LPA25: Second Seven Secondary Bodhisattva Vows to Benefit Others

Very briefly, to review: Tsongkhapa says we have the excellent working basis of a human rebirth, we’ve met with the teachings and we have a teacher, and we have the ability to discriminate between what’s to be adopted and rejected. We have to engage ourselves in the teachings. To do that, we have to rely on a teacher, a qualified one, who knows what are the states of mind that we need to develop, which are the ones that we don’t need to develop or we need to get rid of, who doesn’t add anything, doesn’t leave anything out, and knows the order in which to apply them and how to apply them to each of the students. The teacher himself or herself has to have gained certainty about this by their own experience of studying with a teacher. And all this study has to be on the basis of the great Buddhist classics. 

For beginning the practice, the main thing is to tame our minds, and for that we need a motivating mental framework. For this, the stages for developing that are the stages we have in the lam-rim, the graded stages of the pathway minds. We need to first think in terms of benefitting future lives, then to gain liberation from all uncontrollably recurring rebirth in all types of lives and then work to help everybody overcome that by becoming a Buddha so that we can fully help everyone as much as is possible. 

We need to build these up as beneficial habits and maintain them not only at the beginning of our practice or a session but throughout. In order to build them up as a beneficial habit, which is what meditation (sgom) means, we need to know how to meditate on them. For this, we need to have a clear idea of what are the things that will support these states of mind, what will be detrimental for them, what are the stages… what are the aspects for focusing on them, what does our mind actually focus on, how does the mind take it, and so on. Then we need to really integrate these with our mental continuums. 

Then Tsongkhapa goes on to say that if we want to then, on the basis of a motivating mental framework, practice the two stages of tantra — referring to the highest class of tantra — then we need to have a firm foundation in ethics and that each of these stages or vehicles of mind have a particular set of vows that we need to keep. He speaks in terms of the pratimoksha vows of individual liberation — we’ve discussed the lay vows — that’s on the general level, common to Hinayana and Mahayana; and then the bodhisattva vows, which are common to both sutra and tantra Mahayana; and then the tantric vows. 

We’re at the very tail end of our discussion of the bodhisattva vows, which are the 18 major vows and the 46 secondary vows. That’s where we’re at. 

In the discussion of these secondary bodhisattva vows, we are speaking in terms of faulty actions. There are those which are related to the six far-reaching attitudes that would be detrimental to their development, and then the last list of twelve, that are faulty actions that would be detrimental to our helping others in general. We’ve done five of them. 

[6] Not alleviating the mental grief of others

We’re up to number six. This would be the faulty action of not alleviating the mental grief of others. This would be not trying to comfort those who have lost a loved one, or money, or prized possessions, or who are in pain, or whatever, and not alleviating their mental grief because of spite (they didn’t help us, so why should we help them?), or laziness, or indifference (we’re too lazy to do something or we don’t care). Those who are upset or depressed require our sincere affection, sympathy, and understanding, although of course not pity. 

This of course raises an interesting question, that here we speak about the states of mind that would prevent us from trying to comfort somebody’s mental grief, and that would be spite, laziness, or indifference, but what about other disturbing emotions that might come in the way? We’re afraid. We don’t know how to handle the situation. We don’t know what to do. There are some people who are afraid that if they go to somebody who’s really in pain that they won’t be able to handle it: it’ll be too much for them. “I can’t handle seeing my sick mother with dementia in the nursing home, because it’s just too much for me emotionally.” Is that laziness? Is that indifference? What is that? 

Participant: I guess it’s not indifference for you to feel you can’t cope with that and it’s not going to be of benefit to either of you.

Dr. Berzin: Right. If you really feel that you can’t cope with it and it’s not going to be of benefit to anyone, isn’t that a form of laziness, that you don’t even try? It’s some sort of form of laziness. What about the baby who’s crying, the child? Do you always comfort the child? I’m thinking of the example of children who get spoiled and who just cry and make a big scene in order to get their own way. Do you comfort them and let them get their own way? Or do you just say, “Go to your room and cry until you’re ready to come out.” Is that violating the bodhisattva vow to comfort the mental grief of others? 

Participant: It depends on your motivation. As long as it’s not spite or… 

Dr. Berzin: Right. As long as your motivation is not spite, laziness, or indifference. But we could be annoyed. “You’re always making a scene.” It might not only be with children; it could be with our partner. “You’re always making a scene. You’re always feeling something very neurotic.” 

