Seven Points of Mind Training

The Seven Points of Mind Training is one of the most popular and widely practiced trainings in all traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. This practice comes from the Indian tradition of Kadampa monks. In our Kagyu lineage it was transmitted through Gampopa, who was a great scholar and practitioner Kadampa monk before becoming the principal disciple of Milarepa, he then went on to found the Kagyu School in Tibet. Milarepa was a student of Marpa and is revered as one of the founding forefathers of our tradition. It is customary to refer to our lineage affiliations in Tibetan Buddhism, so that is a brief homage to the Kagyu lineage of the Lojong (mind training) teachings.

The Seven Points of Mind Training originated in Tibet through the Kadampa luminary Geshe Chekawa Yeshe Dorje. The Lojong practice was transmitted prior to him, but Geshe Chekawa was the first one to actually write them down point by point. The root text that I am using here is by Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye.4 It is based on the notes taken by Geshe Chekawa. I will use the original Tibetan text and go through it point by point. There is a good English translation though, in a book called Passage from Solitude by Alan Wallace and published by Snow Lion. There is also the text by Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, an English translation of which has been around for a long time. It is published by Shambhala and called The Great Path of Awakening. Jamgon Kongtrul's version of course should be consulted as the primary source material.

The Seven Points are:

1) The Practice of the Preliminaries
2) The Main Body of the Practice: The Cultivation of Bodhichitta
3) Transforming Adverse Circumstances and Situations into the Path of Awakening
4) Maintaining the Practice for the Duration of our Lives
5) How to Measure the Success of Mind Training
6) The Precepts of Mind Training
7) Guidelines for Mind Training

We have to learn to build a strong foundation whenever we do any kind of practice. If we do not have a strong foundation we will not be able to sustain ourselves with the requisite determination and resolve to see things through when they become a bit difficult or when other disruptive circumstances arise in our lives. The myriad distractions will make us lose our perspective about life and our spiritual practices. Sometimes we are unable to sustain our spiritual practice because we get overcome by laziness and complacency and just going through the routine. We crawl out of bed - when we manage to get up at all - get something to eat and go through the motions of our day, without really paying any attention to what we are doing or how well we are doing it. This is often why the things that matter most in our lives begin to suffer, because we are not putting any energy whatsoever into making them work.

This is why the preliminaries are so important; they remind us of what is important in life and ensure us from wasting time. Otherwise, as it is said in the teachings, time passes and it passes very quickly. We cannot arrest time; time does not stand still. Unless we contemplate the preliminary practices we will just go on squandering our opportunities and miss the various possibilities that we might have been able to derive maximum benefit from. This is why the teachings constantly advocate that we contemplate the preliminaries first.

However, before we can even think about the preliminary practices, we have to develop "humility" or what is called mögu in Tibetan. Mögu basically refers to the fact that if we wish to train ourselves on the spiritual path we must first learn to become a proper vessel. This is why the Kagyu Lineage Prayer5 begins a verse with the line, "Humility is the head of meditation" (mö gu gom gyi go wor sung pa zhin). In order to become fit and worthy vessels for the precious teachings - traditionally referred to as "the precious nectar of the Dharma" - we have to develop humility. If we do not have humility we are like a vessel that is already full: whatever you try to put into it will be lost because there is no room for anything new.

Humility is also characterized by other qualities, such as inquisitiveness, the desire to learn and an openness of mind. All of those attributes have to be there as well. We cannot embark on the spiritual path if we are thinking; "I know what it is all about." We have to be open to what the instructions teach us, to what the great spiritual adepts of the Buddhist tradition have prescribed. Devotional humility in no way infers grovelling at the feet of others and we should not associate it with these distorted forms of behaviour or attitudes.

There is really so much that we have to learn. Spiritually speaking, we are very immature and therefore need a lot of guidance and instructions. These are absolutely necessary. That is why humility is then compared to the head in the teachings. Devotional humility is the "head of meditation." While the head is much smaller than the trunk of the body, everything that is important to our perception and activities is related to the head. For example, the sense organs, such as the eyes, ears, tactile sensation and so forth can affect us greatly, not to mention brain damage and things of that kind. Devotional humility has to be valued in the same way as we value our own head, because it is what allows us to derive benefit from other spiritual faculties. It has to be the very foundation of our practice.

