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Emptiness

ACI In-Depth Course 1 Teacher Training – Teachings of the Future Buddha: The Uttara Tantra of Maitreya (2003, Arizona)

In this first course of the ACI In-Depth Course Series, we will study the fifth of the five books of Maitreya, the coming Buddha. Centuries ago, the Coming Buddha, Lord Maitreya, taught his disciple Arya Asanga the secret of how to reach Enlightenment. He described to him in detail, the inner nature, which guarantees that each of us can, and will, become enlightened. Each of us carries within us a seed, a potential, a capacity to become a fully enlightened being: A Buddha.
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The Wisdom of Arya Nagarjuna Course 5: Medicine Buddha & Nagarjuna’s Wisdom (2023, Arizona)

In these classes, we will continue our exploration of Nagarjuna’s Wisdom, the most famous book ever written on Buddhism’s most important idea: emptiness, which clarified and became the basis of all subsequent emptiness teachings. Geshe Michael Roach will lead us through an investigation into the flow and the deeper meaning of Nagarjuna’s writings, and how to apply his understanding practically into our daily lives.
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Idea Images – The Wisdom of Arya Nagarjuna Course 4: The Mystery of The Chapters (2022, Arizona)

Here is a collection of Idea Images (Idims) which represent all the important ideas of this course. It's a great tool to connect the image mentally with the important idea. There's a tradition in this lineage that when you learn a topic you review it at least two times after the class. Preferably once on the day of the class and preferably once the next day or two days later. Please Note: To make this an even more powerful study tool we linked each image to the exact time in the video where Geshe Michael explains the important idea. You can just click on each Idim and it will open the video at the precise location.
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The Wisdom of Arya Nagarjuna Course 4: The Mystery of The Chapters (2022, Arizona)

In these 15 classes, we will continue our exploration of Nagarjuna’s Wisdom, the most famous book ever written on Buddhism’s most important idea: emptiness, which clarified and became the basis of all subsequent emptiness teachings. Geshe Michael Roach will lead us through an investigation into the flow and the deeper meaning of Nagarjuna’s writings, and how to apply his understanding practically into our daily lives. Each of Wisdom’s 27 chapters of poetry presents an investigation of a unique idea or question to help us understand that the way we *believe* things work in our world perhaps is more than suspect. For almost 2000 years people have studied these poems and wondered what the meaning is behind the order of these chapters and what is the connection between each of the ideas presented. While some of the chapters obviously belong together, it requires a deep examination to discern what Nagarjuna had in mind.
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The Devil Debates an Angel, Part 15: Stepping into Our Next World (2022, Arizona)

If you really understand the emptiness of your primary practices, they become much, much more powerful. This is our third course covering the most famous of all works by Nagarjuna (c. 200AD) which he named simply “Wisdom”. For 2000 years, hundreds of commentaries were written about these 27 chapters in poetry. And it is really all the emptiness teachings that you've ever heard. All the emptiness teachings in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan are based on Nagarjuna's "Wisdom".
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The Wisdom of Arya Nagarjuna Course 3: The Emptiness of Mantra (2021, Arizona)

If you really understand the emptiness of your primary practices, they become much, much more powerful. This is our third course covering the most famous of all works by Nagarjuna (c. 200AD) which he named simply “Wisdom”. For 2000 years, hundreds of commentaries were written about these 27 chapters in poetry. And it is really all the emptiness teachings that you've ever heard. All the emptiness teachings in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan are based on Nagarjuna's "Wisdom".
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Lower Middle Way – An Analysis of Dependence: All Things Depend on Each Other: The Buddhist Teaching of the Wheel of Life

Around 1000 AD, 1500 years after the time of the Buddha, the Tibetans undertook a monumental task: to translate thousands of pages of Buddhist literature from Sanskrit into Tibetan. It took them 700 years to complete translations of the kangyur (the word of the Buddha) and the tengyur (the Indian commentaries). Now, as Buddhism has been making a big push westward, Geshe Michael’s aim is to complete an even larger task: to translate hundreds of thousands of pages of Buddhist literature into modern languages.
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The Devil Debates an Angel, Part 13: A Dialogue on Mind and Meditation (2019, Arizona)

Geshe Michael Roach gave three days of special teachings on meditation and the nature of the mind in Sedona. These teachings are taken directly from The Angel Debates The Devil, a dialogue between the good and evil that happens in our mind, by Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen. The text is at the same time extremely funny and extremely deep, as it reveals the tricky ways that our mind deceives us into believing we are thinking and acting in a way that actually helps us. This teaching will help us to unravel these seductive arguments of the Devil in our own mind to order to be successful in this life, and to learn how to develop the skills necessary to confront any obstacle.
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Arya Nagarjuna’s 8 Impossibles in the Kitchen: Highest Wisdom for Real Life (2018, Thailand)

This is a special class that Geshe Michael taught to the volunteers during the recent retreat in Thailand. It focuses on Buddhism’s most important idea, from perhaps the most influential work ever written on emptiness, from the most important teacher of emptiness to come after the Buddha — Arya Nagarjuna. Geshe Michael manages to masterfully weave the very heart of this idea into a very real life example that we can all use in our everyday lives.
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Daily Practice Series Course 07: Marriage of Karma and Emptiness (1997, Raleigh)

This presentation provides a good overview of how karma and emptiness (ultimate reality) interact to form you, your world, and all of its experiences. Ultimate reality is described along with the principles of karma, and how those two come together to form all things and experiences. The union of karma and emptiness is the basis of all reality, and this practice explores what you can do to affect and change your reality. It is a wonderful practice to transform the world around you by understanding the laws of karma, and the idea of ultimate reality, in your everyday life.
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