Bodhisattva Vows — 2012-09-12

Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. In this 1 hour 56 minute teaching, Tenzin Chogkyi completes the thirty-six secondary Bodhisattva vows, working through the final thirty of a comprehensive series. She opens by reviewing the four binding factors that completely break a vow—knowing it is wrong, lacking restraint, rejoicing in the transgression, and absence of shame or consideration—then systematically covers the remaining vows organized by the six perfections: patience, joyous effort, concentration, and wisdom. Key topics include the four noble disciplines of non-retaliation when scolded, struck, or criticized; handling anger and apologies; correcting laziness and frivolous talk; seeking proper instructions for developing single-pointed meditation; studying foundational teachings without abandoning Mahāyāna practice; and specific responsibilities to others such as helping those in need, counseling those headed toward harmful actions, and praising others’ good qualities. Throughout, she emphasizes that these vows protect the core commitment of Bodhicitta and enlightenment for all beings, using the image of concentric circles where outer vows guard inner ones. For those who have taken Bodhisattva vows and wish to deepen their understanding of daily ethical practice.

File metadata (for organising)

File: 2012 09 12 Bodhisattva Vows.mp3

UUID: 403963e7-12f1-4d12-81d1-831a05efaa19

Teacher: Tenzin Chogkyi

Collection: Bodhisattva Vows (Tenzin Chogkyi)

Date: 2012-09-12

Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide

Words: ~16,000

How did that happen? We only have thirty vows left to go. We’ll do it. I promise. They’re all easy from this point.

Obvious. Very highly intuitive from this point out. Alright, let’s do as we usually do and begin by taking a few minutes just to settle and focus our minds by watching our breaths, and then we’ll set our motivation. So first of all, sitting, focusing on the physical sensation of breathing to get yourself here in this room, in your body. Focus and settle your mind.

And now let’s take a minute to set our motivation for this, our last teaching of the Bodhisattva vows. All of these teachings have been about acting like a Bodhisattva, engaging in the bodhisattva’s deeds in order to create the causes for the body and mind of a Buddha. So Bodhicitta, that wish, the intention is the motivation, incredibly important, and then we need to engage in Bodhisattva activity as a way to create the causes karmically. So that’s what we’ve been studying. And let’s set that Bodhicitta motivation for our session tonight, thinking the reason that we’re studying these Bodhisattva vows, these factors of training, to be able to become a fully enlightened Buddha for the benefit of all living beings.

Okay. So let’s review a couple of the key points from last time. We don’t really have time to review everything completely. Or if we did, we wouldn’t get through the last thirty Bodhis Bodhisattva vows. We talked a bit about the four binding factors that are necessary to actually lose or completely break the Bodhisattva vows.

So who can tell me what one of those four binding factors is? One? More than one? As many as you can explain? Okay.

That’s the first one. Basically, knowing that you’re breaking a vow and you don’t care because you’re just completely disregarding the law of cause and effect. You’re just ignoring that it’s as heavy as it is. You know? So this isn’t the first one, it’s not ignorance of the vow.

You know that it’s a vow. You know you’ve taken the vow, and you just don’t care. You’re acting like it doesn’t matter at all. Good. Good.

What’s another one? Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. You feel no restraint whatsoever.

You happily do it again. Okay. Good. What else? Yeah.

Feeling happy and satisfied that you did it. It was great that I did it. Praise I praised myself and, you know, criticized that other Dharma teacher. That was great that I did that. Yeah.

Okay. What was the last one? Had two parts to it. Yeah. So what do those two things mean?

Yeah. The consideration. Yeah. That’s right. That’s right.

So I like, you know, shame. I don’t know. To me, that’s kind of loaded. I really prefer something like self respect or integrity. You know, just I wouldn’t do that because that’s just not me.

You know, it’s not about the effect that it would have on other people at all. It’s just a sense of integrity of even if nobody ever knew, they never saw you do it, you just wouldn’t do it because it’s just, you know, goes against your sense of self respect and integrity. There’s another part to that one too that is your concern for your own karma. Right? So that’s part of the shame one too, not just the integrity, but also a concern for the karmic effects on you.

And then the second one is consideration for for others. It would look bad for a known Buddhist to misbehave in this way, and other people would lose faith in the path. That’s the main meaning of the consideration. It’s not so much a pride thing of, like, oh, I want people to think that I’m so great. You know, it’s not so much that.

It’s just protecting other people’s minds, and we’ve seen a couple of the vows have to do with that. You know, a couple of the things have to do with just behaving in a way that protects other people’s minds. And I told the story about my friend and when she got ordained as a nun, she realized her behavior in public really changed because she shouldn’t couldn’t kinda push and shove. I mean, she was an American. I don’t know.

Maybe that makes a difference. She couldn’t sort of, like, shove in line or, like, yell at people, you know, in public or whatever because she was really aware that she was representing something. So it’s kind of like that. It’s kind of like that. You’re worried about, you know, or upsetting other people too, you know, even whether they know you’re Buddhist or not, you’re trying to protect their minds from getting upset, whatever it might be.

So that’s shame and consideration. What’s the worst of those four? Of those? Yeah. Not thinking it’s wrong at all.

Right? So we had all of those lists of if it’s a combination of this but not this and this and not this. If you have all four of those conditions complete, you’ve lost your Bodhisattva vows. You know, that whole Bodhisattva shape to your life. Like, you do one of those things.

You don’t care. You’d happily happily do it again, you’re happy that you did it the first time, you don’t care about the effect that it has on other people or your own self respect, you’ve lost the plot big time. Right? Which you can see that, I mean, with all of those really complete. But if you have, you know, the first one and some combination of the other ones, that’s considered a medium infraction.

Right? So you you know it’s wrong, but you could care less plus not all four, but one of the other ones. You haven’t totally lost your Bodhisattva vows. Now what happens if you lose your Bodhisattva vows completely? You have to take them all over again.

Right? But it’s never as good as the first time. And the analogy they always give in scripture is like, when you break your leg, yeah, it can heal, but it’s never gonna be as strong as it was before you broke it. And I’m I’m proof of that. I broke my left leg, like, thirty years ago, and it’s still it always bothers me.

I mean, it’s healed. It’s got a titanium rod in it, and still, you know, I really wish it had never happened. So it’s like that. You can break them. You can take them again, but it’s never gonna be as strong as if you hadn’t blown it in the first place.

Now what if you do what if you have the first factor and one or two of the other ones, but not all four? What do you do to repair your breach of the vows? Yeah. That’s right. That’s right.

So you need to confess out loud with your voice. It’s really embarrassing to three people who best is the people who have the Bodhisattva vows or at least somebody who understands what it’s all about, you know, and understands the seriousness of what you’re doing. So it might be an educated Buddhist that hasn’t taken Bodhisattva vows yet but has some respect for the bodhisattva training. Now what if you’ve got you don’t have the first one. You know it’s wrong and you care about it being wrong, but you have some of the other factors, then what do you do to repair it?

Yeah. Confess to one other person. Yeah. Good. Good.

Now, if you don’t have any of the four factors at all, you haven’t even weakened your bodhisattva vows. Let’s say that you do one of these things, you know it’s wrong, you’re not happy about it, you have no intention to do do it again, and you totally care about, you know, your own self respect and care about what it’s done to other people’s minds. So all of the none of those four factors are there. You haven’t even weakened your vows. Right?

And this is why we call them factors of training because of course we’re not going to be perfect, you know, we’re going to do these things but if we don’t have any of those four things complete, then you haven’t even weakened your vow except for two of the eighteen. Right? Remember we had two exceptions that you don’t have to have all of those four factors and what were those two exceptions? That’s right. Because just by having done those two things, you’ve lost that bodhicitta kind of shape to your life.

I mean, giving up bodhicitta from the depths of your heart. Right? Because this doesn’t mean you’re just having a bad day and going, oh, sentient beings are so hard to serve. You know? They’re just oh, you know, they’re impossible.

I try and try to help them and they’re you know, it’s not like that, like you’ve had a bad day. It’s really from the depths of your heart going, I’m not gonna do this anymore. I just don’t wanna do this Bodhisattva thing anymore. You know? And then in the next moment, you’re not a Bodhisattva vow holder anymore.

You know, you can only have that thought from your heart for a split second and then the next second, it’s gone. And then wrong views. And what were the wrong views? What are some examples of the wrong views that you could hold? Yeah.

Yeah. What else? Jim. Well, wrong views about ultimate nature of reality, but for this for this one, it’s mostly wrong views about cause and effect, not believing in karma, not believing in the possibility of enlightenment, and not believing in future lives. Right?

Because that kind of wipes out the whole I mean, all of those are just the necessary kind of prerequisites for becoming a Bodhisattva. Right? So it kind of pulls the rug out from under the whole sort of what do you call it? Just the just the sort of philosophical framework that the whole Bodhisattva ideal is built on. Yeah.

