Happy new year: let's make it the year of interconnection

 In the last few days I have been reflecting on the past year. I don't really like to list my achievements of the past year because I think it encourages an unhealthy comparison mindset. In today's society it's so hard to not forget that the most important is not what you do, but how you are. In the past few days, I co-led an online winter retreat, and in my part I taught analytical meditation. During these sessions we explored the idea of interdependence. I think today's world is more interdependent than ever (a beautiful quote by His Holiness the Dalai Lama about that: "In today’s highly interdependent world, individuals and nations can no longer resolve many of the problems by themselves. We need one another. We must therefore develop a sense of universal responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members, and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live." (from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Chapter 3).

interestingly, many people say they feel disconnected, while objectively speaking we are more connected than ever through the media, and through the evermore complex production chains of goods and services. So why do people feel disconnected? I think it is because we don't spend enough time being and reflecting on our situation. Another answer, offered by Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim last night was that we all consume (social) media that are so hyperpersonalized that we don't have too many common experiences anymore. And we are no longer so used to seeing things that we don't like.

Picture from Morlaix ballet camp by Michel Le Photography

Whatever may be the cause, my hope for the next year is that I will get to experience the deep interconnection of ourselves and others more in the coming year. Because I found that when I manage to experience the interconnection of myself with others, nothing can be an enemy anymore, and this reduces my stress so much. When things are overwhelming, it helps me a lot to focus on how they are all part of a web of contingent relationships that allows everything to appear and disappear. Moreover, when i experience the deep interconnection of myself and others, the competitiveness no longer exists either. The challenge is just not forgetting this...

Like with everything, not forgetting means to again and again try to remember, while the rest of life is trying to distract you. First you will forget most of the time, but the more often you remember, the more easily it comes. The trick is also to find "hooks", small reminders. I found a wonderful one recently in ballet class with Broche ballet, where Julie, the teacher said: imagine that you are massaging the floor as you are doing tendus. Thinking in this way frames ballet not as an activity that I do by myself, but rather as a cooperation with the floor, and of course the rest of the world outside it as well.

Every moment of remembering is a moment of mindfulness, and every moment of remembering also makes that moment sacred. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the notion of interbeing, where we see that the cow that brings the milk that produces the yoghurt that we eat produces the lesson we teach, and therefore the cow is in the lesson. In this way, everything is a seed for everything else. Every breath we take, we breathe in the oxygen produced by the plants, which connect us to the cosmos and to all other beings. If only I would not forget that, and if only more of us would realize that..

Finding meaning in the dark days after Christmas with wonderful Lojong resources

The next slogan is number 40: counter all adversity with a single remedy. Whenever when life sucks, which may happen to many of us during this pandemic, we routinely blame others. However, this usually does not help very much, and in fact renders us quite powerless, because we cannot do much about what others do. If instead we ourselves take responsibility, we can at least do something about our role in the adverse situation. For example, when there is another lockdown, we can spend all our energy complaining, but that does not really help very much. We could also use that energy to think about who is suffering, and what we can do about it. Something like the famous prayer that says: give me the strength to change the things I can change, the patience to accept the things I cannot change, and the courage to know the difference between them.

For cultivating this wisdom, I came across two excellent resources recently: 

• a set of teachings on Lojong by John Dunne and Roshi Joan Halifax. https://www.upaya.org/resources/exploring-the-power-of-lojong-2021-resource-page/ This includes a nuanced discussion of how we can work with our own role in adverse situations, how we can stay with a kind heart and self-compassion, but also take action to remedy damaging circumstances and avoid moral harm. 
• One particularly powerful example in these teachings is the story of a sailor who gets hit by another boat. He starts yelling at the other boat, but no-one responds. When he finally gets closer, he sees it's just an empty boat. How often are we not yelling at an empty boat? I find it very helpful to think of the empty boat when I am in challenging (or simply annoying) circumstances. That takes so much of the edge off...
• the Everybodhi podcast by Dungse Jampal Norbu, which goes through the Lojong slogans from a modern perspective. https://everybodhipodcast.libsyn.com

Enjoy!

It's so easy to blame others, especially in the time of COVID-19...

