Training the Mind and Transforming Your World: Moral Phenomenology in the Tibetan Buddhist Lojong Traditio

by Jessica Locke

Philosophy Department,

Loyola University Maryland,

Baltimore, MD, USA

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the moral-psychological stakes of Jay Garfield’s reading of Buddhist ethics as moral phenomenology and applies that thesis to the pedagogical mechanisms of the Tibetan Buddhist lojong (“Mind Training”) tradition. I argue that moral phenomenology requires that the practitioner work on

a part of her subjectivity not ordinarily accessible to agential action: the phenomenological structures that condition experience. This makes moral phenomenology a highly ambitious ethical project. I turn to lojong as an example of a Buddhist practice that claims to accomplish this ambitious task. As a

training toward the ethical ideal of bodhicitta (“awakening mind”), lojong utilizes practices of meditation and contemplation to disrupt the habitual, affective responses that arise from the conventional phenomenological orientation to the world, replacing them with imagined responses of radically compassionate altruism. This ultimately inculcates a transformation of the phenomenological structures that underlie both ethical action and conscious experience, fulfilling the aim of moral phenomenology.

KEYWORDS Buddhist ethics; Lojong; mind training; moral phenomenology; Tibetan Buddhism; bodhicitta

Introduction This article has two related aims: first, to tease out the implications of Jay Garfield’s reading of Buddhist ethics as “moral phenomenology” (2010, 2015), and, second, to analyze the pedagogical mechanisms of the Tibetan Buddhist lojong (“Mind-Training”) tradition as a heuristic for

understanding the highly ambitious project of moral-phenomenological training.1 Building upon Garfield’s moral phenomenology thesis, I examine what this ethical project requires of the Buddhist practitioner. Moral-phenomenological self-transformation requires that the practitioner apply her ethical agency

to an aspect of her own subjectivity that does not ordinarily fall within the scope of ethical action: the historically sedimented style of her perception. That is, moral phenomenology seems to require that the “subject-active” engage with the “subject-passive.” This project presentsadistinctivechallenge:inasmuchastheseamlessnessofthesedimented,historical life-world sets the very terms for a person’s actions, how could it become an object of

CONTACT Jessica Locke jelocke@loyola.edu 1“Lojong” is a phonetic rendering of the original Tibetan. In the Wylie transliteration scheme of Tibetan script, the term is spelled blo sbyong. With the exceptionof this term, lojong, and the name of the meditationpractice, tonglen, I will leave allotherTibetantermsinthestandardWyliespelling,whichmostcloselyapproximatesthelettersusedinTibetan,rather than rendering each term phonetically.

COMPARATIVE AND CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY 2018, VOL. 10, NO. 3, 251–263 https://doi.org/10.1080/17570638.2018.1531468

action, as the very thing that the active subject attempts to revise in order to transform herself? Through what kinds of practices can the historical

sedimentation of one’s lifeworld be known as such, much less revised? To understandthe Buddhist account of how an ethical project of thismagnitude might work, I turn to the lojong tradition, analyzing lojong to illustrate the normative angle of Buddhist ethics qua moral phenomenology. Lojong claims to train its practitioners toward the ethical ideal of bodhicitta (Sanskrit: “awakening mind”), an altruistic intention to be of benefit to others.2 The Seven-Point Mind Training, a paragon of the lojong genre, exemplifies this ideal with thorough instructions toward the cultivation of bodhicitta. Through my exegesis of the Seven-Point Mind Training, I will argue that the moral-phenomenological pedagogy of lojong targets the affective polarities of our life-world – the

waysthatcertainphenomenaappeartous,howtheyattractandrepelus,andhowweperceive them as relevant or irrelevant to our projects. This targeting takes the form not of intellectual argumentation, but rather proceeds through an experiential, experimental engagement with the structures of our perception. In doing so,

this lojong text takes aim at the primary perceptual structure problematized by Buddhist ethics: the dualistic structure through which we have imputed the existence of a self, which gives rise to the affective orientation of self-cherishing. Through practices of contemplation and meditation, lojong thus aims

to transform the very structure through which we have a world. The Task of Moral Phenomenology Garfield frames the project of Buddhist moral phenomenology by emphasizing that Buddhism as a whole is driven by the aim of providing a solution to the pervasive suffering of the human condition, and that the origin of suffering is rooted in ignorance.

