Point 1 : First, train in the preliminaries.
Commentary :
In practicing the slogan and in your daily life you should maintain an awareness of :1) the preciousness of human life and the particular good fortune of life in an environment in which you can hear the teaching of buddhadharma;2) the reality of death, that it comes suddenly and without warning;
3) the entrapment of karma - that whatever you do whether virtuous or not only further entraps you in the chain of cause and effect; and
4) the intensity and inevitability of suffering for yourself and for all sentient beings.
This is called "taking the attitude of the four reminders."
With that attitude as a base, you should call upon your guru with devotion, inviting into yourself the atmosphere of sanity inspired by his or her example, and vowing to cut the roots of further ignorance and suffering. This ties in very closely with the notion of maitri, or loving-kindness. In the traditional analogy of one's spiritual path, the only pure loving object seems to be somebody who can show you the path. You could have a loving relationship with your parents, relatives, and so forth, but there are still problems with that : your neurosis goes along with it. A pure love affair can only take place with one's teacher. So that ideal sympathetic object is used as a starting point, a way of developing a relationship beyond your own neurosis. Particularly in the mahayana, you relate to the teacher as someone who cheers you up from depression and brings you down from excitement, a kind of moderator principle. The teacher is regarded as important from that point of view.
This slogan establishes the contrast between samsara - the epitome of pain, imprisonment, and insanity - and the root guru - the embodiment of openness, freedom, and sanity - as the fundamental basis for all practice. As such, it is heavily influenced by the vajrayana tradition.