The Seven-Point Mind Training A Tibetan Method For Cultivating Mind And Heart

by Wallace, B. Alan; Houshmand, Zara

• ISBN13: 9781559393935
• ISBN10: 1559393939
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-05-16
• Publisher: Snow Lion

Summary

A guide to the Tibetan Buddhist practice of lojong meditation—or mind training—as a way to pause, reflect, and discover the true meaning and value of life
 
In this society, with its hurly-burly pace demanding of our time, it is ever so easy to let life slip by. Looking back after ten, twenty, thirty, years—we wonder what we have really accomplished. The process of simply existing is not necessarily meaningful. And yet there is an unlimited potential for meaning and value in this human existence.
 
The Seven-Point Mind Training is one eminently practical way of tapping into that meaning. At the heart of the Seven-Point Mind Training lies the transformation of the circumstances that life brings us, however hard as the raw material from which we create our own spiritual path. The central theme of the Seven-Point Mind Training is to make the liberating passage from the constricting solitude of self-centeredness to the warm kinship with others which occurs with the cultivation of cherishing others. This Mind Training is especially well-suited for an active life. It helps us to reexamine our relationships—to family, friends, enemies, and strangers—and gradually transform our responses to whatever life throws our way

Author Biography

B. Alan Wallace has taught Buddhist meditation and philosophy worldwide since including the Dalai Lama. Wallace is the founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies and has edited, translated, authored, and contributed to more than forty books on Tibetan Buddhism, medicine, language, and culture, and the interface between science and religion, including Buddhism with an Attitude and Minding Closely.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
The First Point: The Preliminaries, Which Are Fundamental Dharma	p. 9
First of all, train in the preliminaries	p. 19
The Second Point: The Main Practice: Training in the Bodhichittas	p. 19
The Cultivation of Ultimate Bodhichitta	p. 19
Having attained stability, let the mystery be revealed	p. 19
Consider the world as dreamlike	p. 23
Investigate the nature of unborn awareness	p. 26
Even the antidote itself is liberated in its own place	p. 29
Establish the nature of the path in the sphere of the foundation of all	p. 32
Between meditation sessions act as an illusory being	p. 37
The Cultivation of Relative Bodhichitta	p. 41
Alternately practice sending and taking	p. 41
Apply those two to the breath	p. 52
Three objects, three poisons, three roots of virtue	p. 53
In all activities train with words	p. 54
The Third Point: Using Unfavorable Circumstances as Aids to Awakening	p. 55
When the environment and its inhabitants are enslaved by evil, transform unfavorable circumstances into the path of awakening	p. 55
Blame everything on one thing	p. 59
Meditate on great kindness toward everyone	p. 67
Meditation on the deceptive appearances of the Four Bodies is unsurpassed in guarding emptiness	p. 72
The supreme method entails four practices	p. 74
Whatever you encounter, immediately apply it to meditation	p. 78
The Fourth Point: A Synthesis of Practice for One Life	p. 81
To synthesize the essence of this practical guidance, apply yourself to the five powers	p. 81
The Mahayana teaching on transferring consciousness is just these precious five powers	p. 84
The Fifth Point: The Measure of Having Trained the Mind	p. 89
All Dharma is included in one purpose	p. 89
Maintain the chief of the two witnesses	p. 91
Rely continually on mental happiness alone	p. 92
The Sixth Point: The Pledges of Mind Training	p. 95
Always practice the three principles	p. 96
Transform your desires, but remain as you are	p. 98
Speak not of degenerate qualities	p. 99
Think nothing about the other side	p. 100
Abandon all hope for results	p. 106
Abandon poisonous food	p. 108
Do not devote yourself kindly to the central object	p. 109
Do not laugh at malicious jokes	p. 109
Do not wait at the narrow passageway	p. 110
Do not load the burden of a dzo on an ox	p. 111
Do not direct yourself to the summit of the ascent	p. 111
Do not be devious	p. 112
Do not let the gods descend to the devil	p. 112
Do not seek another's misery as a way to your own happiness	p. 114
The Seventh Point: The Practices of Mind Training	p. 117
Practice all yogas by means of one	p. 118
Counteract all withdrawal by means of one	p. 121
There are two actions on two occasions, at the beginning and end	p. 122
Whichever of the opposites occurs, be patient	p. 125
Guard the two at the cost of your life	p. 126
Practice the three austerities	p. 126
Acquire the three principal causes	p. 128
Cultivate the absence of three degenerations	p. 131
Be endowed with the three inseparables	p. 133
Always meditate on those who make you boil	p. 134
Do not rely on other conditions	p. 135
Now practice what is most important	p. 135
Do not be contrary	p. 137
Do not be erratic	p. 139
Practice decisively	p. 140
Free yourself by means of investigation and analysis	p. 140
Do not be boastful	p. 141
Do not bind yourself with hatred	p. 141
Do not be fickle	p. 142
Do not desire gratitude	p. 142
Glossary	p. 149
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