First, train in the preliminaries.
This should be followed by the practice of the preliminaries. The Kagyu tradition distinguishes between two different kinds of preliminaries: the "common preliminaries" and the "uncommon preliminaries." The common preliminaries consist of meditation on the precious human body, impermanence, the dissatisfactory nature of the samsaric conditions and karmic cause and effect. When we practice The Seven Points of Mind Training we start with this series of four contemplations.

Precious human body:
We begin by contemplating how fortunate we are. We have to remind ourselves of this because our natural tendency is to emphasize how miserable our life is and to wish that it were different. Instead we should emphasize the preciousness of our body and how fortunate it is to have fully functioning faculties.

The simple fact of the matter is that we really take it for granted. This is one of the biggest problems that we have in life. With the things that are important to us, when we have them we do not pay any attention to them whatsoever. We only realize how precious they are when they are gone, but then it's too late - you can't get back what you have lost. Before we have to confront our sense of regret and guilt for having failed to do this or that or having failed to think about the things that were important. We do that now. Instead of thinking, "Oh, I put on another two kilos, what a terrible thing!" Or getting up in the morning and looking in the mirror to see three more lines around our eyes and thinking, "Gee, maybe I should go back to bed." It is true, we worry so much about these things but we do not realize how fortunate we are to have this human body, a body that is functioning well. Not only do we fail to think about our body in this fashion, we also fail to think of our body as something we can utilize for a greater purpose. As it is said in the teachings, we have to think of using the human body as a vehicle to bring meaning into our lives, to make our life richer and fuller. The body has to be transformed into a spiritual vehicle in that way - a vehicle that will take us from the state of dissatisfaction, misery and a multitude of agonies and intense feelings of despair to a state of lasting happiness filled with purpose, meaning and a real sense of fundamental joy that is not contingent on the changing circumstances in our lives. No matter how young or old we are, we should think of our own body as something very precious and of utilizing that as a spiritual vehicle that will secure a real sense of meaning and wealth in our life.

This means that this precious human body is truly very precious and very hard to obtain. According to Buddhism, it is very difficult to be born as a human being, although we may doubt it sometimes. It is said in the teachings that if you look at the number of insects in the world and compare them to the number of human beings, you will see that there are far fewer human beings than there are insects. If that logic is not convincing, I don't know what will be! It is true that it is more difficult to be born as a human being than as a bug, I am sure. We need to think like that. The human body is very rare and what is rarer still is to be born as a human being who has all the characteristics of being free of certain impediments on the one hand and in possession of various other forms of leisure on the other.6 This is called tal jor. Tal means "to be free of certain impediments" and jor means "to be in the possession of certain opportunities," for example, being born in an extremely impoverished country where food is scarce and famine is common or being born in a place where there is constant warfare or where people have very short lives. Things of this kind will not afford us the opportunity to pursue a spiritual path and so forth because one's life is filled with an immeasurable amount of suffering and everything is basically stacked against one. That is not a precious human body, you see. Thinking along these lines, one recognizes that the human body is indeed very precious.

Impermanence:
That should be followed by the next contemplation of the preliminaries, which is the contemplation on impermanence. This preciousness is not something that we can take for granted; it can be lost, which is why we need to contemplate impermanence. The body that we have is also impermanent; we are mortal, we are not like gods, we do not live forever. As soon as we are born we constantly approach our own demise. We cannot just wile away our time without thinking about it, being very cavalier, very casual and very complacent about how we go about things, constantly postponing and deferring things. Usually the things that we postpone are the things that are important and we end up getting caught up in all kinds of trivial pursuits, quite literally, instead.

We therefore have to think about that. We are constantly growing older and yet the things that are important to us - that really mean something to us, that we feel so much better for when we do them - are not being done, while we keep doing the things that make us feel worse with a great deal of energy. This is a reminder of how precious time is and that the clock is ticking. We use this contemplation in a positive way, instead of thinking that if nothing is going to last and life is short, we should eat, drink and be merry, you know, live for the day, why worry about anything because you never know what may happen. You might just walk out your front door, go into the street and get run over by a bus or something. So why worry. That is a very fatalistic kind of attitude, and from the Buddhist point of view, we should be thinking the opposite way, not along those lines.

