Unless you cultivate Bodhicitta, you will not attain enlightenment.

Master Padma said: If you train your mind in love, compassion, and Bodhicitta, you will not take rebirth in the three lower realms. 

Moreover, from this very moment you will never fall back. This alone is my oral instruction.

Wherever you go, keep Bodhicitta in mind, never departing from its company.

Whatever action you engage in, train in doing it for the benefit of sentient beings. Train in regarding others as more important than yourself. You will attain numerous qualities as a result of this training, such as having unimpaired samayas and vows.

Unless you cultivate Bodhicitta, you will not attain enlightenment, even though you may gain mastery of mantra and be very powerful.

All the supreme and common accomplishments will result from Bodhicitta arising in your being. That alone is my oral instruction.

~ Padmasambhava

Gender identities

Our ideas about what it means to be a woman or a man - that is, our gender constructs - are given meaning and importance in our day-to-day reality. Gender identities permeate so much of our experience that it is easy to forget that they are just ideas - ideas created to categorize human beings. Nevertheless, the categories of masculine and feminine are often treated as if they were eternal truths. But they are not. They have no objective reality. Because gender is a concept, it is a product of our mind - and has no absolute existence that is separate from the mind that conceives of it. Gender categories are not inherently real in and of themselves.

~17 Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje