A bodhisattva benefits all beings equally, without discriminating between enemies and friends. Giving food, clothes and the like to others can only bring them temporary and limited relief; it does not help them at the moment they die, nor after their death. But if you can establish all beings in the dharma, you will help them in a way that is both immediately beneficial and beneficial for their future lives. Practicing the dharma enables them to free themselves from samsara and achieve enlightenment – so that is the way to truly repay your parents’ kindness. Any other way is not enough.
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche
from the book The Heart of Compassion: The Thirty-seven Verses on the Practice of a Bodhisattva
translated by Padmakara Translation Group
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Further quotes from the book The Heart of Compassion:
- Never stop thinking about how to gain liberation
- Sealing your merit with authentic dedication
- No more than an empty echo
- Phenomena adorn emptiness, but never corrupt it
- Giving and taking
- Conduct
- The only thing that is really worth doing
- The reason you are wandering in samsara
- Neither discouragement nor pride
- Powerful sources of help
- The importance of relative bodhicitta
- Accepting short-term sufferings
- Phenomena adorn emptiness
- Practice day and night
- Two types of friends
- Seeing clearly how deceiving the ways of the world are
- Cutting through subtler misconceptions
- Just projections of the mind
- Protecting ourselves from future suffering
- Impermanence dawning in your mind