Jamyang Rinpoche
Many people who practiced Dharma for many years regress on the path, their minds degenerate, there is no improvement and instead one increasingly encounters obstacles. What is the reason? It is due to lacking a strong foundation —the outer preliminaries or the four renunciation thoughts that turn the mind towards Dharma.
These four foundational thoughts are like the ground, if the ground is properly tilled and fertilizer is added to the soil, then you can sow any kind of seeds in it and produce the crops. If the soil is not properly prepared, then no seed you sow will bear its fruit. Therefore, the common preliminaries are extremely important.
Without training sufficiently in the foundational practices, it is like having many seeds but no suitable soil to plant them in. You cannot plant these seeds anywhere you wish. Without an appropriately cultivated ground, nothing will grow. Even if some small seedlings grow, it would not survive long enough to produce the fruits.
Similarly, many people have completed the Ngondro and practiced Dzogchen. But they end up regressing on the path and getting even more entangled with samsaric affairs again. They are even more tightly controlled by self-grasping and selfishness than before, they are unable to free themselves from samsara. Many people are like that.
The reason for this, as I’ve said, is that the foundations of Dharma practice were not sufficiently prepared. Even a building without a good foundation will collapse no matter how good the building materials are. Therefore, we need to follow the proper sequence of practice — first establish a good foundation.
