Excerpts from A Door of Entrance to the Heart Advice Called A Ship Sailing to Liberation: A Commentary on the Heartfelt Advice of Dharma Nectar
1) In the following Dharma advice for heart disciples
I have written down what I feel from my heart,
Keep it in your heart and practice it
My heart advice for Vajra Dharma brothers and sisters
This verse reveals, in brief, the meaning of this text, which is that these twenty-one verses are an exhortation to practice for all of my brother and sister Dharma friends. I am requesting all my Dharma friends to practice Dharma to the utmost of their capabilities and, in particular, not to disregard this small book that I have written with devotion, but to keep it with you, so as to keep the meanings in your mind, and to please put whatever you can into practice every day of your life.
2) This boat of a precious human life we’ve found
Just this once, is not found again.
To cross over the terrible ocean of samsara,
Don’t be lazy getting in the boat! That is my heart advice.
This verse is an instruction urging you to use this life for the practice of holy Dharma. This extremely rare and difficult-to-find excellent base of
a precious human life is more valuable than a precious jewel because a jewel can only dispel the suffering of poverty of this lifetime, but if you wanted to carry it to your next life it could not help you at all. Instead, if this excellent human life is used for sacred Dharma it will help you a great deal in this life, and it will pave the way for a path that goes from happiness to happiness in future lives. This human life is not found just by chance. It is extremely difficult to find by way of causes, examples, and numbers. As for being difficult to find by way of causes, if you had not previously accumulated vast causal merit or virtue, good karma, you would not have an excellent human life such as this.
“As for what you did in the past, look at your present body.
As for where you will go in the future, that depends on your current actions.”
As said, you were born in your current human body by the power of great causal merit, not without cause or conditions. If we wish to have a fortunate rebirth we must definitely accomplish virtue and abandon negative actions. If, judging by our current actions we do not, there is not much hope for us to again take rebirth as a fortunate human being.
