Abandoning Dharma. 

We incur this downfall if we criticize any of Buddha’s teachings, declaring that they are not Buddhadharma and therefore should not be practiced.  We do not incur this downfall if we set aside some instructions for the time being because we do not see their relevance to our lives or they seem too difficult for our current level.  Buddha gave over 84,000 instructions and Geshe-la has written many many commentaries to Buddha’s teachings.  So clearly we work gradually with the instructions, incorporating and synthesizing their meaning in our lives over time until eventually we feel as if we practice – directly or indirectly – every single instruction every single day.  But it can decades before we feel this to be the case.

We also are not abandoning the Dharma if we used to go to every festival and to every teaching, but for whatever reason we no longer do so.  Karma changes and so it is normal that our ability to attend certain events will also evolve and change over time.  But we do incur this downfall if we come to some definite conclusions, “Buddha was definitely wrong about this.” 

Gen-la Losang said it does not matter how many people come to our centers, it only matters how many go away with a happy mind.  He said those who go away with a happy mind are actually more important than those who stay at the center for years for the simple reason that there are more of them!  If people go away having appreciated some point and it makes some positive impression on their mind, even if they never come back, a very powerful karmic seed will have been placed on their mind which can be activated in future lives in the form of them coming to the center and staying (even if only for a little longer than last time).  This is one of the reasons why the International Temples Project is such genius.  Busloads full of school children and tourists come visit the temples all the time, see the Buddhas and leave thinking, “hey, those Buddhists are kinda cool.”  Who is to say that the people who stay in this life were not the tourists of a previous life? 

The reality is there are many many people who come to our centers, attend classes for a shorter or longer amount of time, but then they move on.  It is very easy for the people who remain at the center or for the people who run the center to become attached to people coming to the center and then to be unhappy when people leave.  There have been many examples of people in centers making those who think about leaving feel guilty like they are abandoning the Dharma, they are breaking their vajra commitments, etc., etc., etc.  Of course the over-enthusiastic administrator or practitioner thinks they are helping the other person by saying such things, but in reality they are sabotaging that person’s spiritual future and causing the tradition to develop a reputation of being like a cult. 

The Dharma is like a diamond, like the sun, and like a medicinal tree.  Any amount is good.  Just because more is better doesn’t mean having only some is bad.  If we resort to spiritual manipulations to keep people coming to our center, it may work in the short run but the person will eventually come to resent coming.  This resentment will build in their mind and their view of the center and the tradition will sour.  Their mind will grow increasingly negative until eventually they leave altogether.  But instead of leaving with a happy mind towards the teachings and the center, they will leave with a bitter taste in their mouth, or worse.  Let’s be honest with ourselves, there are more than a few stories of where things like this have happened in the past.  If we can’t acknowledge our mistakes, we are certainly doomed to repeat them.  The good news is I have been with the tradition for several decades now, and I can say without a doubt that every year we get a little bit better about not making a total mess of things!  J  Most of these old ways are a thing of the past, but residuals do remain.  Of course we can’t control what other people and other centers do, but we do have a certain say over what we do and what our own local center does.

If we are an administrator of a local center, I think we need to be very careful when people approach us with problems they might be having with the center.  There has been so much external venom thrown our way, that it is very easy to allow our own sensitivities about some internal unhealed wounds to cause us to overreact, become defensive and act unskillfully when people do approach us.  It is very easy for major conflicts and power struggles to start and it can quickly poison the environment of a center with a cost to all.  It is perfectly possible that the person approaches us in an unskillful way, getting upset and angry and accusatory, but if we are a leader in a local center then presumably we have more experience with the Dharma and it seems to me it is incumbent upon us to respond in a constructive manner that doesn’t make the situation worse.  If we welcome their criticism and have an open, honest and sincere conversation with them where we admit our mistakes and clarify any misunderstandings without defensiveness, then our living embodiment of putting the teachings into practice will dispel far better than any words we might say any misconceptions the other person might be harboring.  We should say thank you, we apologize, and we should we show a willingness to learn.

Even if in the end the other person leaves over the issue, at least they will go away thinking we handled the situation with integrity and forthrightness.  They may disagree, but they will be less likely to reject us, and therefore they will harbor no ill will or cling tightly to what could be wrong views.

Abandoning the Mahayana. 

This downfall is incurred if we reject any Mahayana scripture claiming that it is not Buddha’s teachings.  It also occurs if we propagate views that contradict the Dharma and encourage others to practice such false teachings.

For most of us, it is highly unlikely that we would reject some Mahayana scripture claiming that it is not Buddha’s teachings.  We have been explained the lineage of the teachings, and either we believe it or we think it is some elaborate lie Geshe-la has concocted.  To my knowledge, despite all the criticism that has been lodged against the NKT over the years, nobody has ever disputed the lineage of the teachings. 

But we are far more susceptible to the other means of breaking this vow, namely propagating false views and encouraging others to practice them.  Every time I hit submit on this blog, I run the risk of doing this!  Every time a teacher teaches, they run the risk of doing this.  Every time any one of us speaks about the Dharma, we run the risk of doing this.  Understanding this, some people fall into the extreme of thinking the only safe thing to do is to repeat exactly what Geshe-la said, and they get very nervous anytime somebody says something that they can’t directly trace back to some direct quote by Geshe-la.  This is an extreme because we are encouraged to contemplate and meditate on the Dharma, not just parrot it.  We need to transform what we read and listen to into our own understanding and personal experience.  If Geshe-la didn’t want us to express the Dharma in our own words, then why would he have us discuss the Dharma in our centers or why would he train people to be teachers instead of just make available on the internet his books and teachings?

If we understand being a Dharma parrot is an extreme, how do we protect ourselves then against falling into the other extreme of inventing our own lineage?  I think the answer is implicit in the way this vow is worded “…not contradict…”  I once had a lengthy conversation with a few other teachers about this question in between sessions at an ITTP one year.  What I am about to say should in no way be considered any sort of official answer to this question, but it is an accurate representation of our best faith answer to the question.  We said when we have some understanding of the Dharma that we haven’t read anywhere in Geshe-la’s books, and we are not sure whether our new understanding is correct or not, we can perform the following tests:

1. Does this new understanding contradict in any way any known instructions?
2. Does this new understanding naturally and logically follow from contemplating the interactions and implications of all known instructions?
3. Have we made over a sufficiently long period of time a request to Dorje Shugden, our Dharma Protector, “If this new understanding is not correct, please sabotage it thoroughly within my mind”?
4. Does this new understanding take us “up the mountain” (as opposed to being a correct, but ultimately distracting side path)?
5. Does this new understanding survive spiritual debate with Sangha friends we respect?

