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 ...
Text Section 203
What is known as the precious human body [mi lus rin po che] requires that the eight freedoms and all ten advantages be complete. If any of these eighteen components are missing, your existence is not considered to be a precious human body. We should reflect on the difficulty of attaining such a perfect situation again by contemplating the causes [rgyu], considering the difficulty through metaphor [dpe] and through numerical comparison [grangs].