The Eight Verses of Mind Training – Verses 1-2: Foundations of Lojong
Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, International Women’s Partnership Centre, Chiang Mai, Thailand, January 15th 2007, Part 1.
Here we are dealing with what in Mahayana Buddhism is called Mind Training, or Lojong in Tibetan, which is concerned with the attitude of putting others before ourselves. This is a practice for learning to generate genuine great compassion and use this as a spiritual practice in our daily life.
Basically, the Buddhist world can be subsumed under the two headings of those who practise the path to personal liberation and those who follow the path for universal liberation.
Even in the Theravada tradition as recorded in the Pali Canon, the Buddha did elucidate that there are these two paths—one is the path of individual liberation as an Arhat and the other path is the path of a Bodhisattva leading to complete Enlightenment. The Buddha himself relates how in a past life, when he was still a Bodhisattva, he made the profound decision to renounce immediate Nirvana as an Arhat because he had resolved to carry on for many more aeons in order to become a Buddha out of compassion for the world.
So then if we go back to the time of the Buddha, after the Buddha entered into Mahaparinirvana, there was a Buddhist council convened with 500 Arhats—that means a lot of Arhats—and the basic Canon was recited, and everybody agreed on that which should be included and that which would not be included.
Now, even at that time as it is reported in the Canon that a group of monks who are called the Maha Sangha, or the great community—so there must have been a lot of them—said at the end of the recitation, “Well, that’s very fine and you’ve recited it very nicely, but we didn’t hear it that way. That’s not what we heard the Buddha say, and we are going to keep our version of it. So you can go ahead and keep your version. Thank you.” And they left.
The interesting thing is we don’t know who these people, the Maha Sangha, actually were. What did they hear? For some reason, their different version seems to have died out unless it was incorporated into later traditions.
Now, after the Buddha’s Mahaparinirvana, monks went out and settled in all directions into the many different parts of India, and within a relatively short time there were what are called the 18 schools.
These schools maintained their sutras in different languages. It should be understood that the Buddha probably didn’t speak Pali, which I think was a West Indian dialect. Historians think that the Buddha probably spoke Prakrit, but anyway most of the different lineages kept their sutras in Sanskrit, which was the literary language. But for 300 years nobody wrote down the Canon. It was all memorised and then passed on orally.
Now, it happened that the great Emperor Ashoka followed the teachings in particular of the school of the Theravada, the Pali Canon, and so when his son, who was a monk Arhat, was sent to Sri Lanka, this school was transmitted there and then it spread out to Thailand, Burma, Cambodia, Laos and so forth. Later on when Buddhism was destroyed and more or less died out in India, one of the only lineages among those 18 schools which still existed in the world was the Pali school of the Theravada school because that had already gone to Sri Lanka, Thailand and so on.
On a deep level, the main concern in all Buddhist countries is the question of how to gain liberation. This means that whichever Buddhist country we travel to, we find that behind the basic ethical and social protocol of being a Buddhist, there is the understanding that our minds are deluded and need to be liberated. It is as if we are sinking in the swamp of samsara. So then our real reason for having a human life is to rescue ourselves and get out of that swamp onto dry land.
But the question arises that we are putting all this effort to get out of the swamp onto dry land, but then what? Imagine we are in a swamp and all our family, our mother, our father, our partner, our children, our friends, everybody that we care about, are all sinking in this swamp. Now we have made a lot of effort to pull ourselves out of that swamp, and then we turn around and we say to our father and our mother and our children, “Well, sorry you are sinking. I got out, so it is possible. Keep trying hard, and I am sure you can also get out!” Then we turn our backs and leave them! I mean, even in ordinary everyday life we couldn’t do that.
Surely just from an ordinary point of view, if we got out on dry land, our next action would be to turn and try to pull out all the others onto dry land, wouldn’t we? The only point in being on dry land is to be in a position where we can rescue all the others.
So this is the main divide between the Sravakayana or so-called Hinayana schools and the Mahayana schools—the motivation for liberation. Do we want to be free so that we can be free? Or do we want to be free so that we are in a position to free others? That’s really the big difference.
