(4.24) Having understood this,
If out of ignorance I remain indolent,
Then, when the time comes for me to die,
I shall be choked with unimaginable terror.

(4.25) If my body will burn for a very long time
In the unbearable fires of hell,
Then, without doubt, my mind will be consumed
By the raging fires of regret.

In Buddhism, the time of our death is the most important moment of our lives.  In many ways, we can say that all of our trainings in life are really preparations for the moment of death.  The reason why the moment of death is so important is the quality of mind we have at the time of our death determines the quality of our next rebirth.  The reason for this is simple:  each mind we generate activates a karmic seed which ripens in the next moment.  The karma activated at the time of death ripens in the first moment of our next life, indeed it determines what that next life will be.  Due to the total absorption of the inner winds during the death process, the mind of death activates what is called “throwing karma.”  This is also known as the “ripened effect” of our actions.  If we die with a negative mind, it will activate negative throwing karma throwing us into a lower rebirth.  We can say that throwing karma is the substantial cause of our life, and the other types of karmic effects are the circumstances we will experience in a given life.

We have received Dharma teachings.  We have received sacred spiritual vows on our mental continuum.  We have received many empowerments into the precious tantric teachings.  We have been given everything we need to enter, progress along and complete the spiritual path.  Those who choose to take full advantage of this spiritual opportunity will approach death in the same way we do when embarking upon a long vacation.  We are excited about the adventure that awaits and we know we have prepared everything well.  Those who waste their life following their delusions and squandering the spiritual opportunities they have been given will realize – too late – that their time is now up and they have little to nothing to show from their time here on earth.  Such people die full of regrets.

When Dharma teachings refer to “dying full of regrets” the meaning here is not the regret we generate in  purification practice, but rather a deluded form of self-guilt of having completely wasted our precious spiritual opportunity and now we realize, too late, that we are bound for the lower realms and there is nothing we can do to stop it.  Our mind is seized by self-hatred and panic, activating negative throwing karma, casting us down into the lower realms.

In popular culture and movies, we are told when we die our “life flashes before our eyes.”  This is actually true, from a certain point of view.  The teachings on the 12 dependent related links explain that at the time of our death we will experience two death-specific delusions, namely dependent-related craving and dependent-related grasping.  Practically speaking, dependent-related craving is at the time of death we will feel a sudden surge of craving for all of our strongest objects of attachment in life.  Essentially all of our unresolved attachments – be it or chocolate, sex, a good reputation, whatever – will come flaring up in a sudden blast.  If we have not worked to let go of our attachments in life, we will develop a strong desire for these things combined with a knowledge that we will never have them again.  If in life we respond to our frustrated attachments with delusion and negativity, odds are we will do the same at the time of death. Deluded, negative minds activate deluded, negative karma.

Practically speaking, dependent-related grasping is a strong grasping at our self and body at the time of death.  We realize our life and body are about to be ripped away from us permanently, and we grasp desperately trying to hold on to them.  Think of the panic people feel when they have trouble breathing.  Now imagine it really is the end and you can no longer breathe.  Think of the grasping we feel when we fear our life is in danger from some criminal or terrorist.  Now imagine it is the actual time of death and you know there is no turning back.  If in life we respond with delusions and negativity when things are taken away from us, odds are we will do the same at the time of death.  Deluded, negative minds activate deluded negative karma.

In many ways, I think the regret experienced by Dharma practitioners at having wasted their life must be far worse than that of non-practitioners.  Most people are completely ignorant of what is spiritually achievable in this life, but we know exactly what is possible.  Most people know nothing about the lower realms, but we know they are waiting for us.  We might then wrongly conclude, “well maybe it is better to not know then,” but being an ostrich is no strategy for avoiding lower rebirth.  It is not easy to confront the horror of samsaric existence.  It all seems so exaggerated or so far removed from our daily experience, that we kid ourselves into thinking it’s all just a bunch of superstition, or in any case it is too depressing to think about so better to change the subject.  But we’ve done the contemplations, we know it’s all a karmic dream, we know it is all empty, we know how karma works, we know the arguments establishing past and future lives.  In short, we know better.