Of course, it’s not gonna happen just in this lifetime. We train for after lifetime. Right? Yes. It is possible to get enlightened.

How are you gonna have bodhicitta if you don’t think it’s possible to get enlightened? The whole thing is getting enlightened for the benefit of all beings and then not believing in cause and effect, how on earth are you gonna do it if it’s just random or if God decides, you know, no point in keeping your morality and keeping the vows because it’s just random. You know? So all of those things just sort of pull the rug out from under the whole structure of the Bodhisattva Vow. So if we’ve got those two things, you don’t have to have all four binding factors kind of by themselves, by their nature.

It means you’ve lost that Bodhisattva shape to your life. Okay? So that’s really important to keep in mind because, you know, a lot of these vows, when you just read it, you go, oh my god. Like, I have to just be generous with material things and the dharma, and we feel like we’ve just blown it when we don’t loan somebody a book. Well, if you feel bad about it, you don’t intend to make it your policy, you know, you feel bad about how it reflects on the dharma.

If you don’t have any of those four factors, it doesn’t taking these vows doesn’t mean that we are completely over our miserliness. It means we’re trying to fight it. And even if we give in to it, at least we’re trying to fight it. We don’t feel great about it, you know, but it doesn’t mean that we’re not gonna give in sometimes to things like miserliness. So that’s important to keep in mind so we don’t feel so discouraged about the vows.

Okay. Good. So last time, after we talked about that a little bit, we started talking about the secondary vows, and we said we don’t really talk about the four binding afflictions in terms of the secondary vows. You know, of course, they could be there, but no matter kind of what level of breaking the secondary vows, you don’t lose your Bodhisattva vows. Right?

There isn’t that consideration of, you know, any of these things would cause you to completely lose your Bodhisattva vows. And we’ve talked about the vows that have to do and you and you’ve been able to see how they relate to perfections, the six perfections, because we had a whole group of the secondary vows that related to the perfection of generosity. Right? We went through those, and then we had a whole list that related to the perfection of ethics. And now we’re on vow number seventeen, which is in connection with the perfection of patience.

Okay. So the third I’m sorry. We had enthusiasm. No, we haven’t had enthusiasm yet. We’re on patience.

Okay. And then perseverance or enthusiasm is next. So let’s begin with vow number seventeen. So these are about protecting both ourselves and others from especially getting angry. Okay?

So dwelling in anger, both ourselves and others. And you can see how these vows are so you know, they’re great because we have an explanation of the six perfections, but it can be a little bit vague. We’re like, okay. I’m supposed to be patient and not get angry. Well, how do I do that?

And this is give telling us exactly how to do it or like with the morality one or the generosity and it’s pointing out situations that come up in our lives all the time and telling us exactly how to practice. So it’s very cool, you know, on the basis of the six perfections, like I said, sometimes it can be vague, but these vows are giving us really specific guidelines about when that happens, don’t do that. When this happens, do that. You know, in in situations like I said, I think the first night, not a whole heck of a lot has changed in the last twenty six hundred years. human nature seems to be the same.

Some of the technology and the ways that these things manifest may have changed, but the basic kind of ideas haven’t changed much at all. So vow number seventeen, parting from the what’s called the four noble disciplines or the four qualities of a religious practitioner. So parting from those means going against any of these four. The first one, someone scolds you angrily using harsh words and you don’t respond in kind. Okay.

So the first one is about not responding, not retaliating. All of these are about non retaliation, right, against acts of harm. So the first one is someone’s yelling at you, scolding you at you, and you don’t retaliate. Second one, someone’s gotten angry at you, and you don’t respond in kind. The third one, someone even beats you or hits you and you don’t respond in kind.

And the fourth one, someone points out your faults and shortcomings and criticizes and humiliates you and you don’t respond in kind. Okay? Oh, it doesn’t mean that you’re a doormat. It’s just about non retaliation. You know?

If somebody is doing something like beating you, I mean, that’s gonna be really bad karma for them. You try to stop them from doing all these things, but with compassion, not with anger, and you don’t retaliate. So this is what this is saying. It’s not just saying, oh, if you’re a Bodhisattva trainee, you’re just a doormat and let people abuse you. It doesn’t mean that.

It just means not retaliating with anger. So it’s all about protecting your own mind from anger. Okay. Questions about that or the four yes. Yeah.

Yeah. You mean for this one or for for any of them? No. You know, I don’t think it again, if it’s just sort of a split second, but you catch yourself because, again, it doesn’t mean that we’re not gonna get angry. Of course, we’re gonna still get angry for a long time as long as we still have the karmic seeds for aversion and anger, we’re gonna feel it.

But you catch yourself. That’s the thing. You know, you don’t just kind of let it go on. Of course, you know, you might feel angry. You might even feel like it’s justified, but what I find for myself with my training is I’ve got that voice, that habitual voice of like, well, they deserve it, you know, I mean, I can’t believe they did that but then there’s the wise part of me that goes, yeah, come on, you know, get real, like, of course not, like try, you know, there’s part of you, the wise part, trying to kind of quell, you know, the part that that gets angry.

But, yeah, it’s kind of the same thing. It’s not that it’s not gonna rise in us. It’s just trying not to And it may be that, you you know, we pop off and start to yell back, but then you catch yourself, you know. It just means not allowing yourself or feeling like it’s justified to retaliate, you know, and we might in the heat of the moment, we might retaliate, but at least to try and say in Buddhism, for a lot of our morality, we say if we generate some kind of remorse, even during the course of the action, it really lessens the result. Like, we let the whole thing go and don’t feel any remorse at all, but even if we start to engage in a non virtue, whether it’s this or any of them, if we feel remorse and at least try and stop ourselves, then that means that we haven’t really broken the vow.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to the person and apologize. You know, that’s that’s one of the other ones actually is, you know, if somebody is angry at you or you’ve had a situation like that, I find the most powerful thing and sometimes the hardest, especially for me because I have a terrible case of pride, is going to the person and just going you know, especially when you feel like it’s not even justified that they’re mad at you or whatever is go to the person and just say, you know, whatever I’ve done to hurt you, I’m so sorry.

Please forgive me. And it’s just like magic. It just clears the air completely. So if it’s possible I mean, it’s not always possible that you can well, you know, you’ve done your part. You can’t we can’t really have an influence on other people’s minds and on some level, I mean, they may be holding a grudge, but it’s still gonna have an effect.

Like, if your apology is really sincere and you really have said, like, I, you know, I totally didn’t mean to hurt you and I could tell that that thing that I said really did and you put it out there, I think eventually, it sort of softens them. I mean, they may not be able to come right back and go, oh, it’s okay. Let’s be friends again, you know, but it sort of will soften their hearts kind of over time. I mean, I found that to be the case. And like I said, it can be quite hard, especially if you feel like you haven’t done anything wrong and the person’s still really mad at you or holding a grudge and it’s not even your fault or it was a misunderstanding.

But if you can get in the habit of apologizing even when you don’t feel that you’ve done something wrong because I think sometimes we just shoot ourselves in the foot with our need to be right. You know, we’d rather be right than happy. You know, wouldn’t we sometimes? You know, you just rather be right than just smooth things over, you know, because we feel like somehow we’re winning. But when we really look at it, we’re not winning anything at all.

We’re just creating uncomfortable situations between ourselves and other people. So but, yeah, we can’t control other people’s minds. But I think, you know, if we’re really sincere, it does have an effect and it may take a while before they can swallow their pride and come back and forgive you. But at least you’ve done what you could do. Yeah.

Yeah. Good question. Yeah. So that relates to the next one that we said, just ignoring people who are angry because of something you did to them. So this is you know somebody’s angry at you.

It’s either justified or it’s not justified, and you don’t do anything to try and smooth it over. That would be breaking this next one. And this is protecting other people’s minds because you’re not doing something to minimize the anger in their minds. You know, the first one was the anger in our minds, and this one is protecting other people from having anger. If you if it was your fault, you go apologize.

Even if it wasn’t your fault, you do that thing that we just said, apologize anyway, or try and talk to them about it or try and smooth it over somehow so that they don’t have anger building up and continuing in their minds. Now the commentary say there’s some exceptions to this one. If the person would get more angry if you brought it up again, worse. If it would make it worse. Right?

Or if they’d be really uncomfortable if you apologized, if it’s somebody who wouldn’t be helped with an apology, if it’s to teach a lesson or to discredit a wrong spiritual teaching or some evil. Okay? So those are the exceptions. So basically, we’re looking at the bigger benefit, you know, and hopefully, we’ve got a whole lot of wisdom to understand that it’s the bigger benefit. But those are some of the exceptions.

And, you know, sometimes you need a cooling off period because if you go to the person right in the heat of the moment, it is just gonna make them angrier or they’ll think you’re being sarcastic or something. They’re not gonna really think that you’re sincere. So you just wait until it’s a better time, something like that. Okay. And then the next one, not accepting an apology.

