Tag Archives: lojong

by

Lojong #7 Sending and taking should be practiced alternately…

… These two should ride the breath.

[HERE BEGINS POINT 2B: RELATIVE BODHICHITTA TRAINING:]

This is a simple description of the very advanced practice of tonglen, which is the main practice in developing relative Bodhichitta, awakened heart. Extensive practice in basic meditation, beginning with awareness of breath (anapana in Pali, shamatha in Tibetan), is essential before attempting this practice. A solid background in Metta practice, the practice of sending loving-kindness and compassion out to all the world, is also very helpful, as tonglen can be very dark and overwhelming otherwise.

The practice involves taking into oneself with each inhalation all the bad in one’s surroundings (eventually the world) and sending out with each exhalation all the good one has, actually transforming the bad in the environment into good and giving it away.

This turns the natural tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain on its head, and generally seems absurd to the conventional consciousness. After some years of meditation and observation of the practice, one will usually come to an understanding of its wisdom and transformational power.

Pema Chodron writes about tonglen in her wonderful book The Wisdom of No Escape.

I’m not suggesting that anyone try this, but if you do please read what Trungpa and Pema have to say about it. I’m introducing it here because this is a foundational notion in much of the lojong practice: the idea that one can take negative energies or situations and transform them, simply by one’s willingness to do so – not thru any kind of occult powers or anything. It’s a powerful idea.

by

Lojong #6 In post-meditation, be a child of illusion

This is meditation in action, the discipline of daily life. Trungpa says to continue the experience of meditation in your daily activities, remembering that all this stuff that seems to be going on is, at least as understood on the absolute level, just an illusion created by your mind-system.

Remember to keep everything soft, pliable, workable, with lots of space. Recognize the simplicity of the phenomenal play.

The phrase “child of illusion” has always been hard for me to understand. My best take on it: – it suggests that you – that notion of ‘self’ that is identified as ‘you’ – are created by (child of) the illusion of experience. To ‘be’ that, perhaps, means you recognize it clearly.

Yes, this one is a bit confusing, unclear perhaps. As I understand it, the “be” means just being aware of this truth. The “child of illusion” is the Self. The essential notion is that the Self is not a fixed, permanent entity, and keeping that in mind as you go about your daily life helps to lighten things up a bit. The self, in the Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions, is understood to be simply the product of stringing together all these discrete experiences of ongoing life and reifying the experiencer as some entity, “me.” Of course, since all this stuff going on is essentially created by the mind, it is an illusion, so its creation, the Self is also unreal, in the absolute sense.

Judith Leif says, “In this slogan, the particular postmeditation practice is to “be a child of illusion.” It is to play within an environment that we recognize to be shifty and illusory. So rather than trying to make our world solid and predictable, and complaining when that is not the case, we could maintain the glimpses of the illusory nature of experience that arise in meditation practice, and touch in with that open illusory quality in the midst of our daily activities. That looser more open quality is the ground on which the compassionate actions of the bodhisattva can arise.” from — https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/train-your-mind-slogan-6/

by

Lojong #4 Self-liberate even the antidote

Realization of emptiness/impermanence (shunyata) — the antidote — is helpful in not taking ourselves or anything else too seriously, but it may tempt one to slide into “the poison of shunyatta” attitude: ‘nothing is important, so why bother’. In Zen, this is known as ‘the stink of Zen.’

Trungpa says we must get beyond this naivetè, stay grounded in practice, and remember: “We are not particularly seeking enlightenment or the simple experience of tranquility – we are trying to get over our deception.”

Again, this is a key point, or barrier to get past. When you realize what your deception consists of, you’re on the path to real liberation, true enlightenment.

In considering all these things – which, by the way, you shouldn’t think about too much! – it’s helpful to remember that a main notion in Buddhism is ‘the middle way.’ As the Thai man said to me, “Buddha say, not too much, not too little, just enough!”

It’s also helpful to remember that non-dualism is an underlying notion in all of this. Beyond this and that, good and evil, wrong and right, deceived and not deceived, enlightened and not enlightened. Just this.

 

by

Lojong #3, Examine the nature of unborn awareness

Ah, this is a pithy one!

