Practicing the eighth lojong slogan is how we learn to live beyond the buckets of passion, aggression, and indifference.

When we work with the three objects, three poisons, and three seeds of virtue, we’re really doing another form of tonglen. As you remember, in tonglen we practice sending compassion and taking in suffering as a way of transforming them. In working with the trio of threes, we do this same transformational work within ourselves.

The wisdom of this slogan tells us that we tend either to cling to, avoid, or ignore things. When we cling, we get possessive in a bad way. When we avoid, we get aggressive and attack or reject. And when we ignore, we just totally shut down any path to wisdom.

And usually, that’s because we categorize everything- people, emotions, events, everything. We love it, or we hate it, or we don’t really care either way. We throw everything haphazardly into these three buckets as if to say, love, hate, meh, love, hate, meh, over and over again.

This cannot be a sophisticated way to live our lives, right? Three buckets for everything??? But when you start to notice it, you see this is exactly what we do. That is, unless we push past these first reactions. We ask: can I love that without having to buy that? Why do I want to reject that? Why can I not be bothered to pay any attention to that?

To do this, we’ve got to stay for a moment in these three poisons. We have to let them in, just like we let the suffering in when we practice tonglen. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche says, “Whenever any of the three poisons happens in your life, you should do the sending and taking practice.” We say, May I stay with this longing to possess, this passion, and may others be free from it. May I work with my anger, so others do not carry it. May I investigate my indifference so that ignorance in the world diminishes.

And here’s the best part: when we hold space for these three poisons, the three seeds of virtue really do come to life. It’s the craziest thing. It seems like bad advice to hold poison for any amount of time, right? But what happens is that we take the charge right out of them. When we hold our anger, it doesn’t have an object anymore. And if our anger isn’t pointed anywhere, what can we even be angry about? Nothing, as it turns out, so it just fades away. When we own our clinging, we naturally feel our hands start to unclench. If we don’t cling, we don’t have anything we’re squeezing. And the minute we even name our indifference, we’ve already banished any ability to be ignorant any longer.

This little magic trick of transformation feels counter-intuitive but it’s really so simple. As always, awareness leads us to wisdom, and to all the other virtues as well.

Where can you practice this magic trick of transformation today?