Lojong

Lojong (T. blo sbyong བློ་སྦྱོང་; lit. "mind training"), refers to a set of texts and their associated spiritual practices within Tibetan Buddhism that focus on the generation and development of bodhicitta.

According to Thupten Jinpa, lojong, as a genre of mind training within Tibetan Buddhism, "refers to specific approaches for cultivating the altruistic awakening mind, especially through the practice of equalizing and exchanging of self and others as found in Śāntideva’s eighth-century classic, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life."

B. Alan Wallace states that lojong:

...is designed to shift our attitudes so that our minds become pure wellsprings of joy instead of murky pools of problems, anxieties, fleeting pleasures, frustrations, hopes, and fears.

The meaning of lojong

Thupten Jinpa states:

The Tibetan term lojong (spelled blo sbyong) is composed of two syllables, lo and jong. Lo stands for “mind,” “thought,” or “attitudes,” while jong connotes several interrelated but distinct meanings.

First, jong can refer to training whereby one acquires a skill or masters a field of knowledge. Jong can also connote habituation or familiarization with specific ways of being and thinking. Third, jong can refer to cultivating specific mental qualities, such as universal compassion or the awakening mind. Finally, jong can connote cleansing or purification, as in purifying one’s mind of craving, hatred, and delusion. All these different meanings carry the salient idea of transformation, whereby a process of training, habituation, cultivation, and cleansing induces a profound transformation—a kind of metanoesis—from the ordinary deluded state, whose modus operandi is self-centeredness, to a fundamentally changed perspective of enlightened, other-centeredness.

Broadly speaking, all the teachings of the Buddha and their associated commentarial explanations can be characterized as “mind training” in all four senses described above. However, what we are concerned with here is the emergence in Tibet of a specific genre of teaching. In this special usage, mind training refers to specific approaches for cultivating the altruistic awakening mind, especially through the practice of equalizing and exchanging of self and others as found in Śāntideva’s eighth-century classic, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. When used in this sense, the term mind training represents an abbreviation of the fuller expression “mind training in the Mahayana (Great Vehicle)” or “Mahayana mind training.”

Two famous short works of the Tibetan mind training genre are today well known to the English-speaking world, with numerous commentaries by contemporary Tibetan teachers translated into different languages. These are Langri Thangpa’s Eight Verses on Mind Training and Chekawa’s Seven-Point Mind Training... Historically, the Tibetan mind training teachings evolved within the context of the emergence of the Kadam school following the founding of Radreng Monastery near Lhasa in 1056.

Key features of lojong

Thupten Jinpa states:

A central theme of mind training practice is the profound reorientation of our basic attitude both toward our own self and toward fellow sentient beings, as well as toward the events around us. Presently, we tend not only to grasp at some kind of intrinsically real “self” that constitutes our true being but also to cherish the welfare of this true “me” at the expense of all others. The mind training teaching challenges us to reverse this process. The training involves a deep understanding of others as true friends—as “more precious than a wish-fulfilling jewel,” as Langri Thangpa puts it in his Eight Verses on Mind Training—and the recognition that our true enemy lies inside ourselves, not outside. We feel hurt when someone insults us, disappointed when someone we love betrays us, outraged when provoked for no reason, pangs of jealousy when others are successful, all because of deep-seated self-cherishing. It is self-cherishing that opens us to these painful and undesirable experiences. So the mind training teachings admonish us to:

Banish all blames to the single source.

Toward all beings contemplate their kindness.

One of mind training’s most memorable contributions to world spirituality is the practice of tonglen, or “giving and taking.” Tonglen is a seemingly simple meditation practice of giving away one’s own happiness and good fortune to others and taking upon oneself their suffering and misfortune. Traditionally, the meditation is designed to enhance the cultivation of loving-kindness and compassion, two central ideals in Mahayana Buddhism. According to mind training, this practice is combined with our respiration, whereby when we breathe in, we imagine taking from all other beings their pain and misfortune, all their negative traits and behaviors. These are visualized in the form of streams of dark clouds, smoke, or even brackish water, which enter our body. Then, when we exhale, we imagine giving to others all our happiness and good fortune, as well as our virtuous traits and behaviors. These are visualized in the form of white clouds, bright lights, and streams of nectar, which enter the bodies of other beings. The Seven-Point Mind Training presents this practice most succinctly:

Train alternately in giving and taking;

Place the two astride your breath.

