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By Root 972 0

reflection or meditation in Tibetan Buddhism is known as the Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind from Samsara and Toward Nirvana and Enlightenment. It’s also known as the Four Mind Changers. All Tibetan lamas, without exception, teach and practice it regularly. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Kalu Rinpoche went around the world five times teaching this before introducing the non-dual Dzogchen-Mahamudra teachings on naked awareness, innate wakefulness, and the natural great perfection.

In my own life, I have found this contemplative practice extremely helpful. In the seventies, I began meditating on the meaning contained in these Four Thoughts and experiencing them gradually myself. This practice really did help me loosen my preoccupation with worldly aims. My teachers told me that meditating on these Four Mind Changers would help me turn from seeking happiness from outer experiences (from others and through cheap thrills and highs) toward more lasting happiness, peace, and fulfillment, and they were right. This reflection helps loosen our preoccupation with this body, this life, and this world, opening up wider horizons and a far more unselfish, universal perspective.

In a very natural way, these meditations helped me to practice more enthusiastically, not just because I thought I should or because authority figures told me to do so, but for my own enlightened self-interest. Reflecting on the Four Mind Changers helps make ethics, honesty, altruism, and loving-kindness more possible, not just as superimposed morality but for its own obvious sake, and even as a necessity. Inner certainty and conviction always bring increased motivation and perseverance combined with a passion for truth and spiritual realization.

These four transforming thoughts are reflections or contemplations on: 1) Precious human existence; 2) Death, mortality, and impermanence; 3) The Ineluctible Law of Karma: Cause and Effect; and 4) The defects and shortcomings of samsara, which include eight kinds of problems and suffering.

1. Precious Human Existence

This precious human existence, this lifetime, well-endowed with leisure, qualities, and opportunities, is difficult to attain, tenuous, and easily lost, so this is the time to practice spirituality with diligence.

Shantideva, the eighth-century Mahayana Indian saint (his name translates as “The Peaceful Angel”) and author of The Way of the Bodhisattva, wrote:

“These human leisures, opportunities, and faculties are very rare to obtain and easily lost;

If one squanders the chance to fulfill the aim of human life, How will such an opportunity arise again?”

2. Death, Mortality, and Impermanence

All things are impermanent; our life breath especially is just like a bubble on a swift-moving stream. The time of our death is uncertain, and we depart alone from this world.

All that is born, dies, even the enlightened masters, saints, sages, and powerful leaders;

Our longevity and hour of death are uncertain, and then we sally forth alone and unaccompanied;

All constructions eventually fall to ruin;

All those who are gathered together, eventually separate.

Everything passes and dissolves;

Even the mountains and the seas;

So resolve now to realize the deathless reality and undying peace of freedom and nirvana.

In the Lalitavistara Sutra, the Buddha says:

“The universe and its inhabitants are as ephemeral as the clouds in the sky;

Beings being born and dying are like a spectacular dance or drama show.

The duration of our lives is like a flash of lightning or a firefly’s brief twinkle;

Everything passes like the flowing waters of a steep waterfall.”

3. The Ineluctible Law of Karma

The law of karma follows us like a shadow follows the body; virtue and nonvirtuous words, thoughts, and deeds procreate in kind.

The lawful workings of cause and effect, virtue and vice, are unavoidable.

When we die we leave everything behind, except our karma and our spiritual realization.

This karmic conditioning propels us forward according to what we have set in motion through our actions, words, and deeds.

Karmic