How to Create Happiness for Ourselves and Others - A Weekend Workshop in The Seven Point Mind Training with Jonathan Landaw

It is a fundamental insight of the Buddha that the quality of our life depends primarily on the quality of our mind. As stated in the collection of Buddha’s sayings known as the Dharmapada:
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts; it is made up of our thoughts. If we speak or act with an impure mind, suffering follows us, as the wheel of a cart follows the foot of the ox that draws it….
If we speak or act with a pure mind, happiness follows us, like a shadow that never leaves.
    
Therefore all of Buddha’s teachings can be thought of as mind training: how to lessen and eventually eliminate the various harmful states of mind responsible for suffering and dissatisfaction, and how to cultivate and bring to perfection the beneficial states of mind that lead to temporary and ultimate happiness and fulfillment.

However, the term “mind training” (and its equivalent “thought transformation”) is most commonly used to translate the Tibetan term lo-jong, which refers specifically to those spiritual instructions concerned with cultivating the altruistic motivation of a bodhisattva, the supremely compassionate being aiming to achieve enlightenment for the sake of benefitting others. The selfless motivation of a bodhisattva is known as the precious bodhichitta and, as Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche always emphasizes, the greatest obstacle to developing this supremely altruistic motivation is what he calls "the demon of self-cherishing."

The work we will look at this weekend is called the Seven-point Mind Training, one of the fundamental texts of the lo-jong tradition, and it contains very profound and eminently practical advice for reducing the strength of our habitual selfishness and generating in its place the peerless jewel of bodhichitta.
The workshop will consist of lecture, meditation practice, and Q&A.

As with all Dharma teachings at Kadampa Center, we offer Jon's classes without charging a fee, so that no one is prevented from hearing the precious Dharma because of money. Of course, there are costs involved in bringing the teachers to Kadampa Center, so we rely on the heartfelt generosity of our members, friends and visitors to cover those costs.

The meaning of Om Mani Padme Hung by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

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