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Lama Zopa Rinpoche holding the book Lamrim Year, Kopan Monastery, Nepal, July 2021. Photo by Ven. Roger Kunsang.
Lamrim Year: Making Life Meaningful Day By Day is an essential guide for students at any level of Buddhist study who want to develop their mind in the graduated path to enlightenment (lamrim).
The book was inspired by Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s 2013 advise to students on how they could study the entire lamrim over the course of a year:
“My suggestion would be to divide the twelve months of the year into lamrim meditations and then meditate on each subject for one month or two weeks to finish the whole lamrim in one year. . . . To meditate like this each year, wow, wow, wow! That would be great. Your life would be so rich and you would be getting closer to realization and closer to enlightenment. At the time of death you can be happy and satisfied that you spent enough of your life practicing Dharma.”
Taking Rinpoche’s advice to heart, Alison Murdoch, who compiled and edited Lamrim Year, set out to work her way through the indispensable lamrim text Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand, by the great Buddhist master Pabongka Rinpoche. Finding it hard to maintain daily momentum, she writes in the book’s Editor’s Preface that she had the idea to create “a 365-page daily route map through the lamrim that would consist entirely of extracts from the teachings of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and provide the best possible chance of fulfilling Rinpoche’s advice in the rough and tumble of modern life.”
Lamrim Year provides a 365-day outline of the graduated path in a clear, practical format that is suitable for both individual and group practice. Each day has a page with a quote and text selected from four decades of teachings by Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. The page concludes with a recap summarizing the main points for reflection and a reference to the lamrim topics covered, which closely follows the outline in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand.
Here’s an excerpt from Lamrim Year: Making Life Meaningful Day By Day, published by Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive:
Day 64: The Perfect Human Rebirth (Lama Zopa Rinpoche)
“An appreciation of the perfect human rebirth is fundamental to our Dharma journey”
—Lama Zopa Rinpoche
The great meditator, Lama Tsongkhapa, who formalized the whole lamrim structure, broke the lamrim up into two: appreciation of this life of freedom and richness—the perfect human rebirth—and how to make use of this precious opportunity—the rest of the lamrim topics from impermanence and death, refuge and karma up to the point where we attain full enlightenment.
The lamrim is not like a buffet, where we can pick and choose whatever we fancy. We have to eat the whole feast, otherwise we won’t get what we want, liberation or enlightenment. When we explore the lamrim we will see how each topic leads to the next and how each is therefore indispensable. The meditations on the perfect human rebirth come right at the beginning of the path, just after relying on a spiritual teacher. We need to understand karma and we need to have refuge, and to deepen our commitment we need to understand impermanence and death. But none of that will happen if we squander this precious and unique opportunity that we now have, this one time only.
Only those of us with this perfect human rebirth can become inner scientists and discover the true cause of happiness. We’re unbelievably fortunate. We have the opportunity to study, meditate, and understand everything that the Buddha taught, from the simplest lamrim topic to the most advanced. We have the opportunity to develop the altruistic heart, the attitude that wishes to be fully awakened to benefit others, and to understand the reality of things and events—emptiness. There is nothing we cannot understand with this perfect human rebirth.
- The first section of the lamrim focuses on the perfect human rebirth
- Each lamrim topic is an essential step on the journey to enlightenment
- Only a perfect human rebirth gives us the opportunity to discover true happiness
You can find links to more excerpts from Lamrim Year: Making Life Meaningful Day By Day at the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website.
For a printed copy of Lamrim Year: Making Life Meaningful Day By Day and links to more excerpts, visit the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website:
https://www.lamayeshe.com/shop/lamrim-year-book
You can find the ebook version of Lamrim Year: Making Life Meaningful Day By Day on the FPMT Foundation Store:
https://shop.fpmt.org/Lamrim-Year-Making-Life-Meaningful-Day-By-Day-eBook-_p_3438.html
For more resources on lamrim study, see the FPMT Education Services “Lamrim” page:
https://fpmt.org/education/prayers-and-practice-materials/lam-rim/
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.