My dear friends,

The twelfth precept under the seventh point in Geshe Chekawa's Mind Training in Seven Points is:

This advice holds profound significance for a follower of the Bodhisattva path. This instruction encourages practitioners to turn their focus towards those people with whom they share close relationships—family members, close friends, or anyone with whom they have strong karmic connections.

Why This Should Be Practiced

• Cultivating Unbiased Compassion: Close relationships often trigger strong emotions, both positive and negative. Meditating on those closely related challenges us to extend compassion and equanimity to those whom we are emotionally entangled with, helping to transform attachment into pure love and aversion into understanding.
• Recognizing and Overcoming Delusions: The people we are closest to often serve as mirrors, reflecting our own delusions. By focusing our meditation on these individuals, we can identify and work through these delusions more directly, leading to greater inner freedom.
• Strengthening Bodhicitta: Meditating on those closely related is a practical way to deepen bodhicitta. Transforming close relationships into vehicles of spiritual growth has a powerful impact on the cultivation of bodhicitta.
• Purifying Past Karma: Close relationships are often intertwined with complex karmic histories. By meditating on these relationships with an attitude of loving-kindness, we can purify negative karma associated with them.

How to Practice This Precept

• Meditation: Begin by bringing to mind a person with whom you have a close relationship. Apply lojong techniques such as tonglen (sending and receiving). Breathe in their suffering, and breathe out love and compassion.
• Equalizing and Exchanging Self with Others: Reflect on how, despite the closeness, this person is just like any other sentient being. Meditate on the equality of yourself and others, recognizing that your own happiness is not more important than theirs.
• Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Meditate on forgiveness, both asking for and offering it. This helps to heal any lingering wounds and fosters a spirit of reconciliation.
• Contemplation of Impermanence: Reflect on the impermanence of life and relationships. This helps to reduce attachment and the unrealistic expectations that often accompany close relationships.

By integrating this practice into daily life, a follower of the Bodhisattva path learns to navigate the complexities of close relationships with greater skill and compassion. The ultimate aim is to extend the same loving-kindness and equanimity to all beings, beginning with those who are closest, as they are often the most challenging and therefore the most potent objects of practice.