If any new understanding can survive these five tests, then we can have a pretty high degree of confidence that it is at least not wrong for taking the next step.  Geshe-la explained the meaning of the oral instructions are revealed primarily through blessings.  He encourages us to “make our own commentary.”  We contemplate the teachings, receive blessings, and come to some “understanding” of the meaning.  We then work with those meanings, refining them over time, receiving more blessings, contemplating more deeply, and gradually refine our commentary until it is exactly perfect.  This is our understanding of the meaning.  We actually never stop this process until we are a Buddha, and even then, we may adapt our commentary to the changing karmic dispositions of how people process received information.  If we do, however, share our new understandings with others we should make explicitly clear that what we are saying is our own personal understanding after having contemplated the Dharma and made clear that others should not consider what we think to be definitive in any way.  They should investigate matter for themselves.  Of course it would grow tiresome to say this in front of every sentence, so it is really more an issue of our “style” in how we present things.  If we pretend we are some great scholar or yogi and make definitive proclamations about the “truth”, then we are in grave danger of making a right-darned fool of ourselves!  But if instead, we say things like “it seems to me,” and “from my perspective,” or “I don’t know if this is right, but…” etc., then there is little danger of people misunderstanding. 

A final way, of course, we can abandon the Mahayana is to stop practicing or to put some sort of explicit limitation on who we will generate love, compassion and bodhichitta for.  This doesn’t mean we are breaking the vow if we have not yet generated a qualified universal compassion, but it does mean we break the vow if we say “I will attain enlightenment for all beings except this person.” 

Stealing property from the Three Jewels. 

We incur this downfall if we steal anything that has been offered to the Three Jewels.  Besides the obvious meaning of embezzling funds or actually stealing something from a Dharma center or some practitioner, this vow has many more subtle implications.

While it is true that all Dharma centers say, “nobody will be refused for an inability to pay,” if we do make a commitment to pay a certain amount and then fail to follow up on that commitment, it is stealing.  The administrative directors of all centers will say the same thing, “do what you can afford, and don’t worry.”  All we need to do is discuss our situation with them and reach an agreement about what we can commit to, even if it is only $1 or nothing, but we will help clean up afterwards, something.  But if we fail to do this and sneak in hoping we can get away with not paying, and then afterwards think we got lucky that nobody stopped us, then this too is stealing.  If we copy correspondence recordings we don’t have a right to and didn’t pay for, this too can be stealing.  If we use any property (physical or intellectual) of the three jewels without asking their permission and if we could reasonably suspect that they wouldn’t want us to do so, then this too is stealing.  If we are in doubt about this and are not willing to ask if it is OK for us to use their property because we are afraid they might give us an answer we don’t want to hear, then this too is a form of stealing. 

Stealing from the three jewels is really a foolish thing to do.  Since the three jewels use everything they have for the sake of all living beings in all their lives, stealing from them is karmically equivalent to stealing from all living beings in the worst possible way, namely stealing, even if only on the margin, their access to the Dharma. 

Not accepting others’ apologies. 

This vow means if someone who has harmed us later apologizes and we refuse to accept their apology, preferring to harbor a grudge, we incur a root downfall.  Accepting other’s apologies is a fundamental component of defusing anger in this world.  Anger is our greatest enemy.  It destroys everything that is good, and it has the power to seize our heart and never let go.  We have so little time in this world with a precious human life that we can’t waste even a moment of it harboring anger.  When other’s apologize and we fail to accept their apology, then the heart of the other person hardens and their anger returns.  If we accept their apology and then offer our own, it enables them to let go of their anger.  This is an act of supreme compassion, and one that both Jesus and Ghandi praised highly. 

Sometimes people will apologize to us without using words.  It can sometimes just be glancing at us in a certain way or sending a smiley face through the internet. 

One common mistake a lot of people make is they judge other people’s apologies as inadequate, and so therefore don’t accept them.  We ask questions like, “you say you are sorry, but what exactly are you sorry for?”  And if the other person doesn’t give the answer we seek, we then don’t accept their apology.  Many times people will say, “I’m sorry” with an angry tone, and they are not really sorry about what they did, they just wish there wasn’t this problem with you and they want it to go away.  We often fail to reject such apologies out of hand.  But once again, if we don’t accept even this most meager of apologies, the other person will quickly revert back into their anger.  If, instead, we accept such apologies and once again offer our own, then it gives the situation an opportunity to defuse itself. 

We might object, “but the other person isn’t really sorry, so if we accept their hollow apology it lets them off the hook and they never then generate real regret for their past deeds.”  Here we need to be skillful.  First, it is not up to us to play God and try manipulate the other person into thinking certain things.  All we can really do is look at our own mind in the mirror or Dharma and try to overcome our own delusions.  It is not up to us to withhold the virtue of not accepting somebody’s apology because we think they were not sincere enough.  Second, if we do accept their apology, then it helps disarm the tension and it opens up the space for them to look deeper within their own behavior.  Third, often times it is precisely because their apology was hollow that our sincerely accepting it as genuine will have such a big effect because the difference between where their mind is at and where our mind is at is so great. 

If we truly think it is counter-productive to them to accept their apology the way it was given, then at a minimum we can acknowledge that the other person regrets the fact that you are fighting about whatever the issue is.  You can say something along the lines of, “I am sorry that we are fighting,” or “I am sorry for my contribution to this being a fight.”  It can happen that the other person is completely wrong on the substance of the issue, but that should not distract us from our own role in transforming the disagreement into a fight. 

