Lamrim
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Lamrim

Lamrim (Tibetan: ལམ་རིམ, Wylie: lam rim, "stages of the path") is a Tibetan Buddhist textual form for presenting the stages in the complete path to enlightenment as taught by Buddha. In Tibetan Buddhist history there have been many different versions of lamrim, presented by different teachers of the Nyingma, Kagyu and Gelug schools. However, all versions of the lamrim are elaborations of Atiśa's 11th-century root text A Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment (Bodhipathapradīpa).

When Atiśa, the originator of the lamrim came from India to Tibet, he was asked by king Jang Chub Ö to give a complete and easily accessible summary of the doctrine in order to clarify wrong views, especially those resulting from apparent contradictions across the sutras and their commentaries. Based upon this request he wrote the Bodhipathapradīpa ("A Lamp for the Path to Awakening"), teaching what came to be known as the lamrim for the Tibetans. Atiśa's presentation of the doctrine later became known as the Kadampa tradition in Tibet.

According to Tsong Khapa, in his Lam Rim Chen Mo ("The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment"), Atiśa took the number and order of the subjects in Maitreya-natha and Asaṅgas Abhisamayalankara ("Ornament of clear realizations"), which was based on the wisdom sutras, as the basis to write the Bodhipathapradīpa. In the Abhisamayalankara they emphasised the hidden meanings of the sutras. Tibetan Buddhists thus believe that the teachings of the lamrim are based on the sutras that the Buddha taught and therefore contains the essential points of all sutra teachings in their logical order for practice.

Gampopa, a Kadampa monk and student of the famed yogi Milarepa, introduced the lamrim to his disciples as a way of developing the mind gradually. His exposition of lamrim is known in English translation as "The Jewel Ornament of Liberation" and is studied to this day in the various Kagyu schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

The main Lam Rim text in the Nyingma tradition is Longchen Rabjampa's Finding Rest in the Nature of Mind, along with its voluminous auto-commentary, The Great Chariot. Both lay out the entire scope of the buddhist teachings according to the view of the Nyingma school, from the foundational practices through to Dzogchen.

Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelug school which is primarily based on Atiśa's Kadampa school, wrote one of his masterpieces on lamrim: The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path of Enlightenment (Tib. Lam-rim Chen-mo) which has about 1000 pages, and is primarily based on literary sources. There is also a medium-length lamrim text by Tsongkhapa (200 pages) and a short one, called Lam-rim Dü-dön (Tib.), which is recited daily by many Gelugpas and is about 10 pages long.

The Lamrim was the first Tibetan text translated into a European language by Ippolito Desideri, a Jesuit missionary, who visited Tibet and made an extensive study of Tibetan Buddhism from 1716 to 1721. Desideri studied the Lam Rim Chen Mo of Tsongkhapa, and his manuscript describing Tibet was one of the most extensive and accurate accounts of Buddhist philosophy until the twentieth century.

The starting point of the lamrim is a division of Buddhist practitioners into beings of three scopes, based upon the motivation of their religious activity. Disregarded in this division are individuals whose motives revolve around benefits in their current life. Striving for a favorable rebirth is implicitly the minimum requirement for an activity or practice to be classified as spiritual.

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