Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 96-minute teaching, Buddhist nun and teacher Tenzin Chogkyi provides a systematic introduction to the Bodhisattva Vows, the ethical commitments that practitioners adopt to dedicate their lives to enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. She begins by reviewing the three levels of motivation in Buddhist practice—from seeking a good rebirth, to liberation from rebirth, to the highest aspiration for full Buddhahood to help all sentient beings—and explains how renunciation must precede bodhicitta (the commitment to enlightenment for others’ sake). She clarifies common misconceptions: bodhicitta is not mere niceness but a profound aspiration requiring deep meditation to stabilize, not surface goosebump emotion. Tenzin then covers the aspiring bodhisattva precepts, including practices to guard bodhicitta in this life and future lives, and introduces the eighteen root vows. She examines the first four root vows in detail—avoiding self-praise and criticism of others for material gain, refusing material aid or teachings to those in genuine need, holding grudges instead of accepting apologies, and rejecting the Mahāyāna teachings. For each, she gives real-world examples: workplace gossip, interactions with beggars and students, feuds with friends, and the importance of not presenting secular mindfulness practices as the goal of Buddhism. The teaching emphasizes that keeping these vows requires understanding both their doctrinal basis and their practical application to daily life.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2012 08 22 Bodhisattva Vows.mp3
UUID: 625c96dc-7d99-4b00-a2fe-7fc31e02fa84
Teacher: Tenzin Chogkyi
Collection: Bodhisattva Vows (Tenzin Chogkyi)
Date: 2012-08-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~13,172
All right, so before we begin, let’s take a minute to settle our minds by watching our breath for a few minutes. You may have come from a busy day at work, driving here on the road. So let’s just take a few minutes to calm and settle our minds. So just focusing on the breath, the respiration, the sensation of the breathing, either at the nostrils with the air going in and out or deeper in the body, your chest rising and falling, your abdomen expanding and contracting. And now let’s take a minute to set our motivation for our session tonight.
We’re looking at the Bodhisattva vows, which is instructions about how to act like a Bodhisattva, speak like a Bodhisattva, and how to create all the causes for the enlightened body and mind of a Buddha. And the reason that we’re looking at doing this is to be of ultimate benefit to all sentient beings. Let’s take a minute to try at least to set a Bodhicitta motivation motivation for our session tonight, even if we’re not completely sure what that means. Just thinking of the possibility, developing our qualities completely for their fullest potential to be a benefit to all sentient beings. Okay, then we’ll begin.
There’s a little bit of room over here if you want to move because we’re gonna, yeah, there’s a hole right here. So anybody who’s sitting in the back, if you wanna move up, please, yeah, be my guest. All right, so what I wanna begin is with a bit of a review because we’ve got a couple of new people tonight and it’s always good to review what happened last time. In fact, in when you study in the Tibetan monastery, so I’ve heard the students review three times between the last class and the next class. I don’t know if I told you guys that Wednesday night, I should have done.
Three times. And that’s when you have class every day. So you study with your teacher in the morning, and then in the afternoon, you review, and then you debate with the other students at night, and then you review again early in the morning, and then you have the next class. So that’s the way that the information really gets in. It’s too bad that we don’t have more opportunity to debate because that’s when you really learn, you know, when you have to just sort of hash it out in discussion.
But that’s what some of our discussion periods are like. You can also do that with other dharma students and it’s quite nice to meet other people from the class and talk about, you know, what you’ve learned and really talk about how it applies to your life. That can be quite good as well. Okay. So we started by last time by setting the context of the Bodhisattva vows and we started by talking about the three scopes or the three levels of the Lam Rim and who remembers what any one of those three scopes?
Jen, do you remember? Right. So that was what we call the initial scope or the initial level of capacity, the being who wishes for better rebirth in the next life. And what was the next level of motivation? Very good, Jay.
Very astute, that being? Now that you put yourself on the spot. Now that was the first one, right? Liberation into a higher realm, that’s a little bit we either have liberation or we have the higher realm. Right?
So if we want rebirth in a higher realm, but what is the second level of person wishing for? You’re close. Just take the first half of that sentence. Liberation. Period.
Right? From cyclic existence. Right? So we say in Buddhism that we have this endless round of rebirth forced on us by karma and delusions. Right?
No choice, flung, catapulted by the force of karma and delusion into our next rebirth. So that level of capacity or that level of being says, hey, it doesn’t matter if I get a good rebirth next time, it’s not forever. There’s no guarantee that they’re always gonna be good as long as I’m still subject to the forces of karma and delusion. It’s bad news. So I gotta get out of here.
Right? So that’s the second level is saying liberation completely from that whole out of control cycle. I mean, can you imagine how you know, when you think about it, Buddhism says, since beginningless time, we just think about all the unwanted experiences that we’ve had in this life and how little control we have in this life. I don’t know about you. I’m a well, a former control freak.
I’m in recovery. I’m much more of sort of a control enthusiast now, but how much that happens is completely out of our control. And think, that’s been happening since beginningless time, entire lifetimes. Ugh. And that’s the kind of meditations you do to generate this wish for liberation.
Right? Really thinking about that. And all we need to do is look at this life, and then, of course, you extrapolate and think of the other realms that Tibetan lamas our teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, really into going on and on about the suffering of all the realms of existence in the lower realms that we don’t even remember. Right? So those are the kind of meditations that we do to generate that.
And then what’s the highest level Sandra? The second one, the heart and the great. Yes. Yep. Where do they go?
Yeah, right. So there’s a state of consciousness called nirvana. Right? nirvana isn’t a place, it’s not like heaven. It’s a state of consciousness, a mind free of karma and delusions and uncontrolled rebirth.
Where is it? The Buddha never said because it’s just our limited mind that thinks that it needs to be somewhere. Right? It’s just our kind of concrete, dualistic mind that thinks there needs to be a place where do they go. It’s a mental state.
Right? Yeah. Well, total enlightenment, right, that’s the third level. Right? So, the third level of aspiration is not just for personal liberation, but for full enlightenment to become a Buddha with all of the capacity, and we talked about this a little bit last time, all the ability and capacity that a Buddha has to benefit beings.
Yeah? So what was your question? Right. That’s right. They’re not reborn.
The the person who’s liberated free of saṃsāra completely. Right? So not reborn in saṃsāra. At the highest level, we say a being who is motivated by the wish to be a benefit to others. Right?
At a certain level, even before they’re a Buddha, they’re in control of their rebirth. So they choose. You know? So, for example, there’s these Tibetan lamas who will write a letter before they die saying, next time, this holiness Karmapa, next time, look for me in such and such village. You know, they can they can choose and project their rebirth.
It’s not out of control for them. So they choose to be reborn. Now, is it saṃsāra for them? At a high level, we say no because they’re not subject anymore to their karma and delusion. They’re doing it the force that propels them, you know, and will be us in at some point is no longer the force of karma and delusion, but rather the force of that aspiration in the pure prayers that they’ve made to be reborn for the benefit of others.
That’s the propelling force at a very high level. So that’s very cool. Right? So for them, their rebirth isn’t saṃsāra. They could be with you know, his holiness, the Dalai Lama, a lot of us think he’s a being like this.
Is it saṃsāra for him? No. If he’s that level of being, he’s not under the control of karma delusion. So he can be walking around with us. Thank goodness he is.
You know? But he is not in saṃsāra because saṃsāra is a mental state. Liberation’s a mental state more than a place. Okay? So that’s yeah.
Yeah. Well, they wouldn’t be reborn. That’s the thing. Because there’s no propelling force for them. Right?
