Bodhisattvacharyavatara

by Andreas Kretschmar | 246,740 words

The English translation of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara (“entering the conduct of the bodhisattvas”), a Sanskrit text with Tibetan commentary. This book explains the bodhisattva concept and gives guidance to the Buddhist practitioner following the Mahāyāna path towards the attainment of enlightenment. The text was written in Sanskrit by Shantideva ...

Introduction By Tsoknyi Rinpoche

The Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra: A Perfect Preparation for Vajrayāna Practice

The Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra is a text that can greatly benefit any practicing Buddhist. Among the many commentaries that exist on this text in Tibetan, I have personally found Khenpo Kunpal’s commentary to be the most practical, containing many key points essential to Buddhist practice. During my education I studied the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra with eminent scholars, and I read Khenpo Kunpal’s commentary many times.

The Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra teaches the complete Mahāyāna path to enlightenment, including all necessary preliminary, main, and concluding practices. A perfect path in itself, it is also at the same time a perfect support[1] for all practitioners of the Vajrayāna teachings in general. Practitioners learn how to develop the motivation of bodhicitta, as well as how to carry out the application of the six transcendental perfections. They learn how to fuse their practice of bodhicitta and the five first perfections with the sixth perfection, transcendental knowledge.[2]

Buddhism came to Tibet and remained undisturbed for over a thousand years. There Buddhism was so widespread that even lay people naturally grew up with faith in the Buddha, in the law of karma, in past and future lives, in the existence of pure realms or buddha fields, and in the terrible forms of rebirth known as hell realms.

These beliefs were simply part of Tibetan culture. Uneducated Tibetans did not know why they held these beliefs although they did keep them in their hearts. Therefore, it was relatively easy for Buddhist masters to teach the dharma in the classical format, beginning with the preliminary practices[3] and continuing on to advanced meditation.

Buddhism is now increasingly being taught to foreign students from a great variety of cultural backgrounds. Concepts such as karma, past and future lives, the six realms of saṃsāra, and so forth are new to them and so require considerable explanation.

I believe that the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra is the perfect introduction for Western students to come to a similar understanding and appreciation of Buddhism as have people who have been raised in a Buddhist culture. Students who have studied and practiced the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra for some time under a qualified teacher will have a very stable Mahāyāna foundation for their Vajrayāna practice. Thus, the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra is a perfect preliminary practice for Vajrayāna.

The Blessings of the Natural State

The Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra summarizes the teachings of the Buddha, teachings that are unmistaken and without error. These teachings do not express an opinion but are rather words of truth[4] that accord with the law of dharmatā,[5] the natural state of reality. The Buddha did not invent the truth of the natural state; he realized his own buddha nature and thus was able to teach this realization to others.

Whoever reads, studies, or comes into contact with such teachings will automatically be exposed to the blessings of the natural state of reality through the words of the teachings, even without coming into direct contact with a teacher. The more the reader’s mind is open and devoted, the more will the blessings of the natural state be received. This transfer of blessings does not depend on a teacher but comes from the natural state of reality itself.

Blessings of the Lineage

In addition to the blessings of the natural state of reality, there are also the blessings of the lineage of masters. The blessings of the lineage are always transmitted from master to student. Ideally, students who have access to a personal teacher should first receive the reading transmission[6] for the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra. Then they should receive an extensive commentary on the text from a qualified teacher. Together with the teachings on the ninth chapter, which is the chapter on transcendental knowledge, students should at best receive the ‘pointing out instruction’ from an authentic master in order to facilitate direct recognition of the buddha nature.

The Practices of Skillful Means and Transcendental Knowledge

The Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra is structured around practices of skillful means and transcendental knowledge. The ninth chapter teaches how to practice wisdom, the recognition of the buddha nature. All the other chapters teach the practices of skillful means,[7] leading to the particular results that arise from skillful means.[8] The perfection of transcendental knowledge arises from the skillful method of meditation, as well as from all the other skillful-means-based practices of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra. Therefore, transcendental knowledge is called ‘knowledge that arises from skillful means’.[9] This transcendental knowledge is itself the recognition of profound emptiness, the buddha nature.

