LPA19: Root Bodhisattva Vows Fifteen to Eighteen

Tsongkhapa, after saying that he really doesn’t have very much to explain, nevertheless starts. He introduces the discussion by saying that we’ve found an excellent working basis (in other words, we have a human rebirth with all the abilities and potentials to be able to study and further ourselves and practice), and we’ve met with the teachings of the Buddhas, and we’ve been cared for by great spiritual masters, and most importantly we have the power of mind to discern between what’s to be adopted and what’s to be rejected (in other words, what is helpful and what is harmful). 

When we have that, all these wonderful things, these endowments, then we need to actually engage ourselves in the Buddha’s teachings. In order to do that, it’s not sufficient just to have kind thoughts, just to be a nice person — many, many different philosophies and religions teach that — in order to really engage ourselves with the Buddha’s teachings, we have to rely on guidance from someone who actually knows the Buddhist path and how to lead us through that. That teacher has to be learned. It has many different qualifications, but the ones that Tsongkhapa points out are that they have to know what actually are the states of mind that we need to develop and what are not (to be able to know the difference between these two); to not add anything extra, not leave anything out; and to know how to actually apply them to us in a proper graded order to each individual student, to know what level they’re at and how to guide them in a proper order beyond that. This is very important; otherwise, the teacher could really cause a lot of damage with the students. 

That teacher has to have gained certainty about all of this by having been led through that course of development himself or herself by their own spiritual teacher. The importance of lineage there is stressed. The way that this practice needs to be taught is in accordance with the great Buddhist texts. We shouldn’t make a difference between the Buddha’s teachings for practice and the Buddha’s teachings for study because everything in the texts was intended for our practice. 

Then actually how do we begin our practice? The main point is — and Tsongkhapa quotes the great masters of the past, Nagarjuna and Aryadeva — that we need to tame our minds.  Remember, when we talk about minds in Buddhism, we’re not just talking about the mental intellectual capacity or faculties; we’re also talking about our emotions, our feelings, etc. For that, what’s very important, Tsongkhapa says, is our motivating mental framework, and this is referring to what our aim is and what the reason is for trying to achieve the various goals. The usual way in which we are led in our development are the three stages which are outlined in the teachings of lam-rim, the graded stages of the path (or the pathway minds). We have three levels here: 

The initial level is to think in terms of our deaths, that after we die, we could either go to a worse situation or a better situation in future lives. Think about the causes for that and turn away from the negative type of behavior and so on that would cause further problems or worse rebirths and apply the discipline to achieve better and better lives. The whole point is to continue to have the precious human rebirth and all the opportunities that we can. When we look at the mental continuum, a continuity of our mental activity from lifetime to lifetime, this first point is looking in terms of it having no beginning and no end. It goes on forever, and since it’s going on forever, then our first aim is to ensure that in each lifetime we have the opportunities to continue our spiritual development more and more and aren’t reborn as a cockroach or something even worse. We do that because we basically don’t want to lose this opportunity. We are very terrified of that. 

Then, on the intermediate level, we think of how in any type of rebirth that we might have, even one with the precious human rebirth, we still have the problems — samsara goes up and down (sometimes things go well, sometimes they don’t go well) — and we want to be able to get out of that completely. We are completely fed up with that, disgusted with that. We think of the advantages of being liberated from all of that. We aim for that liberation. This is with the understanding that what is causing all our problems is our unawareness or ignorance, and all the disturbing emotions that are brought on by that — our greed, attachment, anger, jealousy, pride, naivety, etc. — and our understanding that our mental activity, this continuum of mental activity, is basically free of these disturbing emotions and this unawareness. That’s not part of the nature of the mind — it’s something which is like clouds that are fleeting — that can be removed.

Then, on the advanced level, we think in terms of everybody else: all the problems that we have are similarly had by everybody else, we’re all in the same situation, we’re all interconnected with each other, and how it just makes no sense to work just for our own individual liberation. We see that all these mental continuums are all interconnected with each other and that in order to really benefit everybody, we have to overcome what’s known as the instincts or the habits of our unawareness which cause our mind to make things appear separate, individually contained, and unrelated to each other (to put it in very simple terms). We’re aiming for the enlightened state of a Buddha, in which we are equally concerned with everybody and see all the interconnection with everybody and everything, without things being blocked off as if they were coated in plastic, all by themselves. This is based on understanding that the mental continuum is free in its nature from actually making these false or deceptive appearances. When we are aiming for that enlightened state of a Buddha in order to benefit everybody, that’s what’s known as bodhichitta. 

This is how we would develop ourselves when we talk about taming the mind and developing the motivating mental framework. We need to have that in an uncontrived manner, Tsongkhapa says, not merely have an intellectual understanding of it, not merely in words. In order to do that, we need to meditate on it, which means to build it up as a beneficial habit. Then Tsongkhapa went into a big discussion (that we have gone into in great detail) about how you actually meditate, how you build up a positive, constructive state of mind. For this: 

• We have to know what does that state of mind depend on. If we’re developing compassion for everybody, the wish for everybody to be free from their problems and the causes of their problems, it depends on having equanimity: being open to everybody, not having attachment to some, repulsion from others, favorites, and so on. We have to know all the causes. 
• We have to know all the aspects of that state of mind, all the different features of it. 
• We need to be able to know what it is that we are focusing on when we want to develop that state of mind. With compassion we’re focusing on the suffering of others, and it’s open to everybody’s suffering. 
• We need to know how the mind takes that object, which is the wish for that suffering to be gone and with taking some responsibility to actually help to do that. 
• We need to know what will help to build up that state of mind, which is a lot of positive force from helping others and insight into reality. 
• We have to know what’s detrimental to it, like selfishness and so on. 

If we have all this detail about the state of mind that we’re trying to develop in meditation, then we’ll be able to meditate. That’s what is required for meditation. It’s to build up something as a positive habit. It’s not just sitting down and hoping for the best. 

Then Tsongkhapa says we have to maintain these motivations steadily and continuously throughout our practice, throughout not just our meditation sessions but throughout all the practice that we’re doing, and we need to integrate it as part of our mental continuums, the way that we actually are always thinking and operating. 