So we have a choice:  face the horror now, and do what it takes to avoid it.  Or face the horror at the time of death and fall in utter panic.  Time to choose.

(4.23) If, having found the freedom and endowment of a human life,
I do not strive to practise Dharma,
There can be no greater self-deception,
There can be no greater folly.

This is definitely worth memorizing.  We have much work to do, purifying and transforming our mind.  Yet we do nothing.  We have fallen into a hole, and it is only by digging ourselves out that we will be able to get out.  We have to stop fooling ourselves that everything is going to be alright.  Then we will stop taking this human rebirth like a holiday.  We will actually work to progress.  It’s not fair to say we do nothing.  We do try, we do some.  But the question is “do we do enough?”  We say, “don’t worry, be happy, just try” to counter our discouragement not as an excuse to do even less when we are already being lazy doing little.  Sometimes we need to be knocked out of our comfort zone.  Sometimes we need to be told, “it’s time to step it up.”

Our usual excuse for why we don’t is we are just too busy.  We have too many other commitments and engagements.  Besides the fact that these commitments and engagements will amount to little or nothing on our death bed, this excuse completely misses the point.  All situations are equally empty, so all situations are equally transformable into the path.  Whether we spend all of our time on retreat, working for a Dharma center or changing diapers while working full time, it’s all the same.  There is absolutely nothing about our busy, modern lives that prevents us from dedicating every second of every day to training our mind, purifying our negative karma, cherishing others and striving to attain enlightenment.  We actually hide behind our busy lives as an excuse for our mental laziness.

The truly ridiculous thing about such laziness is it is self-defeating.  Going through life enslaved by our delusions is exhausting, stressful, and miserable.  We worry, fight, grasp and then collapse at the end of the day.  Even when we try enjoy ourselves, we find it difficult to let go of our worries without the assistance of some form of intoxicant.  Because we listen faithfully to the bad advice of our delusions, our every action only serves to make our problems even worse.  The bottom line is wisdom works not just to escape from samsara but also to navigate through it.  The bottom line is virtuous, peaceful minds are happy minds, so if we want a happy life we should constantly strive to mix our mind with virtue.  It is not like we need to choose between happiness in this life and happiness in our future lives.  Our actual choice is between being miserable in this life and worse in the next versus being happy in this life and happier in the next.  Why choose the former?

Are we intentionally deceiving ourselves?  It’s a big step to take to admit to ourselves that we’re deceiving ourselves.  We have heard the instructions, but why are we not checking them out to see if they are in fact true?  Certainly it would be good to know, in case they are true.  Why do we not look?  There is a step we have to take from knowledge to acceptance.  Even once we have intellectual knowledge, we still haven’t accepted it as truth.  So it is not moving our mind.  We need to meditate on this information again and again until our mind moves and we realize we need to act.  If we are not acting now, we need to do this.  If we are acting now, we still need to do this so that we never stop.

Venerable Tharchin says, “if you do not seize the opportunities you have, the karma creating them will gradually exhaust itself and it will be nearly impossible for find such opportunities again.  But if you seize the opportunities you have, you will create the causes to have even better opportunities in the future.”  It is time we stopped making excuses.  It is time we stop fooling ourselves that our spiritual training is just some hobby.  Normally we take something seriously when our life depends on it.  All of our future lives depend upon whether we seize our spiritual opportunity.  What are we waiting for?

Perhaps we think it is all too hard.  The Dharma just asks too much of us.  But what is the alternative?  Do we honestly think remaining in samsara forever will be any easier?  It is far harder to remain in samsara than it is to get out of it once and for all.  And once again, what is harder, constantly dealing with all of the problems our delusions create for us or enjoying the good fortune that our wisdom and virtue creates for us?  Even in this life, wisdom and virtue are simply easier because they work whereas delusions never do.