Just as it is important to accept people’s apologies, it is also important to know how to accept others’ apologies.  Generally speaking, when we accept somebody else’s apology we should make sure three things are present:  (1) we express thanks to the other person for having the maturity to apologize, (2) we make some expression of regret for our own mistakes in the situation, especially those things that we think trouble the other person the most, and (3) we offer a shared laugh with the other person about how absurd we sometimes get.  All three of these are very important.  When we express appreciation for the effort the other person has made by apologizing, we reinforce that tendency and so make it more likely that the dynamic can continue in a positive direction.  When we admit and apologize for our own mistakes it enables the other person to let go of their anger towards us for what we have done wrong.  This is really important because most people are not perfect, so when they make the effort to apologize they expect us to do the same.  Perhaps they shouldn’t have such expectations, but it is quite a normal expectation to have.  When we fail to also apologize, then their anger can quickly return and they wind up walking back the apology they just made.  Having a shared laugh with the other person is in many ways the most important step because it eliminates any last residuals of resentment and it creates the space for things to get back on good footing. 

We continue our discussion of the downfall “not giving wealth or Dharma.”  In the last post, we discussed not giving wealth, in this post we turn to not giving Dharma.

In terms of giving the Dharma, as bodhisattvas, we should be no different than the greatest philanthropists of history, like Bill Gates.  The difference is we become spiritual philanthropists.  We actively seek to acquire as much inner spiritual wealth of realizations as we possibly can because we are so eager to give it away.  The mind of bodhichitta is almost no different than the mind of a philanthropist, the only real difference being the type of wealth we seek to acquire.  With such a mind, we start to view our lives completely differently.  We develop a new bottom line for our life.  When we are confronted with the various challenges of life, we see them as opportunities for us to learn the wisdom necessary to navigate through such situations.  We think of all the others who confront similar situations but don’t know what to do, and so we apply ourselves fully to learn how to navigate through the situation with wisdom with the intention to then share that wisdom with others on the other side. 

Venerable Tharchin explained that our gaining realizations with a wish to share them with others actually creates the causes for those who have similar problems to come into our karmic orbit so that we can help them.  He said growing Dharma centers, for example, is no mystery.  If the people in the center gain the realizations for knowing how to transform the typical daily lives of the people in a given region, then those realizations will act as a karmic magnet attracting people to find the center.  Of course we still conventionally have to get the publicity out there, but whether that publicity works depends on whether or not those seeing it receive blessings to be inspired to come.  These blessings karmically radiate out from the collective realizations of the Sangha in the center.  This does not necessarily mean that there will be large numbers of people who come, but what it does mean is large realizations will be transferred.  Venerable Tharchin also said that every person who comes into a Dharma center should correctly be viewed as the future holder of the lineage.  There will come a time in the future of each of us when we ourselves will be the lineage holder, when we ourselves will be the portal between this world and the pure worlds of the Buddhas.  So even if only one person comes, that person has standing behind them all living beings.  Mark Zukerberg, the founder of Facebook, said every person on earth is no more than seven friends away (friend of a friend of a friend, etc.).  We are all quite close to one another.  Through each person, we ripple outwards quite quickly to everyone.  Infusing even one person with realizations literally heals the whole world, even if only on the margin.  Again, Venerable Tharchin says for every step we take towards enlightenment, we bring all beings with us in proportion to their karmic connection to us.  Every being is only at most seven friends away… 

Our giving of the Dharma is not limited to those who are Dharma teaches and it is not limited to helping out people in the Sangha.  George Takei (formerly Sulu on Star Trek, but now a social media icon) said something to the effect that social media is “folk wisdom and pictures of cats.”  People are starving for wisdom.  People know wisdom when they hear/read it, and it naturally speaks to their heart.  We may acquire our wisdom through the language of Dharma, but we are by no means limited to the language of Dharma for expressing the wisdom we realize.  Just as there are different languages in the world, such as English, French, and Chinese, so too there are different cultural dialects for understanding the world.  Economists understand the world through the language and concepts of economics, physicists understand the world through the language and concepts of physics, musicians and artists understand the world through the language and concepts of music and art, etc.  People in the South have their own values, idioms and cultural references which is different than those in the North, but they all have different language sets and patterns for making sense of the world. 

If we are to give the Kadam Dharma our Spiritual Guide has given us to the people of this modern world, we need to learn all these different languages, and more importantly we need to learn how to express the wisdom of the Kadam Dharma using the languages and cultural dialects that people speak and use.  If the Dharma is true, it must be true in all circumstances, so a football game can teach the lamrim just as well as anything else.  What discussion of politics can not be concluded with the disadvantages of self-cherishing?  If we have Dharma realizations in our mind, and we learn the about the world around us, we will then be able to express the Dharma through the myriad languages (linguistic and cultural) of the world and thereby give the Dharma to all the people of this world.  By finding the Dharma in everything, whether it is sports, politics, movies, our work environment, our family, our school, whatever, then we will learn how to express the wisdom of the Dharma on the field, in politics, at the movies, at work, in our family, and at our schools.  And we will be able to do so without being all weird and awkward starting every sentence with “Geshe-la says” and others thinking we are some religious fanatic.  But if we lack the ability to transmit wisdom using non-Dharma words and examples, then we may know a lot of Dharma, but those realizations are nearly useless except for the few others who happen to speak the same “language.” 

Every day we should request Dorje Shugden, “please forge me into the Buddha I need to become.”  Dorje Shugden knows who we have the karma with to be their spiritual guide.  He knows what realizations they need us to gain so that we can help them.  So we request him to emanate a life for us that is a representative reflection of the life of those for whom we are destined to help.  We request him to give us their problems now so that we can learn how to use the Dharma to overcome them.  We then dedicate that the conditions be arranged for us to share the wisdom we have gained.  This is Dorje Shugden’s job.  This is what he does.  This is what he can do for us, if only we ask.  Once we make this request, our life transforms itself into the actualization of bodhichitta.  We view every situation as emanated for us to learn what we need to learn to be able to help others with similar problems in the future.  Dealing with a difficult boss or helping our spouse in their battle with cancer all start having a higher purpose and a higher meaning.  They will still be difficult to go through, but we will do so with the courageous mind of a bodhisattva knowing that the harder it is, the more people we will help in the future with the wisdom we gain.  Our life becomes a meaningful one full of giving Dharma, regardless of whether or not we are a Dharma teacher.  How wonderful!

Not giving wealth or Dharma

In this post I will discuss not giving wealth, and in the next post I will discuss not giving Dharma.

This vow says if someone asks for material or spiritual help, and we are in a position to oblige but, out of miserliness, refuse we incur a root downfall.  When Geshe-la would send Gen-la Losang to India to learn something, he would always give him some money so that he could give it to the beggars.  I try remind myself of this when I walk along the street and see beggars myself. 

