An Essential Lojong: Mind Training / Attitude Transformation

By Terry Conrad

Waking up is hard to do, awakening to our true nature is both natural and not. It's natural to desire happiness and wellbeing, to have peace of mind free of anxiety and worry. The desire for freedom is natural, to be free of delusion, confusion, and suffering, to have loving relationships, filled with empathy, and compassion. Life is difficult, all of us suffer loss, illness, and the death of loved ones, we are all of a kind in our life experiences and the expression of this is Kindness. In the face of difficulties it's often the case we feel we're a victim, that life is unfair, the others are unfair. The ancient dharma teachings are offering us the remedy for human suffering in the form of spiritual practice, learning to recognize the wisdom that difficulties and suffering are offering us.

The awakened mind is no longer defined by life experiences; free of the conditioned assumptions, expectations, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes that tend to define the sense of a self, and instead an open unconditional view of things just as they are, not what we might otherwise want them to be. This view of reality is not reserved for just a precious few living in some remote place removed from the world, this view is available to each and every one of us regardless of where we live, what we do, how or who we think we are.

Happiness cannot be dictated, legislated, or regulated, happiness and wellbeing are our birthright and available to us in this very moment, if we are open and available to it. There are two conditions, first there must be a clear intention to make our wellbeing and the wellbeing of others our top priority. Two, we recognize, have faith, that everything we need to awaken is already fully present within us, a mind of Awareness and a heart of Virtue, what we call Bodhichitta.

In the world of spiritual practice the buddha dharma is a bit unique, though we're asked to have faith in the deepest qualities of who and how we are, there are no beliefs in anything or anyone supernatural, reality, just as it is, is already fully complete, wise, and present.
Some effort is required, dedicating ourselves to become fully literate in a path that has proven to be one hundred percent effective for nearly three thousand years through study, contemplation, and meditation. Teachers, teachings, books, podcasts, YouTube videos, retreats all make the dharma more available to more of us than at any time in history. Cultivating a dailyish time and place to study, to reflect, and to meditate is the tried and true skillful means of awakening to who and how we already are whether we're in a prison or a palace. Sincere and honest spiritual practice is the cause of happiness and wellbeing.

The beauty of the Lojong is the brevity and pithiness of the Seven Parts and Sixty Slogans that invite us, allow us, to realign our conceptual view of the world and ourselves with greater integrity and wholeness. Like the facts of life the Slogans dissolve the bias, prejudice, negativity, and preferential judgments that have obscured the wisdom of everything we experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350928310

Book preview

Preface - Bodhichitta

Whatever we’ve done, whatever we think or want others to think, are the evidence of our conditioning, limiting, but not preventing us from realizing the promise of awakening already available to us in this very moment. At the heart of the Buddhist tradition is the insight we already have everything we need for spiritual awakening, free of the adventitious conditioning of Life experiences causing suffering.

Buddhism is a long oral and written history based on the simple yet profound insight that everyone has the innate capacity to physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually mature, to awaken, what some might call ‘enlightenment,’ if we make the effort to do so. Insights and realizations from generations of spiritually awakened practitioners on how this is done have been generously translated and transmitted throughout the world. Every tradition and school of Buddhist practice is the product of realized masters offering a fresh approach to processing reality, ‘just as it is.’ The tradition invites us to honor a ‘glimpse,’ the hint of Wholeness beyond the habitual and conceptual framing of reality experienced through meditation, psychedelics, or trauma. Whether enlightenment, awakening, realization, or spiritual maturity the transformative agent is not an ‘experience,’ rather the result of Intention and the conscious work of study, contemplation and proper meditation without a goal for anything to be different.

Buddhism is not a religion in the sense of strict prescriptions or beliefs, rather the teachings and practices offering us a fresh view of reality to clear the mind of confusion and delusion, freeing us from the mental and emotional conditioning causing us to suffer. The Buddhist tradition is a collective of schools and traditions translating, expanding, and deepening the essential teachings offering us a view of reality just as it is. Over time, certain gems, the generational insights of realized beings, are particularly effective for this task and the Lojong is just such a gem, a pithy and authentic outline to realize the promise of awakening.

Lojong, translated as ‘mind training,’ or ‘attitude transformation’ points out our essential Nature is Bodhichitta, the awakened mind of Awareness and Virtue fully intact within us. Awareness, the space of everything we experience, and Virtue, the Loving heart of Compassion so essential to our collective survival. Awareness & Virtue are not separate but a single quality of our basic Nature. AwarenessVirtue, or Bodhichitta, our innate heart-mind of Wisdom and Compassion.