Okay. This is all about smoothing things over. So somebody comes to you really sincerely and apologizes, and you don’t accept it out of malice or desire to hurt the other person which would be an afflicted offense and remember we said these secondary ones are usually divided into an afflicted offense that they’re done out of some like anger or spite or or jealousy. In non afflicted, they’re done out of just carelessness or laziness. So it’d be an afflicted offense if you just wanted to hurt the other person or non afflicted if you just didn’t wanna hear anymore about the situation or you just couldn’t be bothered responding.

That would be considered non afflicted. And the exceptions are, again, to teach somebody a lesson or if the apology received is insincere or disrespectful. Right? So then you’re allowed not to accept it because you feel like it’s in insincere. Now in the third vow, we had third root vow.

Right? We had this thing about not accepting apologies. That was talking about the heat of the moment because remember we said, you know, something happens. Somebody actually in the scripture, they say somebody tries to correct you, and you get angry at them and don’t wanna accept their correction, they apologize. The whole thing escalates until you finally hit them.

I mean, that’s like the two parts of the vows, not accepting the apology and actually striking them. This one is talking more about, like, grudges and longer term resentments. That was more about the heat of the moment you actually let things build up into an altercation. This one is more talking about not accepting an apology, you know, when some time has passed between the original incident and then the person comes to you sincerely and apologizes. Okay.

And then the last one to do with patience, patience, dwelling on anger. So this would be not considering that it’s wrong to be angry, not trying to counteract your anger, not thinking of the faults of anger, kind of letting your anger flow, like nursing a grudge or sort of getting into it. You know how you can do that? Some of the lamas say, we do analytical meditation all the time. We’re just doing it on the wrong object.

You know, instead of doing analytical meditation to build up our loving kindness, we think of an incident where somebody wronged us, and we go over it and over it and over it and think about it and contemplate it until our anger just builds up more and more and more. They go, that’s an that’s analytical meditation. You’re just meditating to build up your anger instead of the opposite. So this is saying just letting that flow, you know, without trying to stop it. And, again, we are gonna get angry.

I think I was telling I don’t know. Maybe it was the Four Noble Truths. Was I was telling this story about myself, you know, confessing or using an example of getting really angry when I was teaching these prison inmates. And months later, I had a one on one interview with one of the inmates. He wanted to talk to me, and he goes, I have to tell you, when you told that story about getting really angry, I was so disillusioned, he said.

I thought, she’s a Buddhist nun, and she gets angry. And I was like, dude, man, am I human beings still or what? But we are gonna get angry. Of course, we are. And this means, you know, not doing anything to try and apply the antidotes to the anger to at least think that it’s not a good thing and to just kind of let it let it go.

Okay? And the exception is you try and counter it or you have some regret, but you just aren’t able to stop it because the anger is so strong. Even the smallest effort is enough to keep from breaking the vow. That’s a relief. Right?

So this is saying we you get carried away by the anger. You can’t seem to stop it, but at least you try, then you haven’t broken this vow. Okay? So all of those you can see are, you know, different flavors of not getting angry when it seems to be justified, which is the definition of patience or tolerance or forbearance, that one perfection. So any other questions about any of these four situations?

Yeah. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. No.

Not I mean, that’s what the that’s what the scriptures say. And I’m trying to think of a good I’m think example of teaching somebody a lesson, like just ignoring people who are angry because of something you did to them. Yeah, I wish I could think of a good example, you know, if there was some benefit to just not going to them and trying to smooth it over. Maybe, you know, maybe it’s similar. I mean, it’s not exactly the same, but we had a a vow earlier that was like, you know, if it would be more helpful for the person if they really sort of hit bottom, like if you’re trying to talk to somebody about something that’s happened.

And sometimes you have to wait to the right time. Like if you talk to them too early, they haven’t sort of come to the conclusion themselves or they’re not ready to be helped or something. It might be something kind of similar to that, like in, you know, if they went to a certain point with it, they would correct themselves or they would get more of a lesson out of it or something. So you don’t intervene. You just let it go until it gets to a certain point.

It’s sort of like they always say people with substance abuse, they have to really hit bottom before they’re happy to be helped. And it might be something similar like that, like the person is, you know, in this negative state of mind, but it sort of has to go to the worst case scenario before they’re really gonna see the faults of anger for themselves or something like that. I mean, that would be I think that would be what what it would be. And you could see situations where it would be like that, you know, that it would be even more beneficial to let them hit bottom. And then they’re going to be much more interested in, you know, doing something about their negative emotion.

Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So the next yes, Sarah. Yeah.

Well, if the person was apologizing to you in an insincere way. Yeah. And just accepting it. Yeah. Well, okay.

Like something like this, you know, I do something to hurt your feelings or I think you’re angry at me or something, and I don’t feel like it’s justified at all. And I come to you and go, Well, God, sorry. You know, if you just ignore me, then it might mean that I think more about my sincerity. You know, if you if you just kind of give me a look and walk away. Yeah.

Or you you yeah. In a way. I mean, if I just say say it in an insincere way and you sort of give me a look and don’t respond, then maybe that’ll make me think about my level of sincerity. If you come back to me and go, oh, it’s okay. You know, it’s fine.

Da da da. Then I’ll think I’ve somehow won in my insincerity. I mean, I could imagine something like that. So it’s sort of like, if the person really is insincere and just says it sarcastically, it might be better not to even respond to them. And then it makes them think more about being sincere or make them think more about the way that they’ve made you feel.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. There could be that. And it’s hard. I mean, it’s really hard to know what’s going on in somebody else’s head ever. Even when they’re sincerely trying to explain to you and they really want you to understand what they’re going through, it’s really hard for us to understand.

I mean, it’s true, and it’s not saying we’re gonna have perfect wisdom to know the difference, but it it’s just saying we’re a little bit off the hook. If it is one of those things, they’re like, well, sorry. And then, you know, because they’re not really saying they’re sorry. What they’re really saying is, God, don’t be so oversensitive. Like, what’s wrong with you?

You know, that’s what they’re really saying. It might sound like an apology, but that’s not really what it is. And then they need to think about why their words have hurt your feelings and maybe if they think about it a little bit more because you don’t let them get away with that. I think that’s the kind of thing it’s saying. You know, but it’s true.

We don’t always have the wisdom to know what’s going on. And the way people say things, I mean, people have different ways of communicating. And like you say, some of these things make people feel uncomfortable, so you’re not sure what’s going on. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Out of knowers or something. You have to be sorry too. Yeah. We had an idea actually at a certain point we thought, you know, there are all these confessionals and we were talking about the seven-limb prayer and we decided in Buddhist churches, there should be rejoicinals too.

Wouldn’t that be great that you go in and tell the good stuff that you did so that you can rejoice? I mean, we thought I I just thought that was a great I was actually a student from Mexico, he was saying exactly that thing about, like, you’re a little kid, and you’re going into the confessional, and all you’ve done is pull your sister’s hair and you’re trying to racking your brains to think of all the bad things that you’ve done. And he was talking about the imprint in his mind of doing that. And he said, it would have been so much better if I’d been racking my brains to think of the good things that I’d done and focused on that. So we came up with the idea of Rejoice and Alls.

We’re gonna put one right back in the back corner. Open from two to three. All confessional Rejoice and All. Katrina, you had some. Oh.

That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That would be another great example of this. It’s like, it’s better just not to and really set a firm limit than kind of let them feel like they can do whatever they want as long as they apologize and you’re going to forgive them. Then it just starts the whole cycle over again. That’s a perfect example. Yeah.

Yeah. When it would be better in the kind of the teaching the lesson thing or try to get them to really look at their behavior by not accepting the apology. Yeah. Yeah. Good.

Yes. He’s Yeah. Yeah. What you yeah. You’re not happy about having done it.

It’s true, isn’t it? Yeah. Right. And you could apply those four things to lots of things, couldn’t you? I mean, we’ve looked at them in terms of like breaking your Bodhisattva vows, but really, like you say, those four factors are quite significant and could be applied to a lot of other circumstances as well.

Yeah. That’s a great great thing to point out, you know, thinking of that. Yeah. In terms of sincerity and, you know, do really mean what you’re saying? And are you really conscious of the full kind of import of your behavior and all that stuff?

Yeah. Yeah. Good. Okay. So the next three vows are relate to the perfection of enthusiasm, sometimes called joyous effort.

Alan Wallace says, for God’s sakes, don’t call it effort. It’s enthusiasm. This effort makes us think of that sort of Calvinist, you know, striving for virtue thing. So the next one, we may not be in a lot of danger doing. Gathering a group of students because you’re attached to gain and admiration.

