Alan Wallace leads us in a guided meditation related to Avalokiteshvara’s teachings in our root text, Buddhahood Without Meditation, in which we try to find the “I” in appearances.

This meditation was originally recorded in association with the third video in the Watch section above.

Sera Khandro establishes the necessary motivation and conduct for receiving teachings such as Buddhahood Without Meditation; selected from Volume 2 of Düdjom Lingpa’s Visions of the Great Perfection.

This lesson’s reading is from the great female tertön Sera Khandro, and establishes the necessary motivation and conduct for receiving Dzogchen teachings. This text can also be found in Buddhahood Without Meditation.

Lama Alan Wallace discusses the practice and benefits of mindfulness of breathing, showing us its ability to help us cultivate greater freedom and drawing on the Buddha’s own teachings on the practice.

In this video, Ven. Thubten Chodron discusses the Buddha’s life story as well as how the Dharma, his teachings, initially spread through Asia. You can follow along as she reads from Buddhism: One Teacher, Many Traditions starting on page 1.

Robert Thurman begins to explore the tantric teachings and helps us understand why tantra is considered an accelerated path to buddhahood. We learn about how the buddhas Shakyamuni and Vajradhara are related, explore the three types of course, subtle, and supersubtle planes, and learn about the eight levels of dissolution that take place in the bardo.

Alan Wallace comments on the final pages of The Foolish Dharma of an Idiot Clothed in Mud and Feathers, taking us through Düdjom Lingpa’s song of experience. Read along in the excerpt below or on page 156 of the PDF of the root text found in Lesson 1, or in your copy of Heart of the Great Perfection.

This is called illumination by primordial consciousness of the face of the Great Perfection of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa.

All modification, alteration, hope, fear, doubt, negation, affirmation, grasping, exertion, investigation, and analysis are imputed by the intellect, and the intellect is not ultimate. The ultimate transcends the intellect, so you must know this critical point. When you are utterly settled, you may fall into error, and while you are present in the aspect of emptiness, thoughts may become hidden, beyond the scope of the creative expressions of pristine awareness. In this case, I say that thoughts become ethically neutral in the boundary between the mind and pristine awareness. Not veering away from the nature of existence of the Great Perfection of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa is a sublime and utterly crucial point. With it, all gods and demons and all of saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are liberated within themselves, with no distinction of good and bad. (more…)

Alan Wallace takes us through Düdjom Lingpa’s teachings on the guru, viras and dakinis, and all beings. You can follow along in the excerpt from the text below, or on page 143 of the PDF of the root text (found in lesson 1) or your copy of Heart of the Great Perfection, Vol 1.

Having established those teachings as your foundation, with constant devotion offer prayers of supplication to your guru. Outwardly, imagine your guru on the crown of your head. Inwardly, visualize your own body as the guru. Secretly, again and again transfer your own vital energies, mind, and consciousness, and nondually merge them with the non conceptual primordial consciousness of your guru’s mind. This is the first point.

With devotion and affection, visualize your companions as being of the nature of vīras and ḍākinīs, and see the fine qualities of your guru and Dharma siblings rather than looking at their faults. This is the second point. (more…)