Picture from an epic bicycle ride from Delhi to Taj Mahal with Delhi by Cycle (picture Himanshu Shekhar https://www.instagram.com/hr.the.traveler/ )

The current slogan in the #lojongchallenge is number 34: "don't transfer an ox's load to the cow." Obviously this refers to not pushing our own problems onto others. Blaming others is such an easy and automatic thing to do. But as Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel also points out in her recent talks on agency, this really also is a way to disempower yourself. Of course other people and influences are part of the cause of your problems, but you yourself typically also have a part to play. A traditional example that is given is when someone hits you, they can only hurt you when you are in the way of the hitting. But of course that's a bit of a lame example in some ways and clearly shouldn't be used to justify hitting someone.

But on a more minor level, I think one case where a lot of blaming is going on these days is in COVID-19, where people blame each other for either being "corona-nazis" or for being too lax in following the rules. Last week I found myself to be also guilty of that when I was complaining about the students not taking the rules seriously. She retorted that complaining about the students only makes youangry and is not going to change anything. So true! Complaining usually doesn't make you feel better. It's better to focus on your own contribution to the problem and situation.

A village in the area of Vrindavan, India, with cows

One of those classic Indian cow pictures where cow sits in the middle of an intersection, here in Allahabad/Prayagraj

A very liberating example of a more healthy way to go about things is given by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche in his book "The intelligent heart" in which he writes "The Japanese culture is very strong in this way. Even the emperors take pride in apologizing when they are at fault. They bow down low and say "I'm very sorry. It was my mistake." Having this quality gives people tremendous freedom and dignity." An example to aspire to.

Having said that, I do also find in myself a pitfall with this slogan--which encourages us to not shift responsibilities onto others. What is a tricky pitfall is the tendency to take all the work upon myself, sort of being overly optimistic of the work I can accomplish. This is obviously a recipe for exhaustion and eventually burnout. So while it is important to not overly burden others, it is also important to reflect on your own boundaries and stick to those. Because in the end, if you get a burnout, you are shifting even more responsibilities on others...

Reconsidering "I told you so"

The next slogan in the #lojongchallenge series is "don't wait in ambush". This slogan talks about how we can brood on "getting someone back" if they've said or done something nasty to us. A more noble response would be to instead return their unkindness with kindness.

Now of course being kind to someone who has treated you poorly is not always that easy. My personal response is usually to simply avoid this person. Then at least you know you won't cause them harm, and they also cannot cause you harm. For example, today I was on the train to Amsterdam, and when I see people who do not wear masks, one response is to be nasty to them, but another response is to simply go outside their way (which may either way be a smart thing to do in either case...).

A more subtle tendency that this can refer to is put forward by Khandro Rinpoche. She says that it also refers to cases in which we may allow situations to worsen so we can say in the end: "I told you so", rather than preventing the mistakes to happen. I personally don't think this always works, because sometimes you just need to give people the space to make their own mistakes. Nevertheless, at that time it is still not very compassionate to respond with "I told you so", rather than helping that person to clean up the mess, which would be a bit more supportive. There is sometimes quite some satisfaction in the smugness of saying "I told you so", but it's a good reminder to self that it is pretty much never helpful when you think about it.

Ballerina waiting in ambush? Picture by Anna van der Meijden https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en

On the whole I must confess that i am lucky that I never enjoy seeing people suffer, not even when they have hurt me. What I am trying to cultivate more of is to enjoy it when people do well. This morning I was in a ballet class in Amsterdam and I was able to really enjoy some of the beautiful dancing of the other dancers in my class, instead of being jealous of them, which can also happen sometimes. That was my little win of the day. And in the end, it makes your own life so much better as well (but of course it requires changing of habits, which is always a challenge...).

Can we be without a goal?

An intriguing slogan in the Lojong text is number 28: "abandon any hope of fruition." Here in the West, we are strongly conditioned in being very goal-directed, having specific, measurable, achievable and time-bound goals. This contributes to getting things done. So why are we to let go of a hope of fruition, or in other words, "achievement"?

Sometimes the tendency to try to achieve things can be in the way of accomplishment. This is particularly true with these Lojong teachings, because achieving something tends to often be associated with a feeling of self-cherishing. It's not bad to feel good a bout yourself, but feeling superior is a problem.

Moreover, the tendency to always be goal-directed also gets in the way of taking time to just rest and being present with what is. A large part of Buddhist practice is about sitting there and doing nothing--and through that, through observing what happens, becoming familiar with the nature of reality that is to be found within, rather than in busy activity.