Once buddha nature is recognized, students can bring that recognition into their practice of the bodhicitta motivation and of the first five perfections. Only then will the practice of these perfections be ‘transcendental’. Unless their practice is embraced with recognition of the buddha nature, the students will not be able to reach perfect enlightenment.[10]

The practices of generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, and meditation are considered practices of skillful means, while transcendental knowledge, the recognition of the buddha nature, is considered to be the practice of knowledge.[11] A practitioner who aspires to traverse swiftly the paths and levels should always practice the unity of skillful means and transcendental knowledge.

Some teachers guide their students for a long time through skillful means practices alone, the traditional sūtra approach. Students first practice relative bodhicitta, the six perfections, and the various methods to gather merit. They receive theoretical teachings on the chapter of transcendental knowledge, on the view of profound emptiness. Practicing meditation for many years, they refine their minds until at some point in time insight into profound emptiness naturally arises out of their meditation practice.

Another tradition introduces qualified students from the very beginning to the view of profound emptiness in conjunction with meditation practice. In this approach, the master starts out by giving students the ‘pointing out instruction’, introducing them directly to their buddha nature. Through the ‘pointing out instruction’ the students become able to practice the unity of skillful means and transcendental knowledge.

Students with modern education can easily understand theoretical teachings on transcendental knowledge. However, such a scholastic approach does not readily bring about the genuine recognition of the buddha nature, as buddha nature is beyond theoretical understanding. The ‘pointing out instruction’ from an authentic master is a direct and experiential introduction to the buddha nature.

Present day students find it more difficult to understand the reasons for practicing the teachings on skillful means. They do not easily accept and appreciate teachings on devotion, compassion and renunciation. Nowadays, many people need in-depth teachings on why and how to gather the accumulations of merit. They must be taught in great detail how wisdom[12] and merit[13] enhance one another.

For modern people, teachings on karma, i.e., the law of cause and effect, are not so easy to accept. Traditional Tibetans absorb these teachings without great reflection, having been brought up in a Buddhist culture. Tibetans who have not received a modern education find the teachings on wisdom or transcendental knowledge more

difficult to understand. The average Tibetan would prefer practices of accumulating merit to the actual practice of wisdom. They assume that teachings on wisdom and transcendental knowledge are primarily meant for monks and lamas, not for lay practitioners.

Actually, if practiced without recognition of buddha nature, skillful-means methods for accumulating merit lead very slowly to the dawning of wisdom or transcendental knowledge. On the other hand, by practicing wisdom alone, one’s practice might not flourish, being in danger of becoming dry and lifeless, lacking the juice of devotion, compassion, and bodhicitta. Wisdom is like fire, easily enhanced by the fuel of skillful means. The swiftest way to enlightenment is unifying the practice of transcendental knowledge with the practices of skillful means.

Practitioners in the sūtra tradition apply skillful-means methods to come to the recognition of transcendental knowledge. In the tradition of Dzogpa Chenpo, the Great Perfection,[14] the master introduces the student directly to wisdom, to transcendental knowledge. From that point onward the student uses skillful-means methods as an enhancement for wisdom.

For any practitioner of the Great Perfection or Mahāmudra, this text is a treasure trove of enhancement techniques. Practitioners of the Great Perfection and Mahāmudra who do not know how to enhance their meditation on the view by mingling it with skillful-means methods, such as those taught in the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra, will unfortunately fail to swiftly traverse the paths and levels.

Bodhicitta, the Entrance to Mahāyāna

The entry way to the Mahāyāna teachings is the precious bodhicitta. The practice of bodhicitta guarantees that practitioners are following the genuine Mahāyāna path. The precious bodhicitta will transform all of their actions into an unceasing and inexhaustible stream of virtue and merit.

