37 Praticas Bodisatua

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The Thirty-seven Bodhisattva Practices:
A Literal Translation for Study

(rGyal-sras lag-len so-bdun-ma)
by Togmey-zangpo (Thogs-med bzang-po)

translated by Alexander Berzin, 1983, revised 2003
Original version published in His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama:

Four Essential Buddhist Commentaries Dharamsala, India: Library of Tibetan Works &
Archives, 1983.
Obeisance to Lokeshvara ( Compassion Buda).
I prostrate always respectfully through my three gateways to my Guardian

Avalokiteshvara, my supreme gurus, who, seeing that all phenomena have no coming or
going, make efforts singly to benefit wandering beings.
Fully enlightened Buddhas, the sources of benefit and happiness, come from actualizing
the sacred Dharma. Moreover, since this depends on knowing what are its practices, I
shall explain a bodhisattva's practice.
(1) Now, when we have obtained the great ship (of a human rebirth) with respites and
enrichments, difficult to find, a bodhisattva's practice is to listen, think, and meditate
unwaveringly, day and night, in order to free ourselves and others from the ocean of
uncontrollably recurring samsara.
(2) A bodhisattva's practice is to leave our homelands, where attachment to friends

tosses us like water; anger toward enemies burns us like fire; and naivety from
forgetting what is to be adopted and abandoned cloaks us in darkness.
(3) A bodhisattva's practice is to rely on seclusion where, by ridding ourselves of

negative objects, our disturbing emotions and attitudes gradually become stymied; by
lacking distractions, our constructive practices naturally increase; and by clearing our
awareness, our certainty grows in the Dharma.
(4) A bodhisattva's practice is to give up total concern with this lifetime, in which
friends and relations a long time together must part their own ways; wealth and
possessions gathered with effort must be left behind, and our consciousness, the
guest, must depart from our bodies, its guest house.
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(5) A bodhisattva's practice is to rid ourselves of bad friends with whom, when we
associate, our three poisonous emotions and attitudes increase; our actions of listening,
thinking, and meditating decrease; and our love and compassion turn to nil.
(6) A bodhisattva's practice is to cherish more than our bodies our holy spiritual
mentors, by relating to whom, in a healthy manner, our faults come to deplete and our
good qualities to expand like the waxing moon.
(7) A bodhisattva's practice is to take safe direction from the Supreme Gems, by
seeking protection from whom we are never deceived - since whom can worldly gods
protect when they themselves are still bound in the prison of samsara?
(8) A bodhisattva's practice is never to commit any negative actions, even at the cost
of our lives, because the Able One has said that the extremely difficult to endure
sufferings of the worse states of rebirth are the results of negative actions.
(9) A bodhisattva's practice is to work with keen interest for the supreme never-
changing state of liberation, as the pleasures of the three realms are phenomena that
perish in a moment, all at once, like dew on the tips of grass.
(10) A bodhisattva's practice is to develop a bodhichitta resolve to liberate limitless

beings because, if our mothers, who have been kind to us from beginningless time, are
suffering, what can we do with just our own happiness?
(11) A bodhisattva's practice is to purely exchange our personal happiness for the
suffering of others, because all our sufferings come from desiring our personal
happiness, while a fully enlightened Buddha is born from the attitude of wishing others
well.
(12) A bodhisattva's practice is, even if someone under the power of great desire
steals or causes others to steal all our wealth, to dedicate to him our bodies,
resources, and constructive actions of the three times.
(13) A bodhisattva's practice is, even if while we have not the slightest fault ourselves,
someone were to chop off our heads, to accept these negative forces, through the
power of compassion.
(14) A bodhisattva's practice is, even if someone were to publicize throughout the
thousand, million, billion worlds all kinds of unpleasant things about us, to speak in
return about his good qualities, with an attitude of love.
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(15) A bodhisattva's practice is, even if someone exposes our faults or says foul words
about us in the midst of a gathering of many wandering beings, to bow to him
respectfully, recognizing him as our spiritual teacher.
(16) A bodhisattva's practice is, even if someone whom we have raised, cherishing him
like our own child, were to regard us as his enemy, to have special loving kindness for
him like a mother toward her child stricken with an illness.
(17) A bodhisattva's practice is, even if someone our equal or inferior were to try to
demean us out of the power of his arrogance, to receive him on the crown of our heads
respectfully, like a guru.
(18) A bodhisattva's practice is, even if we are destitute in livelihood and always
abused by people, sick with terrible diseases, or afflicted by ghosts, to accept on
ourselves the negative forces and sufferings of all wandering beings and not be
discouraged.
(19) A bodhisattva's practice is, even if we are sweetly praised, bowed to with their
heads by many wandering beings, or have obtained riches like those of the children of
the Lord of Wealth, never to be conceited, by seeing that worldly prosperity has no
essence.
(20) A bodhisattva's practice is to tame our mental continuums with the martial arts of
love and compassion because, if we do not subdue the enemy which is our own hostility,
then even if we have subdued an external enemy, more will come.
(21) A bodhisattva's practice is immediately to abandon any objects that cause our
clinging and attachment to increase, for objects of desire are like salt water: the more
we indulge in them, our thirst for them increases in turn.
(22) A bodhisattva's practice is not to take to mind inherent features of objects taken
and minds that take them, by realizing just how things are. No matter how things
appear, they are from our own minds; and mind itself is, from the beginning, parted
from the extremes of mental fabrication.
(23) A bodhisattva's practice is to ride ouselves to clinging and attachment through,