Since a key goal of mind training is the radical transformation of our thoughts, attitudes, and habits, the application of remedies against the various ills of the mind is a dominant theme. To begin with, there is the highly practical approach of tackling one’s coarsest mental afflictions first. Then comes the admonition to “overcome all errors through a single means,” namely compassion. In addition, one finds the critically important injunction to ensure the purity of both the initial motivation and the state of mind at the conclusion of a specific act. The Seven-Point expresses this injunction as “There are two tasks—one at the start and one at the end.” Finally, we are advised to make our own self the primary witness to our thoughts and actions, a principle aptly presented in the line “Of the two witnesses, uphold the primary one.” If, despite all of this, we still fail to recognize the ultimate nature of things as devoid of substantial reality and continue to fall prey to self-grasping, we are advised to learn to view all things from their ultimate perspective, as dreamlike and devoid of substantial reality. Given our deeply ingrained tendency to reify anything we deem worthy of attention, once our application of remedies proves successful, there is the danger of grasping at the remedies themselves and once again being caught in bondage. So we are told, “The remedy too is freed in its own place.”

On the path of spiritual transformation we are bound to confront all kinds of circumstances, both positive and negative. To be successful, we need a method whereby we can remain steadfast on our course. In this context, the mind training teaching excels brilliantly with the principle of transforming all adversities into the path. The Seven-Point Mind Training puts it this way:

When the world and its inhabitants are filled with negativity,

Transform adverse conditions into the path of enlightenment.

For example, if we are slandered by someone without any justifiable basis, we can see the situation as a precious opportunity to cultivate forbearance. If we are attacked by someone, we can view the assailant with compassion, seeing that he is possessed by the demon of mental afflictions, such as anger. The masters of the mind training teachings extend this principle to all possible situations. They speak of taking both success and misfortune onto the path, both joy and pain onto the path, both wealth and poverty onto the path, and so on. In a beautiful stanza, the Kashmiri master Śākyaśrī, who came to Tibet at the beginning of the thirteenth century, writes:

When happy I shall dedicate my virtues to all;

May benefit and happiness pervade all of space!

When suffering I shall take on the pains of all beings;

May the ocean of suffering become dry!

When we as spiritual practitioners learn to relate to all events in this radically transformed manner, we will then be able to fulfill the injunction “Cultivate the joyful mind alone.” We will possess something akin to the philosopher’s stone, for we will be able to transform every circumstance or event, whether positive or negative, into a condition favorable to our enhancement of altruism.

Origins of the lojong teachings

Thupten Jinpa states:

The Tibetan tradition attributes the origin of mind training to the Indian master Atiśa Dīpaṃkara of Vikramaśīla Monastery, who came to Tibet in the first half of the eleventh century. Atiśa’s journey to Tibet, his long and close relationship with his principal disciple Dromtönpa, his composition of the highly influential work Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment, his contributions to the translation into Tibetan of major Indian Buddhist classics, and his critical role in what came to be later defined as the “latter dissemination of Buddhism in Tibet” are all well chronicled. What is not clear is whether Atiśa is personally responsible for the emergence of the mind training teaching we know today. Atiśa did not use the expression mind training in the manner defined above in any of his more well-known writings. Even Atiśa’s own short mind training text, entitled the Bodhisattva’s Jewel Garland [...] does not carry the term in its title or colophon. Similarly, the expression does not appear in any of the “mind training” works attributed to Atiśa’s Indian teachers, such as the Wheel of Sharp Weapons... The earliest known texts that explicitly carry the term are Langri Thangpa’s Eight Verses on Mind Training and Chekawa’s Seven-Point Mind Training, both of which appeared about a century after Atiśa.

... How far back can we trace the usage of the expression mind training in the manner defined above?

... There do appear to be clear references to “mind training” in the writings of Dromtönpa, Atiśa’s chief disciple, in the manner we understand today. Chekawa, in his commentary to the Eight Verses, cites the following from Dromtönpa:

In Kham, I went to visit the teacher Sherapbar, a friend close to my heart. I went knowing he had not invited me, and he took offense at this and sent me away. He ordered others to remove all my belongings, and he himself locked me in a dark room. That was when it became clear whether I had trained my mind in loving-kindness and compassion, and whether the lines ”May their sufferings ripen upon me; / May all my happiness ripen upon them” had remained a lie for me.

The use of the term mind training or lojong for a specific approach to the cultivation of the awakening mind, especially on the basis of equalizing and exchanging self and others, is even more explicit in the writings of Potowa, a primary student of Dromtönpa. In his letter to a student, the famous Kadam master Neusurpa, Potowa writes:

The stages of mind training, once taught in secret,

Are today being proclaimed in public.

The stages of the path meditations that begin with death—

Today not even their names exist anymore.

