Yesterday I started a fresh round of Lojong Practice. 59 slogans. This round will be a little more complicated logistically. My study is in conjunction with listening to Be Grateful to Everyone: An In-depth Guide to the Practice of Lojong audio book featuring talks from a 6 week course taught by Pema Chödrön, a Tibetan Buddhist nun.
Image by Will Simpson
My current plan is to listen to 10 mins a day and take notes like I was attending a lecture. These notes I’m going to transfer to my Zettelkasten. As a sample here are today’s (day 2) notes.
It is not that we have to learn new behaviors but more a unmasking to expose our natural innate wholeness.
A heart felt smile is the sharing of bodhicitta or the wish to attain enlightenment motivated by compassion.
Surprise! We don’t always pull off our intentions to be present.
Atisha (980 and 1050 CE.) the monk who spend Lojong teaching to Tibet in traveling he "heard the people of Tibet were very good-natured, earthy, flexible, and open; he decided they wouldn't be irritating enough to push his buttons. So he brought along with him a mean-tempered, ornery Bengali tea boy. He felt that was the only way he could stay awake. The Tibetans like to tell the story that, when he got to Tibet, he realized that he need not have brought his tea boy: the people there were not as pleasant as he had been told."
Look at the ornery situations I meet as my “Bengali tea boy”.
Hope you have an awesome day!
Credits — Pema Chödrön - Be Grateful to Everyone: An In-depth Guide to the Practice of Lojong
This journal is meant as a reminder to encourage my future self. Where I work on my mental fitness and ‘adulting’. A reminder to him to operate in the world with love and compassion and some tips put together in a moment of clarity to help him when he is less clear and caught up in stuff the he can’t control. Continue the conversation anytime: will@kestrelcreek.com.