Capítulo 1
The Heart of Transformation: Exchanging Self for Other
What if the key to genuine happiness isn't getting what you want, but rather letting go of wanting altogether? This provocative question lies at the heart of "The Intelligent Heart" by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, a modern Tibetan Buddhist master whose teachings have captivated Western audiences including celebrities like Richard Gere and Pema Chodron. The book has become something of a sleeper hit in mindfulness circles, offering a radical alternative to our culture's obsession with self-improvement. Rather than adding more to your life, Kongtrul suggests subtracting something fundamental: your attachment to yourself. This thousand-year-old wisdom tradition called lojong (mind training) has been embraced by Silicon Valley executives and mental health professionals alike for its practical approach to transforming suffering into joy. As the Dalai Lama often remarks, these teachings represent Buddhism's most direct contribution to human happiness-not through escaping life's difficulties, but by changing our relationship to them entirely.
Capítulo 2
The Radical Path of Exchanging Self and Other
The Buddha's journey toward enlightenment began not with meditation under the Bodhi tree, but with a simple act of compassion thousands of lifetimes earlier. While suffering in hell, pulling a heavy cart alongside another being, he offered to take on his companion's burden despite his own pain. This compassionate exchange launched him toward eventual enlightenment.
This story illustrates the essence of tonglen practice-"giving and taking"-which forms the heart of lojong teachings. While often taught as a meditation technique where we breathe in others' suffering and breathe out happiness, tonglen encompasses any exchange of self and other, forming the core of Buddhist practice.
Our suffering stems from what Tibetan tradition calls "dak che dzin"-self-importance or self-cherishing. This isn't merely arrogance but encompasses all forms of self-protection and self-concern. This self-importance generates the five poisons: attachment, aggression, jealousy, arrogance, and stupidity. As Shantideva wrote in his classic text, "All the misery the world contains has come from wanting pleasure for oneself."
Liberation begins by recognizing our self-importance without judgment. We must see ourselves as innocent beings harboring an inner "rascal" causing endless suffering. This recognition initiates an internal revolution. Despite its apparent power, self-importance is fundamentally limited and unintelligent, always looking outward without self-reflection-"the epitome of stupidity"-giving us hope for eventual freedom.
The opposite of self-importance is "zhen che dzin" or "altruism"-holding others as important. While we naturally cherish family and friends, this love often carries self-importance because they're "ours." The highest love is the bodhisattva's love-completely free from self-importance. Though initially this seems unnatural, we can expand our existing love by recognizing how all beings equally desire happiness and freedom from suffering.
This exchange of self and other isn't merely theoretical-it's the practical path to happiness. When we prioritize others' welfare over our own self-protection, we experience a profound shift in consciousness that brings immediate relief from the exhausting burden of self-concern.
Capítulo 3
The Preliminary Practices: Building the Foundation
Our minds typically operate on autopilot, constantly reacting to sensory perceptions-grasping at pleasant experiences, rejecting unpleasant ones, and becoming dull toward neutral objects. This reactive pattern continues through memories and future plans, depleting our energy until we sleep, only to repeat the cycle again tomorrow.
The preliminary practices break this exhausting pattern by establishing time for contemplation. Even five minutes daily can transform our relationship with ourselves and others. These contemplations follow four traditional themes:
First, we consider the preciousness of human life with its opportunities for spiritual growth. Like finding a map when lost in the endless desert of self-importance, encountering these teachings gives us direction toward genuine happiness.
Second, we contemplate impermanence. Our opportunity to develop bodhicitta is fleeting-even eighty years passes "like a flash of lightning." Nothing can be permanently secured. Trying to hold onto things as if we'll live forever creates needless anxiety. At death, our consciousness travels alone to the next life, "like a hair pulled from butter"-completely clean without a trace of our possessions, relationships, or achievements.
Third, we examine suffering's pervasiveness. Physical suffering, though most obvious, is actually most manageable. Emotional suffering runs deeper and is harder to work with. Mental suffering-arising from fundamental ignorance about our minds-forms the subtlest layer. We recognize suffering not to indulge in self-pity but to motivate ourselves toward freedom.
Fourth, we contemplate karma-cause and effect. Despite our attempts to create happiness, our ignorance often produces the opposite results. The solution lies in stepping beyond our small self to embrace the universal self of all beings. The Buddha taught that actions focused on others naturally bring joy, while self-centered actions perpetuate suffering-a truth verified through direct experience, historical evidence, and improved social harmony.