Okay. So this is all about you’re a Buddhist teacher, and you’re gathering students because you want them to make offerings to you and fawn all over you and serve you and cook you lunch and prepare your seat and, you know, make you tea. And it’s not really about a wish for their welfare, you know, a wish for their benefit. So most of you guys are off the hook. I have to be careful enough.

Okay. So now it doesn’t mean don’t have students, but it just means be careful about your motivation for it and don’t do it for this wrong motivation because you’re just wanting offerings and respect. And, again, this goes back to some of the primary vows we had about the wish for respect and the wish for material things is suspect in this case, just the way it was at the the praise and blame one we had before and that was the motivation there that you wish to have, you know, material offerings or respect and it’s the same motivation for this one. And then the next one, not trying to stop your laziness. So laziness is the exact opposite to effort and one type of laziness is lethargy just lazy around doing nothing.

Another type is being really attracted to worldly activities. We also talk about procrastination is another flavor of laziness. This one’s mostly just talking about giving yourself up to lethargy and just lying around, sleeping too much, being really lazy. I who is it? I think oh, Sokyal Rinpoche, this Tibetan lama who wrote this really famous book called The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, he really pointed out a difference between Eastern people and Western people.

And he goes, Western people are lazy by being too busy. He said, in Asia and it’s true. In India and Nepal I mean, Mani will, you know, bear this out. People are lazy by really just hanging out, aren’t they? In the chai shop all day smoking beeties and chatting.

We don’t do that. But Sogyal Rinpoche said, Western people are lazy by just being too busy, distracted all the time. The iPods, the cell phones, the this, the that, the gadgets. You know, you feel like you’re doing something all the time, but how much of it is meaningful? Right?

So in the time of the Buddha and, you know, in certain cultures, it really is about, like, sleeping all day. Most of us probably haven’t done that since we were four-year-olds. But, you know, apply it to how much time are you really spending on meaningful things and how much are you spending on things that are a waste of time. Okay? The exceptions to this one, when you’re ill, you’re recharging from work, travel, and efforts.

And, you know, it’s not saying that if you’re Bodhisattva, you’re just nose to the grindstone all the time, But it’s just really about wasting time. And the next one is about that too. Frivolous talk about sense, pleasures, crime, politics, gossiping. You know, getting really into talking about all of these things that are meaningless. Which one of the non virtues does this one relate to?

Yeah. The idle gossip one. So this is exactly what that non virtue is talking about. You know, it’s not saying you only sit around talking about the four noble truths, but this is talking about wasting your time and getting really into it. You know, I remember the last presidential election in America.

Oh my god. Like, if people could, you know, talk about, you know, the other party, we were all sort of leaning in one direction and all of the negative negative talk about the other one. It just went on and on and on and on and on and criticizing this certain dynasty that had been in control of America for a long time and, you know, just on and on and on. And I was like, this is just that. I mean, just decide, you know, or if you need to know something about what’s going on in the world, just hear about it.

Fine. That’s okay. But just on and on and on. That’s what this is talking about. So it’s not just kind of gossiping about people you know.

It’s like politics, crime, sensationalism, just getting so into it that you end up wasting a lot of time with it. Okay? So all of those three are to counteract our laziness of different kinds, you know, and it’s just about wasting time. It doesn’t say that we can’t relax and that we need to to rejuvenate ourselves for our efforts. And Master Śāntideva says this in the guide to the Bodhis attva’s Way of Life and he says that Bodhisattva needs to know balance and when you need to back off.

He says, If you can’t engage in something with joyous effort, back off, rest until you can again. You know, so he really cautions us against that real pushing, striving mind, sort of the tortoise in the hare thing, though. We’ve got to be steady, and we can’t just waste a lot of our precious human rebirth doing these meaningless things. So any questions about those three? Yeah.

Katrina. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And you know what? I think the problem there is it’s all about, you know, as as one of my friends, Thubten Chodron, this American nun who writes a lot of books, she goes, we gotta quit shitting ourselves. You know? It’s not joyous, and it’s not with this sense of inspiration.

It’s, again, from that sense of, oh, I’ve gotta be good. Oh, but it’s a drag. You know? It’s kind of like, oh, I should be doing this. It’s this whole flavor of it is off.

And I think, you know, for me, the key is meditating on the precious human rebirth. So you get really inspired by the incredible opportunity that you have. thinking of, you know, developing the ability to really be of benefit to all of the beings that you really care about. When I was in this long, I was in these two long meditation retreats and believe you me, when you’re meditating all day long for days, months, weeks, years, you need all the ammunition you could get. And I made a list of people in my life that I felt really karmically connected to and I felt like had really needed help that I let down just because I didn’t have the wisdom to help them.

And I would read that list and I would go, We have this karmic connection. You know, some of them had passed away. We’re gonna meet again. I’m gonna be ready next time. You know?

And it would excite me. It wouldn’t make me feel guilty. It would just be like, I know I’m gonna, you know, run into I mean, my parents, you know, I’m gonna run into them again. We have this karmic connection. I couldn’t do anything to help them because I didn’t have a clue.

And that really inspired me for my practice in a good way, like not in a guilty way. I think when we’re doing it out of guilt and out of just this sense of drudgery, of course, we’re not gonna wanna do it. You know, it needs to be joyful, and I think we need to figure out ways to meditate to give us that joy and inspiration. So we’d rather do that than watch television, you know, because it feels better. And I think, you know, for me, the key to that really is the precious human rebirth meditation compassion and loving kindness and really thinking about their responsibility and then not in a way that makes you feel oppressed, but in a way that makes you just feel responsible and inspired.

Like, you know, I was thinking of somebody I was in a relationship for many years who died, you know, as a result of drug problems. And I was going, wow. You know? We’re together for ten years, and I had no idea how to help him when he was struggling with drug addiction. And I know we’re gonna meet again, you know, because we have this connection and just thinking, I so wanna be able to help him, you know, who whatever form it is that we run into each other again.

And, you know, that just made me feel inspired. It wasn’t a burden. It was just kind of like I had this great chance because somehow, karmically, I met the dharma, you know, so I’ll be able to help him next next time because I have enough karmic seeds that allowed me to be the student of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa, so I can’t just throw that away. I’ve got to do the best I can with it. But, you know, figuring out for each of us what it is that makes our practice joyful.

So it’s not a drudgery as it can be, it should be, you know. But we’ll never we’re never gonna make progress if it’s just like, oh, I should meditate now. I really don’t. You know, That’s just the flavor is all wrong, isn’t it? Yeah.

I think so. I just think there’s not much longevity in that if it doesn’t feel happy. And I think we just need to figure out what it is where we can get the joy in dharma. I think it should be joyful, and we should be enthusiastic about it, you know, and we should feel like and and some of it is looking back on our lives and really appreciating the benefits that we’ve gotten from it. I mean, I do that sometimes too.

I kind of think, wow, where was I before I met the Dharma? Compare because I get discouraged because I’m always comparing myself to like the Dalai Lama, you know, really discouraging and sometimes it really helps me to to compare myself to myself, you know, a couple of years ago, five years ago, ten years ago, then I can feel really inspired. It’s like, woah, I’ve changed a lot. Like, of course, if I compare myself with Lama Zopa, I’m always gonna feel like a loser. But if I just compare myself to myself, I can really see the progress and then that that makes me feel inspired too.

And just how much happier I am than I used to be, you know, before I met the dharma. Just that thing that you don’t know what what’s the meaning of life and all the questioning, and you’re just kind of trying to distract yourself, but there’s really this deep feeling of, you know, meaninglessness. And it’s like you know? So that helps me sometimes too, especially when I’m subject to the laziness of discouragement, you know, which is one of my main flavors of laziness is, but, woah, I’ve you know, things have really changed a lot. And and just feeling inspiration of that.

Yeah. Yeah. We need to kind of try these tricks because it’s not easy, and we don’t get immediate results. And we’re kind of used to you know, we’re the kind of the microwave generation. We’re just used to everything happening so quickly, and it’s not like that.

And it is easy to feel discouraged, but I think we just, you know, keep our eyes on the prize and realize that we are moving in that direction, then we’ll be okay. And find the joy in it because it should be joyful. We should know, you go to the lamas with this Calvinist striving thing, and you’re just kind of like, oh, Rinpoche, oh, I’m trying so hard. And they just look at you like, what are you doing? You know?

I mean, I’ve done that, you know. And they’re just like, you know, Buddhadharma is supposed to make you happy. Like, what are you doing? You know? It’s not really supposed to be a burden at all, you know.

So, yeah, getting getting that getting the balance right. But it’s not easy. It’s not easy. And I think we have these imprints. But I think we start in little ways.

Right? Whatever find whatever you can. There’s gonna be something that you can sincerely be happy about and rejoice about and feel good about. You know? And I think I think this is something that we have to be careful about contriving too much.

