Verse 21: Sense pleasures: salt water
Verse 21 of Gyalse Tokme Zangpo’s 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, from the section “Transforming adversity.” Below: the verse in three translations and what seven teachers say about it.
Open in the study browser →Enjoying sense pleasures is like drinking salt water: the more you drink, the greater your thirst. Therefore, immediately abandon all things that give rise to clinging attachment. This is the way of a bodhisattva.
The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to turn away immediately From those things which bring desire and attachment. For the pleasures of the senses are just like salty water: The more we taste of them, the more our thirst increases.
Sensual pleasures are like salty water: The deeper you drink, the thirstier you become. Any object that you attach to, Right away, let it go — this is the practice of a bodhisattva.
Identify your strongest desire and analyze in meditation how much suffering it brings, this life and next. Food that satisfies hunger and clothing that warms suffice; at death only the desire-thoughts remain, landing one among hungry ghosts. Candid digression: if students donate but don't practice bodhicitta, "I have failed"; instruction to self-visualize as Avalokiteshvara radiating love while reciting the six syllables. "Worldly desires for pleasure are like a mirage without substance."
Plain speech: sexual pleasure "appears immediately to us as happiness but deep down it is a cause of suffering," with Nagarjuna's itch: "To scratch an itch is pleasurable but to be without the itch is even better." Structural marker: relative bodhicitta ends here; absolute bodhicitta (vv22–24) begins.
Distinguishes longing desire (craving what we lack) from clinging attachment (won't release what we have). Modern examples: the friend hoarding unread Dharma books, parents who can't let grown children go, smartphone and news addiction — "the more we accumulate, the thirstier we get." Abandoning objects is provisional; voidness (v23) is the cure.
Three lifestyle models: Milarepa abandoned sense objects entirely; Marpa the householder enjoyed them knowing them dreamlike; Gampopa the monk between. True relinquishment is abandoning attachment through emptiness, not necessarily contact.
"Ants cling to scraps of food, while lions cling to chunks of meat" — desire scales but is identical. Two ways to relinquish: give up the object, or the attachment; beginners may need physical distance until contentment stabilizes. Stories: the Karmapa immediately gave away anything he liked too much; the doctor who could turn any plant, even poison, into medicine — as practitioners should use all situations. "Even though there is rain of precious jewels, greedy people still do not feel content."
Winter Retreat vv16–21 talk.
Talk 8: desire as saltwater thirst. Tricycle v21 reply: examine the sensations of attachment directly, or regard the object "as you might a purely natural sound—perhaps leaves rustling in the wind."
KTGR's three models (Milarepa/Marpa/Gampopa) is the frame a lay group needs — the verse doesn't mandate renunciation of contact, it mandates the end of the thirst-loop. HHDL's structural marker matters for your arc: next session the text turns to emptiness. ---
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche — The Heart of Compassion (Shambhala). A purchased book — no text is reproduced here.