Awareness enters into the luminous realm

and starkly sees the nature of all things;

even if you look again, you’re beyond the realm of seeing:

it’s like searching beyond the edge of unobstructed space.

In poetic utterances such as these, the First Panchen Lama, Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen (1570–1662), celebrates Mahāmudrā, the Great Seal, an Indo-Tibetan Mahāyāna Buddhist term that refers, among other things, to the ultimate nature of mind, meditative techniques for realizing that nature, and the spiritual freedom that ensues from that realization. Mahāmudrā was a key theme for the great tantric adepts (mahāsiddhas) of India and has a place of importance in every tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. This program will focus on the approach to the Great Seal found in the Geluk—the lineage of the Dalai and Panchen Lamas—located in a special lineage transmitted to the Geluk's founder, Tsongkhapa, by the wisdom buddha Mañjuśrī, then handed down orally until it was committed to writing around 1600 by the First Panchen. It has remained a vital part of Geluk contemplative practice since that time, and has been widely taught and commented upon by Geluk masters. This program—which will combine lecture, discussion, and both guided and unguided meditation—will focus primarily on the Mahāmudrā instructions for śamatha and vipaśyanā meditation found in the Panchen's root text, Highway of the Conquerors, supplemented by glances at other sources, including some brief Tibetan philosophical texts and the spiritual songs of such figures as Saraha, Milarepa, and the Panchen himself. Participants should emerge from the program with an enhanced appreciation for the varieties of Buddhist meditation in general and for Tibetan ways of exploring and expressing the nature of mind in particular.