The purpose of all spiritual practice is to develop in this human condition these four qualities:
- unconditional love
- altruistic compassion
- insight or wisdom
- and emotional stability or equanimity
The four thoughts that inspire us to do this are:
1. That we have a valuable human birth and that we should make it precious by benefitting others and our environment.
2. We have karmic inclinations of mind, body, and speech. We should strive to make them always positive and loving.
3. We are impermanent in this body, as is everything. We should prepare for the eventuality of aging, sickness, death, and our next life.
4. We all suffer from having a form with sensual perceptions, thinking, emotional responses and habitual inclination to dramatize everything. This causes one physical, mental, and emotional pain.
Each day we start our spiritual practice by contemplating the four thoughts as the purpose to do our spiritual practice in order to evolve into a a perfect human being.
This is best thought of as like a mother’s involvement with her only child. All beings are our mothers.
Ah women!