Approaching the goal. Picture by Anna van der Meijden, https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en

But yet, how can we then still motivate ourselves if we shouldn't hope for fruition? Maybe it is the case that we will never reach fruition, but we will still make some progress along the way, and we can still celebrate those little moments in which we were able to transform an emotion or approach a situation in a different way. And at the same time realize that that is only a tiny step along the way. Then it is key to go back to your motivation and use that as your major impetus: whatever you do, be it action or inaction, can be with a motivation to help beings and eventually to becoming a truly healthy and happy person (something which Buddhists call enlightenment).

More thoughts on self-criticism and other-criticism in life and ballet

The next slogan in Lojong is number 26: "Don’t ponder others’ flaws." This is quite similar to the previous slogan, but whereas the previous one is about acting out your criticism in terms of speech, this one is about merely thinking about the flaws of others. For me that is a much stronger temptation than speaking of other's flaws. You may think "thoughts don't harm, right?" And indeed, they don't do so directly. But they are not particularly pleasant either.

The moment you start criticising others, first of all, doesn't really feel that good in the long term. In the short term, it may make you feel better about yourself, but to maintain this feeling better, you have to keep comparing yourself to others and that is pretty exhausting. One domain in which I am quite prone to mentally comparing myself to others is ballet. This is completely unnecessary because I am way too old for a career, so I am just doing it for fun. And yet, this is my mental habit. A few weeks ago I did a kind of home-made ballet intensive during which I stayed in Amsterdam for a few days and took many classes. This was my chance to play with these feelings! I found out that when I was doing a tough conditioning class, one strategy is to handle the challenge by comparing myself to others. As I just indicated, this is a quite a stressful strategy. Alternatively, I could just try to stay with the moment--with the unpleasant feelings of a tough exercise but not thinking about how long it's still going to last (long!) and not thinking about how well it's going--just staying there non-judgmentally. When I was able to do that, the whole experience became like a meditation, and quite relaxed (at least from a mental perspective). Moreover, practising in such a mind state feels so much more satisfying.

Picture by Anna van der Meijden https://www.instagram.com/annamaypine/?hl=en

I will end with one more tip that I found in Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche's book "Intelligent heart", which I found quite helpful. He said that if you are dealing with a very difficult person for whom criticism almost naturally arises, then try to realize that it's just your perception. Everyone perceives people differently, and there may well be people who see this person as amazing. The same is true about yourself by the way: the way you see yourself is probably quite different from the way others see you.

Motivation during COVID-19

Today I want to share some thoughts on motivation in the current COVID-19 situation. Working from home is the new reality for many of us, and I find that motivation is a big topic for both myself and my students. This situation really leads us to question what our motivation really is, which I think is a good thing. At the same time, it is not easy. Normally we are often motivated simply by being in a context that expects a certain work from us, and it happens more or less automatically. Now in this situation the motivation has to come from within, and it has to withstand countless sources of distraction that varies from the news to kids (depending on your situation) and everything in-between.

picture taken on the Manali-Leh highway in India

I find the current Lojong slogan I am working with quite helpful in this respect: slogan 24 says: "Change your attitude but remain natural." Changing your attitude refers traditionally to working with your mind so it is not so much focused on hope and fear for yourself, and instead more occupied with care for others. This care for others is not so much primarily about what you do, but rather about the motivation with which you do things. For example, when you sweep the floor, you can do this with the motivation that it makes a cleaner world for all living beings, and even maybe that it clears away all the infections that beings are currently suffering from. In this way, every single thing you do can become something inspiring and meaningful. In a recent podcast, Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel also expressed this idea very well when she talked about how we can relate to COVID-19 not so much in terms of our hopes and fears, but rather in terms of what we can learn from it. "remain natural" refers to not displaying these efforts in an attempt to appear like the most amazingly compassionate person--because then it becomes again a self-aggrandizing effort. And besides the fact that the point of the Buddhist path is to reduce this tendency of ours to want to increase our ego, a more important reason to not want that is that whenever we engage in self-aggrandization it is also causes a lot of fear. It is more helpful to ask "how can I serve?" than to ask "how can this serve me to get ahead or to get appreciated."

