What is Lamrim, and what benefit comes from practicing it?
Meditating on Lamrim overcomes all obstacles to our peace of mind, solves our daily problems, and leads us to the final realization of our spiritual practice, Buddhahood.
The entire Buddhist path includes many different meditations leading to an experience of loving-kindness, awareness of impermanence, perfect wisdom and full enlightenment. All of these can be condensed into 21 simple meditations, as presented in The New Meditation Handbook.
By becoming familiar with these meditations, you will enjoy the peace and fulfillment that come from a spiritually meaningful life. A Lamrim retreat is one week in length, to allow you to focus on the 21 meditations systematically, bringing about a powerful and positive transformation in your mind.
The practice of Lamrim is very important because everyone needs to cultivate peaceful states of mind. By listening to or reading these teachings we can learn how to control our mind and always keep a good motivation in our heart. This will make all our daily actions pure and meaningful. By controlling our mind we can solve all our daily problems...Our state of mind next year will be better than our state of mind this year. Eventually we shall gain the highest realizations."
~ Joyful Path of Good Fortune by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso
Lamrim posesses three pre-eminent characteristics that are not possessed by other texts. These are:
1 The Lamrim teaching is the condensation of all Buddhadharma
2 The instructions of Lamrim are easy to put into practice
3 The presentation of the instructions of Lamrim is superior to other traditions
"The instructions of Lamrim form the main body of Buddhadharma...The Lamrim instructions were originally taught by Buddha Shakyamuni. They were handed down in two lineages...The author of Lamrim is Atisha [AD 982-1054] because it was he who first combined all the instructions of these two great Mahayana lineages in his work, The Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, and gave his presentation the abreviated title, Lamrim. He united the two traditions in a way that made both of them easier to understand and practice..." - from Joyful Path of Good Fortune