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Lamrim: The Stages of the Path and the Three Scopes

Atiśa’s three scopes and Tsongkhapa’s Great Treatise: a contemplative map from a precious human life to awakening

What is lamrim, the stages of the path?

Lamrim (Tibetan lam rim, “stages of the path”) is the Tibetan Buddhist way of arranging the whole of the Buddha’s sūtra teaching into a step-by-step course of meditation. It goes back to Atiśa’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, which sorts practitioners into three scopes — initial, intermediate and great — and its best-known expansion is Tsongkhapa’s Great Treatise (Lamrim Chenmo), completed in 1402. The path runs from relying on a teacher, through precious human life, death, karma and the faults of cyclic existence, to bodhicitta, the six perfections, calm abiding and insight. It is a contemplative tradition; the reflections themselves have not been tested in controlled studies.

Lamrim means “stages of the path.” According to Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, the Indian master Atiśa (982–1054) was the first to organise the Buddha’s sūtra teachings into three progressive stages and give them that name, in the Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, which he composed in Tibet at the request of Jangchub Ö. The Lamp names three kinds of person: the lesser, who seeks the pleasures of cyclic existence for their own benefit; the middling, who turns away from those pleasures and seeks peace for themselves alone; and the superior, who wants to end the suffering of all others. These became the three scopes — initial, intermediate and great. In 1402 Tsongkhapa (1357–1419) completed the Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path, the Lamrim Chenmo, which runs from relying on a spiritual teacher, through the precious human life, death and impermanence and karma (the initial scope) and the faults of cyclic existence and the wish for liberation (the intermediate scope), to bodhicitta and the six perfections and finally calm abiding and insight (the great scope); in the English translation those last topics fill the second and third volumes. Every Tibetan school has a version: Gampopa’s Jewel Ornament of Liberation in the Kagyu, Parting from the Four Clingings in the Sakya, and Patrul Rinpoche’s Words of My Perfect Teacher, which Dhargyey calls the main Nyingma text on the equivalent of lamrim. Where the Gelug speak of three scopes, the Nyingma begin with the four thoughts that turn the mind — the outer preliminaries of ngöndro — which this page covers; the inner ngöndro of prostrations with refuge, Vajrasattva purification, maṇḍala offering and guru yoga is received from a teacher, and this page describes it without giving it as a self-taught sequence. Bodhicitta, the six perfections, calm abiding and emptiness each have their own pages; the practices below are the lamrim’s way of meditating — reflecting, then letting the reflection settle — on the ground those rest on.

Pratiques

Comment ces pratiques s'articulent

Every practice on this page applies the lamrim’s one method: take a teaching through hearing, thinking and meditating — reason it through until the conclusion is felt, then rest in it until it becomes a habit of mind — and arrange those reflections so that each stage of motivation becomes the ground of the next. Relying on a teacher is where the sequence begins; the precious human life, death and karma make up the initial scope and turn attention from this life’s concerns toward what lasts; renunciation, the intermediate scope, turns it from cyclic existence toward freedom; and the three-scopes check keeps the aim honest while it widens toward bodhicitta, the perfections, calm abiding and insight. The four thoughts are the same opening material as the Nyingma and Kagyu preliminaries arrange it, and the daily rhythm keeps one topic deep while the whole path stays in view.

What is the difference between lamrim and ngondro in Tibetan Buddhism?

Lamrim is a way of arranging the whole sūtra path as stages of reflection, organised in the Kadam and Gelug traditions by Atiśa’s three scopes of motivation — initial, intermediate and great. Ngöndro is the set of preliminary practices, especially in the Nyingma and Kagyu traditions, that prepares a student for the main practice. Its outer part is the four thoughts that turn the mind from saṃsāra — precious human birth, impermanence and death, karma, and the suffering of cyclic existence — which covers much the same material as the lamrim’s opening stages; Alexander Berzin maps the four thoughts onto the lamrim as steps toward renunciation. Its inner part — refuge with prostrations, bodhicitta, Vajrasattva purification, maṇḍala offering and guru yoga — is practised with a teacher’s instruction. Patrul Rinpoche’s Words of My Perfect Teacher, the classic commentary on the Longchen Nyingtik preliminaries, is described by Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey as the main Nyingma text on the equivalent of lamrim.