Then Tsongkhapa says that in order to... How do we actually, on this basis, practice the two stages of tantra (which is what the person who requested this letter of advice was asking about)? That’s a very advanced level of practice. Then Tsongkhapa says — with all of this as the basis, the foundation — he says that in order to enter the doorway of any of the vehicles of mind (that’s sort of an expression that’s used in Buddhism of the various types of practice) we need to maintain the ethical discipline of each of those vehicles of mind. Ethical discipline is what he’s setting here as the foundation. For tantra, which is the most advanced, it’s based on the prior levels of practice. We have the pratimoksha vows, which are the vows for individual liberation. This is the most basic type of ethics. Then the bodhisattva vows, which are the vows that we take to shape our practice and our way of thinking, and so on, if we want to be able to benefit everybody as a bodhisattva. And then the tantric vows. 

First we discussed the basic pratimoksha vows, the individual vows for liberation, which are for laypersons (those who are not actually a monk or a nun, neither full nor novice). Those, we saw, were not to kill, not to steal, not to lie, not to indulge in contrary sexual behavior — contrary to the aim that we have, which is eventually to become liberated (sexual behavior basically that is based on a tremendous amount of attachment, desire, possessiveness, etc., although it could also be aggression and so on) — and then to avoid and not take any intoxicants (alcohol, drugs, etc.). This is the basic ethics that we have in Buddhism. 

Then, on top of that, we have the bodhisattva vows. These are to avoid various types of behavior that would prevent us from being of best help to everybody. We have the root vows, the basic vows, which are the main things that we want to avoid. Root here means that it’s the root to be eliminated. They’re called downfalls in the sense that if we commit these various actions that we’re promising to avoid then we fall down in our spiritual development toward being a bodhisattva, somebody of best help to everybody, working to become a Buddha. 

This is where we are in our discussion. (I just wanted to do an extensive review, since there are some people that are joining us newly.) There are root vows — there are 18 of them, and we’re up to number 15. Since there are these new people, let me just list the ones that we’ve discussed already. These are things that we want to avoid.

[1] The first one was praising ourselves and putting down others or belittling others because we have greed or desire for profit, praise, love, respect, winning an election, or whatever it might be. That “I’m the best and everybody else is horrible.” That would be detrimental to being able to help others, because who’s going to trust us if we’re always saying, “I’m the best and everybody else is terrible”? 

[2] The second is not sharing the teachings or our wealth with others.

[3] Then the next one is not listening to others’ apologies or hitting others.

[4] The fourth is discarding the actual Mahayana teachings, these teachings, and making up ones that we prefer ourselves and claiming them to be the authentic teachings of Buddha.

[5] Then the next one is taking offerings intended for the Buddha or the Dharma (like for publishing texts and so on) and for the monastic community.

[6] Then forsaking the holy Dharma or the teachings, which is referring to saying that various teachings are not the words of the Buddha. Basically, that’s being sectarian, saying that only the teachings of the tradition that we follow are correct and everything else is false teachings. 

[7] Then disrobing monastics. That would be taking away the robes and kicking out monks and nuns from monasteries because of ill will or malice (because we don’t like them, for example). 

[8] Then committing any of the five heinous crimes. That’s (a) killing our father, (b) mother, (c) a liberated being; (d) with bad intentions, drawing blood from a Buddha; or (e) causing a split in the monastic community (which has to do with splitting off a group of monks or nuns with extreme negative feelings about the actual Buddha’s community, this type of thing). 

[9] Then the next one was holding a distorted, antagonistic outlook, which is basically to deny cause and effect, to deny rebirth and so on, and have a very negative attitude and want to argue and put down anybody who disagrees with us.

[10] Then the next one was destroying places such as towns. So this whole environmental type of thing. 

[11] Then the next was teaching voidness to those whose minds are untrained. Teaching about the Buddha’s teachings on reality, and so on, to people who aren’t ready to understand it, who would misunderstand it.

[12] Then turning others away from full enlightenment, those who have actually developed bodhichitta and working toward it and turning them away from it. 

[13] Turning others away from their pratimoksha vows, their vows for individual liberation. In other words, that’s referring to somebody who’s a monk or nun, for example, and telling them “This is ridiculous. You should stop doing this and go do something else.” 

[14] Then the last one we discussed was belittling the shravaka vehicle. This is basically saying, if we’re following the Mahayana teachings in Buddhism, to say that the Hinayana teachings are ineffective, that they don’t work, this type of thing.

That is what we have covered so far. Now let’s go on.

[15] Proclaiming a false realization of voidness

We’re up to the 15th bodhisattva vow, and this is proclaiming a false realization of voidness. Voidness is referring to an absence, an absence of impossible ways of existing. We project all sorts of impossible ways, like “I’m the center of the universe. I’m the most important one. I should always get my way,” etc. Or that things exist totally independently of causes, and so on. 

Although we haven’t fully realized these teachings on voidness, here the downfall would be to pretend that we have. And the reason would be because of jealousy of the great masters. We’re jealous of them, and so we pretend, like Buddha’s cousin Devadatta did, that we have the same insight, we understand everything. We pretend. We give this impression. 

In order for this to be complete, then, when we give this false impression when we’re teaching, the other people must understand what we explain and be convinced that we know what we’re talking about. In other words, if the people to whom we give this false impression are not fooled by that and they realize that we’re bluffing, then this is not complete. In other words, we have to actually fool people by this. If they don’t understand what we say, if they didn’t hear what we say — they don’t pay attention — then also it’s not complete. 

Although this has to do with proclaiming a false realization of voidness, it has to do with any of the actual Buddha’s teachings. It’s basically — and I think we could extend this to anything — that if you really are aiming to be able to benefit others, to help others, if you pretend that you know something when you don’t, and you try to teach it, because you’re jealous of other people who are more qualified and you’re basically just fooling people, this is obviously totally against the whole aim of trying to really benefit others. As we’ve emphasized in these teachings on the bodhisattva vows, what’s important is to understand how committing any of these negative actions would really prevent us from helping others — that’s the important thing to understand — then we can appreciate the value of trying to avoid these things in our behavior.

[16] Accepting what has been stolen from the Triple Gem

Then the next thing, the 16th one, is accepting what has been stolen from the Buddha, Dharma, or Sangha. 

Before, in an earlier one, it had that we were stealing it ourselves. Something that is given for furthering the Buddhist teachings, the Buddhist community, and so on — to steal it. As in stealing from the alms box in a church, or something like that. 

