A Piece of Advice

At all times and in all situations, examine your mindstream moment by moment: are thoughts positive or negative? When you recognize a thought to have negative content, be aware of its potential for harm and lay it aside. This is crucial.

Otherwise, when craving or other negative thoughts start to take shape, if you let them take hold, who knows where you’ll wind up in the end?

You may not care about becoming a great scholar, but at least do your best to generate goodwill toward others and steadfast devotion to the Three Jewels.

Your future rebirths stretch out ahead much farther than this one life. The circumstances of those lifetimes will depend on your current aspirations, positive or negative. Don’t jeopardize your future lives by seeking fame and status in this life.

The rest of this life will depend on how stable your virtuous aspi- rations are. See if you can transform your mindstream through the teachings.

You have come to a fork in the road: one path goes up, the other down. If you wait till you’re on your deathbed to make your choice, you’ll be out of luck.

Whether others have good or bad qualities is hard to know. Whether others applaud you or criticize you, you need to turn away from both craving praise and avoiding blame.

Though you may not accomplish great acts of merit, at least avoid evil actions, great or small.

Stop thinking badly of other beings. Don’t speak ill of anyone, because you never know when the person you malign might be a sublime being.

In terms of food, clothes, and other material things, be content with what you’ve got and just stay put.

Otherwise, one day you’ll end up a nuisance in everyone’s eyes, a show-off in robes who just rambles on from one valley to the next, sni - ing around like a stray dog.

Don’t do that!

Written by Patrul. May it bring virtue!