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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Since the blossoming of Buddhism in Tibet, no less than 200,000 pages of brilliant commentary have been composed by masters and scholars in the Tibetan language. In this ongoing series of courses, Geshe Michael’s goal is to create and guide a team of young translators to translate these great classics.
This collection of classes is for the purpose of having a regular daily practice. It’s different than many of the other courses here on The Knowledge Base which are meant to teach the philosophy, or intellectual background, of Buddhism. These classes were on monday nights and were taught in a completely different style, focusing on all the most practical and essential elements that should be done each day to really get the most out of all the other intellectual study.
This collection of classes is for the purpose of having a regular daily practice. It’s different than many of the other courses here on The Knowledge Base which are meant to teach the philosophy, or intellectual background, of Buddhism. These classes were on monday nights and were taught in a completely different style, focusing on all the most practical and essential elements that should be done each day to really get the most out of all the other intellectual study.