The 22 levels from earth to sky refer to the development of the Wish for Budhahood (Bodhichitta), from the initial intention in a baby Bodhisattva to the full Bodhichitta in the mind of a Buddha. This list of 22 comes from the Ornament of Realizations (Abhisamayalankara) by Arya Asanga which is one of the Five Great Books of Maitreya—The Future Buddha. They were taught by Maitreya to Arya Asanga in Maitreya’s heaven and then he brought them back to this world.
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".
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.
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.
For the second year, we return to Thailand for another installment of the Gift of Liberation series, which is based upon the Lam Rim teachings of Pabongka Rinpoche, in his seminal book, "Liberation Thrust into the Palm of Your Hand". At this retreat on the stunning beaches of Thailand, Geshe Michael Roach will teach us how to identify the six majors problems that most people experience at one time or another, and the how to finally end them.