Every serious student of Buddhism eventually arrives at two questions. What is the mind? And how do things actually exist?
They sound simple and are anything but. The first asks about the very instrument we use to experience everything, the awareness that is reading these words right now. The second asks whether the world we perceive, including ourselves, exists in the way it appears to. Between them, these two questions have shaped two and a half millennia of Buddhist philosophy, and they remain the hinge on which the whole path turns.
This September, Jamyang opens a new course built around exactly these two questions. Exploring Buddhism: Mind & View is a seven month programme of study, meditation and community, taught by Geshe Tenzin Namdak and Venerable Tenzin Gendun. Registration is now open.
Why these two subjects?
In the great monastic universities of Tibet, students did not begin their philosophical training with the most advanced texts. They began with the mind and with tenets. Understanding the types of awareness, how perception works, how emotions arise and how they can be transformed gives the student a map of their own inner territory. Studying the tenet systems, the four classical schools of Buddhist philosophy, trains the student to hold a view, test it, refine it and finally arrive at the Middle Way understanding of emptiness that Nagarjuna and Chandrakirti set out.
The logic is practical. Meditation without an understanding of the mind is like navigating without a map. And a view of reality that has never been examined tends to quietly run our lives, whether we notice it or not. The Buddhist tradition takes the opposite approach: examine the view first, understand the mind that holds it, and let practice grow from that clarity.
This is why teachers across the FPMT, including Geshe Namdak, return to these subjects again and again. They are not preliminary in the sense of being basic. They are foundational in the sense that everything else stands on them.
What the course covers
Exploring Buddhism: Mind & View draws two modules from the full eight module FPMT Exploring Buddhism programme, a curriculum co-developed by senior FPMT teachers including Geshe Namdak himself, Geshe Legtsok and Venerable Joan Nicell, as a bridge between the foundation level Discovering Buddhism course and the advanced FPMT Basic Program.
Exploring the View, Tenets and the Middle Way, taught by Geshe Tenzin Namdak, works through the four main Buddhist tenet systems: the two truths, selflessness and consciousness as each school presents them, culminating in the Middle Way philosophy of realising emptiness.
Exploring the Mind, taught by Venerable Tenzin Gendun, examines what the mind is, destructive and constructive emotions, objects and object-possessors, the two and seven types of awareness, and main minds and mental factors.
The course runs from September 2026 to April 2027, with classes on Monday evenings from 18:30 to 20:00, beginning on 21 September. There are 26 teaching sessions in total, available in person at Jamyang and online, with recordings of every session. Monthly review sessions and a dedicated WhatsApp group connect you with fellow students throughout, so that study, discussion and meditation develop together.
The course is offered on Jamyang’s generosity model, with a level to suit every circumstance and free enrolment for monastics.
The pathway to the Basic Program
There is a further reason this course matters right now. In 2027, Jamyang launches its next cycle of the FPMT Basic Program, the five year, in-depth study programme designed by Lama Zopa Rinpoche for students ready to progress beyond foundational study. Working directly with root texts by Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, Shantideva and other great masters of the tradition, the Basic Program is the most substantial commitment to Buddhist education that Jamyang offers, and places on a cycle come around only once every several years.
Geshe Namdak has advised that these two modules, combined with the topics studied in Discovering Buddhism, provide exactly the preparation needed for the level of study the Basic Program asks of its students. Completing Exploring Buddhism: Mind & View makes you eligible to enrol in the 2027 cohort.
In other words, this course is the doorway. If you have ever wondered whether the long path of philosophical study is for you, these seven months will tell you, and they will prepare you for it at the same time.
Who this course is for
If you have just completed Discovering Buddhism at Jamyang, congratulations. This is your natural next step, and the timing could not be better: finish in April 2027, and the Basic Program opens shortly after.
If you have been working through Discovering Buddhism by self-study, this course adds live teaching, structure and a community of fellow students to strengthen everything you have learned.
And if you studied Exploring Buddhism in a previous cycle, this is an opportunity to revisit two of its richest modules with fresh eyes. In this tradition, hearing the teachings on mind and emptiness a second time is never repetition. It is deepening.
For students not planning to continue to the Basic Program, the course stands entirely on its own: a thorough grounding in Buddhist philosophy that will inform your meditation and daily life for years.
Begin here
Two questions. Seven months. Two exceptional teachers. And a doorway onto the long, rewarding path of in-depth study.
Registration for Exploring Buddhism: Mind & View is open now.