What are the three scopes of lamrim, initial, intermediate and great?

The three scopes come from Atiśa’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, which distinguishes three kinds of person by what they seek: the lesser, who seeks the pleasures of cyclic existence for themselves; the middling, who turns away from those pleasures and seeks peace for themselves alone; and the superior, who wants to end the suffering of all beings. In the lamrim the initial scope aims at a good future — reflecting on the precious human life, death and karma — the intermediate scope aims at liberation from cyclic existence through renunciation and the three higher trainings, and the great scope aims at full awakening for the sake of others through bodhicitta, the six perfections, calm abiding and insight. Each scope is meant to become the foundation of the next, not to be skipped.

How do you actually practice lamrim meditation day to day at home?

Lamrim meditation follows the sequence of hearing a teaching, thinking it through, and then meditating. In a session you take one topic — say, the precious human life — and go through its reasoning until the conclusion is felt; that is analytical, or discerning, meditation. Then you stop reasoning and rest the mind on that understanding, which is placement or stabilizing meditation, and alternate the two. Teachers such as Alexander Berzin advise short daily sessions at first and a regular “glance” review of the whole path so that no stage is neglected; Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice, reported by FPMT, is to stay with each topic for two weeks or a month and complete the outline in about a year. A teacher or class helps with explanation and questions.

Is lamrim suitable for beginners, even if you are not sure about rebirth?

Lamrim is designed to start at the beginning, with relying on a teacher and the precious human life, so in that sense it is a beginner’s path. Its traditional initial scope, though, assumes belief in future lives; Alexander Berzin points out that the classic texts do not argue for rebirth because they take it for granted. He suggests that many modern students begin a step earlier — working to improve this life as a stepping-stone, while acknowledging that they do not yet understand rebirth and intending to look into it. Some reflections, such as the cause and effect of one’s own actions within a single life, or the uncertainty of the time of death, can be practised either way; others, such as the full teaching on karma or recognising all beings as one’s mothers, are explained by Berzin as depending on rebirth for their depth.

What is the Lamrim Chenmo and how does it relate to Atisha’s Lamp?

The Lamrim Chenmo, or Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, is Tsongkhapa’s expansion of the lamrim, which he completed in 1402. Atiśa’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, written in the eleventh century, set out the three kinds of person and the outline of the path in a short verse text, and the lamrim tradition is traced back to it. Tsongkhapa’s treatise, which belongs to that lineage, grounds each point in classical Indian scriptures and sayings of the earlier Kadampa masters. In the English translation by the Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, the first volume covers the practices that come before bodhicitta, the second the six perfections, and the third calm abiding and insight. Tsongkhapa also wrote shorter versions and verse summaries, such as the Three Principal Aspects of the Path and the Foundation of All Qualities.

Is lamrim only a Gelug teaching, or do other Tibetan schools have it too?

The name and the three-scopes arrangement come from Atiśa’s Kadam tradition and are most associated with the Gelug, which counts several major lamrim texts, three of them by Tsongkhapa. But Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey notes that graduated-path teaching is found in every major Tibetan tradition: in the Kagyu, Gampopa’s Jewel Ornament of Liberation; in the Sakya, Parting from the Four Clingings and the Lamdre, the “path and its result” teachings; and in the Nyingma, Patrul Rinpoche’s Words of My Perfect Teacher. Alexander Berzin adds that the same basic material is organised differently — as the four thoughts that turn the mind in the Nyingma, the four themes of Gampopa in the Kagyu and the four clingings in the Sakya — and that the three graded scopes of motivation are what make a presentation a lamrim in the strict sense.

Comment choisir entre elles ?

If you are new to lamrim, start with how it is meditated — the analytical-then-placement method — and with finding a teacher or class, then take the topics in order beginning with the precious human life. If you keep postponing what matters, the death reflection is the traditional remedy, but only if you feel steady; if you are grieving or death thoughts already feel heavy, set it aside and ground yourself first. If small habitual actions bother you, reflect on karma; if the cycle of wanting and getting has started to feel empty, work with renunciation. If you practise a Nyingma or Kagyu ngöndro, the four thoughts are your entry to the same ground. If you are unsure your motivation counts, use the three-scopes check, and if you have the outline but no routine, set up the daily rhythm.

