བློ་སྦྱོང་ཚིགས་བརྒྱད་མའི་བཀའ་ཁྲིད། ༧ རྒྱལ་དབང་ཀརྨ་པ་མཆོག Eight Verses of Training the Mind by 17th Gyalwang Karmapa January 11 - 12, 2014
 Monlam Pavilion, Bodhgaya Language: Tibetan and English The  Gyalwang Karmapa teaches on The Eight Verses of Training the Mind, one  of the most beloved texts on mind training (lojong) that distills its  very essence. The author, Geshe Langri Thangpa, was a famous Kadampa  teacher, who was also called, “the Serious One,” or “Gloomy Face.” Due  to his compassionate focus on the suffering of living beings in samsara,  he hardly ever smiled. “Why are sentient beings so valuable?  Because in order to achieve awakening we need bodhicitta, and in order  to generate bodhicitta we need compassion. And because compassion must  be generated with respect to sentient beings, sentient beings are  infinitely precious and necessary for our awakening.” 

Without  other beings, the Gyalwang Karmapa explained, we would not be able to  generate the bodhicitta that is the root of the path to awakening.  Therefore, without other beings, we could in fact not achieve awakening  ourselves. What is Lojong? The core of mind training, the  Karmapa explained, is to practice seeing oneself and others as equal and  then to exchange oneself for them. Having studied these instructions in  the main texts and practiced their teachings, Langri Thangpa condensed  all of them into these eight verses. Usually mind training does  not depend on the length of the text but the concise presentation of the  key points. We might read many texts and their commentaries, the  Karmapa commented, but if we cannot blend these teachings with our mind,  if we do not internalize them, they will not benefit us. The Kadampa  lineage in general emphasizes practice over study; its teachers focused  on experience rather than the intellect. Extracting the essential  meaning of all the Buddha’s teachings, they put these into practice  without mistake and without leaving anything left out. Each of Langri  Thangpa’s verses gives one of these key instructions, as we shall see.