Themostfundamentalmanifestationofthatignoranceliesinourfailuretoapprehendthe interdependent, impermanent nature of the self and the world, and our concomitant projection of the fiction of a permanent, intrinsically real self where there is not one. This, in turn, leads us to experience the world through a dualistic paradigm of self and other,andtoanorientationtowardtheworldcharacterizedasself-cherishing–anattitude of self-concern and privileging of

one’s own interests over and against the interest of all others. Self-cherishing thus establishes a polarized phenomenal field, structuring our world such that whatever we experience comes to us through a prism of self-interest, skewing the meanings and values of our world according to our projects. In this field, phenomenaaregivenovertousaccordingtotheaffectivevaluationsthatourself-cherishing assigns to them. Buddhist ethics therefore springs from this most

basic of all Buddhist teachings: we are suffering because we have wrongly apprehended the nature of our own selfhood and of the world generally, and it is the most pressing ethical task of our lives to rectify this error. Buddhist moral phenomenology responds to this by calling us to transform that orientation, effectively casting perception itself as an ethical issue. By pursuing this mandate of radical phenomenological revision, moral phenomenology constitutes a notable

2More precisely, bodhicitta (Tibetan: byang chub kyi sems) names the intention to attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, rather than to relieve one’s own suffering exclusively. I leave the term in its untranslated Sanskrit because usual renderings in English, such as “awakening mind” or “mind of enlightenment,” do not capture the actual meaning of this important and nuanced term.

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innovation of classical phenomenology itself, which traditionally is characterized as a descriptive method. In moral-phenomenological terms, we can say that self-grasping causes us to stylize our world – to make it conform to our own habits of perception. We perceive the world, but most importantly we feel

the world, apprehending it through a lens of concepts that tells us not only what a thing is but discloses its affective significance as a thing worthy of attraction, revulsion or indifference. For example, an omnivore would likely perceive a grilled steak as a source of nourishment and delight. To a hardcore animal rights activist, however, it is toxic – morally, environmentally, and even nutritionally abhorrent. The difference in projects between an omnivore

and a PETA activist produce different perceptions of this particular object. To both, it is recognizable as a steak, of course, but the meaning – the affective weight of the thing – is structured by their differing projects. Perceived objects call to each of us in specific ways; in this example, the style of our perception grounds the kinds of choices we make with regard to the moral status of eating animals, and even whether we regard such a choice as a

moral question at all.3 Merleau-Ponty tells us that “the essence of consciousness is to provide itself with one or many worlds, to make its own thoughts exist in front of itself like things” (MerleauPonty 2012, 132), and he refers to the relationship between subject and object as a “dialogue” that “arranges a world around the subject that speaks to him on the topic of himself and places his own thoughts in the world” (2012, 134). What we have when we have a

world is a rich array of phenomena that push and pull us according to the phenomenological structures that we provide, through which they manifest. The world “speaks to us on the topic of ourselves” not because we live in a solipsistic echo chamber, but because the values and significations that we find in the world are reflections of our own projects and the orientations that proceed from them. From a Buddhist standpoint, self-grasping is the most

fundamental, definitive project of the human condition, and as such it colors all of our perceptions, polarizing the valuations of our milieu according to how they bode for the interests of the self. In that respect, the key issue that moral phenomenology seeks to engage is the way in which our world “speaks to us on the topic of our self-grasping.” Furthermore, and most materially to the Buddhist moral-phenomenological project,

theshapeofthisencounterissubjecttotransformationinthelongterm;althoughitsindividualinstantiationsfeelautomaticandinevitable,thestructureofthatencounterissomething that takes shape over time and is subject to our revision. As such, Buddhist ethics does not amount to an adoption of a value system or a maxim for choosing moral actions, but rather demands a wholesale reworking of our phenomenological rapport with the world and an undoing of the habitual structures

that define and direct our ignorance and suffering. In this way, moral phenomenology entails a profoundly challenging task: turning our attention toward the subjective structures that produce the kind of experience we have of the world and revising them. In other words, it goes far beyond simply naming the ethical ramifications of our styles of perception by asking us to take responsibility for those styles of perception.

3Other examples illustrating the ethical ramifications of perception abound in social psychology, feminist theory, and animal studies. For example, research on implicit racial bias such as that of Dovidio and Gaertner (1986) highlights the degree to which affective valuations are immanent in perception and even decisive to decision-making.

