Ten Bodhisattva Practices

1  Gladdening Practice:

Material generosity, giving to benefit beings, with no idea of self, receiver, or gift; also, observing all living beings perish, bodhisattvas explain to them the equal, imperishable true essence of things, which is none other than emptiness of independent existence.


2  Beneficial Practice:

Maintaining pure morality, abiding in equanimity and impartiality, looking upon all beings as equals.


3  Practice of Nonopposition:

Comprehending the emptiness of the body, selflessness, and nonexistence of possession, realizing pain and pleasure, suffering and happiness, have no absolute existence; inducing other people toward nirvana, the extinction of affliction.


4  Practice of Indefatigability:

Cultivating perseverance in effort in order to cause beings in all worlds to attain ultimate nirvana.


5  Practice of Freedom from Ignorance and Confusion:

Perfecting right mindfulness, purifying the mind and freeing it from confusion, developing and enlarging concentration.


6  Practice of Skillful Revelation:

Knowing thoughts, words, and deeds have no absolute existence, using skillful techniques to demonstrate nonorigination—emptiness of ultimate reality—in order to mature, pacify, and edify people.


7  Practice of Nonattachment:

Purifying and adorning innumerable worlds, serving the Buddhas, entering the realm of reality, dwelling in the abode of Buddhas, cultivating enlightening practices forever, entering the realm of truth with no attachment, practicing enlightening actions throughout the universe.


8  Practice of That Which is Difficult to Attain:

Development of virtuous qualities which are difficult to attain, invincible, supreme, indestructible, unsurpassable, inconceivable, immensely powerful, inexhaustable, and of the same nature as the Buddhas. This involves penetrating the realm of sentient beings in its underlying nonduality with the realm of reality, realizing there is no increase or decrease, as all things and the realm of realities are nondual; it also entails teaching sentient beings without in effect saying a single thing, since there is no absolute thing in the realm of reality, all being as ungraspable as space.


9  Practice of Goodness:

Attaining comprehensive mnemonic power, dealing with all beings with unbreakable compassion, appearing in the form of a Buddha to perform the works of a Buddha.


10  Practice of Real Truth:

Penetrating ever deeper into the Buddhas' teachings and arriving as the fountainhead of truth.