Overview of SESSION
DATE: 2025: Year 3 - Term 1 runs from Sept. 6 to Nov. 29, 2025 (total 13 classes).
Term 2: Feb. 7 - April 4, 2026 (9 classes),
Term 3: April 18 to July 4, 2026 (12 classes).
If you are starting as a new student in year 3, don’t worry. You will get some preparatory advice on what previous recordings to have a listen to.
TIME: Saturdays weekly 2:30pm – 5pm UK time
LOCATION: Zoom only
LEVEL: Buddhist Meditation – Intermediate to Advanced
IDMT Year Three: The Radiant Ground: Emptiness and Buddha Nature
This year’s journey will weave together the profound view of Madhyamaka, as presented by Nāgārjuna and his successors, with the compassionate vision of Tathāgatagarbha, the Buddha-nature teachings that reveal our deepest potential for awakening. Far from abstract philosophy, these teachings offer a radical reorientation of how we perceive ourselves and the world—pointing us beyond habitual grasping to a space of clarity, openness, and profound compassion.
Having cultivated the foundational practices of shamatha and vipashyana in the first year and explored Yogācāra’s profound psychology of ignorance and awakening in the second, we now turn to the very heart of Tibetan Buddhism: the nature of emptiness and the luminous potential that resides within every living being.
Guiding us in this exploration will be core texts from India and Tibet. Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā will serve as a central pillar, systematically dismantling the illusions of inherent existence. In dialogue with this, we’ll study Kamalashīla’s Stages of Meditation, a practical and accessible map for cultivating deep meditative insight grounded in the view of emptiness.
Balancing the radical freedom of Madhyamaka, we will encounter the warmth and encouragement of Maitreya’s Ratnagotravibhāga, a poetic illumination of the Buddha-nature within all beings. These teachings remind us that beyond confusion and conditioning, there is a basic goodness that has never been lost.
To ground these profound insights in daily life, we will also study the beloved text of Geshe Chekawa Yeshe Dorje, The Seven Points of Mind Training. With its pithy slogans and deeply practical tone, it offers tools for transforming adversity and cultivating bodhicitta on and off the cushion.
Throughout the year, our study and practice will be enriched by meditative teachings from both the Pāli and Sanskrit sūtra traditions, inviting a direct and experiential understanding of emptiness—not as a concept, but as a liberating shift in perception.
This year is an invitation to let the view of emptiness infuse your practice—not as abstract philosophy, but as living experience: clear, liberating, and rooted in compassion. Our aim is not to gather concepts, but to transform how we see and relate to the world. Through study, reflection, and meditation, we learn to meet life with less grasping, more openness—and a heart that naturally responds with wisdom and care, held by the strength of community.
RECOMMENDED DONATION: £45 per calendar month, Reduced income donation £31 per calendar month, Sponsor donation £58 per calendar month. There are also options donate annually or per teaching month (8 times a year) . Please note: We are unable to offer this course as part of our Jamyang Leeds membership programme as it is a collaboration with other FPMT centres. If the recommend donations aren’t affordable right now, please do get in touch and we can agree what would be. We never turn anyone away from the Dharma for financial reasons. Of course it’s good to practice generosity where you can.
This four-year online course provides students with long term, in-depth support in their meditative development. We will continue to take new starters onto the course indefinitely.
The teacher is Venerable Losang Gendun who is also our FPMT Basic Programme teacher. Venerable Gendun has trained extensively in meditation in both Theravada and Mahayana Traditions
We are delighted that from March 2025 the course is within the FPMT’s In Depth Education curriculum. You can find out more about FPMT education courses and programs here.
The In Depth Meditation Training course is also part of The Buddha Project led by Venerable Losang Gendun. You can find out more about the course, who it is suitable for, The Buddha Project and Venerable Gendun on our FPMT In-Depth Meditation Training page.
If you have any questions you would like to ask before registering please email our Spiritual Programme Coordination Team on spc@jamyangleeds.co.uk
Please click here if you would like to register
The zoom link and all materials for the course are provided to registered students.