Third Floor (Vajrayāna)
Intro
The Third Floor emphasizes transformation through imagination, culture, and symbolic study. At this stage, students explore how rituals, art, and lifeworlds function as educational tools that reshape perception. Through these methods, the curriculum encourages imaginative reframing and embodied awareness as ways of deepening wisdom and compassion.
This level also introduces the advanced contemplative exercises traditionally known as the stages of perfection. In secular educational terms, these are framed as processes of imagining perfection and internalizing perfection, leading toward practices of open awareness that rest in the spacious nature of mind.
Educational Pillars & Arches
Philosophical Orientation: comparison of Vajrayāna perspectives with earlier Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna approaches, showing continuity and transformation.
Investigative Study of Wisdom: analysis of how symbolic practices, subtle body models, and cultural lifeworlds represent ways of understanding the nature of experience.
Imaginative Reframing: using ritual, art, and visualization as educational tools for transforming perception and reframing self and world.
Stages of Perfection:
Imagining Perfection — creating an idealized framework for perceiving self and world.
Internalizing Perfection — embodying and stabilizing these reframings through symbolic and embodied practice.
Compassionate Application: understanding teacher–student roles, community rituals, and service as forms of compassionate recentering within a cultural context.
Open Awareness Practices: Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen introduced through secular exercises for identifying with the space of awareness beyond conceptual reference points.
Educational Outcomes and Assessment
Students completing the Third Floor will demonstrate:
Cultural and symbolic literacy: Understanding of how Vajrayāna uses ritual, art, symbolism, and lifeworld contexts as educational tools for transformation
Philosophical sophistication: Ability to compare Vajrayāna perspectives with Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna approaches, understanding both continuity and distinctive innovations
Imaginative reframing capacity: Skill in using visualization, ritual frameworks, and symbolic practices as methods for transforming perception and experience
Stages of Perfection understanding: Comprehension of imagining perfection and internalizing perfection as systematic educational processes
Open awareness introduction: Beginning familiarity with Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen approaches that identify awareness itself rather than awareness of objects
Advanced compassionate engagement: Deepened capacity for bringing mindfulness and compassion to serving others, understanding teacher-student dynamics as educational (not devotional) relationships, and embodying wisdom-compassion integration in daily activities
Integrative understanding: Ability to see how the entire palace of learning fits together - Foundation through Vajrayāna as progressive educational development
Students assess their progress through demonstrating understanding of symbolic and cultural dimensions, ability to work skillfully with imaginative practices, and capacity to explain the complete curriculum architecture. Regular guidance from instructors helps students navigate advanced contemplative territory safely and effectively. Those completing Third Floor are prepared for the culminating integration offered by the Golden Roof (Dzogchen).
Climbing onto the Roof
The Third Floor transforms study through imagination, symbolism, and embodied practices, leading students toward new ways of reframing perception and cultivating wisdom and compassion together. From here, they ascend the Grand Stairway to the Golden Roof, where all levels of the palace come together in absolute fulfillment and integration.