There’s no longer the propulsion of karma and delusion, but for them, there isn’t the propulsion of their pure prayers to be of benefit and their bodhicitta aspiration, so there’s no force. Nothing can happen. No result can happen unless there’s a cause. Right? So for them, no propelling force anymore that would cause them to take rebirth.
That’s kind of the whole point of liberation. Okay? No. That would be when a Buddha we say that a Buddha has the ability to send out emanation bodies. So that would be for a Buddha, not for a being that’s liberated, not for an arhat.
Okay. Yeah. For high level bodhisattvas, they can send out emanations also. Yeah. So reeling our us back into the topic of bodhisattva vows, what level are we talking about?
What level is the Bodhisattva vows practice of those three levels? Yeah, the highest. Okay. So it’s all about so what we’re going to be talking about is all within the context of that highest level of practice. And remember, we talked a little bit and we said, it’s not enough just to want to become a Buddha.
We have to create the causes. The wish is huge. Right? That’s a really big deal. What’s that wish called?
Bodhicitta. Right? But it’s not enough to actually make you a Buddha. You need to engage in the actions. Right?
So that’s what we’re gonna be talking about during this class. And that’s the context of the practices that we’re talking about. Because so we’re talking about the practices at a very, very high level of the path. Right? Okay.
So at that level, that third level, we talked about just to review this quickly, we talked about the three principles of the path, renunciation, Bodhicitta, and wisdom and we just talked about this, we just reviewed this definition, the wish for full enlightenment for the sake of all living beings and remember we said it’s important to have those two components. Why isn’t it enough to just say the wish for full enlightenment? Why isn’t enough to say Bodhicitta is just wanting to become a Buddha? And there’s no point unless you wish to benefit others. And remember, for those of you, Anita, you weren’t here and a couple of people weren’t here, Lama Zopa Rinpoche had this great analogy.
He said, you go to the kitchen because you want lunch. You grab a plate out of the cupboard and then you take your plate to the pots and serve your lunch. He said, becoming a Buddha is like grabbing the plate, benefiting beings is like serving the food. You only need the plate because you want to eat the food. It would be really stupid to grab the plate and sit down at the table with an empty plate.
That would be like wanting to become a Buddha just because, wow, they look so cool, you know, wearing these, like, silken things. They say, sixteen, and I mentioned last time, sixteen was not my prime age. I don’t know about you guys. You know, but that’s not it. It’s the wish.
In fact, they say this is the main cause. The main cause is the wish to be of benefit to all living beings and then the means to that end is Buddhahood. Okay? So, the main point is I want to benefit beings and I don’t wanna do it in the way that I’ve been doing it in this kind of like really confused way that you think you’re helping and you’re just messing it up and then your friends get mad at you and no wisdom. We wanna be able to do it perfectly, and a Buddha can do that.
Okay? So that’s bodhicitta. Now sometimes and you hear this in Buddhist circles, and it drives me nuts. One of them my many pet peeves, you’ll get used to all of them in the next couple of weeks. Bodhicitta is not about being nice.
You know? Sometimes you hear this thing like somebody like Bill goes around making tea for everybody and then somebody goes, oh, he’s such a bodhisattva. Forget it. He’s just a nice guy. But this isn’t about being nice.
This is about waking people up. Right? And sometimes you have to do that in forceful ways. So anytime that somebody describes somebody who just has ordinary I mean, it’s great to be nice. It’s really nice to be kind, all that stuff, but it ain’t bodhicitta.
Okay? So you can I’ve just transmitted my pet peeve to you. So now you can have the same pet peeve. Right? So this is not just ordinary kind of some of you may know there’s this American nun who’s quite a well known author of Dharma books, amazing teacher, Pema Chodran.
Do you guys have her? So she was talking once about going to talk to her teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and she said something to him about trying to be nice and she said he made this face like he smelled a bad smell and went, you wanna be nice? I always remembered that. I thought that was cute. So this isn’t about being nice.
Okay. Now, we say the first step is renunciation and I put this word in quotation marks. And as those of you who were here last week, remember this is another one of my pet peeves. What does this mean, really? What is renunciation?
Does it mean giving up chocolate, boyfriends, movies? What does it mean, Jai? Yes. That’s right. Yeah.
Very good. Right. So the Tibetan word, the translation of the Tibetan word is definite emergence. And this is lots better. I know Sandra said she really liked the word renunciation, but Oh, okay.
Right. But to me, renunciation means that sort of Calvinist Protestant thing of giving up the good fun things to be holy. And that’s not a Buddhist view. Thank goodness or somebody. Okay.
So renunciation, the wish to definitely get free of cyclic existence. That’s what it means. Right? So the only thing we’re giving up, as Jegg reminded us, is suffering and the causes of suffering. That seems smart to me.
Right? Why is this does this come before this? We didn’t talk about this last week. Why do we need to develop renunciation first before Bodhicitta? Why do you think?
What’s the relationship there? And why, if we really do, do we develop renunciation first? Yeah. Well that’s right. Right.
So, see just because we, as we all know, are the center of the universe, we see it on our own behalf first, don’t we? You know, it’s our own suffering suffering that we’re looking to be free from and then we get an idea that until we definitely get free of cyclic existence, we’re not gonna be free. Then we extrapolate that to other beings and go, hey, it’s true for everybody else too. Therefore, I’m going to try to free them too. If we didn’t have this, wish to definitely get free of saṃsāra.
If we thought that we would have lasting ultimate happiness with the next job, the next boyfriend, the next chocolate ice cream, we would want if we cared about other beings, we’d want them to have a job, a boyfriend, and chocolate ice cream. We wouldn’t want them to be free of saṃsāra. Right? So that’s why we have to develop this. And it might be a split second before, it might be lifetimes before.
But this comes first because otherwise, without true renunciation, no way to develop bodhicitta. We can help beings without renunciation, but we help them in temporal ways. Right? You’re not wishing to become a Buddha in order to help them absolutely and ultimately unless you really understand this. Okay.
Does that make sense? Any questions about that? Okay. That’s really important. And another reason that bodhicitta doesn’t mean being nice.
You know, it means really, really seeing deeply. By the way, this is hard to really develop these realizations, and it takes a lot of hours with your rear end in direct contact with the meditation cushion. You know, it doesn’t happen listening to a lecture once a week. It’s meditation really develops that. We say we can have what they call in Tibetan I wish I’ve remembered the Tibetan word, goosebump renunciation.
Like somebody close to you dies, you know, or you break up. You have a one of those awful breakups like your partner leaves you for your best friend. Those are great for renunciation. But it’s goosebump. You know, it lee it goes away.
You know, the next samsaric happiness comes along. So, to really get this takes lots and lots and lots of deep meditation. You can also have this as a result of a really good meditation briefly, but it’s not what we call a stable realization. Okay? So these are hard and they take lots of meditation.
It’s not a question of just understanding what we’ve been talking about tonight. Okay? So any questions about that? Ah, analytical meditation. You know, in the beginning, we do lots of analytical meditation.
We also are trying to develop our concentration to make our analytical meditation more powerful. You know, so we’re kind of developing those two streams. The two main kind of meditation are concentration and analysis. And then we develop both of those and then deeper and deeper and deeper analytical meditation, the deeper our concentration is, you know. But it’s analytical meditation on the stages of the path, basically, is what we need for this.
Okay. Alright. So, let’s see. Then we were up to we were saying where the bodhisattva vows fit in relation to ethical discipline. Just real quick, we have three levels of ethics, the perfection of ethics or morality, restraining yourself from non virtue, accumulating merit in terms of the bodhisattva vows via the six perfections which is the first thirty five of the secondary bodhisattva vows and working for the benefit of sentient beings.