I’ll give an example. I know somebody who had a serious neurosis of always feeling that they were being abandoned. They had been abandoned as a child — or at least they felt they had been abandoned as a child — when their parents got divorced and so on. They always projected this on to their partner, when their partner basically didn’t do anything at all or did something that was so innocent that didn’t seem as though it was abandoning, and yet the woman carried on crying and making a whole big scene. My friend had great difficulty comforting her in this situation — she was obviously upset — by saying, “Come on, you’re just acting really neurotically.” 

I’m wondering what is the best way to… when we talk about mental grief of others, how do you deal with that? Do you have to be strict sometimes and say “Come on!” Or do you indulge the other person? What do you do?

Participant: I think maybe a compromise. If this person felt abandoned, don’t make them feel further abandoned, because their wounds are still so fresh that it won’t help to ignore them or tell them that they’re being neurotic. But to make a compromise, to say: “I understand how you feel. But you have to understand too that this is irrational. I mean, I sympathize with you, I understand why you’re doing what you do, but you have to get a grip on yourself and understand that I’m not abandoning you,” in the case that you’re describing. Or in another case, just to try to make a compromise. Let the other person know that you understand why they’re being neurotic. But they have to understand it’s out of control and they have to get a grip on themselves.

Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s…

Participant: They don’t feel abandoned.

Dr. Berzin: Right. We have to be very diplomatic. In this example of the woman who felt abandoned all the time, to say we understand the situation (if we’re on the opposite side of this person that we are being accused of abandoning) and say: “I understand your feelings, and I’m not abandoning you or anything, but you have to really try to get a grip on this irrational fear and projection.” Does that comfort the other person? 

Participant: Maybe not at the moment, but it will help them more.

Dr. Berzin: Maybe not at the moment, but it will help more. This is another point that often comes up in the Dharma, that we have to look in terms of long-term benefit rather than immediate benefit when giving immediate help is going to actually be more damaging in the long run because it just perpetuates irrational behavior that gets rewarded.

Participant: I think what makes the case even more difficult is when the other person, in a way, asks for your help but not really — they don’t really want to hear it — and then it’s really very, very frustrating. Some people don’t want it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. What she’s saying is that what can be very difficult is if somebody is sort of indirectly asking for our help but isn’t really open to receiving it and on one level is saying, “I don’t really need your help.” 

I’m thinking of the example of my uncle who died a couple of weeks ago, about a month ago now. He was 98 and my aunt is 96, almost 97, and they had been married who knows how many years but a tremendous number of years. She had also lost her daughter (she had a 74-year-old daughter who died a few months earlier). And then got rid of the house, basically — went into a nursing home (they had been living at home). Within a few months, she lost her daughter, her husband, and a home that she had been living in for 55 years. You would expect that she would have mental grief, and that would be only normal, but her attitude is that “I’ve got to be strong and not give in to any type of grief or sorrow. I have to be mature about this.” I mean, she’s a very, very strong woman, and so she won’t acknowledge that she has mental grief, and it’s hard for her to accept that it’s OK to mourn and to cry. But she won’t. How can you comfort somebody like that who basically says that they don’t need comfort but they really do? (This is like what you were saying. I’m just giving a concrete example of that.) What I find helpful in this situation is just to call her on the phone quite frequently, just to show that she still has family who cares very much about her. 

Mental grief. It’s very nice to say, “alleviate the mental grief of others,” but how do you actually do that? There are two types of situations that I think of. I don’t know if it’s being sexist, but some people have described it to me as a more feminine situation and a more masculine situation or approach. The masculine approach tends to be one of: when there’s a problem, you just want to fix it. Whereas a woman’s approach is often that they don’t really expect a solution to the problem. They just want understanding and to share the situation so that you understand what it is. They don’t expect you to miraculously just fix it. One has to be aware, as either a man or a woman, that if the other person has this type of approach, that we act in accordance with that. Because I know often a man will feel helpless when a woman is crying, because they don’t know what to do in order to fix it. It’s like a leaking pipe: the tears are coming out, and how do I fix it — how do I stop it from leaking? Which can lead to a lot of misunderstanding, particularly in a couple relationship. 

One has to realize that not necessarily are you being called on, when you need to alleviate the mental grief of others, to somehow fix the problem and give the magic solution, but just understanding and sympathy is a great gift, especially if you can be nonjudgmental. Now of course what we’ve just discussed is when it’s being very neurotic, but when it’s very genuine then we need to be sensitive to different people’s ways of receiving comfort when they have mental grief. 

OK. Anything more about this?

Participant: There’s a big difference in comforting people who already accept the Dharma and understand the basic concepts of the religion and practice it and those who are from Judeo-Christian or atheist backgrounds who do not at all share those ideas. We have to comfort them in different ways. 