Ce que ces approches ne tranchent pas

The sources here establish what Atiśa, Tsongkhapa, Patrul Rinpoche and their modern teachers say the stages are and how to meditate on them — not that the reflections produce particular effects. None of these practices has been tested as such; the modern studies cited tested related exercises, such as imagining a good thing absent or brief laboratory reflections on death, with modern participants. The traditional lamrim assumes rebirth, other realms and liberation from cyclic existence, and its liturgies describe the lower realms vividly; this page presents those as the tradition’s claims, and readers will hold them differently. Teachers and schools also differ on sequence, on how much devotion to a teacher is asked for and when, and on whether the path can be followed in full without accepting rebirth. Death and suffering contemplations can be distressing, and the research on difficult meditation experiences is qualitative.

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Questions fréquentes

What is lamrim, the stages of the path?

Lamrim (Tibetan lam rim, “stages of the path”) is the Tibetan Buddhist way of arranging the whole of the Buddha’s sūtra teaching into a step-by-step course of meditation. It goes back to Atiśa’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, which sorts practitioners into three scopes — initial, intermediate and great — and its best-known expansion is Tsongkhapa’s Great Treatise (Lamrim Chenmo), completed in 1402. The path runs from relying on a teacher, through precious human life, death, karma and the faults of cyclic existence, to bodhicitta, the six perfections, calm abiding and insight. It is a contemplative tradition; the reflections themselves have not been tested in controlled studies.

Comment fonctionne « Alternate analytical (checking) meditation with placement meditation » ?

Lamrim rests on a three-step process of hearing a teaching, thinking it over until it is understood and found convincing, and then meditating. Alexander Berzin describes the meditation itself as two-fold: in analytical — he prefers “discerning” — meditation you walk again through the line of reasoning so that the state of mind it leads to arises freshly, and in stabilizing (placement) meditation you let what you have discerned sink in with full concentration, alternating the two until they can be combined. Mipham’s Wheel of Analytical Meditation gives the same rhythm: investigate until the momentum of the insight fades, remain with it, then investigate again. The Tibetan word for meditation, Berzin notes, implies building up a habit — which is why the topic is revisited rather than understood once.

Comment fonctionne « Begin where the lamrim begins: relying on a spiritual teacher, with care » ?

Tsongkhapa’s Foundation of All Qualities opens by calling the kind teacher the foundation of all good qualities and right reliance on them the root of the path, and the publisher’s description of the Great Treatise has the Dalai Lama’s endorsement there describes it as running from how to rely on a spiritual teacher up to buddhahood. Berzin notes that the Gelug lamrims place the healthy teacher relationship before the stages themselves, and that the more advanced instructions on regarding the teacher as a buddha are not meant for beginners. Atiśa’s Lamp already names qualities to look for in a teacher who gives vows — skill, living by the vows, patience and compassion. The point is practical: the stages are oral instructions that are explained, corrected and fitted to a person.

Comment fonctionne « Contemplate the precious human life: the freedoms and advantages » ?

The first topic of the initial scope is the “free and well-favoured” human birth. Jigme Lingpa’s four thoughts list eight states without the chance to practise that one is free of, five personal advantages and five advantages due to circumstances; Geshe Dhargyey speaks of eight respites and ten endowments, and Berzin of eighteen features. The reflection works by noticing each condition and imagining its absence — Berzin’s example is to picture life driven by an animal’s instincts — so that ordinary freedoms stop being invisible. Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects says to reflect on this again and again to loosen attachment to this life’s concerns; a modern study of “mental subtraction” found that imagining a good thing absent from one’s life lifted mood more than thinking about its presence — a related effect, not the same practice.

Comment fonctionne « Contemplate death and impermanence with the nine-point reflection » ?

Geshe Dhargyey presents the nine-part sequence as deriving from Tsongkhapa’s guideline instructions: three root facts — death is certain, its time is uncertain, and at the time of death nothing but Dharma practice helps — each supported by three reasons and each ending in a decision. Its stated purpose is to stop wasting time, loosen attachment to fleeting things and sustain practice. Psychology suggests the manner of reflection matters: brief reminders of death (“mortality salience”) tend to increase defensiveness, while Cozzolino and colleagues found that a “death reflection” exercise modelled on accounts of near-death experiences led highly extrinsically oriented participants toward less greedy choices — a modern manipulation, not the lamrim practice, but a reason to do this reflectively rather than as a jolt.