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Doing this is not a straightforward task, however. The structural elements of our subjectivity that produce the qualities of our experience are not at all obvious to us. Husserl describes the life-world (Lebenswelt) as “the world in which we are always already living and which furnishes the ground for all

cognitive performance and all scientific determination” (1973, 41), and he says that it is “always already there, in advance for us, the ‘ground’ of all praxis” (1970, 142). The phenomenological structures of the life-world are those through which we have a world, not the experienced content of that world per se. They give sense and meaning to our experience and are the ground for our thought and action, but not the objects thereof. They are in the

background of our experience, contributing to the overall sense of our world and making it navigable, giving us the foundational intelligibilities of our world without ever announcing themselves as subjective or contingent. So how can we turn our attention to them with the aim of transforming them if they do not present themselves to us as discrete objects of experience? As the “ur-project” that polarizes all of our perception, selfgrasping is baked into

everything that we experience. In moral phenomenology, then, we are challenging the most fundamental, ontological facts that we take to be true about ourselves and the world. Inviewingself-graspingnotasanepistemologicalinevitabilitybutratherasanobjectof possible ethical self-cultivation, the Buddhist ethical project is profoundly ambitious. The malleability of the way we experience the world grounds the basic claim that phenomenological structures can

be objects of ethical action, but simply asserting such malleability still leaves us a long way from understanding how such a regime of phenomenological self-cultivation would work. What makes it possible for the subject to transform herself in this way –to work on the structural aspects of her experience from within those very structures, to turn the subject-active toward the subject-passive as a means of ethical self-cultivation?

Lojong as Moral Phenomenology, Bodhicitta as Phenomenological Project Thelojongtraditionprovidesarichillustrationofthepedagogicalmechanicsthatfacilitate the ambitious task of moral phenomenology. The main currency of its pedagogy lies in bringing to the fore the affects that arise from the self-grasping orientation and reversing them–conjuringacapacitytoaccommodatearesponseoutsidetherangeofthattowhich the practitioner is habituated. The significations and

affective vectors with which our world is invested make themselves evident to us all the time, in the form of the attraction, revulsion or indifference provoked in us by our perceptions of our milieu. In examining and toying with those responses, we are engaging the phenomenological structures from which they arise. Lojong seeks to exploit the fact that the structures through which we have a world are historical – that they are not immutable features of our

subjectivity but rather have come together through the contingencies of our experience.4 Because the world “speaks to us on the topic of our self-grasping,” we can actually use appearances and our responses to them to access the self-grasping that underlies those responses. 4Onemightobjectatthispointthat“transformingourphenomenologicalorientation”soundsmorelikeanepistemological project than an ethical one. I counter that the

Buddhist project is epistemological because it is ethical; it starts with the problem of suffering and finds a path out of that suffering by way of transformation of our way of having a world.

From its inception, lojong has been presented as a practical, accessible training toward bodhicitta, the ethical mandate of Great Vehicle (Sanskrit: Mahāyāna) Buddhism. Inculcating the intention to direct all of one’se fforts – including and especially the pursuit of enlightenment – to the benefit of

sentient beings constitutes a radical project of transforming one’s ethical subjectivity; it takes the practitioner from an orientation of self-cherishing to other-centered altruism. For all their various styles and instructions, what ties the many texts of this genre together is their common pedagogical

orientation of instructing ordinary people – not just master practitioners or scholars – in inculcating this key ethical orientation. The term “lojong” is a compound Tibetan word. “Lo” (blo) has a cognitive valence and can be translated with mind, intellect, intelligence, cognition or conceptual mind. The

word “jong” (sybong) is a conjugation of a verb meaning “to cleanse” and “to purify” as wellas“totrain,”“tocultivate,”and“topractice.”5 Thetraditionissaidtohavebeentransmitted to Tibet from India by the Indian sage AtiśaD īpam  kara in the eleventh century during a time of religious

turmoil; although Buddhism had been in Tibet for more than 200 years, the formalities of religious practice and its doctrinal foundations had broken down.6 The idea behind the introduction of teachings such as lojong was to “reestablish thefaithona firmerfoundation…

[through]thepresentationofthefundamentalsofBuddhism in a manner easily accessible to the clergy and educated laity” (Sweet 1996, 244). This history has philosophical significance: when the Buddhist tradition in Tibet seemed to be fraying, these teachings by Atiśa were meant to “get back to the point.”