I have been reflecting on these ideas in the last few days, and I found that what helps me to stay motivated (while I live and work pretty much by myself and spend about 10 hours a day in front of my computer screen) is to go back to the question "what is my motivation?" again and again. I am striving to cultivating this memory more and more, because if I reach for a new binge (my weak spot currently) and I ask "what is my motivation?" then it is just to get entertainment. If I instead work on a paper and I inquire about my motivation, then it is to help my students, or even bigger, science, ahead. If I dance, then I can do this with a motivation to nurture my body and mind, and maybe even to make others happy who see my dancing. If I post on social media, I can do this to get the likes, or instead I can just do it to benefit others without hoping for anything in return. In all these cases, the latter motivation is the bigger one and the more sustainable one.

The main thing is to keep investigating your motivation instead of just going on autopilot.It is not easy to stay with the bigger motivation to benefit the world--or to be the best person I can be, as someone put it beautifully today--but it is a beautiful aspiration!

A sticky virus

Just like the rest of the world, my life in the last few weeks has been turned around by the virus. What stunned me was how sticky the thoughts about the virus are (quite "viral" in fact). I do a lot of research into sticky thinking--thoughts that keep creeping into our minds that make it really difficult to focus. We have shown that when people are distracted by thoughts that they find difficult to let go of leads to substantial drops in task performance and increases in the variability of response times. More recently, we also showed that such "sticky thinking" was associated with reduced pupil responses to incoming stimuli. In essence, we think this means that your mind decouples from the environment. So, no wonder that a lot of people find it difficult to concentrate in this time of covid-19.

Another way I "unstick" myself is through dancing. Here you can see me in India.

Quite fittingly, these days I am working with the slogan from the #lojongchallenge that says: "If you can practice even when distracted, you are well trained." This is the perfect time to test how we practice when being distracted. In a way, the current situation with all its uncertainty is probably not unlike what is called the "bardo" in Tibetan Buddhism. The bardo is the period between dying and the subsequent rebirth--it is a period where nothing is certain and everything can change. And such situations tend to evoke a lot of anxiety--a very "effective" sticky thought. Of course this can be quite adaptive, because in uncertain situations there can be danger, and then you need to be alert about that. However, if there is nothing you can do in such a situation, then this sticky thinking does not really help and leads to a lot of stress and anxiety. For this reason, I find that in the last weeks, practices of loving kindness and compassion are helpful. They lead me to focus not on myself, but on other people, and get me out of the stickiness. Moreover, they give me energy by making me feel that I can do something useful for the world in this uncertain situation. And such practices can be very simple: repeating silently "may you be happy, may you be safe, may you live with ease" is all that is needed for loving kindness. See this page for some nice examples and further explanation. Because if we can practice loving kindness and compassion in this situation, then we are not only well-trained, but probably a lot more resilient as well.

Little happy seeds during a crazy journey

The next slogan in Lojong is another very comprehensive one that pretty much subsumes the whole Buddhist path: "Practice the five strengths, The condensed heart instructions." What are the five strengths? They are determination, familiarization, seeds of virtue, reproach and aspiration. Determination refers to being very steadfast in your vow to practise training your mind. Sometimes we can be a bit cowardly and say: "well, I'll work with my mind tomorrow, when I am not so tired." But that does not work--then it will never happen. I notice how this excuse has started to creep in my practice recently: to feel like waiting with practising more until I am less busy. That will probably take many years so better start practising now.

The second strength is familiarization: nothing is easy until you get used to it. Now we are so used to worrying about all our hopes and fears--hoping for fame, fear of insignificance, hoping for praise, fear of blame, and so on, that that is very easy for us. And it makes us often very tense. I did not notice this, until a few days ago I started my vacation by taking a road trip from Manali to Leh. This is a pretty "bone-shaking" journey, so once we finally arrived in Leh at 22:30 after being in the car from 5 am, and having crossed passes with heights of 5300m, I noticed my jaw was completely clenched. This was probably especially due to the last few hours where I was seriously worried about whether we were even going to make it to Leh! In the last few days I have been working on consciously unclenching my jaw, and I notice the difference it makes to my meditation!

The third strength is my favorite one: "seeds of virtue." This refers to never letting go of any opportunity to do something positive, even if it is very small. Sometimes I can be very ambitious, but what I find encouraging about this strength is the focus on just keeping it small. You don't have to make it very special: even just smiling at someone can make a difference in their day. I have been following the daily compassion program from the free app from Being Bodhi, and this very much makes you familiar with that. During the crazy (but beautiful!) ride from Manali to Leh, also thinking about this and just spending some time wishing well in my mind helped me to come out at the other end.