So all of these are considered ethics or morality in Buddhism, not just the first one. So we talked about that briefly. And then the last thing that we did is looking at the scriptural sources. Okay? So this is something you don’t need to remember.
I just think it’s really important to know that there are sources that go all the way back to the original sutras of the Buddha. You know, this isn’t something that the Dalai Lama made up. You know, it’s actual sūtra sources, and here are what all of them are. The two texts that the material that we’re gonna be going through come from are a text by Lama Tsongkhapa, who’s the founder of the Gelugpa tradition of Buddhism, of Tibetan Buddhism thirteen fifty seven to fourteen nineteen called Highway for Bodhisattvas, and then a more recent commentary called The String of Shining Jewels by a tutor of the ninth Dalai Lama called Geshe Tsaiwang Samdhup, nineteenth century. So these are our main sources, commentary and explanation on the vows found in these original sources, the sutras and the Indian commentaries.
And this is the way it is in when you study Tibetan Buddhism. In fact, I was studying a text once, and each level of commentary was indented. So they had the Sūtra of Lord Buddha, then they had the fourth century Indian commentary, then they had the eighth century Indian commentary, then the, you know, first level of Tibetan commentary, then the second level, then the recent by the end, you know, it was like half a word per thing because it was sort of like ten levels commentary on top of which is a good thing because you sit down and you read the original sutras and sometimes you’re like, You know? So we have these highly realized beings to explain things to us because sometimes they’re quite cryptic, sometimes they seem to contradict each other, but you have to know the background and the context. So that’s why we study in the Tibetan tradition, the more recent commentaries that quote all these ones.
So you get them all within the same book. Okay? Now what I wanted to do before we the next thing that we have to talk about is the vows before we go into the engaging bodhisattva vows, the sixty-four engaging bodhisattva vows, there are precepts for aspiring Bodhicitta. Okay? So we talk about and I’ve written a little flowchart of kind of how it works if it were linear, which it’s not.
You know? So first, I’m gonna give you this chart, then I’m gonna say, it doesn’t really work like this. But if things happened in a very linear way, the first step of our Buddhist practice is based on refuge, taking refuge. Right? We say refuge is based on fear and faith.
So what refuge means is understanding what the Buddha taught, understanding the four noble truths. Right? The topic of this weekend, I’m not supposed to advertise myself, but if you wanna know more about the four noble truths, come this weekend because that’s the basis of refuge. I teach in prisons in many different countries and I’ve been doing it about six or seven years. And the first time I taught in a prison, somebody invited me and they say, oh, there’s a group of guys that have been meeting, you know, the Buddhist group, and they wanna take refuge.
So can you go in and give them like a one off two hour talk about refuge? Well, I went in there. They had a wide variety of different background in Buddhism. Some of them had read a lot, like, really knew what they were talking about. Some of them, it was like, oh, the Jesus thing didn’t really work out so well, so I’ll just substitute Buddha.
You know? And they had this really theistic approach to Buddhism like, oh, it’s cool, you know, and the Buddha and will bow and pray and Jesus, you know, I don’t know about him, but the Buddha. So I said, look. They don’t know what taking refuge means. You know, taking refuge is based on understanding what the Buddha said about suffering, what causes it, and having some conviction that it makes sense what the Buddha said about how to get free.
So I insisted on doing a six week course on the four noble truths before they took refuge. And I’m glad I did because then I felt like fourteen guys that took refuge knew what they were doing. It wasn’t just a theistic substitute. Okay? So that’s what refuge is.
The main thing that we’re taking refuge in is the practices the Buddha taught to get free of our suffering. So the Dharma is the main refuge. And refuge isn’t a word we use much in English, do we? But we talk about refugees, don’t we? So what’s a refugee?
It’s somebody who’s going from a condition of danger to a situation of safety. And that’s exactly what we’re doing when we take refuge in Buddhism. The dangerous situation of uncontrolled rebirth in Samsāra to the safety of liberation, enlightenment. Right? Freedom from suffering.
So first step. And then, as I said, developing renunciation through meditation on karma, the sufferings of saṃsāra, the twelve links and so forth. So, the first two levels of the lam rim, those are the mediteachings that we do to answer Jed’s question more specifically. Those are the mediteachings we do to develop renunciation, those first two scopes of the Lamrim. Okay?
And then on the basis of renunciation, then we develop bodhicitta through the two methods taught in the lam rim, the seven-point cause and effect and the equalizing and exchanging self and others technique. Then after developing bodhicitta, we take the aspiring bodhisattva precepts, which we’re gonna talk about in just a second, and there’s two levels. There’s the aspiration alone, and then there’s the aspiration with a promise. So when we talk about wishing or aspiring bodhicitta, we say, there’s the wish and then there’s a wish backed up by a commitment, never to give the wish up ever until saṃsāra ends. That’s the second level.
But we still haven’t said that we’re engaging in the bodhisattva activity. That’s next. Taking the engaging bodhisattva vows, the eighteen root and forty six secondary vows. Right? So we’re actually engaging in the actions that will lead to Buddhahood and then keeping the vows and practicing the six perfections.
So this is just sort of a little linear timeline and as I said it doesn’t really happen like this because for a lot of us we’re still like I said renunciation is a really high level of realization. So we’re working on this, We’re working on developing our bodhicitta. Maybe we’ve already taken bodhisattva vows. Right? We’re kind of doing it all simultaneously and that’s okay.
But, I think it’s important to sort of understand the progression in terms of how the realizations develop in our minds. Right? How those realizations no way to develop renunciation without refuge, no way to develop bodhicitta without renunciation. So this is kind of more of a linear sequence. So questions about this?
Alright. All clear? No. What’s not clear? Yes.
How do they relate to the long Are they actually the steps? Yeah. So this would be the first two scopes of the Lam Rim. Right? We need to develop and remember I said, even if our we feel that our level is the third level of the Lam Rim, we don’t leap over the first two levels, we also work on generating the realizations of the first two levels as well.
And then, from here on down is the third level. Okay? So, refuge and renunciation are the first two levels and then from here on down. So, we don’t skip, and this is something I can’t emphasize enough, and it actually comes up in the Bodhisattva vows as we’ll see. We can’t skip over and think I mean, sometimes, you know, you get into this thing of like, Oh, you know, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, looked at me special.
I must be special. I don’t have to do the you know, those practices for the, you know, the ordinary people that have to come and learn how to meditate and, you know, but nah. You know? Because he gave me that look when he walked in the room. Forget it.
You know? Sorry. But we really have to begin at the beginning and really develop the realizations and not skip over because we talk about the third level being based. It’s like a foundation of a building. You wouldn’t build the third story of the building if you didn’t have a really, really solid foundation in the first floor and the second floor, would you?
You know, that would be really stupid. And that’s like jumping to the third level. Okay? Does that help? Anybody else have a question that they’re afraid to ask?
Or they hope I won’t hear. Yes. If you, at least mentally, the main refuge is mental. And sometimes people ask questions like, can I be a Buddhist and a Christian at the same time? Or can I be Jewish and and Buddhist?
You can definitely do Buddhist practices that help you love and compassion mediteachings. But the world view of Buddhism that explains where your suffering and happiness come from is quite different from the other religions. So I don’t think you can really hold the world view, right, of the of different religions. You know, definitely, you can practice. You can you can do all the practices.
But so refuge is a mental shift. It’s like casting your lot with the four noble truths and saying, this is what makes sense to me. Whether you do it in a ceremony or not, it’s great. It really deepens the commitment, but it’s really a mental shift that you can do, you know, months or years before you have an opportunity to necessarily take a ceremony. Yeah.
