Key Buddhist Terms

The bodhisattva of compassion, embodiment of the compassion of all buddhas, to whom Tokme Zangpo pays homage at the opening of the text.

The altruistic wish to attain complete buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings, the heart of the Mahayana path.

A being who has generated bodhicitta and dedicates all their efforts to attaining buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.

The wish for all beings to be free from suffering and its causes, the driving force behind the bodhisattva's path.

The fifth perfection: meditative stability that unites calm abiding with special insight, surpassing the formless absorptions.

The compassionate aspiration to attain buddhahood for all beings, practiced through methods like tonglen and recognizing all beings as mothers.

The practice of offering all positive energy generated through practice to the awakening of all sentient beings.

One of the three root poisons; craving and attachment that binds beings to samsara, compared to drinking salt water.

The eighteen conditions that constitute a precious human birth suitable for spiritual practice.

The ultimate nature of all phenomena: the absence of inherent, independent existence in all things, including the self.

The second perfection: moral conduct practiced without worldly aspiration, the foundation of all other virtues.

The radical bodhisattva practice of reversing the habitual prioritization of self over others.

The four highest meditative states within samsara, surpassed by the bodhisattva's concentration joined with insight.

The four conceptual positions rejected by Madhyamaka philosophy: existence, non-existence, both, and neither.

The first perfection: giving without any hope of return, including material aid, Dharma teachings, and protection from fear.

The author of the Thirty-Seven Practices, a fourteenth-century Tibetan master celebrated for his scholarship, compassion, and saintly conduct.

Words that disturb others' minds, identified as the most common daily form of harm and a deterioration of bodhisattva conduct.

The fundamental truth that all conditioned phenomena are transient, used as a basis for renunciation and urgent practice.

Stories of the Buddha's previous lives as a bodhisattva, illustrating the supreme generosity of offering one's body for others.

The fourth perfection: enthusiastic, delighted engagement with the work of awakening, the source of all good qualities.

The law of cause and effect governing actions: positive actions produce happiness, negative actions produce suffering.

Freedom from the cycle of samsara, the aspiration of the middle-scope practitioner, transcended by the bodhisattva's aim for full buddhahood.

The wish for all beings to have happiness and its causes, paired with compassion as the foundation of bodhicitta.

The Middle Way philosophical school that establishes the emptiness of all phenomena, the philosophical basis for verse 22.

The Great Vehicle of Buddhism focused on attaining buddhahood for the benefit of all beings, the tradition within which the Thirty-Seven Practices is situated.

The watchful awareness that monitors the mind's activity, detecting afflictions the instant they arise.

The capacity to hold your ethical intention in awareness, functioning as mental glue that keeps aspirations present in each moment.

The fundamental character of awareness, which is from the beginning free from conceptual extremes.

The retreat site where Tokme Zangpo composed the Thirty-Seven Practices during over twenty years of solitary practice.

The complete cessation of suffering and its causes, the never-changing supreme state beyond the impermanence of samsara.

The third perfection: the capacity to meet harm without hostility, regarding those who harm you as precious treasures.

A Solitary Realizer who attains liberation through independent contemplation but does not teach others.

A human life endowed with the eight freedoms and ten advantages that allow genuine spiritual practice, compared to a ship on the ocean of samsara.

The determination to be free from samsara, arising from contemplating impermanence and the unsatisfactory nature of conditioned existence.

The cycle of birth, death, and rebirth driven by karma and afflictions, described as an ocean from which beings need to be freed.

The habitual prioritization of one's own happiness over others', identified as the root cause of all suffering.

The practice of relentlessly examining one's own faults rather than focusing on others' shortcomings.

Calm abiding meditation that develops single-pointed stability of mind, the necessary foundation for special insight.

The great Indian Mahayana master whose Bodhisattvacharyavatara deeply influenced the Thirty-Seven Practices.

A Hearer or disciple who follows the Buddha's teachings to attain personal liberation from samsara.

The six transcendent practices of generosity, ethics, patience, joyous effort, concentration, and wisdom that form the bodhisattva's active training.

Compassionate methods employed wisely for the benefit of beings, inseparable from the wisdom of emptiness.

Physical and mental seclusion that creates the conditions for disturbing emotions to decrease and virtue to naturally increase.

A qualified guide whose influence causes faults to diminish and good qualities to grow like the waxing moon.

The ten categories of harmful action whose fruit is suffering: three of body, four of speech, and three of mind.

Body, speech, and mind -- the three avenues through which all actions are performed and practice is engaged.

The Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha -- the three objects of refuge that offer reliable protection unlike worldly powers.

Desire, hatred, and ignorance -- the three root afflictions that drive cyclic existence and are the core obstacles on the path.

The graduated framework of initial, middle, and great-scope practitioners that structures the progression of the text.

The agent, object, and action in any deed; recognizing their emptiness transforms ordinary virtue into transcendent perfection.

The three-part framework for every action: begin with bodhicitta, maintain emptiness awareness during, and dedicate the merit after.

The three enemies of joyous effort: indolence, attachment to worldly activities, and self-deprecation.

The progressive method of hearing, thinking, and meditating on the teachings prescribed in the very first verse.

The desire realm, form realm, and formless realm that comprise all of samsaric existence.

The meditation of giving and taking: breathing in others' suffering as dark smoke and sending out one's happiness as radiant light.

The direct realization of the empty nature of all phenomena, the wisdom aspect of the awakening mind.

The god of wealth (Kubera), invoked in verse 19 as the benchmark of maximum worldly prosperity.

Special insight or penetrating wisdom that sees the true nature of phenomena, the complement to calm abiding.

The sixth perfection: penetrating insight into emptiness that does not conceive the three spheres as real, transforming all other perfections.