Power of Mind Training: Revelatory Practices to Grow a Kind Heart

Learn how to turn harmful emotions into compassion and transform life’s difficulties into the path to awakening with internationally revered teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

Our lives have no shortage of problems, disappointments, and difficult people that we must grapple with every day. In The Power of Mind Training, Lama Zopa Rinpoche guides the reader through the practice of lojong, or mind training, giving us powerful tools for transforming these hardships into the path to enlightenment.

Working verse by verse through two main texts, Geshé Langri Thangpa’s Eight Verses on Mind Training and Geshé Chekawa’s Seven-Point Mind Training, Lama Zopa uses everyday examples to show how we can face suffering, sickness, grief, and harm without being swallowed whole by them. Through the practice of tonglen, or taking and giving, we can turn our self-cherishing attitude into compassion and bodhichitta, and in time even use the slings and arrows thrown by others to become more loving, patient, and wise.

Compiled from Lama Zopa’s extensive teachings on lojong, this volume offers a practical guidebook for this potent tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Practitioners and students of Buddhism—and anyone yearning for a fresh way of seeing the world and its problems—will find a treasure trove of tools for reframing our experiences and interactions with others. The Power of Mind Training reveals how training our minds with compassion can turn problems into powerful blessings and self-interest into a practice that uplifts and alleviates the suffering of others.