ACI 14

    Lojong,    

 Developing  

the Good Heart

with
Venerable Gyelse

online course
March 4–April 3, 2025

Are you ready to radically transform your life and the world you live in? If so join us for ACI 14, open your heart and change the world.

ACI 14, Lojong, Developing the Good Heart, is one of the most beloved of the Asian Classics Institute 18 Foundation Courses. For many hundreds of years, teachers severely restricted the teaching of lojong—which means developing the good heart—for the simple reason that they thought it would be too hard for most people to do.  Why? When you change your heart to make it better, you take on the cares, concerns, and troubles of other people as if they were your own. It can be overwhelming, unless you understand that the only way to accomplish this is to use joy—the sheer delight you come to feel as you study more, find out why it's important to treat everyone else as well as you treat yourself, and begin to experience the wonderful results of living this way.
Buddhism has a tradition of the peacock warrior. Just as, legend has it, peacocks fly into a forest of poison trees and avidly eat the foliage, finding that transforming it into nutrients creates the gorgeous colors of their beautiful feathers, so does a peacock warrior who is a bodhisattva avidly seek out problems, trouble, and disaster, bravely take them on their own shoulders, and help resolve and transform them into something much better. The result? A beautiful life, strong joy, and the possibility of reaching total enlightenment much faster.
Lojong, Developing the Good Heart, is all about love—how to feel it, how to use it, and how to rejoice in its results. Other living beings are the workshop for us to practice and learn about love, so they are more precious to us than a wish-fulfilling jewel. We wouldn't even know how to wish properly, if it were not for what other living beings teach us about love and compassion. When we practice lojong, we come to see the most irritating person in our life as more valuable than a goldmine, because they enable us to work on perfecting our virtue and planting good karma. Other people, and irritating people in particular, motivate us to really apply the idea of emptiness—seeing that everything comes from us and how we have treated other beings—and make tremendous strides in spiritual progress.
Lojong has been viewed by our teachers as difficult for most people to practice, because it teaches us to take the loss in any situation, and give the advantage to others. We often feel, "Why should I let others take advantage of me?"  Even if we can give the advantage consistently to others, we might feel regret or resentment, and that will harm us. We have to find a way to give everything with joy. These are some reasons why lojong is such a challenge. But mastering its teachings will bring us good results beyond imagining.
In Lojong, Developing the Good Heart, we will study the eight worldly thoughts and how to incorporate them into our lives. We'll continue our exploration of emptiness and how to take the middle way in every situation. We'll find out about our own Buddha nature that everyone is born with, and how it is the same as the emptiness of our mind, and how that will force us eventually to perceive ourselves as Buddha. We'll learn about the five poisons, the seven-point lojong practice, and the four bodies of a Buddha. The classes will cover the four attachments and how to get free of them, and give us more insight on how to liberate ourselves from circling around in samsara. We'll learn to assess all the parts of our lives, before and after we encountered Buddhism, as very special spiritually. And, most fun of all, we'll learn to create a bloodthirsty monster whose only job is to destroy our own worst enemies!

Join Ven. Gyelse for ACI 14, Lojong, Developing the Good Heart, March 4–April 3, 2025, to find out more.

VENERABLE LOBSANG GYELSE

Venerable Lobsang Gyelse has studied Tibetan Buddhism for over 30 years with many of the great Tibetan masters. Her main teacher is Geshe Michael Roach. 
Venerable Gyelse was ordained a nun in the winter of 2006, completed a three-year silent meditation retreat in 2014 at Diamond Mountain, and is the mother of a grown son. 
She is a chaplain/chaplain/spiritual care provider, counseling people around the world, and currently serves as Diamond Mountain Retreat Center board president. She lives in central Arizona near her teacher.

🗓️ ACI 14 Schedule:

ALL CLASSES at 7:00 a.m.
(ARIZONA TIME)

Class 1 - March 4
Class 2 - March 6
Class 3 - March 11
Class 4 - March 13
Class 5 - March 18
Class 6 - March 20
Class 7 - March 25
Class 8 - March 27
Class 9 - April 1
Class 10 - April 3