Be released by two:  investigation and analysis. 

This precept has two main meanings.  The first meaning is we should be aware of all our actions of body, speech, and mind.  With this mindfulness we can gradually overcome all our faults. 

From a practical point of view, pride is actually the most harmful of all the delusions.  Why?  Because pride functions to blind us to our own faults.  If we are unaware of our faults, then there is no way we can overcome them.  Our pride does not prevent others from being able to catalog clearly all our faults, but with pride even when others point out to us our shortcomings, we fail to see them and we instead see all the faults of the person “attacking and criticizing us.”  When we suffer from pride, when we do become aware of our faults or limitations, we quickly become despondent, deflated, and discouraged.  We swing from misplaced overconfidence to a wish to give up trying.  We somehow think we should be naturally endowed with perfect abilities, and we think we should enjoy great success without putting in the necessary preparatory work.  We would rather not try at all than give something our all and then come up short.  With pride we become obsessed with “winning” and “losing,” and most importantly with whether or not we are better than everyone else.  This introduces haughtiness towards some, competitiveness towards others, and jealousy towards everyone else.  With pride, we are loathe to look at our faults because doing so shatters our inflated sense of our own abilities, and we would rather knowingly live a lie than come down to earth and begin rebuilding.  If we have every delusion except pride, we can identify our faults and gradually overcome them all.  If we have pride, however, we can never go anywhere on the spiritual path.  We may even occupy a high spiritual position, be venerated by everyone, but inside we know we are a charlatan; or worse, we don’t even realize that we are.   

Many people in this world suffer from one form of addiction or another.  Conventionally, programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous, etc., have emerged to provide people with a means of overcoming their addition.  If we examine the 12 steps of such programs carefully, we shall see they are, in almost every way, the essential meaning of this precept.  The 12 steps are:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

As Kadampas, we realize we are addicted to samsara.  It is our delusions that sustain this addiction.  Our addiction has caused us to harm all those around us.  But if we ruthlessly acknowledge our shortcomings and humbly request the Buddhas, in particular Dorje Shugden, to help us overcome them, then we can eventually break our addiction to samsara and then help others do the same.

Train with certainty. 

To gain realizations of training the mind we need to practice wholeheartedly without hesitation and doubt.  First, we need to understand and study how to practice, then we need to practice steadfastly until we achieve our goal.

In the beginning of our spiritual training, the only thing we know for sure is that despite having tried our whole life, we are still not happy.  We know what we have done so far hasn’t worked.  The first many years of our spiritual training are largely about just gaining an intellectual understanding of what the path to enlightenment is all about.  We come to understand what is the nature of our problem and what can help.  We are still unclear about what are the objects of abandonment and what are the objects of attainment on the spiritual path.  But there does come a point where things are clear to us.  We see through the lies of our delusions.  We see the truth of the Dharma.  We know what we must do.  We know where our effort will take us.  Venerable Tharchin says, “once we see how the path actually can work, effort becomes effortless.”  In other words, when we know what the methods are and that if we do them, they are guaranteed to give us the promised results, it is easy to generate the effort necessary to enter, progress along, and complete the path.  So our first task is to become clear about what needs to be done and why it will work.  On this basis, we can then begin to actually practice, in other words, actually begin changing our mind.

There are two types of doubt:  deluded doubt and virtuous doubt.  The technical definition of deluded doubt is a doubt that tends in the opposite direction of correct belief in some object of Dharma.  Practically speaking, though, deluded doubt says, “I am not sure, so until I am, I won’t believe anything.”  The technical definition of virtuous doubt is a doubt that tends in the direction of correct belief in some object of Dharma.  Practically speaking, though, virtuous doubt says, “I am not sure, so until I am, I am going to keep experimenting and trying until I am.”  Deluded doubt stops us dead in our tracks, virtuous doubt pushes us to delve deeper, explore more, keep trying.