I think we can find, you know, some moments or some real inspiration. I think contrived bodhicitta is really good and contrived renunciation that we’re trying to build up through our meditation, but I think we’ve gotta have some joy or we’re not gonna make it. And it’s just a question of finding it or figuring out what we need to do to generate it. Well, I think if if we I think we’re not thinking enough. If we’re here, there was some connection to the Dharma probably maybe we need to think back to that honeymoon period when we first met the Dharma and it was also new and exciting.

And some of the experiences that we’ve had with our teachers, maybe, you know, I think a lot of us have had something. I mean, you’re you’re absolutely right about the merit. And the more merit we have, the happier, obviously, we’re gonna get and the more joyous. But I think we need to dig and just think about some of those experiences that we have had when we start to feel discouraged discouraged and distracted. Yeah.

Yeah. It’s a balance. It’s definitely a balance. Yeah. Yeah.

Or want to or can’t wait to. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. I read somebody, and it may have been somebody like Jack Kornfield.

I can’t remember. Or it could have been a non-Buddhist. Somebody said, try for a week to just not have a sentence with the word should in it at all. You know, like or even think a thought with the word should in it. And I think I’ve tried that.

I think it might have been Jack Kornfield, maybe he stole it from some other psychologist. But it’s an interesting thing to or just note every time we have a thought that’s got a should in it and how much are we setting a standard for ourselves that we just feel like we’re always disappointing ourself. How are you gonna be very inspired if you just feel like you’re always a failure for whatever, like, ridiculous, impossible standard you’ve set for yourself? You know, we’re kind of this culture of people. I think there’s a continuum between low self esteem and perfectionism, and it’s all really the same thing.

It’s just manifesting in different ways, and we just gotta get over it. You know, one of the best things that I’ve done for my spiritual maturity is just accept myself as a really flawed human being and get over the idea that I should be perfect. What a relief that was. You know? Because I struggled between this low self esteem perfections continuum.

I was always somewhere there. And then finally, I was just like, the Four Noble Truths was such a big help because it’s like, of course, I’m not enlightened yet. Why on earth would I expect myself to be perfect? I’m still in Samsāra. I’ve taken an uncontrolled rebirth because of karma and delusion.

What the heck did I expect? And it was such a relief. It was like, of course, I’m a mixed bag but I’m just trying. But I think it’s that, you know, if we could just like it’s sort of like the teeter totter that’s just totally out of whack and if we could just accept ourselves really deeply as a mixed bag and then start start where we are, as Pema Chodron says, you know, start with that. You know, we’ve got good qualities.

We’ve got faults. Of course, we’re in Samsāra. Start with that, you know. I think that’s it. But to me, it was always that.

The perfectionism was I was my own worst enemy with my perfectionism and it led to so much discouragement. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. So, listening to our internal self talk and seeing how many shoulds are there, you know, externally, but also our self talk, how many shoulds are in there, too.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. Yeah.

And overcoming our cultural protestant brainwashing that being a spiritual person means giving up happiness for pie in the sky. I mean, that’s our worst thing, and we’ve got it. Like, we totally have that, I think, raised in this Judeo like, if we’re happy, it’s kind of suspect. You know? Like, woo.

Don’t be too happy because you’re not that virtuous. That is not the dichotomy in Buddhism at all. You know, there’s no dichotomy between happiness and virtue. In fact, they’re both on the same side of the spectrum. You know?

And we’ve just sort of internalized that like, you know, Western people. We’ve just really internalized that. Just being conscious of that, for me, has helped me a lot. And that’s why the Tibetan lamas look at me and they’re like, what are you what’s wrong with you? Like, what are you doing?

Because they don’t have that. Like, they don’t understand this thing that we have of being suspicious about, you know, happiness and thinking that somehow happiness is non virtuous. It’s like, to them, it sort of equates. Yeah. Alright.

Well, let’s go on to the next group of vows, forty, twenty four through forty six are against the perfection perfection of concentration. We can go over these quickly just because there are a lot of really good instructions in the Lam Rim about how to define a concentration. So we won’t go into a lot of details. We’ll just mention these. Really important.

Anybody who was here last weekend, why is single pointed concentration so crucial, Jen? You should have seen the face that went along with that. I was the only one that saw that. Single point of concentration, that mind that can focus on an object for as long as it wants without wavering. What do we use that for?

What was the topic of last weekend’s class? What? Yeah. So to get a direct realization of the ultimate nature of reality, emptiness, we have to have perfectly developed single pointed concentration. It’s a prerequisite.

So that’s why this perfection is the fifth one, and then wisdom is the sixth one. Okay? So there are very specific instructions in the Lam Rim about how to do that. Right? The instructions for developing single pointed concentration.

And vow number twenty four says, failing to seek out those instructions. You’re breaking a Bodhisattva training if you fail to seek out the instructions about how to do that. So either from books, from teachings, you know, very specific. It’s not just sitting there and trying to focus and getting frustrated. There are very specific instructions about the obstacles, the antidotes to the obstacles, how to get started, how to progress, you know, from where we are all the way up to perfect single point concentration.

So this is saying you have to get those instructions, and that’s one of your Bodhisattva vows. Mani. Yes. Calm abiding. That’s right.

Yes. Yeah. Perfectly developed single pointed concentration is what we call śamatha, calm abiding. Shine is the Tibetan word. So it’s working on developing that and then that’s the final result is this.

That’s right. Yeah. But there are a lot of instructions about how to do But, yeah, that’s what we’re talking about here. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. It’s kind of a combination of Samatha and Vipassana. You’re right. The the now those that training comes from a source scripture called the four foundations of mindfulness, and it’s about observing what we would call in the Tibetan tradition, subtle impermanence of the body, the feelings, the mind, and the mental formations. Right?

So first, you try to develop some concentration, but then you’re actually noting or observing the subtle impermanence to break down the solid view of what I am. So that’s where the insight comes in. It’s another method. We don’t use that method in the Tibetan tradition to come up with a you know, to counteract the wrong view of how the self exists, but that’s a very valid method according to that school of counteracting the wrong view. Because when you’re just observing the subtle impermanence, it breaks down this solid fixation that I am something, you know, permanent, unitary, independent of causes and conditions because you see yourself more as a process.

So selflessness. Yeah. It’s a different Buddhist philosophical school. So it’s to see the selflessness as it’s explained in that philosophical school just by observing the components of the self. Yeah.

So it’s a great technique, and that’s why it’s called insight. Now it we wouldn’t say that that is the subtlest view of emptiness according to the Tibetan tradition because it’s a different philosophical school, but still very valuable to do. But a whole different approach to emptiness than the approach that we have in the Tibetan tradition. Yeah. Good question.

Yeah. Okay. So getting the instructions, failing to remove the obstacles to meditation, and, again, I’ll just mention these briefly because there’s lots of instructions. For developing single pointed concentration, there are specific instructions about the obstacles and the specific antidotes to those obstacles. One of the obstacles is mental scattering and regret, which is counted as one obstacle.

Mental agitation going from one object to the other in a restless way, plus regret. The second one is malice, irritation, hatred, wanting to harm. The third one, sleep and lethargy counted as one, foggy mindedness and dullness. The fourth one, desire for sense objects attracted to sense objects. And then the last one is doubt.

So a mind that’s wavering with respect to an object. So it’s really important to learn what these various obstacles are and what the antidotes to them are. And since we’re very limited in time, I’ll just mention that and then refer you to the instructions in the lam in the lam rim. And there are a lot of great books now translated into English. There’s this one great one by Alan Wallace called The Attention Revolution.

It’s a good one about how to develop Shine. There is one by Gen Lamrimpa, this Tibetan Lama, which I think is just called Developing Calm Abiding. At least that’s what it used to be called. They’re always changing the names. But there are a couple of really good texts about how with these instructions about Developing Calm Abiding.

And then the last vow that has to do with the perfection of concentration is considering the pleasant feeling of meditation as an important personal attainment in and of itself. Now as we develop Samatha, calm abiding single pointed concentration, we get to the upper levels we talk about nine different stages leading to that realization. As we perfect that, some of the side effects to that type of concentration is feeling of mental and physical bliss and pleasure and pliancy which are very compelling. Right? They’re just a side effect of concentration.

They’re not the goal of the path. In fact, some people have mistaken them for nirvana. I mean, they’re that good. Right? That might be an inducement.

That that’s kind of something that perks up your interest, doesn’t it? The mental and physical bliss and pliancy. And, in fact, that’s one of the things that we’re supposed to think about to encourage us to engage in this practice of meditation. But we shouldn’t get sidetracked and look at those as a result or a goal that we’re looking for. Right?

And we’re cautioned over and over and over again, it’s not the point of developing single pointed concentration. The point is to be able to use that focused mind to meditate on emptiness. Right? So that’s what this one is saying. Don’t get sidetracked by how blissful it is, you know, the mental and physical experiences as you’re developing that single pointed concentration.