Contemplating our mortality in that way is of utmost importance. We not only do this in relation to our own mortality; we need to realize that we are mortal because everything else is also subject to change. In the teachings, all kinds of things are mentioned, such as thinking of great mountains. We think that mountains are so solid, they look so immobile and immutable but those mountains are also always changing. Even geologists, I think, say that the Himalayan mountains are rising higher and higher, that there is a slight increase in the size of Mt. Everest all the time, so it becomes harder and longer to reach the top. Well, that is very informative, I think. It is mentioned in this teaching that we have to think that mountains and other physical things are also subject to change; they do not remain the same. If they are subject to change, how much more so our own body, which is even more vulnerable to disease, accidents and all kinds of harm. Our body is completely vulnerable and exposed to the elements, to external forces and to internal disease and breakdown of the organism.

The dissatisfactory nature of samsara:
This means that, again, we are easily distracted by sight, sound, smell and other senses, and we respond in a variety of fashions to these distractions. We respond with disgust or revulsion or we are attracted and become completely absorbed and entangled in our sensory indulgences. This then gives rise to all forms of conflicting emotions, such as jealousy, envy, hatred, bitterness and all manners of other things, so then there's never any real sense of joy and peace in samsara. As long as we are in samsara, even the seeming pleasures that we enjoy are not really pleasant in the long run because they are only and ever pleasurable for an instant.

According to Buddhism, even when we think we are having a good time it's not really a good time, because either the pleasure doesn't last or it is just a covering for an underlying painful experience, which becomes obvious when the pleasure wears off - just like a hangover. Many of our so-called "pleasures" are of this kind. If you are on drugs or drink alcohol or things like that, you have to drink more and more to get the same state of intoxication, or you have to do more and more drugs to get the same high. That is why what begins as a source of pleasure becomes a source of great pain. This is the truth. From the Buddhist point of view, we have to contemplate the samsaric state in that way. Of course, most of our experiences are already unpleasant anyway because our mind is completely unruly and always churned up by the upsurge of various conflicting emotions. We are always in an agitated state and this restless state is never pleasurable anyway. Even when we think we are having a pleasurable experience, that pleasurable experience is a disguised form of pain.7

Karmic cause and effect:
Here we have to think, "Why do we experience so much pain and our pleasures are so ephemeral and so transient?" It is because of karmic cause and effect. The kind of thoughts we have, the kind of emotions we experience, the kinds of feelings we have and the kinds of attitudes and beliefs, all impacts upon our mind. They impact on the kind of character and dispositions we develop and the kind of human beings we become. This is what determines how we are going to act and react to a variety of circumstances and situations. The cycle of karmic cause and effect is established in this way and it is relentless unless we embark on the spiritual path and try to learn to reverse this process.

We have to contemplate the four foundations or four preliminaries in that way. We do this, as I mentioned before, in order to wake ourselves up and to bring a sense of urgency to our practice, to use this as an antidote to lethargy and complacency and to teach ourselves to take stock of our lives. We should think, "Enough time has already been wasted so why waste more? The time has come to do something constructive and beneficial instead of just squandering my life in totally meaningless and insignificant activities." It is not worth it; this is so. Those are the reasons these four contemplations are done.

Normally, these four common preliminaries are followed by the four uncommon preliminaries of prostration, Vajrasattva recitation, mandala offering and Guru Yoga. We do not need to concern ourselves with them in this context.8 We simply need to contemplate the four common preliminaries one by one in succession. These contemplations have to go first, which is why they are called preliminaries. It says in the text that doing these preliminaries actually serves three functions. At the beginning, contemplating these four preliminaries encourages us to propel ourselves forward in our spiritual practice. In the middle, contemplating these preliminaries encourages us to sustain our practices with a sense of diligence and vigour. At the end, contemplating these preliminaries will act as aids. In Tibetan it says they become "friendly figures" that help us enjoy the fruits of spiritual practice. Therefore, the four preliminaries provide a variety of beneficial effects at the beginning, in the middle and at the end.

We have to do the preliminary practices in this way and if we do them we will stay on course and not get waylaid. Otherwise, whenever something goes wrong we will discontinue our practices or if something wonderful happens we will also discontinue it. You know, sometimes we give up on our spiritual practices and pursuits because some terrible things have happened, we have lost a dear friend, a close relative or spouse and become completely grief stricken, do not see any point in living and so forth. Or something that we think is wonderful happens, like falling in love or getting married or giving birth to a child and the practice is also discontinued. In the text it says that there will be less likelihood of these things becoming obstacles or presenting themselves as distractions if we really contemplate and invest our time in the preliminaries. They will bring about a real and lasting change in our outlook.