Yeah. It’s really hard to posit the goals of Buddhism without positing karma and rebirth. Right. That’s right. That’s right.
No. But to take refuge, I think you do, for sure. Right? Because you’re saying what the Buddha taught in terms of suffering, the causes of suffering, all of that is definitely based on karma and rebirth. I don’t think you need to believe in karma and rebirth to be a good person and to act morally because all religions have moral values.
Not many of them believe in rebirth. Two or three believe in karma, you know. So, yeah, you’re right about that. But I I don’t you know, there’s some writers that posit that you don’t have to, you know, and I just don’t get it. I don’t get it.
It doesn’t make sense to me. I think you can put these ideas on the back burner and still start practicing, but to outright reject the ideas of karma and rebirth and still take refuge, I don’t get it how you can do that. You know? And I don’t understand the people that say that you can. Just doesn’t make sense to me.
No. No. But like Lama Zopa Rinpoche has a great vehicle of approaching that. He says, there’s not one shred of definite evidence that it’s not true and a whole lot of evidence suggesting it probably is. So you’re right.
You know, we don’t have conclusive definite proof, but we’re believing a lot of things that Western scientists say without understanding what their proofs are either. And when you understand it’s just some little blip on some machine that they invented and then they come up with this whole concept of a subatomic particle, it’s a little bit, you know, we really do. So, you know, like Lama Zopa says, if there were absolute proof that it wasn’t, but there’s so much evidence that it probably is. Right? So, you’re right.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s an interesting question though, you know, for us, especially growing up in Western countries where you know, any Tibetan, they’re like, well, of course, rebirth and karma. You know, it’s all they were ever taught. But for us, sometimes it’s more of a struggle.
And we can kind of put it on the back burner. You know, Lama Zopa that I talked about last week, he says, if there’s anything that you’re really struggling with, if it’s becoming an obstacle, just kind of put it on the back burner for a while, take it out, look at it later when you’ve got more of an understanding, you know, when you’ve been meditating more. So but it’s just that outright total rejection is what makes it a little bit hard in terms of taking refuge. Yeah. Sure.
Yeah. And that’s great. I have a list. I have this envelope I carry around the world with me in case I run into a Lama that I can talk to and it’s my I used to call it the twenty five unanswered philosophical questions. Now, I think we’re up to about maybe thirty seven or something.
I have tons of questions still, you know, things that I’m trying to hash out and work with. You know, I think that’s great. And I’m, you know, I’m trying, but I still have questions. I think that’s fine. But, yeah, it’s that out outright rejection of some of the fundamental principles, I think, are not compatible with taking refuge, for example.
Yeah? Oh, that’s very good. Well, there’s seven actually, you you’re onto something. When we talk in Buddhist philosophy about ways of knowing, we say that there are seven different levels moving from wrong belief to realization. And go and there’s three levels of doubt.
Doubt leading towards, you know, the wrong erroneous doubt, equal doubt and doubt leading towards the positive. So, maybe you’ve gone from the doubt leaning toward the wrong belief to the doubt leading And those are actually levels heading in the right direction. So, you’re on the right track. Alright. Oh, do you need a break yet?
One more one more thing and then we’ll have a quick break. So let’s look at where were we? Here we are. Let’s look at these. We say that there’s precepts that go along with aspiring bodhicitta.
This may come as news to you. Maybe you’ve taken as a lot of people were confessing last time that they’d taken the engaging bodhisattva vows and maybe didn’t study them very well. They’re afraid they’ve broken them. I don’t think you have, probably. We’ll get there.
But you may not have known that you’ve taken also precepts that relate to aspiring Bodhicitta. Okay? And if you’ve taken the engaging, these come along as part of the package. So let’s look at these for a minute. Okay?
Kind of Now Oh, by the way, these days, it used to be traditionally that you would take these vows and these vows as completely different ceremonies, is part of why I drew this diagram. Right? You would be under the care of a master who knew you really, really well. And then when you were ready, your master would take you to the next level. Most of us don’t have that kind of relationship with a teacher.
We go to the public talk with his holiness, the Dalai Lama, with the other twenty thousand people that are there, and he says, repeat after me, yada yada you. And we do that. Right? In the old days, you would take the aspiring Bodhisattva precepts as a ceremony, work on those and then when your master thought you were ready to jump into the engaging. But generally, these days, it’s done as one ceremony.
Sometimes, depending on the translator, you may know that you can decide which level you’re signing on for. Sometimes you don’t. Right? So, just wanted to mention that. And let’s look at what some of these precepts for aspiring bodhicitta.
So, we talk about there’s two levels. There are the pledges of how to guard the vows in this life and how to guard the vows in future lives. By the way, when you take Bodhisattva vows, it’s not just for this life. Okay? These are vows that you take that are until enlightenment.
Now, what happens if you get reborn and you didn’t know that you took them in some past life but you’re still you still hold them? You haven’t broken them. You still we’ll talk about that. Okay? But that’s why these two divisions, how to guard the vows in this life and how to guard the vows in future lives because we still will have them unless we give them up or break them we will have them until enlightenment.
Certain levels of vows finish at death. For example, monastic vows. I’m a nun in this life. At my death, I will lose my monastic vows and then hopefully in my next life, I’ll want to become a nun again but I’ll have to start over. Things aren’t like that.
The bodhisattva vows you have from life to life to life. Okay? So how do we guard them in this life? And if you look in your book, does everybody have this Bodhisattva vows booklet? Did you get one?
Let’s see, I think, do you have some? Okay. We need one here. On page five, you can follow along in your book because we have this list of how to guard the vows from degenerating in this life. To develop your inspiration, contemplate the advantages of bodhicitta.
Okay? So this is one of the things that is really important to do a lot all the time. And we can just read this list. It is the only door to the Mahāyāna path. So it’s the only way towards the the track that takes you to full enlightenment.
Okay? Only way is bodhicitta. You’ll be called a child of the Buddhas or an heir of the Buddhas. You will surpass in brilliance even the Hīnayāna arhats. You’ll become an object of highest respect and offering.
You’ll easily complete the extensive collections of merit. The obstructions of your negative karmic impressions will quickly be purified. You’ll be successful in whatever you attempt and you’ll be without need. You’ll not be overcome by either harm or interference. You’ll be an inexhaustible source of comfort and happiness for sentient beings and you’ll quickly attain all the realizations of the path to enlightenment.
Sounds like a good good deal, doesn’t it? Okay. Some pretty good qualities there. So we meditate on these and by the way, the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, Master Śāntideva’s great text. The first couple of chapters talk in a lot of detail about the benefits benefits of bodhicitta, and this list comes from that text.
How many of you were there in Melbourne last year with this holiness teaching? So I remember at one point, and I think he said to read the second and third chapter, or was it the first and second chapter of the Bodhisattva’s way of life every day? That’s a great vehicle of fulfilling this. I’ve been doing it. I I took the first three chapters, and now I can’t remember exactly what he said.
If he said one and two or was it the second and third that he said, yeah. Okay. Talking about the benefits of bodhicitta. So it’s a great vehicle to fulfill this requirement, this precept. Okay?
It was beautiful. In that beautiful verse, you know, form, Master Śāntideva really talks in an incredibly inspiring way about the advantages. Okay? And this list is drawn from various sources, but including that text. Okay.
To strengthen one’s bodhicitta, contemplate it and recite the prayer three times a day and three times at night. Now this doesn’t mean you have to set your alarm and get up every two hours in the middle of the night. Usually, what we do to fulfill this, it’s a little bit cheating, we’ll say it three times in the morning when we’re doing our morning practice and three times in the evening when we’re doing our evening practice. You know, it would be great to really do it. What’s twenty four divided by six?