Lojong was introduced as a direct and simple way of distilling, clarifying, and refining the central purpose and practice of the Mahāyāna. As such, lojong is not an innovation exactly, but more like an exceptionally practical application of the Mahāyāna ethical view:anaccessible,clear,down-to-earthguidemeanttoeffectaprofoundmoral-phenomenological transformation of one’s inner life. One noted commentary by the

nineteenthcenturyscholarandteacherJamgönKongtrulLodröThayé(‘jammgonkongsprulblogros mtha’ yas) expresses thisevenin its title,MainPathto Enlightenment(byangchubgzhung lam)(2012). The subtitle of the commentary further elaborates that the text is “compiled for ease of access for those of inferior intellect”–in other words, for ordinary kinds of people, not yogic adepts or people of great scholarly training.7 The body of lojong literature is

quite vast, but by far the most well-known lojong root text is the Seven-Point Mind Training, which presents 59 aphorisms attributed to Atiśa that were collected in the twelfth century by the Tibetan scholar Geshe Chekawa Yeshé Dorjé (’chad kha ba ye shes rdo rje). These aphorisms give instruction in two related practices of mind training: two aphorisms offer instruction in a meditation practice called tonglen (gtong len), and the rest are pithy ethical instructions meant for contemplation.

5Traditionally,Buddhistpracticeisoftencharacterizedasaformofpurification,sothemetaphoricalleapbetweentheverb “to purify” and its nominalization as “training” is not a vast one. 6The First Diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet occurred between the seventh and the ninth centuries CE. A pro-Buddhist king, TrisongDetsen,invitedtherenownedmonasticscholar,Śāntaraks ita,andafamedguru,Padmasambhava,to

firmlyestablishBuddhisminTibet.Buddhismbegantodeclineintheninthcentury,duringtheruleofKingLagdharma,whoopposed Buddhism and suppressed it. This period lasted until the eleventh century CE, when King Yeshe Ö brought in a host of teachers and scholars to revive the tradition. Atiśa was among those invited teachers. 7Translatedexcerptsfromthistextaremyown;IthankLowellCookoftheRangjungYesheInstituteinBoudhanath,Nepal, forhiscollaborationinrenderingthem.AnEnglishtranslationofthiscommentarybyKenMcLeodispublishedunderthe title Great Path of Awakening (2000).

In the following two sections, I will treat each of these – the practice of tonglen and the practice of contemplation – in turn. The Phenomenological Significance of Tonglen Practice The meditation practice called tonglen is a key element of lojong in the Seven-Point Mind Training(andapopularpracticeinTibetanBuddhismgenerally).Thispracticeispresented asadirectmethodfor “exchangingselfandother,”akeyantidotetotheself-cherishingattitude. Tonglen is a compound Tibetan word meaning “giving [or sending] and taking.” The

instructionsfortonglenpracticearephrasedasfollows:“Traininthetwo–givingandtaking –alternately./Placethetwoastrideyourbreath”(ChekawaYeshéDorjé2006,83).“Giving” isshorthandforoffering“yourbody,wealth,andallyourvirtues”toothers,sothattheymay serveas“theconditionsforengaginginspiritualpractice”(SéChilbuChökyiGyaltsen2006, 94–95). More specifically, on the instruction of the twelfth-century Tibetan scholar, Sé Chilbu, the practitioner begins by imagining offering all her goods and sources of

wellbeingtoherownmother(afigurewhointheseclassicalBuddhisttextsiscastasunquestionably positive and loveable, not to mention the person to whom one owes their precious human life). The practitioner then extends that love, loyalty, and compassion toward all other sentient beings, offering to them “wealth and roots of virtue…[pledging] to accomplishtheirwelfare,takingthisresponsibilityuponmyself…Givetheseawaywholeheartedly and with no conceptual elaborations” (Sé Chilbu Chökyi Gyaltsen 2006, 95). As for the instruction to “take,” Jamgön Kongtrül instructs practitioners to take on “the various

kindsofsufferingandthesourceofallsuffering,karmaandtheafflictiveemotions.Meditate that all these sufferings come to you, and, if you can, feel intense joy” (Kon-sprul Blo-grosmtha’-yas 2012, 625, emphasis added). That is, the practitioner should not only take on others’ suffering and negative emotions but feel

incredibly happy doing so. This is the apotheosis of the bodhisattva’s altruism; she no longer has any self-centered aversion to suffering. This is what it means to “exchange self and other.” This alternation of sending and taking is done to the rhythm of the breath within the context of sitting meditation:

the “taking” of others’ suffering takes place on the practitioner’s inhalation, and on her exhalation, she “breathes out” her offering of her comforts andadvantages.Thisdetailoftonglenpracticehighlightsthespecialstatusofthebreathasa resourceformoral-

phenomenologicaltransformation:thebreathistheembodiedseatofour being-in-the-world. As the most basic source and expression of life, the breath is the site of our most primal relation with the world. It is the most constant aspect of our embodiment

andprovidesacrucialreferencepointforourhowwenavigateourmilieu.Thequalityofour breathoftenconvergeswithamood,thewayinwhichweareattunedtoagivenmoment;in amomentofpanic,ourbreathisshortandlabored,whereasinsafetyandrepose,thebreath is long and languid. When we are short of breath, we lose our orientation,

becoming confused. When we need to calm ourselves, we take a deep breath. The breath usually operates “inthebackground,” outsidetheexplicitcontrolorconsiderationofattentionalfocus,butit canbebroughttoourattentionandmanipulated.8 Payingattentiontothebreathbringsthe