If security came to us and said, “terrorists have put a bomb in the building, we have to get out now,” would we hesitate?  Would we say we can’t be bothered, or maybe later?  The Buddhas are telling us there are countless karmic bombs in our mind, and we have to get them out right now.  Why do we hesitate?  A bomb can only kill us in this one life, but our negative karma will kill us again and again until we say “enough is enough.”

(4.21) Since just one moment of evil
Can lead to an aeon in the deepest hell,
If I do not purify all the evil I have collected since beginningless time,
It goes without saying that I shall not take a human rebirth.

In Christianity, people are often taught if you are 51% good in life, you can go to heaven.  People come into the Dharma and learn we basically need to be 99% good in life to have a chance just at another human rebirth!  In Christianity, people are told that God will judge them at the Pearly Gates, and weigh the balance of their actions in life.  People come into the Dharma and learn it all comes down to how we respond to the most traumatic and challenging moment of our life, namely the time of our death.  Then they think, better go back to being a Christian!

In its easiest to understand form, samsara is uncontrolled death and rebirth.  It is a game of karmic Russian Roulette we play at the end of each lifetime that then throws us into our next rebirth.  The quality of mind we have at the time of death determines the quality of the karmic seed that gets activated.  If we die with a negative mind, a negative karmic seed will be activated and we will be cast into the lower realms.  If we die with a positive mind, a positive karmic seed will be activated and will be rise to the upper realms.  If we die with a pure mind, a pure karmic seed will be activated and we will escape from samsara to the pure land, liberation or even full enlightenment.

The fundamental question, then, is how do we know what mind will we have at the time of death.  Most people go through life completely oblivious to the fact that we have a choice regarding how our mind responds to what happens.  Karmically speaking, we more resemble a leaf in the wind than a conscious sentient being.  Misfortune strikes, we become angry, depressed and self-absorbed.  Good fortune ripens, we become attached, overly elated and we feel self-important.  When asked why we feel the way we do, we come up with a long list of external conditions as our explanation, as if it were self-evident that our external circumstance dictates our internal experience.

If we check, we see that in virtually all circumstances, when misfortune strikes we respond with a deluded, often negative mind.  If this is our habit in life when minor adversity occurs, what chance do we have at the time of death when we will lose everything?  When something is taken away from us in life, we grasp tightly onto the thing for fear of losing it.  How are we likely to respond at the time of death when our body is ripped away from us?  When our body experiences even the slightest discomfort of illness, we become moody and despondent.  How are we likely to respond when the cancer seeps into our bones and our body is racked with pain?  We feel tired and incapable of virtue after a hard days work, and when we go to sleep we collapse without giving Dharma another thought.  How likely are we to generate compassion and faith after a lifetime’s worth of toil and our inner winds are collapsing in on themselves?  We all fantasize of passing away quietly in our sleep, but how often do we dream we are in the pure land?

If we don’t make responding to adversity with virtue our habit in life, we won’t stand a chance at the time of death.  This is our reality.  Denial won’t make it go away.  We should be afraid.  We should be very afraid.

(4.22) Simply experiencing the effects of my non-virtue
Will not lead to my being released from the lower realms,
For, while I am experiencing those effects,
I shall be generating yet more non-virtue.

Sometimes people mistakenly think that simply experiencing suffering is a form of purification.  While it is true that one singular negative seed might be exhausting itself, if we respond to our suffering with further negativity and delusion, our experience of suffering will not be an occasion of purification, rather it will be tragic spike in our quantity of negative karma.  Usually when things go badly we respond with angry, non-accepting minds.  We respond with more negativity and keep the cycle going.  If we don’t break this cycle, it will go on forever.