Comment fonctionne « Reflect on karma: cause and effect in your own actions » ?

The last initial-scope topic is karma, the teaching that actions shaped by intention bring results that follow the person — in Tsongkhapa’s Foundation of All Qualities, “just as a shadow follows the body.” Berzin clears the ground by contrasting it with ideas it is often confused with: Buddhism, he says, does not explain what happens to us as chance, luck, fate or reward and punishment handed down by an authority, and calls karma the most complex topic in the teachings. Reflecting on ordinary actions turns that abstraction into something visible: small habits strengthen with repetition and shape what comes next, which is the motive the tradition draws on for restraint and for cultivating what is helpful.

Comment fonctionne « Cultivate renunciation in the tradition’s sense: the determination to be free » ?

The intermediate scope begins when the reflections of the initial scope are turned on the whole of cyclic existence. Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects calls renunciation the determination to be free, without which the thirst for pleasure in saṃsāra cannot be pacified, and says it has truly arisen when hope for saṃsāra’s pleasures no longer arises even for an instant and one longs for liberation day and night. The Foundation of All Qualities asks to see that mundane pleasures disappoint and cannot be relied on, and to pursue liberation instead; Geshe Dhargyey describes the method for that liberation as the three higher trainings of ethics, concentration and wisdom. The very next verse of the Three Principal Aspects says renunciation must be embraced by bodhicitta, which keeps it open toward others rather than closed in on oneself.

Comment fonctionne « Reflect on the four thoughts that turn the mind (the outer preliminaries) » ?

In the Nyingma and Kagyu preliminaries, the lamrim’s opening topics are gathered into four thoughts that turn the mind from saṃsāra; the Ninth Karmapa’s Mahāmudrā manual lists them as common preliminaries. Dudjom Rinpoche’s concise ngöndro gives them in four lines — this free and endowed birth is hard to find, everything born is impermanent and bound to die, actions bring their results, and the three realms are an ocean of suffering — and notes that reciting them many times trains the mind. Jigme Lingpa’s Longchen Nyingtik version expands each at length, and Patrul Rinpoche’s Words of My Perfect Teacher is the classic commentary on those preliminaries. Berzin maps the four thoughts onto the lamrim as steps toward renunciation, the intermediate-scope motivation, always followed by bodhicitta and emptiness. They are the outer preliminaries; the inner ones — refuge with prostrations, bodhicitta, Vajrasattva, maṇḍala offering and guru yoga — are practised with a teacher’s instruction.

Comment fonctionne « Set your motivation with the three scopes » ?

Atiśa’s Lamp sorts practitioners by what they are seeking: their own mundane pleasure, their own peace, or an end to the suffering of all beings, and the Lamp itself goes on to explain the path for the third. Berzin explains that in lamrim “motivation” means one’s aim, not an emotion, that the initial scope assumes belief in future lives which traditional texts do not argue for, and that many Westerners therefore start a step earlier — what he calls “Dharma-Lite,” improving this life as a stepping-stone. His warning is that skipping straight to the great scope trivialises it. Naming your actual aim keeps the practice honest, and each scope is meant to become the ground of the next.

Comment fonctionne « Keep a daily lamrim rhythm: one topic in depth, the whole path at a glance » ?

Berzin describes “glance meditation” — regularly reviewing the entire path so that one topic is not overemphasised and others neglected — alongside focused work on a single topic. Tsongkhapa’s Foundation of All Qualities is a fourteen-stanza summary of the whole graduated path that can serve as that review. FPMT reports Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice to follow a lamrim outline and meditate on each subject for two weeks or a month, finishing the lamrim in a year. Berzin adds that continuity matters more than length: short sessions every day, extended gradually, rather than long ones that make you want to stop.

What is the difference between lamrim and ngondro in Tibetan Buddhism?