8Variousmeditationand transpersonal psychotherapeutictechniquesemploybreathworkfor this reason.For example, the yogic technique of prān āyāma (Sanskrit: “breath control”) is intended to channel the flow of prān ā, or cosmic life force, facilitating a deep meditative state. A modern example of breathwork practice is the use of techniques such as circular breathingor “fast and full” breathingin clinical,body-centered psychotherapy “for thepurposeof promoting healingon

practitionerintoamoreintimaterelationwiththetextureofamomentofembodiedexperience,whilemanipulatingthebreathcanbeanexerciseinsubtlychangingthetextureofthat experience. Notably,tonglenisnotframedasamethodforaccomplishingatemporaryfeelingstate, such as dialing back a stress response or even attaining a state of meditative absorption. The kind of change wrought by tonglen practice is meant to unseat the fixed categories of “self” and “other.” That is, it does not treat certain emotional or physiological states but rather engages with the deeper moral-phenomenological structures that give rise to them. The breath is a useful tool for accomplishing this because, while it is an essential aspect of our orientation to the world, its terms are not altogether fixed: when we

breathe, the interiority of the body shows itself not to be so “interior” but in fact always taking in what is “outside” and extending beyond the spatiality of the self in turn. In thisvein, DrewLeder arguesthatthe breathacts as a “hinge,” toggling betweenthe voluntary and the involuntary, the visible and the invisible, inside and outside, self and other, conscious and unconscious (Leder forthcoming). He further notes that, as a compassion

training that hinges between self and other, tonglen dissolves the binary that is the ground of self-cherishing and reinforces a realization of selflessness and interconnectedness with others and the world. From a moral-phenomenological standpoint, I would add to Leder’s reading that the breathwork in tonglen hinges upon the ambiguity of the self-other relation together with the affective overlay through which that relation is disclosed. Here we might recall

Jamgön Kongtrül’s radical instruction to “feel intense joy” upon reversing the directionality of one’s habitual clinging and aversion. It is one thing to say that one ought to feel joy in taking on others’ suffering by convincing oneself that doing so is ultimately good eveniftheexperienceitselfispainful,asamartyrmightdo.ThisisnotKongtrül’sinstruction, however. He is saying that we should practice feeling pleased by an experience – or the idea of an experience – that is, by all conventional standards, not enjoyable. The practitioner is tasked with uprooting the way she experiences misfortune, attack, sickness, loss – all the vicissitudes of life that, by conventional logic, she strenuously avoids. This practice invokes and then disrupts the most basic affective valuations that stem from the conventional experience of selfhood and the self-cherishing attitude that arises

from it. According to Buddhist moral psychology, everything we perceive is laced with the primary afflictive emotions of passion, aggression, and ignorance that spring from our deluded, dualistic orientation to the world. Tonglen turns the hinge of the dualistic structure that grounds that experience, pulling in that toward which the practitioner is ordinarily aggressive and sending outward all the objects of her passion. Köngtrul also includes a simple

visualization in this meditation practice such that on the inhalation, the practitioner imagines that the negativity that she inhales comes in the form of dark, smelly muck, and that the comfort and joy that she exhales leaves her in the form of bright light. This use of imaginative faculties in visualization practice is yet another way to access the practitioner’s non-discursive valuations to undermine the habitual ways in which she is repelled from or drawn to

them. Visualization is a way for the practitioner to distill the kinds of affective polarities that come from her projects, four levels of human functioning: the cognitive, the emotional, the physical, and the spiritual” (Young, Cashwell, and Giordano 2010, 113).

bringing themto mindin amore rarefiedform thanshe might find them inher quotidian discourse.Throughvisualization,shecanworkwithaheightened,amplifiedmanifestation of her phenomenological habits rather than specific phenomena that are laden

with that affect. Theskillfulmeansof thepracticeliesin promptingthepractitionerto haveanaffective experience that goes against her existing habituation. The conventional values through which she knows the objects of her clinging and aversion begin to lose their primacy as the only way to apprehend them, but the point is not simply to change one’s valuations but rather to underscore the fact that those valuations themselves are not intrinsically established. This

is why the twentieth-century Tibetan lama, Shamar Rinpoche, explains tonglen practice as “an incredible shortcut” in cultivating bodhicitta (Shamar Rinpoche 2009, 58); it demonstrates in an oblique way that the self-other dualism upon which we operate is not necessarily real and ought not be the driver of how we navigate the world.

