Dharma College Course Descriptions
REVELATIONS OF MIND COURSES
ROM 101 Exploring Mind and Self
The opportunity to learn from experience is among the most precious benefits life has to offer.
This introductory course explores the human mind from the perspective of inner experience.
What do we mean by ‘mind’? How do mind and ‘I’ relate to each other? And why does life have
so many problems? We read and dialogue, engage the mind and gently observe. If we don’t
know how mind operates, how can we know who we are?
No pre-requisites; open to all.
Week One: Mind, an Introduction
Week Two: Mind and ‘I’: Is Mind Mine?
Week Three: A Name for Everything
Week Four: Mind on Automatic
Week Five: Mind Loves Problems
Week Six: I am, Therefore I am
ROM 102 Confused Mind is Not My Friend
We present ourselves to the world as a single being operating rationally from a single
perspective, but inside a whole society is active. In this course, we look more closely at ‘roleplaying’ mind and at how the many guises of mind deceive us. Convinced that thoughts are ‘me’
and that all presentations of mind are reliable, we don’t see the ways in which our reality is preconstructed. Experience lightens as understanding arises.
No pre-requisites; open to all.
Week One: Confused Mind
Week Two: Customer Mind
Week Three: Sensitive Mind
Week Four: Relaxing Mind
Week Five: Confident Mind
Week Six: Story-telling Mind
ROM 103 The Happy Mind
All human beings seem to yearn for happiness. But how many of us have examined for
ourselves what happiness is? In this course, we will turn from a search for pleasurable things to
an exploration of the mind doing the searching. Using interactive dialogue - and practices that
delight and enliven experience - we will look directly at the mind. Who is the one who is never
satisfied? Are a ‘happy mind’ and ‘a happy me’ the same thing?
No pre-requisites; open to all.
Week One: A Happ(ier) Mind
Week Two: The Experience of Happiness
Week Three: The Language of Happiness
Week Four: The Self and Happiness
Week Five: Patterns of Unhappiness
Week Six: Understanding the Happy Mind
ROM 104 The Stories Mind Tells
Mind talking to mind is a story, just as our life is a story. What else could it be? A hundred years from
now, no one will consider our lives as anything more than stories. Yet our lives are important to us and we
take them very seriously. So why not pay serious attention to the stories that mind tells?... Tarthang
Tulku, Revelations of Mind
Chances are that we have told the story of our lives so often that we have lost the ability to
understand our situation in any other way. ‘I’ star in the ‘story of me’ and firmly believe the story
is real. But is this the story we would tell if we knew we could choose? Or do we feel stuck,
constricted by a past and a future beyond our control? In this course, we will play with the
elements of storytelling, using them as metaphors to re-imagine our lives. Is the past as fixed as
we suppose? Must we be anxious about the future? Could the present unfold with all the
wonderment of dreams?
No pre-requisites; open to all.
Week One: The Ongoing Story of ‘Me’
Week Two: New Beginnings, New Genres
Week Three: Playing with Point of View
Week Four: Conflict and Dramatic Arc
Week Five: Uses of Humor
Week Six: Endings, Happy or Otherwise
ROM 105 Five Key Questions to Keep in Mind
Why does life have to have so many problems? Must we continue to experience frustration and
confusion? Centered around five questions that are key to understanding mind, this course will
introduce enjoyable methods for working with the nature of mind. We learn to understand the
‘knower’ on the path to wholeness.
No pre-requisites; open to all.
Week One: Introducing Mind and Its Regime
Week Two: Who is the Observer?
Week Three: How Does Mind Use Language?
Week Four: Is there a Relationship between Mind and Time?
Week Five: Where Do Thoughts Come From and Where Do They Go?
Week Six: How Do We Move Toward Understanding?
ROM 106 Developing Inner Harmony
We present ourselves to the world as a single being operating rationally from a single
perspective, but inside a whole society is active. In this course, we will look at our busy minds
directly, using discussion, reading and gentle practices that bring more joy, beauty and vitality to
our lives. As we learn to release old mental patterns we naturally develop inner harmony and
peace.
No pre-requisites; open to all.
Week One: Understanding Mind and Heart
Week Two: Exploring the Busyness Within
Week Three: Noticing Our Mental Patterns
Week Four: Opening the Senses to Beauty
Week Five: Developing Quiet Joy
Week Six: The Peaceful Mind
ROM 201 Mind in ‘Real’ Time
Time agitates and confuses us. Not understanding impermanence, we become stuck in the past
and anxious about the future. This course explores the intriguing relationship between mind and
time. When we begin to examine time under the ‘magnifying glass of awareness’, we discover
that past, present, and future may not be immutable qualities of ‘real’ time, but conceptual
frameworks marked out by mind in order for experience to arise. Then what accounts for the
seeming continuity of ‘me’? And where am ‘I’ before mind marks out time?
For students who have taken at least 2 ROM courses at the ‘100’ level.
Week One: Mind Enters Time
Week Two: Mind Marks Time
Week Three: Mind in Three Times
Week Four: Mind Connects Time
Week Five: Points of Transition
Week Six: Mind Before Time
ROM 202 Seeds of Understanding
In this course, we look directly at the knowing aspect of mind that is here called ‘understanding’.
Triggered by the acknowledgement of not understanding, and deepened through inquiry,
understanding moves mind beyond superficial patterning to further levels of knowing. Released
from constrictions of its own making, mind manifests joy and appreciation.
Pre-requisite: Mind in ‘Real’ Time, or consent of the Director.
Week One: Seeds of Suffering
Week Two: A Mind Divided
Week Three: How the Knower Knows Itself
Week Four: Where to Pay Attention
Week Five: Seeds of Understanding
Week Six: Inviting Understanding
ROM 203 Sprouts of Understanding
A further inquiry into the knowing mind, this course looks again at mind and time and considers
anew why we experience problems.