Four. Every four hours? I mean, that would be awesome. I have a friend that does that. He sets an alarm on his watch for every four hours and he does these prayers.
That would be great. But we can do it three times in the morning, three times in the evening and we’re given on the next page an example. So the second paragraph on page six. Oh, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Gurus, please listen to what I now have to say from the depths of my heart. Just as all the Buddhas of the past have developed the thought of enlightenment, true bodhicitta, then practiced its stages of greater development by following the trainings for all Buddhist children, so may I too, for the sake of all beings, develop Bodhicitta and follow the trainings exactly as all Bodhisattvas have done.
So, if you have refuge commitments, you’re supposed to say the refuge prayer also three times in morning, three times in the evening. Combine this second paragraph and you’ve covered both your refuge and your Bodhisattva commitments. Okay. Really beautiful. Okay?
What do you mean? You don’t do it unless you’ve gone through? It would be fine to do. There would be no fault even if you haven’t taken bodhisattva vows, you have some inclination towards, you know, this Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s right.
That’s right. Even if you have, which is one of the reasons that I said for this class, studying the bodhisattva vows, everybody is allowed to come. See, even if you haven’t taken the vows as a formal ceremony, start working with them. If you have an attraction to that noble intention, it’s totally okay. I’m still working on refuge.
You know, I’m off the flip chart, personally. I’m kinda working on all of them simultaneously. I feel like my understanding of refuge changes about every six months pretty radically. But, you know, I think sometimes we just have a resonance to this noble intention. I know I did.
When I first heard about Bodhi Chita, it was like, wow, that’s so incredible, you know, and even though I didn’t feel like I had it yet or even really understood what it was, but verses like this can inspire us, you know, even if we’re kind of at the very beginning. Just kind of what do we feel comfortable with. But the Bodhisattva vows are something we’re allowed to study in a lot of detail before taking them and I think working with them is a great idea, you know, if we feel inspired by that. Yeah. Yeah.
Good. Alright. Then don’t give up a single sentient being. Okay? This is even your ex mother-in-law.
Sorry? All your ex yeah, the mice. That’s right. That’s right. And this means from the depths of your heart A lot of people in California, it’s the ants.
You know, in New York, it’s the cockroaches. But this means from the depths of your heart for me, it’s all my x whatever they are. But this means really from the depths of your heart saying, forget it. I’m not gonna benefit that being. You know, that being, whoever it is, human or animal, is completely outside the realm of my compassion and my Bodhicitta, really from the depths of your heart.
Has anybody heard the story of the example of a very great being who did that? Who’s used as an example? Anybody heard? Okay. Shari no.
No. I mean, yeah, him too, but he didn’t give up bodhicitta after developing it. So giving up even a single being. So there’s a story about lord Buddha had I need both of my hands for this demonstration. Hopefully, my Madonna thing is long enough.
Okay. Good. So lord Buddha had two main disciples. One, Śāriputra foremost in wisdom. One, Mogdalayana foremost in psychic power.
Do you have you heard this story? Yeah. So, in a past life, Śāriputra who is in this in the Mahāyāna scriptures, a Hīnayāna or, you know, kind of liberation vehicle, arhat, in a past life was a bodhisattva, had Bodhicitta, and a yakṣa, this spirit manifested as a person and approached him and said, Hey, I’ve heard you’re a great bodhisattva. I need an arm. Look, you know, my hand is missing.
Give me your hand. So, Śāriputra, great bodhisattva, didn’t even hesitate, lopped off his hand, handed it to the spirit manifesting as a human with his left hand. Anybody who’s traveled in India knows. You don’t hand anybody anything with your left hand because there isn’t toilet paper, and guess what you do with your left hand. So it’s incredibly, absolutely the rudest thing you can do to hand somebody something.
So the spirit manifesting as a person says, oh, I can’t believe you did that. How disgusting throws Śāriputra’s hand that he’s just lopped off and, you know, out of generosity. And Śāriputra said, oh, these sentient beings, you can’t, you know I’m an American. I could feel I always kind of envision it in this, like, Brooklyn accent. Bill, you you can’t satisfy them whatever you do.
You can’t please them at all. So, Śāriputra just gave up from the depths of his heart, just said, forget it. You know? Try to help them and you can’t. You know, it’s metaphorical story, whatever.
Who knows if it’s literal? Gave up Bodhicitta. You know? Gave up his wish. So this is what we can’t do, not give up from the depths of our heart.
We may struggle with the blowflies and the cockroaches, but it means we’re not really giving them up completely. Okay. Work to accumulate the two collections. And we talked about the two collections last time. Who remembers the two collections?
Anybody remember what we’re saying about Wait. Yeah. Merit and wisdom. So we talked about the bod enlightened body and the enlightened mind and we said, you know, we need this spiritual momentum. Right?
This merit to create the causes of the enlightened bodies of a Buddha and then we need great stores of wisdom to create the mind of a Buddha. Okay? So, that’s what we’re talking about here, building up those two collections that will result in the body and mind of a Buddha. Okay? So that’s how to guard the vows in this life.
How to guard the vows in future lives, abandon the four negative actions, deceiving one’s Gurus or holy beings. Okay? They’re there to help us if we engage in the two practices, one’s called deceit and one’s called pretentiousness pretending to have qualities we don’t have and hiding our faults from our teachers. It’s really stupid for one thing because then they can’t help you, you know, and this is one of these things. So, deceiving one’s gurus or holy beings.
You know, your teacher is reprimanding you for a fault and you say that you didn’t do it, that kind of thing is what we’re talking about because they can’t really help you if you’re not really honest with them. Discouraging others from practicing virtue and causing others to regret their virtuous actions. Okay? This is something that we can do. What would be an example of that, causing somebody to regret a virtuous action?
Yeah. Yeah. There’s a book. This is great, by the way. I keep meaning to mention this.
It’s called The Bodhisattva Vow by Geshe Sonam Rinchen, published by Snow Lion, which has just been taken over by Shambhala. Great commentary if you want a text. He has a good example in here. He says, let’s say a friend of yours gets ordained and instead of and is really excited about it. Instead of being encouraging, you go, oh my god, you’re going back to the West.
It’s so hard. Right? It’s really hard to be a monk in the West. They mostly disrobe. That would be an example of that.
Right? Somebody’s done something incredibly virtuous that they’re really excited about and you are discouraging, you know, and cause them to regret their virtue. Very, very heavy negative karma to do that, to cause somebody to regret virtue. And then, getting angry at a bodhisattva and speaking unpleasantly. So bodhisattva is somebody who’s committed their not just this life but all of their lifetimes to benefit beings and then you get angry and yell at them, speak unpleasantly.
Okay? Acting with pretense or guile towards any sentient being. So, you’re acting, you know, as if you’re meaning to help beings but you actually have a hidden agenda and you have pretense and guile. And then, the four positive actions which are just the reverse of the four negative ones. Not lying to one’s gurus or even any sentient being, even in jest.
I know. That’s hard. The jest part. Yes. Anita.
Yeah. Well, there’s different levels of bodhisattvas. You know, at a very, very high level, you’d say that they don’t they’re no longer subject to karma and delusion but anybody who is developed Bodhicitta gets the label bodhisattva and that’s you know, they don’t even have to have seen the ultimate nature of reality directly, they still could have plenty of faults. So, yeah. Yeah.
