In-Depth Meditation Course for Experienced Practitioners: Year 4 Term 1 (September – November 2026)
In-Depth Meditation Training
An opportunity to put the teachings into practice and deepen your meditative experience and understanding, through the guidance of experienced meditator and teacher Venerable Losang Gendun.
Course Details
With Venerable Losang Gendun
Saturdays 5 Sept – 28 Nov
3:30 – 6:00 PM
Online
About This Course – Year 4 – The Vajra Ground: Mahāmudrā and Kriyā Tantra
In this culminating fourth year of our journey, our path turns inward to the mind itself—its empty, luminous nature—and outward to the transformative methods of tantra, where the naturally pure nature of our perception is recognized as the very ground of awakening.
As always, the year will start with generating the mind of awakening, using evocative instructions ranging from Langri Thangpa to Nāgārjuna and Lord Buddha in the famous Bodhisattvapiṭaka. This mind generation we’ll cultivate through the four immeasurable thoughts and the support of calm abiding.
Illuminated by the life stories of the masters of the Gelug Mahāmudrā lineage and beyond, we’ll explore its roots in the history of the early Indian Mahāsiddhas, such as Saraha and Tilopa, through the Kagyü master Gampopa’s and Je Tsongkhapa’s Mañjuśrī lineage up to Paṇchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen’s Highway of the Conquerors and its perspective on this practice. In Sūtra Mahāmudrā we will practice resting attention in the empty nature of awareness, recognizing its clarity and openness as inseparable.
Kriyā Tantra offers a complementary method. Rather than suppress the ordinary, narrow self-narrative that we impose on ourselves and our world, it substitutes for it an extraordinary perspective of pure view. Occasionally, by way of introduction, we’ll also taste practices from the higher tantras—glimpsing how afflictive emotions can be met as innate wisdom, and how the dissolution of the death process opens onto the innate mind of clear light. The structured practices of generation and recitation become a rehearsal for transformation, training perception to meet appearances as pure.
These methods rest on a relationship. We will therefore examine the practice of guru devotion candidly—both as the means by which the lineage’s realization is transmitted and as a practice with real pitfalls, requiring discernment as much as trust. Through the Ganden Lha Gyāma, the Yoga of the inseparability of guru and Avalokiteśvara, and supporting sādhanas, devotion is approached not as deference but as the ethical road toward the state of Vajradhara: the full integration of wisdom and method.
This final year is an invitation to let realization ripen into a way of being. Grounded in bodhicitta and the four immeasurables, sustained by the preliminary practices, and held by the strength of community, we learn to meet the mind without grasping and to meet the world as pure appearance. Our aim is not to accumulate practices, but to bring the path to maturity—wisdom and compassion no longer cultivated separately, but lived as one.
The Buddha Project
This meditation course is part of The Buddha Project led by Ven. Losang Gendun, a branch of which is the Buddha Research Project, an on-going collaboration between Buddhist contemplatives and scientific researchers from the universities of Nîmes and Lausanne, and the Mind & Life organization (founded by neuroscientist Francesco Varela in collaboration with H.H. the Dalai Lama). It is aimed at investigating transformative processes in long-term meditators, regarding such topics as mental health, perception, and self-transcendence. For the initial research it has been granted a European Varela Award.
Introduction to the IDMT training
Meditation is essential for personal transformation and a crucial complement to Buddhist studies. This 4-year online course provides students with long term, in-depth support in their meditative development. This weekly course will offer:
- Authentic traditional instructions, in contemporary language, aimed at providing a comprehensive set of meditation tools for students to transform their knowledge of the Dharma into personal experience.
- Traditional and modern theories on supplementary topics such as models of healthy psychological and spiritual development, ritual, narrative, ethics, and social engagement.
- An international community of meditators, online and live.
To complement the IDMT course we will also offer:
- Meditation Retreats – week & weekend retreats on vipassana, compassion, and mahamudra, offered both at the centers and online.
- Yogi Bootcamp – an intensive, guided, 1-year meditation training with weekly personal interviews (call) for a small group of international students.
- Practice days guided by Ven. Gendun and experienced students of Ven. Gendun
- Weekly reflection sessions, led by experienced students
- Weekends with the opportunity to receive Refuge / Lay Vows, Aspiring Bodhisattva Vows and Engaging Bodhisattva Vows
For more information about the content of the course, download the course description (PDF) here. This course is a collaboration between 5 FPMT Buddhist centers: Shantideva Center New York (US), Jamyang Buddhist Centre Leeds (UK), Institut Vajrayogini in Marzens (FR), Yeshin Norbu Stockholm (SW) and Maitreya Instituut (NL) and therefore the course will be attended by an international group of Buddhist practitioners. If you’re enrolling later on in the course, it is possible to request access to recordings of previous classes. Practical details The In-Depth Meditation Training runs weekly on Saturdays and consists of about 1-hour of guided meditation and 1,5 hours of teachings. The course offers a great opportunity for Buddhist practitioners. In the first year many of the foundational topics will be introduced, however a basic understanding of Mahayana Buddhism is a prerequisite to attend. It will be given in English, with French translation, online via Zoom. The recordings will be made available after the sessions.
Practical information and how to register:
- Course dates: 5 Sept – 28 Nov (13 classes)
- Weekday: Saturdays
- Time: 15:30-18:00 European Central Timezone
- Language: English
- Location: Online (zoom link will be sent after registration)
- Donation: drop in 250 SEK, term 2500 SEK, 4 times pass 900 SEK
- Last day of registration: you can join any time
Your Teacher
Venerable Losang Gendun has spent nearly four decades in Buddhist practice and has lived as a fully ordained Bhikshu in the Tibetan tradition for the past twenty years. Before taking robes, he worked across a wide range of fields — palliative care, technology, refugee organizations, and management — a breadth of human experience that continues to inform his teaching.
His formal training spans ten years of study in monasteries across France, India, Nepal, and Myanmar, complemented by more than four years in solitary retreat engaging deeply with Tibetan sutra and tantra, as well as the Burmese Theravāda Forest Tradition.
For the past eighteen years, Ven. Gendun has taught Buddhist philosophy, psychology, and meditation to students around the world. He serves the vision of H.H. the Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa Rinpoche as a teacher within the FPMT (Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition), and is a member of Mind & Life Europe, a multidisciplinary initiative bringing together scientists and contemplative practitioners to investigate the nature of mind and experience.
In 2023, Ven. Gendun founded The Buddha Project — a long-term initiative offering sustained guidance for serious meditators, fostering dialogue between Buddhist traditions, supporting scientific research into contemplative practice, and exploring the intersection of Dharma and the arts. Its core program is the four-year FPMT In-Depth Meditation Training.
