Explore/Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect: Difference between revisions

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Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect

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The seven-point instructions of cause and effect are a systematic meditation practice for cultivating bodhicitta through a logical progression of contemplations. The practice begins with recognizing all beings as having been one's mother in past lives, and then moves sequentially through five other contemplations until the seventh instruction is reached—that is, the arousing of bodhicitta, the aspiration to attain enlightenment for the sake of all. This stepwise method builds bodhicitta by transforming one's relationship with others from indifference to a strong sense of connection, unconditional love, and responsibility.

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The Lineage

The sevenfold cause-and-effect instructions for developing bodhicitta belong to the Vast Conduct lineage, also known as the lineage of Extensive Deeds. The practice derives from an unbroken transmission originating with Śākyamuni Buddha, who passed the lineage to Maitreya, who then transmitted it to Asaṅga. This lineage was then passed onto Asaṅga's brother Vasubandhu, and subsequently through to Candragomin and Atiśa. Atiśa brought this lineage to Tibet, where it was subsequently adopted by the Kadampa masters.^[1]

The Instructions

The seven-point instructions of cause and effect are so named because six of the points are causes leading to bodhicitta, while the seventh is bodhicitta itself as the resultant state of mind. It is named "cause and effect" because the mind cultivated through each instruction acts as a cause for the next, with each subsequent state of mind arising as the effect of the one preceding it.

The six causes are:

1. recognizing all beings as having been our mothers (མར་ཤེས་)

2. remembering the kindness of all those mothers (དྲིན་དྲན་)

3. wishing to repay these mother beings' kindness (དྲིན་གསོ་)

4. affectionate love for all these mother beings (ཡིད་དུ་འོང་བའི་བྱམས་པ་)

5. great compassion wishing that all beings be free from all forms of suffering (སྙིང་རྗེ་ཆེན་པོ་)

6. superior altruistic intent that takes responsibility for doing something about the plight of beings trapped in samsara (ལྷག་བསམ་རྣམ་དག་)

The seventh instruction is the result itself that we are aiming for:

7. the mind of enlightenment—that is, bodhicitta (བྱང་ཆུབ་ཀྱི་སེམས་)

By contemplating each of these instructions and developing the realizations associated with them, step by step we put each cause in place so that, eventually, we can give rise to our goal, the resultant mind of enlightenment.

Extensive Explanation

Equanimity and Compassion as a Foundation

Prior to these six causes, most traditions emphasize the importance of cultivating equanimity toward all beings, whether we perceive them to be a friend, a stranger, or even an enemy. Without this unbiased foundation, the subsequent instructions will always be colored by partiality toward some beings over others. Once equanimity is established, we can correctly engage with all the succeeding stages, such as love and compassion. For further details on the topic of equanimity, see this article:

Equanimity

In his masterwork The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment (Lamrim Chenmo, ལམ་རིམ་ཆེན་མོ།), the Gelukpa master Lama Tsongkhapa reminds us that before we begin to engage in this practice of the seven instructions, it is important to gain certainty about their sequence. He first explains the importance of compassion as the root of the Mahāyāna. He then explains how, within the seven points, all the other instructions apart from great compassion are either causes of compassion or effects of compassion.^[2]

Tsongkhapa points out how the first four instructions—from recognizing all beings as having been our mothers up until the fourth instruction on affectionate love—all act as causes of compassion. The last two instructions, superior altruistic intent and the mind of enlightenment, he explains to be the effects of compassion.

The important point here is to recognize how all seven instructions are related to compassion, and how compassion therefore forms the basis not only for the practice of generating bodhicitta but for the entire path of the Mahāyāna practitioner. For further information on compassion and the Mahāyāna tradition, explore the following pages:

Compassion

The Mahāyāna Tradition

1. Seeing All Beings as Your Mother

This first instruction encourages us to recognize all beings as having been our mother. This recognition is underpinned by the understanding that consciousness has no beginning and no end, and that although the body of this present life will cease to exist, our consciousness will continue on to a new life. If consciousness is unceasing, then we must have lived countless births in the past, and if that is so, we must have been born as the offspring of innumerable beings.

On this, Venerable Lobsang Gyatso, in his book Bodhicitta: Cultivating the Compassionate Mind of Enlightenment, makes a crucial point about the continuity of consciousness and how there must be an infinite number of lives:

Something which is of a material nature cannot be transformed into or produced in the nature of consciousness. Rather, each individual moment of consciousness is generated from the substance of its own former moment in an uninterrupted continuum. In this sense also there can be no beginning point to the sentient being.^[3]

Material phenomena cannot act as the substantial cause for immaterial phenomena such as consciousness. This must mean that each moment of consciousness must have a preceding moment of consciousness. It then follows that consciousness has no beginning and no end, and therefore that previous lives are beginningless and our future lives are endless.