These preliminary practices aren't mere philosophical exercises-they're practical tools that reorient our minds away from habitual self-concern toward a broader, more meaningful perspective that serves as the foundation for all subsequent practice.
Capítulo 4
Absolute Bodhicitta: Seeing Through the Illusion
Bodhicitta practice encompasses two inseparable aspects: relative and absolute. While relative bodhicitta involves developing love and compassion for all beings, absolute bodhicitta means directly perceiving emptiness-the ultimate nature of reality.
Emptiness doesn't mean nothingness or nihilism. It simply means phenomena don't exist in the solid, independent way we habitually perceive them. Chekawa begins with absolute bodhicitta because understanding emptiness loosens our grasping, making our minds more agile for lojong practices while deepening our compassion for beings trapped in misperception.
The absolute bodhicitta slogans provide increasingly subtle methods for understanding emptiness. We begin by seeing all phenomena as dreamlike illusions that appear only under certain conditions. Just as dreams seem real when we're asleep but dissolve upon waking, our waking experiences seem solid only because we misinterpret what we perceive.
Everything we experience is subjective-a brick wall appears solid to us but consists mostly of empty space at the atomic level. This understanding becomes immediately practical when applied to our disturbing emotions, which have no inherent existence but arise from conditions, like rainbows appearing when sunlight, rain, and an observer align perfectly.
After seeing phenomena as illusory, we turn inward to examine our mind itself. Does awareness have form, shape, color, origin, or location? Searching reveals nothing concrete-our awareness is like space, primordial and "unborn." This discovery of "not finding is finding" reveals our mind's empty nature.
When we discover mind's empty nature, we often want to cling to this realization as an antidote to suffering. But this creates a new form of grasping-to our idea of emptiness. We must examine this clinging itself, seeing that even our concept of emptiness has no inherent reality.
As our concept of emptiness fades away, we rest in our unborn wakeful state, free from conceptual grasping. In this state, thoughts arise and instantly self-liberate, melting into space. This space-not a void but pervaded by enlightened awareness-is called the alaya, our fundamental buddha nature.
In daily life, we connect to absolute bodhicitta by seeing the world without fixed concepts, like a small child does, or as if in a lucid dream. Modern life's speed enhances this practice by showing how quickly everything changes before we can fully register it. This practice doesn't impair our functioning-great sages operate more effectively than ordinary people while maintaining awareness of life's illusory nature.
Capítulo 5
Relative Bodhicitta: The Heart of Exchange
While absolute bodhicitta gives us glimpses of our potential freedom, we can't immediately transcend suffering by connecting to our absolute nature. We must first understand our self-cherishing before gradually embracing the universal self of all beings. As Jamgon Kongtrul says, "With the development of relative bodhicitta, absolute bodhicitta is naturally realized."
The exchange of self and other through tonglen is the most profound practice for transcending the small self. Shantideva declares, "Unless you don't want to attain enlightenment, you must practice tonglen," adding that even conventional peace is difficult without this exchange.
Before beginning tonglen, we must understand its purpose-self-importance causes all our troubles, from daily anxieties to negative karma. To counteract this, we progress through three stages: contemplating the equality of self and others, practicing tonglen, and finally training to care for others more than ourselves.
When examining our minds, we discover an unceasing desire for happiness that never leaves us. This fundamental wish remains constant throughout our lives-even during self-loathing, we still seek comfort when thirsty, cold, or tired. Simultaneously, we try to escape all forms of suffering. Looking at other beings, we see they're no different-all are "moving beings" (drowa semchen), constantly moving toward happiness and away from suffering.
This essential equality forms the basis for expanding our circle of care beyond loved ones. Our current division between self and other is merely habit-as malleable as a horse changing owners. By seeing all beings as "ours" to protect rather than possess, we can develop universal love. Just as we consider countless body parts as "me," we can train to love all beings collectively.
Tonglen practice involves four exchanges that transform our self-importance. After the exchange of affection, we begin proclaiming others' good qualities instead of our own. The exchange of position asks us to imagine ourselves from others' perspectives-seeing ourselves through the eyes of those who feel superior, equal, or inferior to us.
The exchange of happiness for suffering is the core tonglen practice. We visualize someone suffering (beginning with our mother), and breathe in their suffering while breathing out our happiness. We reflect deeply on our mother's kindness, generating profound gratitude until tears flow and our consciousness transforms. We then take on her suffering of samsara and give her all our happiness, possessions, and merit. Eventually, we extend this practice to all sentient beings, viewing them as our mothers from countless past lives.