Dr. Berzin: Yes. He’s saying that for those who accept Buddhism and those who do not accept Buddhism but believe in another religion — that we need to comfort them in accord with their beliefs. That’s very true. To say to someone who has no idea of Buddhism that “Yes, your problem is burning off negative karma” is not exactly a skillful way of comforting them. Or to say that “God knows, in his infinite compassion, why you have this problem, so trust in God,” that also wouldn’t work for a Buddhist. 

Participant: For instance, Tibetan Buddhists I’ve known — their parents die or their house burns down and they sometimes laugh and act like “That’s the way it is.” It’s a very different attitude sometimes. Yeah, it’s the opposite of what I’m saying for Westerners. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. He’s saying that for some Tibetans that he’s known, if someone close to them dies — a parent — or their house burns down, they might even laugh. I really wonder though. They don’t think that it’s funny.

Participant: No, no. I mean they laugh at one’s attitude. In talking about it, they just describe it as just another samsaric problem. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. That I can understand, that they laugh at it, at the absurdity of samsara, that all these things are happening. Like finding out that we have to have an operation, or we have to have a tooth pulled or something like that. You just laugh at how these are the ups and downs of samsara.

Participant: I didn’t mean that they were unfeeling. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. No, they are feeling. They are feeling. But it’s a very different mental state. 

Participant: But if you tell a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew, “You don’t really have a personal self anyway. Don’t worry about it,” that’s not going to help them.

Dr. Berzin: Right. If we tell to a Christian, Jew, or Muslim that “Well, just think of voidness. You don’t have an independently truly established self that is experiencing this problem, so just dissolve it with your understanding of voidness,” that’s not going to help either. That’s very true. That’s very true. 

Also, to alleviate mental grief — again there are physical means, like giving somebody a hug, holding them, and just verbally comforting them — we have to be sensitive to what the other person feels comfortable with, and it’s not necessarily what we like. There are some people that really don’t like physical contact, but nevertheless there are situations in which to comfort somebody they do need to hug them even though they might not necessarily feel comfortable doing that. And vice versa, that you like hugging but here’s somebody that it wouldn’t help at all: they would feel uncomfortable or embarrassed (especially if you’re a younger person and it’s an older person that is not used to a lot of hugs). One has to be sensitive in alleviating the mental grief of others.

Participant: I’ve recently been in a situation with a friend and I really found it very, very strange to deal with. I think it’s not easy to deal with others’ grief when you yourself are affected by the same thing, when you yourself have the same problem going on (on an unconscious level or whatever). You have this person that you might want to assist, but you know that assisting is not a possibility, because you yourself have no solution.

Dr. Berzin: That you have no solution? What he’s saying is that it’s difficult to comfort somebody from a mental grief when we have the same grief, because we don’t know how to handle it ourselves. But this is exactly… it calls for the practice of tonglen, of giving and taking, in which we take on the suffering of the other person as part of our own suffering. Because of the need of the other person, we get ourselves together to be able to give something to others. 

Let’s give an example: your father or your mother dies, and you have brothers and sisters who are very, very upset. You’re upset as well, obviously, but what is your situation — how do you deal with the grief of your brothers and sisters? I think in that situation, if you look at it from the point of view of tonglen, of giving and taking, that one would want to try to, in your mind, take on the grief of everybody in the family, accept that, and then with your example show a way of dealing with that. That is not an insensitive way. It’s not as though “I don’t care. I’m not sad that my mother or father has died.” But because of the need of the other, you have a much stronger incentive to deal with your own grief. I think that’s very important. Otherwise, to just go even more to pieces when the rest of the family is going to pieces — I mean, what good is that? 

Now that becomes another interesting question. What happens when we are experiencing mental grief? Do we expect some great bodhisattva to come along and give us a hug? 

Participant: It would be nice. 

Dr. Berzin: It would be very nice. But how do you deal with your own mental grief in [these] two situations (one in which there’s nobody around, and the other in which there is somebody around)? Do we demand, in a sense, that they comfort us? Sort of go like a puppy dog in front of them and start whining and expect them to pat us on the head? This is a very real situation that happens. 

Participant: I guess it depends on how deeply into the grief they are before they lose perspective, because if they lose perspective then it’s very hard for them to be rational and even think such things as you described. I think they become almost infantile or something if they’re so deep in it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. If we’re so deep in grief, we might become quite infantile and lose all perspective.

Participant: Which can happen to us, practitioners we may be — or we’ve known people like that.

Dr. Berzin: Which happens and... Do you go up to somebody and say, “I could really use a hug”? Or what do you do?

Participant: I think it helps to have Dharma friends, serious Dharma friends. They can redirect your attention and your focus and encourage you to maybe engage in recitations or something that will help get you engaged again in getting some balance. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. If we have a religion, whether it’s Buddhist or a non-Buddhist religion, to have friends who share that who can guide us into some sort of comforting practice.