Actually, it doesn’t have anything to do with what particular practices we are doing, what robes we are wearing or what outwardly we call ourselves. We can be doing Vipassana practices wearing a Theravadin robe but with a Bodhisattva motivation, and we are on a Mahayana path. We can be practising the highest tantras, and if our real motivation is to just liberate ourselves or to gain power for ourselves, then we are on a Sravakayana path. Sravakayana doesn’t have anything to do with Theravada per se; it has to do with our motivation for why we are practising.
Therefore I know a number of Theravadin monks and nuns who are taking the Bodhisattva Vow; even some Catholic monks and nuns are taking the Bodhisattva Vow. They don’t stop being Theravadin; they don’t stop being Catholic. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with our inner motivation for why we are practising and our motivation on behalf of all other beings.
The basic attitude is that we have been born endlessly in samsara, millions and millions of times in all realms of existence—not only as humans, but as animals, as insects or gods, or in the hell realms, as ghosts or as anything we can imagine. We have all experienced it, over and over and over. So through all these countless lives we have been interconnected with all beings. All these beings at some time have been our mother, and therefore at some point we have had a very deep and close connection with every sentient being. However, we have forgotten about it now. When we meet them they look like strangers, but at some time in the past they were our mother. And just as we would only want to help, care for and liberate our mother of this lifetime, so likewise we recall that all beings have been our mothers.
So then the question arises: if this is our mother and we want to help her, what is the best and most lasting way that we can benefit her, not just for this lifetime but through endless lifetimes? Clearly, the best way would be to help my mother to attain liberation from the rounds of births and deaths. Because that way she is finally safe; she is on dry land.
But right now we can’t help much because we are not liberated, and how can we liberate others when we ourselves are still entrapped in samsara? Therefore, we make the vow that we will attain Enlightenment for the sake of all mother sentient beings.
This really does alter one’s whole attitude towards what our life is about, because it means that basically everything which we are doing is in order to progress spiritually for the sake of others. Yes, we benefit ourselves, but the ultimate intent is to prepare ourselves so that we can really benefit others.
Supposing we were sick and we decided that we have to heal ourselves and the best way would be to become a doctor. But then as we learn of more and more of the skills for becoming a doctor, we realise that there are all these other people who are also sick. Therefore it makes more sense to train to be a doctor not just so we can cure ourselves, but so that we can be of benefit in healing all these other beings.
Now, of course there are an infinite amount of sentient beings. It doesn’t just mean human beings, but also animals, insects and beings in the spirit realms. There are so many of them, and in one lifetime it is not possible to liberate them all—even the Buddha couldn’t accomplish that. But we have endless lifetimes, and so we go for refuge not until life ends, but until Enlightenment is reached and all sentient beings have been liberated. That’s a long time.
So this attitude pervades everything that we do: in every meditation or prayers or the service which we do during our everyday life, the ultimate aim is to spiritually advance and be able to genuinely benefit others.
There is a very simple example that comes to my mind. One time I used to do a certain practice, and one evening I was feeling kind of tired and decided I wouldn’t bother to do it. Then I thought, No, wait a minute, you are not doing this for the sake of yourself. You’re like the representative, the substitute for all the beings in the world who don’t know how to do this practice. You are doing it on their behalf! So what are you talking about that you don’t feel like it tonight, you are a bit tired… Then immediately the whole situation changed and the energy to continue came. It’s a very powerful motivation.
So one of our main problems is that we put ourselves first. Even people who are usually very selfless still find there is a sense of self there which they are somehow protecting.
So we are going to discuss the Eight Verses of Mind Training and think about them, and they might seem very extreme. They seem extreme in that they are dealing with how to place the other in front of oneself and to consider the other as more precious than oneself. And how to break down our resistance to doing this.
Even the fact that we feel resistance at the thought of coming back endlessly again and again into samsara out of compassion is a sign that we have such strong self-cherishing. So these are methods or ways to help us to replace this self-cherishing mind with great compassion.
Many of you are already dedicating your life for the service of others and in this world even that is very rare. So, as it were, this is taking that commitment a step further and transforming this benefit of others into a genuine spiritual path that extends not just for this lifetime but endless lifetimes.