The fourth strength is reproach: catching ourselves and acknowledging it when we do something wrong, but also not getting stuck in that. Just learning from the mistake and owning it. The fifth strength is aspiration: this is a more traditional part of the Buddhist religion, which has aspiration prayers. I personally often have trouble connecting to these prayers, but one beautiful way to consider the meaning of these prayers is that we often with our lack of wisdom do not really know what to pray for, and these prayers are help from the buddhas in what to ask for so it is really beneficial. Anyway, for now I think I will just simply stick with cultivating seeds of virtue, one little bit at a time...

Finding gratitude in happiness and suffering

The thirteenth lojong slogan is "Be grateful to everyone." I think this holiday time is therefore a great time to blog about this in the #lojongchallenge, since I feel the Christmas period is always a time to reflect on what I can be grateful about. As the year draws to a close, I always think about what happened in the past year, and so much has happened. Although I never feel I have enough time to accomplish what I want to, nevertheless stuff happens and papers do get published, data gets collected, and grants get submitted. In this past year, my lab doubled in size, which is quite sobering.

Grateful for the delicious food on the Christmas table (a vegan roast, gravy, loads of veggies...). Picture by Maya Thierens.

Being grateful is a one of the easiest way to enhance your happiness. There is even some research that shows that being grateful is a great way to enhance satisfaction with life and self esteem. I often forget to be grateful for what I have in the mad rush to get stuff done. When things slow down towards the end of the year, gratefulness gets a chance to re-emerge. When you think about it, there is a lot to be grateful about: having a (somewhat) healthy body, having a roof over your head, food to eat, friends and family, a sense of purpose in life...

Image of my injured knee

Some of the aspects of gratefulness that are emphasized in Lojong are also worth a mention: we usually have the habit to think that all the good things that befall us are our own merits. But actually when you think about it, a lot of the good things that happen are due to many causes and conditions that make those emerge. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche writes in The Intelligent Heart:"it is a gift from other sentient beings". Without the care of your parents, you would not be able to grow up into a functioning adult. Without the care of colleagues, you would be able to succeed and get promotion in your job. Without food to eat you would not be able to be healthy and survive. In this way, contemplating the kindness of others in acquiring what we enjoy can open our hearts to these others, instead of being oblivious to them. One thing that I was particularly grateful for in the past days is a chance to be a dancing angel in a Christmas mass/celebration for patients in the hospital. Such a gift to be able to give something to those suffering with my dancing!

Grateful for the chance to be a dancing angel for patients in the hospital

But there is more: we can even be grateful for the challenges provided by others. An example I got to work with this month was that another bicyclist hit me one morning as I was cycling to work. I fell on the pavement and my whole left side was scraped, blue and bloody (see picture for an impression). Even now, my knee is still a bit swollen, although it does not hurt anymore. While I was definitely not happy (especially about the fact that I had to skip several ballet classes because of my injured knee), this was my chance to practise "being grateful to everyone." I was definitely not very successful at appreciating this, but every so often I managed to use my injury as a tool to develop compassion for everyone else who was suffering as well. Feeling the pain in my own body somehow made other's suffering much more real, and I did the healing practices of Vajrasattva for both myself and others. So, in the end, there was benefit in the suffering, and looking back upon it, I can be grateful to the bicyclist who hit me. I feel that for every bit of suffering that I can transform, I become a bit less fearful, and acquire some wisdom that no-one will be able to take away from me.

Finally, for another reflection on gratitude, see this article by Salmaan Sana.

Facing the ever-growing todo list with compassion

The next slogan in the #lojongchallenge is "turn all suffering into the path of awakening." While usually we want suffering to go away, and feel like it distracts us from the spiritual path, or whatever other goals we seek to accomplish, this slogan encourages us to instead use the suffering as fuel to progress on the spiritual path. How would that be possible? In contemplating this slogan, I realized that my particular and most pervasive suffering is the todo-list that keeps on growing, and makes me feel really stressed (you can tell I am pretty spoilt). I suspect I am not alone in this, since stress and feeling overworked are rampant in our modern society. But how can we work with the ever-growing todo list?

