List of illustrations | |
Foreword | |
ISLT's Acknowledgements | |
Translators' Acknowledgements | |
Translators' Introduction | |
A brief historical introduction to Tibetan Buddhism | |
Prologue | |
The Ordinary or External Preliminaries | |
The difficulty of finding the freedoms and advantages | |
The Proper Way to Listen to Spiritual Teaching | |
The Teaching Itself: An Explanation of How Difficult It Is to Find the Freedoms and Advantages | |
The impermanence of life | |
The Impermanence of the Outer Universe in Which Beings Live | |
The Impermanence of Beings Living in the Universe | |
The Impermanence of Holy Beings | |
The Impermanence of Those in Positions of Power | |
Other Examples of Impermanence | |
The Uncertainty of the Circumstances of Death | |
Intense Awareness of Impermanence | |
The defects of samsara | |
The Sufferings of Samsara in General | |
The Particular Sufferings Experienced by the Beings of the Six Realms | |
Actions: the principle of cause and effect | |
Negative Actions to Be Abandoned | |
Positive Actions to be Adopted | |
The All-Determining Quality of Actions | |
The benefits of liberation | |
Causes Leading to Liberation | |
The Result: The Three Levels of Enlightenment | |
How to follow a spiritual friend | |
Examining the Teacher | |
Following the Teacher | |
Emulating the Teacher's Realization and Actions | |
The Extraordinary or Internal Preliminaries | |
Taking refuge, foundation stone of all paths | |
Approaches to Taking Refuge | |
How to Take Refuge | |
Precepts and Benefits of Taking Refuge | |
Arousing bodhichitta, the root of the Great Vehicle | |
Training the Mind in the Four Boundless Qualities | |
Arousing Bodhichitta | |
Training in Bodhichitta | |
Meditating on the teacher as Vajrasattva to cleanse all obscurations | |
How Obscurations Can Be Purified through Confession | |
The Four Powers | |
The Actual Meditation on Vajrasattva | |
Offering the mandala to accumulate merit and wisdom | |
The Need for the Two Accumulations | |
The Accomplishment Mandala | |
The Offering Mandala | |
The kusali's accumulation: destroying the four demons at a single stroke | |
The Body as an Offering | |
The Practice of Offering the Body | |
The Meaning of Cho | |
Guru Yoga, entrance-way for blessings, the ultimate way to arouse the wisdom of realization | |
The Reason for Guru Yoga | |
How to Practise Guru Yoga | |
The History of the Advent of the Early Translation Doctrine | |
Propagation of the Essence-Teaching in Tibet, Land of Snows | |
The Swift Path of Transference | |
Transference of consciousness, the instructions for the dying: Buddhahood without meditation | |
The Five Kinds of Transference | |
Ordinary Transference Using Three Ideas | |
Conclusion | |
Notes | |
Glossary | |
Bibliography | |
Index | |
Padmakara Translation Group | |
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