Lojong Practice Journal: Four practices are the best of methods
The 59 slogans through a social justice lens
I’ve been putting off writing a commentary on “Four practices are the best of methods,” as I reached a point of maximum saturation for lists. You may have noticed that there are a lot of lists in Buddhism, and trying to keep track of them all can eventually feel overwhelming. I have started to think, however, that this is kind of the point.
These lists are presented as the ‘best’ or the ‘heart’ or the ‘essential’ instructions. This is true, and also not true. What is best for one person, may fall flat for another. The reason for all the lists is because the path is personal. Each individual will wake up in their own way, and since ‘all Dharma agrees at one point’, every list is equally valuable and irrelevant, depending on who you are and what speaks to you and your path of awakening. The lists are guides, and through bombarding us with so many, it’s likely that eventually, one is going to speak to us and stick.
This also helps keep us humble, as it’s pretty much impossible to remember every single list and get trapped in being a ‘knower’. The point is not to have excellent memorization, but to apply the teachings and embody them in a way that helps us to continually wake up. We can stop worrying about tracking the lists, and focus on testing and integrating the teachings into our lives.
And so, without further ado, I shall unpack ‘The four practices that are the best of methods’—according to this particular set of mind-training tools, anyway. ;)
1. Accumulate merit
A dictionary definition describes merit as ‘…a quality of worthiness, being deserving of praise or recognition’. But within Buddhism, merit does not have the same individualistic value as it does in most capitalist, patriarchal, and colonialist influenced societies.
Merit is an essential part of Buddhist ethics, and to ‘accumulate’ it is not about hoarding praise, but about conducting oneself in a way that contributes to our collective awakening. We accumulate merit when we take care of one another, or we meet an edge and stretch it, or let go of a neurotic habit. Merit is found in right action, right livelihood, right speech, and so on. It is anything that contributes to reducing harm, or cultivating joy, and contributing to happiness, contentment and ease.
2. Lay down evil deeds
At first, laying down evil deeds may seem obvious and easy to adhere to, given societal ideas of ‘evil’. But evil is not only cruel or intentionally harmful behaviour. I think of Hannah Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’, which points out that evil has much more to do with complacency, apathy and willful ignorance, than it does with outright intention to cause harm.
I think about this a lot, and how in a capitalist society, where profit comes before humanity and the environment, we are all complicit in the harm that causes.
To lay down an evil deed could be the choice not to consume particular products — items we know to be produced through systems of enslavement, oppression, and economic blackmail. To lay down evil deeds could be to challenge the complacency that thrives off of phrases like, “I’m only one person, what can I do?” To lay down evil deeds could be to have that conversation with a friend or family member which you’ve been avoiding out of discomfort, in order to address their use of sexist, ableist, racist etc. language.
3. Offer to the döns
In the Tibetan calendar, the days preceding the New Year are known as dön season. A dön is an obscuration or obstacle to practice and the belief is that we are more susceptible to such things just before the year changes. Personally, ‘dön season’ seems as silly to me as blaming mercury being in retrograde for miscommunications–as if miscommunications and practice obstructions aren’t happening all the time.
This instruction is not specific to a season, and how we view what a dön is can turn this into a very powerful practice.
Given that a dön is described as an obstacle, it may seem odd to be told to make offerings to one. Why would I want to offer anything to my neurosis or frustration or depression? Well, this isn’t so very different from the practice of meditation, which is about learning to make friends with ourselves. When we make offerings to the things that impede us, we are seeing how they are equally a part of our path as those things which galvanize and inspire us.
I have learned a great deal from anxiety, for example, and regularly thank anxiety for teaching me so much about what it is to be human. This gratitude practice helps me to not see anxiety as a problem, but something that helps me grow and cultivate greater compassion for myself and others.
4. Offer to the Dharmapalas
‘Dharmapala’ translates into ‘Protector of the teachings’. They are depicted in Tibetan Thangkas as wrathful beings, often holding hooked knives and wearing necklaces of heads. But they are not mythical or otherworldly deities so much as they are reminders to practice wholeheartedly, genuinely, and authentically.
For me, offering to the Dharmapalas is a practice of acknowledging that while the path is personal, there is still a specific ground we are all walking on. We don’t get to pick and choose based on what makes us comfortable. Feelings of discomfort are excellent indicators that we are actually doing the work.
When I offer to the Dharmapalas, I am acknowledging that the practices are not theoretical, but genuine tools to be respected and used in my life. Offering to the Dharmapalas is about accountability and honouring the wisdom of the teachings — especially at times when I might be inclined to be lazy in my practice.
Originally published on Medium.
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I've reopened my Lojong practice for lent. I started four years ago during the pandemic and made my own slogan cards. The idea was that I then even would add comments and explanations but that never happened. This year I decided to go back to Lojong. To look at a new slogan every day and collect various interpretations in order to understand them. That is how I stumbled upon your blog. So thank you for your thoughts and explanations. I appreciate them.
When I read about "offering to the döns", I came to think of Milarepa's demons and a quote from Pema Chödrön that has been important to me for many years: Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. We shouldn't ignore or suppress our hangups. We should ask them what they have to teach us.