The exchange of merit for demerit involves giving away our positive karma while taking on others' negativity. Though counterintuitive, this practice actually increases our merit while reducing our self-importance. Joy is the key to effective tonglen practice-we must feel genuine delight in relieving others' suffering rather than approaching it mechanically.
Capítulo 6
Transforming Adversity into the Path
Many of us tend to feel like victims, blaming others, bad luck, or "the system" for our suffering. This victimhood makes us unproductive in both worldly and spiritual life as we withdraw into our pain.
Difficult times may actually indicate we've reached a plateau in our spiritual path, with challenges arising to test how much we've overcome attachment to our small self. For bodhisattvas, karmic seeds from past negative deeds may ripen more quickly due to our aspiration to purify self-importance sooner.
These challenging circumstances provide ideal conditions for tonglen practice-far more powerful than trying to practice in comfortable situations like relaxing on a sunny beach. When facing fear, confusion, or contraction, we have an incredible opportunity to exchange self and other, purifying our self-importance and sowing seeds for genuine happiness.
Instead of feeling like victims, we can take charge of our minds and move toward the deepest, most stable form of happiness: that based on pure, ever-flowing love and care for others.
We simplify our complex lives into stories about who or what causes our suffering, placing blame outside ourselves. Lojong helps us discriminate between helpful and unhelpful stories, teaching us to think about our lives in both honest and favorable ways.
The most truthful story reveals that all suffering-ours and others'-comes from one source: clinging to this small self. Self-importance leads to attachment, aggression, jealousy, arrogance, and stupidity, causing harmful actions whose results return to us as our current difficulties.
Less ego equals more peace; more ego equals more tension. Self-importance is the source of all interpersonal problems, making us jealous, competitive, arrogant, pushy, demanding, and hard to please. These qualities are contagious, causing tension to build within relationships and creating walls between people.
Everything positive in our lives has been a gift from other sentient beings. Without others, we wouldn't exist. Our bodies began as an egg and sperm donated by our parents, giving our consciousness a home. Our mothers provided a place to grow, nourished us with their own food, endured pain to bring us into the world, then continued caring for us without asking for anything in return.
Without our parents' and teachers' love, affection, and instruction, we wouldn't have developed into functioning adults or learned even the most basic words for communicating with the world. Everything we have-our bodies, possessions, knowledge, wisdom, skills, personality traits-all come from the kindness of others.
Even our "enemies" offer special opportunities for growth. As Patrul Rinpoche taught, suffering's outcome is better than happiness's, since happy times make us forgetful while painful times develop renunciation and appreciation for the spiritual path.
Capítulo 7
The Four Special Practices for Transformation
Beyond relative and absolute bodhicitta, four special practices help us transform difficulties. First is accumulating merit through actions aligned with bodhicitta. When misfortune strikes, recognizing it as the result of our own negative actions motivates us to focus on others instead. Any practice oriented toward becoming enlightened for others generates tremendous merit.
Jamgon Kongtrul highlights a particularly powerful approach: making supplications to cease all hopes and fears. We adopt the attitude: "If I am to suffer, bless me to suffer, so I may learn what I need. May illness keep me from being caught in life's superficial glitter and develop my renunciation of self-importance." This courageous surrender frees us from the bondage of self-attachment.
The second practice is confession, beginning with using critical intelligence to connect our current adversity with past self-centered actions. We develop healthy regret-not guilt-acknowledging our mistakes came from removable ignorance, not intrinsic badness. We then resolve to counteract self-clinging and increase bodhicitta.
The third practice involves offering tormas (offering cakes) to "demons" who trouble us, fearlessly asking them to bring more difficulty to destroy our self-clinging. The fourth practice is offering tormas to dakinis and protectors-powerful beings committed to helping practitioners-acknowledging our interdependence rather than maintaining a prideful "cowboy mentality" of refusing help.
Both good and bad circumstances have equal potential to confuse us. With good fortune, we can become self-absorbed, wondering if we deserve it or if it makes us special. With adversity, we may react with tension and struggle. The key is to train our minds to apply lojong practices immediately to whatever arises.
Our reactions to experiences are like telegraphs sending the same message: increase care for others and decrease self-importance. This message has been coming to us since beginningless time, but we've missed it through innocent but ignorant self-concern.
