The teachings on the lamrim show you how to make your life most meaningful, most fruitful, most happy and most beneficial for every single sentient being.

Welcome to the journey to enlightenment!

The purpose of your life is to benefit other sentient beings and the greatest benefit you can offer them is to liberate them from their suffering and its causes. In order to do that you need to attain enlightenment. And to do that you need to achieve the lamrim, the graduated path to enlightenment.

To make that possible, you have to (1) purify the negative karma and defilements you have collected over your beginningless rebirths (see chapters 14 and 15) and (2) accumulate extensive merit (see chapters 14 through 21).

These are the conditions necessary for you to actualize the path.

Read and study every day

Life is like last night’s dream. Don’t hold on to it as too solid or inherently existent. The following advice on practice is given with the intention of making your life—this most precious human life that you have received just this once—as meaningful as possible. In the past, you have sacrificed your life and died numberless times creating the cause of suffering in samsara but have almost never sacrificed your life for the sake of Dharma, especially trying to bring other sentient beings to enlightenment. So, do as much as you can of what follows. And don’t worry—be happy!

There are many texts to read and meditate on: reading them mindfully, slowly, becomes meditation. For example, there is Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, or The Essential Nectar, or Lama Tsongkhapa’s Middle Length Lamrim, or his Lamrim Chenmo. They contain the essence of the entire Buddhadharma. For a list of books, see chapter 22.

Even if there is no one to ask in prison to clarify things for you, the more you read the books, slowly, slowly, the more the understanding will come. Because of positive imprints in your mind from having met the Dharma in past lives, realizations will come.

The teachings on the lamrim show how to make your life most meaningful, most fruitful, most happy and most beneficial for every single sentient being. What ordinary people in the world think of as happiness is not pure happiness. It is suffering, but it is called happiness. As you read through the lamrim you will learn about what real happiness is and the different levels of happiness.

The lamrim is what you need to actualize, no matter how long it takes. Please put your effort into that.

The lamrim meditations

First, read and study the complete lamrim—any of the above books or those in chapter 22—from beginning to end at least three times.

Then, for effortful experience of the lamrim, please spend three months, more or less, meditating on each of the topics in the four levels of practice, as listed below.

Go through the subjects slowly, meditating every day. Whatever meditation you did in the morning, continue with that mind during the day—in this way your mind is in the lamrim all day.

Then, for effortless realization, keep circling through the topics and spending about three months on each until you get stable realizations. Keep doing this, no matter how many months or years it takes, until you have realizations of the essential points of the four levels of practice.

Meditate on each topic in the context of guru yoga

As I mentioned above, for success in your practice of the lamrim, you need to (1) purify the defilements and obstacles and (2) accumulate the necessary conditions, the merits.

And not only that: you also need to (3) receive the blessings of the guru in your heart. Without this, it is difficult to transform your mind. You can accomplish it by making requesting prayers to the guru, who is inseparable from all the buddhas, by practicing a guru yoga meditation.

On the basis of a guru yoga practice every morning and every evening you then meditate on the lamrim topics listed below. You can use Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga, for example; I have written a commentary on it. Or you could use other practices, such as Guru Shakyamuni Daily Meditation, a small booklet I put together. See chapter 22 for other recommendations.

Having done the guru yoga practice in the morning, you don’t have to repeat the whole prayer again in the evening; you just visualize the guru, take refuge and generate bodhicitta, then practice whichever lamrim meditation you are up to.

THE FOUR LEVELS OF PRACTICE

Preliminary practice

1. Guru devotion

Meditate on guru devotion by following the outlines in the lamrim book that you choose to use, as mentioned above. The length of your session is up to you. The main thing is to do one every day, whether it is short or long—it could be fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, or one hour—whatever you like.

Sign of success: Train your mind in guru devotion, not only for a few days or hours, not even a few months or years, not even until you have an experience, but until the realization is stable: that all the buddhas are the guru and all the gurus are the buddhas. You realize this all the time from the bottom of your heart, that they are all one being, but with different names.

Graduated path of the lower capable being

2. Renunciation of this life

• perfect human rebirth
• death and impermanence
• the suffering of the lower realms
• refuge in the Three Rare Sublime Ones
• karma

You don’t have to finish all the subjects in one session. Until you achieve the realizations—in other words when you have a total change in your mind—carry on with the meditations.

Meditate especially on impermanence and death. You should meditate mainly on impermanence and death—it helps you to achieve all the other realizations. Normally we think this life’s happiness is the most important thing, that future lives, liberation from samsara and enlightenment are not important.

