Lojong — Mind Training
Lojong (mind training) is the Vajrayana system of 59 slogans for transforming adversity into the path, developing bodhicitta (enlightened mind), and using every experience as an opportunity for awakening.
Lojong (Tibetan: blo sbyong — mind training) is a system of aphoristic teachings compiled by Chekawa Yeshe Dorje (12th century) based on Atisha's Seven-Point Mind Training, which itself traces to Santideva's Bodhicharyavatara. The 59 slogans of Lojong cover all aspects of transforming the spiritual practitioner's relationship with difficult experiences: 'Begin with yourself'; 'When everything goes wrong, treat disaster as a way to wake up'; 'Always maintain only a joyful mind'; 'Drive all blames into one'; 'Abandoned hope and fear.' The core method is Tonglen. The Lojong slogans train the practitioner to transform every adversity — illness, conflict, loss, failure — into an opportunity for developing compassion and dissolving self-grasping. This is radical psychological wisdom: the goal is not the absence of difficulty but the transformation of one's relationship to difficulty.
The best instruction is to transform adversity into the path. The deepest wealth is contentment.
Chekawa Yeshe Dorje's Seven-Point Mind Training gathers the Lojong slogans, among them 'turn all mishaps into the path' — the instruction to treat adversity itself as the raw material of practice.
Seven-Point Mind Training
Written about in
- What Tantra says about habit and discipline
Lojong's fifty-nine slogans train the reverse move: 'when everything goes wrong, treat disaster as a way to wake up.' A discipline that only runs on good days is not yet a discipline, and lojong is the explicit method for the bad ones.