Atiśa's three teachers

Thupten Jinpa states:

One critical element of the traditional account of the origins of the mind training teaching is the story of the “three masters” from whom Atiśa is said to have received instructions on awakening mind. Once again, Chekawa’s teaching, as penned by his student Sé Chilbu, is an important source for the legend. According to this story, Atiśa received instructions on the generation of awakening mind from three different Indian masters. The first is the teacher Dharmarakṣita, a yogi who happened to uphold the philosophical standpoint of the Vaibhāṣika school and whose compassion was so great that he once cut off a piece of his own flesh and gave it to a sick man as medicine. The second is Kusalī Jr., a dedicated yogi of Maitreya, who is therefore sometimes called Maitrīyogi. Finally, there is Serlingpa Dharmakīrti, whom Atiśa is said to have deliberately sought by braving a twelve-month sea voyage to the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The question is, what was Chekawa’s source for his account of the three distinct lineages of awakening mind that Atiśa is believed to have received? How early can we trace the story?

The story may be traceable to Atiśa himself, at least as told by his student Dromtönpa. In an extract from Atīsa’s advice to Naljorpa Sherap Dorjé and Jvalamati, Dromtönpa identifies two distinct approaches in the training of one’s mind in the cultivation of great compassion. One is to first cultivate a deep sense of equality between self and others and then move on to the next stage of exchanging self and others. This, Dromtönpa states, is the tradition of the teacher Dharmarakṣita. In contrast, he says, exchanging self and others right from the start is the approach of master Serlingpa.12 Interestingly, no mention is made of the approach of Atiśa’s third teacher on awakening mind, Maitrīyogi or Kusalī, Jr. However, we find in Chekawa, and especially later in Thokmé Sangpo, an allusion to a statement by Chengawa that first equalizing and then exchanging self and others is the approach of the teacher Maitrīyogi.13 In the absence of further evidence, it is difficult to speculate who is responsible for introducing the legend of Atiśa’s three awakening mind gurus. My own feeling is that it is traceable at least to Dromtönpa, if not directly to Atiśa himself. In any case, all textual sources agree in recognizing Serlingpa as Atiśa’s most important awakening mind teacher and therefore the true source of his mind training teachings.

Scriptural sources

Thupten Jinpa states:

What are the early scriptural sources for the instructions of mind training? Sangyé Gompa’s Public Explication of Mind Training contains a memorable passage that describes a brief exchange between Chekawa (1101–75) and his teacher, Sharawa. Having been intrigued by the powerful altruistic sentiments expressed in Langri Thangpa’s Eight Verses—such as “May I accept upon myself the defeat / And offer to others the victory”—Chekawa asks Sharawa whether these teachings have a scriptural basis. The teacher then cites some stanzas from Nāgārjuna’s Precious Garland and asks if there is anyone who does not accept the authority of Nāgārjuna. It is in this work of Sé Chilbu, which is effectively a compilation of notes taken from Chekawa’s lectures, that we have the earliest known discussion of the scriptural sources of the mind training instruction. According to Chekawa, several sutras and early Indian treatises stand out as the primary sources of mind training teachings. Among the Mahayana sutras, those singled out are the Ākāśagarbha Sutra, the Teachings of Vimalakīrti Sutra, the Flower Ornament Scripture, the Teachings of Akṣayamati Sutra, as well as the Collection of Aphorisms (sometimes referred to as the Tibetan Dhammapada). Of the classical Indian treatises, those singled out are Nāgārjuna’s Precious Garland, his Discourse on the Wish-Fulfilling Jewel Dream, Āryaśūra’s Garland of Birth Stories, Maitreya’s Ornament of Mahayana Sutras, Asaṅga’s Levels of the Bodhisattva, and Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life and Compendium of Training. Of these, the two most important sources are undoubtedly Nāgārjuna’s Precious Garland and Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.

Sources

• Thupten Jinpa (2014), Mind Training: The Great Collection, Wisdom 
• Wallace, B. Alan (2022), The Art of Transforming the Mind: A Meditator's Guide to the Tibetan Practice of Lojong, Shambhala 

Further reading

• Khyentse, Dilgo; Rab-Gsal-Zla-Ba (2006). Enlightened Courage: An Explanation of the Seven Point Mind Training. Snow Lion Publications. ISBN 978-1-55939-902-9. 
• Rabten, Geshe; Dhargyey, Geshe (2001). Advice from a Spiritual Friend. Wisdom Publications. ISBN 978-0-86171-193-2. 
• Shamar Rinpoche (2009). The Path to Awakening: A Commentary on Ja Chekawa Yeshe Dorje's Seven Points of Mind Training. Motilal Barnasidass. ISBN 8120834402. 
• Trungpa, Chögyam (1993). Training the Mind & Cultivating Loving-kindness. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 978-0-87773-954-8.  (Introduction)

External links

• Translations of lojong texts, Lotsawa House
• lojong, Wikipedia