Practice Library

The 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas - One-Week Retreat

A one-week retreat with David Oromith on Gyalse Tokme Zangpo's fourteenth-century verses, and turning everyday life and adversity into the path.

This course is guided by the highly revered 14th-century Tibetan Buddhist text, The Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas by Gyalse Tokme Zangpo. It offers an opportunity to explore radical teachings that challenge and transform conventional views of our self, others, our reality, and the adversity we face. This beautifully condensed text gives advice on how to transform our own life by following the bodhisattva path. A bodhisattva is one who, motivated by compassion, works to achieve enlightenment so that they can help all other sentient beings. This classic text serves as the basis for deep discussions of our life, our priorities, and ways of handling challenge and change. Gyalse Tokme’s teachings invite us into deep introspection and awakening. These verses express a bodhisattva’s ideals, and though they may at times be radically different from our own, by emulating them however we can, we cultivate practical tools for living with greater compassion, understanding, and resilience. Each day we explore different verses, guided by commentaries from H.E. Garchen Rinpoche, H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama, and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and we engage with these teachings in a practical way

What this course covers

• Aligning behaviour with intention
• Transforming adversity: how challenges and difficult people become opportunities for growth
• Radical compassion: transforming empathy and wisdom into the compassionate mind of bodhicitta
• Reframing perceptions, and how that changes the way we experience life
• Commentaries from H.E. Garchen Rinpoche, H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Sessions

1. Day 1 - Introduction 59 minutes
2. D2S1 - Verse One: The Precious Human Life 83 minutes
3. D2S2 - The Three Poisons Behind Our Reactions 84 minutes
4. D2S3 - Inner Solitude and the Impermanence of All Things 87 minutes
5. D2S4 - The Company We Keep and the Qualities of a Teacher 55 minutes
6. D3S1 - Loving Kindness, Refuge, and the Workings of Karma 90 minutes
7. D3S2 - Compassion Practice and the Two Paths to Bodhicitta 84 minutes
8. D3S3 - Mudita, Self-Cherishing, and the Roots of Tonglen 88 minutes
9. D3S4 - Equanimity and Tonglen, Two Meditations in Practice 59 minutes
10. D4S1 - The Continuum of Mind and Turning Loss into Practice 90 minutes
11. D4S2 - Everyone's Kindness, and Hard Questions About Rebirth 88 minutes
12. D4S3 - Responding to Disgrace, Disparagement and Betrayal 90 minutes
13. D4S4 - Bodhicitta's Final Steps, and Meeting Ordinary Scorn 55 minutes
14. D5S1 - Meeting Deprivation, Prosperity, Anger and Craving 81 minutes
15. D5S2 - The Emptiness of Self and the Nature of Awareness 84 minutes
16. D5S3 - Non-Attachment, Generosity and the Roots of Ethics 90 minutes
17. D5S4 - The Three Kinds of Patience, and a Farmer's 77 Problems 50 minutes
18. D6S1 - Diligence, Concentration and When to Step In 91 minutes
19. D6S2 - Self-Cherishing, Honest Speech and Healthy Boundaries 81 minutes
20. D6S3 - Completing the Text and Living It Day to Day 78 minutes
21. D6S4 - One Useful Word and a Vision for the Sangha 43 minutes
22. Day 7 - Closing Discussion 92 minutes