Tag Archives: 37 Practices

37 practices: verse 3, part 1 of 2

3. To rely on solitude

When I avoid conditions that disturb me, / Emotional afflictions lose their strength.

When there are no distractions to engage me, / My dharma practice grows to fill the space.

Awareness – knowing – rigpa clarifies, / And certainty in dharma dawns and thrives.

On solitude and silence to rely: / This is the way a bodhisattva trains.

verse 3 chanted 3x.

verses 1-3 chanted 1x.

Verse 3!  I think this may the hardest challenge of all in our 21st-century lives so rich with technology and other distractions. We will spend another week on verse 3, so please continue your study, contemplation, and meditation on it.

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37 practices: verse 2

2. To leave my homeland

While those I love can stir up a tsunami, / And those I hate can burn me up like fire,

When I don’t care I lose my moral compass / And dark delusion permeates my mind.

To give up all my habits and reactions — This homeland where I’ve dwelt from life to life:

This is the way a bodhisattva trains.

Verse 2 chanted 3x.

Verses 1 and 2 chanted 1x.

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37 practices: verse 1

1: To study, contemplate, and meditate

This precious human life’s so hard to find, / Its freedoms and resources like a boat

To navigate samsara’s endless sea / And set myself and other beings free.

For that, without distraction, day and night / To study, contemplate, and meditate:

This is the way a bodhisattva trains.

Verse 1 chanted 3x. (Click where the “play” button should be.)

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37 practices: infrastructure

A recording of each class (except the first one) is linked at the bottom of each post, and also via the 37 practices link in the blogroll (right column of this page). I sometimes forget I’m being recorded.  🙂 Any errors are all mine. The classes are taught by Zoom so there may be imperfections in some recordings due to technical glitches or temporary noise from a participant’s surroundings. Just like life.

Overall structure of the 37 practices: I mentioned in the prelude that the 37 practices both serve as a lam rim (step-by-step guide to the path) and fall within the traditional class of instructions known as mind training (lo jong). The root text, by Gyalse Ngulchu Togme Zangpo, is very concise: 37 verses with a couple of extras at the beginning and end, fitting entirely within 11 pages in Dilgo Khyentse‘s commentary, The Heart of Compassion. (The rest of the book consists of Dilgo Khyentse’s commentary on each verse plus some introductory chapters and quite useful appendices, notes, and index.)

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37 practices: prelude

Interspersed with other topics, you will now find, in progress, starting in June 2017, a study guide for a class I’m teaching on the classic text 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva by Gyalse Ngulchu Togme Zangpo. I’m posting materials here for those who miss a class and for anyone else who is interested.

Why study a text written centuries ago in a culture that had very little in common with the sophisticated, technologically-oriented lifestyle of 21st-century Westerners? 1) Frankly, human nature doesn’t seem to have evolved all that much, if any. We still face all the same problems Togme Zangpo did. 2) This very concise root text is a complete guide to the step-by-step path of awakening to our full potential as human beings, aka a lamrim, like The Jewel Ornament of Liberation; PLUS a mind training text like the Seven Points of Mind Training (see Jamgon Kongtrul’s Great Path of Awakening) and Shantideva’s A Bodhisattva’s Way of Life–ALL THIS in just 37 short verses plus a couple of extras at the beginning and end. But wait–there’s more!

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