In Tibet in the 11th century there came a very great Indian pandita called Atisha Dipankara. He had been a great scholar at Nalanda University, and then he went to Indonesia and studied with a master for years to understand this whole topic of Bodhichitta, of the aspiring mind which is seeking Enlightenment for the sake of others.
So the Eight Verses of Mind Training was not thought up by the Tibetans but came from India, introduced into Tibet by Atisha, and he started a tradition which is called the Kadampa. But the important thing is that this doctrine originally came from India, and the whole question of attaining Enlightenment for the sake of others and training our mind so that we place others ahead of ourselves is something which subsequently underlines the whole of Tibetan Buddhism.
For example, my own Lama, Khamtrul Rinpoche, was very quiet. When he was a young monk in Tibet he almost never spoke and even in India he didn’t say much. He hardly ever gave any teachings. We learnt through his example, by how he acted, not really by what he said.
But when he gave the Bodhisattva Vow he would speak about Bodhichitta and about this Mahayana mind training. Then he would just talk and talk and he would get so excited. His speech would pour out and he could go on for hours because he was so enthused at this idea of dedicating our whole life to the service and Enlightenment for others, it just was so inspiring for him!
In our community we have yogis who are monks, but in Tibet they lived in caves. They do the most advanced Tantric practices. At one time, just before he died, Khamtrul Rinpoche called the yogis together and he said, “Now I am going to give you the supreme secret teaching, this is something from my heart that I have to transmit to you.” So they all felt very intrigued, wondering what this teaching was going to be. And it turned out to be a text on Lojong, called the Seven Point Mind Training. So these teachings are given at the beginning, but they are also given in the middle and they are given at the end. If we could just practise this, then that would be enough. We don’t need anything more.
In all the traditions of Tibet, this is the essence, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama and all the great teachers teach these basic principles again and again and again, because our self-cherishing mind is so hard and so subtle at the same time. This teaching just keeps wearing it away.
So when people outside think of Tibetan Buddhism they often think of all the rituals, all the deities and all the glamour, but when I think of what Tibetan Buddhism is fundamentally about, it is Bodhichitta and this mind training for putting others before ourselves.
This is why Tibetan Buddhism stays so pure. It didn’t degenerate. Actually, Tantra also came to Thailand, Sri Lanka and many countries, and after a while it became corrupt because Bodhichitta was not emphasised there. It did not degenerate in Tibet because they have this incredible emphasis on the purification of motivation from the very beginning.
So this quality of Bodhichitta is really the essence of the path in the Mahayana. It is the most precious thing. People write books just praising Bodhichitta in beautiful words: how it really is like the wish-fulfilling gem, the jewel beyond price. This aspiration for Enlightenment for the sake of others is the most precious thing in the world. The Tibetans regard Bodhichitta as the one thing which completely transforms the whole of our spiritual and worldly life, like changing base metal into gold, so it is precious beyond words.
The basic idea is that of putting others before oneself and seeking the happiness of others before one’s own happiness. So perhaps before we start with the specific verses, I should say something to dispel possible misconceptions.
This text is dealing with hitting at what is called the self-cherishing aspect of the mind, the mind which thinks of oneself first and others only second. It’s not intended that we should constantly humiliate and hate ourselves. It does not mean that we should only be thinking about the bad things in ourselves and any time we think of anything good in ourselves we feel guilty because of pride. That way we end up feeling tight and low in self-esteem.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama is very impressed with science, and he used to have yearly “Mind & Life Dialogues” gatherings of different kinds of top scientists to discuss the similarities and differences between science and Buddhism. Now, at one time His Holiness had a seminar with all sorts of psychiatrists, neurologists and Western experts concerned with the mind. Perhaps he had been giving some reflections on self-cherishing because one of these scientists asked him, “Well, Your Holiness, how do we deal with low self-esteem and self-hatred?” His Holiness looked completely blank and said, “What do you mean?” So then they said, “Well, you know, when you feel unworthy and you don’t like yourself and you feel very heavy and sad within yourself.” His Holiness looked puzzled and asked his translator, “Hmm, what does he mean?” So the translator explained and then His Holiness sat there thinking, then he said, “Oh, I think very rare, very rare.” And so the scientist turned to his eminent colleagues and said, “Who ever suffers from a sense of low self-esteem or self-hatred?” and everybody put their hands up. So His Holiness had to really think about this because Tibetans, at least traditional Tibetans living in old Tibet, didn’t suffer from that. Nowadays, modern young refugee Tibetans have identity problems, but not so much the original Tibetans. They had a great sense of self-worth and self-esteem no matter what level of society. It’s not pride. It’s a sense of inner confidence and the feeling of being basically okay.
