How does "Train with the two truths throughout all activities" work?

The two-truths teaching prevents two errors: nihilism (nothing matters because it’s all empty) and fixation (this situation is permanently, solidly terrible). Holding both simultaneously creates the cognitive flexibility to take situations seriously while not being devastated by them — a form of cognitive defusion from one’s own worst appraisals.

How does "Drive all blames into one" work?

The Lojong slogan "drive all blames into one" points to the habitual pattern of self-protection: when things go wrong, the habitual mind seeks an external cause to blame. The practice is to redirect inquiry inward — not to self-flagellate, but to notice the role of ego-grasping, self-centered expectation, or reactivity that contributed to the situation. This interrupts the blame cycle that maintains interpersonal conflict.

How does "Practise with the unexpected" work?

Contemplative traditions observe that the value of training lies in its application when it’s hardest — not just in formal meditation. Unexpected disruptions produce a spike in reactivity that temporarily overrides deliberate thought; training in response to that spike means interrupting the automatic reactivity loop and choosing a more considered response. Over repetitions, the window of reactivity narrows.

How does "Don’t make gods into demons" work?

Lojong warns against what Chögyam Trungpa called "spiritual materialism" — using a practice meant to dissolve ego as a new trophy for ego. When practice becomes a source of identity, comparison, or judgment ("I’m more mindful than others"), the compassion mechanism is hijacked. The slogan is a circuit-breaker: does your practice open you toward others or close you in superiority?

How does "Train in the three difficulties" work?

Chekawa’s three difficulties are a learning model for changing habitual mental patterns: (1) recognising the habit in the moment, (2) choosing not to act on it, and (3) making that choice automatic through repetition. Each difficulty is genuinely hard, which is why the teaching names them explicitly — so practitioners don’t expect the transformation to happen suddenly and abandon practice when it doesn’t.

How does "Always abide by the three principles" work?

Lojong’s three principles of practice — maintaining commitment, abandoning public virtue-signalling, and applying practice impartially — target the social distortions that corrupt transformative practice. Showing off disrupts the non-egoic orientation; selective practice (only with people you like) preserves the very attachments that produce suffering. Impartial practice trains the neurological equalising of all people’s worth in attention and care.

Atisha / Chekawa — Lojong

How does Lojong mind training change how you relate to difficulty and other people?

The 59 slogans and their practical application to everyday adversity and compassion

Short answer

Lojong is a Tibetan Buddhist mind-training system, codified by Atisha and later Chekawa, built around 59 slogans that train the mind to transform adversity into awakening and to cultivate compassion for all beings including oneself. Evidence is primarily contemplative-clinical; some practices (loving-kindness, tonglen-adjacent exercises) have been studied, but the full system is practitioner tradition rather than a clinical protocol.

Lojong mind training emerged in 11th-century Tibet as a practice for turning difficulties — illness, conflict, failure, death — into occasions for spiritual and character development. The system is built around short slogans meant to be memorised and recalled in the moment when habitual reactions would otherwise take over. The practices below distil the most practically applicable slogans, with honest notes on evidence.

The practices (7)

Why it works

Tonglen deliberately reverses the habitual impulse to reject pain and cling to pleasure. By intentionally visualising taking in suffering on the in-breath, the meditator trains the neural association between attention-to-pain and compassionate response, rather than aversion. The out-breath — sending relief — activates the prosocial orientation and the sense of agency that comes with giving rather than merely enduring.

How to do it

1Sit quietly and bring to mind something difficult — your own pain or someone else’s.
2On each in-breath, visualise breathing in that suffering as a dark, heavy cloud.
3On each out-breath, send out lightness, relief, or well-being to those who suffer.
4Start with yourself if the practice feels too abstract; then expand to others you care about, neutral people, and finally those who are difficult.

Evidence

Clinical practice

Tonglen is a compassion meditation; loving-kindness and compassion meditations have RCT support for reducing self-criticism, increasing positive affect, and improving prosocial behaviour. Tonglen itself has not been studied separately from loving-kindness (metta).

Honest caveat: Research is on compassion meditation generally; tonglen specifically — with its focus on intentionally taking in suffering — may not map perfectly onto loving-kindness studies.

— Hofmann, Grossman & Hinton (2011), loving-kindness and compassion meditation, Clinical Psychology Review

Common mistake: Treating tonglen as a visualisation exercise to perform rather than a genuine turning toward pain — the effect comes from actually contacting the discomfort, not simulating it.

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