The experience of suffering only results in purification if we mentally accept the suffering as purification.  To actually purify, we must generate the four opponent powers:  the power of regret, the power of reliance, the power of the opponent force and the power of the promise.  To mentally accept suffering as purification, all four powers must be present.  The mere presence of suffering is not purification, the acceptance of it with the four powers is.  When suffering strikes, we recognize it as the ripening of our past negative karma.  We then consider how we have countless other similar seeds on our mind and if we don’t purify them, it is just a question of time before we are condemned to experience their effects.  We then turn to the Buddhas, requesting them to bless our mind with the strength to patiently accept our suffering as purification.  The power of the opponent force is any virtuous action motivated by regret.  In this instance, our virtuous action is patiently accepting our suffering.  Patient acceptance is a type of virtuous action we can practice when misfortune occurs.  We then use our suffering as a fuel for the promise to in the future stop engaging in actions which cause such suffering, making effort to examine our behavior to identify instances where our moral discipline is less than perfect in ways consistent with the particular suffering we are experiencing.

If we accept our suffering with such a mind, we purify our negative karma.  Otherwise, we just suffer with no meaning to it at all.

(4.20) It is for these reasons that Buddha, the Blessed One, said
That it is extremely difficult to obtain a precious human life;
Just as it is rare for a turtle to insert its neck
Into a yoke adrift on a vast ocean.

It was discussed in an earlier post how we only attain a precious human life once every 637 quadrillion lifetimes.  But we can change these odds through the practice of moral discipline.

Moral discipline in general creates the cause for a fortunate rebirth.  Moral discipline engaged in with a spiritual motivation creates the causes for another precious human life.  The way it works is as follows:  first we contemplate the valid reasons for voluntarily adopting certain vows and commitments until we develop a wisdom desire to do so.  We actively choose to practice moral discipline because we want to and we see the value of doing so.  We then formally take the vows, making the decision to live our life in a way consistent with them.  Later, deluded tendencies that move in the opposite direction of our vows arises within our mind.  Our job at that time is to recall the disadvantages of following our delusions and the advantages of keeping our vows.  We try see through the lies of our delusions and reconnect with the wisdom that lead us to take the vows in the first place.  Once we have rediscovered that clarity of mind, we then voluntarily choose to not follow the deluded tendency, but instead we reaffirm our moral commitments.

This mental action is the moral discipline of restraint, and since it is motivated by spiritual concerns, it creates the causes not just for another upper rebirth, but a precious human life in which we re-find the Dharma.  If 50 deluded tendencies ripen in a single hour (which can sometimes happen when our delusions are really flaring up), and we engage in this process of reconnecting with our wisdom that lead us to take the vows until we no simply do not want to follow our deluded tendencies, then we created the causes for 50 precious human rebirths in that hour!  Not bad for an hour’s worth of spiritual work.

What distinguishes the mere practice of moral discipline from training in actual vows and commitments, such as the Pratimoksha or Bodhisattva vows, is when we train in vows we not only create the causes for another precious human life, but more importantly we create the causes to maintain the continuum of our spiritual practice until enlightenment is reached.  This is a qualitative difference in effect.  If we have countless trillion negative seeds on our mind, and we create a few dozen good ones, the odds of these good ones ripening is still microscopically low.  If, however, we train in our sets of vows, it creates a different karma altogether, one that maintains the continuum of our practice in life after life.  Geshe-la said when we die, we should try do so with fresh vows on our mind.

Why the different effect between individual moral discipline and keeping the sets of vows?  Because when we practice an individual act of moral discipline, we are throwing our future selves a spiritual life-line.  When we practice a set of vows, we are karmically weaving for ourself a spiritual safety net.  Each vow strengthens and reinforces all of the others in an interactive way that creates for us this minimum spiritual flooring.  Geshe-la explains in Essence of Vajrayana that practicing Tantra is like climbing a high mountain, but doing so on the foundation of our Tantric vows is like adding the necessary safety equipment so that even if we slip, we do not fall.

Different types of vows will create different types of precious human rebirths.  Keeping our refuge vows creates the causes to maintain the continuum of our Buddhist practice between now and our eventual enlightenment.  Keeping our Pratimoksha vows creates the causes for us to maintain the continuum of our practice of a path that leads to liberation from samsara.  Keeping bodhisattva vows maintains the continuum of our Mahayana trainings to enlightenment.  Keeping Tantric vows maintains the continuum of our Vajrayana trainings; and keeping our mother Tantra vows maintains the continuum of our Heruka and Vajrayogini practice.  We invest in insurance for all sorts of things in life; how much more important is it to invest effort in the spiritual insurance provided by our practice of the sets of vows?