Meditating on death and impermanence brings a total change of mind. Then, whatever happens, whether you are inside or outside that building you are in, the prison, whether there are unfavorable or favorable conditions, it doesn’t matter, because in your heart you see that this life is very short.

We always think only of this life. When you don’t have renunciation of this life, the first realization of the lamrim, you experience the eight worldly dharmas:

• when there is comfort you experience the suffering of attachment, and
• when there is discomfort you are unhappy;
• when you have a good reputation there is the suffering of attachment, and
• when you have a bad reputation you are unhappy;
• when you have material things you experience the suffering of attachment, and
• when you don’t have material things you are unhappy;
• when you are praised there is there is the suffering of attachment, and
• when you are criticized you are unhappy.

Our lives are like this: either we feel down when we meet undesirable things or we feel up when we encounter desirable things. There is no stability. Life is always emotional, with negative emotions and delusions.

We must think of our future lives. For most of our life we seek the happiness of this life; we never think about the happiness of future lives. Here, the realization is to totally change that so that our attitude is to mainly seek the happiness of future lives—which, of course, makes us create the causes for it, which is to practice virtue. Then the happiness of this life is unimportant.

Renunciation of this life is the first lamrim realization. It is the foundation of renunciation of future lives’ samsara, the graduated path of the middle capable being, the next step.

Sign of success: You should continue the meditations from the perfect human rebirth up to karma, especially impermanence and death, until your mind has incredible peace, happiness, satisfaction and contentment; that whatever happens nothing bothers you.

The graduated path of the middle capable being

3. Renunciation of the next life

Next, meditate on the sufferings of all of samsara:

• the general sufferings of samsara and
• the particular suffering of each realm.

And you should also contemplate the evolution of samsara as explained in

• the twelve dependent-related links.

Continue these meditations until you have the realization of renunciation of samsara; until you see only suffering everywhere, not just in the lower realms but in the upper realms as well: the desire realm, form realm and formless realm.

Think that being in any of those realms is like being in the center of a fire, like being in a poisonous snake’s nest, like being in a thorn bush. In a thorn bush, wherever you step, thorns go into your flesh. There is only pain. There is no happiness even for one second while in the middle of a thorn bush.

Gain a stable realization of this, not just for a few hours or days. Meditate on how the whole of samsara is in the nature of suffering—the desire realm, including even the devas, besides human beings; the form realm; the formless realm—until you no longer have the slightest attraction to any of it.

Sign of success: When you have total detachment from samsara and wish to achieve liberation from samsara continuously, day and night, spontaneously—that is the realization.

The graduated path of the higher capable being

4a. Realize bodhicitta

There are numberless universes and numberless beings. Realize how all sentient beings are suffering in samsara, just like us, and constantly creating the causes for more suffering. It is unbearable. Feel unbearable compassion for all of them, wishing that they could be free from suffering. Then develop the universal responsibility, the special attitude of wanting to free all sentient beings from suffering and its causes forever, by yourself, alone.

As a result, one generates bodhicitta, which is the wish to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings. This combines the two thoughts of (1) wishing to liberate all sentient beings and (2) wishing to achieve enlightenment. Then you have entered the path to enlightenment.

When you have bodhicitta, these thoughts come naturally all the time (except when you are in equipoise meditation on emptiness). You experience the wish to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings, with no exceptions, spontaneously, from your heart.

There are two techniques for training the mind in bodhicitta, according to Asanga, through Lama Atisha. One is the seven techniques of Mahayana cause and effect and the other is equalizing oneself and others and then exchanging oneself for others. In the second method, you meditate on the shortcomings of the self-cherishing thought and the benefits of cherishing others. The mind totally changes from cherishing oneself to cherishing others. Train the mind in bodhicitta with either method.

Sign of success: When you have the realization of bodhicitta you are like a mother whose beloved child has fallen into a fire. Even though other people can help, she wants to go into the fire herself to rescue her child. She can’t stand even for a second that her child has fallen into the fire. She has unbearable compassion and must take the child out of the fire by herself, alone. She goes there, preparing everything, whatever equipment she needs.

This is the equivalent of getting enlightened: first you get enlightened, then you go and help. Whatever she is doing—eating, walking, whatever—in her heart she is constantly getting ready to run to rescue the child who has fallen into the fire.

This bodhicitta is so powerful. Whenever you see a sentient being, the thought to help them, to liberate them from suffering and its causes, by yourself alone, arises spontaneously, without any effort.