So any questions about those three? And I know we kind of rushed through those a bit, but again, there’s lots of instruction on those. So the first one is saying you’re not getting the instruction. The second one is saying you’re not doing what you can to get rid of the obstacles. And the third one is going you’re getting derailed by the side effects of developing single pointed concentration.

So caution about those three things. Alright. So the next group are against the perfection of wisdom. So the last of the six perfections, wisdom. So the number twenty seven, to reject the teachings of the lower vehicle, Hīnayāna, and I’m sorry to use this word but it’s one that we’re familiar with, right?

This teachings of the individual liberation vehicle. So rejecting them, saying that Bodhisattva shouldn’t study, listen to, learn or follow them. Now we had a root vow that related to these individual liberation vehicle teachings. What was that one? We had two actually that related.

Does anybody remember? And what’s the difference between those two and this one? Anybody remember what those were? Yeah. We had that one.

We had that one too. So we had a lot of the vows and the root vows that were about, don’t reject this, don’t reject that, don’t reject that. Right? We had two that had to do with the individual liberation vehicle. One was rejecting that whole path, just rejecting it completely, the whole path.

One was saying that they weren’t effective in overcoming the disturbing emotions. So this one is a little bit different. This isn’t rejecting them completely or saying they’re not effective. This is saying Bodhisattvas don’t have to follow them. Okay, so it’s a little bit different than the two root vows.

This is just saying it’s not necessary at all for Bodhisattva track people to study, meditate, listen to the individual liberation vow teachings. Why is that not true? That’s right. That’s in fact, Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, this amazing Tibetan lama, Dzogchen master who passed away, he called the individual liberation vehicle the foundational vehicle, and I really like that. That’s good because that’s where all the teachings on the four noble truths are the very basic framework and foundation of Buddhism.

So this vow is saying, you can’t give that up. You can’t skip over that. And, remember, we’ve got that in the three scopes of the Lam Rim, don’t we? We say, we’ve got to study the, you know, first level, the second level and then, the third level, the bodhisattva levels built on the foundation of those two levels. So that’s what this one is saying.

You can’t skip over the four noble truths. It’s absolutely fundamental stuff. Right? So that’s what this one is saying. So it’s not rejecting all of those teachings out of hand, nor is it saying they’re not effective.

This vow is just about saying, oh, we’re on the Bodhisattva track. That’s for those Hinayanists. We don’t have to worry about that. Absolutely wrong. Yeah.

Big time. Yeah. And misunderstanding, you know, too. I mean, it can either come out of arrogance or just out of, like, total misunderstanding that, you know, they’re separate instead of levels. Right?

Like, oh, you’ve got this track and that track and there’s no overlap rather than seeing it. And that’s why I love that foundation foundational vehicle or root vehicle sometimes they call it because it just provides that foundation. Okay. Then the second one says, don’t devote yourself if you’re a Mahāyāna tracked person, which you are if you’ve taken bodhisattva vows. Don’t devote yourself to those individual liberation teachings at to the expense of your Mahāyāna training.

Okay? So this is saying, okay. Don’t forget about those altogether, but don’t emphasize those teachings to the detriment. And the example that they give in the commentaries is from a monastic perspective, like you’re a monk or a nun, and you are spending all of your time studying your individual liberation monastic vows and not spending any time on your Mahāyāna practices. That’s the example that’s given.

We must study our vows. We have study the monastic code of discipline for sure. But this is saying you just forget about all of the, you know, compassion, loving kindness, Bodhicitta practices. You’re totally focused on that one area. Okay?

And Lama Tsongkhapa in his Bodhisattva vows commentary, the highway for Bodhisattvas clarifies the relationship between this one and the last one by saying, therefore, while you must study the Hīnayāna scriptures, you must do so without abandoning the Mahāyāna teaching system. Okay? So that makes it clear. He’s just clarifying what’s the relationship between those two. Now the next one, to make efforts in non-Buddhist teachings.

And what this means is excessively to the point of detracting again from your Mahāyāna studies. So this means other spiritual systems and other things in general. Right? In the commentaries, the classic commentaries, they mention things like texts on logic and grammar and medicine but in the modern educational context, we can think of just about anything, you know, that we’re putting a lot of energy into. Now, you have to work to support yourself.

You need a livelihood. Sometimes that means you to go back to school to get another degree or something like that. And again, I think it’s the motivation and how much time are you spending on it and how necessary is it really? And remember these are for people who’ve made a vow to engage in and prioritize their bodhisattva training to get enlightened as quick as possible for the benefit of all sentient beings. How much time are you gonna spend on studying other things that don’t relate to your spiritual path?

When I was first studying these vows in a lot of detail in the kind of mid nineties, I had a really good friend who’s really into astrology, you know, and she was studying astrology and and studying how to do astrological charts and the ephemeris and how she was just, like, super into it. And every all of of her spare time, she’s reading these astrology books. And when we’re studying these vows, she’s just going, you know, I’m not doing this because I need to do it to make a living. Like, she wasn’t even doing it for a living. She was just like super into it.

And then she started thinking, wow, I think I’m really devoting too much time to this, you know, just, you know, at the expense of her practices and at the expense of her Mayana training. So, again, this isn’t isn’t saying it’s bad to study other stuff. This is just saying, if you’ve signed on for this responsibility, you know, there’s only so many hours in the day, how much are you studying these other things? And then the next one is saying, even if you have to study them, you’re really attracted to it and you prefer it. So the next vow, number thirty, is saying, even if you make efforts, you’re attracted.

Like, say, you need to study something else, and what they give in the commentary is the example of, in order to debate with an opponent, because this is what was done a lot of times in ancient India. Right? There would be these big public debates with, you know, a Buddhist master with a non-Buddhist opponent. And the way it worked was whoever won the debate, the the person who lost, that person and all their followers had to convert to the winner’s view. So it was you know?

And sometimes it would be, like, hundreds and hundreds of followers. Everybody had to that was the deal. You know? And there’d be these big public debates. So they’re saying, obviously, if you’re gonna do that, you need to know what the other guy thinks in order to debate.

So that was the example that they gave. They said, sometimes you have to study the other view in order to refute it, but don’t get too into it. Don’t spend too much time doing it and don’t get too into it. Okay? So that’s what this one’s all about.

Okay? So even if you have to make efforts for a reason like that, don’t be attracted. And this is interesting and I’m gonna draw you one of my classic diagrams illustrate because this relates to something that we talked about a little bit before. Now I have to find a blank page. We’ve had so many exciting classes in the last five weeks.

What, Sarah? So this relates to something that I mentioned before in terms of sort of concentric circles of protecting our vows like a bull’s eye. Okay? So these last couple are concentric circles. They’re kind of out here trying to protect us from going here.

What’s in here? What are, what is it trying to protect us? This is an important thing that these last couple of vows that we’ve talked about is trying to protect us from going there by stopping us out here. Great! Wrong view and giving up our Bodhicitta.

Remember those two of the root vows that are so important. Wrong view Bodhicitta. Okay. Those two that by, you know, giving up bodhicitta, by generating a wrong view, you’ve lost it completely. There’s a danger if you start studying another system and get really into it and spend all of your time on another system, it might convince you like the individual liberation vehicle system.

Yeah, we need it as a foundation but this is saying if you spend all of your time studying that and you forget about your bodhisattva studies, you have a danger of giving up your Bodhicitta and this is saying if you study non-Buddhist systems, another whole system, you have a big danger of generating a wrong view, especially if you’re more attracted to that other system. Right? So you start to study the Sāṃkhya, you know, ancient Indian philosophical system in order to refute it. And then you decide that you’re, you know, oh, that samkhya system really makes sense. And they believe that there’s this sort of primordial nature.

And Buddhism says that everything’s completely empty of inherent existence, but I really like the idea of the primordial nature better. You know, you might generate wrong view. So a lot of the secondary ones, and this is a really obvious case, are like that. You know, it’s trying to stop you out here because if you just get stopped here, you’re not you’re you’re not as, you know, it’s not as dangerous that you’re gonna go here. Okay?

So that’s an example. So I always think in terms of the concentric circles, like, especially if a vow, whether it’s a, you know, Pradimoksha vow, a monastic vow, bodhisattva vow, a tantric vow, if it seems kind of petty or peripheral, think of it in terms of this because this is a really important principle to keep in mind. And if we disregard this, we’re in trouble. Okay? We have to keep even the what seems like the lesser petty vows.

There are plenty of people, for example, there’s a monastic vow of celibacy and then there are all these vows to protect us from breaking our celibacy vow like don’t hang out alone in the hotel room with somebody with from the opposite sex that you’re attracted to. Because if you never do that, you’re not gonna go here. And don’t even hang out and and talk to them a lot, like, one on one on your own, go for long walks. You know, there are all of these vows that will keep us. And if we diss those and if we think, oh, no.