Introduction - Awakening Freedom

In one way or another we seek Freedom, free of the confusion causing suffering to ourselves and others. Freedom is a path not a destination, a path of Insight, Wisdom, and Realization. It’s one thing being free to go anywhere we want, to do, say, or think whatever we want; in spiritual practice we free ourselves of conditioned assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs causing confusion and bias through Habits of attachment and aversion.

Buddhism is a path of faith, practice, and fellowship allowing us to realize our true Nature through the skillful means of study, contemplation, and meditation. Lojong trains us to recognize the wisdom of everything we experience, revealing conditioned attitudes causing us to suffer. By practicing equanimity we experience without judging or making up a story. The Lojong has Seven Parts, each part uses pithy Slogans offering insight and advice on how to contemplate and meditate. For this study guide, we’ve added short commentaries to each Slogan and a more detailed commentary for each Part.

In 2006 Project Clear Light created a Lojong Study Guide as a correspondence course for incarcerates, adapting it from an unpublished booklet, LOJONG: Attitude Transformation in Seven Parts, translated from Tibetan by Lama Surya Das, Lama John Makransky, and Charles Genoud. In their preface to the booklet, the Lama’s point out the Lojong as the heart of the Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist traditions. The Indian Mahasiddhi, Atisha (982-1054) after hearing a few of the Slogans being recited by a fellow monk, spent years tracking down the full collection and brought them to Tibet teaching them to his closest disciple, the layman Drom (1005-1064), who went on to found the Kadam School of Tibetan Buddhism.

It was a Kadampa student, Geshe Chekawa (1101-1175), who compiled the Sixty Slogans in the basic form we study them today. Gampopa, (1079-1153), a former Kadampa monk and disciple of the great yogi saint Milarepa, became the founder the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. Today, every school of Tibetan Buddhism and other Mahayana lineages teach the Lojong.

Lama John comments, "Lojong teachings are surprising in their simplicity and profundity because they so directly express the motive force of awakening, Bodhichitta, [bow dee chee ta] the heart of love and discernment beyond ego-concern."

Awakening to Bodhichitta we recognize the power of Awareness, Virtue, and Cognizance at the core of our humanity, the union of Wisdom and Compassion at the heart of awakening. The Lojong guides us to recognize even the most difficult experience as the very cause of awakening.

Enjoy

The Lojong

PART I ~

The Foundation of the Path

Part I

1). First, train in the Foundation of the Path:

The Four Thoughts to Change the Mind

1. The precious human opportunity Nirvana - Freedom

No one or anything else can Practice for me, it is only this brief and precious human existence that allows me to realize Bodhichitta

2. The suffering struggle Ducca - dissatisfaction

A moment of difficulty is the opportunity to recognize the conditioned attitudes of liking, disliking, and ignorance - Habits of attachment and aversion

3. Karmic patterning Karma - mental Habits

Everything experienced arises from the interconnected and interdependent confluence of causes and conditions; whatever we’re thinking, feeling, saying, or doing today will be the cause of tomorrows’ happiness or sorrow

4. Impermanence Dharma - innate Wisdom

Everything thought, felt, and perceived is a continuous dynamic arising and dissolving in the basic space of Awareness; All phenomena is in a continuous state of change

COMMENTARY for PART I

The mind is malleable. Our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.

Venerable Matthieu Ricard

The Four Thoughts reflect one of the earliest teachings of the Buddha on The Four Noble Truths in a slightly different order. The Four Thoughts are a guide for us to frame reality more accurately, like four facts-of-Life, the skillful means to recognize how we cause ourselves to suffer.

The Four Thoughts are a Mahayana summary of the original Four Noble Truths, guiding us to train the mind beyond self-centered constructs and recognize how a worldview conditioned by Life experiences distorts reality causing us to suffer. The basis of Buddhist teachings for all the traditions, schools, and lineages is to train the mind in integrity with reality, free of delusion and confusion.

Precious Human Life ~

The Promise of Awakening, Free from Suffering

Human beings are the only Life form we know of with the opportunity, or maybe the need, to spiritually mature and awaken. Reflect upon the variety of Life forms in this world, from viruses to critters that number in the billions. Human Life is precious because the opportunity to awaken is rare. Most other Life forms are stuck in the cycle of eating, sleeping, working, and procreating; humans have the capacity to awaken to the power of AwarenessVirtue, to realize Bodhichitta.

Imagine you’re a poor sailor working on a ship lost at sea ending up on a remote island whose beaches are made of fine grains of gold and silver and pebbles are precious gems. You live there for several years until one day while out fishing a passing ship picks you up and takes you to a strange land where, after a very long and difficult journey, you finally make your way back home. How many times do you wish you’d put a few of those pebbles in your