Diamond Way is Coming in 2026
Asian Classics Institute is opening the door to the Diamond Way! Geshe Michael has offered to teach us Diamond Way in 2026–– and the journey starts in 2025.
We are very excited, and we hope you are too. There are some prerequisites, however. If you want to take Diamond Way courses with Geshe Michael in 2026, there's something you must do in 2025: Attend (in person or online) all four A Song of My Spiritual Life events in 2025!
Why? A Song of My Spiritual Life is a short lam rim (written by Je Tsongkapa)—and lam rim is one way of preparing for Diamond Way. Geshe Michael has chosen this book as our preparation for taking Diamond Way courses from him in 2026. He will be teaching its contents over the course of four Asian Classics Institute events in 2025. So please join us in April for the first of these four required activities, if you think you might be interested in taking Diamond Way courses from Geshe Michael next year.
The other three required A Song of My Spiritual Life events will take place in July in Mexico City; October in Phoenix; and December in Kyoto. Please make your 2025 plans accordingly.
April 17-27, 2025, at Diamond Mountain Retreat Center: The New Beginning/Opening the Door to the Diamond Way
July 18-20, 2025, in Mexico City: Wisdom in the Times of Chaos
October 24-28, 2025, in Phoenix
December 11-16, 2025, in Kyoto
More information will become available on these events over the next few months.
Lam rim means steps on the path to enlightenment in Tibetan. (In Sanskrit, it's marga krama.) Many important teachers in our lineage, including Je Tsongkapa (1357-1419) and Pabongka Rinpoche (1878-1941), have written lam rims, setting out all the steps needed to achieve total enlightenment in one lifetime. Some lam rims are long, like Je Tsongkapa's massive Lam Rim Chen Mo (about 1,000 pages) and some are short, like Master Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend at 123 verses or Lord Tsongkapa's 14-verse work, The Source of All My Good. Even short lam rims cover the entire breadth of Mahayana Buddhist practice with great clarity, often using beautiful poetry that leaves images seared into your mind, to be remembered during the course of your day as you struggle to be a better human being amidst all the challenges that daily life brings us.
Our text for preparing to receive Diamond Way teachings in 2026 will be Je Tsongkapa's A Song of My Spiritual Life. It is a 45-verse lam rim in which this master teacher lays out his own spiritual experience during the course of his 62-year life. Since Je Tsongkapa usually writes in a very scholarly style, this work is unusual, because it gives us a glimpse into Tsongkapa's own personal spiritual history. It's a touching and intimate work from a Buddhist superhero. And at the same time it, like others of this genre, sets forth everything each of us needs to know and do to achieve total enlightenment in this lifetime.
We will use the recent translation of Tsongkapa's A Song of My Spiritual Life completed by Diamond Cutter Classics' translator Gibson Chang with Geshe Michael Roach. In several of Geshe Michael's classes during The New Beginning/Opening the Door to the Diamond Way, we will find out what personal advice this wise founder of the Gelugpa tradition thinks it's important to give us as we progress through our own spiritual journeys. We will discover how Tsongkapa applied the lam rim to his own life, reminding us constantly: “I, the deep practitioner, this is how I practice; you, who seek freedom, must try to do the same.” It's very encouraging to know that this great master not only thinks we can do it, but is prepared to lay out the specifics that we each can follow to achieve this highest of all goals, right now.
And speaking of the highest of all goals, it's an open secret in our tradition that if you study lam rim well and truly (while at the same time keeping your morals nicely, being kind to all other beings, and studying emptiness as much as you can), you are already receiving many Diamond Way teachings! Sometimes people find this hard to believe, but it's quite true, and once you begin to receive Diamond Way teachings, either from your own personal teacher, from Geshe Michael, or in both ways, you will be amazed at how much Diamond Way you've already learned in lam rim.
But don't take our word for it. Sign up for the four A Song of My Spiritual Life teachings in 2025, make a plan to register for the Diamond Way teachings in 2026 when registration opens later this year, and find out for yourself!