Here it is referring to if somebody else has stolen from that and then we accept it as a present, as a gift, or something like that. @ this is also breaking the vows. Why? Because anything that goes to supporting the teachings, making them more and more available to others, giving them the opportunities to practice this, and so on, is something which is very positive, and we want to be able to help others. So encouraging others to steal, taking it from them and using it as our own, and so on — this is not helpful at all. 

[17] Establishing unfair policies

The 17th one is called establishing unfair policies. This is a very interesting one. The way that it’s explained is that we are biased against serious practitioners because of our anger or hostility — we don’t like them — and we favor those with lesser attainments or none at all because of attachment to them. 

Let’s say we’re in a monastery, in a Buddhist center, or whatever. There are these serious practitioners and we don’t like them: they’re boring, they’re not friendly, and so on. And so we don’t like them, but we like the people who just come and are very socially pleasant and are chatting with us all the time, and we’re more interested in that. Here this would be, let’s say, if we are going to further our Buddhist center, not to give money and facilities and time and so on for, let’s say, the serious practitioners to have more meditation facilities or things like that, but use it instead to have a social lounge for the people who come for the conversation and the tea and cookies or whatever after the teachings. This is what is known as setting unfair policies because of our attachment to the people that we like who are not really very serious and our dislike or hostility toward the serious ones. That’s establishing unfair policies.

Participant: I found in another text that the order of the vows is changed. 

Dr. Berzin: The orders of the vows are changed, you found, in another source.

Participant: Also, your 17th is their 15th. And this is a bit different, in my opinion. It’s also because of attachment, but it’s more putting others down and saying that they don’t have advantages that you don’t have yourself. That was the explanation that was written there.

Dr. Berzin: They don’t have the...? You found that the 17th vow is listed as the 15th vow. And it stated that because of attachment, you say that some people don’t have the same advantages that we have?

Participant: No. That they don’t have facilities…

Participant: You stress the lack of qualities in others although you also yourself lack those qualities.

Participant: You don’t have it, and you say that they don’t have it.

Dr. Berzin: You have these qualities. They don’t have... 

Participant: No, the other way around.

Dr. Berzin: You don’t have these qualities, they have the qualities, and you say that they don’t have these qualities. Well, that could be another way of explaining favoring those who are of lesser attainment as opposed to those with greater attainment. That’s just a further example of this. It’s just called establishing unfair policies, which is favoring those who are less over those who have more qualities. There can be many examples of it. The actual order of it? Different texts will have different orders. That’s not terribly significant. It’s not that one is based on the other, on the previous one. It’s not progressive. 

Participant: It’s pretty interesting that sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s a different one.

Dr. Berzin: The number doesn’t mean anything. The number doesn’t have any significance in the list of 18. It’s not like…

Participant: Sometimes there is an 18th vow and sometimes not.

Dr. Berzin: Right. I mean, I do recall Serkong Rinpoche mentioning that in some texts there is a slightly different number. But this is the standard number. We’ve seen this in our Buddhist studies: there are always variations. Many different texts talk about the same thing, and you will have variation due to all sorts of things: different lineages, different ways of writing things down, two things could be included in one, or one could be divided into two. These aren’t major differences. But it’s good to investigate to see is it significantly different or is it something which is not so significant. 

But when we have any of these vows, like this establishing unfair policies, you have to understand what the point of it is. For that one, what are we doing? We’re trying to help others to achieve liberation and enlightenment. The more serious someone is, the more happy we should be, in terms of “Here’s a person that is actually making progress” and we want to help give them facilities. Whereas somebody who’s not serious, if we give them all the facilities — now we’re not talking about giving them facilities to practice but facilities which are trivial — just because we happen to like them, that’s completely against this whole idea of working to help everybody achieve liberation and enlightenment, isn’t it? 

In your example — favoring yourself over others who have greater qualities than we have — that obviously is contrary to the bodhisattva aim, and it is unfair. We’re favoring those with lesser qualities — in this case, ourselves — and not taking care of those with greater qualities. The qualities we’re referring to here are how serious they are in their practice. 

[18] Giving up bodhichitta

The last one is giving up bodhichitta. Bodhichitta here — remember, this is our aim — focus on our own future enlightenments that we haven’t achieved yet, our own individual ones, that is possible to achieve on the basis of the purity of the mind, as we were discussing. The motivation that it is possible to achieve that, this state which has not yet been attained, further down on my own mental continuum. We’re driven to that with love and compassion equally for everybody. The intention not only to reach that but to benefit others as much as possible through that and all along the way (as much as we are capable of) on each stage as we develop. 

There’s the wishing state for that, where we aspire to achieve that, and then the engaged state, in which we take these vows and actually engage ourselves seriously in the practice that will bring us there. Here giving up bodhichitta is referring to discarding the first of these, the aspiration. In giving up the aspiration, the wish to achieve enlightenment, obviously we also give up the second (actually engaging in the practice that would bring us there). 

Those are the 18 root bodhisattva vows. 

Now the question is... Before I get into that (the question of how you lose them), what is a vow? We have discussed this a little bit. A vow is, according to some of the schools of Buddhism, a state of mind of ethical discipline, of restraint from these things. It’s a promised restraint. From the Vaibhashika and Prasangika point of view, these two schools, it is a subtle shaping of the energy. It is shaping the energy to have these boundaries, in a sense. We’re shaping our behavior, if we want to put it in a very rough type of way. 

We can either lose these vows (we lose that shape to our life) or we weaken them. This is important to understand. With two of these vows, breaking these, regardless of all the other factors that might be there, causes us to lose the vow. That would be the distorted antagonistic attitude. When we say, “There is no such thing as enlightenment. There is no such thing as gaining liberation,” and we’re very negative and hostile toward anybody who thinks like that that, then obviously we’ve lost this shape to our life of aiming to achieve that. Giving up bodhichitta — likewise, we lose it. If we say, “Forget it. I can’t possibly attain enlightenment. This is stupid.” Well, “this is stupid” would be the antagonistic attitude, but “I’m giving it up. I can’t do it. It’s impossible. I’m just going to work for myself. To hell with everybody else.” That causes us to lose these vows. Mind you, we can take them again. But we lose the vows. If we do that, by the way, we lose all the bodhisattva vows, when we have either this distorted antagonistic attitude [vow 9] or giving up bodhichitta [vow 18]. 

