Hello, Soul Ninja friends! I know it has been a chaotic and eventful few months. While I always take the summers off from blogging and writing, I am especially grateful for the time over the last few months to regroup and recharge. That being said, I am truly THRILLED to begin yet another Soul Ninja project, and I hope you’ll come along. We’re going to be Living the Lojong!
Starting next week, I am going to begin working through the 59 Lojong slogans. Lojong simply means mind training, and these 59 slogans are short, pithy sayings that are meant to help us become more aware and ultimately more compassionate. I think these are perfect for the times in which we find ourselves, when our brains are too frazzled to hold anything too complicated, but we sure do need to keep cultivating compassion and kindness all around.
The Tibetan teacher Atisha originally wrote these slogans in the 11th century as a way to teach students how to cultivate bodhicitta, an awakened heart. These teachings were revered and passed down through his disciples, but it wasn’t until Chekawa Yeshe Dorje found them, quite by accident, in the 12th century that they became widespread. He summarized Atisha’s teachings in his book The Seven Points of Mind Training, which remains a central text in Tibetan Buddhism. Since then, these 59 little slogans have traveled across the globe and helped thousands of people practice developing a wholehearted approach to life. I believe they’ve stood the test of time because they are direct and practical.
Traditionally, the lojong slogans are written on cards, and students shuffle the deck and choose a card daily. They try to be mindful of the slogan as they go about their day, and often discover that an opportunity arises for them to practice exactly what the card espouses. For our project, Living the Lojong, I’m going to work through them in order from 1 to 59. But since the slogans are meant to be received openly and with flexibility, I’m not going to set a schedule of how many slogans to introduce a week, or how long I’ll blog on any given slogan. I will post reflections every Tuesday and Thursday, and sometimes they will be a new slogan and other times we might just take a little longer with the one we’ve already got. The goal isn’t to get through them, but to sit with them…and hopefully, to live them!
Our first Living the Lojong post will be Tuesday, September 1. If you’d like to sign up to have these posts come to your inbox, go to the Soul Ninja homepage and look for the Newsletter sign up box on the right hand side. Fill it out and click the box for “Posts.” And if you’d like to order lojong cards to keep displayed as you work through them, I recommend these.
As always, I will provide links to the books and teachers I cite in each post, but here are the four books I plan to use regularly:
The Great Path of Awakening: The Classic Guide to Lojong, A Tibetan Buddhist Practice for Cultivating the Heart of Compassion by Jamgon Kongtrul, translated by Ken McLeod
Training the Mind and Cultivating Loving-Kindness by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
The Compassion Book: Teachings for Awakening the Heart by Pema Chodron
Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong by Norman Fischer
I’m happy to be back, and I look forward to starting this new journey with you on Tuesday!
