Lojong (Mind Training)

Slogan:

Work on the Strongest of Your Emotional Defilements First

We should scrutinize ourselves and examine which of our defiled emotions is the most powerful. If desire is strongest, we should try to concentrate upon its antidote, which is ugliness. If anger is to the fore, we should try to generate the remedy of patience. If by nature we are inclined to ignorance and

dullness, we should exert ourselves in the cultivation of wisdom. If we are jealous, we should work to develop equanimity. In this endeavor to subdue these defilements, we should concentrate all our Dharma practice. For if we are able to free ourselves of our grosser defilements, the lesser ones will also naturally subside.—Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Gurdjeff used to say to his disciples - the first thing, the very first thing: "Find out what your greatest characteristic is, your greatest undoing, your central characteristic of unconsciousness." Each one's is different. Somebody is sex-obsessed... somebody is obsessed with anger, and somebody else is obsessed with greed. You have to watch which is your basic obsession.

So first find the main characteristic upon which your whole ego rests. And then be constantly aware of it, because it can only exist if you are unaware. It is burnt in the fire of awareness automatically.

And remember, remember always, that you are not to cultivate the opposite of it... People move from one thing to the opposite. That is not the way of transformation. It is the same pendulum, moving from left to right, from right to left. And that's how your life has been moving for centuries, it is the same pendulum.

The pendulum has to be stopped in the middle. And that's the miracle of awareness. Just be aware that "This is my chief pitfall, this is the place where I stumble again and again, this is the root of my unconsciousness." Don't try to cultivate the opposite of it, but pour your whole awareness into it. Create a great bonfire of awareness, and it will be burned. And then the pendulum stops in the middle.

And with the stopping of the pendulum, time stops. You suddenly enter into the world of timelessness, deathlessness, eternity.—Osho

All beings within the cycle of rebirth suffer to a greater or lesser degree from emotional afflictions, but different individuals have different specific afflictions that predominate. Our main defilement may be desire, aggression, arrogance, jealousy, or ignorance. We should look within and judge which one is the most serious and then apply the necessary opponent forces to purify it first.

If attachment or desire is most intense, we should meditate specifically on impermanence and the impurity of the body. If hatred and aggression dominate, we should cultivate love. If it is ignorance or blank indifference, we must meditate on emptiness and cultivate intelligent awareness. For pride and arrogance, We meditate on impermanence, the suffering of our own life, cyclic existence, and especially the misery of the three lower unfortunate realms. If jealousy predominates, we should practice rejoicing in the virtues of others. Our afflictions are countless, and since they are active in no other place than within us, their destruction can only take place internally.—Geshe Rabten AND Geshe Dhargyey

Examine your personality to determine which disturbing emotions are strongest. Concentrate all dharna practice on them in the beginning, and subdue and clear them away.—Jamgon Kongtrul

You should work with whatever is your greatest obstacle first - whether it is aggression, passion, pride, arrogance, jealousy, or what have you. You should not just say "I will sit more first, and I will deal with that later." Working with the greatest defilements means working with the highlights of your experience or your problems. You do not just want to work with chicken shit, you want to work with the chicken itself.—Chogyam Trungpa

The time is now, not later. This slogan is suggesting that you start where you feel most stuck.

Because the larger obstacles like rage or jealousy or terror are so dramatic, their vividness itself may be a reminder to work with the practice of tonglen.* We may

so take for granted the multitude of daily irritations that we don't even think of them as something to work with. To some degree they are the hardest obstacles to work with because they don't reveal themselves. The only way you know that these are arising is that you feel righteous indignation. Let righteous indignation be your guide that someone is holding on to themselves, and that someone is probably you.—Pema Chodron