First Floor (Hīnayāna)

Intro

The First Floor focuses on mindful living and the development of personal clarity. Students study concentration (leading to calmness), investigative meditation (leading to liberating insight), and ethical reflection as part of personal growth.
This level emphasizes the “personal ultimate”: insight into impermanence, suffering, and the emptiness of personal identity. Students also begin compassion practices through the Four Immeasurables. Retreats allow students to experiment with mindful living in Tarpa’s cabins for 10–120 days.

Four Hallmarks: Impermanence, suffering, emptiness of identity, nirvāṇa as peace. (See mini-course outline with sample lectures here)
Four Noble Truths: Introduced as a pragmatic framework.
Concentration, Calmness, and Contentment: Developing attentional stability and nonjudgmental acceptance of experience.
Investigative Meditation & Liberating Insight: Observing body, feelings, mind, phenomena from the perspective of four hallmarks.
Ethics & Refuge: Vows and precepts as psychological hygiene, culminating in a secular understanding of the refuge vow.

The First Floor helps students establish clarity through mindful living, concentration, and investigative meditation into the nature of personal identity. With these foundations in place, students are ready to climb the steps to the Second Floor, where compassion practices and universal perspectives on wisdom begin to expand their field of study.