Lojong
A few months ago, Tapi and I bought a book called
"Always Maintain a Joyful Mind" by Pema Chodron. It
has fifty nine tibetan teachings called Lojong to
help develop wisdom amid challenges of daily living.
Most of the teachings are quite straight-out, like: "don't expect applause", "abandon poisonous food", "don't be jealous" and so on.
The idea is to pick a slogan at random from the book each day, read the short commentary offered by the author and try to live by the meaning of that slogan throughout the day.
It is interesting to see how the work you do, and your everyday interactions with people take on new meaning each day depending on the slogan you have called to mind. The message manifests itself in your life in more ways than you had imagined.
Some slogans seem quite unclear in meaning without the commentary, like "Practice the five strengths, the condensed heart instructions", "three objects, three poisons, and three seeds of virtue."
I find with these ones that the commentary speaks of more than one thing, which then makes me want to take more than a day to think about the message.
Take today's slogan for instance. It is impossible to know what it could mean without the commentary . It also happens to be the first slogan for this year. I hope to make a regular habit of this from now on and read a slogan a day, or in some cases read the same slogan everyday until I am ready to move on to the next.
Slogan:
First, train in the preliminaries
Commentary:
The preliminaries are also known as the four reminders.
In your daily life, try to:
1. Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life.
2. Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone
3. Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; what goes around comes around
4. Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will suffer. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want does not result in happiness.
That is a lot to take in at once. Frankly, I am a little overwhelmed with these reminders and am not sure what to focus on and how. I suppose I could split them into four different slogans, one for each day, and think about them independently first and then together as a whole.
So more about this when I am done thinking and taking the attitude of the four reminders :)
You know there is a "joyful mind" section coming up on this website soon, don't you?
Most of the teachings are quite straight-out, like: "don't expect applause", "abandon poisonous food", "don't be jealous" and so on.
The idea is to pick a slogan at random from the book each day, read the short commentary offered by the author and try to live by the meaning of that slogan throughout the day.
It is interesting to see how the work you do, and your everyday interactions with people take on new meaning each day depending on the slogan you have called to mind. The message manifests itself in your life in more ways than you had imagined.
Some slogans seem quite unclear in meaning without the commentary, like "Practice the five strengths, the condensed heart instructions", "three objects, three poisons, and three seeds of virtue."
I find with these ones that the commentary speaks of more than one thing, which then makes me want to take more than a day to think about the message.
Take today's slogan for instance. It is impossible to know what it could mean without the commentary . It also happens to be the first slogan for this year. I hope to make a regular habit of this from now on and read a slogan a day, or in some cases read the same slogan everyday until I am ready to move on to the next.
Slogan:
First, train in the preliminaries
Commentary:
The preliminaries are also known as the four reminders.
In your daily life, try to:
1. Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life.
2. Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone
3. Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; what goes around comes around
4. Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will suffer. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want does not result in happiness.
That is a lot to take in at once. Frankly, I am a little overwhelmed with these reminders and am not sure what to focus on and how. I suppose I could split them into four different slogans, one for each day, and think about them independently first and then together as a whole.
So more about this when I am done thinking and taking the attitude of the four reminders :)
You know there is a "joyful mind" section coming up on this website soon, don't you?
