Lojong

Even among the people in the room right now, I've spoken to a few of you about different aspects of this.

and it comes on the heels of our midterm elections here in the United States, but also in my ongoing project to list all 59 slogans of Lojong into a podcast, episode by episode.

We've just come to the end of the fifth point of the sixth point of mind training which outlines commitments to mind training and a few other conversations has brought to mind the everyday responsibility of being a practitioner and of course the preceding the everyday responsibility is perhaps the understanding or really it must be the understanding of why we practice, why we engage in a spiritual pursuit to begin with before we get into the responsibility of being a practitioner.

Because it always comes back to why we are practitioners and seeing the relevance of what Dharma brings into our life before we and get into the commitments and the responsibilities and then the outcomes of those responsibilities.

But then it's like this big, ah, now I don't have to do anything for another however long.

But follow up Making your voices heard making your wishes known to representatives.

I think that's important But more important than that Is the way that we show up? for our own life Not disengaging with the actions that are going to bring about a better future for ourselves not disengaging with our own Mind training our own spiritual practice and working continuously Without hope of fruition, this is the Lojong verse 28, I think, abandon all hope of fruition.

How does one abandon hope of fruition and still work towards building a better life? It's with that understanding that all things are impermanent.

Welcome to everybody.

where we explore the transformation of habits into freedom through the Buddhist practices on Lojong Mind Training.

I am John Paul Norbu.

This is episode 147, My Little Demon.

This is a dangerous attitude to have because you exchange potentially profound conditions within your life for matters of mere convenience.

Or worse, ornaments of your own inner demons.

Lojong is the practical instruction on Mahayana mind transformation taught by Atisha Dipamkara and compiled into seven chapters by Shikawa Yeshe Dorje.

We are now covering the sixth point, which focuses on commitments to mind training.

Right, Rinpoche said, the mind training has some very profound depths and levels to which it comes.

But one of the sort of special features about Lojong in general is that it's like coming upon already prepared food, like a buffet.

And in the sense that every practice there is something that we can immediately comprehend and we can immediately apply in our experience and practice.

Just like prepared food, you can immediately eat it and feel full.

I've got lots of concepts.

We love examples, so maybe an example, right? So I'm thinking, remember, Jay, this idea of bringing these different teachings back to one cushion, right, and for our culture.

but I'm being a bit tricky, so I'll be upfront, right? So, of course, Rinpoche is a great Dzogchen master, yeah, we know, I know this because I have friends who study with you and you have had such great teachers, right? And so, of course, this is a public, so we can't really talk about Dzogchen, but we also know that you can bring all the teachings together on one cushion, right? So, often, sometimes I think that Lojong, mind training, Sometimes you can bring lojong, but also it's very consistent with like, you can just use lojong words, but feels like ma mo chak chen or zog chen, right? And I'm very interested in how to bring like this view into practice.

And sometimes the lojong verses can do this.

And, like, everything was kind of dull, and there was one table... that had like a light, like they were just illuminated.

And I just walked up and I was like, whatever you're talking about, I want in on it because there was there was something like electric in their conversation and that they had just come from this Tibetan Buddhist teaching called Lojong.

And then they they invited me to come.

And a couple of weeks later, I went to it.

Yet bodhisattvas also report facing problems and experiencing pleasure.

The mind-training techniques of Tibetan Buddhism, called Lojong in Tibetan, offer many advanced techniques for transforming our daily dramas into tools for expanding our love and compassion.

Not fleeing pain and pleasure like an ascetic, but using pain and pleasure as fuel that moves them toward a more enlightened way of living and being.

In our last episode, we practiced a meditation on one of the most powerful of these techniques, called Tonglen.

And here the approach remains mindfulness and purification, but with the addition of techniques of thought transformation.

And these techniques called Lojong, or mind training, help us transform impure conditioned thoughts through bodhicitta, the altruistic intention to benefit others, and loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom.

And so this, a lot of times, is where we start to layer in compassion for other beings.

So again, this is the intermediate technique.

I want to go into detail.

When Dongshila was teaching Lojong in Amsterdam last year, there was an opportunity to ask him a question.

I was working with civil servants to reflect on how they allow problems to reoccur by not speaking up when they see systems not working well, big problems affecting society.

Problems they do not face directly because there are so many layers between their acts and what it's causing for people.

It made that I could see the interconnectedness, how it all leans, how the civil servants longing to serve is crushed in their complex systems they have to work in, where they lose sight on what they are causing.

And being frustrated about that, they easily collapse in the cynical approach of us meeting.

In that same Lojong program, Rungshela had said, try to always respond from an immeasurable heart.

And in this answer, I felt deeply how to do that.

And...

And with Lojon, you know, it's mind training.

So, you know, you you you you live your life and you meditate in such a way it's about other people.

And it's wonderful because it just means for me, Vajrayana practice wasn't something I've got a lot of time for that from afar.

Next thing is developing the mind of compassion.

The mind of compassion, the easiest way to develop it, uh, that I've found, and the most profound, is what's called the Lojong practice.

And my friend, Pema Chödrön, she, she, uh, uh, bases her books on that practice, and she's, uh, um, presents it in a very accessible manner.

If you're gonna be of benefit to others, uh, you have to begin at home.