Who is This Program for?

The Trail to the Summit Study and Mentorship Program is open to practitioners at all levels on the path of Buddhadharma and Vajrayāna. It offers both an adaptable group structure and personalized mentorship, bringing authentic guidance into your practice and your daily life.

The program includes instruction in the methods of the gradual path of Vajrayāna, alongside individualized guidance to support your progress, build confidence and clarity, and cultivate insight and compassion.

Today, teachings seem to find us effortlessly through countless forms of media. Yet traditionally, dharma has been given in response to a student's request. This program was born in that same spirit, from practitioners' wish to weave group study and practice together with consistent, meaningful individual mentorship. A survey helped us understand your particular needs and design the program accordingly.

The authentic dharma is unchanging. The program that carries it continues to evolve, shaped and reshaped to hold you where you are, both as individuals and as a community.

Structure and What Will You Learn?

• The Gradual Path: What is the proper order and understanding of how the path is traversed? The rationale for each stage.

• Our spiritual heritage: The spiritual heritage from the time of the Buddha, all the way to the present day; the importance of lineage, connection with a teacher, method, and model of practice sequence. Starting with the Four Noble Truths, the Nine Vehicles (yānas), schools, traditions, and lineages.

• Renunciation: the realization of our condition in cyclic existence, a wish to transcend beyond the states of unsatisfactoriness and constant change that keep us from settling in the present and beyond it.

• Body & Grounding: How to stabilize the body and nervous system as part of your practice; working with pain, illness, and aging; posture and individual constitution; rethinking our relationship with the body. Is it a problem or a resource?

• The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind to Dharma: meaning and purpose for this life.

  • Identifying a Precious Human Birth: The Eight Freedoms and Ten Endowments.

  • Death and Impermanence: Three Roots, Nine Reasons, and Three Conclusions.

  • The Dynamics of Karma: The Ten Virtuous Actions and Their Counterparts, the Ten Negative Actions.

  • The Dissatisfactory Nature of Samsara.

• Ethics and Compassion: containers for mindfulness:

  • A brief instruction on maintaining pure morality and the benefits of an ethical lifestyle.

  • Establishing Genuine Compassion: a series of different meditations and reflections.

  • Nurturing Love and Compassion: How the Eight Thoughts of a Great and Noble Being can inspire practitioners to go beyond their perceived limitations.

• Relying upon a spiritual teacher: Nine metaphors that illuminate the teacher-student relationship. Exploring the different kinds of teachers, how to relate to them, and the importance of lineage and training.

• The Cultivation of Bodhicitta: the seven-point cause-and-effect mind training and Tonglen, exchanging suffering and happiness between self and others:

  • Taking the Bodhisattva's Vow: The Four Black and Four White Deeds.

  • The Bodhisattva's Vow: The Six Perfections and the Four Means of Gathering Disciples.

• Mind Training: The heart of Calm Abiding and Insight:

  • The Eight Verses of Mind Training: Gathering the meaning of the Buddha’s teachings in their entirety in a way that is easy to follow, and yet profoundly powerful.

  • The Cultivation of Calm Abiding: causes leading to calm abiding, antidotes to the five hindrances, mental placements, powers, and the four mental engagements.

  • Achieving Special Insight: Realizing the selflessness of both ourselves and phenomena.

• The Union of Relative and Ultimate Bodhicitta: dreams, illusions, clouds, water bubbles, and the sky, meditating in an equipoise that is free from all elaboration.

• Ultimate Bodhicitta: remaining within a great, vast expanse that is free from all extremes.

• Beyond Insight: ground, path, and result, what lies where mind has no place.

• Death and Dying: Cultivating a fearless attitude on the path in preparation for the most important moment of your life and developing the skills to open your heart to the experience of others.

• Dharma and Healing: How emotions, calm abiding, and understanding karma can reshape our experience.

• Retreat: The program concludes with practical guidance on creating conducive conditions for a retreat, how to enter and complete it, and how to transform any available time and space into an opportunity for a retreated mind to thrive.

The program mainly follows The Emanated Scripture of Manjushri: Shabkar’s Essential Meditation Instructions. Other readings and resources are provided.

Program Objectives:

The program includes regular monthly online teachings, personal mentorship, and dynamic individual guidance that aim to offer a foundational framework for the path of Buddhadharma, a ground from which the gradual path of Vajrayāna can be traversed with confidence.

Through mentorship and individualized guidance, it endeavors to weave together instruction and genuine receptivity to each individual's needs, inspiring every person to live compassionately and take wisdom as their truest companion.

Rooted in the authentic wisdom tradition of Vajrayāna, the program continues to be shaped around your life, circumstances, and capacity, so that progress on the path remains genuinely within reach.

Offerings/Pricing:

Lhamen is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization dedicated to making authentic dharma, healing, and knowledge accessible to all. We operate with limited resources and a small, devoted team of staff and volunteers.

Program fees cover the practical costs of running the program, resources, materials, and other associated expenses. Your contribution directly sustains the continuity and quality of what Lhamen offers, helping us serve the community now and into the future. The dharma teachings are offered as a gift.

This ongoing program is offered on a suggested sliding scale. Your contribution includes:

·       All monthly group teachings

·       Access to a library of recordings

·       An interactive community channel

·       Regular monthly private mentorship and interviews with Drubpon, and more

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