Maintaining the bodhicitta attitude is of utmost importance when receiving the reading transmission and explanations on the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra, as well as on Khenpo Kunpal’s commentary. You should think, “I will receive these teachings and transmissions in order to free all sentient beings from suffering and to establish them on the level of complete enlightenment.” Listening to the teachings in this manner will create a powerful momentum of virtue and blessing that can never be lost. A practitioner who maintains this motivation when receiving the teachings or when practicing them will greatly benefit many sentient beings.

Bring to mind that all buddhas of past, present, and future travel the Mahāyāna path to enlightenment. All buddhas practice bodhicitta and the six transcendental perfections. They all reach enlightenment by gathering the accumulations of merit and wisdom and by purifying the two obscurations, the obscurations of affliction and obscurations of cognition. The Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra and Khenpo Kunpal’s commentary teach in great detail how to practice exactly like the buddhas of past, present, and future. Understand the preciousness of the teachings and the unique opportunity that we all now have to study and practice them.

Blessing

Buddha Śākyamuni discovered a universal truth, which he called ‘the precious dharma’. He taught this dharma to his students. The dharma that Buddha Śākyamuni taught is the same dharma taught by all the buddhas of the past to their students. Furthermore, all the buddhas of the future will teach exactly that very same dharma. When Buddha Śākyamuni taught the dharma, the blessing of his realized mind was transmitted along with the words of his teachings. That blessing caused realization to dawn in the minds of his students. Once the students gained genuine realization, they in turn transmitted the same blessing and dharma teachings to their students.

In this manner Buddha Śākyamuni’s immaculate dharma has been handed down from teacher to student in an uninterrupted lineage. This is a most important point. The lineage must be uninterrupted. Only then will the transmission of genuine teachings as well as the transmission of blessings be guaranteed. All the lineage masters must be qualified to uphold the lineage and must have received authorization from their own masters to pass on the teachings. Such a lineage is compared to immaculate pearls on a strand of silk. For as long as the lineage remains intact, the blessings and realization will be handed down from generation to generation.

Any person who sincerely wants to study and practice these teachings should connect to this lineage of blessings and realization. You should make every effort to receive the reading transmission for the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra as well as teachings on it from a qualified master of the Buddhist lineage. If that is not possible, visualize that Buddha Śākyamuni, surrounded by the bodhisattvas, is present in the space before you. While studying the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra, imagine that you directly receive all the teachings given in it from Buddha personally. As Buddha’s wisdom body[15] is bound neither by time nor by proximity, it is certain that you will receive his blessing. Thus, the study and practice of this text will influence your mind to a profound degree.

The blessings of the lineage are transmitted only from master to student. The transmission is from the enlightened mind of a qualified master to the mind of the student. The full force of the blessings of the lineage cannot be transmitted through a book, however sacred it may be. It relies on our connection to the wisdom body of the Buddha and to the teacher.

The ultimate point of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra is to recognize the view of emptiness and to merge this view with one’s practice of bodhicitta and of the six transcendental perfections. Studying such a book without the blessings of the lineage, a reader who has devotion to the Buddha can still receive the Buddha’s blessings, since all the teachings of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra are in fact words of truth. In addition, an intellectual understanding of the view might also be obtained through such study.

The genuine recognition of the view, however, is only possible through the blessings of an authentic lineage master. As the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra is a treatise for meditation practice, a committed and serious student of Buddhism must at some point seek out a qualified master and receive the pointing out instruction according to the teachings of the Great Perfection or Mahāmudra.

That is the tradition maintained in the lineage of Paltrül Rinpoche, Khenpo Kunpal, and the teachers from the Śrī Siṃha Shedra of Dzogchen Monastery. The fusion of sūtra and Vajrayāna, of study and meditation practice, has long been the special feature of the Śrī Siṃha Shedra. Students at Śrī Siṃha study the treatises and also receive pointing out instructions from qualified meditation masters. They maintain the tradition of uniting the practices of studying, contemplating, and meditating.

