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Hi all, my article this week is on Lojong, and specifically the lojong text the Eight Verses of Mind Training:

Lojong and the Eight Verses of Mind Training

Lojong is a Tibetan teaching for developing bodhicitta, or the compassionate desire to forgo liberation to work towards the liberation of all beings. It is central to all Mahayana Buddhism, as the central spiritual motivation. Westerners often misunderstand some of the teachings on this, as I discuss in this article...

To Lisa,

Just read the beautiful text.This text does not apply only to the Bodhisattvas,but to all buddhists ,and even lay people doesn't it.

If everyone lived by these verses,peace would reign master in this Realm .Am I right?

loong
simple Buddhist

Yes, it is a powerful practice that many Tibetan Buddhists do (it is a mainstay of the Dalai Lama's personal practice.) It is meant to be guidance for the every day for any practitioner. This is a short version, there is a longer version too.

No it is not only for Bodhisattvas. Perhaps you thought that because I mentioned the bodhisattva vow in the article. But all practitioners take this vow in the Mahayana tradition at some point, it is the mainstay of Mahayana (so that includes Zen, although TNH does not talk about it as much in his public books, although I have heard talks where he does.)

Here is Tenzin Palmo's introduction to Lojong and Bodhicitta from her book Into the Heart of Life, which I'll be reviewing next week:

“Putting others before ourselves is an attitude that in Mahayana Buddhism is called mind training, or lojong in Tibetan. As we learn to generate great compassion and become clear in our motivation regarding others and ourselves, we deepen our spiritual practice. Lojong is a means for opening ourselves to life.

Buddhist practitioners may be said to comprise those who practice the path for personal liberation and those who practice for universal liberation. Even in the Theravada tradition as recorded in the Pali canon, the Buddha elucidated these two paths – the path of individual liberation achieved by an arhat, and the bodhisattva path which leads to complete enlightenment. The Buddha himself related how in a past life, when he was still a bodhisattva, he made the profound decision to renounce immediate nirvana as an arhat in order to carry on for many more aeons and become a Buddha out of compassion for the world.”

I'd like to continue this thread with thoughts on how we can practice 'mind training' or lojong in our daily lives. It is sometimes hard for Westerners to grasp onto this concept because we are taught to value our own achievements and goals as the pathway to self-actualization, and so this bodhisattva focus on others feels like it could be dangerous to us - it feels like martyrdom. But that is not what it is talking about. We aren't acting for the benefit of others at our own expense (or at least not in a self-destructive way). The whole point is that others' happiness and our own are linked.

Also, this isn't simply about being 'nice'. This is the other misunderstanding that can arise a lot. Sometimes, acting in someone's best interest requires strong action. If a child is about to run into the street and get hit by a car, knocking them to the ground to prevent it, or yelling harshly, is an act of compassion. So different circumstances require different aspects of our being. We have to consider each circumstance individually.

Here is a passage from this book on non-attachment:

"Non-attachment doesn't have anything to do with what we own or don't own. It's just the difference between whether the possessions own us or we own the possessions."

This is a brief, but really very profound quote. Possessions can be anything in this case - physical objects certainly, but also our lifestyle, job, or even ideas. We might be attached to any of these things. And the problem is not that we have these in our life, it is our relationship to them - do they own us or we own them? I think this is a great way to evaluate.

[D]etachment means letting go and nonattachment means simply letting be.

Hi Maya, yes that's a great way of putting it. In practice, I find people often get caught up in trying to push thoughts away, instead of just letting them go or letting them be. Then it becomes a battle. So these phrases are very helpful.

One of my favorite parts of this book is the chapter on karma, which Tenzin Palmo elucidates very well. In this section she is talking about how we tend to diminish or write-off karma in the West - either we think it's something we don't need to really grasp, because it's 'old-fashioned', or we think we've 'got it' when we really have a very limited, philosophical understanding of it:

"Nowadays in our very humanistic, scholastic mode we say, "Oh well, the Buddha talked about karma because it was the fashion of the day. You know everybody in those days believed in karma, or a lot of people did, so he just took it on board as part of his doctrine." But it wasn't like that. It was part of his enlightenment to actually experience how beings come and how beings go, and how they are interrelated and interconnected - how karma works. Later on, his main attendant and cousin Ananda, said to him, "Well, karma is kind of complicated, but I think I've got it now." The Buddha replied, "Don't even say that. The understanding of karma is the provence only of the mind of the fully enlightened one."

Only a Buddha can understand karma because only a Buddha can see the total pattern, the whole tapestry. We just see a tiny part, and only on the wrong side, usually - the side with all the knots and loose ends. And then we try to understand the total pattern from that tiny square, but how is that possible? We need to look at the other side at a distance in order to see how all those red and green and blue threads form a pattern. I don't mean that our life patterns are already woven. We are continually weaving. That's the whole point."

- from Into the Heart of Life

As part of the chapter on Creating Happiness in Into the Heart of Life, Tenzin Palmo shares a story about a monkey trap, which is one I have often heard used in relation to how our clinging and attachment to things causes us suffering:

"There's a story about a kind of monkey trap which they use in Asia. It's a hollowed-out coconut which is nailed to a tree or a stake. This coconut has a little hole in it just big enough for a monkey to put his hand in, and inside the coconut they put something sweet. And so the monkey comes along, smells the bait, puts the hand into the hole, and grasps the sweet. So now he has a fist holding the sweet. But when he tries to withdraw his fist through the hole, he can't. So he's caught. And then the hunters come and just pick him up.

"Nothing is holding that monkey to the coconut. He could just let go of the sweet and be out and away. But the greed in his mind, even with his fear of the hunters, will not let him let go. He wants to go, but he also wants to have the sweet. And that's our predicament. Nothing but our insecure and grasping mind is holding us to our hopes and fears. This is a very fundamental and important point, because we are trained to think that satisfying our desires is the way to happiness. Actually, to go beyond desire is the way to happiness. Even in relationships, if we're not holding on, if we're not clinging, if we are thinking more of how we can give joy to the other rather than how they can give joy to us, then that also makes our relationships much more open and spacious, much more free. All that jealousy and fear are gone."
- From Into the Heart of Life by Tenzin Palmo

Of course there are exceptions to this, in terms of focusing on giving the other person joy in relationship - this is assuming it's not an abusive or unhealthy relationship. But the point is that we are always thinking our happiness lies in getting the next big thing (promotion, money, house, car etc.) or when someone else changes (co-worker, partner etc.) Often our attachment to how things 'should' be keeps us from enjoying how they are. This is the fundamental 'dukka' or suffering that the Buddha speaks of - the tendency of our mind to always want other than what it is. This is the tendency we are trying to address in lojong or mind training, the subject of this book...the next posts will start getting into this mind training in more detail...