I’m cool. I can handle it. Yeah. Right. You know, many people have disrobed because they thought they didn’t need to keep the peripheral ones, and then they ended up, you know, giving up their monastic vows.

So that’s another example of how and once it might seem petty, but it’s protection for our, you know, more important vows. And that’s what some of these are all about. And number thirty one is giving up the Mahāyāna completely. Right? So giving it up.

Now, this is different from the sixth root vow. We had a root vow about giving up the Mahāyāna claiming that the Mahāyāna texts weren’t the words of the Buddha. Here we’re accepting that they’re authentic, but we’re criticizing certain aspects of the teachings. And there are four ways of doing this by saying the content is inferior. This particular part of the subject isn’t correct or important for practice.

Right? So we’re criticizing some aspect of the Mahāyāna teachings. We’re not throwing the whole thing out and saying it’s not important, but we’re being critical. And we have to be careful because there’s some text that we just don’t understand yet. And we have to be careful.

Just put it on the back burner, but don’t criticize. So this is either criticizing the content, their manner of expression is inferior, it’s not written so well. The third one is saying the author is inferior, the author is just an ordinary being and not a good writer. The fourth is saying their use is inferior, it isn’t much benefit for living beings. And this is talking about the text in the main canon.

This isn’t talking about any Buddhist book that happens to get published by you know, there’s all kinds of things out there. You know, we shouldn’t be critical of them, but that’s not what this vow is talking about. It’s talking about the main text and the commentaries, the sutras, the Indian, the Tibetan commentaries. It’s not talking about all the popular Buddhist books that are, you know, that people are writing out there. So we have to be careful about this one too.

If we don’t understand something, there’s a certain sūtra at Lama Zopa Rinpoche probably because he knew my resistance to this sūtra because it just didn’t make sense to me at all. And then he told me I needed to recite it two hundred and sixty times. Times. And it was so good for me because I was in great danger of breaking this Bodhisattva Vow because I would read this sūtra and just be like, it’s gotta be the translation. The translator was on drugs.

You know? Okay. That doesn’t make sense. And then I got this all these other translations from, like, these, you know, extinct central Asian languages, and I did this thing and compared them all, like, different trans well, no. Okay.

It’s not it wasn’t the translator. You know? Okay. What you know? Because I was in great danger of just going, this sūtra with the words of the Buddha is just, you know, nuts.

Right? So we have to be careful. It’s you know, some of the teachings are very subtle and we just don’t understand it yet, you know, and we have to just accept responsibility for reject the teachings. Okay. I’m not telling.

I’m I’m a reformed character. A reformed. You can guess. I might tell you after class if you guess correctly. Alright.

So number thirty two. Here we’ve got praising yourself for criticizing others again. Now, we had that as the first root vow, didn’t we? What was the motivation for the first root vow? That’s right.

Yeah. Yeah. So seeking honor, respect and material gain. This one, the motivation is different out of anger, pride, self-cherishing. Okay?

So the difference here is in the motivation. Now why do you think this is in the perfection of wisdom section? What does this have to do? All the other ones have to do with texts and things. How come this one’s in here?

What do you think? And how open are we to learning from somebody if we think we know it all and we’re looking to criticize what they’re saying. Right? So, think that’s why it’s in wisdom. I mean, I just threw that out there because I haven’t actually commentary why that is but today when I was reviewing it, I thought, I think that’s it too.

It’s like, you know, if we’ve got that critical mind and we’re just thinking that we know it all and that somebody else doesn’t, we’re not gonna be able to learn from them. So I think that’s part of it too. Yeah. That’s right. Which is not so terrific for wisdom.

Right, so I think that’s why that’s in, you know, mixed in with all of these other ones that have to do with the text and don’t reject this text and don’t reject that one. Okay, we’re doing great. We’re on number thirty three. We’re gonna make it. Maybe.

Okay. Alright. Not going to Dharma talks, rituals, teachings and so forth ourselves. And this is about out of pride or anger, it’s an afflicted offense. Out of laziness, it’s an unafflicted offense.

And this is just talking about not going to teachings. Now, some people when I teach this, like in San Francisco, they go, there’s like five different teachings going on at different centers every single night. Do you mean I need to be out all night? This means counteract that thought that says either, oh, I know this subject already. I don’t want to listen to it again or oh, I can get the recording later.

I just can’t be bothered to go. I can get the recording later. You know, it’s counteracting that. We need as much teaching from valid sources as we can possibly get. So this is just saying being lazy and just not going because you can’t be bothered when there is a valid teaching going on.

Now the exceptions to this one are if you’re sick, you’re unable to go, you’re unaware of the teaching, you’re already a master of the subject, you suspect it’s gonna be inaccurately taught, you’re in deep retreat and you can’t break it, or if you think that your regular Dharma teacher might in some way be upset if you went. So those are the exceptions. Otherwise, when there are teachings happening, we should make every effort to go. Okay. Now the next one, disrespecting your Dharma teacher and being more interested in the presentation than the content.

This means being disrespectful and criticizing your teacher. One of the one of the translations for this is relying more on the letter. And that means you’re paying attention to how it’s presented rather than the meaning itself. You know, some teachers are good speakers. They’re very charismatic.

Some are not so eloquent. Eloquent. But we shouldn’t worry so much about that. We should really consider whether or not the teaching is something valid. You know?

There are charismatic good speakers that also teach really good Dharma. It doesn’t mean we need to be suspicious about, you know, a charismatic good teacher, but if we’re sort of taken in by that, and it may not be that they’re teaching something that’s really valid, you know, this is saying pay attention to the content and not the style. Don’t get so caught up in the style, especially not criticizing your teacher’s style of presentation. And this is talking about what we call the four reliances. Don’t rely on the words, rely on the meaning.

And that means don’t rely on the style, rely on the meaning that’s being expressed. Don’t rely on the person but on the Dharma. That means don’t go to hear someone just because they’re famous, rely on the Dharma that they teach. Don’t rely on teachings that require interpretation, but rather those that present the actual meaning, and don’t rely on ordinary consciousness, but rather on the wisdom born of realization. Okay.

So those that’s what’s called the four reliances. So this is talking about the first one, getting caught up in the style and criticizing your teacher because maybe they don’t have the style that you’d like. So any questions about that group? Okay. And then last group, we’re on the last group, forty thirty four to forty six are against the morality of benefiting others.

Remember, we had the three kinds of morality, the morality of avoiding, non virtue, of accumulating virtue, and of benefiting sentient beings. And this is these last group of vows is about the morality of benefiting sentient beings. And I apologize. I didn’t give you a break just because we’re racing to the finish line here. I hope is everybody okay?

We’ve only got about ten more minutes. Seemed okay. Okay. So these ones we can kind of cluster together too. The first one, not help me helping someone in need, who needs help when you have the capacity to do so.

So it can either be because of anger, spite, which it would be an afflicted offense or out of laziness or indifference, which would be an unafflicted one. And that’s true for most of these secondary ones. We have those two kind of the motivation. So eight types of people need needing help. Somebody doing positive work, Someone traveling on a journey and they need help.

Someone learning a foreign language that we know. Someone carrying out some task that has no moral fault. Someone keeping watch over house, temple or their possessions. In stopping a fight or an argument, in celebrating an occasion like a wedding, in going if invited to create merit like going to pujas if you have the time and the ability. So these are the eight different conditions.

In your booklet, does it have those eight? Oh, it does. Probably the wording is a little bit different. So good. Okay.

Now the exceptions, and these exceptions apply to many of this last grouping of vows. If you’re sick, if your time is already committed to help elsewhere, if you’re doing more important another more important spiritual task, if you can refer the person to someone else for help, if you don’t have the capacity to help, if they have other sufficient means to get assistance or if helping creates more problems than it helps. Exceptions. So this doesn’t mean that you need to help everyone learn a foreign language if they have another way of learning it. Like you have to, you know, teach English to every refugee that comes to Australia.

It means, you know, if somebody’s really counting on you for help and they don’t have someone else to assist them and you just refuse, that’s when you’ve broken the vow. Okay? And then the next one, same exceptions, avoiding helping the sick. Okay? And that’s the same exceptions as the last one.

And this has to do with some incidents that happened in the lifetime of Lord Buddha that people would be monastics actually once he came to a monastery, and one of the monks had dysentery. And he was lying in his meditation hut in his own excrement, you know, without any food, and the other monks weren’t helping to take care of him. And Lord Buddha cleaned him with his own hands. He and Ānanda got some water, bathed the monk, fed him, and then he called the other monks around and said, so what’s up with this? You know, why are you not doing that?

So it’s ignoring somebody, obviously, that’s in need like that. And one of the lamas, I was reading a commentary and he was going, you know, in the time of Lord Buddha, they didn’t have the social networks that they have now and so people really depended a lot more on each other for help in ways like that. You know, there weren’t the hospitals, the emergency rooms, the social services, all of that. So he’s saying nowadays, we don’t have so many opportunities as in the time of Lord Buddha where everybody was just completely dependent on each other for this kind of help, but still we need to keep it in mind. Okay?

