Fifty-nine slogans

In the eleventh century a Bengali master named Atisha carried a set of mind-training teachings to Tibet, and a century later a monk named Chekawa wrote them into fifty-nine short slogans that have been memorized and practiced ever since. The tradition is called lojong, mind training, and its slogans are the most portable practice on the 360. One line, carried in the pocket, applied to whatever the day brings.

A few of them. Drive all blames into one. Be grateful to everyone. Don't be so predictable. Always maintain only a joyful mind. Don't wait in ambush. Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one, which means: of the people judging you, trust your own conscience over the crowd. Whatever you meet unexpectedly, join with meditation. Don't make gods into demons.

Each one is a small turn of attention. "Drive all blames into one" means: when something goes wrong, instead of scanning for whose fault it is, look at the one place you have any power, your own grasping. Not guilt. Responsibility, in the sense Canfield meant on day fourteen. "Be grateful to everyone" includes the people who make your life difficult, because they're the ones giving you the practice.

The central practice of lojong is tonglen, which you met through Pema Chödrön on day sixty-nine: breathing in suffering, your own or another's, and breathing out relief. It reverses the body's whole instinct, which is to breathe in what's good and push away what's bad, and it trains, breath by breath, the capacity to stay with what's hard.

It's an Awareness key because every slogan is a cue for noticing. You're mid-argument, and the line surfaces: don't be so predictable. That one second of noticing is where the choice lives.