Pre-requisite: Seeds of Understanding, or consent of the Director.
Week One: Perception and Identity
Week Two: The Open Dimension of Mind
Week Three: Another Look at Mind and Time
Week Four: Authentic Knowing
Week Five: 'Who' Knows What 'I' Know?
Week Six: Problems as Opportunities
ROM 301 Knowing Not Knowing
This year-long course continues the exploration of mind and self. Looking more deeply, we see
the results of not understanding our minds. Understanding ‘not understanding’ opens the
gateway to knowledge.
Pre-requisite: ‘Sprouts of Understanding’ and consent of the Director.
ROM 302 Revealing Mind
In this one-year course about mind, identity and the nature of reality, we study Revelations of
Mind for the second or third time. As the text states, “[This] reading moves deeper, toward
seeing specific self-interpretations and readouts in action in your immediate experience. At this
point, you could say, ‘Now I see what I am doing.’”
Pre-requisite: ‘Sprouts of Understanding’ and consent of the Director.
PRACTICE COURSES
PRM 101 Practicing Revelations of Mind
This 6-week course gives you the opportunity to engage in Revelations of Mind practices
together with other students once a week. Instructor-led exercises make the teachings come to
life and help to integrate your understanding into everyday life. The particular practices change
each term.
No pre-requisites; open to all.
PRM 102 Harmonizing Mind & Senses
To grow more accustomed to joy and freedom in the light of knowledge, we practice harmonizing senses,
feelings, identities, motivations, and consciousness; appreciating each element, resolving the conflicts,
and synthesizing the different interior vibrations . . .Tarthang Tulku, Revelations of Mind
Join us as we begin a journey to harmonize mind and senses, allowing more joy, beauty and
vitality to enter our lives. All students are welcome, from long-time meditators to those new to
contemplative practices. The emphasis is on gentle, effective exercises to balance the senses
and open the knots of mind. Brief readings and class discussion will supplement practice,
grounding us in the understanding we need to release confusion and make friends with our
minds.
No pre-requisites; open to all.
Week One: Mind and the Five Senses
Week Two: Sound and Silence
Week Three: Light, Shadow and Form
Week Four: Feelings and Sensations
Week Five: Fragrance, Mind and Memory
Week Six: The Depth of Taste
PRM 103 A Calm, Clear Mind
Clarity arises through observing mind. Observing the mechanisms of mind, seeing how they operate,
what calms and what agitates them, leads to a potent understanding of mind’s nature. Tarthang Tulku,
Revelations of Mind
In this course, we will observe mind and its operations to notice what is agitating and what is
calming. With more knowledge, there is more choice. We learn to create the conditions for
calmness and clarity, qualities that benefit us, and those around us, in our daily lives.
No pre-requisites; open to all.
Week One: Observing Mind
Week Two: What is Agitating?
Week Three: What is Calming?
Week Four: Slowing Thoughts
Week Five: Expanding Clarity
Week Six: Understanding Mind’s Nature
PRM 104 Becoming Present
Dependent on labels and interpretations assigned by mind, we cannot set aside notions of past, present
and future and experience directly what mind presents. Tarthang Tulku, Revelations of Mind
Can we learn to appreciate the unfolding present moment we call ‘now’? In this course, we work
with gentle practices that allow us to set aside thoughts of the past and worries about the future.
Becoming more comfortable with experience as it unfolds, we are better able to handle the
challenges in our lives.
No pre-requisites; open to all.
Week One: Breathing Now
Week Two: Sitting Now
Week Three: Walking Now
Week Four: Listening Now
Week Five: Feeling Now
Week Six: Knowing Now
PRM 105 Opening the Senses to Beauty
Mind seems to have an affinity for beauty, no matter what our definition of beauty may be. In
this course, you will be introduced to practices that develop the positive aspects of engaging
with beauty. Working with sound and visual imagery from both Eastern and Western cultural
traditions, the mind relaxes, the senses expand, and a natural and joyful appreciation
arises. The particular practices change each term.
No pre-requisites; open to all.
HALF-TERM COURSES
HTC 101 What It Means to Think
Do we always think in words? Never think in words? Are we always thinking? How much do the
answers to these questions vary from person to person? What is the relation between thinking
and dreaming? Thinking and perceiving? Thinking and emotions? Can we think anything other
than thoughts? What does the mind do when we are not paying attention? We’ll experiment with
ways of thinking differently, and see how much we rely on thoughts.
No pre-requisites; open to all.
HTC 102 The Poetics of Inner Space
Many poets have explored the mind through language, highlighting the complex relationship
among sound, symbol and meaning. Each week, we’ll read and discuss poems that draw us
inward. Is the meaning of the poem locatable in its words, in the spaces between, or someplace
else entirely? Can the language of poetry point beyond itself to the silent depths of mind? The
particular poets and poems change each term.
No pre-requisites; open to all.
HTC 103 Telling a New Story
All we perceive or think is organized by mind into a story, as though our minds are continuously
telling the ‘tale of everything’. But is this narrative fiction or fact? Each mind becomes adept at a
particular way of telling its tale: perhaps as a mystery, tragedy, comedy, romance, or
melodrama. In class, we will tell each other ‘what happened’. Then we’ll play! We may give our
story a different narrator, new characters, or a different beginning or end. We believe our story:
it becomes our truth. But can we see through it? Can we glimpse ‘story-telling mind’ itself?
No pre-requisites; open to all.
Week One: Memory, Memoir, and “Me”
Week Two: Capturing ‘Now’ Now
Week Three: Projecting Hopes and Fears
For More Information
Call: (510) 809-2010 ext. 676
Email: registrar@dharma-college.com
2222 Harold Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
www.dharma-college.com