(2 credits) This course introduces the Guru Puja (Lama Chöpa) and related practices as complete contemplative systems for personal transformation in the Gelug tradition. Through readings, discussion, meditation, and reflection, students examine how these practices integrate devotion, ethical commitment, analytical inquiry, and meditative insight into a unified path of spiritual and psychological growth. Combining historical and philosophical study with direct contemplative experience, the course explores how lineage and the teacher–student relationship function as relational and ethical frameworks for transformation, with particular attention to discernment, responsibility, and agency within asymmetrical relationships. Working with selected verses and practices, students investigate how devotion and reasoning operate together as technologies of transformation and consider how these dynamics can be responsibly engaged in contemporary educational, spiritual, and service contexts.