Deluded doubt is the death of practice.  Doubt causes us to hold ourself back so that we don’t engage fully in our practice.  We hedge our bets, trying to get the best of samsara and the best of Dharma.  We never really allow ourselves to change or believe anything for fear of being wrong, but as a result we never do anything and therefore make the biggest mistake of all.  Many people can become completely paralyzed by their doubts, or worse they become a habitual doubter about everything.  Doubt lies to us telling us that it is protecting us from believing something that might be wrong.  We believe our doubts are protecting us, but in reality they are keeping us at square one. 

When a baseball player swings a bat or a golfer swings a club, they put their whole body into it.  When a sprinter races towards the finish line they hold nothing back and they give it everything they’ve got.  When a scientist performs an experiment, they do everything they can to give the experiment a chance of succeeding, they don’t sabotage it beforehand thinking, “this will never work anyways.”  An actor on the stage literally forgets who they are as they plunge themselves fully into their character.  This is how we should practice.  We should put our whole mind into.  We should hold nothing back.  We should give it everything we’ve got.  We should do everything we can to give our practice the opportunity to succeed.  We should forget our ordinary self and plunge ourselves fully into our new identity as a bodhisattva or indeed a Tantric deity. 

A powerful leader is somebody who is able to be decisive, and never look back.  They know hedging and trying to split the difference often just guarantees failure.  Once they have committed to a course of action, they carry it through to completion, despite all adversity and everyone else around them having given up long ago.  Once the die are cast, they know there is no taking it back.  When a general launches a battle, they don’t stop until their objective is reached.  This is how we should practice.  We decide to leave our delusions behind, and we never look back.  We don’t hedge between samsara and the Dharma, but instead we burn our bridges back to samsara behind us.  Once we have taken vows and committed to the Bodhisattva’s path, we never give up no matter what adversity we may face, even if everyone who started with us has long ago given up.  Once we have become ordained or generated superior intention towards our family, we know there is no taking it back and we continue on no matter what.  Once we embark upon the Joyful Path, we never stop until all beings have been freed. 

Do not be erratic. 

The effort we apply when practicing Dharma should be steady and consistent.  A short-term effort that later slackens will not produce results.  We need continuous effort until we accomplish our final goal of full enlightenment.

First, we need a clear understanding of what effort is.  Effort in a Dharma context is not the same as effort in an ordinary context.  In an ordinary context, effort means to work hard.  In a Dharma context, effort means “to take delight in engaging in virtue.”  It is a special mind that enjoys engaging in virtue.  Nothing is enjoyable or unenjoyable from its own side.  Things become enjoyable when we relate to them with a mind of enjoyment.  Things become unbearable when we relate to them with a mind of impatience.  If we work very hard at our Dharma practice, meditating every day, working endlessly for the center, going to all the teachings, etc., but we do so with a heavy mind of guilt and obligation, then we actually have no effort.  Without effort, we will have no results.  If instead we do very little formal practice, but we go about our day enjoying the opportunity to train our mind to respond with wisdom and compassion to whatever arises, then we have great effort and results will flow naturally. 

How do we develop a mind that “enjoys” engaging in virtue?  First, we must recognize that at present our mind enjoys engaging in non-virtue and dreads having to engage in virtue.  Shantideva says we are drawn like moths to a flame to that which is harmful to us, and we flee that which is good for us.    Why is this?  The reason is we are completely confused about what is the cause of happiness and what is the cause of suffering.  We enjoy eating ice cream, we would not enjoy eating ice cream we know is laced with poison.  Why the difference?  Because we know one thing is very bad for us and the other is not.  So we need to take the time to consider what is actually good for us.  The things of samsara can at most help us in this one life, but Dharma can help us in all our future lives.  In reality, any good thing in samsara comes from past virtuous karma.  Where did that good karma come from?  Our past practice of virtue.  Even from the perspective of this life alone, when our mind is under the influence of delusion, we are unhappy; whereas if our mind if peaceful, wise, and full of love, we are very happy.  Further, the so-called pleasures of samsara actually just serve to ensnare us further into the deceptive lies of samsara, and cause us to waste countless hours of our precious human life doing things in a meaningless way.  Would someone derive much enjoyment spending all the money in their retirement on a fancy vacation, knowing that they are squandering all that they have saved up and that they will have to spend their retirement in abject poverty?  It is the same with samsara’s pleasures.  When we harvest them, we are causing our virtuous seeds to ripen, and once exhausted we will have no karmic provisions left for the long road ahead of our countless future lives. 