Bodhisattva is a wide range of beings, you know. The high level ones and I mentioned before that can control their own rebirth, that’s a really high level. But anybody who has what we call uncontrived bodhicitta, not just the goosebump kind but it’s really a stable realization gets the label bodhisattva but they still could have plenty of faults, plenty of disturbing emotions. Yeah. K.
Being honest and without pretense to all sentient beings, abandon criticizing bodhisattvas and see all beings as your teacher. We talked about this last week. Remember my pro noya thing. Because by the way, do we know who’s a bodhisattva? No way.
So, this is sort of the tricky part of this is like, who knows? Right? So, we have to be really careful about criticizing and getting angry at anybody. Now, it doesn’t mean if somebody’s doing something negative, you don’t correct them skillfully out of love and care for their welfare. But this is just talking about anger, criticism, gotta be careful, really.
Because we don’t know who is who in heavy, heavy negative karma to get angry and criticize a bodhisattva. Okay? So, if we do feel that somebody’s engaging in harmful actions, we do take action. It doesn’t mean you just sit there like a doormat, but very skillfully, you know, very, very skillfully, tactfully. And it’s mostly about the motivation.
The motivation, instead of anger and criticism and judgment, is love and care for their karma and the harm that they may be doing to somebody else. Okay? And take upon yourself the responsibility of all sentient beings. So these these four negatives and four positives, which are kind of the mirror image of the negatives. So this is a way to keep our Bodhicitta from degenerating in future lives as well.
So questions about these? Anything to clarify? Okay. Why don’t you stand up and breathe and stretch for five minutes? If you really have to go to the bathroom, you can, but don’t, you know, run off and make cups tea and have snacks.
Sorry about that. We’ll do that on Saturday. Have nice proper breaks on Saturday, but just to get Always. It’s just that they’re completely different types of vows. So the prati, what, for example, if you take five vows as a layperson, the lay vows to refrain from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and intoxicants, those are a category of vow that we call prati moksha or individual liberation vows.
Monastic vows are also in that category. Those are lost at deaths. Right? So that whole category of vows. The bodhisattva vows, however, go from life to life to life just by nature.
You are. You are. You just have no way to practice them. You know, you have Well, okay. In there’s different philosophical schools of Buddhism.
The Mādhyamika Prāsaṇgika or a middle way consequent school that most Tibetan schools ascribe to say that vows are like there’s a subtle form, like an aura. So, you take a vow, it actually there’s a certain form that that vow takes if you take it with all the proper motivation and all the proper conditions. So you would have that like an aura, this subtle form even in your next life. Okay? Now, what does it mean for an ant?
There’s no way they would be conscious of it, but there would be that imprint. Now we’re gonna talk about how to break vows. And it said, if you have your let’s say you’re born as a human into your next life. You don’t remember that you took bodhisattva vows in your past life, you wouldn’t break them by not remembering that you took them and transgressing them until you took them again in your next life. Because one of the and this is jumping ahead a little bit.
One of the things that’s necessary for breaking the vow and losing them completely is knowing that it’s wrong and you don’t care. Right? So, if you have your vow in the next life but you don’t know it, there would be no way that you would have the factor of knowing that it’s wrong and deciding you’re going to do it anyway. Right? So, you would still have the vow even though you wouldn’t be practicing with it consciously until you took it again in your next life.
But in but you wouldn’t have lost it. It’s just the way that we’re taught that they do. Okay. There’s three ways of knowing things. One is by direct perception.
Like, know that there’s a green glass flask on my table because I can see it with direct perception. The second way of knowing something is inference. And the example I was given is, you know, if there’s a house down the street with smoke coming out the chimney, you know there’s a fire in the fireplace even though you’re not seeing the fire directly through inference. The third way of validly knowing something is believing somebody who’s a valid resource or reference. And there are certain things that until we can check them directly with our own experience or through inference For example, certain subtle workings of karma, they say, Only a Buddha knows exactly which karmic cause leads to which result.
But why would the Buddha lie about that? It’s something so fundamental. And there’s so many things that the Buddha taught that we can check with our direct experience. So sometimes, we just, you know, use that third way of knowing, of believing a valid resource even though we can’t check it directly, which we do, like I said, with modern science too. We’re not in there doing all the experiments we don’t even understand, you know, and we don’t even really know from our own experience that the earth is round, but we believe it.
You know? So it’s kind of the same same kind of thing. Yeah. But it is based on not just blind faith, but faith because there’s enough that we can check with our own experience that then the things that we can’t check, we believe in that valid resource. Yeah.
Okay. Anything else before we get started with the specific vows? You okay? Alright. So let’s launch in.
And for this, I’m going to sit down and you can look at your book because there’s too many to write on flip chart pages. So look at the top of page eight and we’re going to start with what we call the eighteen root vows. So there’s eighteen root or primary vows and forty six secondary vows. And there are two different levels of intensity, heaviness. You can only break your vows if you break one of the primary eighteen with certain factors complete.
And we’ll talk about that in a second. So the first one, praising yourself or belittling others out of attachment to receiving offerings or admiration. Now, the first four vows let’s backtrack a little bit. The first four vows have two parts each. Both of them don’t have to be present.
So it’s real in a way, it’s really eight vows. The first four each have two components. So in a way, it’s like eight. Now, what’s the scriptural source of the first four vows? Bill knows.
We were just talking about it. Yeah. The Avataṃsaka Sūtra explained in which text? Yeah. Bodhisattva levels.
Okay. So these first four, these ones that are dyads are from the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, the Flower Ornament Sūtra, explained in the Bodhisattva Levels, the text by Master Asaṇga. Okay? So, very important. And in fact, some commentators, Lama Tsongkhapa disagrees to this.
Some commentators say all the bodhisattva vows are subsumed in the first four. So these are super important, these first four. Okay. Praising yourself or belittling others out of attachment to receiving offerings or admiration. Now, a couple of details about this one.
It means either praising yourself or criticizing someone else. You don’t have to do both things. Now, if you’re criticizing somebody else and the example given is somebody else is getting a lot of respect, Like some other Dharma teacher has loads of people going to their class and you’re jealous at the respect that they’re getting and you want some respect. So you say, God, you know, they haven’t really studied well. You know, they didn’t really go to the monastery and the teachers that they had.
So, you’re criticizing them out of a wish to have the respect and maybe the material offerings that they have. That would be an that’s the classic example, the classic example. Now, in order to break the vow or in order to transgress, it needs to be a lie. They really do have to have the qualities that you’re criticizing. Okay?
So, they really do have good qualities. You’re putting them down out of a wish for the respect and material offerings that they’re getting. Now, that would be a kind of monastic Dharma teacher example. What would be an example from ordinary life? Can you think of an example of praising yourself in criticizing somebody else for wish for material gain or respect?
Okay. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Happens all the time, doesn’t it? You know, coworkers, promotions, you’re trying to get the promotion and your coworkers trying to get the promotion too.
So, we have to be really careful. It doesn’t mean that we can’t honestly say what our qualifications are. You know, because sometimes when people read this vow, they go, oh, does it mean that I never should put myself forward for a promotion? Because is that praising myself wanting material gain? Have to be careful not to exaggerate our own qualities or criticize somebody else’s qualities when they really have them, even in a work situation.
Okay? So we have to be careful about it, but that would be a perfect example of how we would have to work with this in daily life. Right? So we have to be very, very careful. Now, there’s another vow that comes from another scriptural source where envy is the motivation, which is included into here.
Okay? Remember, I said there was another scriptural source, Master Śāntideva’s Compendium of Trainings? There’s a very specific vow about praising yourself and criticizing someone else just with envy as the motivation and that’s included in here because it’s so similar. So a different source. This is more general.