When the Tibetans first arrived in India they had lost everything. The Chinese Communists came in and had taken over their country. So many of their family and their friends were killed or imprisoned, but also the communists destroyed the most important thing to the Tibetans which was their Dharma. They destroyed the monasteries, they killed the monks and nuns, and they devastated the culture. Then those Tibetans who could escape came out from Tibet into India and Nepal. Often there were hundreds trying to escape and maybe two or three got out because it is very difficult terrain and it took them months to get across the snow mountains. And when they finally got out they found themselves in a completely different culture. It was so hot, the food was different, the language was different, they were completely poor refugees and they were sick and devastated.
When I first went to India in 1964, the Tibetans had been out about four years. They were so poor and many were just living in tents made out of sacks. They were working on the roads—even lamas were working on the roads because they had nothing. They had lost everything and they were so worried about what was happening to those they had left behind. Nonetheless, what struck everybody who met these Tibetan refugees was how cheerful they were! They had such presence, they were so friendly and so generous. They weren’t self-pitying; they were just beautiful and radiantly at peace with themselves despite all their trauma.
So what I am trying to say is that this quality of exchanging self for others doesn’t leave us feeling depressed, downtrodden and full of self-contempt—in fact, it gives a tremendous sense of inner courage and fearlessness which we can carry with us into even the most disastrous situations.
The 8th century Indian philosopher Shantideva makes a specific point of the difference between ordinary pride and that of self-confidence. Pride is a klesha, a mental defilement, but self-confidence is essential for the spiritual path. In fact, to genuinely place others before ourselves and to cherish others beyond ourselves requires enormous amounts of self-confidence and fearlessness.
However, these texts are hitting at our pride and at this tight knot of self-cherishing which seems to sit at the centre of our being. So that’s why the first verse says:
May I always cherish all beings
With the resolve to accomplish for them
The highest good that is more precious
Than any wish-fulfilling jewel.
And this really means exactly what it says: may I always hold dear everyone with the determination to win for them “the highest good”, which of course is liberation. So the fact is that all beings want to be happy—not just human beings, but animals, insects, fish, birds, any creature we can think of. Basically, beings want happiness; they don’t want to suffer. We want to be happy. When we wake up in the morning, our first thought is usually not, “Oh, how can I make this day as miserable as possible for myself?”
We as human beings expend enormous energy, time and money on what we hope is going to make us happy. One of the tragedies of our modern consumer society is that they are trying to sell us a deal for making us happy which the Buddha has already proclaimed is the path to suffering.
Our consumer society is based very firmly on the three poisons of greed, hatred and delusion, with the emphasis on creating more and more greed and desire. There is also the glorification of violence. I am always horrified when I get glimpses of the movies people are watching in the planes and so on. These movies are full of people fighting and blowing each other up! Also, society is founded very much on self-advertisement, on selling ourselves, on promoting ourselves, and these are just the same three poisons which are noted for creating more and more samsara.
2,500 years ago the Buddha compared desire to salty water and said that even if we drank the whole ocean, we would still be thirsty. We are proving it today. So many people are consumed by greed and craving for totally unnecessary things. Yet obviously the moment they have possession they lose interest and they want the next thing and then the next thing, and work day and night to get these wholly unnecessary objects in the hope that somehow the void inside of themselves will be filled.
Of course our society is so in denial of the law of impermanence, of old age, sickness and death. Everybody wants to live forever and be eternally young, beautiful, healthy and never die. So this view of life is based on fear because the reality is that we all get old, we all get sick, we all die. But so what? That’s the nature of samsara; we need to be recycled.
