(2 credits) This course explores the Guru Puja (Lama Chöpa) and similar practices as comprehensive contemplative frameworks for transformation within the Gelug lineage. Through study, meditation, and reflective analysis, students investigate how these practices unite devotion, ethical discipline, analytical reasoning, and meditative insight into a single path of spiritual and psychological development.

The course integrates historical and philosophical study with direct contemplative experience, emphasizing the role of lineage and the teacher–student relationship as vehicles of transformation. Students engage with selected verses and practices to explore how devotion and reasoning function together to cultivate wisdom and compassion.

Students in this course will deepen foundational understanding, apply insights through contemplative practice, integrate devotional and analytical modes of knowing, and develop the capacity to translate these insights into contemporary educational, spiritual, and service-oriented contexts.

*Note: this course is NOT a commentary on the Guru Yoga text!*