When we take a photograph, we first see an image through the camera’s lens. We don’t press the button to take the shot until we see the image that we want to appear in the photo. Similarly, before embarking on dharma practice, we should start off with an image of what we want our fruition to look like. What is the point of practice? What are we doing this for? It is to liberate ourselves from self-importance, the source of all our suffering and the suffering of every sentient being. If our practice is helping us step out of the small self, then it is in accord with the initial image. It matches the intention of the dharma. If our practice isn’t having this effect, then it isn’t worth much.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be well and wanting to be safe. But we tend to take these wishes too far, becoming attached to ourselves in an unhealthy way, which doesn’t support us but makes us suffer. We all have a sense of when our attachments—to people, to situations, to ideas—have gone too far and are only harming us. We may even see that they need to be worked on. But the sad story is that we don’t often get around to that work. Sometimes we don’t know how to work with our attachments; sometimes we just don’t want to look at them closely. Either way, our attachments, along with all the other disturbing emotions that arise from self-importance, continue to make us suffer.
As beginning lojong practitioners, we may need to give these emotions a little room. We may need to let them remain at a low level, where they aren’t hurting ourselves and others too much. But when these emotions cross the line into neurosis, when they start leading to actions that produce negative results, then it is time to get to our lojong practice.
We can work individually with each of the five disturbing emotions—attachment, aggression, stupidity, jealousy, and arrogance. Or we can relate directly with their source: grasping to the small self. The latter approach is more in the style of the lojong teachings. It is also more efficient: it uses the same rationale as treating a disease by removing the cause rather than by addressing the symptoms. Relating directly with the source requires taking time to sit and notice what is always happening whenever we feel attached, or jealous, or confused. What is the common experience behind these various manifestations? Until we’ve spent time working with our mind through lojong, it’s hard to locate the experience of self-centeredness that is always present. Even when it becomes temporarily clear, the emotions and their related thoughts tend to take over our attention, masking the primary self-importance underneath.
It’s like trying to locate and remain aware of the source of a pool of water. When we first see a pool of water, it may take some time to see the spring that feeds it from below. If we sit with any disturbing emotion that comes up and are open to looking for its source, we will eventually be able to see the spring of self-importance. That spring is the source of every aspect of samsara: every delusion, every painful emotion, every negative action, and every difficult circumstance. All of these are part of the pool that comes from the same spring.
When we investigate the source of our suffering, we may encounter resistance in our own mind. This often happens because recognizing our attachment to the self shows us how insecure we are. When we discover the source, we realize that everything coming out of it is, in one way or another, a form of insecurity. In the core of our heart, we have a perpetual spring of insecurity. Witnessing how insecurity continually disturbs our mind can make us hard on ourselves. We may think: “What is wrong with me? Why do I have this condition? Why can’t I be like so-and-so, who is always secure and confident?” But “so-and-so” has the same condition. Unless they have thoroughly worn out their self-importance through exchanging self and other and become a supreme being, all sentient beings are insecure in this way.
But it is fine to feel insecure. Every enlightened being has had to work with insecurity. In fact, they became great sages precisely because they were able to make use of their disturbing emotions. Whenever their insecurity became obvious, they were happy to see its face. Why? Because they could then trace the insecurity back to its source and remedy their self-importance at the root. The great lojong practitioners didn’t overcome their insecurity through a determined effort to boost their confidence. They did it by working with their attachment to the small self.
To be successful lojong practitioners ourselves, we need to appreciate any chance to discover our own insecurity, seeing it as a pathway to getting to know the root of all our afflictions. Without appreciating this process of discovery, we won’t be able to let go of our small self. The process of letting go is not about trying to be confident. It’s not about trying to be different from who we are. Rather, it’s about recognizing our self-importance for what it is, and deciding to stop feeding it.
We can attempt many dharma practices and experience some apparent success with them. For instance, we may be able to calm our mind through meditation on the breath, and thus reduce our afflictions to a minimum. But when self-importance continues to be present, when we fail to address it as the spring feeding the pool, then all our practice will fail to free us from suffering. We can cut all the branches, but if the root remains, the branches will grow back. This is why the relative and absolute lojong teachings are so profound. By emphasizing that the root is poisonous, they motivate us to pull the root out.