In his Great Treatise, Tsongkhapa explains how there is no living being who has not, at some point in our beginningless series of lives, been our mother.

Because cyclic existence is beginningless, your births are also without beginning. Therefore you have died and been reborn time and time again. There is absolutely no kind of body which you have not assumed in cyclic existence. There is absolutely no place where you have not been born, and there is no person who has not been a relative such as your mother.^[4]

Not only is it explained that all beings have been our mothers but also that all beings will be our mothers a limitless number of times in the future. Asaṅga mentions this point in his Levels of Yogic Deeds (Yogācārabhūmi), where he cites from a sūtra as follows:

I have difficulty seeing a place wherein you have not been born, gone to, or died in the distant past. I have difficulty seeing any person in the distant past who has not been your father, mother, uncle, aunt, sister, master, abbot, guru, or someone like a guru.^[5]

We must reflect upon this and become convinced that all beings have been our mothers in the past, and that they will continue to be our mothers again in the future. Developing this conviction will then naturally lead us to remember their kindness and so forth. If we do not develop this understanding, we will have no basis for remembering their kindness.

2. Remembering the Kindness of All Those Mothers

Having recognized that there has never been a being who has not been bound to us in the most intimate of relationships, the next crucial stage toward developing bodhicitta is to understand how kind they have been to us—and the majority of mothers, in the way they care for their children, give us a vivid example of that kindness.

It is important to make sure that we take our mother in this life as an example and remember her kindness. Of course, there are some people who have had very problematic and painful relationships with close members of their family such as their mothers. In these cases, it is advised not to take them as a model for cultivating the remembrance of kindness, as it could create complex feelings that would not be in accord with the development of this stage of instruction. Instead, those people should choose a person other than their mother who has been close to them and shown them great kindness in their lives.

In his Great Treatise, Tsongkhapa shows us how to meditate on this sense of kindness by beginning with our mother of this life:

Imagine your mother clearly in front of you. Think the following a few times: "Not only has she been my mother at present but she has been so an incalculable number of times throughout beginningless cyclic existence." As your mother, she protected you from all harm and provided you all benefit and happiness. Particularly in this lifetime she carried you for a long time in her womb. Then, when you were a helpless, newborn infant, she held you to the warmth of her flesh and bounced you on the tips of her ten fingers. She suckled you at her breast, used her mouth to give you soft food and to remove mucus from your nose, and used her hand to wipe away your excrement. So in various ways she nurtured you tirelessly.

Moreover, when you were hungry and thirsty, she gave you food and drink; when you were cold, clothes; when you were poor, she gave from her wealth those things which were very dear to her. Even more, what she gave to you were not things that she had obtained easily but that she had secured through great hardship while engaging in wrongdoing and receiving ill repute and suffering. If you suffered from illness, pain, or the threat of death, your mother made the choice from the depths of her heart that she would rather be sick than you be sick, she would rather be in pain than you be in pain, she would rather die than you die. By putting this feeling into action, she did what was needed to alleviate these troubles.^[6]

We bring to mind in front of us someone from this life who has shown us great kindness and reflect carefully on the ways in which they have cared for us. They have sacrificed themselves in so many ways for the sake of our welfare, and in some cases they would even be willing to die for us. Visualizing the person of this life directly in front of us helps us not just remember them in words but manifestly feel that sense of gratitude toward them.

Once we have contemplated the close person of this life, we then extend that feeling of kindness to all beings, starting with other close relatives and friends and eventually radiating it out to all beings who we have already recognized as being our mothers. Eventually, this mind of gratitude will extend even to those we consider our enemies.

In his work on the stages of the path to enlightenment, Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand (ལམ་ཁྲིད་རྣམ་གྲོལ་ལག་བཅངས།), Pabongka Rinpoche encourages us to also remember the kindness shown to us by the mothers of our nonhuman lives as birds and other wild animals:

When other sentient beings were your mother and you were reborn as some wild animal, for example, those mothers treated you with loving kindness and looked after you. They even licked you with their tongues. When your mother was a bird, for example, she shielded you with her wings for nearly a month. And if enemies threatened, such as a man with a stick, she would protect her precious chick with her life although she herself could have flown away. Later, she would feed you and even if she only managed to find a single worm, she would give it to you.^[7]

These images remind us that the impulse to protect and nurture one's offspring is universal, and that we ourselves have been the recipients of that same care in countless nonhuman lives.