Simply look at your own basic awareness, mind, noting that if you pursue it to the deepest level (which means spending a lot of very still, silent time) there is nothing there.

No color, no shape, no size, no attributes or qualities – just awareness. Sometimes referred to as “pure awareness.” Awareness that has no content. Essentially, we realize that awareness is simply the potential to be aware of some content. So the mind, in itself, without anything else, is nothing.

Pursuing this, eventually we see that the nature of everything is impermanence, emptiness or shunyata – not that it doesn’t exist, but simply that everything is empty of an independent, abiding nature. So it doesn’t exist in and of itself, it only exists in co-existence with everything else.

As I said, pithy. You might have guessed that this is the essential thing you must get before much else in the Buddhist meditation catalog really works for you…

by

Lojong #2 Regard all dharmas as dreams

POINT 2A, ULTIMATE BODHICHITTA TRAINING:

In the interest of developing compassion and openness, it’s perhaps best to regard whatever happens as only phantom… “Nothing ever happens. But because nothing happens, everything happens.” I.E. don’t take this so-called ‘reality’ too seriously. Whatever ‘reality’ is, all we can ever know of it is what our mind-system perceives and conceives. Which keeps everything light and open….

Bodhichitta means enlightened heart or mind… ultimate Bodhichitta slogans are those that are concerned with the absolute nature of reality, as opposed to relative, which is the everyday practical stuff.

Before you get too stuck on this one, be sure you go on to #3 and #4…

by

On Training the Mind

After something of a gap, I’m back to posting Practice Notes on this site, and hope to continue the Meditation Guide as well, as time allows.

This gap has roots in a complex matrix of causes and conditions, prime among them my depression and confusion following the death of my mother… of which I may write more later. It all has created something of a gap in my meditation practice as well, and so, casting about for some way to get back on the path, I have been digging into my past practices. I’ve begun to do yoga regularly again, and have been relying heavily on anapana – following the breath – and some chanting of the Gate Gate mantra – as well as some minor rituals – reciting daily vows at my morning altar.

These have all been helpful, and I’m feeling closer to resuming a solid daily meditation practice.

Another thing from my past practice that has been very helpful is lojong practice, which comes from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, most famously in this country from Chogyam Trungpa and his disciple Pema Chodron. Though Trungpa was a controversial character, his ‘crazy wisdom’ has been a powerful stream in US Buddhism, and his book Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness has been a powerful influence on my practice.

Although my formal practice was Zen, I have also practiced tonglen, or sending and taking, and used the lojong slogans in my mindfullness practice.

Tonglen is a very powerful practice that should be undertaken only with a solid foundation of shamatha – formless meditation – and preferably with a teacher’s guidance. Of course, I always disregarded that advice and just jumped in where angels fear to tread, but I realize now I really do need a teacher for truly developing the practice. And I certainly would not presume to guide anyone into this practice via this blog.

Even without a teacher, however, the lojong practice – the slogans themselves – seems to be very helpful in dealing with the difficult process of putting the teachings into practice and dealing with the vagaries of everyday life in the Twenty-first Century. The slogans are very down-to-earth practical advice, “a grandmotherly finger-point” on how to apply the Buddha’s teachings to your life situations. Even without understanding them properly and deeply, they are helpful.

I have read Trungpa’s book several times straight through and been through it taking one slogan a day quite a few more times. In addition, I created cards for myself summarizing his commentary about each of the slogans and have been through those more times than I’ve counted. I posted a few of them on the original Shunyata’s Apprentice blog several years ago.

The point of going through the fifty-nine slogans is that one becomes very familiar with them, so appropriate ones tend to come to mind in various life situations, prompting reflection and a meditative awareness that can help turn potential disasters into highly enlightening experiences. “Poison as medicine” is how Pema Chodron describes this process.

In my recent attempt to get my practice back on track, the slogans have been immensely helpful, and I have been going through them with renewed intensity, finding new ways to keep them active in my mind, including making a small booklet from my cards that’s convenient to carry around and refer to. I also have begun posting computer-generated versions on my Instagram feed… with links to these further explications included.

So welcome, if that’s what brought you here! Hope you find these explanations enlightening! Even better if it motivates you to read Trungpa’s little book yourself! Here are a few independent bookseller sources.