There have been many studies which have shown that American social attitudes towards poverty are quite different than they are in Europe.  In the U.S., the attitude is very simple to understand:  it’s all the poor person’s fault.  Americans reason, “they are lazy or they made stupid choices and so now they must suffer the consequences.  If I help them out, I am not actually helping them, rather I am creating incentives for them to continue to be lazy and make bad choices.  Let their suffering be the encouragement they need to get to work and make different choices.”  There are, of course, people in Europe who think in similar ways.  The point is such thinking is a major obstacle to our practicing the perfection of giving and this mentality is likewise a major contributor to our incurring this downfall the bodhisattva vows.

My father, when I was growing up, would always tell the story of “give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for life.”  There are three problems with this argument.  First, usually the people who say it also don’t teach the man how to fish.  They instead do nothing but make this statement.  Second, if the man dies of starvation before he learns how to fish, then it won’t work.  And third, this argument presupposes that work is available for all those who are willing to take it.  Since I am an Economist by training, I want to just say a few words about this last point because it is something many many people believe, and based upon this wrong understanding of Economics, we use that as ipso facto proof for our original hypothesis that the only reason why the person is poor is because of their own bad choices.  On the basis of this conclusion, we feel justified in not giving. 

Why is this wrong?  There is a fundamental axiom of macroeconomics which most people don’t understand, and it is this:  your spending is my income and my spending is your income.  When a recession hits, like the one after the 2008 financial crisis, then people spend much less.  When they spend less, they buy less things and so the people who sell things lose their jobs.  But who are these people who sell things?  It is all us.  We each are contributing in some way to the economy (selling something, usually our services) and we are all buying in some way.  If everybody starts spending less, then thousands and indeed millions of jobs simply disappear.  People who were working can no longer find work, even though they very much want to work.  It is not these people’s fault that the economy slipped into recession, but they suffer the consequences nonetheless.  People who were living just above the poverty line suddenly find themselves below it, people who were barely off of the streets suddenly find themselves homeless.  And generally speaking, the first jobs to go are those held by the people who are most economically vulnerable.  In Europe, there is a safety net, but in America there is basically none.  Whole families can find themselves on the street, met by a country that blames them and shuns them.  They then feel helpless and desperate, turn to crime or drugs, and then get blamed for that too.  If we understand that the business cycle is no different than the weather (though more unpredictable), we realize there is a growing season and there is a dying season, and sometimes there is a dark, cold winter.  We can hardly blame the most vulnerable in our society for an economic cycle completely beyond their control. 

So the answer to my father’s parable is simple:  teach a man to fish, and while he is learning, feed him a fish.  In other words, give.  Now it is true that we need to be skillful that we don’t make our giving create a dependency.  There is some truth to the argument above, and unskillful giving can lead to the problems the critics cite.  But just because giving can be done unskillfully does not mean we shouldn’t still strive to give to others in skillful ways.  Again, teach the man to fish, and while he is learning, feed him a fish. 

Why are there some unbelievably rich people in the world?  The reason is because these people have given a lot in the past and that karma is ripening now.  It is no coincidence that two of the most famous rich people, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, are as rich as they are.  Both of them basically give away all the wealth that they make.  Why are they rich now?  Because they gave before.  Why will they be rich again in their future lives?  Because they are giving now.  Those who are rich and not giving will know terrible poverty in the future.  Those who are poor now but give extensively from what little they have will be incredibly rich in the future.  I know somebody who is quite rich and gives in absolute terms quite generously, but in percentage terms they give almost nothing.  I know somebody else who has almost nothing and gives in absolute terms very little, but in percentage terms they give a tremendous amount.  Our karma doesn’t care about the absolute value of our giving, it responds only to the percentage of our giving.  There is no doubt who is karmically speaking giving more, and who will enjoy such fruits in the future. 

One of my teachers once provocatively said, “when you give, you should give so much it hurts.”  Some might call this extreme, but I call it wise.   How can we do this without falling into an extreme?  Gen Tharchin explains that having control over and possession of material things is irrelevant.  The question is whether we impute “mine” on any of them.  If we do, then our control over or possession of these things will burn up our merit like a blazing karmic bon fire.  If instead we impute “others’ things” onto the things we have control over or possession of, we will accumulate merit as vast as space.  In other words, we can mentally give away everything we have to others by simply changing our imputation regarding our possessions, namely we think they now belong to all others.  This will change our relationship with everything we have in our life.  Some things we will realize we have no valid reason to hold on to and we will see how others can better use out of these things than we can, so we actually physically give them away.  Some things we will see we need for our basic survival, but we consume these things to keep us alive and healthy so that we have the strength to be of service to others.  Some other things we will see how by us keeping them now we will be able to give even more to others in the future, and so out of a wish to do so we will maintain control over the thing.  Some other things we will have to change our reasons for doing them or buying them so that we are doing it for the sake of others.  There will be some things for which we are very attached and it will be hard to even mentally impute “others’ things” onto them.  There, we have to do some work.

But the point is, there is nothing we can’t at least mentally give away today.  My house, I mentally give to my family.  My money, I mentally give to the store owners when I buy things.  My body, I can give it to my employer 10 hours a day, to my kids several hours a day, and to all living beings when I engage in Dharma practices.  My mind, I can give it to the beneficiaries of my every action.  My time, I can give it to those I serve.  When I take the time to learn new things, I am giving my time to all those in the future I will help with my newly acquired skills and knowledge.  Any power we might have, we can give it to those we can protect with it.  If we never impute “mine” on anything under our control, we can be phenomenally wealthy and powerful and yet still be only giving.  In fact, our becoming richer and our becoming more generous become exactly the same wish and exactly the same action.

The Bodhisattva vows include extensive advice on how we should conduct our daily lives by transforming all our actions into the Bodhisattvas way of life.  By putting them into practice we shall gradually complete the Bodhisattva’s training and eventually attain the supreme bliss of Buddhahood.

