ACI Foundation Course 3: Applied Meditation (2019, Arizona)

Good meditation is the foundation of all Buddhist practice, and so the next ACI course presents meditation in the Tsongkapian tradition: a precise, effective science with a solid lineage of many centuries behind it—as opposed to many of the poorly-founded meditation fads that come and go in the world today.In this course we delve into this science, and this lineage, to create a strong foundation for a personal meditation practice that we can apply to our whole life, whether at home or in our professional career.

The centerpiece of this course is a special woodblock carving called “The Stages of Meditation” (seen at left). This poster presents an entire course in meditation and was designed by Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche based upon the teachings of the Indian master Kamalashila (c. 775AD), whose 3-part Stages of Meditation is the foundation of all later schools of meditation in Tibet. The course further relies heavily upon the very detailed presentation of this system given by Je Tsongkapa in his major works on the steps of the path.

A robust meditation practice lies behind every one of the five major topics of Buddhism, especially the Middle Way—which says that enlightenment is only possible through a combination of deep meditation (called shamatha in Sanskrit) and deep insight into emptiness (correctly spelled vipashyana).