Foundations of Contemplation

~This pure human body with its freedom and resources, so difficult to possess, is lost in ordinary physical death without Dharma.

~ It is necessary to select instructions of one’s guru unmistakenly, through understanding the difference between instructions that are appropriate and inappropriate.

~ It is necessary that, by being without attachment and craving, one avoid giving one’s nose rope to others.

~ Rely upon worthy disciples who have faith and respect.

~ Abandon retinue and negative companions that harm your mind and experience.

~ Abandon careless conduct that causes others to lose faith.

~ Since appearances are the radiance of the mind, do not abandon them.

~ Since desirable things are the water and manure of experience and realization, do not abandon them.

~ Since all the pleasure and suffering of sentient beings arises from karma, know the results of actions to be unfailing.

~ Relying upon a holy guru, abandon arrogance; practice in accordance with his or her instructions.

~ If excitement predominates, emphasize the subduing of awareness.

~ Contemplating death and impermanence, exhort yourself to cultivate virtue.

~ If you have little faith and much knowledge, that is the deviation of becoming a talker.

~ If your mind is untrained in method—great compassion—that is the deviation into the path of the lesser vehicle.

~ There is confusion between the emptiness that is the nature of all knowables and the emptiness that is intellectually posited.

~ To combine the hearing, reflection, and meditation aspects of Dharma is unmistaken.

~ To have good experience and realization and no arrogance or vanity is unmistaken.

~To be learned in instruction and have no experience is like a treasury of riches to which there is no key, and is useless.

~ To abide in solitude and accomplish greatness in this life is a hidden evil of practitioners.

~ To present instructions to others while one’s own mind is contrary to Dharma is a hidden evil of practitioners.

~ A view that realizes the nature of all knowables s indispensable.

~ It is a mark of a holy person to examine any action with alertness and to perform it with alert mindfulness.

~ Since, having entered the gate of Dharma through faith, if you do not conduct yourself in accordance with Dharma it will cause lower migrations, there is no benefit.

~ Disregarding through pride one’s holy guru and the Victor’s teaching is like a rash ruler ignoring his council, and is accomplishing one’s own disaster.

~ To abandon activities of distraction and cultivate hearing, reflection, and mediation, is a great kindness to oneself.

~ Realizing that the viewed, the viewer and the realization are indivisible is the perfect view for one of the highest capacity.

~ Not searching out the instructions of the siddha’s oral lineage but earnestly emphasizing pointless intellectual Dharma is extremely bewildered.

~ Not to reflect upon the meaning of Dharma while living alone, but to teach Dharma amidst an extensive retinue, is extremely bewildered.

~ In the middle stage, undistracted meditation is necessary, like the intense feelings of a mother whose only child has died.

~ If suffering is recognized to be siddhi, searching for pleasure is unnecessary.

~ This vehicle of the essential meaning is superior to the paths of all other vehicles.

~ If an individual who has attained freedom of mind abandons desirable things, it is excellent.  If he or she partakes of them, it is also excellent.

~ When a bad person’s mind turns to genuine Dharma and he or she becomes a holy person respected by everyone, this is a quality of genuine Dharma.

~  Since in the path there is nothing to be traversed and no one traversing it, path is merely a name.

~ Since in effortless conduct free from action there are no elaborations of acceptance and rejection, it is spontaneously present as great bliss.