Second, we need to completely let go of attachment to results from our practice.  The fastest and most effective way to kill the joy in our practice is to become attached to experiencing results.  The definition of pure Dharma practice is practice that is engaged in free from the 8 worldly concerns, one of which is wanting to experience pleasure and pleasant feelings.  Many people do meditation hoping that it will make them feel “blissed out” or at least help them “calm down.”  They may have had some experiences in the past where they were blown away by some deep spiritual insight, and they grasp at trying to get the next spiritual breakthrough.  Sometimes people quickly become frustrated when they become distracted quickly and fail to find their object of meditation in any meaningful way.  Or perhaps some people have been practicing for many years, but they feel like they are just as deluded as they always were.  Practicing with these sorts of attachment to results in our mind leads to all sorts of frustrations, tensions, discouragements, and disappointments with our spiritual practice.  Attachment to results drains the joy from our practice in the same way unplugging a barrel will eventually drain its contents.  Once the joy is gone, we may continue to practice driven by guilt or some feeling of obligation, but this can’t last long.  Eventually we abandon everything or become a neurotic mess. 

In contrast, when we completely let go of attachment to results in our practice, everything becomes naturally joyful.  What does it mean to practice without attachment to results?  It means, quite simply, we derive our enjoyment from planting good seeds, not harvesting their results.  We should be like the squirrel who spends the Fall collecting nuts and storing them away so that when winter comes he has enough provisions to last him.  The other animals may seem to be having fun, but come wintertime, they regret their shortsightedness.  We should be like the hard-working medical student that stays in school for many long years after all their friends have left school and gone off to work, making money, going on vacations, etc.  They do this because they know they are working for a higher goal.  We should be like the investor who saves as much money as they can, little by little, adding to their investment capital which will one day enable them to live effortlessly without ever having to work again as they live off of the dividends of their prior investments.  We should be like the farmer who plans ahead, preparing the soil, planting seeds, irrigating the fields and ensuring there is enough sunlight.  The farmer does not expect the crops to ripen before the seeds are planted, but instead knows such seeds must be patiently nurtured and cared for in order to have a bountiful harvest come the Fall. 

Ghandi famously said, “full effort is full victory.”  His meaning was when we apply ourselves fully to effort and completely forget about results, such effort itself is full victory itself.  When such effort is attained, the final results are a foregone conclusion, as we go from joy to joy travelling along the path. 

We are desire realm beings, which means we have no choice but to do what we want.  So the whole trick of Dharma is to change what we want from what is harmful to us to what is beneficial to us.  Our wanting to enjoy ourselves is not a problem, our problem is we are confused about what is enjoyable.  Licking honey off of a razor blade is not enjoyable, building for a better future is.  When we enjoy engaging in virtue more than we enjoy indulging in samsara’s deceptive pleasures, then we will naturally engage in virtue for the simple reason of we want to.  Once we are like this, there is no danger of us being erratic or our effort waning, we simply do what we enjoy all the way to enlightenment.

Do not misinterpret. 

We should avoid six mistaken attitudes:  wrong patience, wrong aspiration, wrong experience, wrong compassion, wrong benefit, and wrong rejoicing.

Wrong patience.  Wrong patience is patience towards our delusions.  Geshe-la says we should develop the wish to harm our delusions, we should have the wish to permanently eradicate the entire species of our delusions.  This is not a negative mind, it is a wisdom mind.  But it feels quite different than anger.  Anger is directed against living beings and leaves our mind feeling agitated, the wish to eradicate our delusions is directed against our delusions and leaves our mind feeling clear and free.  While it is true we should never be patient with our delusions, allowing them to fester or grow serendipitously within our mind, we must be patient with ourselves still being a deluded being.  A lot of Dharma practitioners know that delusions are our real enemies, but are still unable to prevent delusions from arising within their mind.  They then feel all guilty or neurotic about the fact that delusions are arising.  The typical response is to then repress them, driving them deeper within the mind.  We need to honestly acknowledge and accept that we are still a deluded being, but we never accept the validity of the delusions themselves.  To reuse the spam analogy, we accept the fact that spam will still appear in our inbox and there is nothing we can do at present to stop it completely, but we are never fooled by any of it.

Wrong aspiration.  Wrong aspiration is wanting to emulate people who are concerned exclusively with things of this life because they are rich and powerful and not wanting to emulate a sincere Dharma practitioner, even if they are poor and ugly.  There is nothing wrong with aspiring to have wealth, power, a good reputation and so forth if our reason for wanting these things is genuinely so that we can use them to cause the Dharma to better flourish.  But there is something wrong with wanting these things, viewing them as in and of themselves causes of happiness.  Our entire society is built around wishing to be like the rich, powerful, and famous.  The entire economy is built around cultivating this wish in people.  To what end?  People are no more happier than they were in the past, in fact we can argue that people are less happy now than ever before.  Externally, things in the world have never been better; internally, all the trend lines point towards entering a darker age.  I try think, “by keeping the wish to practice the Dharma alive in my mind, I keep that wish alive within my world.  If I never let go of this wish, I will eventually attain enlightenment and be able to, slowly but surely, lead all other beings to the same state.  If I allow this wish to go out in my own mind, then my entire world will be plunged into darkness.  Why?  Because it is all my karmic dream.” 

Wrong experience.  This is setting aside the nectar-like happiness of Dharma in favor of following worldly experiences and pleasures.  Every moment of every day we have a choice:  do we work to harvest good results now or do we work to plant good seeds for the future.  We want to experience pleasant things now because we still believe that samsara can offer us some happiness.  But it always leaves us feeling dissatisfied, we never feel like we reach the end of the rainbow.  The truth is this:  by completely forgetting about results in this life and focusing 100% of our attention on planting good causes, we not only lay the seeds for our future happiness, but we also come to enjoy every moment of our present life.  If we pursue happiness in this one life, we never find it in this life and we arrive at our future lives empty handed.  If instead we work exclusively for our future lives, we not only enter our future lives rich in merit, we also are able to be happy all the time in this life.  This is the experience of everyone who has actually done so.  We need not fear nor doubt this.

Wrong compassion.  This is compassion for Buddhas and not for suffering worldly beings.  When I first learned this precept, it was at the time when people were still confused about the proper view to have with regards to their resident teachers.  We thought we were supposed to view them as Buddhas, and so didn’t know how to respond or view them when suffering seemed to befall them.  In the early 2000s, though, Geshe-la clarified that we should view our teachers as Sangha jewels.  They are practitioners, just like us, striving their best to tame their wild minds.  The only difference is they may have been doing so for longer and therefore have some useful experience or insight to share.  When suffering seems to befall them, we can develop compassion for them and pray for them just as we would anybody else.  But what about Geshe-la?  Should we develop compassion for him?  The answer is it depends entirely on our view of him.  If we see him as a kind bodhisattva working tirelessly in this world, then of course there is no problem in generating compassion for him.  If however, we see him as a Buddha, then our compassion for him is misplaced, and in fact a contradiction.  If we see him as a Buddha, then there is no basis for compassion to arise, because we understand he experiences no suffering.  If we think he is experiencing suffering, then it means we don’t really see him as a Buddha.  So what should we think if we view him as a Buddha but he nonetheless appears to be suffering.  First, we can view such an appearance as him taking on the suffering of others and it ripening on him so that others are free from it.  This is no different than the Christian view of the Passion of Christ.  Second, we can use this appearance to generate compassion for all the beings in this world.  Geshe-la dying is a loss of cosmic proportions for all the people in this world.  The karma for him to appear directly will have exhausted itself, and so the beings of this world will no longer be able to directly receive his help and advice.  Compassion for all living beings  generated on this basis cultivates within us a burning desire to request the turning of the wheel of Dharma.  This request then creates the causes for new emanation bodies to appear in this world again and again for as long as samsara exists. 