The reality is this:  if we keep finding the path and have the wish to practice it, our samsara will slowly but surely come to an end.  If we lose the path, we lose everything and it might be countless aeons later before we can rebegin our practice.  While we have found the way out, we should do whatever is required to stay on the path.  In short, if we lose the path, we have everything to fear; if we fear only losing the path, we will have nothing to fear.

(4.17) If I engage in non-virtuous actions,
I shall not obtain a human body again;
And if I do not attain a human form,
There will be no virtue, only negativity.

(4.18) If I do not practise virtue now
While I have the good fortune to do so,
What virtue shall I be able to practise
When I am suffering and confused in the lower realms?

(4.19) For if I do not practise virtue
But accumulate only evil,
I shall not even hear the words “fortunate rebirth”
For a hundred million aeons.

At present, the vast majority of our actions are neutral, but if we are honest negativity comes easily and virtue comes only with great effort.  This clearly shows the natural tendencies on our mind.  As Gen-la Losang says, what is natural is simply what is familiar.  The fact that negativity comes naturally to us shows that it is what our mind is most familiar with.  When we do engage in virtuous actions, it is rare and our virtues are weak.  Often we simply show up to Dharma centers or festivals or place our bottoms on our meditation cushion, but fail to bring our mind along too.  During daily life, when difficulties arise, our first instinct is to lie, cheat, steal, avoid, retaliate, criticize, judge, and blame others.

If we do not engage in virtuous actions, we will not take another fortunate rebirth.  Moral discipline is the principal cause of upper rebirth, and upon that we have scantly relied.  If we fall into the lower realms, we will engage almost exclusively in non-virtue.  Look at a day in the life of an animal, a hungry spirit and a hell being.  How much virtue do they accumulate?  How much non-virtue?  What causes do they create for their future lives?

If we think about it, when we suffer there’s no space in our mind for any virtue to arise because we are completely preoccupied with the situation. We know when we don’t feel good, even some physical discomfort, our Dharma practice becomes worse, it becomes more difficult to generate and maintain virtue.  What will it be like when we return to the lower realms experiencing far more suffering than we are now?  Even an animal, where is the space for virtue?  We engage in only non-virtue.   In the upper realms, our experiences will be so pleasant that we will feel no real motivation to practice.  Instead, we will be consumed by jealousy, competitiveness and self-indulgence.  Once the merit creating the causes for such a rebirth is exhausted, we will have no choice but to fall once again in the lower realms.  From this perspective, an upper or lower rebirth are essentially equally dangerous.

But right now, as a human being, we can create space in our mind for virtue.  This is our chance.  We have just enough suffering to be motivated to do something about it, and just enough good fortune to have everything we need to be able to do so.  It is perfect.

I look at how hard it is for me to just try be a good person, much less an enlightened being.  I see how hard it is to not give into my deluded tendencies, much less eradicate them completely.  I see how easy it is to become despondent, discouraged or lazy with our practice.  Attaining enlightenment seems almost impossibly hard that if I am honest, I mostly don’t even believe it is possible.  But Buddha says it is easier to attain enlightenment once reborn as a human than it is to attain rebirth as a human once we have fallen into the lower realms.  It is, for all practical purposes, impossible.  Again the Christian view is an almost entirely accurate approximation of reality – what awaits us is eternal damnation.  Buddhists like to quibble with the eternal part, triumphantly thinking, “oh, those naïve Christians, don’t they understand there are countless lives and nothing is permanent about lower rebirth.”  But their naïve view grasping at an eternal fall is far closer to the truth than our wishful thinking that our time in the lower realms will be short-lived.

