My dear friends,
In Geshe Chekawa's Mind Training in Seven Points, the final precept under the third point, "Changing Adverse Circumstances into the Path," is:
The four preparations are foundational practices and attitudes that, by perfecting our mental formations (sankhara), prepare us recognize and act on opportunities for the skillful transformation of adverse circumstances into the path of enlightenment.
These four preparations are:
(1) Accumulating Merit
This is the practice of strengthening our positive mental formations by engaging in skillful actions (kusala-kamma), guided by the six perfections (paramitas).
- Philippians 4:8
(2)Purifying Negativities
This entails practices, such as the 5-step purification process, aimed at weakening, and ultimately eliminating, mental formations resulting from past unskillful actions (akusala-kamma) under the influence of the (Three Psychic Poisons).
a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
- Psalm 51:17
(3) Offering to Harmful Spirits and Obstructive Forces
(4) Offering to the Dharma
Protectors
Regarding these two points, Gelek Rimpoche has offered the following advice:
generate your own positive work, and rely on your own activities
than when you rely on spirits here and there.
- Kyabje Gelek Rinpoche, Lojong: Training of the Mind in Seven Points (1999), p. 80
Let's compare this with what the Apostle Paul has to say about harmful and helpful spirits:
following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air,
the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.
All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, doing the will of flesh and senses,
and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else....
- Ephesians 2:1-3
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
- Romans 8:1-3
- In Ephesians 2:1-3, we see Paul describing the internal enemies of ignorance, attachment, and aversion as the "ruler of the power of the air", holding its victims prisoners to the passions of the flesh, "following the course of this world". Compassion for oneself and others, recognizing everyone as prisoners of these enemies, is indispensable to the ability to transform adverse circumstances into enlightenment.
- In Romans 8:1-2, the "Spirit of life" represents the ultimate protector, offering freedom from the prison of self-grasping ignorance. The greatest gift, both to ourselves and to the world, is to grow in Bodhicitta – the mind of love, compassion, and wisdom.
Geshe Chekawa’s advice to "possess the four preparations, the greatest of means" can be understood as a call to lay a strong foundation for spiritual practice. By accumulating merit, purifying negativities, addressing internal enemies with compassion, and offering to the ultimate protector, practitioners create the optimal conditions for transforming adverse circumstances into opportunities for growth. This integrated approach, drawing from both Buddhist and Christian insights, highlights the universal principles of virtuous action, purification, compassion, and inner transformation as the greatest means for spiritual progress.