Fri, 24 Jul 2009
More Online Notes
I've put some more of my notes online. First, here are my notes from a talk Khenchen Konchog Gyaltsen gave at the Spring Retreat in Frederick on his composition, Permissions and Prohibitions. Then, there are my notes so far from Lama Phurbu Tashi's teaching on The Seven Points of Mind Training. Here's an excerpt on what Lama considers the key point of Mind Training:
Our mind is untrained. We have no idea where our negative emotions are coming from or how to overcome them. Lojong is a profound practice to change our unenlightened mind into an enlightened mind. The source of suffering is ego clinging, which is a superimposition by our mind on reality. We take the five aggregates as me and our posessions as mine. This is a source of problems, so we have to eradicate this thinking. Once we do, we become who we really are. Now we act as if we were drunk or crazy, but then we will become normal. Even compassionate talk does not make us a compassionate person. You need to understand this for lojong practice to make sense. If I burn my hand on the teacup I can blame all the circumstances which caused it to happen, which includes everyone and everything in the world. Or I can turn away from that thinking and place the blame on my ego. All suffering arises from my ignorance. When you place the blame on ego, it is weakened. So that is why we should drive all blames into oneself.