But the other ones — we have to have what’s known as the four binding factors (kun-dkris bzhi) (binding factor; that’s the literal translation of it). We have to hold and maintain these attitudes from the moment immediately after we develop the motivation to break the vow, through the entire period of committing whatever act is involved, up until the moment right after we have completed it. You have to keep these four throughout the whole thing of getting up there and saying, “How wonderful I am and how terrible everybody else is.” What are these four?

• The first is not regarding what we’re doing as detrimental. In other words, we see nothing wrong in what we’re doing, only advantages, and we undertake the action with absolutely no regrets. That would be the first.
• The second is we have no wish or intention to restrain ourselves now or in the future from repeating that action. We’re going to continue it. 
• The third one is we delight in what we’re doing and we undertake it with joy. Really happy about what we’re doing. 
• The fourth is we have no sense of moral self-dignity — self-dignity about ourselves (“How am I going to act like this?”) — so there’s no sense of self-dignity and no concern for how our behavior reflects on others (in terms of how it reflects on our teachers, how it reflects on our family, and so on). Reflection on our family is a very big concern in Asian societies. We have no intention to repair the damage that we’re doing to ourselves. That’s part of that. 

In order to actually lose all the vows: if we have all four of these attitudes from the moment when we develop the motivation to break the vow, through the actual action that’s involved, and up until the moment right after we’ve completed it, then we’ve lost the vows. But we may break the vows. I mean, there’s a difference between losing the vows — that’s basically you no longer have that shape to your life (you’d have to take it again) — and breaking the vow, which just weakens it (so the shape to your life is weaker but it’s still there). 

It’s like, for instance, if you’re in Alcoholics Anonymous and you promise never to take a drink again. If you take a drink and you don’t think there was anything wrong with it, and you’re happy about it, and you want to continue drinking, and you have no sense of self-dignity, you don’t care how this reflects on your family (who’ve spent a lot of money to try to put you in rehab), and so on, then you’ve lost it. But if you don’t have all of that, then you merely weaken your resolve — your vow — to stop drinking. “Well, I took a drink. I regret that I did that. I’m not very happy about it, etc. But I’m going to try not to repeat it.” There’s a big difference. You’ve broken the vow. (I mean, this is our Western word that we say: you broke the vow.) But it’s not that you’ve lost the vows. You’ve just weakened it. 

There is of course a big complex analysis of all the possibilities that are involved here in what would be a stronger weakening or a lesser weakening. This is actually very helpful to know, because often, of course, we’re going to break these vows. We’re going to break any of the vows, the Buddhist ethical guidelines. This is important to know, what we want to avoid. And obviously what we want to avoid is having all these four things present. 

The example that I use in one of the books in which I explained all of this is: There’s the vow of… the downfall would be not sharing the Dharma teachings or money or our possessions, material things. Let’s use the example of our Buddhist books. We have Buddhist books, or it could be any type of material, and we don’t want to loan it to somebody who is interested in this because of attachment to our books or miserliness. Remember, those were the two states of mind. It could also be that I don’t want to share my computer with you. I don’t want to... all these sorts of things, which obviously will come up for some of us. Suppose we don’t loan it to somebody. This is how it will be fully broken:

• We don’t see anything wrong with this. After all, the person could dirty it or not give it back. 
• We’ve never loaned it before, and we have no intention to change this policy now or in the future.
• When we refuse, we’re very happy in our decision that “I’m not loaning it to you.” 
• We’re shameless about saying no, despite the fact that we’re supposedly wishing to bring everybody enlightenment. How can we be aiming to help bring everybody enlightenment when we’re not even willing to share a book about the teachings? We’re not embarrassed, we don’t care how this reflects on our teacher, or anything like that. We have no intention of doing anything to counterbalance our selfish act. 

If we have all these attitudes when refusing to loan our book, then we’ve definitely lost the bodhisattva shape to our life. OK? That’s a clear example. 

But if we transgress this vow with none of these factors present, we don’t actually even weaken our vows. Let’s give an example: 

We don’t loan our book to somebody who asks. But we know that it’s basically wrong, that we really should loan them the book. But we don’t intend to do this as a policy, we’re unhappy about saying no, and we’re concerned about our sense of dignity and how our refusal reflects on our teachers. But we have a valid reason to refuse to loan the book, because we have a real strong need to use it ourselves or we’ve promised it to somebody else. Our motivation for not loaning it isn’t attachment; it isn’t miserliness toward the book. We apologize for not being able to loan it now, and we explain why, and we assure the person that we are going to loan it to them as soon as possible. And to make up that loss, we offer them our notes or to explain to them what was in it. Like this, we maintain the bodhisattva shape to our life even though we didn’t share our book with this person, we didn’t loan our book to this person. 

This is why it’s important to actually understand what all these factors are and to be sure what the difference is. It’s not just that literally you don’t loan your book and therefore you’ve broken your bodhisattva vows. There’s a progression in terms of what weakens the vow more and more. Also, be aware that just keeping this vow doesn’t necessarily rid us of attachment to our books. We could still be terribly attached, but you loan them to others because “I have to,” this type of thing, but you really are very, very uncomfortable with that. Even keeping the vow is not in itself going to get rid of these disturbing emotions which are underneath. 

What weakens it the least is if we at least know that it’s wrong to do so, that there’s something detrimental with this. In other words, I don’t loan the book, but I know that that is really detrimental to my bodhisattva path. That’s the most fundamental thing that we need to at least try to maintain. “I recognize that this is not what I should be doing. I really should be sharing it.”  We hold one, two, or all three of the other factors — we know that it’s wrong, for example — but this is our policy and we make no exceptions. “This is my policy. I know it’s not a good policy, but that’s my policy. I don’t loan my books.” Or if we feel badly about that and are ashamed and embarrassed, then it’s still not too weak, but if in addition we feel happy about not loaning it and we don’t care what anybody thinks or how it reflects on anything, then it gets stronger and stronger — weaker and weaker, I should say (the breaking is stronger and stronger). A stronger breaking. In other words, if the vow is weaker and if we weaken it more — if we don’t acknowledge that there’s anything wrong with it, in not loaning, if you don’t see anything wrong in it and then you add one or two of the other factors — then the breaking becomes stronger and stronger. The weakening becomes stronger and stronger if we can say that. You don’t say “the weakening becomes stronger”; that’s a funny way of speaking. But, anyway, it gets more and more weak. 

These are the factors that are involved. 

