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Awakening the Mind, Lightening the Heart
byHis Holiness,The Dalai Lama of Tibet
The emblem of the Library of Tibet is the wind horse (lung da), a beautiful steed that brings happiness and good fortune (symbolized by the jewel on its back) wherever it goes. The image of the wind horse is printed on prayer flags in Tibet, which are then affixed to houses and temples, on bridges and at mountain passes throughout the land. The movement of the flag by the wind sets the wind horse in motion, carrying prayers for happiness and good fortune to the ten directions.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: Motive and Aspiration
CHAPTER 2: Source and Qualities of the Instruction
CHAPTER 3: The Meditation Session
CHAPTER 4: Creating the Perspective for Practice
CHAPTER 6: Calling the Awakened to Witness
CHAPTER 7: Transforming Trouble into Fortune
CHAPTER 8: The Awakening View of Reality
The teachings on mind training set forth here by His Holiness the Dalai Lama are based on a text composed in the early fifteenth century by Hortön Nam-kha Pel, a disciple of the great scholar and adept Tsong-kha-pa (1357–1419). This text called Rays of the Sun is a commentary on an earlier poem entided the Seven Point Mind Training, whose lines are quoted throughout the book. This poem is reproduced in its entirety at the end of the book. By the early part of the present century Rays of the Sun had become somewhat rare and obscure. After the Dalai Lama’s senior tutor, Kyabje Ling Rinpoche, had heard it explained, it became one of his favorite works because the book combines, in a way that is succinct and easy to understand and put into daily practice, the qualities of the mind training and stages of the path traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. Ling Rinpoche arranged for the Tibetan text to be reprinted and distributed, and he taught it himself. Subsequently, the Dalai Lama has taught it on many occasions, at Dharamsala where he lives, in the reestablished monasteries in South India, and at Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha attained enlightenment. Thus its popularity has been much revived.
His Holiness’s teachings presented here were translated and edited by the following team: the Venerable Geshe Lobsang Jordhen, a graduate of the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics, Dharamsala, who since 1989 has been religious assistant and personal translator to His Holiness the Dalai Lama; Lobsang Chophel Gangchenpa, who also trained at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics and has worked as a Buddhist translator first at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala, and later, for over a decade, in Australia; and Jeremy Russell, who, with over twelve years’ experience working with the Tibetan community in Dharamsala, is editor of Chö-Yang, the Voice of Tibetan Religion and Culture, published by the Religious Affairs Department of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile.
The Buddha offered many different teachings, corresponding to the different interests and dispositions of those who came to hear him teach. Yet all of his teachings outline metho ds through which we can purify the mind and achieve the fully awakened state of enlightenment. Among the different sets of instructions, there is a tradition called mind training or thought transformation. This is a special technique devised to develop what we call the awakening mind, the aspiration to achieve enlightenment for the sake of helping others. This technique was transmitted to Tibet by the Indian master Atisha, who taught it to his Tibetan disciples. The first Dalai Lama received the transmission from Hortön Namkha Pel, and from him the transmission came down to my own root guru, the late Kyabje Ling Rinpoche (1903–1983), from whom I received it.
Its techniques embody the essence of the Buddha’s teachings: the cultivation of the awakening mind. I rejoice at the opportunity to impart this tradition, as I follow its practice myself. Although I do not claim to have all the qualifications necessary for giving such instructions, I have great admiration and devotion for them. I rejoice that this precious instruction, transmitted from the Buddha, has actually come down to a person like me in this degenerate age when the teachings of the Buddha have almost become extinct. Whether I am giving this teaching or you are listening to or reading it, we are not engaging in an act of competition. We are not doing it for personal gain. If this teaching is given out of a pure wish to help others, there is no danger of our state of mind deteriorating; it can only be improved.
We can achieve enlightenment only through the practice of meditation; without it there is no way we can transform our minds. The whole purpose of reading or listening to Buddhist teachings is to enable us to undertake the practice properly. Therefore, we should try our best to put what we understand into practice. At this juncture we have obtained this precious life as free and fortunate human beings, able to engage in this practice. We should seize the opportunity. Although it is important to take care of our livelihood, we should not be obsessed by that alone. We should also think of our future, for life after death is something we know little about and our fate is unpredictable. If there is a life after death, then it
