(Transforming duality on the path through bodhicitta).
Je Tsongkhapa expounds the essence of “turning the mind to Dharma again and again” is not merely thinking about Dharma, reading Dharma, or identifying as a practitioner. These practices plant awareness of the two-truths of reality.
It is transforming the very basis from which experience is lived. Every moment becomes an opportunity to weaken self-grasping and strengthen wisdom and compassion.
The practical question is not, “Am I doing Dharma?” but rather:
“Is this thought, feeling, action or reaction increasing self-cherishing, or decreasing it?”
Turning the Mind to Dharma
At the beginning, the mind naturally turns outward.
It seeks praise, comfort, success, recognition, security, possessions, and identity. Even spiritual practice can be appropriated by the ego:
- “My realisation.”
- “My understanding.”
- “My lineage.”
- “My meditation.”
Tsongkhapa repeatedly points back to examination. (Dharma practice is a vehicle for the mind, supporting awareness recognising itself).
Whenever attachment, aversion, pride, jealousy, or grasping arise:
- Recognise the appearance.
- Recognise the afflictive response.
- Recognise the self-reference upon which it depends.
- Relax the grasping.
- Return to Dharma.
Thousands of repetitions become habituation.
The path is built from these repetitions.
Planting Dharma Seeds – During Daily Life
The functional level practice is continuous recollection.
While walking:
“This body is impermanent.”
While speaking:
“May this speech benefit beings.”
While eating:
“This food supports awakening.”
While working:
“May this activity become a cause of wisdom and compassion.”
While suffering:
“This too is dependently arisen.”
While enjoying happiness:
“This too is impermanent.”
In this way Dharma ceases to remain merely an object of study.
It becomes the interpretive lens through which experience is understood.
Working With Self-Cherishing
Je Tsongkhapa follows the Kadampa masters in identifying self-cherishing as the root enemy.
Not the body.
Not possessions.
Not other people.
Not difficult circumstances.
Rather:
The instinctive conviction that “I” am inherently central and must be protected, elevated and gratified.
When this is recognised repeatedly, one begins to see:
- Attachment serves self-cherishing.
- Aversion serves self-cherishing.
- Pride serves self-cherishing.
- Fear serves self-cherishing.
Then every difficulty becomes practice.
Criticism becomes practice.
Failure becomes practice.
Success becomes practice.
Loneliness becomes practice.
Pleasure becomes practice.
Everything becomes Dharma.
Awareness and Recognition
Tsongkhapa’s presentation is profoundly analytical.
Awareness is cultivated not as blankness but as discriminating wisdom.
When anger appears:
Observe.
Where is the anger?
What is its shape?
Its colour?
Its location?
Did it come from somewhere?
Does it remain?
Where does it go?
The apparently solid disturbance begins to dissolve under investigation.
Likewise with the self.
The mind searches:
Where is the “I”?
In the body?
The feelings?
Perceptions?
Mental formations?
Consciousness?
The collection?
The owner of the collection?
The search never finds an independent entity.
Yet conventional experience still functions.
This is the doorway to understanding the union of appearance and emptiness.
Habituation Toward Yogic Direct Perception
Initially emptiness is merely heard.
Then contemplated.
Then inferred.
Then certainty develops.
Repeated meditation familiarises the mind with the absence of inherent existence.
The distinction between meditation and post-meditation gradually softens.
Appearances continue to arise.
Yet they are recognised as:
- dependently originated,
- merely designated,
- empty of intrinsic nature.
This familiarisation is what prepares the continuum for direct yogic perception.
One does not manufacture ultimate reality.
One removes obscurations to recognising what has always been the nature of phenomena.
A Simple Daily Practice
Several times each day pause for less than a minute:
1. Stop
- Relax body and breath.
2. Observe
- What mental state is present?
3. Identify
- Is self-cherishing active?
4. Apply Dharma
- Impermanence?
- Compassion?
- Dependent origination?
- Emptiness?
5. Release
- Loosen the grasping.
6. Dedicate
- “May this become a cause for the awakening of all beings.”
Repeated hundreds and thousands of times, the ordinary mind becomes a Dharma mind.
Repeated millions of times, according to the graduated path teachings Tsongkhapa inherited from Atiśa and the Kadampa masters, the mindstream is transformed from self-centred habituation toward bodhicitta and wisdom.
As the great traditions emphasise:
First, Dharma appears as something outside ourselves.
Then Dharma becomes our way of thinking.
Then Dharma becomes our spontaneous response.
Finally, appearance and emptiness are known as inseparable, and compassionate activity arises effortlessly for the welfare of beings.
This is turning the mind to Dharma again and again until there is no separation between the path, the practitioner, and the awakened nature that the path reveals.