharma practice, and its goal is enlightenment.

The lam rim shows us how to move from being within the realities of our individual suffering to going completely beyond it. We do this not by suppressing our feelings and turning away from life, but by learning how to embrace our very humanity. And through embracing our own humanity and its poignant mix of suffering and joy, we also come to feel both profound grief that others suffer even more deeply, and great joy when we see their suffering released, and their own humanity blossom. It is this poignant mix of grief and joy, of compassion and loving kindness, which gives meaning to our lives.

The lam rim teaches us how to find what we intuitively know is possible -- a life which is meaningful and satisfying. As such, it is a profound psychology and philosophy for living and dying. Have you ever wondered why some children are geniuses, or angry from birth, or incredibly kind? The lam rim explains it all – how we create imprints on the mind, and how this has been happening for countless lifetimes.