Participant: Who won’t indulge your grief but who can help.

Dr. Berzin: Who won’t indulge our grief? But sometimes you need a hug and that’s all that you want. I mean, if you can be rational enough and say, “I really need a hug. I’m not expecting any fix or something like that, but can you just hold me for a moment?” I don’t know if that works. It depends on the maturity of the other person very much. 

That’s why actually, in terms of particularly tantra practice, it’s very helpful to develop a very, very strong ability to visualize. We’re not talking here in terms of visual visualizing — it doesn’t matter in terms of actually visualizing somebody specific hugging us — but to have that, to imagine being hugged. And it’s not even imagining the act of being hugged; it’s just bringing to mind — and this is memory actually (mindfulness) — the feeling of being comforted. Whether we think of the comfort coming from Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, whether we think of it coming from a visualized partner hugging us, or from our spiritual teacher, or in a more unaimed fashion — you have a lot of these practices that are called unaimed (dmigs-med) in Mahamudra or in Dzogchen, in which you’re not actually having a specific object but just the feeling in general (an understanding of voidness usually has to come along with that, of course) — then that can be very, very helpful. But that requires a tremendous amount of training — to be able to, in a sense, give yourself comfort. 

Participant: I think that’s part of understanding that the Buddha-mind is always present, and not getting lost in…

Dr. Berzin: Right. The Buddha-mind is always present. That’s the same thing as saying, “God is always present. And God loves me, no matter what.” It’s just a variation on the same theme. 

Participant: Also understanding external events are impermanent.

Dr. Berzin: Right. External events are impermanent. Does a hug really make everything better? I mean, a physical hug… if you can get it, the physical hug certainly can be of help. But the difficulty, as I say, is when there is nobody to give it. Do you go and sort of ask somebody, or do you just deal with it?

Participant: I think also what Thich Nhat Hanh is suggesting is that you accept it and embrace the pain. Really accept it. OK, it’s a painful situation, but you’re friends with it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s another way of dealing with it, also suggested by tantra, which is to welcome the pain, embrace it. I mean, when I talk about it from a tantra point of view, it’s sort of like almost visualizing the pain as a being that is an interference or something like that, and then what’s called in the lojong — actually it’s not even tantra, it’s in the lojong (blo-sbyong, attitude training) teachings — “feeding” or making offerings to the interfering spirits. This is in the seven-point lojong. That, in a sense, you embrace it. That you don’t fight it. You accept it: here it is. And so on. Does that give you comfort? This is the whole point — what is comfort? Or does it help you to deal with it? 

Participant: Comfort in the sense that you don’t fight against this.

Dr. Berzin: Right. It gives us comfort in the sense that we don’t fight against it, and it takes off the sharp edge. This is particularly useful when we have pain. What happens when you lose a loved one, or you find out that your partner is having an affair with somebody else, and you feel terrible mental grief and jealousy and hurt and so on? It’s not easy just to say, “May they be happy,” and so on, and give the victory to the other. That’s not so easy, is it?

Participant: I think one has to try different things. Sometimes it might help to accept this.

Dr. Berzin: Right. This is very, very good. We need a whole assortment of different Dharma methods. 

Participant: The Buddha came up with 84,000.

Dr. Berzin: Right. The Buddha came up with 84,000, so we can find more than one.

Participant: A gun has 38 calibers, so you can’t resort to that. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. Without resorting to a .38-caliber gun. 

Mental grief is not an easy thing to deal with in terms of others and not so easy to deal with in terms of ourselves. As I say, there’s the level of just understanding and sympathy, and the level of “How do we fix the problem?” Sometimes the only way to fix it is really to gain liberation and enlightenment, so that also we have to be realistic about — that any fix still within the sphere of samsara can only be a temporary fix. I think that also (if we can understand that) is a sobering thing in terms of: What do we expect? Do I expect that I’m going to solve everybody’s problems without really getting to the root of them? Do I expect I’m going to be able to solve all my problems without getting to the root of it? 

[7] Not giving to those in need of charity

The next one is not giving to those in need of charity. The root downfall was in terms of not giving because of miserliness. Here, we are not giving in terms of anger (we’re angry with the other person), or spite (“You didn’t help me, so why should I help you?”), laziness, or indifference. 

Charity. Again, I think we had a little bit of a discussion of this in terms of how much do we need to go in the direction of a totally socialist state. Do people have to... This is an interesting thing.  Does somebody have to deserve charity? If there is a refugee who comes, do they have to be good, in a sense, in order to receive social help? How long do we give them charity? Are they there just for a free ride? Are they taking advantage of it, taking advantage not even on a government level but on our own individual charity and help? These are not easy questions. But if we can be charitable, that’s very good. 

