Overview of SESSION
DATE: 2026 / 2027: Year 4
Term 1: September 5th to November 28th 2026
If you are starting as a new student in year 4, don’t worry. You will get some preparatory advice on what previous recordings to have a listen to. Alternatively you may wish to join the new Ngondro Lamrim Meditation course for 2 years before starting In Depth Meditation Training. They are designed to be complementary.
TIME: Saturdays weekly 2:30pm – 5pm UK time
LOCATION: Zoom only
LEVEL: Buddhist Meditation – Intermediate to Advanced
IDMT Year Four: The Vajra Ground: Mahamudra and Kriya Tantra
In this culminating fourth year of our journey, our path turns inward to the mind itself—its empty, luminous nature—and outward to the transformative methods of tantra, where the naturally pure nature of our perception is recognized as the very ground of awakening. As always, the year will start with generating the mind of awakening, using evocative instructions ranging from Langri Thangpa to Nāgārjuna and Lord Buddha in the famous Bodhisattvapiṭaka. This mind generation we’ll cultivate through the four immeasurable thoughts and the support of calm abiding. Illuminated by the life stories of the masters of the Gelug Mahāmudrā lineage and beyond, we’ll explore its roots in the history of the early Indian Mahāsiddhas, such as Saraha and Tilopa, through the Kagyü master Gampopa’s and Je Tsongkhapa’s Mañjuśrī lineage up to Paṇchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen’s Highway of the Conquerors and its perspective on this practice. In Sūtra Mahāmudrā we will practice resting attention in the empty nature of awareness, recognizing its clarity and openness as inseparable.
Kriyā Tantra offers a complementary method. Rather than suppress the ordinary, narrow self-narrative that we impose on ourselves and our world, it substitutes for it an extraordinary perspective of pure view. Occasionally, by way of introduction, we’ll also taste practices from the higher tantras—glimpsing how afflictive emotions can be met as innate wisdom, and how the dissolution of the death process opens onto the innate mind of clear light. The structured practices of generation and recitation become a rehearsal for transformation, training perception to meet appearances as pure. These methods rest on a relationship. We will therefore examine the practice of guru devotion candidly—both as the means by which the lineage’s realization is transmitted and as a practice with real pitfalls, requiring discernment as much as trust. Through the Ganden Lha Gyāma, the Yoga of the inseparability of guru and Avalokiteśvara, and supporting sādhanas, devotion is approached not as deference but as the ethical road toward the state of Vajradhara: the full integration of wisdom and method.
This final year is an invitation to let realization ripen into a way of being. Grounded in bodhicitta and the four immeasurables, sustained by the preliminary practices, and held by the strength of community, we learn to meet the mind without grasping and to meet the world as pure appearance. Our aim is not to accumulate practices, but to bring the path to maturity—wisdom and compassion no longer cultivated separately, but lived as one.
This four-year online course provides students with long term, in-depth support in their meditative development.
The teacher and course developer is Venerable Losang Gendun. He has trained extensively in meditation in both Theravada and Mahayana Traditions
The In Depth Meditation Training course is also part of The Buddha Project led by Venerable Losang Gendun. You can find out more about Venerable Gendun, the course and who it is suitable for on our FPMT In-Depth Meditation Training webpage
If you have any questions you would like to ask before registering please email our In Depth Meditation Coordinator Marie Odile on idmt@jamyangleeds.co.uk
The zoom link and all materials for the course are provided to registered students.
Donations:
Generosity is one of the cornerstones of the Buddhist path. With your donation we support The Buddha Project and we keep our centre going for the benefit of all sentient beings.
As the course is a collaboration with other FPMT centres it is not possible to offer this as part of our Jamyang Leeds membership programme.
The recommended donation per calendar month is £45.
If you are able to practice generosity and sponsor other students we recommend £58 per calendar month.
If you are on a reduced income it is £31 per calendar month.
There is also the option to donate annually.
If none of the above options are affordable please do still register, we never turn anyone away from the Dharma for financial reasons and we can agree a donation that is affordable for you right now. Please email Marie Odile our IDMT Coordinator idmt@jamyangleeds.co.uk if you would like to chat.