The Seven Points of Mind Training Is Now on Chitta

We've just published our seventh text: The Seven Points of Mind Training (བློ་སྦྱོང་དོན་བདུན་མ།) by Geshe Chekawa Yeshe Dorje.

If you've never heard of it, here's the short version: it's a twelfth-century manual for transforming your mind. Fifty-nine slogans, organized into seven points, covering everything from how to meditate on compassion to how to behave when someone cuts you off in traffic.

If you have heard of it, you probably already know why it matters. This is the text that gave us tonglen. It's the text that Pema Chödrön's Start Where You Are is based on. It's the text that generations of practitioners have turned to when they wanted something they could carry with them into the mess of everyday life.

What makes this text different

Most of the texts on Chitta are long. Words of My Perfect Teacher is fourteen chapters. The Way of the Bodhisattva is ten. The Jewel Ornament of Liberation is twenty-one. They're comprehensive, systematic, and designed for deep study over months or years.

The Seven Points is something else. It's compact — seven chapters — and built around slogans you can memorize and work with on the spot. Slogans like:

"Drive all blames into one."

"Be grateful to everyone."

"Always maintain only a joyful mind."

Each slogan is a complete practice instruction. You don't need a meditation cushion or an hour of free time. You need a difficult coworker, a traffic jam, or a moment of unexpected kindness — and the willingness to use it.

A text with a story

Geshe Chekawa didn't set out to write a famous text. He was a Kadampa scholar in twelfth-century Tibet who stumbled upon a single line from Langri Tangpa's Eight Verses of Training the Mind. The line struck him so deeply that he spent years tracking down the teachings behind it, eventually studying for twelve years with Geshe Sharawa.

The result was a systematization of the mind training instructions that had been passed down orally from Atisha through the Kadampa lineage. Chekawa organized them, added his own commentary, and created something that could be practiced by anyone — monastic or lay, scholar or farmer.

What's unusual about Chekawa's presentation is that he puts ultimate bodhicitta before relative bodhicitta. Most texts start with compassion practice and build toward wisdom. Chekawa flips the order, beginning with the nature of mind itself. It's a bold choice, and our chapters include a note on why he might have done it.

What you'll find on Chitta

We've prepared seven chapters covering each of the seven points:

The Preliminaries — The contemplations that prepare the ground: precious human birth, impermanence, and the nature of suffering.
The Main Practice — Training in both ultimate and relative bodhicitta, including the tonglen meditation.
Transforming Adversity — How to use difficulties as fuel for practice rather than obstacles to it.
Applying the Practice Throughout Life — The five powers for daily life and at the time of death.
The Measure of Mind Training — How to know if your practice is actually working.
The Commitments — Sixteen guidelines that protect the practice from corruption.
The Precepts — Twenty-two practical instructions for daily conduct.

Each chapter includes the original slogans, contextual explanation, and study questions. There's also a full glossary with Tibetan script and Wylie transliteration for every key term.

And of course, you can ask the AI study assistant any question about the text and get answers grounded in the actual chapters — not the internet, not a guess.

Why we added it now

We wanted Chitta's library to include a genuine lojong text — something built specifically for practice in daily life. The other texts on the platform are profound, but they tend toward the comprehensive and systematic. The Seven Points fills a different role. It's the text you keep in your pocket.

It also pairs beautifully with the Eight Verses of Training the Mind, which was already on Chitta. Langri Tangpa wrote the eight verses. Chekawa heard one of those verses and spent twelve years unpacking it. Together, they form the heart of the lojong tradition.

If you've been wanting to start a mind training practice but weren't sure where to begin, this is a good place. Pick a slogan. Sit with it for a day. See what happens.

That's how it's been done for nine hundred years.

Chitta is a study companion, not a substitute for a teacher. If these teachings resonate with you and you wish to deepen your understanding through practice, we encourage you to seek guidance from a qualified teacher in a recognized Buddhist lineage.