I’m thinking of the example of benefits from the government, when you are retired, to people who have a lot of money, retired people, and people who have nothing. Do they “deserve” to get the same help from the government? Is that charity? Do you have to be in need in order to receive charity? What is charity? Remember, Shantideva… I mean the word charity here is just the word giving, generosity. Shantideva described it as the willingness to give. It’s a state of mind. Even if we have nothing to give, there’s the willingness to give. 

Participant: I would think every religion pretty much teaches charity to be without any thought — giving to all, without any criteria. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. He thinks that most religions say to be charitable to everybody, without discrimination and without any thought or premeditation beforehand. 

[8] Not taking care of the needs of our circle

Anyway, the next one brings in the topic of “charity begins at home,” which is the faulty action of not taking care of the needs of our circle. It says here that it’s a great fault to neglect, out of spite, laziness, or indifference, our circle of relatives, friends, coworkers, employees, disciples, and so on, especially when we’re engaged in social work helping others. 

This often happens in the case of parents who are social workers, that they tend to spend all their time helping others and their children feel neglected. This is the point: charity begins at home. That’s not an easy thing to have. We’re taught so much, in the Buddhist teachings, to develop equanimity, an equal attitude toward everyone without a feeling of close or distant. But it’s very easy when working to develop that, that in the developing a feeling of closeness with others outside of our immediate circle, we tend to put distance. Because to gain equanimity, you have to lessen the distance with those who are far from us that we would ignore but increase the distance with those that we are attached to, don’t you? 

I mean, what happens when we have people who are close to us that demand all our time? Especially if it’s a baby. What do you do? These are practical questions that are not very easy to answer. The baby takes a lot of time, a tremendous amount of focus, and to neglect our baby while we go out and help the homeless or whatever — that’s not so easy (or if we take in a lot of other children, to take care of them together with our baby). Doesn’t our baby feel that it’s supposed to be someone special? I don’t know. Itay, you come from Israel. Do you have any experience with kids who grow up on a kibbutz, in terms of the very young being put in a communal thing with children? Don’t they feel as though they should be special to their parents? 

Participant: I just saw a documentary about this which was very interesting. It showed children in the kibbutzim in the ’50s, when kibbutzim were the real thing, not like today. I think the children, some of them, to some extent, were quite miserable most days. I mean, they were not allowed to spend more than two hours a day with their parents, because they didn’t belong to them: they belonged to kibbutz. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. He’s reporting that he saw a documentary recently about the kibbutzim in Israel in the ’50s, when they were the real thing, according to the theory. Many of the children there were quite miserable because they had to be raised from a very, very young age in the communal house and they could only spend two hours a day with their parents, because they didn’t really belong to the parents — they belonged to the community, to the kibbutz.

Participant: Sometimes they didn’t have any kind of protection from other children.

Dr. Berzin: Right. They didn’t have protection from other children. What was the attitude of the parents in terms of this? I mean, the parents went into this voluntarily; the children didn’t. 

Participant: I think people were… Some parents believed in this ideology, so they went along with it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Some parents believed in this ideology, so they went along with it. 

Participant: Actually, the exact same thing you’re describing happens with Scientology children, because L. Ron Hubbard teaches that you shouldn’t be treated like a child: you should just be with other children, not with adults. And in the Cultural Revolution in China, the Chinese children were treated the same way: you’re part of the people’s community and you shouldn’t have bourgeois ideas of belonging to…

Dr. Berzin: Right. He’s saying there are many other examples like this: in Scientology, in which the children should just be with other children and not with adults, and during the Cultural Revolution. But with the kibbutzim, it was from being a baby. How young were they when they went in?

Participant: I don’t exactly remember that. But yes, as babies they wouldn’t sleep with their parents but rather in the children’s house.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Even as a baby in the kibbutzim, they were in the children’s house. 

That’s a difficult balance to make, that we’re trying to help others but also, we need to take care of our family, and our sick mother or father, and all these other types of things. How do you strike that balance without making our relatives or children feel abandoned? Yet you have to make some sort of room — maybe it’s not distance but you have to make room — in order to be able to also help others. That’s not easy. That really isn’t.

Participant: You also need room, as you say, for close ones in order to have compassion.

Dr. Berzin: To have them what?

Participant: To help the close ones.

Dr. Berzin: Right. We also need to make room in order to... in our busy life helping others, we have to make room also to take care of those who are our family or the really close friends. That’s very true. 