The Phenomenological Significance of Contemplation of Aphorisms Therest ofthe aphorisms inGesheChekawa’scompilationpresentpithyethical teachings intended for intensive contemplation practice. Contemplation involves meditative repetition of an aphorism until it has “mixed with the mind” of the practitioner

(to use a traditional locution), giving it a pre-predicative resonance that becomes a part of the practitioner’s way of thinking without the need to explicitly call forth its instructions. Indeed, the aphoristic form lends itself to this purpose, insofar as many times an aphorism’s true meaning does not emerge as the result of a line of argumentation per se, but rather it requires active participation on the part of the reader-practitioner. The meaning of

an aphorism often shows itself in a specific kind of experience, a turning of the mind through which the meaning of the aphorism appears and thereby becomes personally available to the practitioner. The literary form of aphorisms also lends them the kind of interactive, experiential, transformative play of the mind that makes contemplation so productive; they are eminently memorizable, and while their brevity often belies a meaning that goes beyond what is

explicitly contained in the words of the aphorism itself, it also makes them especially suited to repetition.9 Traditional Buddhist practice instructions celebrate the value of contemplation. The twentieth-century teacher Sogyal Rinpoche explains contemplation as follows:10 The deepening of understanding, then, comes through contemplation and reflection.…As we contemplate [a teaching], it gradually begins to permeate our

mindstream and saturate our inner experience of our lives. Everyday events start to mirror and more and more subtly and directly to confirm the truths of the teachings, as contemplation slowly unfolds andenricheswhatwehavebeguntounderstandintellectuallyandcarriesthatunderstanding down from our head into our heart. (2012, 126) What most stands out in this characterization of contemplation is the way in which contemplation brings discursive teachings “down from our head into our heart.” This is a 9Iamgratefulforconversations withJohnLysakerforhelpingmedevelopthisreadingofthepedagogical functionsofthe aphoristic form. 10ThisispartofhisexegesisoftheThreeWisdoms,whichtogetherarehearing,contemplatingandmeditating(2012,126). All three of these play a role in lojong practice, but here my analysis focuses on the pedagogical function of contemplation.

practiceofheartfeltreflection,notstrictlyintellectualanalysis.Itmakestheteachingunder consideration something lived within the body and in daily life rather than a mere set of concepts to which we intellectually assent but never actually live or feel. Contemplation practice brings a teaching – which may have initially seemed inaccessible or foreign for itscontrasttoourordinaryorientationstotheworld–intotheintimacyofapractitioner’s inner life. By repeatedly returning to a deep, reflective consideration of a pithy teaching, the practitioner stands to develop an intra-personal relationship with a novel view. Eventually, the object of contemplation becomes part of what structures the practitioner’s experience rather than something to which she consciously

applies her mind. A close reading of Atiśa’s aphorisms reveals the moral-phenomenological work that is the aimofcontemplativepractice.Themajorityof theaphorisms of theSeven-PointMind Training are, on their face, straightforward instructions for decent behavior in everyday life, some quite prosaic, such as “Do not torment with malicious banter.” Others are stunninglyoracularandprovocativealbeitstillintendedforapplicationinoureverydaylife,as in the

instruction, “In the intervals, be a conjurer of illusions”–(Chekawa Yeshé Dorjé 2006, 83–84). In the latter aphorism cited above, the “intervals” refer to the periods betweenmeditation sessions,called “post-meditation” in TibetanBuddhist practiceliterature. Sé Chilbu explains in his commentary that one must go about one’s business during post-meditation “without losing the flavor of [one’s] meditative equipoise” (Sé Chilbu Chökyi Gyaltsen 2006, 92). That is,

during meditation the practitioner attempts to maintain a subtle sense of the emptiness of all phenomena and the view that whatever she experiences and perceives as intrinsically existing is only the product of illusion-like conceptual construction. The practitioner is instructed to “relinquish clinging to substantial reality” by attempting to see her experience of herself and her world as what they are: impermanent, contingent, and interdependently

