Celebrating Ten Years of the All-Encompassing Path to Enlightenment (AEP) Sangha Programme
All Encompassing Path Transition Team
Key points you can find in this post:
2023 celebrates 10 years of the Rigpa sangha’s main study programme - the All Encompassing Path to Enlightenment (AEP)
How the programme began and evolved
The NEW AEP - starting in October 2023
Gratitude to all the volunteers and teams who produced the programme
2023 marks the tenth year of Rigpa’s sangha programme The All-Encompassing Path to Enlightenment (AEP). The programme has supported many of us in Rigpa and has been an invaluable continuous thread of teachings, published weekly, that has given stability to the whole sangha. Countless students around the world have followed the path, watching and studying teachings individually and in groups - listening to video recordings of teachings and with support of detailed written materials in up to six languages.
How the All-Encompassing Path began
Back in 2013 the programme was launched by Sogyal Rinpoche who envisaged it having the dual intention of:
bringing the whole sangha together, and
bringing all his students along the path to enlightenment.
“Don’t miss this boat!” he’d say when he kicked off the AEP during the streamed ‘Winter Retreat’ in December 2013. “The main thing about the All-Encompassing Path, if you put it in a simple way, is directly showing the way to enlightenment.”
In the beginning, the AEP closely followed and shared teachings from Sogyal Rinpoche’s teaching tours, connecting the sangha ‘almost live’ to the progressive flow of his teaching cycles. The topics shared in these early years included mind and the nature of mind, elements of the ngöndro, Guru Yoga and devotion, lojong - these were all themes of the AEP home study and sangha days. Back then, Monthly Gatherings were also an integral part of the AEP bringing the whole sangha together once each month.
The last six years
When Sogyal Rinpoche stepped back as Spiritual Director of Rigpa in 2017, the AEP team, together with the countries, felt it was important that the programme continued to be all-encompassing, and for everyone.
Rigpa Senior Teacher, Ian Ives recalls:
“At that time it became clear that the focus should broaden to include teachings by other masters as well as Sogyal Rinpoche. The aim was to continue our Dharma programme in a way that respects the needs of different students in Rigpa, and that was possible for students to study and follow on their own.
With Sogyal Rinpoche no longer giving live teachings, there was a wish for the programme to shift towards longer term modules covering some of the most core teachings of Rigpa’s path of study and practice—topics which were relevant and accessible to the whole Rigpa community and were also topics that Sogyal Rinpoche had taught. These included: The Seven Points of Mind Training; the Bodhicaryavatara, and the course Revolution of Mind and Heart looking at the fundamental principles of the Buddha’s teachings. Most recently the AEP has featured the study, reflection and practice of Turning Suffering and Happiness into Enlightenment.”
The AEP continuously evolved to offer teachings of interest to a broad spectrum of students—appropriate and inspiring for newer sangha members, and also inspiring and helpful for older Rigpa students as well. Materials were published via the Treasury of Wisdom website. [link https://treasuryofwisdom.rigpa.org/ ]
In 2021, international Sangha Days were transformed and ‘reimagined’ to focus on standalone topics, and their place became separate from the All-Encompassing Path.
Celebrating the first Ten Years
We take this opportunity to celebrate the achievement of the first ten years.
Since the first weekly module of the Weekly Home Study Programme was published in January 2013, we have seen,
269 weekly packages of video teachings and study and practice guidelines have been prepared in 5 (sometimes 6) languages, offering students 2 hours of study and reflection each week;
82 monthly gatherings: full day programmes of study, reflection and practice; and
It has been the regular programme followed by over 1000 students; and at its peak, some 3000 students were connecting with the AEP.
Each student who followed for the last ten years, has received over 1000 hours of study and reflection of the Dharma -- this amounts to well over a million student Dharma hours for some 1500 students over the last ten years.
We can all rejoice at this treasure of Dharma!
And all these packages of teachings will not be ‘put in the bottom drawer and forgotten’ - the entire All-Encompassing Path to Enlightenment archive of teachings and study materials continues to be accessible to all Rigpa mandala student who currently have an AEP subscription on Dharmakosha and Treasury of Wisdom website.
Looking ahead
Today, the Rigpa community is flourishing under very different circumstances, and we have seen the entrustment of Rigpa’s teachers and practice holders, whose main role is to guide students on their path.
The AEP international sangha programme and international Sangha Days are also entering a new phase with a new format starting in October, 2023.
The idea for the new format came from discussions that took place during the January gathering of senior teachers and practice holders.
The elements of the new All-Encompassing Path–maybe not everything will be up and running perfectly from day one– will be:
A monthly LIVE teaching session by one of Rigpa’s most experienced teachers - sharing the Dharma in an engaging modern way, while at the same time being grounded on the teachings of Sogyal Rinpoche and our lineage.
→ The first teaching will be on the 8th October at 16:00 CET. SAVE THE DATE!!Weekly study topic, so the groups that have formed in the different centres can continue their endeavour to let the dharma enter their everyday lives.
Deepening study materials for all those who have more time at hand and want to go deeper.
Who is coordinating and guiding the new AEP?
Based on the initial proposals from the One Month Retreat with senior teachers and practice holders (January 2023), a transition team formed at the direction of the International Steering Group. This transition team currently includes: Lily Ng (Lerab Ling), Gabriele Maass (Germany), and Miguel Oramus (Spain), advised by Ian Ives (Lerab Ling) and the team is supported by Claire Harron (Ireland). They have been in contact with many different activity holders—including Rigpa National Curriculum Holders, the International Coordination Group, the group of Rigpa Teachers, and current national and local AEP holders—to get their input into how this programme can continue to meet the needs of students within Rigpa and to keep it as flexible as possible for those interacting with students.
One Rigpa teacher, sharing during a recent AEP project meeting, returned to Rinpoche’s metaphor of the boat:
“There is a sense of the AEP being a vessel continuing, keeping the thread of what Sogyal Rinpoche wanted of us. And also, this new phase is a recognition of us being in new waters and we are pioneering into new ground.”
Gratitude to the AEP team for the first ten years
So, a big thank you to everyone who has played a role to date in this vast transmission of Dharma. They include teams in Lerab Ling who have held and navigated this core sangha programme, and at this time in particular Eva Stöter, Jeremy Tattersall, Markus Schmidt and Ian Ives, as well as Javier Torales and Israel Carrion for the production of materials, also the Archiving Team.
Rigpa Teacher, Rosey Hastings, has volunteered on the AEP team in recent years, and shared:
“I had the privilege of working with the team putting the programme together. I would help every week writing the guidelines and it was absolutely extraordinary. It was so beautifully put together, so well thought out. And the guidelines also were exquisite. Eva is extraordinary. She has an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the teachings and she would choose them every week and then give us this beautiful overview.”
And especially thank you to the countless volunteers without whom it would not be possible for the teachings to be transmitted: the translators - German, French, Spanish, Italian and Chinese - and transcribers of the words, editors and writers, local instructors and teachers who hold the students, the local AV and tech teams, and centre managers who create the containers. It’s a vast interdependent web.
May the merit of everyone’s activity bring all sentient beings to enlightenment; and May the Rigpa sangha together realise the all-encompassing path to enlightenment.
As for the future, the plans for the next phase of the AEP will be shared during the last AEP gathering in June, at the All Mandala Gathering for 4th Anniversary of Sogyal Rinpoche’s Parinirvana, and by email.
We look forward to seeing you in the NEW All-Encompassing Path programme.
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