Realization

The ninth chapter of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra teaches transcendental knowledge, the view of profound emptiness. The ultimate view is taught in stanza 34 of the ninth chapter:[16]

When neither an ‘entity’ nor a ‘non-entity’
Remains before the mind,
At that point, since there is no other position,
It rests in utter peace, without any conceptualizing.

gang tshe dngos dang dngos med dag
blo yi mdun na mi gnas pa
de tshe rnam pa gzhan med pas
dmigs pa med par rab tu zhi

Bodhisattvas practice transcendental knowledge and skillful means as an inseparable unity. Maintaining the view of emptiness, they practice bodhicitta as they carry out the five remaining transcendental perfections. From the first bodhisattva level onward, all activities of the perfect bodhisattva are embraced by transcendental knowledge, by wisdom.

Once the view has been recognized, the various practices of skillful means greatly enhance realization. The teaching of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra is beneficial for enabling beginners to recognize the view. It is even more beneficial for advanced practitioners since it enhances their practice of the view through the teachings on skillful means. The practice of skillful means alone does not lead to realization; neither does the practice of transcendental knowledge by itself lead to enlightenment. Only the unity of both practices, of transcendental knowledge and skillful means, will lead to perfect enlightenment.

Conceptual and Non-conceptual Teachings

The dharma includes teachings that would have us rely on the rational mind, the intellect,[17] as well as teachings through which we transcend the rational.[18] The Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra explains the first of these, the dharma of the rational mind, in a most wonderful manner. Without suggesting that we either reject or suppress concepts, it instead teaches us how to look at them, how to soften their rough edges, how to make concepts spacious, and how to transform negative thoughts into positive ones.

On the other hand non-conceptual teachings, such as the teachings of the Great Perfection, require that students have the capacity for transcendental knowledge,[19] for faith,[20] for compassion,[21] and for bodhicitta.[22] If all of these qualities come together, students will swiftly recognize the essence of their minds, the buddha nature, the view of profound emptiness. When mind essence is genuinely recognized, the energy[23] of that recognition naturally manifests as qualities such as faith, compassion, and bodhicitta. That level of practice is endowed with vitality, juice, with qualities. When we are able to maintain the recognition of buddha nature, the qualities of buddha nature naturally begin to unfold.

The Cure for Jaded Practitioners

Unfortunately, many who practice the Great Perfection seem to lack that juice, that spiritual vitality. They manifest no signs of faith, compassion, humility, or openness. They seem unable to mingle the recognition of buddha nature with their daily activities. Without being aware of it, such practitioners are actually spending most of their post-meditation[24] time caught up in conceptual thinking. The Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra is especially helpful for these practitioners, since it teaches them how to deal with concepts and emotions while in the post-meditation state. For most people, it seems to be necessary to have something to do; they find the ‘nothing-to-do’ approach of the Great Perfection difficult to accept!

A thorough study of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra enables practitioners to intellectually understand the emptiness of all phenomena, to understand that all phenomena are like a dream or an illusion. They come to understand that phenomena appear without truly existing.[25] However, this view remains a mere intellectual understanding.

When students follow up by obtaining teachings on how to directly recognize the true nature of mind, the buddha nature, they will begin to realize the great benefit of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra teachings. This will be particularly true during the post-meditation stage, when engaging in daily activities. Students will arrive at the heartfelt conviction that everything they are experiencing has no more reality than a dream. They will understand that all perception comes about through interdependent arising,[26] which in turn results from karma,[27] causes,[28] and conditions.[29]

I would advise every sincere student of the dharma to practice the teachings of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra in order to lay a stable foundation for practice. At the same time I also strongly recommend receiving teachings on how to directly recognize the true nature of mind from an authentic master, a master of either the Mahāmudra or the Great Perfection traditions. Practitioners of these meditation traditions, who know how to infuse their experience during post-meditation with the mental training and attitude of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra, will develop a peaceful[30] and tamed[31] character.

Ideally, the continuity[32] of the meditation state[33] should pervade all the conceptual activities[34] of post-meditation. Without losing the recognition of the buddha nature, the expression[35] of the buddha nature encounters all situations appropriately.