This is more general, praising oneself and criticizing others. So any questions about that? Okay. The next one. Not giving someone Dharma teachings or material assistance.
And this is one of those ones that people read this and then they go, Oh my God! Does that mean every time an envelope comes in the mail from the nonprofit asking for a donation or every time I pass somebody on the street that asks for a spare change, that I have to give it? There’s specific circumstances for this one. This one says, The person asking you has to have a serious problem. They’re really destitute.
They have a disease. They really have a serious need, a serious problem. You’re their only option. They don’t have another source of support. They don’t have family.
They don’t have social services. And it’s a personal request to you. And out of miserliness, you refuse. That’s a little bit different, isn’t it? So, it doesn’t mean you necessarily have to write a check every time an appeal comes in the mail.
And it doesn’t mean you necessarily have to give spare change to everybody who asks you, you know, or if it’s just a general thing like the sign up there’s so many homeless people in America. I always use homeless people as the example. I never see that many in other countries. It’s just a very American thing. You know, the sign, please help.
It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to stretch the boundary of our generosity. It doesn’t mean, oh, since that doesn’t fulfill the Bodhisattva vow, I don’t have to worry about helping other people, but you’re not gonna break your vow. This is a personal appeal to you specifically. You’re their last resort and they’re in real need. And you say no out of miserliness.
Okay? That’s what this one is talking about. So it’s a little bit easier, isn’t it? Than when you just read the phrase that said, Offer material assistance. You’re like, Oh my God!
How am I going to do that? And, Dharma teachings. Alright? So, also teaching Dharma to those, as it says in the book, those who are suffering without a protector because you want to amass knowledge just for yourself. So, the main motivation for this one is miserliness.
So, this means somebody asks you dharma questions or they’re asking you to help them with their class with the dharma and just because you want to be miserly about the knowledge and not share it with them, you don’t tell them the answer. Now, it may be that they ask you about emptiness according to the middle way consequence school. Can you explain to me that thing? And you feel completely inadequate to do it, you haven’t studied enough, fine to say no. You know, if you don’t know, if you feel like it would be misleading, if you can’t provide what they ask for, that’s perfectly fine.
This doesn’t mean, in fact, you absolutely should not just make something up. That’s breaking another vow. We’ll get to that. Okay? So, if they’re asking you for some knowledge you don’t have, but try and steer them in the right direction.
Recommend a book. Recommend a class. This is just talking about being miserly about your own knowledge and not wanting other people to know as much as you do. Okay? When it’s the dharma and when it can really help them because they’re suffering.
Oh, by the way, one of the sort of disclaimers about the material assistance, you don’t have to offer people something that would be harmful to them, weapons, drugs. Right? So if they’re asking you for something that would actually harm them, you don’t obviously give it to them. Okay? So a lot of times, that’s it too.
You’re walking down the street and somebody’s asking for money and you know that they’re going to buy alcohol or drugs or something like that. It’s okay to give you know, what I try and do is give them food instead. I’ll just go buy food and give it to them because I don’t really want them to use my money to buy the next hit of heroin that they’re gonna overdose. You know, and if you give money, that could happen. So sometimes I’ll ask them what they like to eat and go buy food for them, something like that.
But, yeah, you don’t give people something that’s harmful to them. So questions about this dyad. Right? So you it doesn’t have to be both material things in dharma, one or the other. One or the other.
Okay. So, one, not forgiving others but harboring a grudge and holding it even when they apologize. Now, the second half of the vow isn’t in here and it says, or striking them. And so, in the commentary, it gives a scenario for this vow and it says, you know, it’s talking about two people on the bodhisattva track or or a group of people and you. So, you’re on the Bodhisattva track, so are your friends.
They try and correct you for something that you’ve done wrong. You get angry at them. They apologize to you for offending you. You don’t accept their apology. You hold a grudge and it builds up to the point where you punch them in the face.
Okay? Can’t imagine physical violence, but it’s actually the second half of the vow is not accepting an apology or striking another. So that’s where the physical violence part of morality comes in, is striking another. Okay. So that would be the scenario that your anger builds up, you don’t you don’t forgive.
In fact, you harbor a grudge and it builds up even to the point where you can, you know, hit or strike the other person. Okay? So, if somebody sincerely apologizes to us, we have to swallow our pride and accept the apology. Now, if somebody apologizes to you in a way that you feel like is insincere, Oh, sorry. God.
No. You know, they need to come to you and you feel that they really are contrite and sincerely apologize. And then, if you hold on to your anger, that is anti bodhisattva activity. And again, remember this is all about acting like somebody who has the welfare of other beings in mind. And these vows, you’ve taken because you’ve really signed on to that lifestyle.
You know, you’ve signed on to, you know, engaging in the activities that will bring benefit to other sentient beings. So, somebody approaches you and sincerely apologizes and just out of spite and pride, you don’t accept their apology. Very anti bodhisattva activity. Okay. So questions about that one?
Okay. Yeah. This is actually talking about human beings. I mean, it’s not a Yeah. It’s okay to discipline and again, it gets back to what’s the motivation.
When you discipline your dog, when you discipline your child, when you set limits, setting limits with friends. I mean, we need to set limits all the time out of love and out of a respectful relationship, but not out of, yeah, anger, grudge holding like that. So that’s fine. You don’t haul off and beat the dog. That would be, you know, anti Bodhisattva.
But if you’re just wrapping the nose or doing whatever to discipline in a realistic way, I think that’s fine. Yeah. Alright. Fourth one, abandoning the Mahāyāna teachings by saying that some parts of the teachings are not the teachings of the Buddha and propounding your own fabricated or perverted doctrine. Bad news.
Okay. So, this is about rejecting the Mahāyāna teachings either by rejecting any part of it or by saying that it’s not the teachings of the Buddha. And there’s a lot of debate about that. You know, you’ll read some scholars that say, oh, the Mahāyāna sutras are later. They weren’t actually the words of the Buddha.
For those scholars, it wouldn’t be breaking a bodhisattva vow if they never had a bodhisattva vow. But if you signed on to the bodhisattva vows and then you reject the Mahāyāna teachings that teach you how to act and think like a bodhisattva, then you’re transgressing your vows. Okay? And then the second half, because remember all of these four have another half to them. The second half says, instead you promote your own doctrine.
You know, you come up with your own ideas, you teach it to people as valid Buddha Dharma, you prefer your own ideas and you convince them to follow your ideas. It’s really important if you’re ever teaching or talking about Dharma, if you say something that’s just your opinion, make it really clear. You’ll hear me do this because I’m full of opinions. You know, and sometimes I’ll say, you know, I haven’t ever heard a Tibetan Lama say this but I’ve been thinking about it and I think it might be like this. Really important to qualify And don’t just come up with your own ideas and present them as Buddhist ideas and then try and get convince people to follow you.
It’s not tried and true. Right? We have a tradition and there’s a huge emphasis actually in Buddhism on the oral transmission without any alteration because it’s produced enlightened beings for twenty six hundred years. Right? Something that some idea you came up with last Tuesday, you know, doesn’t have that lineage to it.
So, it’s really important to be careful about promoting your own trip and calling it Buddha Dharma and trying to get people to follow it. Okay? Now, you can be innovative. There’s new methods that are being used. There’s this thing that we have in the FPMT called the sixteen guidelines, universal education.
All that stuff is fine. It’s just new methods based on, you know, the teachings. And that’s great. You know, all the things that they’re doing with kids these days to try and transmit the ideas of Buddhism, all of that’s fine. So the methods but don’t don’t distort the teachings to suit.
