Report 42

I think preliminaries are about seeing ordnary/samsaric mind, and its inability to engage in practices like exchanging self for others, because its energy goes toward promoting/enhancing self's projections. So the intention is made to address that.

For instance, how can one treat all perceptions as dreams, if one hasn't spent time contemplating and considering impermanence and cause/effect (karma)?

In my own practice, we recite the "four thoughts that turn the heart toward the dharma", and my feeling is that it is a way of entering into practice with a kind of humility that fathoms the spectacular interplay of circumstances that appear to have brought one to a place of being priveleged to practice... to have 'something to give'.

The natural extention of stirring this contemplation is less desire to protect self and therefore a stronger desire to connect/ability to see in a less frozen way, which is the only way many of the other slogans make sense.