Wrong benefit.  This is trying to help others, but in reality making their situation worse.  For example, helping someone commit a non-virtuous action is wrong benefit.  A lot of people mistakenly think cherishing others means giving them whatever they want or helping them, even when their wishes are wrong.  In reality, our love for others actually prevents us from “helping” others in this way because we know that doing so actually hurts them.  It is because we love them that we refuse to help them harm themselves.  It is this love infused with wisdom that gives the bodhisattva the necessary strength and backbone to say no, and to not cooperate with others’ delusions.

Wrong rejoicing.  This is rejoicing in other’s non-virtue or misfortune.  If we are honest, it is quite common for us to be happy when somebody who causes harm to others themselves experiences misfortune.  How many people rejoiced in Osama Bin Laden being killed?  We should not rejoice in him being killed, but we can rejoice in the fact that those who he would have later killed will now be safe.  There is a difference.  Likewise, our entire culture is built around the celebration of violence.  Our movies, our sports, our video games are all centered around rejoicing in non-virtue.  It is very hard to not fall into a similar mindset.  Venerable Tharchin says that when we rejoice in non-virtue, karmically speaking, it is no different than ourselves engaging in that non-virtue.  This is extremely dangerous, so we must be careful.  This does not mean we shouldn’t go to the movies, watch sports, or play computer games, but it does mean we need to be mindful that when we engage in these leisure activities we are not inadvertently digging our own karmic grave.

Apply the principal practice at this time. 

Right now we have a precious human life, and it would be a great shame to waste it on pursuing only material wealth.  The greatest purpose of our human life is to attain enlightenment, and the only way to do that is to practice Dharma.  Amongst Dharma practices, training the mind is supreme, therefore, we must practice training the mind right now.

Our biggest problem is we still grasp at there being a conflict between our normal lives and our practice of Dharma.  We feel as if Dharma practice is on one side and our other activities are on the other.  Because we grasp at this conflict between the two as being true, when we are required to do our normal daily activities, we feel as if we are wasting our precious human life. 

In reality, there is no conflict whatsoever between these two.  Our jobs, our family, and our daily tasks are simply the conventional context in which we train our mind.  Each situation in our life gives rise to different delusions, and therefore different opportunities to train in the opponents.  There is no situation where putting others first, compassion, and wisdom are not the right way to respond.  We might not at present know how to do so, but if we continue to try to do so, overtime we will learn how to do so with increasing effectiveness, until eventually we are able to do so all the time in any situation.  Then, there will no longer be a duality between our Dharma practice and our daily life.  We will be able to not waste a single moment of our precious human life.

Do not rely upon other conditions. 

In practicing training the mind we rely upon inner strength not external conditions.  We do not need to wait for better conditions because we can transform any situation into the path.  If we waited for the perfect conditions, we would never start our practice.  If we wait until we create the perfect conditions, we will never have any time to practice because we will be expending all our energy trying to fulfill our insatiable desires.

Because every situation is equally empty, every situation is equally potentially perfect for our practice of Dharma.  It is only our lack of wisdom knowing how to transform certain conditions into the path that makes us prefer some conditions over others.  We grasp at some external conditions as being inherently better than others, and so when we lack those conditions, we think we can’t practice Dharma.  Assenting to such a mistaken way of thinking becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Because we believe we don’t have the external conditions we need, we don’t practice.  And because we don’t practice, we never gain the wisdom that knows how to practice in all situations.  Practically speaking, we will be right – we can’t practice.  But this is an entirely self-created problem.  If instead, we mentally tell ourself, “all external conditions are equally perfect, just in different ways,” then our mind will open to receiving blessings to see how this is true. 

For me, the most powerful way of doing this is to rely upon Dorje Shugden.  Dorje Shugden’s job is to arrange the perfect outer, inner, and secret conditions for our practice of Dharma.  These conditions may not be what I would have thought were the perfect ones, but my faith in Dorje Shugden enables me to believe that they in fact are what is best for me.  This faith then opens my mind to receive his powerful blessings helping me realize how the situation is indeed perfect.  Then, I just practice to the best of my ability free from worry.  Our biggest obstacle is our lack of faith that Dorje Shugden is already arranging for us perfect conditions.  With this faith, we want for nothing.