Just as the refuge vows primarily function to maintain the uninterrupted continuum of our Buddhist practice between now and when we attain enlightenment, and the pratimoksha vows primarily function to maintain the uninterrupted continuum of our path to liberation, so too our practice of the Bodhisattva vows creates the karma to enable us to maintain an uninterrupted continuum of our Mahayana path between now and our eventual enlightenment.  In other words, we create the causes to again and again refind a pure Mahayana path without interruption until we attain the final goal.  If we have wisdom, we realize the biggest thing we should fear it not non-virtue and delusion (though those are terribly scary), but our biggest fear should be the fear of losing the path.  If we keep refinding the path in life after life, we can gradually purify all our negativities.  But if we don’t refind the path, we will be lost for what could be incalculably long periods of time where our suffering will know no bounds.  If we genuinely fear this, we will realize just how precious our vows are, and how precious our Bodhisattva vows are in particular. 

If we incur a root downfall we actually break our Bodhisattva vows.  To incur a root downfall (except for the 9^th and 18^th) four binding factors must be present:

1. Not regarding the action as wrong
2. Not wishing to abstain from the action in the future
3. Rejoicing in the action
4. Having no sense of shame or consideration for others.

Praising ourself and scorning others. 

This downfall is complete only if someone hears and understands our words.  We incur this if we praise ourself with the motivation of deceiving others so that we might receive gifts or to enhance our reputation.  It also is incurred if we criticize others with the wish to hurt them.

This is something many of us do all the time.  In modern times, it is actually quite rare for us to physically harm others – there are too many social conventions against such behavior.  I do wonder, though, whether we have compensated for this with an increase in the amount of hurtful speech we engage in.  If our minds are just as critical and angry as they have always been (and a case can be made why in degenerate times it is actually worse), and we can conventionally no longer express this mind physically, it only stands to reason that there has been a corresponding increase in the amount of our hurtful speech.

And we see this everywhere we go.  A large number of the shows on TV these days are “reality TV shows.”  What makes for good reality TV is outrageously hurtful speech among the contestants.  Virtually all the news programming we see on TV or hear on the radio these days is one constant stream of critical and scornful speech.  In political discourse now, there is almost no discussion of the merits of the different policy options, everything is about personal attacks on the other person.  In many of our social circumstances, the price of entry into a given social group is agreeing with the dominant negative view of that group towards others.  We say hurtful things to show these people we are with them, and when we do, they then accept us into their group.  We so want to belong to other groups, that we are ready to commit all sorts of hurtful things just to feel like we belong.  This is very foolish.  It is better to be a group of one but think and say nothing bad about anybody than to belong to a group where what binds them is their mutual hatred or cynicism of another. 

Why is all this negativity so popular?  Because it reflects how our mind naturally works.  Psychologists have estimated that a negative opinion of someone or something will spread 10 times faster than a positive opinion.  In our own speech, we are constantly putting other people down in one way or another, at work, at home and in our social life.  When others around us say critical things of others and we agree, or even just nod our head, we are contributing to this storm of negativity.  When we laugh at jokes made at other people’s expense or agree with the rhetorical broadsides lodged against those around us, karmically it is the same as us using such hurtful speech ourselves.  Venerable Tharchin explains that just as rejoicing creates the causes to acquire the good qualities we rejoice in, so too being critical, scornful or judgmental of others creates the causes to acquire the bad qualities we criticize!  Seen in this way, our negative attitude is sowing the seeds for us to, quite frankly, be a horrible person.  We see a world filled with horrible people now, if we don’t change our ways, in the future we will be the sum of all horrible-ness we see.

We likewise are constantly praising ourselves.  If we check, we will see that virtually every time we put somebody else down or judge somebody else even in the slightest way, we are at the same time – even if only indirectly – affirming that we are not like what we are criticizing.  We are implying by our speech that we are somehow better than the person we are criticizing.  So even if we are not directly making boastful statements about ourselves, every time we put others down, we are indirectly doing so.  At work or at home, we quite often try to take credit for our good deeds, and even sometimes the good deeds of others.  When recounting what we do, we quite often exaggerate how hard everything was to create the impression that we have done such amazing work.  We easily feel put aside when others don’t appreciate the value of our contributions.  On Facebook, we check and see how many ‘likes’ our comments get and we compare it to others.  Even when we put ourselves down, we often exaggerate what we say in a sub-conscious effort to get the other person to say, “no, no, you are not that bad.”  If I am honest, almost everything I say is directly or indirectly saying how or why I am so much better than everyone else.  And we all do this.  How can I say this?  Because we all suffer from a terrible sense of our own self-importance.  If this is what we think, then our speech is going to reflect this one way or the other. 

Praising ourself doesn’t in any way increase our good qualities.  Most other people are not stupid and they are not fooled by our boasts, in fact they often think how pompous we are.  When we see people who think too highly of themselves and of their accomplishments, we may be polite to their face, but inside we are being quite critical and generating the wish to knock the other person down a peg or two.  A very common thing in Dharma circles is for somebody to mention somebody else in a positive light, and we will say, “yeah, that person is great,” but inside we are thinking “yeah, but…” and then our mind immediately races to something negative about the other person.  We almost never have a genuine good thought about another person.  I would say that karmically speaking praising ourself actually depletes our merit and good qualities. 

So what should we do?  In my own speech, I try live by three rules:  First, never say anything bad about anyone ever.  I don’t always succeed at this, but I do try.  My Grandmother, who lived to be 105 years old, basically never says anything bad about anybody.  The closest I have heard her say anything bad about anybody was during the first Iraq war, and she said, “Saddam Hussein, ehhhh, …”  And then she cut herself off.  Second, I try to never make any comparisons – ever.  When I make any comparisons between people, invariably I am putting somebody down.  When I make comparisons between myself and others, I invariably develop pride, competitiveness, or jealousy.  But if I never compare, then these minds don’t have as much occasion to arise.  Third, I try to never miss a chance to praise somebody for some quality I see in them.  Of course we have to be skillful with this.  Your compliments should be genuine and well grounded.  If somebody doesn’t actually have a good quality and you praise it, they usually know you are not being sincere and it just makes things worse.  Likewise, you can’t do this too much where it becomes obnoxious or uncomfortable for the other person.  But even though you might not be able to say all the compliments you would like to, mentally you can still think them. 

The bottom line is simple:  if criticizing others creates the causes for us to acquire the faults we criticize and praising others creates the causes for us to acquire the qualities we praise, it is pretty clear what we need to do.

Not to pretend to have good qualities or hide our faults without a special, pure intention.