One looks at the really great lamas, and do they have any really close special disciples? This gets into a very, very difficult thing. The inner circle around the lama, and then the people who are jealous that they’re not in the inner circle. What is the criteria for being in the inner circle? Or does the lama have to travel around and help everybody? I don’t really know. 

I look at the example of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and he certainly gives the impression — and this is very, very true with His Holiness — that nobody is special. In order to be involved with helping His Holiness in any way whatsoever, that’s the first rule that you have to learn, is nobody is special, and certainly you’re not special, so you can’t expect any special treatment or special amount of time or something like that. Yet there are individual people that His Holiness will teach specially. You know, the people who do lifelong retreat up in the mountains above Dharamsala. They come down to His Holiness’s residence and get special teachings from His Holiness. His Holiness takes care of them. Whereas just some regular Dharma student is not going to get personal attention. 

Do you schedule your time in such a way in terms of the need of the others? I mean, we already had this — that in some cases you might direct people to someone else who could help them if you don’t have the time. Yeah, Jorge?

Participant: Maybe it also has to do with your special position to help some people, like with your close ones, in ways that other people could not help them, just as His Holiness can teach these people who are doing the retreat in a way that other teachers couldn’t.

Dr. Berzin: Right. We have to see: are there people that we’re in a special position to be able to help? Also, what about close karmic relationships? I mean, it’s saying don’t neglect those, is what this vow is talking about — not to neglect them. But don’t just totally focus on them.

Participant: On the other hand, I was reading the other day in the vows somewhere, in a commentary, that it’s also considered disrespectful to teach too much of the Dharma to somebody you know that doesn’t really care about it and is not really going to practice.

Dr. Berzin: Right. He’s referring to another vow which comes up, which is not to teach those who are unripe (who are not ready for the teachings). That’s particularly in terms of voidness teachings but other teachings as well. Yeah. I mean, one needs to be very skillful. 

But you know what is always very difficult with a lot of Dharma practitioners is that they’re thinking “I’m going benefit all sentient beings,” and they do various social work and so on, but they can’t get along with their parents. There something is really quite out of balance. Whenever they go to visit their parents, they just get into big arguments. This is really the area where we have to try to focus our Dharma efforts on is what this vow is saying.

Participant: I think another approach, which we try to apply at our workplace, is this sort of idea to treat everybody special. The approach is “Everybody’s special and everybody has the same right for attention.”

Dr. Berzin: Right. She’s saying that at her workplace they have the thing that everybody is special, the feeling that everybody is special. Also with His Holiness, I should say. Nobody is special, but he makes everybody who comes in his presence feel that they’re special, because he gives 100% attention to anybody that he speaks with or interacts with. 

But here you have a problem with this thing about being special. I have a cousin who is involved with school psychology, and she was mentioning how many problems have arisen because of this whole generation that has been raised in the United States to feel that they are special, everybody is special. Then you get this now in China with the one-child policy. Everybody is special. Because you are taught that you’re special, you’re totally unprepared to go out into the real world after school in which nobody considers you special at all. 

Participant: Because they think they’re so special.

Dr. Berzin: Because they think that they are so special. They are really ill-equipped to deal with real life. 

Participant: There have been a lot of studies done, particularly in this American system of education. In particular they talk a lot about how that actually doesn’t work very well because it doesn’t give a person — or a child — a sense of fulfillment if they achieve something, because they feel like “Why should I even try to achieve anything? I’m special just the way I am.” They don’t know a sense of fulfillment and worth.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Exactly. She says that from studies that have been done in America in which a whole generation was raised this way (to feel that they were special), that then the children don’t work to achieve anything in a challenging way because “they’re special in their own way.” So this has not helped. 

Also there have been studies recently in China about the result of the one-child policy, and this has also been quite a disaster, because the children who have been so spoiled then have no sense of taking care of the parents when the parents get old. They are the prince, they are the princess — it’s usually the prince — but they’re the one that has been so special, and so they pretty much become very, very self-centered. They were always given everything from the parents. Actually, there’s a service now in which you can call, and you can hire somebody to be the good daughter or the good son who will actually call you and visit you, and so on, as you get older. This is very, very strange, that that’s developed. 

Participant: In both those cases, America and China, it’s getting away from any spiritual or religious foundation, and being simply rational and using ideas from the Age of the Enlightenment, that leads to this.

Dr. Berzin: What he’s saying is that both in America and China, it’s getting away from a spiritual basis. I don’t know. One would have to examine. Because America has the strongest (of at least the Western countries) religiosity, with fundamentalist… the bible and so on. I think that’s very real in a large part of the population. That’s very real.

Anyway, we have this thing of not neglecting those who are close to us.