These are the signs of the realization of bodhicitta. You have to continue meditating until it is stable.

4b. Realize emptiness

Everything is merely labeled. As I discussed in chapter 11, everything that exists is merely labeled by the mind, relating to the base. Therefore, nothing exists from its own side. Everything is empty, including the I, the self. Everything exists but is empty; while it is empty it exists in mere name. This is the truth, as we discussed.

But this truth is not seen; this truth is always there but we are not able to see it. For most people this truth doesn’t exist; for them, this truth, which is there and is always functioning, doesn’t exist.

I, action and object all appear as not merely labeled by the mind. In fact, this is false I, false action and false object. But the world truly believes one hundred percent that that which is false actually exists, that it is true. You can now see this.

Believing in the truly existent self is the root of samsara, from which all hell beings, hungry ghosts, animals, humans, gods and demi-gods come. Holding the I as real, while it is not, from beginningless rebirths—this ignorance creates the entire hallucination, the real hell, real enlightenment, real samsara, real nirvana, real happiness and real problems in everyday life.

I’m not saying there is no samara, no nirvana, no hell, no enlightenment: they do exist, but in mere name. While there is an I, that which performs the function of abandoning suffering and achieving happiness, it exists by being merely imputed by the mind.

But we believe there is an I that is not merely labeled by the mind, that exists from its own side, which can be found inside the body or on the aggregates. We believe one hundred percent that this non-existent I exists, and we hold onto it.

This hallucination is the root of all our superstitions and delusions, such as attachment and anger, as well as all the rest of the sufferings, including the cycle of death and rebirth and all the realms of existence.

Meditate on emptiness. To realize emptiness, do the four-point analysis; or meditate on the king of logic, dependent arising: that the I is not truly existent because it is dependent arising. These are explained in the lamrim books (see chapter 22).

Or, on the basis of the first part of the mahamudra meditation—see later in this chapter—you can now go to the second part in which you look for the object to be refuted, the self-existent I; you investigate how you feel the I. And from that you meditate on the emptiness of that I. That’s the mahamudra technique. In other words, while you are looking at the mind, you can now check on the one who is meditating: how you are seeing the I, how it seems to exist and whether you can find it or not. See chapter 22 for books to read about mahamudra.

Read verses on emptiness. There are many different lamrim prayers, such as the Foundation of All Good Qualities, which include sections on emptiness. In Guru Puja there are also two or three verses on emptiness. Or you can recite the Panchen Lama’s mahamudra text in Lama Yeshe’s commentary Mahamudra: How to Discover Our True Nature and meditate on that. See chapter 22.

Recite sutras related to emptiness. It is extremely good to plant the seed of the realization of emptiness by reciting the Heart Sutra, or the Diamond Cutter Sutra (see chapter 22), texts cherished by Buddha; both are a part of the precious Prajnaparamita literature. If they’re recited every day and relied on, for sure things can change. Because their subject matter is emptiness, reciting them is incredibly powerful purification. Each reading leaves a positive imprint in your mind for realizing emptiness, bringing you closer to liberation and enlightenment.

It’s like an atomic bomb on negativity. Reading any teaching on emptiness is unbelievable purification, like an atomic bomb. You purify negative karma not just to avoid problems like prison or problems of life but, the main thing, to be free from samsara, all the delusions and karma.

Therefore, it is extremely important to meditate on emptiness every day, or simply to recite some teachings on emptiness, even for five minutes. Even if you don’t know what emptiness means, merely reciting the words plants the seed to realize emptiness. And if you read the teachings without distraction you will plant even more seeds.

Sooner or later, in the future, without taking many lifetimes, you will be able to easily actualize emptiness. That is the main weapon to cut the root of all suffering, to liberate yourself from samsara.

When you’ve realized emptiness, then you can show others, reveal teachings on emptiness to others. And then you are able to liberate them from the oceans of samsara’s suffering and its causes and bring them to enlightenment.

At least recite a lamrim prayer every day

At the very least, if you cannot find the time for the in-depth approach above, do a direct meditation on the lamrim every day by reading one lamrim prayer straight through, mindfully, slowly, going over the meaning, such as the Foundation of All Good Qualities, the Three Principles of the Path, or Hymns of Experience. Or you can read and meditate on the long version of Calling the Guru from Afar. See a list of lamrim prayers in chapter 22.