Cutting Through Moods

Support your meditation practice with a form practice, a practice which includes visualizing a form of the Buddha such as Śākyamuni, Mañjuśrī, Tārā, Avalokiteśvara, or any other. Practitioners should develop the confidence that their chosen meditation deity is identical in essence with their root guru. Only when practicing with heartfelt devotion will the guru’s blessings enter into your mind-stream and realization dawn.

Such practice should be done every day, whether or not you are in the ‘mood’ to practice. Relate every experience to the blessings of your root guru. Especially if you do not feel like practicing or if you are in a bad mood, consider your mood to be the direct blessing of your guru. Your guru is asking you to look into the essence of your mood. Do not hold the view that only positive experiences arise from the guru’s blessing.

At times, when you are upset, unhappy, tense, tired, sick, or uninspired, look into the essence of that feeling. Practice the instructions of stanza 11 from the third chapter of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra. There, in the practice called ‘the cutter’,[36] you give your body, your wealth, and all your merit to demons and beasts. You let them eat your flesh and drink your blood:

My body and likewise my enjoyments,
And even all my virtue of the three times,
I surrender without any sense of loss,
So that I will accomplish the welfare of all beings.

lus dang de bzhin longs spyod dang
dus gsum dge ba thams cad kyang
sems can kun gyi don sgrub phyir
phongs pa med par btang bar bya

Sometimes you may feel very inspired to practice, and you decide to get up early in the morning. When morning comes, however, your inspiration has vanished, and you no longer want to practice. You might feel disappointed that your hope for a nice practice session was not satisfied. Regard this disappointment, this off-mood, as a true blessing of your guru. Realize how feeble your moods are and how much you depend on having your expectations fulfilled.

At that point give up identifying yourself with your experience, with all of your expectations, your moods, and your body. Give it all away to demons and beasts. Simply allow the off-mood to remain as long as it lasts. Do not try to produce any artificially contrived state of meditation. Just remain with the essence, without either affirming good moods or rejecting bad moods.

On other occasions you might be very sick, and everything you experience is tinged with suffering. Again, at that time, simply allow the pain and suffering to be there. Realize that it is only your mind that is experiencing the suffering. Disown your body, disown your experience of suffering and pain. Give it all away to demons and beasts. Apply this method at any time, when you have been insulted and mistreated, when your feelings have been hurt, or when you are upset or angry. These are the opportunities to apply the practice of the six perfections.

Practice your meditation deity every day with the same mindset. Generate the carefree attitude, “It doesn’t matter whether I get any results or blessings or not; it doesn’t matter if I am happy and inspired or if I am not; it doesn’t matter if this practice is useful for me or if it is not; it doesn’t even matter if I die today. Whatever happens to me is all right.”

Cut through all hopes and fears in this way. Treat all positive and negative experiences in meditation and in your life as being equal. Do not seek out the positive while rejecting the negative. If you disown your experiences in this way and allow them to arise by themselves and to disappear by themselves, if you mingle everything that happens to you with the practice of mind essence, you will quickly traverse the paths and levels.

Entering Into the Stream of Blessing

The Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra addresses both our emotions and our ability to reason. Śāntideva’s beautiful poetry inspires readers to open their hearts. Slowly reciting, chanting or singing this text is a wonderful way to enter into its flow and spirit. In this way, the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra can confer profound insight and transcendental knowledge upon your mind. This text delights beginners as well as scholars, both new and old practitioners.

Practitioners of the Great Perfection should from time to time recite a few chapters of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra. While maintaining the recognition of the buddha nature, they should slowly sing the verses in a melodious tune. The enlightened mind of the Buddha is as vast as space, permeating everything. Buddha’s recognition of wisdom is not disrupted even for a single instant, while yogin practitioners, depending upon their degree of development, recognize buddha nature only partially. Reciting or singing the text expands a yogin’s mind.

First, make your mind vast and open in a contrived manner, and then mingle this openness with the recognition of buddha nature. In this state, yogins of the Great Perfection should sing or recite the poetry of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra as an enhancement practice. The blessing of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra will enhance any yogin’s recognition of buddha nature.

