Buddhist Psychology and the Nature of the Mind and Ganden La Gyama with Geshe Tenzin Zopa

6 - 8 November 2026 | Friday and Saturday - 6 - 8 PM | Sunday 10.00 - 12.30 pm Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/8105820312?pwd=shSzand46dda8xqKYrPgBPUPPQa7kj.1Zoom Login: 8105820312Passcode: karunaBuddhist Psychology and the Nature of the MindEverything we experience arrives through the mind, yet most of us never examine it. In the Lamrim and Abhidharma tradition, the mind (sems) is defined by clarity and knowing. Feeling, perception, intention, and attention are mental factors that color how the mind engages with its objects. The tradition catalogues 51 such factors, some virtuous, such as faith and compassion, and some afflictive, such as anger, pride, and ignorance. Psychological health means knowing which factors are operating and where they are pulling the mind.The mind has no beginning. Each moment of consciousness arises from the moment before it, so habits and emotional patterns carry forward. Because the mind is a flow shaped by its own prior states, it can be reshaped through deliberate training.Ordinary experience presents a self that seems solid and independent. The tradition holds that this self is merely imputed, designated on the basis of body and mind, and cannot be found as a separate entity. Clinging to the self as it appears is the root of suffering, because that self becomes the object of fear, craving, and pride.Suffering arises from afflictions, which arise from ignorance of how phenomena exist. Freedom is therefore an inner achievement, available to anyone who examines and changes their own mental habits.At its subtlest level, the mind’s fundamental nature is clear light: clarity and knowing in pure form. Its afflictions are adventitious, like clouds passing across the sky, and can be removed.The methods are shamatha (calm abiding), which stabilizes attention; vipashyana (special insight), which investigates the mind’s nature; lojong (mind training), which turns difficulties into practice; and analytical meditation on dependent origination, emptiness, and impermanence.Ganden Lha GyemaGanden Lha gyema (also written Ganden La Gyama) is a lineage prayer in the Geluk tradition. Its name, meaning “the hundred Ganden,” refers to the lineage of Ganden, the monastery founded by Je Tsongkhapa. The prayer calls on the successive teachers of the Ganden lineage, gathering their blessings into the practitioner’s mind.It is recited in Geluk monasteries and centres, often in the morning or at special occasions, as a form of guru yoga. Practitioners visualize the lineage masters above their heads and request their guidance and blessings. Recitation is said to strengthen devotion, connect the practice to the living lineage, and support the study of Lamrim.The prayer is valued because it joins the teachings to the teachers who preserved them. Practitioners recite it with the intention of receiving the lineage’s wisdom and compassion, and of carrying that understanding into daily life.About Geshe Tenzin ZopaGeshe Tenzin Zopa is a teacher in the Geluk tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He holds the Geshe degree, the tradition’s highest scholarly qualification, which is earned through many years of study in debate, philosophy, and the classical texts. That training shapes his teaching: he approaches the Dharma with careful reasoning, and he expects his students to think through what they hear rather than simply accept it.His teaching centres on the Lamrim, the graded stages of the path to enlightenment composed by Je Tsongkhapa. The Lamrim moves step by step from the preciousness of human life, through impermanence, karma, and the suffering of cyclic existence, to renunciation, the awakening of compassion, and the wisdom that realizes emptiness. Geshe Tenzin Zopa’s approach is to show how these stages build on one another, so that a student understands not only what to practise but why each practice leads to the next.A recurring theme in his teaching is the relationship between study and meditation. Understanding the view intellectually is not enough, and meditation without understanding can drift into vagueness. He encourages students to hold both together: to study with a clear mind, and to meditate on what they have studied until it becomes part of their experience. This makes his teaching accessible to newcomers, who are given a solid foundation, and valuable to experienced practitioners, who are invited to examine familiar ideas more closely.Those who attend his teachings often describe them as clear, patient, and grounded in daily life. He draws on the classical sources while relating them to the ordinary difficulties of work, family, and emotion, so that the Dharma feels usable rather than remote.