And, of course, meditate with a bodhicitta motivation

Whatever you do every day, including meditating on lamrim, as well as eating, walking, sleeping, doing a job, whatever, do it with a bodhicitta motivation. This makes your life the best, most fruitful, most meaningful and most beneficial for all sentient beings—which means it is also most beneficial for you. With a bodhicitta motivation, whatever you do becomes the purest Dharma and, especially, the cause of enlightenment. See chapter 10.

It’s necessary to follow the correct instructions

Of course, realizations won’t come for those who don’t know the path or who don’t practice it correctly according to the instructions. This is why it is so important to learn the Buddhadharma well, by reading the correct Dharma books; then you won’t be confused. As I mentioned, there is a list of books in chapter 22.

If you have been practicing for a long time but no change is happening in your mind, this is because you are making mistakes and not rectifying them. This blocks attainments.

Even if you practice for billions of years, because of a lack of understanding of the whole path and not practicing correctly, no realizations will ever come. This is very important to recognize, to remember.

Some simple meditations to help you calm the mind before you do your lamrim meditations

(1) Watch the breath: Sometimes your mind might be out of control. Or perhaps you’ve used drugs before going to prison and now you can’t get any, so your mind becomes very agitated. Or you might feel paranoid sometimes. When the thoughts are overwhelming, although you can’t stop thinking completely, at least you can calm them down. You can simply breathe out and breathe in, and just sit.

(2) Watch the mind: Another way to stop thinking of the past and the future is mentioned in the mahamudra teachings—it’s the first stage of the meditation. Simply look at the nature of the mind, look at the mind, look at the face of the mind, that’s it. The whole mind is watching the mind, no past or future; just watching the mind, just concentrating on the mind. At that time, when strong desire, anger, attachment, all those delusions arise, you distract the mind from them. The mind becomes neutral.

(3) Another breathing meditation: Another practice is based on the nine-round breathing meditation, which is a preliminary for mahamudra meditation.

When you breathe out, you imagine all the negative emotional thoughts—anger, attachment, the selfish mind and the negative imprints from these—are banished from this world, like dark smoke, disappearing into space.

As you breathe in, you can visualize Chenrezig or Buddha and imagine receiving all their qualities in the form of radiant light—omniscience, power and compassion. This goes into your heart and fills your whole body. Try to feel compassion for all living beings.

Think: “When I am buddha I will have the power and all the knowledge to do perfect work for sentient beings, to help them reach enlightenment.”

You can do any of these meditations a few times, then your mind will be calm and relaxed, ready to do your lamrim meditation.

After the lamrim, you can study philosophy

Once you have read well Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand or any of the other lamrim books and have a feeling for those ideas as the background, it makes much sense to go more deeply in your practice and study the philosophical texts. You could study FPMT’s Basic Program and then the Masters Program. Contact Liberation Prison Project and they can connect you with the centers that teach them.

Eventually you can practice tantra

Before you practice tantra, you must have a realization of bodhicitta. And in order to have bodhicitta, which is the practice of the graduated path of the higher capable being, you need a realization of the renunciation of samara, which is the practice of the graduated path of the middle capable being. And in order to have that, you must have a realization of the renunciation of this life, which is the practice of the graduated path of the lower capable being.

Then you will be qualified to enter the path of tantra. For your quickest enlightenment and to be able to enlighten sentient beings most quickly, you need a deity of Highest Yoga Tantra to practice, and for this you need to receive a great initiation. Then you are permitted to practice, to receive the commentary, to practice the path of that deity and to do the retreat.

Whichever is your deity, practice the generation stage. You can try to achieve one-pointed concentration, calm abiding, as is explained in the generation stage commentaries. On the basis of that there is a gross and a subtle meditation, and later you can also practice the Six Yogas of Naropa in the completion stage.

Before you go to bed, make strong prayers to the Buddha, or Tara, to show you which deity you should practice for your quickest enlightenment, so that you can enlighten sentient beings quickly. You can ask for some indication in your dreams.

You should practice this deity day and night. Then, through this practice, you actually become the deity—which means enlightenment: your body, speech and mind become the deity’s body, speech and mind—and then through this, you can enlighten all sentient beings. Through this practice, you bring all sentient beings to this deity’s enlightenment. You are able to free all beings from the ocean of samsaric sufferings and bring them to enlightenment.

REMEMBER

• The lamrim presents the entire path to enlightenment from A to Z.
• First contemplate guru devotion.
• Motivate yourself to practice by thinking about death and impermanence.
• Give up attachment to this life.
• Give up attachment to future lives.
• Realize bodhicitta.
• Realize emptiness.
• Read and study and meditate every day.