It’s interesting here, and I think we always have to understand this: when we speak in the Buddhist context, we’re not talking about guilt, that you should feel guilty about this. Remember, there’s a big difference between regret and guilt. Regret is that “I wish I didn’t do this” or “I wish I hadn’t done this” or “I wish I don’t have to do this.” Whereas guilty is identifying what we’re doing with “bad” and “I’m bad” and then not letting go of that. That’s guilt. It’s not that what we want to have here is to think that “If I don’t loan my book, that’s really bad and I’m bad. I’m a bad person. I’m a bad Buddhist. I’m a naughty bodhisattva, bad bodhisattva. I’m not loaning my book.” It’s not like that. It’s that “I understand that this is detrimental. I acknowledge that this is going against what I really ultimately would want to do. But at this point I can’t, for this reason or that reason, so I regret it.” 

You have to be very careful not to use this as an excuse. “I regret taking the last piece of cake. But I’m really very greedy. I don’t care that you haven’t had your share yet, because I want a second piece. But it’s OK as long as I don’t feel guilty about it. I regret it. I’m sorry” — es tut mir Leid, as you say in German — “I’m very sorry,” and then you take it. We’re not talking about using regret as an excuse for being selfish or miserly or whatever, but “I regret not being able to loan you my book, because I really need it now. I need it for something that I’m actually doing. But I’ll try to share it with you in the future.” This sort of thing. It’s not guilt; it’s regret, but regret not as a rationalization or a justification. Are there questions about that? That fits in also with this thing of not feeling happy about it. “I’m not happy that I’m not loaning it to you.” But it’s not that I feel so terrible. “I really don’t rejoice in that. I wish I didn’t have to do this. I wish I could help you.” 

We don’t have a specific vow here that I’m always going to help others, but if you think in general: people ask for our help, they ask us to do things, so how do you deal with that as an aspiring bodhisattva that’s trying to help everybody? Because sometimes you have to say no. For a lot of us, myself included, it’s very difficult to say no. How do you say no within the context of taking bodhisattva vows? These guidelines are very helpful. 

On the one hand, it’s detrimental to get into the habit of saying no, so what’s my reason for saying no? Is it laziness? Is it selfishness? Is it “I don’t want to help you because I don’t like you”? What’s the reason for saying no? Or is it “I’m really busy. I’m really tired. I really have too much: I’m incapable of doing more.” Sometimes we are capable of doing more but we’re just lazy. Or “I don’t feel like it,” which is a very vague excuse, isn’t it? “I don’t feel like it,” as though we’re supposed to be, all of a sudden, inspired and “Now I feel like it.” But how do we say no? How do we say no? 

 “I realize that this is detrimental, that I really eventually want to be able to help as much as possible. And saying no is not very nice for you, and so on. I regret that. I’m not happy about it.” It’s not like “Thank goodness I got this person off my back who’s been bothering me to help them with this or that all the time,” and that we’re really happy that we got rid of them. We don’t want to have that. It’s not that I want to continue this all the time as my policy: “I really hope that I don’t have to repeat this over and over again.” I have a sense of self-dignity: “I know how this reflects on my Buddhist community, on everything that I’m trying to do, and all the other people who have been supporting me, and so on. I am concerned about that.” 

Our attitude is very important when we find that we have to say no. And not to feel guilty about it. Because there’s this whole thing of we’re aspiring to be able to help somebody — to help everybody — but maybe we’re not capable yet. That’s why that vow about not expounding false claims (proclaiming a false realization of voidness) comes in. We don’t claim that we can help somebody when we really can’t. You know: “Ta-da, the great bodhisattva! I’m going to come in and solve all your problems.” We are undoubtedly incapable of doing that. 

That becomes a problem, especially with… say if you’re a doctor. Do you give people false hope? Or does the doctor say, “I’m sorry. I can’t help you. You’re going to die”? Or do you give the person false hope by saying, “It’s going to be OK. I’ll be able to help you”? Or you say, “I don’t know if I’ll be able to help you”? That’s a very difficult question, isn’t it? Especially since research shows how strong the placebo effect is. If you have confidence in the doctor, you don’t have to do anything, and you might get better. How do you deal with that? Anybody have any suggestions? Do we give people false hope, or do we smash all their hopes? Or how do you deal with it? 

Participant: I think there’s a difference between saying “I can’t help you” and “I will try. I will do my best.”

Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s very good. In that situation, you say: “I will try my best. I can’t guarantee, but nobody can guarantee. I’m not God. But I will try my best.” Yes. That’s a good way of saying it. Jorge?

Participant: Also, the emotional support from the doctor doesn’t only come from technical information about how he can help you with your health problems, but a patient/doctor relationship develops.

Dr. Berzin: Right. With the placebo effect, basically it’s not just the doctor’s technical skill and the doctor being able to say, “Yes, I can do this and that,” and so on, but it is — and, I think, even more — the personal relationship, that the doctor actually shows that he or she cares about the patient and takes personal interest in the patient. 

I have a good friend who’s a psychiatrist, and she deals with very violent street people in a violent city in America, homeless street people who are involved in various criminal things and so on. Most other psychiatrists are afraid to deal with these people, very afraid, and most of them aren’t successful at all in dealing with these people. She is very successful with them, basically — and she has a Buddhist background — because she is concerned about them as people and communicates that to them, and treats them as human beings, as people. The others, these violent young people, respond very, very well to that, and she’s able to actually help them. Although of course she takes precautions: she sits on the side of the desk that’s by the door; she doesn’t have that person sit on the side of the desk by the door (so that she would be trapped if there were any violence against her). Remember our old Persian saying: Trust in God but tie your camel. You still have to take precautions. 

But yes, the personal relationship is very helpful. As an aspiring bodhisattva — well, what are the foundations for bodhichitta? It’s love and compassion (love, the wish for others to be happy and have the causes for happiness; compassion, the wish for them to be free of suffering and the causes of suffering) based on seeing the equality of everybody: nobody wants to be unhappy, everybody wants to be happy (we are all equal in that). The empathy is there, equalizing self with others. It’s only on the basis of that type of empathy that we can actually help others. If we reaffirm that, and it’s not just “Oh, I love you. I wish I could help you, but I can’t.” You don’t have to be overly… in a sense, it’s almost showing off to say “Oh, I love you so much, but…” But to just communicate that in our natural warmth and the interest in engaging the person and “I really wish I could help you, and I will try my best, but there’s no guarantee.” 

