10 Necessities for the Practitioner

  1. Ability to be independent. You need to stay independent so as not to lose your true goal once you have decided what needs to be done and what you need not follow.
  2. Follow the words and teachings of sublime Masters with trust and diligence.
  3. One must have the wisdom to discriminate whether the sublime teachings given by the Master is correct or incorrect before one starts the practice. If found to be wrong, one has to find out what is correct and what is suitable for oneself.
  4. Assimilate the sublime Master’s knowledge with devotion. That is, one must have faith and determination to practise the teachings given by the sublime Master to attain the realisations of the Master whom you receive the teachings from.
  5. One’s three doors (body, speech and mind) should be free from faults by having mindfulness, introspection and heedfulness in one’s daily practice.
  6. To be steady and have fortitude in pursuing the goal of ultimate liberation. This means one ought to have strong courage and unwavering determination to reach the highest state of Buddhahood.
  7. To practise non-attachment and non-clinginess. That is, your mind should always be still and steady, resting in equanimity and be free from attachment or aversion towards any phenomenon or people.
  8. To constantly exert oneself in accumulating merits through compassion, loving-kindness, practice and dedication. First, it is crucial to generate thoughts of loving-kindness, compassion and pure motivation. Next, we proceed to doing the actual practice, and finally round it off by dedicating the merits of the practice to the complete liberation of all sentient beings.
  9. To constantly cherish thoughts of helping, caring and benefiting all sentient beings, whether directly or indirectly, in our practice and all that we do.
  10. Avoid seeing phenomenon as cast in concrete. It is important to have the wisdom, the understanding and realisation to differentiate between realisation and intellectual understanding.
  • Thritsab Rinpoche, excerpted from Awaken 8

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