When we feel disturbance, tension, or lack of joy, it reminds us to overcome self-clinging and increase care for others. By examining our reactions, we'll likely find their source in self-cherishing or self-protection. Once we recognize this pattern, we can embrace the universal self of all sentient beings instead.
Capítulo 8
The Five Strengths: A Framework for Life and Death
To progress along the bodhisattva path, we need clear instructions that provide structure for our lives. The Seven Points text offers a concise framework through the five strengths.
The first strength is motivation-the driving force that initiates our practice, keeps us on track through obstacles, and ultimately brings us to fruition. Like a young gymnast's unwavering vision of reaching the Olympics, our motivation to develop bodhicitta must persist through challenges. The Buddha's methods work gradually and peacefully, requiring only our own mind. As we progress, we begin to "fall in love" with all sentient beings, experiencing the joy that comes from decreased self-centeredness.
The second strength is familiarization-the repeated practice that builds confidence and skill. Just as gymnasts must practice countless repetitions despite their background or status, we must repeatedly apply lojong practices, especially when disturbing emotions arise. Unlike becoming an athlete or professional, becoming a proficient lojong practitioner requires only determination, not special talents or circumstances.
The third strength is virtuous seeds, or merit. Every action performed with the intention to benefit others generates merit that propels us along the path. From shrine offerings to workplace interactions, from parenting to watching television-any activity can become meritorious when done with bodhicitta motivation.
The fourth strength is remorse-not self-judgment or guilt, but objective analysis of our mistakes. When we struggle to practice bodhicitta, we should examine what's happening as if observing someone else, connecting the dots to see how experiences and emotions interconnect. This analysis reveals how negative patterns stem from self-clinging, naturally increasing our vigilance against it.
The fifth strength is aspiration-making sincere prayers to reduce self-importance and increase bodhicitta. By contemplating the qualities of buddhas and bodhisattvas and reciting prayers sincerely, we connect with their enlightened minds.
When facing death, we apply the same five strengths but in a different order. First comes virtuous seeds-the accumulation of merit. Rather than clinging to possessions that will only create attachment and hinder a peaceful death, we should intentionally distribute our assets while still alive. Giving at least half to charitable causes creates merit that extends beyond our family circle.
The second strength is aspiration. Since we'll leave this world "like a hair being pulled out of butter" with nothing but our naked mind, we should aspire for our mind to be in the best possible condition-full of bodhicitta and love.
Third is remorse. Rather than taking dying personally, we should recognize it as a universal process affecting all beings. This is the time to let go of grudges and see how our suffering results from attachment to a small self.
The fourth strength is motivation. Having established bodhicitta during life, we should increase it even more at death. Strong motivation protects us from being scattered by suffering and helps overcome the shock of dying.
Finally, familiarization means using practices we've already learned. Through tonglen practice, we can take on the suffering of countless others who are dying and load it directly onto our "fearer," our small self. This causes self-importance to melt away, bringing tremendous relief.
Capítulo 9
Measuring Progress: Signs of Authentic Practice
The fifth point provides clear benchmarks for evaluating our progress in mind training practice. These measures help us recognize when we're truly internalizing the teachings rather than merely performing them superficially.
All authentic dharma practice aims at a single point: liberating ourselves from self-importance, the source of all suffering. Like a photographer who visualizes the image before taking the shot, we should begin with a clear understanding of our goal. If our practice helps us step out of the small self, it's aligned with dharma's intention. If not, it has little value.
Rather than addressing individual disturbing emotions separately, lojong efficiently targets their common source-grasping to the small self. This requires sitting quietly to notice what's always present beneath attachment, jealousy, or confusion. It's like locating the spring that feeds a pool of water.
When self-importance persists, all other practices ultimately fail to free us from suffering. We might temporarily calm our minds, but if the root remains, the branches grow back. Lojong's power comes from addressing the poisonous root directly.
When your lojong practice starts bearing fruit-fewer disturbing emotions, decreased self-attachment, growing bodhicitta-others may notice and admire you. This slogan warns against relying on such external validation. People's opinions are fickle, changing from praise to scorn overnight, and they can't detect your hidden motives.
External witnesses are unreliable indicators of genuine progress. The main witness to trust is your own mind-only you know if your practice is authentic or performative, if your compassion is genuine or calculated. Your mind has the power to reveal itself through honest self-examination.
In lojong practice, we welcome everything, even what we conventionally avoid. With methods for working with whatever arises, nothing needs to be pushed away, allowing us to remain cheerful and unconcerned about the future. Our happiness has no weak points.