originated (Sé Chilbu Chökyi Gyaltsen 2006, 93). Being a “conjurer of illusions” means actively cultivating a different mode of relating with one’s perceptions, lifting oneself out of the assumptions of the objective reality of one’s world as if in a lucid dream. The discursive significance of this aphorism aligns well enough with the overall intention of reorienting oneself away from one’s conventional way of experiencing the world. However,therealworkofthisaphorismgoesbeyondconfirmingthisideainaperfunctory sense by simply saying, “Yes, yes, I should see the world as illusion-like.” In fact, this

instructionisdemandingactualparticipationandexperimentationonthepartofthepractitioner.Inorderforthepractitionerreallytoknowwhatitwouldmeantobeaconjurerof illusions, she must give it a try, experimentally entertaining the act of seeing and even feeling her world as an illusion, even if only hypothetically or ephemerally. She must absorb and relate with the meaning of the aphorism in a personal way, taking up the viewthatitpresents,andexperiencingitnon-

discursivelyratherthanjustintellectualizing its meaning. This aphorism suggests that the practitioner can – and should – tinker with her phenomenological habits through an imaginative process of “conjuring” that goes beyondroterepetitionofitswords;whatittrulywouldmeantobea“conjurerofillusions” is not readily apprehensible at a discursive level. Truly appreciating what this aphorism means requires actually trying it, experimentally entertaining the possibility

of a world otherwise structured, otherwise felt – of a world that may not be so true. The practice of memorizing and repeating this aphorism again and again is not a matter of trying to “convince” oneself of a counter-intuitive “truth.” Rather, this kind of contemplation COMPARATIVE AND CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY 259

createsabitofplayinthetermsofthepractitioner’sexperienceofherworld,cultivatingan ability to loosen the structures through which she has that world, and unweaving some of theseamlessnessofhowitappearstoher.Thisishowcontemplationpracticemovesfrom the discursive level of a thought or idea to a non-discursive level of experience; it introduces a slightly oblique angle into the “factuality” of one’s experience of the world and asks the practitioner to inhabit

that obliqueness as part of what Merleau-Ponty would call the flesh of the world. Next, take the aphorism that reads, “Banish all blames into a single source” (Chekawa YeshéDorjé2006,83).Onthefaceofit,theinstructionhereistotakeresponsibilityforthe misfortune that befalls one, rather than blaming others or external circumstances. This instruction sounds straightforwardly moralistic enough (if a bit self-sacrificial), but a closer examination reveals much more

profound stakes to this instruction than simply refraining from the unflattering behavior of deflecting blame. Sé Chilbu claims that this aphorismactuallyservesasareminderofthedisastrousresultsofself-grasping,remarking that “this line presents the perceiving of your own self as the enemy. Whatever calamities befall you, without blaming others, you should think, ‘This is due to my own self-grasping’” (2006, 98). Truly taking on the blame for

the misfortunes that one encounters has to dowithseeingthatthesourceforallmisfortuneisactuallyself-grasping.SéChilbugoeson to instructthepractitionerto contemplate thefollowing:“SolongasI failtoviewthis[the self]astheenemy,solongwillIcontinuetoseekthewell-beingofthisself…Thisselfhas been my own executioner and my enemy from beginningless time…”(Sé Chilbu Chökyi Gyaltsen 2006, 99). All this is to say that “driving all blames into a single source” means

assigning blame to the true source of suffering: self-grasping. Self-grasping is the real enemy against which righteous anger is justified. “Banishing all blames into a single source” is not about being the “nice guy”; it is about seeing correctly that whenever we havetheoccasiontodefendagainstordeployblame,weareenactingaperniciouslyhabitual, dualistic and deluded phenomenological orientation to the world.11

Ultimately, then, blaming the “single source” of self-grasping amounts to accurately “[[[recognizing]]] the enemy as the enemy,” as Sé Chilbu puts it (Sé Chilbu Chökyi Gyaltsen 2006,100).Thiseffectivelyreversesourordinaryattitudeofregardinganythingthatthreatens the self as the enemy and only looking out for Number One, so to speak. By these lights, inasmuch as any misfortune that we experience is actually a misfortune undergone by the ego-clinging self, such

misfortune is actually an attack on the enemy and therefore can be greeted as a positive phenomenon by the same logic that holds that “the enemy of myenemyismyfriend.”Again,onecouldtakerecourseheretoaphilosophicalanalysisof the ethical ramifications of the no-self doctrine, but even this does not quite get to the point of the aphorism. Rather, the point here is to root out what is causing our affective responses, our pain, and instead of lamenting it,

celebrating its efficacy in bringing into relieftherealproblem–theself-graspingorientationthatcausesustodefendtheinterests ofthismetaphysicallydubiousandethicallyproblematicself.Thisisamatterofworkingat the level of deep affective polarities – the lifeblood of the life-world – and using our

