{{EditorialContent |EditorialAuthor=Houlton, S. |subclass=Key Concepts |sub-theme=Bodhicitta |featured-books=How to Generate Bodhicitta (Ribur Rinpoche 2010); Bodhicitta: Practice for a Meaningful Life;
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|featured-dissertations= |TermTopics=Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect |jumbo-image=File:Europeana-jfu2CKjSjtU-unsplash reduced.jpg |jumbo-text=The Seven-Point Instructions of Cause and Effect is a systematic meditation practice for cultivating bodhicitta through a logical progression of contemplations. It begins with recognizing all beings as having been one's mother in past lives, then sequentially contemplates: remembering their kindness, wishing to repay that kindness, cultivating love, developing compassion, generating the extraordinary resolve to personally liberate all beings, and finally arousing 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 unconditional love and responsibility. |main-text=The seven-point cause and effect instruction method of developing bodhicitta was introduced to Tibet by Atiśa and was later adopted by the Kadampa masters.[1]
The first six instructions in this tradition are the sequence of causes that are required for generating bodhicitta, and the seventh instruction is the result itself, the actual mind of bodhicitta.
The six causes are:
- 1. recognizing all beings as having been our mothers
- 2. remembering the kindness of all those mothers
- 3. wishing to repay these mother beings' kindness
- 4. affectionate love for all these mother beings
- 5. great compassion wishing that all beings be free from all forms of suffering
- 6. superior altruistic intent/exceptional resolve that takes responsibility for doing something about the plight of beings trapped in samsara
The seventh instruction is the result itself that we are aiming for:
- 7. the mind of enlightenment—that is, bodhicitta
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.
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- ↑ Elio Guarisco and Ingrid McLeod (Kalu Rinpoché Translation Group), trans. and ed., The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Five: Buddhist Ethics, by Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Tayé (Boulder, CO: Snow Lion Publications, 2003), 172.