Participant: Also, as a bodhisattva, you should try to speak to a person in a language that they understand. If it’s more emotional, then why not?

Dr. Berzin: Yes. Now we have our Latin American saying that we need to, as a bodhisattva, speak in the language of others. If people are much more emotional and speak with a great deal of emotion, then you need to obviously speak to the person in the way that they would understand. I think so. I don’t know. Do doctors speak like that? I mean, you’re from Mexico, and you’re from Costa Rica. Do doctors...

Participant: I have a dentist who does.

Dr. Berzin: You have a dentist who does. 

Participant: Some do and some don’t. But then you have doctors who, as you were saying before — technically they know a lot but they’re not really helpful. 

Dr. Berzin: OK. They’re saying that in the Latin American countries — the two representatives we have here, Mexico and Costa Rica — that some doctors express themselves more emotionally, some don’t. (Of course, it depends on the personality of the doctor as well.) Some are very technically skilled but can’t help anybody. 

Participant: Usually if you go to a doctor, you’re in an agitated state, and I can’t imagine that an overly emotional response to your being overemotional would help at all. You need a calming effect.

Dr. Berzin: Let’s give an example. She’s saying that if you’re very nervous as the patient and very stressed, if the doctor is very emotional then that might not calm you down. But it depends on what we mean by emotional here. 

Let me give an example. Last week I had a small operation on my nose, and it wouldn’t stop bleeding, and it took quite a long time to get it to stop bleeding. They had to… the instruments weren’t completely sterilized, whatever, and the doctor had to go out and take care of that, and they sent somebody in to comfort me. Mind you, I spent the time comforting that person — but they sent somebody in to comfort me, which I thought was actually very, very nice. This — I don’t know if she was a nurse or what she was — came in and took my hand and said “It’s going to be all right. And the doctor...” and you know, come on! But there’s a difference. The nurse just coming in and saying, “Wait for five minutes and the doctor is coming,” and then walking out, or just sitting there looking at me as if I’m some specimen just to make sure that I don’t freak out. An emotional response here is taking my hand, patting me on the shoulder: “It’s going to be all right,” as if I were in need of that. I mean, many people are in need of that, many people are. Emotional doesn’t have to be… We’re talking here about being warm, showing warmth and affection. They care. They care that I am in a stressful situation lying there bleeding. 

Participant: I also think that it depends on the receiving party as well, because people will respond very differently to emotional... When you approach them quite emotionally, some people are turned off, because they think this is unprofessional. Others feel more comfortable with a warmer person. I remember Aldemar explaining how he was a neurosurgeon, and he explained how he approaches patients with terminal cancer, when he first finds the results that they have terminal cancer — how to give the information to the patients. And he said what he does — I can remember that — he says he gives just the facts and then he waits to see what happens, because it’s very important for him to have the feedback from the patient. He might understand from the questions that arise if this patient needs more emotion or needs more facts (most of the time it’s more facts). 

Dr. Berzin: I’ll just repeat for our recording. What he’s saying is that the response of the doctor also needs to correspond to not just the culture and so on, but the individual patient. We have a friend, Aldemar, who is a neurosurgeon, a brain surgeon, spine surgeon, and he was telling us how he deals with his patients when it comes to having to tell them when they have terminal cancer. Do you just say, “Everything’s going to be all right” or do you tell them “You have terminal cancer”? He just gives them the facts — “You have terminal cancer” — and then he waits for... “It looks terminal, what you have,” he would say, and then he waits to see their response. 

Participant: Terminal?

Dr. Berzin: Terminal means that there’s no hope: you’re going to die. 

He waits to see their response. Some people would want to know “How long do I have to live?” Others don’t even ask. If they ask, he tells them. If they want to know more details — what is it going to be like and so on — he tells them. If they don’t ask, he doesn’t give that information. If they’re very, very upset, he would try to give them comfort. If they’re able to accept it as “OK, that’s it” and so on, or they’re in shock or something like that, then he responds in accordance with that. 

That obviously is a very difficult position to be in, to tell somebody that they have a terminal cancer, that they’re going to die, there’s no hope. Because often a surgeon like that is faced with the thing: Do you perform surgery and the person is going to have the horrible pain of the recovery from brain surgery or whatever, and they’re going to die anyway because it’s not going to be of any help? Or do you just let them go home and die with a little bit more dignity? But they’re going to die in any case. These are difficult things if you’re in that position and you really are concerned about helping others. Aldemar is a very wise man, very wise man. 

Anything else? Good.

Participant: Not for this one, but for another vow. I have a problem with vow number 14.

Dr. Berzin: Number 14? Oh, you’re into numbers. I have to look up what number 14 is. 

Participant: I’m not really sure how not to break this vow.

Dr. Berzin: Let’s see what it is before we talk about how not to break it. Do you know what 14 is? Number 14: belittling the shravaka vehicle. We discussed that. The shravaka vehicle is referring to the Hinayana or Theravada teachings, and we accept that they are the teachings of the Buddha, but we deny the effectiveness of practicing the teachings contained in them. 

Participant: It’s going to be very difficult to make this differentiation. On the one hand, when getting the teachings from the Mahayana point of view, it’s said here if you just meditate like this or that then you can’t even attain liberation. On the other hand, due to this vow, not belittling the effectiveness of this. 

Dr. Berzin: OK. He’s saying that if we look at these Hinayana teachings, the way it’s described in some of the Mahayana texts, in which they say that doing that type of meditation is not actually going to bring you liberation, so you have to meditate... It’s referring to the teachings on voidness, that they don’t go deeply enough. Is this, to say that, are these great masters in fact breaking this, these Mahayana masters, breaking the bodhisattva vow? We’d have to say no, because they are not denying the effectiveness of the meditation that they do. They say the meditation that they do will bring them… the liberation that they describe will have an effect but it is not complete definitional liberation (they still have something left), if you recall the discussion in Shantideva’s text that we studied. You say, “Yes, it’s effective.” It is effective. I mean, what would be breaking this would be if we say, “Forget about doing that meditation at all. It’s useless.” It’s not useless. It will free you from a great amount of these disturbing emotions. Will it completely liberate you? No. But maybe their concept of liberation is not quite the Prasangika definition of liberation. 