True proficiency in lojong means practicing without missing a beat, regardless of what arises. Rather than shrinking into self-centered reactions when faced with difficulty, the accomplished practitioner naturally responds with bodhicitta, seeing challenges as opportunities to enhance practice.
Capítulo 10
Mind Training Commitments: Protecting the Practice
We often think of being uncommitted as freedom and commitments as chains. But we commit to things too important for halfhearted relationships. When we have one foot in and one foot out, we become vulnerable to confusion and temptation.
Commitments provide protective energy against negative mental forces that can overwhelm us if unchecked. Like digging a trench to prevent flooding, lojong commitments safeguard us from floods of mental negativity. However, these commitments aren't about becoming dogmatic or puritanical-they're about increasing our internal peace and joy.
The first principle is staying committed to working against self-importance while increasing love for others. We start with family and expand outward with genuine motivation. This requires identifying self-centered attitudes to decrease them while increasing bodhicitta.
The second principle is not using dharma practice as an excuse for outrageous behavior. Testing our practice through daredevil actions without overcoming inner hopes and fears is harmful. Our practice needs humility and groundedness, working pleasantly with whatever comes rather than creating artificial situations to show off.
The third principle is being impartial in lojong practice, especially tonglen. We shouldn't practice only with people we respect or are close to, but with everyone we encounter-humans, animals, even elements. All forms of bias come from clinging to the small self.
This slogan summarizes all lojong practices: transform your natural self-directed affection toward others. Unlike Western emotional love built on unstable ground and euphoria, bodhisattvas practice "visionary love" based on recognizing the equality of self and other. This more stable love commits to helping others achieve happiness regardless of challenges, bringing joy without focusing on our own happiness.
Our speech is often more problematic than our physical actions, as Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche said: "Speech is the way all our filth comes out." We frequently criticize others' faults or lack of proper dharma practice, sometimes believing we're protecting people or fulfilling our duty.
Before offering "helpful" criticism, check your motivation and ensure the person is open to help. Casual conversations can easily slip into damaging gossip, which we find exciting. When noticing this excitement, Shantideva recommends "being like a log"-staying still until the energy calms down.
Capítulo 11
Guidelines for Daily Practice: Making It Real
Since intention drives all achievement, we must set the highest possible intention on the bodhisattva path-to completely abandon self-importance by working for others' ultimate benefit.
While wishing temporary pleasure for others is noble, our aim should be bringing all beings to irreversible happiness and freedom from suffering. This requires visionary love rather than transient emotions. Bodhisattvas feel powerful love and compassion but focus on deep, lasting commitment that transcends mood fluctuations.
When our motivation joins with visionary love, all activities naturally orient toward helping others-as natural as a swan gliding into water. Everything, even hardships, increases our wisdom and ability to benefit others.
When our bodhicitta wavers amid life's obstacles-relationship difficulties, unjust treatment, or powerful self-centered emotions-we must examine where abandoning our commitment leads. Without bodhicitta, we become more closed, disconnected from our good heart, and potentially worse off than before due to feelings of failure.
We must triumph over obstacles rather than surrender to self-importance. While creating space from difficult people is sometimes necessary, we cannot allow anyone to destroy our bodhisattva nature. Losing care for even one person means abandoning our commitment to all beings and strengthening our tyrannical small self.
Begin each day by setting clear intention rather than rushing into activity. Ask yourself how you'll reduce self-importance and fulfill your vision to benefit others. Put things in perspective by contemplating the countless beings suffering throughout the universe.
End each day with reflection: "How did I spend my time? Was my mind focused more on myself or others? Did I fulfill my morning intentions?" If you did well, rejoice and dedicate the merit for all beings' enlightenment. If your day was negative, don't berate yourself-instead, recognize how self-importance created your regrets, make a simple confession, let it go, and make a joyful aspiration to do better tomorrow.
Both suffering and happiness can derail us from dharma practice. When suffering arises, recognize it as the inevitable result of self-importance and the five poisons. Take responsibility rather than indulging in self-pity, and use your experience to develop compassion by contemplating others in worse situations.
Surprisingly, happiness often presents a greater obstacle than suffering. When life goes well, practitioners may abandon meditation for a "party mentality," especially when practice itself begins producing results. Good fortune-a new relationship, financial windfall, or sudden fame-can lead to excitement that unsettles energy, diminishes mental clarity, and suspends mindfulness.
