Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living (21 page)

Observe these two, even at the risk of your life

Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one

Pay heed that the three never wane

Practice the five strengths, / The condensed heart instructions

Regard all dharmas as dreams

Rest in the nature of alaya, the essence

Seeing confusion as the four kayas / Is unsurpassable shunyata protection

Self-liberate even the antidote

Sending and taking should be practiced alternately. / These two should ride the breath

Take on the three principal causes

This time, practice the main points

Three objects, three poisons, and three seeds of virtue

Train in the three difficulties

Train wholeheartedly

Train without bias in all areas. It is crucial always to do this pervasively and wholeheartedly

Two activities: one at the beginning, one at the end

Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation

When the world is filled with evil, / Transform all mishaps into the path of bodhi

Whichever of the two occurs, be patient

Work with the greatest defilements first

NOTES

1.
The slogans are also available as a set of cards that one could use as an aid in working with these teachings. See Resources for information.

2.
If you’ve never tried sitting meditation before, you may wish to seek the guidance of a qualified meditation instructor. See the list of meditation centers at the back of the book for help in finding an instructor.

Excerpt from
Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness
by Chögyam Trungpa

eISBN  978-0-8348-2123-1

Introduction

I
N THE MAHAYANA TRADITION
¹
we experience a sense of gentleness toward ourselves, and a sense of friendliness to others begins to arise. That friendliness or compassion is known in Tibetan as
nyingje
, which literally means “noble heart.” We are willing to commit ourselves to working with all sentient beings. But before we actually launch into that project, we first need a lot of training.

The obstacle to becoming a mahayanist is not having enough sympathy for others and for oneself—that is the basic point. And that problem can be dealt with by practical training, which is known as
lojong
practice, “training the mind.” That training gives us a path, a way to work with our crude and literal and raw and rugged styles, a way to become good mahayanists. Ignorant or stupid students of the mahayana sometimes think that they have to glorify themselves; they want to become leaders or guides. We have a technique or practice for overcoming that problem. That practice is the development of humility, which is connected with training the mind.

The basic mahayana vision is to work for the benefit of others and create a situation that will benefit others. Therefore, you take the attitude that you are willing to dedicate yourself to others. When you take that attitude, you begin to realize that others are more important than yourself. Because of that vision of mahayana, because you adopt that attitude, and because you actually find that others are more important—with all three of those together, you develop the mahayana practice of training the mind.

Hinayana discipline is fundamentally one of
taming
the mind. By working with the various forms of unmindfulness, we begin to become thorough and precise, and our discipline becomes good. When we are thoroughly tamed by the practice of
shamatha
discipline, or mindfulness practice, as well as trained by
vipashyana
, or awareness, in how to hear the teachings, we begin to develop a complete understanding of the dharma. After that, we also begin to develop a complete understanding of how, in our particular state of being tamed, we can relate with others.

In the mahayana we talk more in terms of
training
the mind. That is the next step. The mind is already tamed, therefore it can be trained. In other words, we have been able to domesticate our mind by practicing hinayana discipline according to the principles of the buddhadharma. Having domesticated our mind, then we can use it further. It’s like the story of capturing a wild cow in the old days. Having captured the wild cow, having domesticated it, you find that the cow becomes completely willing to relate with its tamers. In fact, the cow likes being domesticated. So at this point the cow is part of our household. Once upon a time it wasn’t that way—I’m sure cows were wild and ferocious before we domesticated them.

Training the mind is known as
lojong
in Tibetan:
lo
means “intelligence,” “mind,” “that which can perceive things”;
jong
means “training” or “processing.” The teachings of lojong consist of several steps or points of mahayana discipline. The basic discipline of mind training or lojong is a sevenfold cleaning or processing of one’s mind.

This book is based on the basic Kadampa text,
The Root Text of the Seven Points of Training the Mind
, and on the commentary by Jamgön Kongtrül. In Tibetan the commentary is called
Changchup Shunglam. Shung
is the word used for “government” and also for “main body.” So
shung
means “main governing body.” For instance, we could call the Tibetan government
pö shung—pö
meaning “Tibet,”
shung
meaning “government.” The government that is supposed to run a country is a wide administration rather than a narrow administration: it takes care of the psychology of the country, the economics, politics, and domestic situations.
Shung
is actually the working basis, the main working stream.
Lam
means “path.” So
shunglam
is a general highway, so to speak, a basic process of working toward enlightenment. In other words, it is the mahayana approach. It is the highway that everybody goes on, a wide way, extraordinarily wide and extraordinarily open.
Changchup
means “enlightenment,”
shung
means “wide” or “basic,” and
lam
means “path.” So the title of the commentary is
The Basic Path Toward Enlightenment
.