Especially nowadays society is being sold the idea that we have to be happy all the time and we have to give so much of our energy, time and thought to making ourselves fulfilled—and yet never have people felt so unsatisfied and miserable. For instance, you go to New York City and just look around… or Bangkok.
So this teaching is another way of looking at life. Maybe our genuine happiness can actually be obtained not by always thinking of our own satisfaction, but finding our joy in giving happiness to others. This actually gives a whole different perspective to life. His Holiness the Dalai Lama says his first thought on waking in the morning is how he can use this day for bringing happiness to others.
Many of you are social workers, so you have also discovered that when you are not thinking about yourself and when you are thinking about others, then that can give birth to a really deep inner satisfaction which cannot be attained dealing merely with one’s own concerns.
So as Shantideva says, when we seek only our own happiness, we just end up with more and more frustration and suffering. When we seek the happiness of others, then actually we discover our own happiness.
Also, just on the basis of statistics, since sentient beings are infinite and I am just one, it makes much more sense to be concerned with so many rather than just little me.
Now, a wish-fulfilling jewel is a part of Indian mythology which I am sure you must have in Thailand too. These are jewels which belong to the gods and will grant us anything we wish for. So it is saying that the aspiration to give joy to others beyond ourselves is more precious than such a jewel.
The reason is because even if we have the wish-fulfilling jewel, this could only fulfil our wishes for this lifetime. Whereas the aspiration for the Enlightenment and happiness of others is something which we will carry with us throughout endless lifetimes and will bring us so much good karma and benefits. Therefore, it is much more precious than a wish-fulfilling jewel.
It is a transformation of the mind which we will take with us until Enlightenment is reached.
So therefore the second verse says:
Whenever I am in the company of others,
May I regard myself as inferior to all
And from the depths of my heart
Cherish others as supreme.
Now, I can understand how justifiably certain women might resent this and say that as women we’ve always been seeing ourselves as inferior. This is a text meant for men! Our whole lives we’ve always been serving others and now it’s time for us to stand up and give ourselves a little attention!
So again I want to emphasise what I said at the beginning. It doesn’t mean that we only see ourselves as inferior and others as superior, so that we are grovelling or passive or full of self-contempt. Rather, it is this attitude of delight in bringing happiness to others. It’s not a subservient thing. It means that we shrug off our inherent self-concern and this tight little sense of me, me, me, and we rejoice in making whoever is with us as happy as we can.
The Buddha when talking about loving kindness said that it is like a mother loves her child, her only child. When the mother has a little baby she is often up all night cleaning it, feeding it, taking care of it. She is cherishing her baby even though he doesn’t give much in return. She holds her baby and it coos “gah, gah” and then the mother is ecstatic! All those nights of sleeplessness are worth it just to see her baby gaze at her and smile. But she does all this not because somebody told her that she has to, or because she is trying to be “spiritual”, but because she naturally loves that child more than herself. There is that outpouring of love even though at that point the child is giving very little back except a lot of trouble with more to come! Yet she loves.
She loves because nature has programmed her to love. If nature didn’t predispose us to love our little baby, then we might just throw it away because it is too much trouble! But even most animals will love their offspring and they will defend them literally to the death. So we already have that instinct inside us and just need to promote and expand our natural impulse until that feeling of melting love is extended to all beings. Throughout countless lifetimes all beings have been our children and we have been their mother. Also, they have been our mother. So to reach out that loving compassion towards all beings, this is what completely transforms the heart.
That’s why it is this question of recognising and being aware that every being who comes into our presence wants happiness. However they may act, whether they act friendly, aggressive or indifferent, in their hearts they are the centre of their own universe and they want only happiness. Therefore we aspire to do to them what we would want them to do to us.
We should be conscious of that when anyone comes into our presence. This means not just humans, but animals and insects. All creatures are wanting happiness, and from our side we should extend the goodwill and thought of kindness towards them and as much as possible help promote their well-being.
