Discovering
the Buddha Within
The Discovering the Buddha Within is an experiential learning program of the Buddha Dharma created as part of the vast vision of Guru Vajradhara His Holiness the 12th Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa. For many years resident lamas and students of Palpung Dharma Centers worldwide have been requesting His Holiness the 12th Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa to create a step-by-step Dharma study and practice curriculum adapted to any type of audience that can be taught and practiced in all Palpung Dharma centers. Following this request, His Holiness has designed a three-year study curriculum.
The aim of this curriculum is to explain the essence of the Buddha’s teachings in an easy and understandable yet comprehensive way. The Buddha Shakyamuni has shown the nature of being’s minds and phenomena on three different levels, each consecutive level being deeper and wider than the former one. This three-year curriculum follows the Buddha’s teachings on the Three Turnings of the Wheel of Dharma, followed by the sacred transmission of the Four Tantras that correspond to three gradual levels of discovering the ultimate nature of the mind and phenomena. The best way for a foreign audience to be able to acquire a proper understanding of these basic three levels of the Buddha Dharma is to approach it through one’s own direct experience of various meditations connected to each of the three levels. To facilitate a deep understanding of these levels, the program emphasizes direct experience through meditation practices.
Each level covers the view (intellectual understanding), meditation (experiential understanding), and application (integrating understanding into daily life) according to Shravakayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana perspectives. The core meditations include Shamatha (calm abiding) and Vipashyana (advanced insight). Through these three aspects —view, meditation, and action—one will discover the Buddha within oneself. This program is open to everyone. For those new to Buddhism, the practice commitment is to practice at least 10 minutes every day for a minimum of 30 consecutive days. For those who are already practicing the Buddha Dharma, their actual practice will work as the commitment. For those who would like to use this program as their own daily practice, a guideline for the students is available.
The Teachers
The primary instructors for the Discovering the Buddha Within curriculum are His Eminence Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, along with other esteemed masters such as His Eminence Gyalton Rinpoche and senior khenpos from Palpung Sherabling Monastic Seat. H.E. Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche initiated the transmission of this program at Palpung Sherabling Monastic Seat in November 2022. Starting from 2023, H.E. Chungpo Gyalton Rinpoche and two venerable senior khenpos have been traveling to Palpung monasteries and Dharma Centers worldwide to impart teachings on this curriculum.
Following the teachings by any of the appointed masters, and for a comprehensive follow-up of the study curriculum, each group of students will have access to review classes led by an appointed kyorpön (teaching assistant). These review classes will be conducted monthly, either online or in person, providing students with opportunities to deepen their learning. Additionally, each student will be granted access to an online study platform to further strenghten their understanding of the teachings.
The Discovering the Buddha Within
curriculum consists of three levels
Year 1
Inner Peace
Year 2
Awakened Heart
Year 3
Original Purity
This level focuses on calming the mind and developing insight and wisdom through simple yet profound study, meditations, and contemplations derived from the Shravakayana teachings of the Buddha. Awareness meditations and precise knowledge will allow students to discover inner peace, accept and let go of worldly concerns without grasping at or rejecting them, and develop a stable aspiration for genuine freedom. Guided meditations and question-and-answer sessions will help students learn how to start a daily meditation practice at home. In this level students will:
- Learn the essence of meditation: o Develop and nurture awareness and inner peace using breath, body, feelings, thoughts, emotions, and phenomena as a support for meditation.
- Learn the basics of Buddhism through knowledge and advanced insight meditation:
- Understand the shortcomings of one’s life and the world, the origins and cessation of suffering, and the means to reach that cessation, along with understanding refuge —the starting point of the path to an everlasting state of well-being, rich with innate goodness and radiant pure qualities.
- Develop advanced insight meditation mainly based on experiential observation of the natural flow of everything as being impermanent.
Through meditations on loving kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity, and so forth, students will learn to connect with their awakened heart and discover their innate goodness, further enriching the calm state of mind and deepening their meditation through recognition of emptiness, which is the essence of the Mahayana. In this level students will: > Discover their inner goodness:
- By discovering and cultivating love, compassion, appreciation or joy, and equanimity.
- By developing their potential through six perfect states of mind, the six paramitas.
- By training their mind to transform defilements into love and compassion. > Widen their motivation and outlook and gain deeper insight:
- By learning about and meditating on bodhicitta, the awakening mind.
- By gaining an advanced insight that understands selflessness and emptiness through direct experience.
The meditations connected with buddha nature, which is the basis of the Vajrayana, the final teaching of the Buddha, will allow students to connect with their enlightened nature, the primordial purity of the mind and the universe, and to experience pure perception of everyone and everything. In this level students will:
- Discover the primordial purity of their own mind and the universe: By discovering through advanced insight their own buddha nature and the original purity of everything.
- Learn how to reveal that purity: By appreciating and developing gratitude for one’s own enlightened mind, by meditating on guru yoga, and by learning about creation and completion stage meditations according to the Vajrayana.