The twelfth-century Kagyu master Gampopa takes up this same theme in his Ornament of Precious Liberation (དམ་ཆོས་ཡིད་བཞིན་གྱི་ནོར་བུ་ཐར་པ་རིན་པོ་ཆེའི་རྒྱན།), one of the very first texts in the stages of the path genre, drawing on the Mahāyāna sūtra called The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines (Aṣṭasāhasrikāprajñāpāramitā, ཤེར་ཕྱིན་བརྒྱད་སྟོང་པ།) to help us cultivate a genuine sense of gratitude for our mothers' kindness:

Mothers gave birth to us, underwent hardships, kept us alive, and taught us all about the world.^[8]

In his commentary to this verse, Gampopa provides us with some wonderfully evocative images of why we should feel gratitude for the kindness of our mothers. He also goes on to break down the positive things we receive from our mothers into four categories—the kindness of nourishing our body, the kindness of undergoing hardships, the kindness of keeping us alive, and the kindness of teaching us the ways of the world.

Advising us on how to contemplate the kindness of our mothers nourishing our body, he writes:

This body of yours did not start out fully grown, with its flesh fully developed and with a healthy complexion. It developed gradually inside your mother, through the different embryonic and fetal stages, being gradually created and nourished by vital fluids from her very own flesh and blood. It grew thanks to nourishment from the food she ate. It came into being by her having to put up with all sorts of embarrassment, sickness, and suffering.^[9]

The person you are now and the body you have grew from the fetus that your mother bore in her womb. Our mothers underwent tremendous hardships, including the pain of childbirth itself, to bring us into this world.

Next, Gampopa instructs that we should consider the kindness of how our mothers underwent hardships:

You did not come into this world clothed, finely adorned, with money in your pocket and provisions for the journey. When you came into this unfamiliar place, where you knew no one and had nothing, the only wealth you had was your howling mouth and empty stomach. Your mother gave you food so that you would not go hungry, drink to keep you from thirst, clothes to fend off the cold, and wealth to keep you from poverty. It was not as though she just gave you things she no longer needed herself: she herself went without food, without drink, and without new clothes.^[10]

We knew nothing when we came into this world, and it would be impossible for us to survive without help from our parents. Most mothers will deprive themselves of food so that their children can be fed and will use every last penny they have to keep their children alive. We must remember this kindness.

When we were born, we did not know how to even feed ourselves, let alone do other complex tasks necessary for survival. Next, Gampopa explains how to consider the kindness of our mothers keeping us alive:

It is not as though you were born as you are now, knowing how to feed yourself and endowed with the necessary ability to accomplish difficult tasks. When you were helpless, useless—a little worm unable to think—your mother did not discard you but did an inconceivable number of things to nurture your existence. She took you on her lap, protected you from fire and water, held you away from dangerous precipices, got rid of all sources of harm, and prayed for you.^[11]

Finally, Gampopa gives a wonderfully vivid expression of how helpless we were when we were born and how much our parents showed us how to survive and grow:

Apart from being able to bawl out to other members of your family and flap your limbs about, you were ignorant. When you did not know how to feed yourself, it was she who taught you how to eat. When you knew not how to dress yourself, it was she who taught you. When you did not know how to walk, it was she who taught you. When you could not even speak, it was she who taught you, repeating "Mama," "Dada," and so on. Having taught you various crafts and skills, she helped you become a balanced being, strengthening your weaker points and introducing you to the unfamiliar.^[12]

We knew only how to scream and cry when we were born. We had no idea how to feed or clothe ourselves, and everything was done for us by our mothers. We had to be taught to speak by our parents, and it was they who taught us skills for life and encouraged us to develop.

Gampopa's resonant images invite us to sit with these reflections and truly feel the weight of what our mother of this life has done for us. By contemplating her kindness in this vivid and detailed way, we build the emotional foundation from which we can then extend that same sense of gratitude outward to all beings. For those who find it difficult to use their mother as the focus of this contemplation, it is entirely appropriate to bring to mind another person who has shown them deep kindness and closeness.

3. Wishing to Repay the Kindness

Having brought to mind the kindness of mothers (or an equivalent kind person), the next step is to wish to repay that kindness. In ordinary life, those who appreciate the generosity of others and are careful to repay them in some way are respected in society. Here, being aware of the greatest generosity of all in this world—that of someone being a kind and caring mother—we must feel the urge to repay them for that kindness. With gratitude for all they have done, we must not only wish to repay that kindness but do something concrete to acknowledge all their care.