The next one, not trying to stop someone’s mental or physical suffering. And there’s a list of seven peep seven types of people who require special care: people who are blind, people who are deaf, amputees and disabled people, tired travelers, those suffering from any of the five obstacles to meditation, those of ill will and strong prejudices, and those who’ve fallen from high positions of authority and status. So, those are the kind of people that we should care for especially and the same exceptions apply as for the last two vows. Okay. Not the next one.

Not trying to reason with those doing something that will cause them future suffering. And so it refers to people who don’t care at all about the law of cause and effect and whose behavior will cause them suffering in the future. We have to try to intervene and get them to stop doing what they’re doing. Okay? If it’s at all possible.

And this is one of those ones, skillful means and wisdom and all of that stuff, and it’s not always easy to do. But if somebody’s doing something really deeply negative, it’s going to be a terrible negative karma that’s going to cause them suffering in the future. We have to try to intervene. Now we’ve got some exceptions to this one as you might imagine. You’re not capable of dissuading them.

You refer them to someone who can dissuade them, they’ll catch themselves or their spiritual teacher will correct them, or if they would continue the behavior just to spite you, or you know that you they won’t listen to you. Those are the exceptions to doing this one. In all of those conditions, it wouldn’t be skillful to try and help them. Okay. Well, we’re nearly done.

So I’ll go through I’ll just mention the last couple because they’re all pretty obvious and self explanatory. Failing to repay someone who’s helped you, so not wanting to help others in return to help that for help that they’ve offered you. Failing to stop someone’s grief if they’ve lost something important either a person or their possessions, not giving material assistance to somebody who needs it, failing to take care of the needs of your students, failing to get along with others, and this just has to do with trying to get your own way. Remember we said before, it’s more important to be right than to be happy. And this is just saying, just go along with what other people want.

Don’t try and win all the time or be right all the time. Failing to praise someone’s good qualities or something good they’ve said. Thanks. And this is this is it. Thanks, I think.

Yeah. Praising the other people’s good qualities is something something good they’ve done. Mean, this is our Bodhisattva responsibility and I love this one. It’s very cool because how many times do you tell somebody else how great you think the job that somebody did and you don’t tell them? Now, some of the exceptions to this one is if you think it would make them feel uncomfortable or embarrassed or if it would create pride and vanity, you’re allowed not to.

But this is encouraging us to appreciate each other and I think it would be great if we did a lot more of that. Now the next one, failing to cut off somebody when it’s necessary, like somebody really is just completely out of control, incorrigible, and they need to be cut off. And we’re kind of talking about this before about, like, are you a doormat, or do you set limits? Because sometimes the best thing to do for someone is to really set a strong limit. In fact, Lord Buddha on his deathbed, one of the main players in his early story was Chana, his charioteer, who took him out of the palace four times to see the sick person, the old person, you know, the dead person, and then the renunciate.

Chana became a monk, and he was extremely proud and arrogant and always misbehaving. And he would, you know, forgiven, get in trouble, be forgiven. One of the things that Lord Buddha did on his deathbed was say that Chana had gone too far and needed to be expelled from the monastic order. That was one of his last things that he said. The message was taken to Chana and he changed completely.

He was so shocked that his beloved friend on his deathbed had said he needed to be expelled from the monastic order. So this is so it sort of worked in that case. But this is saying, if you need to and there’s certain offenses that, you know, monks and nuns can actually get kicked out of the monastery and actually expelled from the monastery for misbehavior. So this is saying, don’t be afraid to do that if the person is really gone so far. And the exceptions, if you’re waiting for a better chance, they won’t listen to chastising, they’re self correcting or if expelling them would cause a major major split in the group.

But this is saying don’t be wimpy if somebody’s really done something that would warrant expulsion. And then the last one is one of those ones that we probably don’t have to worry about very much. Failing to use your supernatural powers when necessary. This is, you know, there are couples that are just sort of like give away Bodhisattva’s house that we don’t have to worry about so much. To frighten someone who’s about to do a non virtuous action so that they’ll stop.

And the example given the scripture is like, give them a vision of the hell realms so that they’ll stop being non virtuous. Well, if it’s within your power and you hesitate, you’ve broken your body’s up. So be really careful about that last one. Okay? We made it.

Woo hoo! Alright, I’m sorry we did have to rush through some of those but some of the ones we rushed through were pretty self explanatory. If you will give me two minutes, I have just one more list that I have to show you before the class is over because it’s so important. It’s a list of four things that will, if we do them, will have a tendency to break our vows. So it’s four causes of breaking the vows.

So I’ll just mention this careful, just quickly. Not knowing the vows. Well, none of you have that excuse anymore. Okay? So one cause of breaking or going against vows is just not educating ourselves as to what our vows are which is what this class was all about.

You know, now we’re all well educated bodhisattva vow holders. Carelessness, heedlessness, we know what the vows are, but we’re not applying mindfulness. And mindfulness is a really big deal in Buddhism. You know, and some teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh emphasized mindfulness as the main practice and this is the reason. If we’re really mindful about what our actions are, we’re not going to fall into this carelessness.

Being under the control of strong delusions and we talked about this a little bit already tonight. We said, sometimes you try and stop and you just can’t help it. Right? So we try as much as possible in our meditation to subdue our really strong delusions so that they don’t take over. You know, they still do from time to time but that is another cause of breaking our vows.

We know it’s wrong. We know it’s a vow. We know it’s wrong. We’re just completely under the control of our delusion and lack of respect for the vows. And this is knowing that it’s a vow, knowing Lord Buddha taught it and just being disrespectful of that, you know, not really caring.

So that’s another good list to keep in mind. And that’s true for all vows, not just bodhisattva vows. This is just true for ethics in general. You know, these four causes of going against our Buddhist ethics, whether it’s the ten non virtues all the way up through vajrayana vows. Okay?

So any questions about this list? Alright. We did it. Now, let’s dedicate. Any last burning questions before we dedicate them there?

Okay. And when I was originally asked to do this class, I tried to make it six weeks and we just didn’t have the time and now you know why. I said, Oh, it’s gonna be really hard to do it in just five weeks. But we did. It would have been nice to have had a little bit more time for the last thirty vows, but anyway, that’s alright.

What I’d like to do is do you guys have the prayer this little prayer book? On the page six, there’s the dedication prayer for Master Śāntideva’s Bodhicharyavatara. And so we’ll read that one together. Dedicate the merit, Bill has a present for you all, hot off the presses, a new book by Lama Zopa Rinpoche called Bodhisattva Attitude, How to Dedicate Your Life to Others. Look at that.

It’s awesome. It has all kinds of motivations, how to set your motivation, all kinds of meditations and teachings in here, very, very practical, and some transcripts of talks by Lama Zopa all about bodhisattva attitude. So this will be a nice supplement to our bodhisattva vows class. Bill thought of that five weeks ago and ordered enough of these books so that we could all have one. So where are they out on the table?

You’re gonna give give on the way? No. You can we’ll dedicate and then on the way out, we can all grab one. Alright. So page six, the prayers at the end of teachings, the first prayer.

So before we recite together, let’s just take a minute to think of all of the merit that we’ve generated. We’ve had five sessions on the Bodhisattva vows, spent so much time talking about these vows, really looking at them and seeing how to apply them to our lives. Incredible. Bodhicitta is said to be so incredibly powerful that Master Śāntideva says if we if we if it changed into a form, the whole universe wouldn’t even be big enough to hold it. To all of this merit that we generated from this class, let’s dedicate to being able to engage in the bodhisattva training, to keep our vows well, thereby creating all of the causes and conditions for our full enlightenment for the benefit of all living beings.

And then let’s recite this prayer together for Master Śāntideva. May all beings everywhere, plagued by suffering of body and mind, obtain an ocean of happiness and joy by virtue of my merits. May no living creature suffer, commit evil or ever fall ill. May no one be afraid or belittled with a mind weighed down by depression. May the blind see forms and the deaf hear sounds.

May those whose bodies are worn with toil be restored on finding repose. May the naked find clothing, the hungry find food. May the thirsty find water and delicious drinks. May the poor find wealth, those weak with sorrow find joy. May the forlorn find hope, constant happiness and prosperity.

May there be timely rains and bountiful harvests. May all medicines be effective and wholesome prayers bear fruit. May all who are sick and ill quickly be freed from their ailments. Whatever diseases there are in the world, may they never occur again. May the frightened cease to be afraid and those bound be freed.

May the powerless find power and may people think of benefiting each other. For as long as space remains, for as long as sentient beings remain, until then may I too remain to dispel the miseries of the world. Thank you. Thank you all for coming and all of your great energy this last period while I’ve been here at Buddha House. It’s been fun.

We had fun, didn’t we?