It’s as if we realize we have a bad marriage to our ego and need to get a divorce. Do we want our divorce to be confused, dramatic, and messy? No, we want a clean and reasonable divorce, based on solid reasoning about how our marriage is unhealthy and unworkable. With as little emotionalism as possible, we want to proceed with firm determination to get out of our bad marriage. Armed with that kind of resolve, we work slowly to get the divorce papers done.
Self-importance, however, will make things much harder for you than a difficult spouse. It will do everything it can to convince you that you shouldn’t seek a divorce. It will continually try to undermine your resolve and seduce you back into the unhealthy relationship. And most of the time it will be very persuasive. As a result, our attempts to let go of self-importance may not always work. We may find ourselves confused about what we’re trying to accomplish. Sometimes the more we notice our ego-clinging, the worse it gets. What do we do then?
The best remedy is a sense of humor. Don’t take your self-centeredness so seriously. Undermine the whole process by laughing at yourself. Recognize the irony: “I want happiness so badly, but my self-cherishing just makes me suffer. Even though I know this, I still can’t abandon my attachment to this self!” It’s very funny, when you think about it. Life is full of irony. Samsara is full of irony. Mind is full of irony. So try to be witty enough to see and appreciate this irony. Laugh at all your contradictions, especially the contradiction between your intentions and your counterproductive ways of fulfilling them. There’s no point in being heavy-handed and feeling so serious about your self-importance. When your habits are so strong that your thoughts and feelings are beyond your control, what else can you do but laugh? Humor is very important in the process of dismantling the ego. Without humor, it’s hard to be a practitioner.
The path of lojong is a path of trial and error. Nobody is demanding that we achieve certain marks of progress at certain times. We are just trying our best and being open to what happens. The best lojong practitioners have this kind of humble attitude. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, despite having the highest position of any Tibetan, bows down to everyone. When he is in a panel discussion, he always appreciates the others and has the attitude of being in the lowest seat.
With this kind of approach, progress in lojong flows easily. We don’t think of practices such as tonglen as being like harsh medicine: “It may be good for me, but I find it repelling.” Lojong isn’t at all about being hard on ourselves. It’s not about rejecting or being negative toward our ego. Shantideva compares conventional methods, which tend to be harsh, to the methods the Buddha taught. The latter are far more effective because they are gentle and full of wisdom. Lojong is about being wise and appreciating our new understanding of ego. Simply having this appreciation makes us no longer care to keep this tiresome rascal around.
Things may be going well in your lojong practice. You have gained some freedom, you are having fewer disturbing emotions and reactions, your attachment to the small self has decreased. Bodhicitta has grown within: you are feeling more love and compassion, you are able to practice the exchange of self and other more effectively and sincerely. Now others may be noticing how you’ve changed. They admire you, praise you, seek your guidance, even want to follow you.
This slogan recommends not relying on such external confirmation. People can praise you one day and scorn you the next. And unless they’re omniscient, it’s hard for others to detect your ulterior motives. You may be very cunning, good at hiding things from others, conning them. People are often fooled by charlatans, and you may be one of those charlatans. The admiration of others may blind you to these tendencies in yourself.
As new practitioners, we usually seek confirmation from the outside. We want to make a good impression, we want respect. But eventually we realize how painful these hopes are and how little others’ confirmation actually benefits us. Even if we are praised, we’re still stuck with our self-importance and the suffering it causes. So instead of trusting the witness of others, trust the main witness, your own discerning mind.
Your mind has the power to reveal itself. If you sit down and look honestly and bravely at your own character and motivations, you’ll be able to see yourself clearly. If you have sound reasons to be a practitioner—reasons based on recognizing self-importance as your one true foe—you won’t be able to fool yourself for long. When you develop a good sense of what is and what isn’t dharma, you will have a reliable conscience. Operating from that conscience, you won’t want to embarrass yourself by thinking or behaving beneath your own standard as a practitioner. You will maintain decency, always thinking of others and making sure never to harm them. You will be considered decent both from society’s point of view and from your own point of view. Not going around with any sense of shame or guilt, you will always be able to walk with your head up.
