Change Your Mind, Change Your Life

Transform life’s difficult moments into opportunities for growth with this clear and direct guide to Tibetan lojong, or mind training.​

Take the Tibetan Buddhist approach to mind training with lojong, a practice of simple contemplations and pithy “slogans” to train the mind in enlightened compassion, or bodhichitta. A centuries old, time-tested method, lojong remains readily applicable to daily life. 

One of the most essential lojong texts is The Seven Points of Mind Training, a series of slogans composed by Tibetan master Geshe Chekawa Yeshe Dorje (1102–76). In this straightforward guide to The Seven Points, the renowned Buddhist teacher Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo unpacks each of Chekawa’s lojong slogans and illuminates their relevance to modern life. Jetsunma’s teachings will allow you to:  

• Discover a wellspring of compassion to guide you in your daily life; 
• Gain a new understanding on core Buddhist concepts like the preciousness of human life, impermanence, karma, and rebirth;
• Establish or develop a meditation practice for both tranquility and insight into the nature of mind;  
• Work with the totality of your life as an opportunity for spiritual practice and growth—even the most difficult experiences of adversity, illness, and despair.

“The Seven-Point Mind-Training is one of my favorite texts. It ‘saved my life,’ so to speak, because it taught me how to deal with whatever life presents. When we practice these teachings with the help of Jetsunma’s clear commentary, our self-confidence grows as we learn to abandon blaming others for our problems and instead transform adversity into the path to full awakening. Our mind becomes calmer, more compassionate, and wiser, enabling us to make a positive contribution to the lives of people around us and to society in general.”
—Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, author of Don’t Believe Everything You Think and Good KarmaJETSUNMA TENZIN PALMO was raised in London and became a Buddhist while still in her teens. At the age of twenty she traveled to India, becoming one of the first Westerners to be ordained as a Buddhist nun. The international bestseller Cave in the Snow chronicles her twelve years of seclusion in a remote cave. Deeply concerned with the plight of Buddhist nuns, she established Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery in India. In 2008 His Holiness the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa, head of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage, gave her the rare title of Jetsunma (Venerable Master).