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.”

Verse 1

The Dalai Lama’s translation:

The possession of this human base, this precious vessel so difficult to obtain, in order to liberate others and ourselves from the ocean of samsara, allows us to hear, reflect, and meditate day and night without distractions. This is the practice of the bodhisattva.

Ken McLeod’s translation:

Right now, you have a good boat, fully equipped and available—hard to find. To free others and you from the sea of samsara, Day and night, fully alert and present, Study, reflect, and meditate – this is the practice of a bodhisattva.

The first verse of the 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva is a reminder of how precious our human life is, how rare the opportunity is to live as human beings… To have the opportunity to practice and how important practice is, and Ken McLeod says we should “appreciate the opportunity.” Bring gratitude to the thought of being alive—right now—in this time and place…

This human life holds the potential for enlightenment. Mine and yours and everyone’s—every human being. It’s a good boat and it has everything we need to free ourselves and others from suffering… to make the journey from delusion to enlightenment.

The classic teaching called the “precious human life,” asks that we take time to think about what makes it possible for us to practice. Realize that first, we live in a society that affords us leisure time… we don’t have to spend all of our time just trying to survive. Second, we have the freedom to decide how we spend our time. There’s no one—not a person standing over us with a whip, or a state that regulates our leisure time—telling us how to live. Third, we have access to teachers and teachings. Today we can hear teachers from all over the world and receive their teachings, through the internet and apps… and here in Colorado Springs and in most towns and cities in the country.

Togme Zangpo was born in 1297 in the town of Sakya in Tibet. He lived until 1371—74 years! He became a monk at 15 and when he was 40, retreated to a cave for over twenty years. Rather than live in seclusion, he continued to teach, and to write. He wrote The Ocean of Good Saying—a commentary on The Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, and—his masterpiece, The Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva.

The Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, or the Bodhicharyavatara, in Sanskrit, was taught by the great yogi Shantideva in the 8^th Century and  summarizes the entire Mahayana path, or the “Great Vehicle,” with instruction on cultivating, Bodhichitta, the enlightened mind, and embodying the Bodhisattva ideals of the Six Paramitas or Perfections. This is an individual who have committed themself to achieve Buddhahood, and to free all beings from suffering.

Buddha taught that sentient beings are as countless as grains of sand in the Ganges. Pema Chodron wrote “Because there are more than the mind can grasp, the wish to save them all is equally inconceivable.  By making such an aspiration, our ordinary, confused mind stretches far beyond its normal capacity; it stretches limitlessly.  When we expand our personal longing for liberation to include immeasurable numbers of beings, the benefit we receive is equally immeasurable.  Don’t worry about whether or not it’s doable.  Don’t worry about the results; just open your heart in an inconceivably big way, in that limitless way that benefits everyone you encounter.  The more we connect with the inconceivable, indescribable vastness of mind, the more joyful we will be.”

The Paramitas as perfections, are perfect realization, or reaching beyond limitation. Through the practice of the paramitas we cross over the sea of suffering, which is samsara, to the shore of happiness and awakening; to perfect awareness, understanding, stillness—Nirvana.

What is samsara? Samsara isn’t a place. It isn’t even the world or realm we live in. Samsara, or cyclic existence, is living in identification with and attachment to this body and mind. It is the “ME” we cling to and believe is the a permanently existing entity that is at the center of the universe. This unending delusion is what we call the “Wheel of Suffering.”

Nirvana is also a state of mind–not a place or a realm. It is the mind that does not dwell in ignorance. The mind that is free from attachment to the “I.”