When you practice exchange of self and other, things change for the better. Rejoice about that and dedicate the merit, but also recognize that there is much further to go. If you make one percent of the progress to enlightenment in this life, that is a lot of progress. But at the same time, there is still the other ninety-nine percent to go. So maintain your enthusiasm to keep practicing. Realize that right now, even if your state of mind has improved considerably, you’ve only scratched the surface of bodhicitta. Having such a humble attitude will safeguard you from being thrown off by others’ confirmation.
When he was very young, my son told me something very helpful. He said, “Dad, all fear comes from not wanting to lose something.” What are we afraid of losing? People, things, our peace, our freedom, our comfort, our choices in life. We’re constantly busy trying to ward off these losses. But in lojong, we welcome everything, even the things we conventionally avoid. Because we have methods for working with whatever comes up, nothing is unpleasant, nothing needs to be pushed away. We can be free to be cheerful and unconcerned about the future. Our happiness has no weak point, no hole.
If your house is completely sealed, you can feel comfortable and relaxed, even with a strong wind blowing. But if there is a hole, the wind will come through and stir up dust. When your heart becomes disturbed, when your psychological or emotional state is shaken, it is because you have a hole. That hole is an attachment: to your loved ones, to your possessions, to your reputation, to favorable circumstances. If you notice such a hole but have not yet gained proficiency in lojong, you will probably try to fix it through some form of cherishing or protecting your small self. Such methods have been proven not to work well.
If you learn to let go of your attachment to the self without forsaking your love and care for others, while remaining open to the natural law of the impermanence of all things, you still may feel raw and vulnerable at times, just as everyone does. But at least you won’t be suffering because of deliberately holding on to self-importance. You can use that rawness and vulnerability to increase your inspired determination to turn toward relative and absolute bodhicitta. Then you will find yourself living in a well-sealed house, where you feel no threat in your heart. Not having holes doesn’t mean you no longer care about anything. It means you are no longer limiting your efforts to the needs of a small self, and can thus increase your love and compassion for the universal self of all sentient beings.
Always being cheerful isn’t easy, especially during dark times. Everyone can be cheerful when things are going well, but this slogan refers to unconditional cheerfulness. But when things are difficult, what are our alternatives? Do we have a better choice than to work with our mind with a positive attitude? Our problem is we think we have a lot of choices. This can make us confused, like an overwhelmed child. We may think it’s a viable option to hope someone else will take our pain away. But that never works. We may whine and sulk, but that only makes things worse. Once we develop a connection to practices such as tonglen, we realize that having a positive attitude is really the only choice. Then, armed with the resolve of having made this choice, we really do start to feel cheerful, even during the hardest times.
Back in the eighties I heard a story about a man in New York who was terminally ill. He was angry and depressed, especially because he couldn’t do the things he wanted to do. When people tried to do things for him, he would get even more irritated. This is common in people with serious illnesses. And his state of mind was getting worse and worse. When his family visited, he would become abusive. They didn’t know what to do. So one day his friend asked a Tibetan monk to come over and give him tonglen instructions. The man was very angry at his friend for inviting this bald, maroon-robed man into his room. The monk gave him some simple instructions and then left cleanly.
Over the next few months, the dying man changed. He became more peaceful and friendly, and started expressing gratitude to people. Near the end, he actually felt grateful for his illness. His family was relieved, but they didn’t understand what had happened. Finally, his friend asked him what had changed. The man said that for weeks he had been angry about the monk. But after a long period of being stuck in his apartment twenty-four hours a day with his miserable mind, he realized that blaming others and feeling angry wasn’t getting him anywhere. He decided to try the monk’s suggestion of exchanging self and other, and he found it helpful. The more he practiced tonglen, the more helpful it was. It brought him relief from his pain, anxiety, and reactions. He saw that his pain was not so much from his illness as from his own mind, and that he could address that pain by getting rid of his deep attachments to himself. Then he started thinking about the kindness of others and realized how much of that he had received without acknowledging it. As he began to show appreciation to others, it made him happier and happier, until he felt that he owed his transformation to his illness, which had been so painful to him. He realized that without the illness, he never would have changed. And when he finally died, he was at peace.
