Lojong slogan #27: Work with the greatest defilements first.

Some Westerners come to Buddhism looking for a way out of whatever personal problems they're going through. While Buddhism does offer to provide a way to become happier and live a more fulfilling life, this can only be done through work. Buddhism provides a sort of list of rules that must be followed if we want to move towards contentment. But most times, practicing meditation is not enough, and sometimes it is used as a crutch. People may think, "Well, I am meditating and reading lots of books on Buddhism, so this will eventually help me overcome my problems. I am doing something to work towards overcoming my problems." Oftentimes, this is a person's reason for not seeking help elsewhere. Sometimes we try to convince ourselves and others that we are doing enough just by practicing a sending-and-taking meditation or an insight meditation for ten minutes daily. But there is a lot more to Buddhism than meditation.

The Lojong slogans of Atisha are a set of 59 proverbs intended for training the mind. We can read these proverbs and, provided that we can understand the meaning behind them, we can use them as reminders to help turn away from our destructive patterns of behavior and thought. They are useful because, a lot of the time, it seems that we get stuck in these patterns because we don't really know any other way. Many of the Lojong slogans can be extremely helpful to anyone who reads it, and I may choose to create more posts highlighting some of them, but for now I want to focus on #27.

Lojong slogan #27 reads as follows: "Work with the greatest defilements first."

Let's break this statement down. What are the greatest defilements? A defilement is an impurity, anything that steers away from the Eightfold Path. The "greatest defilements" can be seen as the most pressing of our problems. A good example is any kind of addiction, maybe a person has a tendency to be very judgmental with friends and family and place exceedingly high expectations on others, perhaps a person tends to take advantage of others for his or her own gain. The "greatest defilements" refers to anything that is a condition of clinging, or of ignoring right livelihood, right effort, right intentions/speech/actions/view, etc. So the slogan is saying that in order to find happiness and contentment, we must work to overcome these obstacles before we can begin to concentrate on any other aspect of our search. We can spend hours upon hours in meditation and never gain any ground if we do not first overcome these "greatest defilements."

Although it is extremely scary to face your greatest problems and figure out how and why you came to depend on them, it will inevitably be very rewarding. You can get to know yourself better and you become stronger. In working with these problems, you are practicing self care, thus cultivating love and kindness toward yourself. This is where we must start. Those already learning about Buddhism know that loving-kindness aspirations and compassion aspirations always start with the self, and then extend to the rest of the world. It is common knowledge that we can only have compassion for others if we are able to feel compassion for ourselves, and this unyielding, all-encompassing compassion is central to Tibetan Buddhism and is central to being truly happy.

Make sure to take care of yourself and work with the greatest defilements first, because as much knowledge as a person might have of the teachings of the Buddha, he can never gain anything from it if he has not been working to fight through his greatest personal problems.