Once we fall, we will know only terror.  There will be no Dharma, no Dharma centers, no spiritual friends, no wisdom.  Every day will be a constant struggle, where our only chance at survival will be to engage in actions that condemn us to remain trapped in the lower realms.  Our minds will be dark, clouded, full of ignorance, miserliness and rage.  Even we who have heard of such things as liberation and enlightenment continue to neglect our spiritual trainings; what chance will we have when we live in a world that knows even not of fortune rebirth, but only torment.  Our time is coming.  This is no game.

(4.15) Since the appearance of a Tathagata – a Buddha,
Faith in his teachings, a precious human body,
And a suitable basis for practising Dharma are so rare,
When will an opportunity like this arise again?

We know we have all the conditions necessary for the practice of Dharma—we have perfect conditions, but the question is are we using those conditions?   With these conditions we can discover and put an end to all the paths that lead to suffering in our mind. We probably never had such conditions before and we will probably never have them again.  Human life is rare enough, but one such as we have?

I did the math before and it comes out that we have a life like this only once every 637 quadrillion (thousand trillion) lifetimes.  Buddha likens the chances of us having a precious human life to odds of the blind turtle who lives in an ocean the size of this world and surfaces only once every 100,000 years.  There is a golden yoke (a yoke is what is put around an animal’s head when the pull a cart) floating on the surface, what is the likelihood of the blind turtle putting their head through the middle of the yoke?  The surface of the earth is 510 million square kilometers, or 510 trillion square meters.  If you assume the yoke is 1 square meter and an average lifespan of 80 years, the turtle will rise to the surface only once every 1,250 lifetimes.  Each time the turtle rises it has a one in 510 trillion chance of putting its head through the yoke, resulting in once every 637 quadrillion lifetimes!  Numbers this big are simply beyond our imagination, so for all practical purposes we can say this is our once in an eternity opportunity.  Again, the Christian model of saying we get this one life on earth to do it right is, more or less, correct.  It is as if this is our one chance.  The question we face is are we going to waste it.

Unless we do something with this opportunity, it is meaningless.  We need to choose to use this information to decide to not waste this opportunity.  Until we make this choice, all of our Dharma knowledge will remain intellectual.  It is only once we have decided to embark on the journey that we start to appreciate and understand the value of each instruction we are given.  Shantideva says we need to formally declare war on our delusions, because when we do and the battle is joined, we will then need the instructions.  They will no longer be viewed as optional, rather they will be necessary for our very survival.

(4.16) Today, for example, I might be free from sickness,
Well-nourished, and without afflictions;
But this life is fleeting and deceptive,
And my body is as if borrowed for a moment.

Why do we become so complacent?  I think the main reason is we forget that because we’re human we must die.  We may be healthy, wealthy, happy, all these things.  But the fact is all this will come to an end.  Inevitably I will become unhealthy, unwealthy, unhappy.  When things are good, we assume they will last forever, and then we are shocked when they come to an end.  We should not take for granted our present circumstances, but always recall that karma changes fast.  Our lives can be turned on their head in an instant, or worse we can lose our life altogether.

While we have it good, we should use our time wisely to store spiritual provisions for the long road ahead.  In George Martin’s A Game of Thrones they say, “winter is coming.”  The meaning is the current good times will not last and we must prepare for the hardship we know is coming.  Our spiritual winter is coming, whether we freeze to death or make it through the winter depends entirely upon how we use our time right now.

We do not want to be the person who arrives at the time of death empty-handed, with nothing to show for the spiritual opportunities we have had.  Venerable Tharchin says we should “live our life from the perspective of our deathbed.”  We should view each situation as we go through life through the lens of how we will think about it when we are on our deathbed.  If it is not going to be important to us on our deathbed, then it is not important now.  If it will be important to us on our deathbed, we should consider it important now.  If we live our life in this way, there is no danger of our wasting our precious human life nor dying full of regrets.

(4.11) Those who repeatedly renew their Bodhisattva vow
Only to go on to incur further downfalls
Will remain for a long time enmeshed in samsara,
Obstructed from attaining higher spiritual grounds.

