Cultivating Compassion
We are all looking for simple, practical ways to nurture our own inner goodness and find the peace and courage to live well in the face of a world full of stress, anxiety and disconnect
This online course presents Geshe Chekawa’s summation of the Tibetan Buddhist guidelines for living a compassionate life, The Seven Points of Mind Training.
These lojong (mind training) teachings have guided practitioners for more than a thousand years. Chekawa’s pithy slogans open the way for each of us to develop our own compassionate nature and apply it in everyday life. They offer a vital practical antidote to despair and despondency.
At the core of this course are video recordings of Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche’s comprehensive commentary on The Seven Points of Mind Training, given in 2018. These teachings are accompanied by guided practices that bring this commentary to life.
Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche, one of Rigpa’s Spiritual Directors, is an outstanding meditation teacher. She is known for her penetrating wisdom and humour; conveying the Buddhist teachings in a concise and lively manner, enriched with personal anecdotes of particular relevance to the everyday life of the modern, fast-paced world.
The course has been deliberately designed to be slow and spacious.
If you wish, this will allow study of optional textual commentaries from other masters, contemporary and past. Explicitly referenced during the course are: Ringu Tulku Rinpoche’s Mind Training; Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche’s The Great Path of Awakening; and Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche’s The Practice of Lojong: Cultivating Compassion through Training the Mind. All demonstrate the profound benefits of studying and practising Lojong.
Ringu Tulku Rinpoche is renowned for his ability to transmit the most complicated teachings in an accessible way, infused with warmth and humour. A master of the Kagyu Order, he was trained in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism under great masters including His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa and His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. He has authored several books on Buddhism, including the Lazy Lama series and has taught at Rigpa’s annual retreat.
In Mind Training, he begins the chapter entitled “The Lojong Tradition” with the following.
“Mind Training comes directly from the Buddha and has been passed down to this day in an unbroken line. It was originally brought to Tibet from India in the eleventh century by the great Indian master Atisha Dipamkara (A.D. 982-1054).”
He goes on to say:
“The teachings of Buddhism are so vast and complicated that it would be impossible to study them all. Lojong contains, in a condensed form, the essence of all Buddhist thought. Our prospects in other traditional meditation methods depend to some extent on our individual level of ability but mind training is worthwhile for everyone and enriching in every situation.”
In the translator’s introduction to The Great Path of Awakening, we are told that Jamgon Kongtrul (1813 – 1899) produced five major works, known as The Five Treasuries, which “embrace all Tibetan learning and constitute one of the greatest contributions of the religious revival in eastern Tibet, the Ri-me movement” and that “His …influence on buddhism was enormous”.
He was one of many teachers “inspired or urged by their students to write further” on the subject of The Seven Points of Mind Training. and “he likely welcomed the opportunity to write on a highly regarded teaching that had, by his time, been assimilated by all schools of Buddhism in Tibet”.
In one translation of his subsequent commentary, he is quoted as saying:
“…we should strive only for the state of completely perfected buddhahood. There are no methods to effect this attainment other than those which rely on two forms of meditation: relative bodhicitta, which is training the mind in love and compassion, and ultimate bodhicitta, which is resting evenly in a non-discursive state free from conceptual elaborations.”
Kongtrul quotes the great Nagarjuna:
“If the rest of humanity and I
Wish to attain unsurpassable awakening,
The basis for this is bodhicitta
As stable as the King of Mountains:
Compassion, which touches everything,
And pristine wisdom, which does not rely on duality.”
From the early 1980s onwards, Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche was a pioneer in bringing Tibetan Buddhism to Australia and a strong advocate of non-sectarianism. He taught extensively on many aspects of Buddhist psychology and philosophy, comparative religion, and Buddhist and Western thought.
This course is open to all, but does assume some familiarity with meditation and the Buddhist understanding of interdependence.
This course takes a personal, intimate approach to working with these teachings so numbers will be limited to a maximum of 25 participants.
Online
Saturday mornings, third Saturday of the month
10.30am – 12.30pm AEDT (12:30am CET, 6:30pm Fri US East, 3:30pm Fri US West)
21 February; 21 March; 16 May; 20 June; 18 July; 15 August; 19 September; 21 November; 19 December 2026 and extending some way into 2027.
(There will not be sessions in April & October 2026).
$20, concession $10, free for Rigpa subscribers