11JamgönKongtrulconcursinhiscommentaryonthisaphorism:“Ratherthancastingblametoothersbythinking,‘Thishas caused me harm,’ think: ‘The mind that grasps [to the self] does all these things out of pure self-interest, the result of which is all these sufferings I am experiencing now. Therefore, I will skillfully and vigorously direct all practice [toward addressing] self-grasping’” (Kon-sprul Blo-gros-mtha’-yas 2012, 628).

conventional responses to how our world is polarized as a way of generating a novel relationship to our experience. This aphorism exemplifies the powerfully radical reversal of the habitual tendencies of our untrained attitudes toward self and others that lojong seeks to inculcate. However, as we have already

seen above, the work a practitioner does to enact that reversal must go beyond the discursive level of convincing herself that misfortune is actually good for her. Through her contemplative practice, she is meant to absorb the significance of “self as enemy” and “enemy as friend” in a more-than-cognitive sense. Contemplation of these two aphorisms challenges the most foundational habitual orientations that she has. What does it really mean that the source

of all misfortune is self-grasping? What would it really feel like to change our allegiance from self-cherishing to other-cherishing? Whatistheactualexperienceofregardingourenemiesashelpful?Again,therealizationof the meaning of these aphorisms goes beyond discursive, philosophical assent; it is something that the practitioner feels and embodies. Contemplation thus gives the practitioner an opportunity to practice ways of responding to self

and other that were once utterly foreign, and to make these new ways of responding more and more familiar, more and more hers. This creates the basis for the ethically felicitous orientation of genuine compassion. Conclusion: Transforming One’s World Through Moral Phenomenology As a practice of moral phenomenology, lojong is a holistic transformation of the

practitioner’s ethical selfhood, which includes both her discursive, conceptual understanding of herself and others, as well as the lived, practiced, and embodied values that supervene upon her experience of her world. The final purpose of the practices discussed here is to change the practitioner’s phenomenological orientation such that the basis for self-cherishing is completely dissolved and other-cherishing is spontaneous and effortless. Of the

dedicated practitioner of lojong, the twentieth-century Tibetan scholar Geshe Sopa writes: “When this attitude of exchanging self with others spontaneously arises each day, without effort, it becomes the antidote for selfcherishing” (2001, 54). This likewise recalls the aphorism of Atiśa that reads,“If this can be done even when distracted, you are trained” (Chekawa Yeshé Dorjé 2006, 84). This exemplifies the kind of transformation that is characteristic of

Buddhist ethics qua moral phenomenology; the reworking of one’s inner life that is its fruition means that morality does not rely upon our ability to uphold counter-intuitive maxims in our conduct. Instead, this reworking produces ethical behavior because it has reoriented the practitioner’s moral-phenomenological landscape. In this way, Buddhist moral phenomenology is predicated upon the radically open future of moral subjectivity. Although the task

of fundamentally uprooting the most basic of our orientations to the world – our sense of our self-contained subjectivity as distinct froman objectively meaningfulworldoutside ofus – might soundat first impossibly unrealistic,thisis infactthetrajectoryoftheBuddhistpath.Whatmakesthisfantastically ambitious ethical project feasible according to Buddhist thought is the ever-unfolding, unfinished fact of a subjectivity that is always in flux. Our conventional

experience of a fixed subjectivity and an objectively real world belies the reality of the impermanence and interdependence of both of these terms of our experience. Lojong exploits this

impermanence and seeks to make it ethically useful, optimistically maintaining that we can actively practice putting in place new habits of seeing and experiencing that give rise to a less dualistic and self-cherishing way of having a world. This recalls MerleauPonty’s assertion that, “My actual freedom

is…out in front of me, among the things” (2012, 479). Our subjectivity is not fixed, and all the instances of our contact with our world stand to shift the terms within which future experience will arise. The Lojong practices that we find in the Seven-Point Mind Training make use of the fungibility of the subjective featuresthatdefine ourexperienceof theworldby gettingthe practitionerto adopt the project of bodhicitta in place of the project of self-

cherishing. By entertaining that project, even if only as an intra-personal meditative or contemplative practice, she then stands to revise and reshape the very structures through which her world is disclosed. This wholesale revision of the structures by which she has a world provides a radically new ground of experience, one that brings within reach the spontaneous, other-centered altruism that is the hallmark of the bodhisattva’s being-in-the-world.

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