3. Lojong is to Like Suffering
Change Problems into Something You Need
Video 3: The Selfish Mind Makes Everything into an Enemy
(duration: 16 minutes)
(You can read the transcript of the video below. Alternatively, you can read the same transcript alongside the video by clicking here to download it or view it in a separate window.)
Even though the whole lamrim is lojong, the particular lojong found in the lamrim is so important. If you don’t know it and if you don’t practice it, what happens is:
NANG DZE THAM CHÄ DRA RU SHAR
Everything that appears around you becomes an enemy.
This means that anything that appears to you—whatever you see, whatever you hear, whatever you smell, whatever you taste—turns into an enemy, something that you don’t like. Because you don’t like anything that happens around you, everything becomes an enemy, your enemy. Nangdze thamche dra ru shar in Tibetan means “Everything that appears around you becomes your enemy.”
When your self-cherishing thought is too strong, when you have a very strong selfish mind, even if small birds outside make a chee-chee-chee noise, you get angry. You get angry that they don’t let you be quiet and think, “I want to get rid of these birds.” Then, you chase them away or something. Or even if a dog barks, you get angry at it, thinking, “It doesn’t let me be quiet.” If somebody brings you bread or something else that is cold instead of hot, you get angry at the cook. Or if there’s one flea in your bed while you are sleeping, waaaah! You get angry and move from that hotel to another hotel because one flea bit you. Then you say that the hotel is so bad. You do things like that.
When the mind is so selfish, so strong, everything turns negative. Everything, whatever happens, makes you get angry and complain. Then, it is very difficult for things to fit your desire, what you like. It is so hard to satisfy your mind, so difficult to satisfy your mind. Wooooo!
NANG DZE THAM CHÄ DRA RU SHAR
Everything that appears around you becomes an enemy.
Everything that happens, you get angry. It doesn’t fit your desire, your mind. Everything is something that you don’t like. Then, in a hotel or in a house, you don’t like or want even the decorations. You want to change them immediately. You want them this other way. Everything becomes a very big problem. Your mind becomes so difficult to satisfy.
Therefore, what I’m saying is to do the special thought transformation of making or transforming problems, things you think are harmful, useful to achieve enlightenment. You transform the problem that originally was an obstacle to enlightenment into something useful for your enlightenment for sentient beings. You use the obstacle to cause happiness to all sentient beings and to free them from the suffering of samsara. You use your problems like that. It is like transforming poisonous food, which causes death, into nectar, which makes your body and mind healthy and causes you a long life. By changing your mind, you transform the problem into something that you like. From an unwanted problem, you transform it into what you want and what you need. It becomes something you need. Before you didn’t need it, but now you need it! You make it something you need for your enlightenment.
Therefore, lojong, thought transformation, is not to stop suffering. It is not to stop pain or a sickness, such as cancer or whatever, or a problem. You don’t practice real lojong to stop the problem. If the problem is stopped, such as cancer, a sickness, or pain, you have no opportunity to do lojong. Because the pain is stopped, you don’t have an opportunity to practice lojong. Therefore, to use it for lojong you need the pain or the person’s anger or the person’s abuse or whatever problem it is. You need the problem to utilize it to achieve enlightenment, to cause happiness to numberless sentient beings. But if the problem is stopped, you have no opportunity to do lojong. Okay? So the purpose of lojong is not that. Many people might think it’s to stop the sickness or whatever it is, but it’s not that. That’s not the real reason. Instead, while you have sickness, while you have the problem, you can do lojong.
It is mentioned in the teachings on thought transformation that lojong has to be done by the mind. You change the mind that dislikes the suffering and instead likes the suffering. With that mind you do lojong. You change the mind that dislikes the suffering. Generally, we have dislike for suffering and like happiness. All sentient beings, even insects, are the same. But here, in lojong, you change the mind that dislikes suffering and make your mind like the suffering. You change your mind from disliking the suffering into liking the suffering.
You do that and then 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.
Then, you abandon the thought that dislikes the discomfort, the suffering, or the problem and establish the thought that likes the suffering, by thinking of the benefits of the suffering. You train your mind beginning with a small discomfort, a small suffering. You try to practice like this with the small ones, and then gradually you can do it even with the great pains and great obstacles. You can utilize them or transform them into pleasure. As your mind gets trained and develops, you can use even great problems to achieve peerless happiness, enlightenment, for sentient beings. You can utilize obstacles to practicing Dharma to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. You can do that.
So first you train with small sufferings and discomforts. Then, as you get more and more trained, later you can transform even big problems into pleasure. In this way, you energize yourself and stop the thought of dislike. Normally even insects have dislike for suffering and like happiness. But in this particular lojong you change the dislike for suffering into the dislike for comfort and the like for suffering. So rather than as before having no need for the problem, now you change your mind and the problem becomes something you need to achieve enlightenment.