You know, sometimes you see this too. People are watering things down, presenting Buddhism as psychology. You know, there’s this thing that’s very popular in the States. I don’t know if it’s made it to Australia. Mindfulness based stress reduction, Jon Kabat Have you heard of this?
This is really popular and it’s all about mindfulness meditation. I mean, fantastic program. This Dharma teacher, Jon Kabat-Zinn went into hospitals and people with like chronic pain, chronic illness, so forth, stress, mindfulness, breathing, meditation practice to reduce stress. I heard that he went to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, to present his program to get His Holiness, the Dalai Lama’s, you know, to buy into it, to sign off on it, whatever. He presented his whole program as Holiness.
He’s like, that’s great. Wonderful. So beneficial. Excellent. Just don’t call it Buddhism.
So, the important taking a technique out of Buddhism to use in a specific context, great. But like His Holiness says, don’t present that the goal of Buddhism is stress reduction. It is not. What’s the goal of Buddhism? Enlightenment, at the least liberation.
It ain’t just about stress reduction. So that’s the kind of thing we have to be careful about. Don’t say that’s the goal of Buddhism. You you know, you see that a bit, and it sort of worries me. It’s a little bit of a watering down.
Oh, boy. Don’t talk about renunciation. They’ll freak out. They’ll leave. You know, don’t don’t make them think that they really need to make radical changes in their lives.
So we’ll just kind of talk about being calm and stress free because they can handle that. It’s a good first step, but don’t present that as the goal of Buddhism. Okay? So that’s what this is talking about. So even for us, you know, sometimes we might look at these vows and go, well, I would never be in a position to do that.
Yeah. We are. Yeah. So we have to be careful and very mindful about this. Yes, Anita.
I think, you know, what His Holiness the Dalai Lama says when he gives them is, you know, to really have an understanding of what bodhicitta is and really have a sincerity. We know and one of the things I mentioned last week when you weren’t here, a friend of mine who’s a Pāli scholar doesn’t like us calling them vows. He calls he said the the word in Pāli, and I don’t even remember what it is, or the word in Sanskrit means factors of training. So it’s really disciplines to train our minds. So I think as long as we’re sincere, we understand what Bodhicitta is and we have, you know, at least for me, I feel like, you know, we’ve defined Bodhicitta as the wish for full enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.
I feel like I’ve got the wish to have the wish for enlightenment. It’s sort of like one level of wishing backwards. That’s good enough. That’s good enough. Like I said, if we have an admiration for that My teachers have said, if we feel like at least we’re gonna try as hard as we can to keep the vows.
We don’t take the vows with an idea of, oh, it’s just impossible, so I’ll probably blow it, but it sounds like a nice idea. We at least have a level of sincerity knowing that we probably won’t be perfect. That’s right. Yep. Yeah.
No. I think it’s really important too. And I think as dharma centers, we need to take responsibility to prepare people and after people have taken the vows to get a proper training. Because otherwise well, there’s just no benefit. I mean, at the worst, you can become overwhelmed and give it up.
But even at the very least, it’s factors of training. And if you don’t know what your training is, it’s not really going to benefit your mind at all. So, think you’re absolutely right and I think we should be much more rigorous, I guess is the word, in terms of really preparing people to take vows, supporting them after taking them. Sometimes I joke, but it’s not really a joke. I think in dharma centers there should be renunciation support groups and bodhisattva vow, you know, groups.
So you can sit around and talk about how are you trying to live this morality because, man, it goes totally against the grain. Believe you me. You know, it goes against what the billion, trillion dollar advertising industry is trying to tell you. It goes completely against what global capitalist consumerist culture is trying to tell you. It’s totally swimming upstream.
And we need that support, and that’s why these kind of places are here. Because otherwise, you’ll just fail. It’s too hard. It’s too hard. Every message you get from the media is against Buddhist ideas, against Buddhist morality.
So I really think, you know, I I joke about the renunciation support group, but I think it would be great if people did it because in the workplace, you know, what do you do? I mean, this always comes up when we talk about morality. You’re sitting having lunch with your coworkers and everybody’s talking about the person who’s not there that day. And what do you do? Eat lunch in your car every day or, you know, ignore your coworkers?
I mean, these kind of things really you know, we can help each other try and figure out strategies of how to live with this kind of morality in an ordinary way. But you’re absolutely right. It’s very serious. It’s a serious commitment. When we’re at the point oh, wrong page.
When we’re at the point of really taking the engaging vows, as we’ll see, it’s hard to completely break them and lose them. You need a lot of factors to do that. But it’s definitely raising the bar in terms of our Bodhisattva practice. And that’s the point. So you’re right.
We do need to train well in them. Yeah. Anything? Yes. Katrina.
Yep. It’s true. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That’s right. For everyone else. That’s right. That’s right.
Yeah. And the whole thing of, you know, equalizing and exchanging self and others and really overcoming self-cherishing. Because I think you’re right. I think a lot of the things on offer now very much promote more self-cherishing, you know, in in and we do need to look out for ourselves first because it’s like the analogy, if we’re drowning, how can we save someone else who is? But our own spiritual work and our own self care needs to be from a wider context and not just get into this sort of ingrown self absorption the way that I think some of these paths do.
I think you’re right. I think you’re right. Yeah. So it’s not just against capitalist consumerist culture, but a lot of the other spiritual paths that are out there as well. Yeah.
Alright. Our time’s up? So we did Are you shocked, Jang? Are you? Yeah.
It’s nine o’clock. In fact, I’ve gone one minute over. I never tried going. Jang’s like, I’m into it. So, what I’d like to do next week, don’t miss it, we’ll finish the rest of the eighteen root vows.
We’ll talk about the four, what we call the four binding factors that are necessary to lose your vows completely. It’s really quite hard. We had some confessions the first night and people said, Oh, I’ve taken the Bodhisattva vows but I’m sure I’ve broken them. And I kept saying, Maybe not. It’s not that easy.
So we’ll talk about that. What also needs to be present to blow it completely to totally lose your vows and then there are other levels of kind of downfall and we’ll talk about those and then what can we do to repair our vows that may have degenerated. Then we’ll launch into the forty six secondary vows. Now, there’s a lot of similarity and remember, these come from different scriptural sources so it may feel like splitting hairs a little bit. Some of them may seem very very similar but they do have a different emphasis.
Some of the secondary vows, the difference is in the motivation between vows that sound quite similar. But we’ll get into all of that discussion next time. Also, please keep these in mind. We’ve gone over the first four, the very important ones that some commentators say everything’s based on that. In your life between now and next Wednesday, you know, be mindful of these first four.
How often they come up and we can talk about that a little bit too. How do they come up in your life? Okay? So we’ll look at all of that. So we have an enormous amount of virtue to dedicate.
So by all means, so that our positive spiritual momentum isn’t lost, let’s take just a minute and think about all the positive energy that we’ve generated from our session tonight. Just think there are more than seven billion human beings on the planet now. How many of them have even heard about bodhicitta? How many have even been exposed to the idea of this incredible, beautiful, noble intention? Then among the people that have been exposed to the idea, how many of them are committed enough to finding out more that they’re engaged in the study of these vows, the study of these practices?
So you’re just a teeny tiny percentage of all the human beings on the planet. It’s amazing, actually, to think of the virtue of what you’ve engaged in tonight, really looking at this, trying to question, trying to discover and apply to your own life. So huge amount of merit. Let’s dedicate towards being able to understand the vows completely, keep the morality purely, thereby creating all the causes and conditions for enlightenment, the benefit of all living beings. Take just a second to dedicate all that amazing positive energy towards that goal.
Thank you.