Bob Schwartz

Mindfulness is a growing movement and a good one. It continues to help many to improve themselves and their lives, reducing stress, enabling calm, increasing focus, and developing an overall sense of well-being. Much better than mindlessness.

Finding your mind is an essential step. But once you are there, what are you going to do? Different religious, spiritual, philosophical and psychological traditions offer different recommendations, some of which are expressly related to mind and mindfulness. Buddhism is one of the traditions that puts your mind at the absolute center. Once you have found your mind, the next step is to transform it for the better.

The Dalai Lama has frequently taught about Eight Verses for Training the Mind, a Tibetan Buddhist text by Geshe Langri Tangpa (1054-1123). The following is from The Dalai Lama’s Book of Transformation:

GENERATING THE MIND FOR ENLIGHTENMENT

For those who admire the spiritual ideals of the Eight Verses on Transforming the Mind it is helpful to recite the following verses for generating the mind for enlightenment. Practicing Buddhists should recite the verses and reflect upon the meaning of the words, while trying to enhance their altruism and compassion. Those of you who are practitioners of other religious traditions can draw from your own spiritual teachings, and try to commit yourselves to cultivating altruistic thoughts in pursuit of the altruistic ideal.

With a wish to free all beings
I shall always go for refuge
to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha
until I reach full enlightenment.
Enthused by wisdom and compassion,
today in the Buddha’s presence
I generate the Mind for Full Awakening
for the benefit of all sentient beings.

As long as space endures,
as long as sentient beings remain,
until then, may I too remain
and dispel the miseries of the world.

In conclusion, those who, like myself, consider themselves to be followers of Buddha, should practice as much as we can. To followers of other religious traditions, I would like to say, ‘Please practice your own religion seriously and sincerely.’ And to non-believers, I request you to try to be warm-hearted. I ask this of you because these mental attitudes actually bring us happiness. As I have mentioned before, taking care of others actually benefits you.

Continuing on this path, you will also begin to appreciate the value of human life, how precious it is, and the fact that as human beings we are capable of reflecting on these questions and following a spiritual practice. Then you will really appreciate a point emphasized again and again by many great Tibetan masters: that we should not waste the opportunity offered to us in this life, because human life is so precious and so difficult to achieve. As life is valuable it is important to do something meaningful with it right now, since, by its very nature, it is also transient. This shows how you can bring all the elements of the various spiritual practices together so that they have a cumulative effect on your daily practice.

The Dalai Lama’s Book of Transformation