So again I have to emphasise it’s not debasing ourselves or grovelling, although sometimes the words in the text sound like that. It’s a very open, heartfelt joy in giving others happiness. A classic image is if we have two slices of cake: one is a big piece and one is a little piece, and we would happily give the big piece of cake to someone we love. We wouldn’t regard it as being a sacrifice; we would want them to have the bigger piece of cake because we love them. So therefore if we love all beings, then it’s easy.
Because if we think of this in terms of self-sacrifice, then it becomes very heavy and we end up with a sense of “oh, poor me, I am always giving and giving and everybody else is taking and taking”. We end up feeling very inwardly deprived and dry. But this practice is actually the opposite of that attitude. The opposite of self-sacrifice is not promoting more and more of our own ego. It’s related to giving to others with joy and genuine delight in their happiness.
In Buddhism, pride is regarded as being threefold. One is thinking we are better than others. This is how we normally think of pride, as a feeling of arrogance in us. We are proud of our looks, our wealth, our talents, our family, our race: we feel that we are somehow superior to others. This is one type of pride, the one which we usually associate with the word.
But there is also the pride in thinking we are just as good as others, and also there is a pride in thinking we are inferior to others—because all of these attitudes deal with self-reference. Sometimes when people are psychologically disturbed they feel very bad about themselves, they feel inferior and they hate themselves. But still they are absorbed in themselves; they can’t think of anything outside of themselves; all they want to talk about is their problems, the horrible things that happened to them and how they are feeling. Anything about other people bores them to tears, they want to come back to me, me, me, the whole time. So it’s not just thinking that we are wonderful that’s pride, but also thinking that we are awful is also a pride because it’s all concerned with the ego.
I think the idea in the text of saying pride is feeling superior, inferior or equal is dealing with the fact that whatever kind of comparison we are making, it’s still a duality between ourselves and others. Normally as soon as we meet somebody we start to compare, so even if we think “I am just as good as you are”, immediately we’ve made that separation. So the idea is that our mind should be much more open and spacious and not make any comparison, just that we are as we are.
So all this attitude is trying to undercut our whole ego concern, just not always first thinking what’s best for me, but looking at all these others and thinking what’s best for them.
Now of course if we are in a situation where we are always giving out and giving out, it could very well happen that after a while we become empty like a bottle that we are continually pouring from. So as beginners we also need to replenish ourselves. In Buddhism that is usually done through meditation practice where we fill ourselves up in order to be able to give ourselves out.
For example, most people think of the nuns of Mother Teresa as going around the streets of Calcutta sweeping up the dead and dying, but what they don’t understand is that at least half of their day is spent in prayer. The sisters only spend a certain amount of time going out and serving others. A lot of the time they spend on prayer and contemplation. They breathe in as well as breathing out, and in this way they can keep going.
It strikes me also that the sisters of Mother Teresa and her volunteers are trained to see Jesus in everyone they care for. Jesus said that he would come back as the poor and the sick, and so they are not just serving some wretched beggar on the street; they are serving Jesus. This gives them a tremendous feeling of privilege to be allowed to care for their Lord, and therefore they don’t feel the sense of pride that “I am so good to be helping this poor person”, but instead a sense of honour and love that they are caring for Jesus.
Likewise in Mahayana Buddhism, it is said that all beings have Buddha nature. That means that the essence of our being, the true nature of our mind, is primordial awareness which is blissful emptiness and clarity. This is something beyond time and space and transcends the idea of subject and object. It is an incredibly expansive level of unborn awareness likened to the sky. We all have it—not just human beings, but animals and even mosquitoes have Buddha nature. Every being is an incipient Buddha. Every being that we meet is inherently a Buddha. Our tragedy is that we don’t realise this and we identify ourselves with our very ordinary klesha-ridden personality while all the time our true nature is something incredibly wonderful and magnificent. So when we meet people we also recognise that within them. Therefore everybody that we meet, help, smile at and speak to is a Buddha-in-the-making and we respect that in them.
So we are surrounded by Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, isn’t that wonderful? If we only saw people as they really are then we would be overjoyed and honoured to serve them. So this is not a path of making ourselves feel oppressed; this is a path of joy!
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May All Beings Benefit
Sarva Mangalam