Although genuine yogins are able to chant the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra while maintaining the view, new practitioners who have not yet received teachings on how to recognize buddha nature should chant the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra while cultivating conceptually contrived devotion[37] toward the buddhas and bodhisattvas. They should see the buddhas and bodhisattvas as inseparable from their own root guru and should imagine that the wisdom mind of the buddhas and bodhisattvas is merged with their own dualistic mind. This is a very important point. It is essential to read and study the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra while remaining in a state which is merged with the wisdom field of the buddhas and bodhisattvas.

Applying this instruction will naturally lead to an open, devoted, and compassionate state of mind. The buddhas and bodhisattvas are a supreme object of veneration, endowed with great blessings and healing powers. Opening our minds to that energy, the Buddha’s blessings will naturally enter into us, and our minds will be infused with love and compassion.

On the other hand, if you focus your mind on inferior or negative objects and become fascinated by the deeds of great evildoers, their negative and unwholesome energy will enter your mind. Similarly, if you hold in your mind the image of someone who has done you wrong, constantly reinforcing feelings of hurt and aggression, you are totally immersing your mind in negativity.

When you open your mind to the teachings of the Bodhisattva-caryāvatāra, you open up to the enlightened mind of the Buddha, to teachings that accord with the natural state of reality. The blessing power of the Buddha and his teachings will immediately enter your mind, just as your finger becomes wet the moment you dip it into water. As soon as you begin to merge your mind with the wisdom field of the Buddha, you have already received his blessing.

The word ‘blessing’ carries the meaning of ‘power’ and ‘energy’,[38] similar to the way in which the radiance[39] of the sun opens up a lotus flower. ‘Blessing’ is the energetic capacity,[40] the charisma,[41] to positively influence the thoughts and attitudes of others. ‘Power’ denotes strength and intensity.[42] The blessing power of Buddha’s vajra-body, vajra-speech, and vajra-mind can change our ordinary body, speech, and mind. Our own capacity to receive Buddha’s blessing power depends on the strength of our faith, devotion, and diligence.

Motivation

Whether or not your dharma practice is successful, whether or not your practice accords with the genuine dharma, depends entirely on the purity of your motivation.[43] Only if your motivation is utterly pure and altruistic will you be able to reach liberation or enlightenment. When gathering the accumulations there should not be the slightest degree of self-interest. The merest trace of the desire to achieve enlightenment for yourself alone means that you are simply using sentient beings as objects for gaining personal merit. If that is the case, your practice of bodhicitta and the six perfections has not been embraced by transcendental knowledge, as you still maintain selfishness, ego-clinging.

You must honestly examine your mind and search for the true motives of your dharma practice. Are you really motivated by the desire to free all beings from suffering and establish them on the level of enlightenment, or are you striving for your own happiness and well-being? An attitude of hoping to reach enlightenment and happiness for your own benefit can easily arise. This is the thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if I reached enlightenment? Then I would be happy.” The moment you detect such a thought in your mind you must transform it. Again and again form the resolve: “I will never rest until all sentient beings have reached enlightenment. Wherever beings may be suffering I want to be reborn among them and help them.”

Teachers can easily become proud and think, “People really like the way I teach. I’m really good at what I’m doing.” Teachers, on detecting such thoughts within their minds, should immediately correct their motivation and remind themselves, “The dharma should never be taught to impress people and make the teacher look good. My motivation for teaching the dharma is to free all beings from suffering and to establish them on the level of complete enlightenment. May all beings benefit from hearing the teachings of the Buddha. What touches people is the greatness of the dharma. I am only a conduit for the teachings and blessings of the Buddha. That is the reason why I teach the dharma.” In this way teachers must constantly be on guard that their motivation for teaching remains pure and altruistic.

Nyoshül Khen Rinpoche, a truly authentic master of the Great Perfection, repeatedly emphasized the importance of maintaining a pure motivation when receiving teachings, when practicing, and when giving instruction in the dharma. Sometimes he would teach me for one hour straight and then interrupt his discourse to say, “Now our motivation has deteriorated. Let’s correct it again. For me as a teacher and for you as a student, pure motivation is easy to lose. Our minds quickly become tainted by the eight worldly concerns.[44] Let’s examine our minds and renew our motivation. Let’s meditate for ten or twenty minutes on our motivation.”