Always meditate on special cases. 

There are some situations that it is more difficult to practice training the mind, with these we need to meditate specifically, for example, developing compassion for our enemies or those with greater fortune than us and being patient with people who we always get angry with.  During the meditation break we should try put our virtuous determination into practice

At the Toronto festival in 2002, in the lead up to the Iraq war, Geshe-la said what will no doubt go down as one of the most famous things he ever said.  He said, “Love is the real nuclear bomb that destroys all enemies.”  How does this work?  At a superficial level we can say if we love somebody, they no longer see us as a threat, and so they stop feeling the need to defend against or even destroy us before we harm them. 

But there is also something deeper at work.  Whether between nations or between children in a sandbox, we perceive enemies everywhere.  Why does somebody become our enemy.  If we check, there is really only one reason:  because our desires are in conflict.  We want one thing, they want something else (or they want the same thing for themselves), and conflict ensues.  Love is a mind that also wants the other person to be happy.  But the function of love is to bestow a special wisdom which sees how everyone can win.  Love does not just mean give the other person whatever they want and deprive yourself of what you want.  Love sees beyond such zero-sum dualities to a deeper level where everyone can have something better than what they even initially desired.  Seeing this, we naturally work towards it.  The more genuine our love, the clearer will be this special wisdom.  The clearer we see how peace and mutual benefit can be achieved, the more effectively we will be able to communicate the possibilities to our “enemy” and the more likely they will go along.  We will then cease to be enemies and instead become partners. 

Ultimately, love can destroy all “enemies” because we cease to impute such a term.  An enemy is one who harms us.  But with love, those who seek to harm us are viewed as incredibly precious because through them we can train in purification, patience, giving, the moral discipline of restraint, etc.  Without them, it is incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to train in such things.  Love for all beings actually makes it impossible for anybody to harm us, even if they try.  No matter what they do to us, we receive benefit.  Such is the power of love.

Those who have greater fortune than us normally give rise to jealousy within our mind.  We see all that they have, find ourselves more deserving, and wish we had these things instead.  The cruel truth is jealousy creates the cause to be separated from the object of your jealousy.  For example, if a boyfriend is very jealous every time their girlfriend talks with another guy, the girlfriend will grow tired of it and eventually leave him.  Rejoicing in other’s good fortune, in contrast, creates the karmic causes to obtain whatever good fortune we rejoice in.  So it is precisely because we want these things that we should not be jealous, but instead rejoice in the good fortune of those who have them. 

Finally, there are some people in this world who have a unique power of make us upset.  Sadly, it is usually those people who are closest to us, such as our partner, kids, co-workers, or extended family.  Because they have bothered us so often in the past, it only takes the slightest thing done by them to throw us completely off balance.  We have an extremely short fuse with these people, and even their laugh annoys us.  All this comes from the bad habit of inappropriate attention to their faults.  Focusing on the faults of others feeds our anger.  Focusing on the qualities of others starves our anger.  With some people, we have been focusing on their faults for so long it is a deeply ingrained habit.  When we think about them, we get this running internal narrative about how awful they are.  Just as rejoicing in the good qualities of others creates the causes to have those good qualities for ourself, so too criticizing others creates the causes for ourself to have the faults we criticize in others.  We are quite literally transforming ourselves into our own worst enemy. 

There is frankly only one way to break this habit:  conscientious effort over a long period of time.  When we find ourselves dwelling on the faults of others, we try recall how we are just feeding our anger and creating the causes to become equally faulty.  We then choose to stop doing that and instead to try to appreciate the good qualities of the other person.  We just keep doing this again and again until it becomes our new habit.  My grandmother, who lived to 105, said there are two secrets to her long life:  first, she never thinks anything bad about anyone ever; and second, when she plays cards, she “plays for blood!”  You do not want to play cards with my grandmother, but we would be wise to emulate her attitude towards others.