Lama Tsongkhapa quotes from Candragomin's Letter to a Student (Śiṣyalekha, སློབ་མ་ལ་སྤྲིངས་པའི་སྤྲིང་ཡིག།) to remind us of how shameful it would be if we were to watch all these beings who have been our mothers in the past suffer while we stood by and did nothing to help them.

While you see that your relatives are engulfed in the ocean of

cyclic existence,

And are as if fallen into a pit of fire, There is nothing more shameful than to work for your own

liberation,

Neglecting those whom you do not recognize due to the

process of death and rebirth.^[13]

↑ Elio Guarisco and Ingrid McLeod (Kalu Rinpoché Translation Group), trans. and ed., The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Five: Buddhist Ethics, by Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Tayé (Boulder, CO: Snow Lion Publications, 2003), 172.
↑ Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, trans., The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, by Tsongkhapa, ed. Joshua W. C. Cutler and Guy Newland (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2000), 2:36.
↑ Ven. Lobsang Gyatso, Bodhicitta: Cultivating the Compassionate Mind of Enlightenment, trans. Sherab Gyatso (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1997), 22.
↑ Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, The Great Treatise, 2:38.
↑ Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, The Great Treatise, 2:38.
↑ Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, The Great Treatise, 2:38.
↑ Pabongka Rinpoche, Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand: A Concise Discourse on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, ed. Trijang Rinpoche, trans. Michael Richards (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1991), 577.
↑ Ken Holmes, trans., Ornament of Precious Liberation, by Gampopa, ed. Thupten Jinpa (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2017), 90.
↑ Holmes, Ornament of Precious Liberation, 90.
↑ Holmes, Ornament of Precious Liberation, 91.
↑ Holmes, Ornament of Precious Liberation, 91.
↑ Holmes, Ornament of Precious Liberation, 92.
↑ Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, The Great Treatise, 2:39.

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Bibliography: Works on Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect

[1] Elio Guarisco and Ingrid McLeod (Kalu Rinpoché Translation Group), trans. and ed., The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Five: Buddhist Ethics, by Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Tayé (Boulder, CO: Snow Lion Publications, 2003), 172.

[2] Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, trans., The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, by Tsongkhapa, ed. Joshua W. C. Cutler and Guy Newland (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2000), 2:36.

[3] Ven. Lobsang Gyatso, Bodhicitta: Cultivating the Compassionate Mind of Enlightenment, trans. Sherab Gyatso (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1997), 22.

[4] Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, The Great Treatise, 2:38.

[5] Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, The Great Treatise, 2:38.

[6] Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, The Great Treatise, 2:38.

[7] Pabongka Rinpoche, Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand: A Concise Discourse on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, ed. Trijang Rinpoche, trans. Michael Richards (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1991), 577.

[8] Ken Holmes, trans., Ornament of Precious Liberation, by Gampopa, ed. Thupten Jinpa (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2017), 90.

[9] Holmes, Ornament of Precious Liberation, 90.

[10] Holmes, Ornament of Precious Liberation, 91.

[11] Holmes, Ornament of Precious Liberation, 91.

[12] Holmes, Ornament of Precious Liberation, 92.

[13] Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, The Great Treatise, 2:39.

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@@ Line 159: / Line 159: @@
 Lama Tsongkhapa quotes from Candragomin's ''Letter to a Student'' (''Śiṣyalekha'', སློབ་མ་ལ་སྤྲིངས་པའི་སྤྲིང་ཡིག།) to remind us of how shameful it would be if we were to watch all these beings who have been our mothers in the past suffer while we stood by and did nothing to help them.
 {{QuoteCite
-		|quote-text=While you see that your relatives are engulfed in the ocean of<br>:cyclic existence,<br>And are as if fallen into a pit of fire,<br>There is nothing more shameful than to work for your own<br>:liberation,<br>Neglecting those whom you do not recognize due to the<br>:process of death and rebirth.<ref>Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, ''The Great Treatise'', 2:39.</ref>
+		|quote-text=While you see that your relatives are engulfed in the ocean of
+:cyclic existence,
+And are as if fallen into a pit of fire,
+There is nothing more shameful than to work for your own
+:liberation,
+Neglecting those whom you do not recognize due to the
+:process of death and rebirth.<ref>Lamrim Chenmo Translation Committee, ''The Great Treatise'', 2:39.</ref>
 }}

Explore/Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:35, 16 April 2026

Contents

The Lineage

The Instructions

Extensive Explanation

Equanimity and Compassion as a Foundation

1. Seeing All Beings as Your Mother

2. Remembering the Kindness of All Those Mothers

3. Wishing to Repay the Kindness

Notes

Media

Featured books

Featured articles

Bibliography: Works on Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect