Chapter 3. Lojong is to Like Suffering
The Mindfulness Practices
Dedicate an entire day to one mindfulness practice. As you go about your normal activities, try to bring that mindfulness practice to mind as often as possible by reflecting on the words of Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
To help you remember to do the mindfulness practices, print the Mindfulness Cards, cut them into the form of cards, and put them in places where you will see them easily and often throughout the day.
To qualify for the Certificate of Achievement, keep track of the mindfulness practices you do using the Personal Log. Then, when you finish the entire module, tick them off in the Checklist for the Certificate of Achievement.
Mindfulness Practice 4: I Won’t Let Things Bother Me
From the morning you motivate that when a problem comes, whenever you face a problem, you try to build up your courage, thinking, “I will never let myself be easily disturbed or bothered.” Basically if you are selfish, that’s what happens. As I mentioned before, everything turns into something negative, so it becomes easy for you to be disturbed by what you see, what you hear, and what you smell. In the end, everything disturbs you. So instead from the morning you build up your courage, thinking, “I won’t let myself be so easily disturbed. I won’t be like this.” You encourage yourself to look at the problem as pleasure and not let it bother you. You don’t allow things to bother you so easily. You make yourself strong, not like that. (Lama Zopa Rinpoche)
In the morning set your motivation thinking, “I will not let myself be easily disturbed or bothered,” and then practice mindfulness throughout the day looking at problems as pleasure and not letting them easily bother you.
(To qualify for the Certificate of Achievement do this mindfulness practice as much as possible for two full days.)
Mindfulness Practice 5: All My Problems Come from My Negative Karma
When you recognize that your sickness or your relationship problems, all the problems that go on and on, come from your past negative karma, from not controlling your attachment, you become careful to not create negative karma. Because of the problems, you abandon creating negative karma, such as sexual misconduct and so forth, you get energy to control your attachment, and then your mind is happy to collect virtue.
In short, by seeing the problems you have, you are happy to abandon their causes. Then to have happiness, you need to create virtue, so you are happy to collect virtue. Also seeing the problems you have helps you develop renunciation to samsara. (Lama Zopa Rinpoche)
Practice mindfulness throughout the day remembering that any unpleasant experiences that happen come from negative karma you created in the past and so abandon negative karma and collect virtue.