Capítulo 12
The Practical Path: Training in All Circumstances
The first difficulty is recognizing disturbing emotions as problematic rather than normal. Though we suffer from neuroses like anger and attachment, we often fail to connect them with their root cause-cherishing the small self. Through mindfulness and vigilant introspection, we must establish an "intelligence agency" in our minds to recognize these emotions without suppression or self-disparagement, seeing them as universal experiences arising from confusion.
The second difficulty involves transforming disturbing emotions by applying appropriate remedies. Lojong teachings offer effective practices like tonglen. Study these traditional methods thoroughly before attempting creative approaches, to avoid inadvertently strengthening self-importance.
The third difficulty requires consistent practice until disturbing emotions no longer arise-demanding time, effort and enthusiasm, but entirely possible. Through relative bodhicitta practices, we purify the small self and embrace the universal self of all beings. Then, with absolute bodhicitta, we uproot our ignorant belief in the reality of self, removing the foundation from which neuroses arise.
The three principal causes for progress are: having a spiritual friend who embodies the teachings; cultivating a workable, open mind that's willing to transform rather than just acquire concepts; and creating conducive conditions for practice. When we have these causes, we should cherish them rather than take them for granted, contemplating our good fortune and practicing tonglen for those without such opportunities.
We must maintain our connection with our spiritual friend through yearning and respect, recognizing how they help us complete our evolution beyond mere animal survival. We must preserve our enthusiasm for practice even during painful periods, remembering that lojong transforms suffering into joy. And we must uphold our commitments and sense of decency, maintaining mindfulness of what's right and wrong based not on religious ideas but on how much we focus on others versus our small self.
Never let mindfulness drift away from the three doors of body, speech, and mind. Use your body to care for others' physical needs, your speech to share dharma and comfort those suffering, and your mind to transform self-centeredness into altruism. Since actions originate in the mind, continually training in practices like tonglen will naturally cause all your activities to benefit the world.
Expand your practice to include everyone, not just those easy to love. Ironically, we often need the greatest patience with those closest to us. When too familiar with people, we take them for granted and become less tolerant. Rather than equating familiarity with friendliness, maintain politeness and respect with everyone, especially those you know best.
Rather than requiring perfect conditions, lojong thrives on challenges. "Obstacles" often become the greatest aids in overcoming self-importance. We can make faster progress bearing with difficulties than living in comfort. The difficult people in our daily lives-children, spouses, roommates-provide ample opportunity to practice.
Capítulo 13
The Path of Integration: Making Mind Training Your Life
We often leave dharma teachings in our knowledge bank without integrating them into our lives. True integration happens when we face challenges and respond with the exchange of self and other rather than habitual self-importance. When tonglen becomes our familiar way of being, the entire path unfolds naturally.
This difficult modern age becomes the perfect setting for spiritual growth. By applying lojong teachings repeatedly until they become part of us, we transform ourselves and can help others-first those closest to us, through example, then words, then explicit guidance.
Like small lamps illuminating our immediate surroundings rather than trying to be suns, we affect the world steadily and reliably, avoiding the risk of ego taking over. One lamp helps illuminate others, creating wider and wider circles of transformation-an incredible outcome within our reach.
Having endured countless eons of suffering in samsara, we finally have teachings that can liberate us. We must recognize this precious opportunity and prioritize what matters most. Of all possible long-term plans, becoming enlightened to free all sentient beings is supreme.
Inconsistency in practice undermines our progress and self-confidence. When we alternate between intense dedication and complete neglect of our spiritual goals, we can't advance. Self-satisfaction is never appropriate for lojong-there's no vacation from working with our mind. Mind training requires nothing external, not even a cushion. All we need is our mind, which we always have.
Half-hearted practice won't eradicate self-importance. Understanding how lojong works gives us the confidence to commit fully. As Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche taught, "It's important to practice, but first you need to learn how to practice." When we grasp the benefits and effectiveness of lojong, we'll naturally train like Olympic athletes-exerting ourselves outwardly while keeping our minds completely in sync with the practice inwardly.
As Shantideva said, "When you treat yourself to a good meal, you don't expect yourself to thank yourself." Letting go of the small self is its own reward. Practice dharma without expecting praise or recognition. Do good without attaching strings, or you'll become disillusioned with bodhicitta practice. When we stop expecting anything from others, we become less neurotically entangled, with nothing to gain or lose, finding ourselves increasingly in a state of peace.