The main text is based on Atisha’s teachings on lojong and comes from the Kadam school of Tibetan Buddhism, which developed around the time of Marpa and Milarepa, when Tibetan monasticism had begun to take place and become deep-rooted. The Kagyüpas received these instructions on the proper practice of mahayana Buddhism through Gampopa, who studied with Milarepa as well as with Kadam teachers. There is what is known as the contemplative Kadam school and the intellectual Kadam school. What we are doing here is related to the Kadam school’s contemplative tradition. The Gelukpas specialized in dialectics and took a more philosophical approach to understanding the Kadam tradition.

The word
kadam
has an interesting meaning for us.
Ka
means “command,” as when a general gives a pep talk to his or her troops or a king gives a command to his ministers. Or we could say “Logos,” or “Word,” as in the Christian tradition: “In the beginning was the Word.” That kind of Word is a fundamental sacred command, the first that was uttered at all! In this case,
ka
refers to a sense of absolute truth and a sense of practicality or workability from the individual’s point of view.
Dam
is “oral teaching,” “personal teaching,” that is, a manual on how to handle our life properly. So
ka
and
dam
mixed together means that all the
ka
, all the commands or messages, are regarded as practical and workable oral teachings. They are regarded as a practical working basis for students who are involved with contemplative and meditative disciplines. That is the basic meaning of
kadam
.

The few lists presented here are very simple ones, nothing particularly philosophical. It is purely what one of the great Kagyü teachers regarded as a “grandmother’s fingerpoint.” When a grandmother says, “This is the place where I used to go and pick corn, collect wild vegetables,” she usually uses her finger rather than writing on paper or using a map. So it is a grandmother’s approach at this point.

In my own case, having studied philosophy a lot, the first time Jamgön Kongtrül suggested that I read and study this book,
Changchup Shunglam
, I was relieved that Buddhism was so simple and that you could actually do something about it. You can actually practice. You can just follow the book and do as it says, which is extraordinarily powerful and such a relief. And that sense of simplicity still continues. It is so precious and so direct. I do not know what kind of words to use to describe it. It is somewhat rugged, but at the same time it is so soothing to read such writing. That is one of the characteristics of Jamgön Kongtrül—he can change his tone completely, as if he were a different author altogether. Whenever he writes on a particular subject, he changes his approach accordingly, and his basic awareness to relate with the audience becomes entirely different.

Jamgön Kongtrül’s commentary on the Kadampa slogans is one of the best books I studied in the early stages of my monastic kick. I was going to become a simple little monk. I was going to study these things and become a good little Buddhist and a contemplative-type person. Such a thread still holds throughout my life. In spite of complications in my life and organizational problems, I still feel that I am basically a simple, romantic Buddhist who has immense feeling toward the teachers and the teaching.

What has been said is a drop of golden liquid. Each time you read such a book it confirms again and again that there is something about it which makes everything very simple and direct. That makes me immensely happy. I sleep well, too. There is a hard-edged quality of cutting down preconceptions and other ego battles that might be involved in presenting the teaching. But at the same time there is always a soft spot of devotion and simplicity in mahayana Buddhism which you can never forget. That is very important. I am not particularly trying to be dramatic. If it comes through that way, it’s too bad. But I really do feel extraordinarily positive about Jamgön Kongtrül and his approach to this teaching.

1
.
Hinayana, mahayana
, and
vayrayana
refer to the three stages of an individual’s practice according to Tibetan Buddhism, not to the different schools of Buddhist practice. See Glossary.

POINT  ONE

The Preliminaries, Which Are a Basis for Dharma Practice

1

First, train in the preliminaries
.

In practicing the slogans and in your daily life, you should maintain an awareness of [1] the preciousness of human life and the particular good fortune of life in an environment in which you can hear the teachings of buddhadharma; [2] the reality of death, that it comes suddenly and without warning; [3] the entrapment of karma—that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, only further entraps you in the chain of cause and effect; and [4] the intensity and inevitability of suffering for yourself and for all sentient beings. This is called “taking an attitude of the four reminders.”