Lamrim is a way of arranging the whole sūtra path as stages of reflection, organised in the Kadam and Gelug traditions by Atiśa’s three scopes of motivation — initial, intermediate and great. Ngöndro is the set of preliminary practices, especially in the Nyingma and Kagyu traditions, that prepares a student for the main practice. Its outer part is the four thoughts that turn the mind from saṃsāra — precious human birth, impermanence and death, karma, and the suffering of cyclic existence — which covers much the same material as the lamrim’s opening stages; Alexander Berzin maps the four thoughts onto the lamrim as steps toward renunciation. Its inner part — refuge with prostrations, bodhicitta, Vajrasattva purification, maṇḍala offering and guru yoga — is practised with a teacher’s instruction. Patrul Rinpoche’s Words of My Perfect Teacher, the classic commentary on the Longchen Nyingtik preliminaries, is described by Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey as the main Nyingma text on the equivalent of lamrim.

What are the three scopes of lamrim, initial, intermediate and great?

The three scopes come from Atiśa’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, which distinguishes three kinds of person by what they seek: the lesser, who seeks the pleasures of cyclic existence for themselves; the middling, who turns away from those pleasures and seeks peace for themselves alone; and the superior, who wants to end the suffering of all beings. In the lamrim the initial scope aims at a good future — reflecting on the precious human life, death and karma — the intermediate scope aims at liberation from cyclic existence through renunciation and the three higher trainings, and the great scope aims at full awakening for the sake of others through bodhicitta, the six perfections, calm abiding and insight. Each scope is meant to become the foundation of the next, not to be skipped.

How do you actually practice lamrim meditation day to day at home?

Lamrim meditation follows the sequence of hearing a teaching, thinking it through, and then meditating. In a session you take one topic — say, the precious human life — and go through its reasoning until the conclusion is felt; that is analytical, or discerning, meditation. Then you stop reasoning and rest the mind on that understanding, which is placement or stabilizing meditation, and alternate the two. Teachers such as Alexander Berzin advise short daily sessions at first and a regular “glance” review of the whole path so that no stage is neglected; Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice, reported by FPMT, is to stay with each topic for two weeks or a month and complete the outline in about a year. A teacher or class helps with explanation and questions.

Is lamrim suitable for beginners, even if you are not sure about rebirth?

Lamrim is designed to start at the beginning, with relying on a teacher and the precious human life, so in that sense it is a beginner’s path. Its traditional initial scope, though, assumes belief in future lives; Alexander Berzin points out that the classic texts do not argue for rebirth because they take it for granted. He suggests that many modern students begin a step earlier — working to improve this life as a stepping-stone, while acknowledging that they do not yet understand rebirth and intending to look into it. Some reflections, such as the cause and effect of one’s own actions within a single life, or the uncertainty of the time of death, can be practised either way; others, such as the full teaching on karma or recognising all beings as one’s mothers, are explained by Berzin as depending on rebirth for their depth.

What is the Lamrim Chenmo and how does it relate to Atisha’s Lamp?

The Lamrim Chenmo, or Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, is Tsongkhapa’s expansion of the lamrim, which he completed in 1402. Atiśa’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, written in the eleventh century, set out the three kinds of person and the outline of the path in a short verse text, and the lamrim tradition is traced back to it. Tsongkhapa’s treatise, which belongs to that lineage, grounds each point in classical Indian scriptures and sayings of the earlier Kadampa masters. In the English translation by the Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, the first volume covers the practices that come before bodhicitta, the second the six perfections, and the third calm abiding and insight. Tsongkhapa also wrote shorter versions and verse summaries, such as the Three Principal Aspects of the Path and the Foundation of All Qualities.

Is lamrim only a Gelug teaching, or do other Tibetan schools have it too?

The name and the three-scopes arrangement come from Atiśa’s Kadam tradition and are most associated with the Gelug, which counts several major lamrim texts, three of them by Tsongkhapa. But Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey notes that graduated-path teaching is found in every major Tibetan tradition: in the Kagyu, Gampopa’s Jewel Ornament of Liberation; in the Sakya, Parting from the Four Clingings and the Lamdre, the “path and its result” teachings; and in the Nyingma, Patrul Rinpoche’s Words of My Perfect Teacher. Alexander Berzin adds that the same basic material is organised differently — as the four thoughts that turn the mind in the Nyingma, the four themes of Gampopa in the Kagyu and the four clingings in the Sakya — and that the three graded scopes of motivation are what make a presentation a lamrim in the strict sense.

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