After we scrutinized and corrected our motivation in this manner, he would continue with his teaching. At other times, Khen Rinpoche said that purity of motivation is the ultimate measure, parameter, or plumb-line[45] for dharma practice. If the motivation is genuinely correct, everything you do will be in accordance with the dharma.

Any practitioner of the Great Perfection needs this purity of motivation. For those of highest capacity, compassion and bodhicitta arise naturally as the expression of their recognition of buddha nature. If practitioners do not have this natural compassion at all times, they have no choice but to develop compassion conceptually. You must, for a short while, intentionally contrive compassion, and then mingle it with uncontrived mind essence practice. In this manner, such contrived practices, which actually belong to the post-meditation stage, will evoke the natural qualities of uncontrived meditation, and uncontrived compassion can begin to naturally arise as the expression of the essence. Practicing the Great Perfection with a Hīnayāna motivation does not work; the innate qualities of buddha nature will not manifest unless your mind is infused with Mahāyāna motivation.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

lam stegs

[2]:

shes rab pha rol tu phyin pa

[3]:

sngon ’gro

[4]:

bden par smra ba

[5]:

chos nyid kyi khrims

[6]:

lung

[7]:

thabs

[8]:

thabs byung

[9]:

thabs las byung ba’i shes rab

[10]:

rdzogs byang

[11]:

shes rab

[12]:

ye shes

[13]:

bsod nams

[14]:

rdzogs pa chen po

[15]:

ye shes kyi sku

[16]:

Khenpo Kunpal explains: “When neither a (truly existing) ‘entity’, something that must be negated, nor a (truly existing) ‘non-entity’, the negation thereof, remains before the mind or within the mind’s reach, at that point, since there is no other position of something truly existing such as ‘both existence and non-existence’ and ‘neither existence nor non-existence’, without any reference point of conceptualizing ‘it is empty’ or ‘it is not empty’, all elaborations (of the mind) rest in utter peace. It is (a state of) equanimity, which is like the center of space, inexpressible and inconceivable, perfectly revealed only by one’s individual awareness wisdom” [gang gi tshe dgag bya dngos po dang de bkag pa’i dngos med gnyis po dag gang yang blo yi mdun nam spyod yul na mi gnas pa de yi tshe de las gzhan gnyis ka dang gnyis min la sogs pa bden par grub pa’i rnam pa gzhan med pas na stong ngo mi stong ngo la sogs pa’i dmigs pa’i gtad so ma lus pa med par spros pa ma lus pa rab tu zhi ba yin te so so rang rig pa’i ye shes tsam gyis rab tu phye ba smra bsam brjod du med pa nam mkha’i dkyil lta bu mnyam pa nyid do]. kun dpal ’grel pa (si khron mi rigs edition), pages 649-650. For further details on this stanza see, Altruism and Reality, pages 20-22.

[17]:

blo gi chos

[18]:

blo dang bral ba’i chos

[19]:

shes rab

[20]:

dad pa

[21]:

snying rje

[22]:

byang sems

[23]:

rtsal

[24]:

rjes thob

[25]:

bden pa grub pa ma yin

[26]:

rten ’brel

[27]:

las

[28]:

rgyu

[29]:

rkyen

[30]:

zhi ba

[31]:

’dul ba

[32]:

mdangs

[33]:

mnyam bzhag

[34]:

blo

[35]:

rtsal

[36]:

gcod

[37]:

blo’i mos sgom

[38]:

nus pa

[39]:

byin rlabs

[40]:

nus pa

[41]:

gzi byin

[42]:

rlabs po che

[43]:

kun slong

[44]:

The eight worldly concerns [’jig rten chos brgyad] are: gain [rnyed pa] and loss [ma rnyed pa]; fame [snyan] and disrepute [mi snyan]; praise [bstod pa] and blame [smad pa]; pleasure [bde ba] and pain [mi bde ba].

[45]:

gnam thig

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