While generating abundant love and compassion toward your own mother, use your breath to give and take alternately. As your mind softens, do this practice more and more from the depth of your heart. In this way, for the sake of your own mother—for her happiness and protection—you should feel that you actually give up all your attachment to the

Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye,

Our arms, legs, heart, lungs, eyes, teeth, hair, bones, muscles, nerves, blood, cells, thoughts, emotions, personality, character, intelligence, and so on: we see all of these parts as “me.” Everyone does this, without a problem. Even though that fertilized egg started out so basic and grew more and more complicated as our body developed, we’ve had

that it is “empty,” an interesting

learn how to influence the future positively,

But we only fear this suffering because of our own self-cherishing.

directing it toward our self-importance.

In our analogy, the Sahara represents our habitual self-importance, which is so all-encompassing that it seems to have no beginning and no end. The map, which leads us in the direction of altruism, represents bodhicitta, a Sanskrit word that can be translated as “the mind-set of awakening.” Bodhicitta is the state of mind of the bodhisattvas, those

and other—is the heart of lojong, and the heart of the Seven Points. In fact, Jamgon Kongtrul goes so far as to say that “other approaches to mind training are mere elaborations” of the exchange of self and other.