I felt that just realizing that the ever-growing todo-list was making me feel stressed was already quite an accomplishment. Such a realization is the moment of awareness. Suddenly the stress is not the thing that defines me, but instead is linked to something outside me--I am not the stress. In fact, I can kindly look at the stress and become friends with it. Instead of hating my endless todo list, I can also ask what it can teach me. What does an endless todo-list say about your priorities? Maybe my ego thinks I am so important that I need to do all those things? Do I really need to do them? And even if there is such a long todo list, I can also just get started, dedicate all my efforts to the benefit of beings, and not worry so much about all the other stuff that still needs to be done. In some of his teachings, Tsoknyi Rinpoche explains very well how sometimes we let ourselves become really stressed because when we are doing one thing, our mind is already onto the next thing and starts worrying about that. in fact, the moment we do nothing, our mind is so restless that it wants to do something--anything. This is one moment when we may create more stuff to do.

Random picture taken by my brother Floris van Vugt

What I found very helpful is just to sit for a moment with my todo list. Not to let myself get distracted by it, but just simply to feel my feelings. Suddenly the todo list was not so daunting--really my stories and catastrophizing were what made it so bad. So whenever I feel this stress about the growing todo list creep in, I try to kindly observe it, and let it dissolve on its own accord. It definitely has helped me be a little bit more calm and happy.

Another important observation is that sometimes I use my todo-list as an excuse for not being able to do my meditation practice. But in fact, the todo list (or any other problem or stress) is exactly when you should practise says Khandro Rinpoche. Practice is not about feeling good; it is about confronting the neurotic aspects of ourselves that make us aggrandize things, go after the things we want and run away from the things we don't want, and ignoring everyone else. So when we feel like a martyr who has to work so hard when looking at our todo list, when we want to run away from it and be in some different place, this is our chance to work with that. Of course that doesn't mean we have to always accept such a todo list and not change the outer circumstances as well. But given that we are now in this situation, why not relate to it in a more sane way?

Remembering to remember this trick to make your mind bigger

Next installment in the #lojongchallenge. The next slogan is more general: "in all activities, train with the slogans." I think this refers to how in general, it is important to not just think about the slogans in your meditation, but try to remember to apply them in your daily life. Of course that is nothing new for us on this blog, because that is what the blog is all about. The general idea of Lojong is to train an attitude in which we give all gain to others, and take all loss upon ourselves, as the sage Geshe Chekawa said. This is about the most counterintuitive that you can think of, so it is crucial to try to remember again and again. Writing this blog is one way in which I remind myself. Other people have cards with the different slogans in a visible place, or they put some of the slogans on their fridge.

So how have I been working with these slogans? Currently I am on retreat in the beautiful dharma centre of Lerab Ling in southern France, which obviously makes it easier to remember these slogans. In the previous blog I write about how I used the Lojong teachings to generate compassion for the pain of others while running. Another example is that when some judgment about people arises, you can immediately use that as a source of compassion. Instead of judging them, you can see people's suffering, and you can pray or aspire that it may be relieved.

I also had some spectacular failure of applying these teachings. Today right after finishing my retreat rota of cleaning toilets and showers, I was sitting at lunch and noticed I had lost my water bottle. That really sucks when on retreat! So I set out to look for it, first in the temple, and then back at the place where I clean the washrooms. Now it turns out that the person who had locked the cleaningroom after we were done had misplaced the key, so I could not look for my water bottle there. I spent my whole lunch break looking for this person frantically, and not a single moment did any thought of compassion for others arise. In fact, my mind was dramatically narrowed to just looking for this one self-related thing. It was not a very pleasant feeling. Thankfully, I found the person at the end of the lunch break, and he had in fact misplaced the key and I found my water bottle back. What a different space did I feel in my mind. Next time I should remember the Lojong teachings. It would have probably made my lunch break quite a bit more enjoyable.

Finally, to further inspire serious engagement with Lojong, I recently read an article that hypothesized that the Tibetans' resilience in the face of the torture, being forced to flee their country, poverty, and so on, comes from an ingrained mentality of Lojong. They themselves called it "broad thinking" in which you take off the focus from yourself and expand it to all the others that are suffering. Definitely worth a read, and worth doing more research into!

