Chakung Rinpoche
When I was young, I began to practice Lojong (mind training) and I noticed a huge difference between people who have practiced Lojong and those who haven’t practiced it, especially when they have to meet life challenges.
People exercise and take healthy diets so they have stronger bodies with stronger immunity to diseases. In the same way, our minds need to be stronger, we need to do mind exercises to develop greater strength in our minds. Lojong is exercise of the mind which develops greater strength and resilence, enabling us to face difficulties with dignity. If strength of mind is not developed, we fall apart when we meet challenges.
Lojong emphasizes embracing all circumstances, both happiness and suffering, as a spiritual path. For example, if we really look into our mind with wisdom, we will have a new insight into the very nature of happiness and suffering — both happiness and suffering have positive and negative aspects. Mind is the most powerful factor. All our experiences are dependent on our mind. Mind is the root of all of them. We can change our perspective of life circumstances whether happiness and suffering.
Most people fail to recognise and appreciate the happiness already present in their lives. If you think about your own life, there are many moments of happiness. For example, you are healthy and don’t have any kind of major problems. You are not disabled and your basic needs such as shelter and food are met. These should be regarded as blessings, something we can appreciate. But most people are kind of lost in the past and future. They are hoping for something more enticing and glorious in the future, or they get really stuck in the past. Most people fail to open their hearts and recognize the blessings that are always unfolding in our everyday life.
Instead of taking their present happiness as a spiritual path, some people fall prey to their ego or pride, thinking that they are somehow better than other people. If we are able to recognize and appreciate happiness, our experience of happiness actually increases. In the same way, imagine we have some small troubles in our life, but if we focus or fixate on our troubles, our experience of sufferings increases. Whatever we give our attention to magnifies our experience of it, whether it is a sense of happiness or suffering.
Suffering and sorrow are an unavoidable part of human life. They come through environmental factors like natural disasters or through socio-political challenges. Maybe we have our own emotional and personal challenges. In any case, for external challenges like natural disasters or socio-political changes, we have little to no power to change the situation according to our preferences. We are at the mercy of these powerful external forces from nature or society. If we are able to turn our attention inward instead of finding a remedy externally, if we are able to change our perspective, I think we can find a sense of ease regardless of what happened in life.
Most people don’t have this kind of mental training. Maybe someone just said something and your ego perceived that as offensive or an insult and you can become totally fixated on that comment, you can get into a rage and be in a conflict, your mind is totally focused on this unpleasant interaction you had with someone.
Mind training can create the new habit that looks inside our own mind whenever we are challenged, whether with external circumstances or internal emotions, rather than only looking for the cause and remedy externally. When we go through any situation, we should pause and look into our mind. Then we are able to change our perspective of the situation and in that way, we will find much more peace in our lives. This is a new habit we have to develop. Many people are lacking this habit.
Instead of reacting out of our old habits, we should have this new habit of looking inside at our mind and see if we can change our perspective or maybe you can come up with a better response to the same situation. Our old habit is that when there is a little problem in our life, our mind tends to pay attention to it and blow things out of proportion. We dive into a sea of inner poisons like greed, anger and ignorance. We become fragile, sensitive and touchy rather than resilient and broad-minded.
This is why so many people in modern days have mental issues like anxiety. If we realize that fundamentally both happiness and suffering are states of mind, we can experience inner freedom by changing our attitudes towards them. We can have a greater sense of happiness in our life.
Pay attention to small instances of happiness in your lives. If you recognize and appreciate them, your sense of happiness will grow and increase. Humans do almost the opposite, we tend to get lost in and focus on the small problems, which then overwhelms us and our minds become so contracted that we are barely able to handle any situation. That results in psychological problems; anxiety; an irritable, oversensitive and fragile kind of mind. Mind is basically not strong; mind doesn’t have any balance or patience and so forth.
Suffering is always regarded as evil or bad, something inauspicious that we should avoid at all cost. I think we should change that perception completely and not perceive suffering as bad or problematic. If we are able to change that perspective, that is the beginning of developing greater courage to embrace suffering and to find meaning in it.
If we perceive suffering as problematic, what actually happens is that our sense of suffering actually becomes greater, to the extent that we develop great aversion towards suffering. We need to change our whole attitude towards suffering. Suffering has both aspects, yes, it has a negative side, but it also has a positive side. We should realize that suffering can be used on the spiritual path. Through suffering, we can grow, evolve and mature. If we can see the spiritual benefits of suffering, we have more tolerance towards suffering. Because we have to face suffering anyway in our lives. Even if you dislike suffering, suffering doesn’t go away from your life. Suffering is a huge part of life, instead of trying to eradicate suffering completely, you should change your attitude towards it and see that there is a positive spiritual element to it, then I think you will find greater freedom in your life.