[9] Not going along with the preferences of others

Then the next one is not going along with the preferences of others. So long as what others wish us to do or what they like is not harmful to them or others, it’s a fault not to agree. Everybody has different tastes, and so if we don’t honor this, because of spite, laziness, or indifference, then we start a lot of small little arguments about: Where shall we go to eat? What shall we do? What shall we watch on the TV? And so on. This is saying: don’t make a big deal out of getting our own way; if what the other person is suggesting and wants is… as long as it’s not harmful, go along with it. 

Does that mean that we always go along with what others say, that we become passive?

Participant: No.

Dr. Berzin: You say no. How do you know when we’re not just asserting our own selfish preferences and when we are striking a balance?

Participant: One has to watch one’s own mind from time to time and check what’s going on.

Dr. Berzin: Right. You have to watch your mind and check what’s going on. But often we want things to be our own way, don’t we? You go visit somebody, or you call them on the phone, and you expect that they’re going to drop everything and speak to us and spend time with us. They are busy doing something that is more important to them. How do you handle that? Do you go along with that and just retreat? You can. As a Dharma practitioner you would, in a sense, and not push yourself on somebody else. But can you do that without giving an indication in your facial expression or tone of voice that subtly is trying to make them feel guilty at neglecting us? “That’s OK. You do your work. It’s more important. I’ll call some other time.” 

Participant: I’ll go meditate instead.

Dr. Berzin: Yeah. “That’s OK. I have other things to do. I’ll go meditate instead.” 

Very often, as Dharma practitioners, we can externally do what we know is in accordance with the bodhisattva practices, but we, on a more subtle level, resent having to do that, and so we give more subtle hints that sabotage our efforts. That’s something that you have to actually watch out for. If we are going to follow a Dharma procedure in dealing with a difficult or disappointing situation, to really try to be sincere in it. 

That’s difficult, because in the beginning we’re not going to be sincere. That you have to accept: we’re not going to be sincere in the beginning. In the beginning, basically you’re using discipline. That’s the initial scope, basically. We’re using discipline to refrain from a destructive action because we know that it will be detrimental and cause problems. If we force the person to leave what they’re doing and spend time with us, they’re going to resent us, it will probably get into an argument, and they’re certainly not going to invite us again. You just restrain yourself. But you don’t sincerely feel “Aw, their needs are more important than mine. Let’s not be self-cherishing. Let’s cherish the others,” and so on. 

Participant: If you want something and then the other says no, you’re disappointed. But then, if you’re disappointed, you have a chance to look at it and ask why. You get a chance. It’s OK to get disappointed — you are disappointed — but then this is a chance to look at it.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Exactly. When this happens and we get really disappointed, it’s a good chance to look at it. 

I had an example this weekend. I went to visit a friend (and the friend had invited me), but actually when I got there the friend was very busy with work that he had to do, and there was almost no time whatsoever to spend together. I was feeling a bit itchy, and I must say I wasn’t very skillful. Because we were supposed to go for a walk, and then he got involved in doing some project that he was doing. So, indirectly, I gave the hints: “Come on, at least go out for a walk.” But the way that the thing unfolded was a compromise — he was sensitive enough to realize that I was very frustrated — and we went out for a walk. I was being very self-cherishing in terms of that, so I confessed that to him, and we only went for a walk for ten minutes and then I said, “I appreciate the token that we did this, and so go back and do your work. That is more important.” You reach some sort of compromise, if the two people are mature enough to be able to do that. 

There are different ways of dealing with that type of uncomfortable situation. But there’s a saying: In general, don’t make a big fuss about where you’re going to eat and what you’re going to do when you go out with somebody else. If they have a strong preference, go along with it, as long as it’s not harmful.

Participant: Your example also fits more, to my mind, to the vow that I found in a text I was reading — that you don’t support others in their Dharma practice or with doing good things. I think that vow is more specialized. Because, thinking about it, it sounds a bit different to me to the vow here.

Dr. Berzin: There are other vows. This will come in the tantric vows. She’s wondering if this is the same as another vow saying not to encourage others in their Dharma practice. There’s a vow against discouraging other people from their practice when they have faith in it. 

Participant: We’re talking about a variation of this vow. Another variation. What is the variation? 

Participant: Not supporting others in their Dharma practice. It was the same number vow. 

Dr. Berzin: Right. She’s saying there was another version of this, which was not supporting others in their Dharma practice. I don’t know. This is the way that it’s explained in the various commentaries that I’ve looked at.

Participant: There could be a conflict between the two. If you go along with someone, maybe that’s harming their Dharma practice.