(4.12) Therefore, I must practise sincerely,
In accordance with the promise I have made.
If, from now on, I make no effort,
I shall be reborn in lower and lower states.

Here, we need to make a clear distinction between the correct and incorrect way of approaching our vows.  The correct way is to “work gradually and skillfully with all the vows, while maintaining the intention to one day keep them all perfectly.”  The incorrect way is to “allow ourself to incur downfalls thinking it doesn’t matter because we can simply retake our vows.”  There is a world of difference between these two approaches.

Deluded tendencies arise in our mind all the time.  The training in moral discipline takes this as a given.  We would not need to train in moral discipline if deluded, negative tendencies did not arise.  Some people, falling on one extreme, relate to their vows as if the arising of a deluded tendency itself is a downfall, and so when it occurs, they immediately repress the tendency.  The result of this is as predictable as it is tragic:  the strength of the deluded tendencies grows and grows until one day the person “cracks” and then binges on their delusions and negative habits.  Spiritual bulimia is not the goal.

The other extreme is whenever a deluded tendency arises we simply give into it, knowing we will be defeated by it anyways.  Usually we rationalize this in one of two ways, either we say, “we are not there yet where we are ready to take on this particular deluded tendency” or we tell ourselves, “this action is not so bad, lighten up.”  If we take this approach, we never really get serious about our practice of moral discipline.

The worst, of course, is intentionally engaging in negativity thinking it doesn’t matter because we can just retake our vows and all will be good.  I call this the Don Corleone method of purification, we go to Confession while our hit men are out killing our enemies.  Purification practices and the restoration of our vows only works if we are sincere about it.  They are not get out of jail free cards. When we practice like this, our underlying intention is to continue to enjoy samsara.  Such a practice will bring no real change.   We will not move forward.  If we carry on like this, Shantideva says we’ll remain for a long time enmeshed in samsara.  We need to sincerely reconstruct the pathways and behavior patterns within our mind.  We need to cherish our vows as a way of doing that, and sincerely work with them all to retrain our mind.  Conclusion: we mustn’t let things slip, as we have done. More importantly, we must never give up.  Through considering the results of letting things slip or of giving up, conscientiousness will naturally arise.  Because we don’t want those results, for ourselves or others.

Geshe-la advises us to “work gradually and skillfully with all our vows, while maintaining the intention to one day keep them all perfectly.”  Our actual commitment – our actual vow – is to never abandon the intention to keep them all perfectly in the future.  This protects us against the extreme of just letting loose and indulging in our negativity whenever it arises.  Working gradually and skillfully with all our vows humbly accepts that the practice of moral discipline is a training, something that we work with over a long period of time gradually learning from our mistakes and doing a little bit better each day, each month, each year, each decade and indeed each lifetime.  This protects us from the extreme of repression, thinking that we are supposed to act perfectly from day one.  I usually do self-initiation three or four times a year.  At such times, I try reflect back on how I am doing with all of my vows.  I will mentally make new commitments where possible to do a little bit better with my vows than I did the last time I retook them.

The key to moral discipline is to move beyond “shouldn’t” to “I don’t want to.”  When we think, “I shouldn’t engage in a certain action” implicit is within us a desire thinking, “but I still want to do so.”  Shouldn’t-based moral discipline generally just leads to repression.  Instead, we need to contemplate the faults of delusions, karma, the benefits of moral discipline, our spiritual goals and the practicalities of what works and what doesn’t, and get to the point where we can “see through the lie” of our delusion.  Our delusion promises us that if we follow it, things will be better.  We instead shine the light of wisdom on this, realize that no, if I follow my delusion it will just make things worse.  Then, we refrain from engaging in the negative action because we simply don’t want to.  We know we will suffer more if we do.  Such moral discipline is sustainable.  Once we have realized this wisdom once, then, every time a deluded tendency arises, we recollect our wisdom that lead us to the decision to commit to certain practices of moral discipline.  We reaffirm that, “no, I don’t want to do that” and then we refrain.  Practicing in this way, our moral discipline and wisdom will improve in tandem, with each reinforcing the other.