There was a time within the tradition when it was quite common for people to pretend to be better than they actually were, especially if they were teachers or key officers in a center.  Many many people did this for what seemed like a good reason.  They allowed others to refer to them as “Buddhas,” and “having miracle powers,” etc., because they thought doing so helped the student develop faith, and with faith they would then gain more realizations.  So they allowed such views to develop among the students.  The results of this were predictably disastrous.

For the students, it tied them in all sorts of really strange knots where the teacher would be making some fairly obvious mistakes, but the student would have to try say it was actually correct because they needed to “maintain pure view.”  This caused students to repress their criticisms of their teacher, which far from increasing their faith served as a cancer gradually destroying any and all faith.  For the teachers, this was likewise terrible because they had to keep up this charade of being some holy being so they too had to repress their delusions (which just made them worse) and it deprived them of having any refuge of being able to go to their sangha friends when they had problems.  There were quite a few very high profile teachers who self-destructed due to this dynamic.  For those who were neither teachers nor regular students, this all seemed very strange and cult-like.  They were not fooled by the teacher’s pretentions so they had no faith, and seeing the slavish and strange sychophantry of the students made people think they had found some cult. 

Probably a good 20 years ago, Geshe-la tried to put an end to this bizarre dynamic.  He explained that our local teachers should be viewed as Sangha jewels, not Buddha jewels.  This was a monumental change, because up until that time it was standard practice to try view our local teachers as Buddha jewels.  He explained that when our teachers appear to make mistakes, we should go speak with them explaining our view with an open mind, and then through a healthy discussion either the teacher would realize their mistake or the student would develop a better understanding by seeing the teacher’s actions through a different lens.  There is still within the NKT some residual of this old way of doing things, but it is quickly fading away.  Now we are all practitioners doing our best and having a good laugh at ourselves and our own delusions.

This wrong view emerged from a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to maintain pure view.  Pure view does not mean we view everything as perfect on the side of the object itself, rather it means we learn how to view everything – the good, the bad and the ugly – in a perfect way.  Good, bad, and ugly are still good, bad and ugly, but no matter what is appearing it can be perfectly beneficial for our practice.  Viewing everything, even mistakes, as teachings enables us to receive perfect benefit from whatever appears.  This is viewing things in a perfect way.  So we can still call a spade a spade (say what is wrong is in fact wrong), but identifying it as wrong is not a problem for us because it teaches us something valuable.  If we view everything in a perfect way, then for us everything will be perfect, not because what is happening is perfect on the side of the object but because we know how to receive perfect benefit from whatever arises.  Pure view exists only on the side of the mind (or at least it starts there). 

Not to criticize those who have entered the Mahayana

Somebody who has entered the Mahayana is somebody who has committed themselves to becoming a Buddha for the sake of all living beings.  They are like a spiritual prince or princess destined to one day take the throne.  Just as we naturally treat with respect all those who we know will go on to become incredibly powerful, even if they are still a child now, how much more should we show respect to those who will go on to become the highest beings of all, fully enlightened Buddhas.  Ultimately, of course, we don’t know who has or who has not entered the Mahayana, so just to be safe we should assume everybody has and treat them all accordingly!

Criticism (of the negative sort) is a form of anger.  Anger is a wish to harm.  Harming an ordinary being is bad, but harming a Bodhisattva is karmically the same as harming all living beings because if you harm somebody who is trying to help everybody it is the same as indirectly harming everybody.  It is said that one moment of anger directed towards a bodhisattva creates the causes for countless lifetimes in the lower realms.

And let’s get real here:  we are criticizing the people in our centers all the time.  It is rare indeed (indeed almost unheard of) for there to not be some sort of tension or drama in a Dharma center.  There is a tremendous amount of judgment that takes place (why are they so deluded, why don’t they ever do work for the center, etc., etc., etc.).  If we check, there is usually in a Dharma center a fair amount of talking badly behind other people’s backs.  We know enough to know not to be critical of others to their faces, but then when they are gone, we share our real feelings with some people we feel we relate to.  Sometimes we are critical of our teachers and we encourage others to share our negative view.  If we were sick, we would not intentionally go sneeze in somebody’s face, so if we are sick with delusion, why do we run to go infect others with our negative views? 

This does not mean we should never say anything and pretend that everything is fine when it is not.  We should of course go speak with people when we have differences of opinion in a constructive effort to resolve them.  We all know the difference between being critical of somebody and making an honest effort to resolve differences. 

Another common transgression of this vow is when we are critical of those in other traditions, especially those that are critical of us and our tradition.  These are often people who have also entered the Mahayana, and it is just as much a transgression to criticize them as it is to criticize somebody within our own tradition.  It can be very hard to not be critical, especially when they are shunning us or saying we have joined some crazed cult or they speak to us with hurtful or divisive words.  Just because they are acting in deluded ways and not respecting their own vows does not give us license to do the same towards them.  Indeed, if we do so all we do is prove them right.  If we want to prove them wrong, then our actions need to be different.  We respond to criticism with understanding, wisdom, and respect. 

The objection may arise, but what about the protests that the NKT has done against the Dalai Lama’s policies?  We shout, “stop lying” and we lay bear all sorts of mistakes he is making.  Isn’t that a violation of this vow?  The short answer it can be if our motivation is delusion.  But if our motivation is the compassionate wish to protect him and his followers from the negative karma of criticizing us, then instead of it being a negative action it becomes a compassionate wrathful action.  This is not easy, I agree, but it is vital we get it right.  If we do not, then we will just be laying the seeds for others to criticize us again in the future.

Not to cause others to regret their virtuous actions

This can sometimes happen when somebody is particularly nice to somebody who is normally not so nice to others.  We think, “why are you being so nice to him when he is such a jerk to everyone else?  You are just encouraging him to treat others badly.” Another common form of this is when somebody is particularly generous to somebody else, especially if the person who does the giving is himself or herself not somebody who has a lot of means.  We think, “you shouldn’t give like that, you can’t afford it.”  While it is true we need to be wise with our giving and know when to practice the giving of keeping, in general we can’t afford to NOT give.  Sometimes we also transgress this when somebody goes out of their way to do a favor for somebody else, especially if their doing of a favor for somebody else somehow created some inconvenience for ourselves.  For example, they went to go pick somebody up and that made you wait for an extra 15 minutes. 

