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# Tilopa’s six words of advice
- URL: https://improvesomething.today/tilopas-six-words-of-advice/
- Published: 2026-05-27T18:55:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-05-28T07:24:59.000Z
- Description: A six-word poem to be appreciated, for today, as a poem.
- Author: Brian Kerr
- Tags: Meditation

These are Tilopa’s ‘six words of advice’ in their entirety. A thousand years old, jostled about in layers of translation and interpretation. Would’ve originally been six words, but it’s hard to pull that off in English. They are:

> Don’t recall.   
> Don’t imagine.   
> Don’t think.   
> Don’t examine.   
> Don’t control.   
> Rest.

This [translation by Ken McLeod](https://unfetteredmind.org/practice/tilopas-advice/). 

Although these words are the basis for various practices, you might want to [further explore them as a poem in translation](https://unfetteredmind.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/sixwords.pdf), a beautiful and simple thing. The linked document gives the Tibetan source (itself a translation from the original, now lost), a transliteration, and both of McLeod’s English translations.