Contemplate the precious human life: the freedoms and advantages
Go through the conditions that make this life an opportunity — what you are free from and what you have — until you feel how rare and useful it is.
Why it works
The first topic of the initial scope is the “free and well-favoured” human birth. Jigme Lingpa’s four thoughts list eight states without the chance to practise that one is free of, five personal advantages and five advantages due to circumstances; Geshe Dhargyey speaks of eight respites and ten endowments, and Berzin of eighteen features. The reflection works by noticing each condition and imagining its absence — Berzin’s example is to picture life driven by an animal’s instincts — so that ordinary freedoms stop being invisible. Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects says to reflect on this again and again to loosen attachment to this life’s concerns; a modern study of “mental subtraction” found that imagining a good thing absent from one’s life lifted mood more than thinking about its presence — a related effect, not the same practice.
How to do it
- Sit, and bring to mind the freedoms you have: time to reflect, a mind able to understand, not being in the grip of war, famine or constant danger.
- Take one condition at a time and imagine your life without it — no access to teachings, no leisure, no health enough to sit — and let the contrast register.
- Bring to mind the circumstantial advantages the texts list: that the teachings exist, have survived, are available to you, and that someone is willing to teach them.
- Draw the conclusion the tradition draws: this situation is rare and will not last, so it is worth using well.
- Rest on that sense of opportunity for a minute; then ask what one thing you will do with today because of it.
Evidence
The freedoms and advantages are listed in the four thoughts of Jigme Lingpa’s Longchen Nyingtik preliminaries and discussed by Geshe Dhargyey and Berzin; Tsongkhapa’s instruction to reflect repeatedly is verse 4 of the Three Principal Aspects. In Koo and colleagues’ experiments, writing about how a positive event might never have happened improved affect more than writing about how it came about — a related modern exercise, not this one. (mechanistic)
The mental-subtraction studies tested single positive events with student and online samples, not the traditional contemplation; the tradition’s own aim is motivation to practise, not mood. Some traditional lists assume rebirth and other realms, which modern readers may hold differently.
Sources
- Jigme Lingpa. The Common and Uncommon Preliminary Practices (Longchen Nyingtik), including “The Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind from Saṃsāra”; compiled from translations by Rigpa Translations and Adam Pearcey, by Han Kop for the Longchen Nyingtik Project (2026). Lotsawa House.
- Berzin, A. Meditation on the Precious Human Life. Study Buddhism (Berzin Archives).
- Tsongkhapa Lobzang Drakpa. Three Principal Aspects of the Path, trans. Adam Pearcey (2006, revised 2012). Lotsawa House.
- Koo, M., Algoe, S. B., Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2008). It’s a wonderful life: Mentally subtracting positive events improves people’s affective states, contrary to their affective forecasts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1217–1224.
Common mistake
Turning it into guilt — “I have all this and I am wasting it.” The reflection is meant to produce appreciation and resolve; if it produces self-reproach, return to simply noticing what you have.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Lamrim: The Stages of the Path and the Three Scopes
- Alternate analytical (checking) meditation with placement meditation
Reason your way into a lamrim topic until it is felt, then rest on that understanding without more thinking — and alternate the two.
- Begin where the lamrim begins: relying on a spiritual teacher, with care
Treat finding and learning from a qualified teacher as the root of the path — and take the time the texts themselves ask for to choose well.
- Contemplate death and impermanence with the nine-point reflection
Reflect that death is certain, that its time is uncertain, and that at death only what you have cultivated helps — so that you stop postponing what matters.
- Reflect on karma: cause and effect in your own actions
Trace one recent action from its intention to its effects on others and on your own habits, and decide what you want to repeat and what to stop.
- Cultivate renunciation in the tradition’s sense: the determination to be free
See clearly that the pleasures of cyclic existence never finally satisfy, and let that turn into a wish for freedom — not into contempt for life.
- Reflect on the four thoughts that turn the mind (the outer preliminaries)
Precious human birth, impermanence, karma and the suffering of saṃsāra, recited and reflected on together so the mind turns toward practice.
- Set your motivation with the three scopes
Before a session, check honestly which scope you are practising from — this life, a good future, liberation, or awakening for all — and let it widen one step.
- Keep a daily lamrim rhythm: one topic in depth, the whole path at a glance
Work through the outline one topic at a time over weeks, while briefly reviewing the whole path each day so no stage is lost.
Related concepts
- Bodhicitta: The Awakening Mind and How It Is Cultivated
The intention at the heart of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and the classical ways Tibetan teachers train it
- The Six Pāramitās: How the Bodhisattva Trains
Six trainings, each aimed at one obstacle, and each made whole by wisdom
- Shamatha: The Buddhist Practice of Calm Abiding
Training the mind to rest: the nine stages and their modern neurological parallels
- Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
The 59 slogans and their practical application to everyday adversity and compassion
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