When we make people regret their virtues is harms both them and us.  It harms them because instead of being happy about their virtues, they start to think they are a sucker for being nice to others.  When they have regret for their virtues, it destroys the merit they have accumulated and makes it far less likely they will engage in virtue again in the future.  If they don’t engage in virtue, how will they ever be happy?  If we make them regret their virtues, we are condemning them to an unhappy future.  This also harms ourselves.  We all know that when we rejoice in other’s virtue, we accumulate a fraction of the virtue we rejoice in.  Through rejoicing we can accumulate a tremendous amount of virtue even if we ourselves do almost nothing.  But in exactly the same way, when we judge people as wrong for engaging in certain virtues we destroy our own merit from our own virtues.  If we criticize them, we create the causes for others to criticize us in the future when we engage in virtue, and as a result in the future we will develop regret for our virtues and become discouraged. 

A frequent, but more subtle form of transgression of this vow is to belittle others’ virtues as not being that big of a deal.  Quite often when we hear somebody being praised for something they did, internally we become jealous and start judging the other person for all that they do wrong.  We think, “yeah, what they did was great, but…” and we go on to list their faults.  Even if we just have this discussion in our own head, we still destroy our own merit and create the causes for others to judge us as well.  All this is extremely short-sighted.

Not to cheat or deceive our Preceptors or Spiritual Guides

There is nobody more kind in our life than our Spiritual Guides.  Our parents are extremely kind to us, but they are only interested in our welfare in this life alone.  Only our spiritual guide is primarily interested in helping us in all our future lives.  Since the duration of this life is highly uncertain, whereas the duration of our future lives is infinite, it is clear which is more important.  Even if others are concerned about our future lives, they don’t necessarily know the means by which we can secure happiness in our future lives.  But our Spiritual Guide does.  He has already provided us with everything we need to attain any spiritual goal we set for ourselves.  If we wish to avoid lower rebirth, he explains to us how.  If we wish to attain liberation, he explains to us how.  If we wish to attain the pure land or to attain enlightenment, he explains to us how. 

He not only explains these things to us, but he has arranged all the necessary conditions for our practice.  Without hardly any effort on our part, we have access to Dharma centers, Dharma books, sadhanas, festivals, everything.  He has laid at our feet everything we need to be a modern day bodhisattva, and all we need to do is pick it up and use it.  What Geshe-la has done with Manjushri center, we can do with our local centers.  In many ways, it is even easier for us because we are already starting with everything, whereas he had to start with nothing.

His greatest act of kindness to us is he is there to help us when we are in the greatest of need.  Later, when we are spiritually advanced, we will be able to receive teachings directly from Buddhas.  But right now, when our minds are dark and obscured, who is able to shine a light into our hearts?  Our Spiritual Guide.  He also blesses our mind, giving us the strength and wisdom we need to travel the path, joyfully and even easily.  When you think about it, it is impossible for anybody to be kinder to us than he is. 

Likewise our Dharma teachers at our local Dharma centers are just as kind.  A case can be made for why they are even kinder because we are only able to see Geshe-la very rarely, if at all, but our local teachers are with us all the time.  But any local teacher would say in reality they are doing nothing, that it is Geshe-la who works through them, so all credit goes to the Spiritual Guide.  Even if our local teacher grants us empowerments or vows, in reality it is our Spiritual Guide who is doing it through our local teacher.  Our local teacher is like a speaker connected to the spiritual stereo system of our Spiritual guide.

Why do I explain how kind our Spiritual Guide is?  To show how and why it is so terrible to cheat or deceive them.  To cheat or deceive somebody who is cruel or out to harm us is bad, but how inconceivably worse is it to cheat or deceive our Spiritual Guide who is so kind to us? 

What does it mean to cheat or deceive them?  Generally, if we are doing it, we know when it is wrong.  Any form of stealing or lying or deception would fall under this.  Ultimately, it is incredibly stupid to do.  First of all, it is impossible for him to be deceived, even if we try, because he is omniscient and so sees right through any of our deceptions.  Our local teacher we can perhaps deceive, but our Spiritual Guide (who is our real local teacher) can never be deceived.  Second, why would we want to deceive him?  He only wants to help us and he has only compassion for our shortcomings, so there is really no need to deceive him.

I think a far more common, but more subtle, form of breaking this vow is when we have pretentious pride with our Spiritual Guide.  I for one have a long history of being attached to what others think of me, especially what my spiritual teachers think of me.  For many many years (and even now, if I am honest), I try get my teachers to think I am better than I really am.  I do this because I think they will like me more if they think I am this great practitioner.  But actually, if I am so great, what need do they have to teach me?  So even if I am just trying to get them to give me more love, to pretend to be better than we really are is just counter-productive.  It is also, again, incredibly stupid to do.  Just as a doctor can only treat us effectively if we describe for them the symptoms we are actually suffering from, so too our teachers can only effectively help us if we describe for them honestly what is happening in our mind – humbly and honestly.

Another common form of deception that can take place is to exaggerate how great we supposedly think our local teacher is.  It can happen quite often that our local teachers are making all sorts of mistakes.  But because we think we are supposed to be maintaining pure view and we think it is disrespectful to talk to them about the mistakes they are making, we tell them how great they are when in reality we don’t think that at all.  This doesn’t help them.  It may coddle their ego, but how does it help them advance spiritually?  And how does it help us because we know it is not what we think.  Geshe-la says when we see our teachers making mistakes we need to approach them constructively explaining our perspective on their actions and asking them for clarification so we can better understand.  If they are wrong, they should then say, “thank you, you are right, I will try change this about me,” and if we are wrong, they should without defensiveness explain to us how our view is wrong at which point we learn something. 

Finally, in the context of this series of blog posts, it is a form of deception to pretend that we are taking our vows with the intention of practicing them, but in reality we do nothing about them and never really had any intention of doing better.  The first time we took our bodhisattva or refuge or Pratimoksha vows, for most of us it was a big deal, something we considered, something we discussed with our Sangha friends to make sure we were approaching it right.  But since then?  If others are anything like me, I have attended festival after festival, taking the vows again and again, and never really giving it a second thought.  In general, it is advisable before every festival or time when we are going to receive new vows that we make a point of examining the vows, seeing the different areas where we can do a little better next time, and then with a very specific motivation to do better, we retake the vows.  In this way, every month, every year our practice of the vows and commitments becomes a little bit more qualified. 

