The 3 Principal Aspects of the Path

Prerequisite for this Course : Lamrim Course

5 weeks : Thursday 7h30 PM to 9h00 PM

July 8th to August 5th

Teacher : Tenzin Gawa (Jason)

This is a very short text written by Tsongkhapa that condenses all the teachings of the Lamrim, into what is called The 3 principal aspects of the path : renunciation, mind of Enlightenment and perfect view.

Here is the Text : 

Homage to the Venerable Lamas!

I will explain as best as I can the essential meaning of the Victorious Ones’ excellent teachings, the path praised by their sublime Children, the gateway for the fortunate wishing liberation.

You who are not attached to the pleasures of conditioned existence and who strive to make your freedoms and endowments meaningful, with confidence in the path pleasing the Victorious Ones: fortunate ones, listen with a pure mind.

Without a pure determination to be free, there is no way to pacify the pursuit of pleasures of conditioned existence. As embodied beings are completely bound by their thirst for conditioned existence, seek from the very start determination to be free.

Freedoms and endowments are difficult to find and life does not last; through familiarization with that, attachment to appearances of this life is reversed. By thinking continuously about infallibility of actions and their effects and the sufferings of samsara, attachment to appearances of future lives is reversed.

By familiarizing with that, not even for a moment does desire for the marvels of conditioned existence arise, and with the arising of the mind striving for liberation during all day and night, then you have generated the determination to be free.

If renunciation is not accompanied with the Mind of Enlightenment, it doesn’t act as a cause of the perfect happiness of Unsurpassed Enlightenment. Therefore, the wise produce the Mind of Enlightenment.

Swept away by the strong current of the four great rivers, tied by the tight bonds of karma, so hard to undo, and caught in the iron net of self-grasping, completely enveloped by the thick darkness of ignorance Endlessly reborn in conditioned existence, ceaselessly tormented by the three sufferings, thinking that your mothers are in such a condition, generate the supreme mind.

Even after having been familiarized with renunciation and the Mind of Enlightenment, you cannot cut the root of conditioned existence without the wisdom realizing the nature of reality; therefore put effort in the method to realize interdependency.

Whoever sees that cause and effect of all phenomena of samsara and nirvana are infallible and destroy entirely any point of focus walks on the way that pleases the Buddhas.

The unfailing interdependent appearances and the emptiness free from all assertions: if these two understandings appear to you as separate, you have not realized the Buddha’s intent.

When they do not alternate but are simultaneous, and from the mere perception of the unfailing interdependency, a determinative knowledge destroys all modes of grasping to objects, at this moment you have completed the analysis of the view.

Moreover, when you know that appearances eliminate the extreme of existence and that emptiness eliminates the extreme of inexistence, and that you know how emptiness appears as causes and effects, you will not be captivated by views holding to extremes.

When you have realized this way the essential points of these three principal aspects of the path, resort to solitude and strengthen your enthusiasm so as to quickly accomplish your ultimate wish, my child.