Now is the time.

With most of us, however, karma and negative emotions obscure the ability to see our own intrinsic nature, and the nature of reality. As a result we clutch onto happiness and suffering as real, and in our unskillful and ignorant actions, we go on sowing the seeds of our next birth. Our actions keep us bound to the continuous cycle of worldly existence, to the endless round of birth and death. So everything is at risk in how we live now, at this very moment. How we live now can cost us our entire future. 


"This is the unescapable message of the natural bardo of this life. As Padmasambhava says: Now when the bardo of this life is dawning upon me, I will abandon laziness for which life has no time. Enter undistracted, the path of listening and hearing, reflection and contemplation, and meditation, making perceptions and mind the path, and realize the "three kayas" of enlightened mind. Now that I have once attained a human body, there is no time on the path for the mind to wander."


Notes: Bardo is a Tibetan word that simply means a "transition" or a gap between the contemplation of of one situation and the onset of another.  Bar means in between and do means suspended or thrown.

The "Three Kayas" are the three aspects of the true nature of mind described in Chapter 4: its empty essence, radiant nature,  and all pervasive energy.