Remember we had this discussion about repudiating that the teachings are teachings of the Buddha? The way in which a Buddha is defined in Hinayana and sutra Mahayana and tantra Mahayana are very different. To say that the historical Buddha, as asserted in Hinayana, taught the Mahayana or the tantra teachings — that’s a little bit difficult. But to say that the Buddha as described in Mahayana taught the Mahayana teachings — that’s perfectly reasonable. Similarly, the explanation that you have in Hinayana of what liberation is (that after you die your mind-stream goes out or ends, and so on), the concept of what a Buddha is, and what the omniscience of a Buddha means — all these are different, aren’t they, from the Mahayana one. They’re effective in bringing about the goal as they define it, but they’re not effective in bringing about the goal as we define it. 

Participant: I think even in Hinayana they define that when you attain liberation you are free completely of all the disturbing emotions.

Dr. Berzin: You’re free of all disturbing emotions. But you remember the big discussion that we had in Shantideva about whether or not arhats can continue to have wet dreams, whether they can be seduced in dreams? This was used as a demonstration by Mahayana — and it wasn’t just Mahayana but other Hinayana schools that broke away — that said that “Well, hey! How can they be seduced in a dream and have a wet dream if they have no desire?” They’re not completely free of desire — there’s still a little bit of a trace — yet some will assert that such an arhat is liberated.

Participant: They would accept that he is still subject to desire.

Dr. Berzin: I don’t know how they explain, actually, how this person still gets seduced in a dream. I really must confess that I don’t know how they would rationalize that. 

Participant: It sounds like saying, “Well, that can’t be completely it.” 

Dr. Berzin: Yeah. These are tough points, and they caused breaks in the community. Because obviously there were people who at least said they were arhats, and other people accepted that they were arhats, and they still experienced these kinds of dreams. These were real issues that came up in the community. 

But I think really when we’re talking about this type of vow — and you have to consider all the things of breaking it and what needs to be complete with breaking it — it’s mostly “What are you going to a vipassana course for? What are you going to a Theravada teaching for? It’s useless. Come to mine. Mine is so much better.” This is what we’re talking about. Not this real deep metaphysical discussion of what stage on the path will this kind of meditation bring you to and so on. Think of it in practical levels. 

Then let’s go on. We had decided, upon request, that we would go through all the vows, and so let’s do that. Having done the root bodhisattva vows, then we have the secondary bodhisattva vows. These are to refrain from 46 faulty actions. We have a long list of 46 of them, and these are divided into seven groups. These are six groups: one each for what would be detrimental to our training in each of the far-reaching attitudes. What would be detrimental to our training in generosity, in ethical self-discipline, in positive or joyous perseverance, patience, mental stability or concentration, and discriminating awareness or wisdom. And then the seventh one is what would be detrimental to benefiting others in general.

Participant: Sorry for interrupting. But also concerning this Theravada: I was in this situation because once I went to Myanmar and Sri Lanka. They follow the Theravada tradition. Sometimes people ask you what kind of religion you have, and then you say “I’m also Buddhist,” and then they’re very happy. And then they ask who are your teachers or which kind of Buddhism do you follow, and you tell them the Tibetan tradition, the Mahayana tradition. And 90% (even of the monks) say they don’t know much about it. 

Sometimes they start asking about the evidence about what is the main difference. For me, this was a tricky situation, because for me the main differences are the bodhichitta approach and emptiness. Maybe you can say these are the main points. Then you talk about emptiness a little bit. And this is also very difficult, because the laypeople — again, they don’t know the proper concepts of emptiness. Then you say that in Mahayana they put more emphasis on compassion. But again then people, it seemed to me, they became a little bit fed up, or maybe they didn’t understand it. I had to be really cautious in that situation so they wouldn’t think they don’t practice proper compassion or not enough compassion. Then I said, “Well, in Mahayana you really have a huge, huge approach and they put so much energy in it. And seems maybe in Theravada it’s a little bit different,” and I used these kinds of words. But it’s tricky, isn’t it? What do you say?

Dr. Berzin: That’s a very good thing that you bring up. He was just in Myanmar, or Burma, and Sri Lanka, and there he met many Theravada practitioners, lay and monastic. They asked, “What are you interested in? What do you do?” So, he said he’s Buddhist. “What do you follow?” The Tibetan Mahayana tradition. And then 90% of them knew nothing about it, just as probably even more than 90% of the Tibetans know nothing really about what the Theravadins actually practice other than what it says in the text (which has nothing to do really with Theravada as it actually is practiced). And so they ask, “What is the difference?” He explained that the main difference has to do with bodhichitta (this whole compassion side) and voidness (the teachings on reality). 

Then, when they asked a little bit further, he said that concerning the teachings on voidness, they were people that weren’t terribly well-educated in the Buddhist sphere and couldn’t really understand what he was talking about (which is undoubtedly what would happened in most cases, even with Tibetans). And then he said, “Well, with compassion… There’s more of an emphasis on compassion in the bodhichitta approach.” 

This is a big mistake. That’s the big mistake. Because love and compassion is emphasized a great deal in Theravada: metta bhavana (love meditation) is a big part of their training, and they do extend it to everybody. The method for meditating on it is slightly different, but you find that even in some of the Mahayana texts (which is start with yourself, then extend it to your family, your friends, everybody in your town, even people you don’t like, your country, the universe). They do have that. Where does it differ? What’s the border in terms of how far do they take it? It is this exceptional resolve (or “pure wish” sometimes it’s translated) — that they don’t have — in bodhichitta. The exceptional resolve is not only… 

Because it’s part of compassion to take responsibility to help others, and they do help others. If you look at the Engaged Buddhism movement, that started in Thailand not in a Mahayana country. That started in a Theravada country. Engaged Buddhism, where the Buddhist monks have hospices and places for people who are dying from AIDS and so on. That’s all in a Theravadan country. 

The exceptional resolve is to take the responsibility not just to help others but to help bring them to enlightenment, to liberation and enlightenment. Then bodhichitta is aiming for my own future enlightenment as is defined in Mahayana — omniscience and the whole bit — in order to be able to do that most efficiently. This they don’t have. Although Theravada and other Hinayana schools assert a bodhisattva path — there are such things as bodhisattvas (in order to become a Buddha, you need to follow a bodhisattva path) — they don’t give terribly much detail about it, but they assert that. In theory, everybody could become a Buddha — although they don’t speak about Buddha-nature — but that’s not the aim. You help others, etc., but you’re not really aiming to become a Buddha. 

