Ken McLeod’s translation:

Attraction to those close to you catches you in its currents; Aversion to those who oppose you burns inside; Indifference that ignores what needs to be done is a black hole. Leave your homeland — this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

Dalai Lama‘s translation:

“Towards our friends and those we love run the waters of attachment, towards our enemies burns the fire of aversion; in the obscurity of ignorance, we lose sight of what should be abandoned and what should be practiced. Therefore, renunciation of one’s country and home is a practice of the bodhisattva.

Ken McLeod’s teaching of this is attachment, aversion and indifference rather than ignorance. When we think of all the things that we ignore in life, including the ways that we feel, we can see that that ignoring also creates ignorance. Ignorance in Dharma teaching is not “not knowing anything,” rather it is not knowing the truth… not being willing to know the truth.

Some people find that when they bring attention to the arising of like, dislike and indifference in meditation practice, then they can recognize them arising as they go about their day. Others hold the practices of loving kindness, compassion, equanimity, or devotion in the mind as they meet life. And still others, as Trungpa Rinpoche wrote, “develop or naturally have enough capacity in awareness that they experience attraction as delight, aversion as clarity, and indifference as non-thought.” 

Ken McLeod writes, “These poisons pull you out of present experience and into the past, an eternal limbo in which you forever seek the love you always wanted and fight with the ghost of those who stood in your way. When nothing touches you, your indifference creates a distance between you and the world around you. It is not so easy to leave your home homeland.”