Everything is workable -- turning failure into compassion

The next slogan in the #lojongchallenge is "three objects, three poisons, three sources of virtue." This sounds quite cryptical, but it's actually a really powerful idea. The three poisons according to Buddhism are the three principal negative emotions of attachment, aversion and ignorance or greed, hatred and delusion. These emotions are thought to be negative because they lead to suffering for both the person and those around him or her. But the good news is that each of these can be turned into a source of virtue. So this means everything is workable!

The secret is taht whenever we experience a negative emotion, we can realize that we are not the only ones experiencing these emotions, and we can develop a sense of compassion to those others: may our experience of this negative emotion be enough. This immediately creates a sense of space, and a sense that the suffering of the negative emotion is not useless. For example, I am currently on a Buddhist retreat, and every morning I go for a run. Now it is quite hilly here, which means every run involves some painful ascent. This time, instead of being intimidated by the climb, I tried to use it to take upon me all the pain and exhaustion of all the countless runners. A that time, the climb became much less painful. What a relief!

cows I met during my daily run

up the hill (not during my running route but still up the hill)

Since I am curently on retreat, I am not working. However, I think it would also work really well in dealing with failure. For example, when your paper gets rejected, you may mentally feel: "may I take upon myself all the other paper rejections of all my colleagues as well." The paper rejection still sucks, but you are no longer alone. You then focus less on feelings of worthlessness that may also come up, but on the universality of the suffering (welcome to the world of academia!). I will definitely try this next time, if I manage to think of it ;-)

Introducing the #lojongchallenge

Last weekend I was at a retreat organized by Rigpa Netherlands about the topic of Lojong. Lojong means literally training the habitual mind. The Lojong text we focused on was the Seven points of mind training. What is amazing about these teachings is that they are very practical ways to bring kindness and compassion in your life, and at the same time to give you some tools to work with your emotions. Note that these blogs are not intended to be teaching tools, so if you want to know more about these teachings, I suggest you read some of the excellent books that are around, such as Training the Mind, The Intelligent Heart or for a more contemporary application to the workplace: Awake at Work. Or you can of course take a course at your local Tibetan Buddhist centre if they offer it.

Picture taken in my hotel room in Amsterdam at the retreat

The retreat was an interesting one for me, because Rigpa has been in a lot of turmoil because the main teacher Sogyal Rinpoche has been accused of sexual abuse, physical abuse and financial mis-management, and consequently he stepped down as the director of Rigpa.* This was the first retreat without him, quite a searching process for the sangha that is very divided on what they think of the matter. In the midst of all the rampant emotions and the general happenings in the world, it was magnificent to study and practise Lojong.

While I think these teachings are amazing, my main problem is that I always forget to actually put them into practice. For this reason, I came up with the #lojongchallenge, where I challenge myself (and whoever would like to join) to write a blog/tweet/facebook/instagram post on a Lojong topic every week. In these blogs I plan to not regurgitate the teaching, but rather write a short story on how I worked with the teachings in my life as a practitioner and as an academic (or even as a dancer). I will probably start by going through the 59 Lojong slogans in order, because that gives a nice structure, but I may deviate from that as time continues.

Note also that these stories are not intended as a showcase of my realization (which I clearly don't have), nor a teaching tool, but only as a motivation to take the Lojong teachings seriously, and maybe to inspire others as in the process...

An example of a story could be like what happened to me during this retreat. In the first day I felt pretty much everything went wrong: folding bicycle that was supposed to transport me every day from hotel to venue broke down (its chain kept falling off and cannot be repaired), my watch stopped working, the balloon that is inside my meditation cushion broke, and I lost my coat (meanwhile found). As all this happened, I felt my familiar tendency to catastrophize, to feel that "everything is going wrong" started to emerge. Then the slogan "all dharmas are dreamlike" came to the rescue. When you realize that all of these things are natural properties of the world (things will disintegrate, disappear, break...--that is called impermanence), it is no longer such a surprise, and I felt suddenly a lot more relaxed.

a dreamlike image...

So, this was my first contribution to #lojongchallenge. If anyone else wants to join me, please do so, and add the hashtag #lojongchallenge.

* Please note that I will not be discussing matters related to the Sogyal Rinpoche controversy here on this blog. This is not because I want to ignore it or think it is not important. Rather, I think this blog is not the correct forum for that. I am very much working with it in more personal ways in the organization and beyond.