Description

The Art of Transforming the Mind
A Meditator’s Guide to the Tibetan Practice of Lojong

Tibetan Buddhist practice isn’t just sitting in silent meditation, it’s developing fresh attitudes that align our minds with reality.

In this book, B. Alan Wallace explains a fundamental type of mental training that is designed to shift our attitudes so that our minds become pure wellsprings of joy instead of murky pools of problems, anxieties, fleeting pleasures, hopes, and frustrations. The lojong—or mind-training—teachings have been the subject of profound study, contemplation, and commentary by many great masters. B. Alan Wallace shows us the way to develop our capacity for spiritual awareness through his relatable and practical commentary on the mind-training slogans.

Includes three new translations of Atisha’s source material including Pith Instructions on a Single Mindfulness and Pith Instructions on the Middle Way.

The purpose of lojong, a traditional Mahayana Buddhist practice of training the mind, is about transforming one’s attitude and expanding one’s sense of self to encompass the greater whole. In this modern presentation of lojong practice and Atisha’s Seven-Point Mind Training, author, translator, and Buddhist practitioner B. Alan Wallace gives readers a framework from which they may cultivate the qualities of loving-kindness, compassion, and insight while diminishing harmful habits and ways of thinking. “All of us have attitudes,” Wallace explains, and “attitudes need adjusting.” The practice of lojong is therefore presented as a method to shift our attitude away from our problems, anxieties, hopes, and fears toward an expansive sense of joy and well-being that springs from the very essence of Mahayana—bodhichitta.

This is an updated version of Buddhism With An Attitude.

Praise For The Art of Transforming the Mind: A Meditator’s Guide to the Tibetan Practice of Lojong… “Readers who put the advice this book contains into practice may indeed transform their minds and achieve a sense of inner peace, the key to greater peace and happiness within and in the world at large.”—His Holiness the Dalai Lama

“Alan Wallace, one of the great Western Buddhist thinkers of our day, has written an extraordinary book! Buddhism with an Attitude is written not only with great intelligence, but also in an accessible and readable style that helps us apply the principles in daily life.”—Howard C. Cutler, MD, coauthor with H.H. the Dalai Lama of The Art of Happiness

“This book places you into a new domain where the world actually becomes the meditation hall. . . . A book to guide both beginners and seasoned meditators, a book to be read reread and studied.”—Buddhist Peace Fellowship