Root Text Flashcards
Airplane. Explain Fuel. Essential How to fill. Teachings Runway. Path Jesus. Bodhisattvas Compass. Compassion Big, beautiful, golden beam of light pointing to new runway....Ultimate Runway. Path Golden. fortunate Slingshot. Liberation
Homage to the venerable Spiritual Guide.
I will explain to the best of my ability
The essential meaning of the teachings of all the Buddha’s [renunciation],
The main path of the Bodhisattvas, who have compassion for all living beings [bohichitta],
And the ultimate path of the fortunate ones who are seeking liberation[the correct view of emptiness]
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You should not be attached to worldly enjoyments,
But strive to find the real meaning of human life
By listening to and practicing the instructions given here,
Which all the previous Buddhas practiced with delight
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Attachment to the fulfillment of your own wishes, uncontrolled desire,
Is the main cause of all your own problems and suffering,
And there is no method to abandon it without first developing renunciation.
Thus you should apply great effort to develop and maintain pure renunciation.
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When, through daily training, you develop the spontaneous thoughts:
‘I may die today’ and ‘A precious human life is so rare’,
And you meditate on the truth of karma and the sufferings of the cycle of impure life, samsara,
Your attachment to worldly enjoyments will cease.
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In this way, when uncontrolled wishes for worldly enjoyments does not arise even for a moment,
But a mind longing for liberation, nirvana, arises throughout the day and the night,
At that time pure renunciation is generated.
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However, if this renunciation is not maintained
By the compassionate mind of bodhichitta,
It will not be a cause of unsurpassed happiness, enlightenment;
Therefore, you must apply effort to generate the precious mind of bodhichitta.
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Swept along by the currents of the four powerful rivers [birth, ageing, sickness, and death],
Tightly bound by the chains of karma so hard to release,
Ensnared within the iron net of self-grasping,
Completely enveloped by the pitch-black darkness of ignorance,
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Taking rebirth after rebirth in boundless samsara,
And unceasingly tormented by the three sufferings [painful feelings, changing suffering, and pervasive suffering] -
Through contemplating the state of your mothers, all living beings, in conditions such as these,
Generate the supreme mind of bodhichitta.
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But even though you may be acquainted with renunciation and bodhichitta,
If you do not possess the wisdom realizing the way things really are,
You will not be able to cut the root of samsara;
Therefore strive in the means for realizing dependent relationship.
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When you clearly see phenomena such as samsara and nirvana, and cause and effect, as they exist,
And at the same time you see that all the phenomena you normally see or perceive do not exist,
You have entered the path of the correct view of emptiness,
Thus delighting all the Buddhas
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If you perceive and believe that the appearance, phenomena,
And the empty, emptiness of phenomena,
Are dualistic,
You have not yet realized Buddha’s intention.
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Through just seeing that things exist
In dependence on their mere name,
If your self-grasping reduces or ceases,
At that time you have completed your understanding of emptiness.
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Moreover, if you negate the extreme of existence
By simply realizing that phenomena are just mere appearance,
And if you negate the extreme of non-existence
By simply realizing that all the phenomena you normally see or perceive do not exist,
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And if you realize how, for example, the emptiness of cause and effect
Is perceived as cause and effect,
Because there is no cause and effect other than emptiness,
With these realizations you will not be harmed by extreme view.
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When, in this way, you have correctly realized the essential points
Of the three principal aspects of the path,
Dear One, withdraw into solitary retreat, generate and maintain strong effort
And quickly accomplish the final goal.
