Before engaging in main practice, we need to cultivate renunciation, which entails four practices of outer preliminary practices: preciousness of human body, the impermanence of human life, the infallibility of the law of karma, and the defects of samsara. Once having cultivated renunciation, we should not hurry to engage in practice of calm abiding and meditative concentration; rather, we need to cultivate bodhicitta. Without bodhicitta, there is no aim in our practice. Without aim, what’s the point of engaging in meditative concentration and dzogchen practice?

~Depicted from LUMINOUS WISDOM BOOK SERIES