Transcripts and video excerpts
Video 11. A Summary of the Advice
(duration: 4 minutes)
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Then the main practice is meditation on the lamrim.
1) You should study one lamrim. There are many lamrims now in English, like Lama Tsongkhapa's Great Lamrim. Now, there is Geshe Sopa’s commentary in [five] books, Geshe Sopa’s commentary. Then there is the Middle Lamrim, which is studied in the Basic Program, and then Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand. There are many other lamrims. One lamrim, Liberation in the Palm or Middle Lamrim, study it well, read it a few times. Study it a few times from beginning to end.
2) Then you do effortful meditation. Divide the year up: one part of the [year] for guru devotion, one part of the [year] for renunciation, one part of the [year] for bodhichitta, one part of the [year] for right view. You divide the whole year. You can do like that, or even [divide it] into two years or three years.
3) After that, you develop effortless meditation. Develop guru devotion until you have the stable realization. No matter how many days, weeks, months, or years it takes, do that until you get the stable realization. The other ones are the graduated path of the lower capable being; train the mind in that until you gain a stable realization of no attachment to this life's pleasures and the main thing is the next life’s rebirth or happiness, or ultimate happiness, to be free from the oceans of samsaric sufferings, or enlightenment. Then after that train the mind… You can do two or three meditations a day; if you can’t do two, then at least do one.
Then after that train the mind in the graduated path of the middle capable being. You can do two [meditations a day]: [a meditation on the graduated path of the middle capable being] and then bodhichitta. If not, then do one [meditation a day]. Then after you achieve [the graduated path of the middle capable being], then put the main effort into bodhichitta, for no matter how many months or years it takes to have a stable realization. Then also you can do a little bit of meditation on emptiness every day by using different quotations or even the Heart Sutra.
Depending on how many imprints you left [on the mind] in past lives, depending on how much you studied and how much you listened to teachings, depending on that, then you get realizations and understandings in this life. So anyway, that is the basis.
After you actualize bodhichitta then you do meditation mainly on tantra, the generation and completion stage; you do that just to get the imprint, but the main thing is the generation stage.