Lojong Practice Journal: First, train in the preliminaries
The 59 slogans through a social justice lens
The preliminaries are two-fold. On the one hand, they are whatever brings us to the path of dharma — circumstances that lead us to question habitual patterns and the suffering we all experience. My preliminaries, for example, would be heart-break, grief, and loneliness. These were things which led me to ask questions about the causes of happiness and what makes a meaningful life.
On the other hand—more specifically and in the tradition of lists that Buddhism loves—the preliminaries are the Four Reminders. These are the four things that act as a continual basis for our practice, regardless of who we are. We can turn to them for motivation and understanding, just as we can also turn to whatever life experiences put us on this path.
The four reminders are:
1. We have a precious human birth
2. Everything is impermanent
3. The law of karma (all actions have results)
4. Samsara (the cyclical experience of birth, life and death) is unsatisfactory
1. Precious human birth
This one is tricky for me to explain, but I shall endeavour to do so as best I can. Be aware, this is the understanding to which I have come based on a few factors. First of all, I absolutely buy the Buddhist theory of rebirth. It makes sense to me, given that energy is not created nor destroyed, that we have all already lived forever and will continue to do so.
Secondly, I recognise the basic goodness of all human beings, which is to say that all of us want to be happy and not to suffer and this motivates us in anything we say or do. I have spent much time contemplating basic goodness and have drawn this conclusion for multiple reasons, not least of which being that I know it to be true of myself and those in my social circle. There’s also the fact that, if people were inherently bad/evil, then we would not be surprised or shocked by the cruel and inhumane things we do to one another, animals and the planet. That would be like getting upset about fire for being hot or a rock for being hard.
But even if one doesn’t buy rebirth or think people are basically good, it is only human beings that have this level of sentience. We have an incredible capacity for introspection, reflection, growth, knowledge and understanding. We are self-aware and can cultivate that further. In short, we are incredibly lucky because we can see our confusion and do something about it — more so if we are also born into circumstances where these kinds of practices are encouraged.
2. Impermanence
I will die. You will die. Everyone we know will die. We don’t know when or how, but it is inevitable.
These statements put a fire under my butt to practice. Seriously practice. I have this human birth which is made even more precious by how fleeting it is. I may be coming back, but I won’t have a sense of ‘I’ in this current manifestation — plus I might not be so lucky to get a human birth next time around. Or I will, and I gotta say, the future of life on our planet looks pretty bleak. If I’m going to keep coming back to it I damn well want to make it a world worth being born into. And even if rebirth proves not to be the way things work, I’d still rather leave the world better than I found it in the time I have.
3. Karma
Before I talk about what karma is, I want to be really clear about what it isn’t. Karma is not a system of punishment and reward. It’s not a ‘bank’ of positivity versus negativity. It’s not even what goes around comes around.
Karma is energy. Karma is multiple actions and multiple results. When you drop a pebble into a pond it doesn’t just make one ripple, but many. And the pebble wasn’t created by one single event or mineral, but multitude.
Even better is to think of karma as a seed. What we sow now will be what grows later, but right now, in this very moment, we can always make a new choice about what to sow. If I choose to sow seeds of resentment, I will grow bitterness, anger, disappointment and so on. If I choose to sow seeds of love, I will grow compassion, an awakened heart and wisdom.
Another thing about the law of karma, which is my favourite thing, is that the future is unwritten. This moment, right now, is fresh. And so, in any given moment, I can choose something different. I can choose to sow different seeds, more skilful seeds, that will be of benefit.
4. Samsara
The best way to explain samsara is the ways we fluctuate and are swayed when it comes to the following pairs of opposites: Praise and blame, fame and disgrace, pleasure and pain, gain and loss.
We always want one and not the other. When we get the one we want, we are fearful of losing it, and when we get the one we don’t want, we feel like it’s unfair. We see the things we want through a lens of scarcity, as though there is only so much to go around and the only way we can get our share is if someone else gets less or none at all. We see the things we don’t want as mistakes, that shouldn’t happen to us because we are ‘good’ people or we ‘work really hard’ or we feel like we’ve gotten more than ‘our share’ of suffering compared to others.
So we’re born into this cycle and we live painful, contracted lives because of it and then we die. Ad nauseam.
And yet, I still struggle with it. It’s tough to convince myself that samsara sucks because it does feel good to get what I want and not get what I don’t want. But as a reminder, I need only reflect on how fleeting happiness is when it’s based on external circumstances, and the ‘hangover’ that comes from trying to get things to a fixed, static state when the world just doesn’t work that way.
Regardless of our practice, to return to what brought us to it in the first place is to remember the importance of what we are doing and the motivation behind that realisation. In this regard, whether it’s the Lojong slogans or any other text, teaching or words of wisdom, we should always train in the preliminaries.
Originally published on Medium.
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