Idea Images: A Gift of Liberation 37: The Best Thing You Can Do With Your Life (2021, Arizona)

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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. As Geshe Michael pointed out in this course:

I personally think it’s a great idea to do your traditional lineage required review by just looking at the pictures. Personally I make myself breakfast and I set the images down on the table and I slop food into my mouth, and I drink my coffee and try to remember what was this picture about. And for me it’s a very pleasant breakfast. It’s kind of like a Dharma breakfast.”

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.

Idim 37.1: Making it on the tennis team

Idim 37.2: Handing us our degree

Idim 37.3: Not just a “bodhisattva”

Idim 37.4: Hope for all of us

Idim 37.5: A shifting skyscraper

Idim 37.6: Good birds, but the sun

Idim 37.7: The real thing, from the depths of the sea

Idim 37.8: The once & future King

Idim 37.9: From the ashes of a normal suffering life

Idim 37.10: The power even of fragments

Idim 37.11: The gold is not much compared to the diamond

Idim 37.12: Even a coffee, and even unknown

Idim 37.13: The best things take time, and hard work

Idim 37.14: The infinite power of hearing just once about the infinite

Idim 37.15: Connecting to the four spaces

Idim 37.16: The millionaire

Idim 37.17: An ancient precedent: honoring where we came from

Idim 37.18: Honoring what will be

Idim 37.19: Better than picking up stones

Idim 37.20: Gathering, cleaning, clearing

Idim 37.21: The alchemical elixir within the two collections

Idim 37.22:The difference between skin and living diamond

Idim 37.23: The eternal peach

Idim 37.24: Sparrows & McDonald’s fries

Idim 37.25: What is 1 x countless?

Idim 37.26: The tornado & the butter lamp

Idim 37.27: A delightful way to pile up good karma

Idim 37.28: Trying to fix a single headache

Idim 37.29: Meals for centuries

Idim 37.30: A ketchup stain to the middle of the sun

Idim 37.31: The power of the dog

Idim 37.32: A master climber on a treacherous mountain

Idim 37.33: A city in the sun

Idim 37.34: Just the idea of helping countless beings on countless planets

Idim 37.35: The machine behind the Diamond Way

Idim 37.36: The malfunction in the machine

Idim 37.37: The real secret to miraculous cures

Idim 37.38: The ultimate act of truth

Idim 37.39: A secure place to sit

Idim 37.40: The best of bodyguards

Idim 37.41: Fire alarms that might not work

Idim 37.42: The ultimate vaccination

Idim 37.43: What to do when spirits bother us

Idim 37.44: A gift of the latest electronics

Idim 37.45: Suddenly, in the sun at the top

Idim 37.46: An impossible flight

Idim 37.47: Not the end, not even the beginning

Idim 37.48: A drop of water

Idim 37.49: The quiet fertile valley

Idim 37.51: What is a “listener”?

Idim 37.52: How a listener passes on wisdom

Idim 37.53: The difference between literal and general names

Idim 37.54: Truly hearing is to proclaim

Idim 37.55: Why a bodhisattva is not a listener

Idim 37.56: Tattva buddha: Why a medium buddha is still a buddha

Idim 37.57: Waking, and the opening of a flower

Idim 37.58: What makes them “medium”

Idim 37.59: How much emptiness can you see if you are not yet a bodhisattva?

Idim 37.60: Expanding: the difference between a listener and a self-made buddha

Idim 37.61: “Collection” as the perfection of practice

Idim 37.62: “Sambhara” as “embraced”

Idim 37.63: What does it mean to be “self-made”?

Idim 37.64: Able ones, and their Lords

Idim 37.65: Six steps to producing an arhat

Idim 37.66: Are the self-made made in a single lifetime?

Idim 37.67: The assurance of our future

Idim 37.68: A beautiful way to spend lives

Idim 37.69: It wasn’t just dependence, it was teaching

Idim 37.70: How can a father be born from their child?

Idim 37.71: Born, in the sense of a material cause

Idim 37.72: Born, in the sense of a contributing, and separate, cause

Idim 37.73: Keeping the material separate from the contributing

Idim 37.74: The main reason for singing the praises

Idim 37.75: Beyond, and deep

Idim 37.76: A second offering, implied

Idim 37.77: Caring for the young tree

Idim 37.78: Remembering what will be

Idim 37.79: Going on a higher trip

Idim 37.80: A four-part chain of cause & effect

Idim 37.81: The real teaching is compassion

Idim 37.82: The three causes of the cause

Idim 37.83: And diamonds come from the black earth too

Idim 37.84: A single biography

Idim 37.85: Sitting weeping on a cliff

Idim 37.86: All rivers to the sea

Idim 37.87: Water in the desert

Idim 37.88: You wanna surf, but you don’t wanna get wet

Idim 37.89: A thing that never happened before

Idim 37.90: Two extremes in trying

Idim 37.91: Galaxy search within a hoofprint

Idim 37.92: The practice in the palm of our hands

Idim 37.93: The peacock warrior’s transformation

Idim 37.94: Two things to be a great teacher

Idim 37.95: The emperor’s flying saucer

Idim 37.96: The seed of the father, the womb of the mother

Idim 37.97: The ultimate mantra practice

Idim 37.98: The very nature of a produced thing

Idim 37.99: Not like getting your vows

Idim 37.100: Walking without knowing the steps

Idim 37.101: The two great methods

Idim 37.102: A hidden method kept hidden