The Tibetan term lojong is composed of two syllables. Lo stands for “mind,” “thought,” or “attitudes,” while jong connotes several interrelated but distinct meanings.

First, jong can refer to training whereby one acquires a skill or masters a field of knowledge. Jong can also connote habituation or familiarization with specific ways of being and thinking. Third, jong can refer to the cultivation of specific mental qualities, such as universal compassion or the awakening mind. Finally, jong can connote cleansing or purification, as in purifying one’s mind of craving, hatred, and delusion.

All these different meanings carry the salient idea of transformation, whereby a process of training, habituation, cultivation, and cleansing induces a kind of metanoesis, from the ordinary deluded state, whose modus operandi is self-centeredness, to a fundamentally changed perspective of enlightened, other-centeredness. Today, thanks to research on neuroplasticity, we have a much better appreciation of the brain’s capacity for transformation and change.

Broadly speaking, all the teachings of the Buddha can be characterized as “mind training” in the senses described above. However, the genre called mind training or lojong refers to specific approaches for cultivating the awakening mind—the altruistic aspiration to seek full awakening for the benefit of all beings—especially through the practice of equalizing and exchanging of self and others as found in Śāntideva’s eighth-century classic, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.

Two famous short works of the Tibetan mind training genre are today well known to the English-speaking world, with numerous commentaries by contemporary Tibetan teachers. These are Langri Thangpa’s Eight Verses on Mind Training and Chekawa’s Seven-Point Mind Training. …

Traditional Tibetan sources identify the Indian Bengali master Atiśa (982–1054) to be the source of lojong in Tibet.

Judging by currently available literature, the early origins of mind training as a separate genre of texts and spiritual practice appear to lie in the varied pithy instructions Atiśa may have given individually to many of his disciples. These instructions came to be later compiled under the rubric of “root lines on mind training,” thus forming the basis for the emergence of subsequent lojong literature.

A well-known legend associated with the emergence of the lojong teachings is Atiśa’s sea voyage to the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where he went to seek the instruction on “mind training” from Serlingpa. It is from him Atiśa is said to have received the profound instruction on the techniques of “equalizing and exchanging self and others,” which entails a disciplined process aimed at radically transforming our thoughts, prejudices, and habits from self-centeredness to other-centered altruism.

Years later, in Tibet, whenever Atiśa uttered his teacher Serlingpa’s name, it is said, he would instinctively fold his palms together in homage with tears in his eyes. “Whatever degree of kind heart I possess,” he is reputed to have exclaimed, “this is due entirely to my teacher Serlingpa.” Such was the depth of Atiśa’s gratitude for having received the mind training instructions.

Source: Thupten Jinpa. Translated, edited, and introduced by Thupten Jinpa. Essential Mind Training: Tibetan Wisdom for Daily Life. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2011.

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