To accumulate merit and wisdom

To drive a car, you need two things:  gas and knowing how to get to where you want to go.  Gas is merit, knowing how to get to where you want to go is wisdom.  From a spiritual point of view, from where our mind is currently at to the city of enlightenment we are a long, long ways away.  The path there is also unknown to us because we have never travelled it before.  To complete the path, therefore, we need a lot of spiritual gas and a lot of wisdom. 

In general, we can divide a Buddha’s aggregates into their form aggregates (their body) and their mental aggregates (their mind).  Merit is the principal cause of attaining the body of a Buddha and wisdom is the principal cause of attaining the mind of a Buddha.  When we talk of the “two collections,” we are referring to the collection of merit and the collection of wisdom.  What does a Buddha’s body do?  It spontaneously emanates for each and every living being exactly what they need to attain enlightenment each and every moment.  Buddhas are doing this for us right now.  We just don’t realize it because we have different ideas about what we need than they do.  What we have emanated around us right now might not be perfect for the fulfillment of our worldly wishes, but it is definitely perfect for our swiftest possible enlightenment.  If we had wisdom, we would see and understand how this is true.  As but a small example of this, we can consider a dedication Buddha once made.  He had engaged in some virtue which created enough positive karma for him to be reborn as a Chakravatin king (a universal monarch) something like 50,000 times in succession.  Instead, he dedicated all this merit so that in the future pure Dharma practitioners would never want for the basic necessities needed to sustain their practice.  He transformed his merit into his future emanations of his body to take the form of these basic necessities.  In the same way, when a being reaches a certain critical mass of merit it transforms itself into a self-replenishing inexhaustible fountain of merit that spontaneously ripens in the form of countless emanations helping each and every living being every day.  This self-replenishing inexhaustible fountain of enlightened deeds is a Buddha’s body.  Shantideva refers to it as the reliquary a bodhisattva accumulates while on the bodhisattva path that they then leave behind when they attain enlightenment. 

The difference between the wisdom of an ordinary mind, that of a bodhisattva, and that of a Buddha can be explained as follows:  an ordinary person might know how to drive on certain main roads in the city which they live, but outside of that they are completely lost and don’t know how to get anywhere.  A bodhisattva is like a driver with a GPS.  With the GPS they can program it to take them to any destination anywhere and the GPS will plan the route.  The driver then follows the planned route and it delivers them to the city of enlightenment.  A Buddha’s mind is like that of a seasoned taxi driver that knows all the roads from anywhere to anywhere without needing the help of a GPS at all.  They always know the quickest way to get to any destination, and in particular they know how all routes for how to most quickly get to the celestial mansion at the center of the city of enlightenment.  Not only is it simply the mind of a single taxi driver, but the Buddha’s mind is able to manifest itself as countless taxis that they send out to each and every living being so that all the being has to do is hop in, say “take me to enlightenment” and as long as the passenger never gets out of the car, they will be swiftly led to their final destination, even if their starting point is the pit of the deepest hell.  Just as all roads lead to Rome, so too for the enlightened mind they know how to connect all mental roads to enlightenment. 

Understanding the value of merit and the value of wisdom, how do we actually accumulate them as the precept encourages us to do?  In general, anytime we help somebody else in any way we accumulate merit, or positive mental karma.  In general, anytime we realize how our delusions are deceiving us we accumulate wisdom.  The best way to accumulate merit is to engage in actions motivated by bodhichitta.  The power of our merit is multiplied by the number of beings upon whose behalf we engage in the virtue.  With a bodhichitta motivation, we seek to help countless living beings, so the power of our merit is multiplied by a factor of countless!  The best way to accumulate wisdom is to contemplate and meditate on emptiness.  Emptiness is the ultimate nature of things, and it explains that everything is mere karmic appearance to mind, a karmic dream.  There is nothing other than these mental appearances, and they are no more real than last night’s dream.  If everything is created by mind, by changing our mind we can change everything.  At present, we still grasp at things as somehow having some existence outside of our mind, somehow separate from our mind.  These things, we feel, can never change regardless of what we do with our mind.  We can change our mind, but they will remain the same.  This is grasping at the inherent existence of things, grasping at them having some existence outside of or independent of our mind.  When we contemplate and meditate on emptiness, we realize this is completely wrong and come to understand how everything is a mere karmic appearance, a mere karmic dream.  If there is nothing really there, then there is no basis for generating attachment or anger to karmic holograms.  Emptiness cuts the power of all delusions in exactly the same way that waking up dispels all fear of the monster chasing us in our dreams. 

The best way to accumulate both merit and wisdom simultaneously is the practice of guru yoga.  Guru yoga is a special mental recognition that views everything as an emanation of the spiritual guide.  Any virtue we accumulate towards a Buddha is non-contaminated virtue (this is like pure rocket fuel compared to leaded gasoline).  Any virtue we accumulate towards the Spiritual Guide is the same as engaging in that same virtue towards each of the countless Buddhas.  The reason for this is all the Buddhas enter into the spiritual guide to receive our actions, so engaging in one action towards the spiritual guide directly is karmically equivalent to engaging in that action towards all the Buddhas.  Just as a small TV can show an image of an entire city, so too a small emanation can reflect countless pure worlds.  Likewise, with guru yoga we can learn to rely upon the guru’s mind as our own.  His mind already has all the wisdom realizations.  Instead of going through the laborious work of gaining all these realizations ourselves, it is so much simpler to just adopt his mind as our own, and learn how to download and use his mind as if it were our own.  This is doable (see the series on Activating the Inner Spiritual Guide and Relying upon the Guru’s Mind Alone).  Just as through Google we can access all the knowledge of the entire internet, so too through the Guru we can access all the wisdom of all the Buddhas.  The spiritual guide is a portal through which we can directly communicate with all the Buddhas.

The ultimate way to accumulate both merit and wisdom is to train in ultimate guru yoga with a bodhichitta motivation.  Ultimate guru yoga is recognizing the emptiness of our very subtle mind of great bliss as the same nature as that of the Guru’s Truth Body Dharmakaya.  If we can learn to attain this mind directly, it is said we can attain enlightenment in merely a matter of months!