You have to be very careful not to accuse… Because the Tibetan texts give the impression (and it’s a false impression) that they are all selfish and they only care about themselves and they don’t give a hoot about anybody else. That’s not true. Sometimes — maybe this is my way of making excuses for these texts — I say that they are pointing out the extreme that you could go to, so you avoid the extreme. That way, one is a little bit more tolerant of these authors that sometimes sound a bit fanatical and unfair in their characterization of these other schools. 

But that’s a very tricky, tricky situation when you’re speaking with people from different Buddhist traditions or different religions. Doesn’t have to be within Buddhism. “How is what you do different from what I do?” Then you have to be very careful not to praise yourself and put down others — “Mine is the best. And yours... you’re going to hell for believing that” — to take it to the extreme. 

Participant: It seems also implicitly… The Theravadins with this whole vipassana movement: they set up centers and they also say this is the best gift you can do for other people, to give the Dharma so that they reach Buddhahood.

Dr. Berzin: No. Not that I know of. You’re saying they have all these vipassana centers, and it’s from this vipassana movement — that’s a Theravada movement (a Western understanding of the Theravada movement, I should say) — of mindfulness meditation in the hospitals, what Jon Kabat-Zinn does, all of that, for pain reduction and so on, and they have all these vipassana centers. But I don’t think they assert that through doing this you’re going to become a Buddha. I don’t think they say you’re aiming to become a Buddha. 

Question: There’s no aim at all?

Dr. Berzin: Well, aim for… 

Participant: For yourself.

Dr. Berzin: For yourself for liberation? I don’t really know how much they really place the emphasis on your ultimate aim. I don’t know. I’ve not had much experience actually going to these places, so I don’t know how they explain what the aim would be.

Participant: You mean the average…

Dr. Berzin: Average vipassana center. 

Participant: Those vipassana centers are not original Theravada. 

Dr. Berzin: Yeah. Do you have any experience? Anybody have experience? 

Participant: The one I was at… this Goenka center, you know? He strongly, strongly put an emphasis on this.

Dr. Berzin: On becoming a Buddha? Or becoming liberated?

Participant: Yeah, becoming liberated

Dr. Berzin: Becoming liberated. Right. That’s what I said. They would aim for becoming liberated. They wouldn’t talk about becoming a Buddha. Now, mind you, the difference between a liberated being and a Buddha is not as great in Theravada as it is in Mahayana. A Buddha simply knows how to help others more than an arhat (a liberated being) knows how to help others, but they’re certainly not omniscient. It’s different.

Participant: All sorts of vipassana groups are coming from America, from Western people who studied this.

Dr. Berzin: Yes, exactly. That’s what I said. The vipassana movement is a Western, American movement in which they have taken certain aspects of traditional Theravada and just emphasized them and ignored the other aspects and combined it with a lot of psychology and so on. It’s an American adaptation, definitely. Definitely. Mostly from Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield. I know them very well.

But it’s very good to think about these vows, these guidelines — if we’re going to take them — to understand how avoiding these actions that they point out will help us. It’s not as though it is “Oh, my goodness! Here are the rules, and I have to keep the rules.” We’re not talking about rules that you have to keep. They are very helpful guidelines — if we understand them — how doing these actions really makes a big obstacle to our sincerely helping others. 

Then this next list of 46 deals specifically with each of these far-reaching attitudes, these positive attitudes, like generosity and so on, that we’re trying to develop. We only have five more minutes. But with these, by the way, committing them even with the four binding factors complete doesn’t constitute a loss of our bodhisattva vows. But obviously, the more factors that are there — like not regretting it and so on — make it weaker.

By the way, what I had left out is the opposite: if we’ve weakened them, how do we restore them and make them stronger? These are the four opposing factors (gnyen-po bzhi), which are:

• First of all, feeling regret about it. Which is opposed to feeling happy about it and so on, and not caring, not thinking there was anything wrong. We acknowledge that this was a mistake and we regret it. 
• Then we promise our best not to repeat the mistake. That’s the opposite of feeling that I’m going to continue doing this. 
• Then to go back to our basis, which is to reaffirm our — what are we doing with our life? The safe and positive direction that we’re putting in it. Bodhichitta. We’re aiming to become a Buddha to help everybody. We reaffirm that. This is like countering having no self-dignity, not caring about how what we do reflects on others. 
• Then we undertake remedial measures to counterbalance our transgression — such as meditating on love and generosity, apologizing for not loaning our book, these type of things — to counteract it, to counterbalance it. 

To just give a little taste of what we’re talking about here with the faulty actions, the 46 — then we’ll start it again next time, because we only have a few minutes — is what would be detrimental to generosity. Generosity is defined as the attitude of being willing to give. 

The first two harm our willingness to give things to others. 

[1] Not making offerings to the Triple Gem through the three gateways of our bodies, speech, and minds

The first is not making offerings to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha — the Triple Gem (the Buddha, the teachings, and the community) — through our body, speech, and mind because of being… then there need to be the reasons: 

We don’t make offerings. Offerings would be like the water bowls or something like that. Offer your food and say, “May all being enjoy this,” etc., before we eat. This is not doing it because of being in a bad mood (like being annoyed about something), or because of laziness, indifference, or simply forgetting, thinking that it’s not important. (In many of these, they give the state of mind that we would have.) This is referring to what’s the Buddhist custom. Make prostration in the morning and evening — that’s an offering of respect, remembering their good qualities, these sorts of things. Because, as it says, if we can’t at least be generous enough to offer a bowl of water on an altar to the Buddhas that we are imagining or visualizing, how could we ever perfect our willingness to give everything to everybody? 

It’s not just filling your water bowls because that’s a ritual and a duty and you just sort of do it like you brush your teeth, not like that, but do it with the idea that “I am making an offering.” (And don’t think the Buddhas are going to come and drink the bowl. This is taking it to a silly level.) But just the willingness to give. This is what is cultivated by just making this type of offering. Or lighting a candle, something like that. 

That is the first. That gives you a little bit of a foretaste, an appetizer, for what is discussed in these 46, and we’ll go through them one by one over the next weeks. OK? Good.

That brings to the end of the class, and we end with a dedication. We think whatever positive force, whatever understanding has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of everyone.