The mode of generating [bodhicitta] is as follows: not only those carried along again and again in the current of the four strong rivers of the sufferings of birth, old age, sickness and death, those bound by tight bonds, like nooses, of various actions hard to release by other conditions, and those who enter into the iron net, hard to sever, of the conception of a self of persons and phenomena, but also those whose eye of awareness regarding actions and their effects is covered with much dark ignorance, in dependence upon which . . .
. . . they are born in born into limitless cyclic existence (limitless because it is difficult to aprehend the measure of the beginning and end), and in their births are tortured uninterruptedly by the three sufferings — the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and the suffering of pervasive conditioning. Contemplating the condition of our mothers in such a state, (i.e., their mode of being), generate the supreme bodhicitta by keeping the firm promise to train in the conduct of the Conqueror and his children.