This slogan means that whatever comes up in your life, you can practice lojong without missing a beat. No matter how complex or dynamic a situation is, your mind stays with the vast attitude of bodhicitta, rather than shrinking down to focus on the small, singular self. Sometimes it feels like a force is oppressing your mind from the outside, almost pressing it to react in a self-centered way. Our usual course is to exhaust ourselves by reacting negatively, and only turn to the positive when we are overwhelmed by evidence that this doesn’t work. Instead, one who is proficient in lojong is naturally inclined to encounter a difficult situation with a calm, practice-oriented mind, seeing the situation as an enhancement of one’s bodhicitta practice.
To be considered proficient, we must also be able to maintain our lojong mind during mundane activities. Even when we are dreaming, our lives are oriented toward others. At some level, we are always thinking of how we can be more kind and compassionate, more generous and patient, more beneficial to our fellow sentient beings. Eventually we can reach the point where there is no gap between our “spiritual practice” and our ordinary life. Both are expressions of our bodhicitta.
To reach this level of proficiency, we need to cultivate two mental attributes: mindfulness of mind and vigilant introspection. Mindfulness of mind (pagyu in Tibetan) is like having a surveillance camera watching what takes place in the room of your mind. When we practice a lot of self-reflection we come to see how swiftly our attachment to the self can fly out of control, leading to dangerous emotions such as anger, and the actions that often follow. Seeing how easily our self-importance can transform itself into harming ourselves and others makes us appreciate what’s at stake in the practice of lojong. We realize that we’re always walking on the edge of a cliff. Understanding this, we feel naturally inclined to maintain pagyu. If we’re constantly aware of what’s happening in our mind, we can work skillfully with our karma and successfully navigate the path away from self-importance and toward altruism.
Along with pagyu, we need shezhin, vigilant introspection. Shezhin is a form of conviction that comes about through analyzing the process by which self-importance causes harm. To develop this conviction, we connect the dots of cause and effect; we see how various attitudes and actions bring about favorable or unfavorable results. Having and using pagyu and shezhin protects us from being a victim of our own mind. When Tibetan Buddhists are about to eat, we recite a chant offering our food to the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. In this chant, we refer to the dharma as “the unsurpassable protector.” This protector is not something outside. It is nothing but our own mindfulness of mind and vigilant introspection, which protect us from all the harm we normally cause ourselves. We are always in need of this unsurpassable protector.
Recently, for example, I’ve developed a taste for a certain brand of Assam tea. When I asked my friend to get me some, she didn’t buy very much, so I felt disappointed. Now, preferring a certain kind of tea in the morning is not necessarily a problem. But if the tea starts running out, and I get anxious about not being able to replace it in time, and I’m wondering how I can live without it, and that anxiety turns into blaming my friend, and I find myself yelling, “Damn it! Why didn’t you think of this before?” and I’m filled with burning, violent energy, then maybe my attachment has gone too far. Fortunately, this sequence didn’t play out to the end: my surveillance camera was on, and I was able to connect the dots that would lead me to negative results.
There can be a tendency to see self-awareness as a nuisance. We may have subtle thoughts along these lines: “Why not just go along with the habitual unfolding of my mind, even though it may turn into a conflict with someone else?” Or we may think, “This mindfulness is too hard. It feels unnatural. Surely there must be an easier, more free and spontaneous way to live.” But if you think this way, all I can say is “Welcome to samsara!” Not making use of our mindfulness and awareness—either through ignorance or laziness—is the brewery of samsara. But if we know what’s at stake in our thoughts and emotions, and cultivate the vigilant mind of a proficient lojong practitioner, we will enjoy greater and greater peace and happiness.