when we meet with pleasing objects, not regarding them as truly existent even though
they appear beautifully, like a summer's rainbow.
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(24) A bodhisattva's practice is, at the time when meeting with adverse conditions, to
see them as deceptive, for various sufferings are like the death of our child in a dream
and to take such deceptive appearances to be true is a tiresome waste.
(25) A bodhisattva's practice is to give generously without hope for anything in return
or something to ripen because, if those who would wish enlightenment must give away
even their bodies, what need to mention external possessions?
(26) A bodhisattva's practice is to safeguard ethical self-discipline without worldly

intents because, if we cannot fulfill our own aims without ethical discipline, the wish to
fulfill the aims of others is a joke.
(27) A bodhisattva's practice is to meditate on patience, without anger or resentment

for anyone because, for a bodhisattva wishing to make use of positive potentials, all
who cause harm are equal to treasures of gems.
(28) A bodhisattva's practice is to exert joyous perseverance, the source of good

qualities for the sake of all wandering beings, as we can see the tenacity of shravakas
and pratyekabuddhas who, in working only for their own sake, will disregard even a fire
that has broken out on their heads.
(29) A bodhisattva's practice is to meditate on mental stability that purely surpasses

the four formless absorptions, by realizing that an exceptionally perceptive state of
mind, fully endowed with a stilled and settled state, can totally eradicate disturbing
emotions and attitudes.
(30) A bodhisattva's practice is to meditate on the discriminating awareness that

possesses methods and which has no conceptions about the three spheres, because
without discriminating awareness, the five far-reaching attitudes cannot bring us
complete enlightenment.
(31) A bodhisattva's practice is continually to examine our own mistakes and rid
ourselves of them because, if we do not examine our own mistakes, it is possible that
with a Dharmic external form we can commit something non-Dharmic.
(32) A bodhisattva's practice is not to say that any person who has entered Mahayana
has faults because, if under the power of disturbing emotions and attitudes, we find
fault with others who are bodhisattvas, we ourselves will degenerate.
(33) A bodhisattva's practice is to rid ourselves of attachment to homes of relatives

and friends and homes of patrons because, under the power of wanting gain and
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respect, we will quarrel with each other and our activities of listening, thinking, and
meditating will decline.
(34) A bodhisattva's practice is to rid ourselves of harsh language displeasing to the

minds of others, because harsh words disturb others' minds and cause our ways of
bodhisattva behavior to decline.
(35) A bodhisattva's practice is to have the servicemen of mindfulness and alertness

hold the opponent weapons and forcefully to destroy disturbing emotions and attitudes,
like attachment and so forth, as soon as they first arise because, when we are
habituated to disturbing emotions and attitudes, it is difficult for opponents to
reverse them.
(36) In short, a bodhisattva's practice is to work for the sake of others by continually
possessing mindfulness and alertness to know, no matter what activities we are doing,
what is the condition of our minds.
(37) A bodhisattva's practice is, with the discriminating awareness of the purity of the
three spheres, to dedicate for enlightenment the constructive forces realized by
efforts like these, in order to eliminate the sufferings of limitless wandering beings.
Having followed the words of the holy beings and the meaning of what has been spoken
in the sutras, tantras, and treatises, I have arranged these thirty-seven bodhisattva
practices for those who which to train in the bodhisattva path.
Because my intelligence is feeble and my learning small, I may not have written this in a
poetic fashion that would please the erudite. But, because I have relied on the sutras
and the words of the holy ones, I believe these are unmistakenly a bodhisattva's
practice.
Nevertheless, since it is difficult for someone dull-witted like myself to fathom the
depth and extent of the great waves of a bodhisattva's actions, I request the holy
ones to be patient with my mass of faults such as contradictions and unconnected lines.
By the constructive force built up by this, may all wandering beings gain supreme,
deepest and conventional bodhichittas so that they never abide in the extremes of
compulsive samsaric existence or nirvanic complacency, but become equals to our
Guardian Avalokiteshvara.
This has been composed in a cave in Ngulchü-rinchen by the disciplined monk Togmey, a
teacher of scripture and logic, for the sake of his own and others' benefit.
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37 Praticas Bodisatua

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1

The Thirty-seven Bodhisattva Practices:

A Literal Translation for Study

by Togmey-zangpo (Thogs-med bzang-po)

Original version published in His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama:

Obeisance to Lokeshvara ( Compassion Buda).

I prostrate always respectfully through my three gateways to my Guardian

(2) A bodhisattva's practice is to leave our homelands, where attachment to friends

(3) A bodhisattva's practice is to rely on seclusion where, by ridding ourselves of

(10) A bodhisattva's practice is to develop a bodhichitta resolve to liberate limitless

(23) A bodhisattva's practice is to ride ouselves to clinging and attachment through,

(26) A bodhisattva's practice is to safeguard ethical self-discipline without worldly

(27) A bodhisattva's practice is to meditate on patience, without anger or resentment

(28) A bodhisattva's practice is to exert joyous perseverance, the source of good

(29) A bodhisattva's practice is to meditate on mental stability that purely surpasses

(30) A bodhisattva's practice is to meditate on the discriminating awareness that

(33) A bodhisattva's practice is to rid ourselves of attachment to homes of relatives

(34) A bodhisattva's practice is to rid ourselves of harsh language displeasing to the

(35) A bodhisattva's practice is to have the servicemen of mindfulness and alertness

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