Practice Library

Exploring Hidden Lands

Four seminars with Ian Baker on the hidden lands of Beyul Pemako, and on pilgrimage in Dzogchen and tantra, outer and inner.

Four seminars with Ian Baker on Dzogchen and tantra, and on the outer and inner dimensions of pilgrimage. Across the four parts he travels through the hidden lands of Beyul Pemako in the eastern Himalayas, the place that obstacles and adversity hold in the tradition, and the ways Dzogchen practice can inform ordinary life. In the final words of his book The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet's Lost Paradise, introduced by H.H. the Dalai Lama, Ian Baker writes: “We feed on mystery, whether the enticements of unknown lands or a masked dancer revealed more perfectly by what she hides. The scrolls describing the beyul lead us similarly into wonder, for they are accounts of processes of the mind as much as in the external world. There is no real separation or boundary between ourselves and the world around us, and an ever-present wildness and radiance lies at the heart of our tamest vistas.” Part I: Outer and Inner Pilgrimage in Dzogchen Tantra. Baker speaks about his explorations of Beyul Pemako, the hidden land arrayed like lotuses, from the perspective of Dzogchen and tantra, and the ways in which primal nature can support spiritual awakening. Beyul are the secret or hidden dim

What this course covers

• Beyul Pemako, and what the revealed scrolls mean by a hidden land
• The outer, inner, secret and ultimately secret levels of a beyul
• Obstacles and adversity as the Dzogchen masters treated them
• The Four Mudras, and taking nature as the path
• Tummo and the completion stage read against contemporary research
• Chulen, and the substances said to nourish the subtle body
• Dzogchen as a disposition beyond the limits of formal practice

Sessions

1. Part I: Outer and Inner Pilgrimage in Dzogchen Tantra 192 minutes
2. Part II: Outer and Inner Pilgrimage in Dzogchen Tantra 193 minutes
3. Part III: Approaching the Great Perfection 197 minutes
4. Part IV: Nourishing the Subtle Body 197 minutes