Dr. Berzin: Going along with the preferences of others. There’s a very nice example. You go to a puja at a different Dharma center, and it’s a puja that you know, and your Dharma center chants it in one tune and this Dharma center chants it in another tune. The tendency is to think “My tune is right. Your tune is wrong,” and sing really loudly with your tune so that you force them to go along with your way of doing it. Or they arrange the offerings slightly differently, or they whatever. 

Or another example that I come across is that I go to teach in some place, and they have their preliminary prayers and their dedication at the end, and I have mine that I usually do. Do you insist on doing it your own way or do you go along with their preferences? Sometimes this becomes very difficult when their preferences means the first half hour, of a very limited amount of time that I’m with them, is taken up by chanting and sitting in silence. They’re meditating without a specific topic. Do you go along with their preferences? This is saying basically yes, if that’s what they want, because their preference is not harmful. What is my motivation? “I have something that’s more important and more helpful to teach them than their sitting here and chanting. Why did they invite me to sit here and participate in them chanting?” But according to this vow, one would go along with it: there’s nothing wrong with it. 

Participant: I thought maybe I can do it as a special case of the vow.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Yeah. The example that I just gave would fit in with what she had read about this vow of going along with other people’s Dharma practices and not contradicting them.

[10] Not speaking in praise of others’ talents or good qualities

Then the next one is not speaking in praise of others’ talents or good qualities. If we fail to commend others when they’ve done something well or if we fail to agree with somebody else’s praise of them, because of anger (we’re angry with the person), spite (they didn’t praise us, so why should we praise them?), indifference, or laziness, we weaken our interest and enthusiasm for them to continue to grow. Now of course there are the cases in which others might feel embarrassed to be praised either privately or in public, and so for those you wouldn’t necessarily do it, or if they would become proud or vain if praised to their face. 

I always give the example of my own teacher Serkong Rinpoche. He neither praised me… He never said “Well done.” He thanked me twice in nine years. But I know from what other people said he did praise me to other people, but never to my face. For people in the West who suffer from low self-esteem, that could be really very unskillful. For myself it was very skillful; it was very helpful. 

This is a tricky thing. Do you encourage people and always praise them? Then that makes it very difficult to point out when they make a mistake, doesn’t it? How do you know when praising is helpful or not helpful? In the West, everybody expects a thank you. But also, from a Dharmic point of view, we shouldn’t be helping others because of the wish to be thanked. In fact, the best help is anonymous help, in which nobody knows that it was you who helped, so you’re not helping in order to get praised or thanked. Suffering should be eliminated, Shantideva said, simply because it’s suffering and it hurts, not because it’s my suffering or your suffering. Suffering has no owner. 

Participant: But if somebody has low self-esteem, it’s really helpful to praise them.

Dr. Berzin: Right. If somebody has low self-esteem, then it helps to praise them. But do you praise them — now we go back to what we were just talking about — by saying, “Oh, you’re so special”? 

Participant: You praise… you enhance something which is a good quality.

Dr. Berzin: Right. You enhance a good quality. In praising, you have to be honest. 

Participant: You could say, “That wasn’t as bad as you usually do it.”

Dr. Berzin: Right. “That wasn’t as bad as you usually do it.” That’s not so skillful perhaps. I don’t know. 

Praising others can get very tricky. But what’s especially true here is when somebody praises somebody else who we don’t particularly like, then at that time we should go along with it. If you remember, Shantideva had a whole bunch of verses dealing with praise: That why feel badly about something good that somebody else has done? If you feel happy about it, you share in their happiness, and so on. Your feeling badly about it isn’t going to take it away from the other person, and so on. He has many, many very helpful lines of reasoning and thought to help in that situation. 

This is that vow.

[11] Not enforcing punishment in accordance with circumstances

The next one — we just have two more (it would be good to finish them today) — is not enforcing punishment in accordance with circumstances. To help others, it’s important to discipline them if they act in an unruly manner. If we fail to do so, because of emotional problems with it, or laziness, indifference, or not being conscientious, we damage our ability to be an effective guide. 

How do you punish others? 

Participant: It depends on…

Dr. Berzin: It depends on... I mean, it’s interesting. I think of… I go to a fitness club in which there are classes. And at the fitness club — unlike our classes here — they start exactly to the minute when the class is supposed to begin. You have leeway of up to five minutes maybe, maximum, to come late. After that, you’re not allowed into the class. “Finished. You can’t come in.” What would it be like if we did that here? Nobody would come. Or everybody would come on time. 

Participant: Then the second time maybe they will.

Dr. Berzin: The second time maybe they will come. 

What do you do? Is it being really unfair to people not to teach them discipline by being strict? I’m guilty of this. I’m not strict at all in terms of when people walk in and when we start the class and so on. But this is saying that perhaps it’s better to give punishments — “Sorry. The door’s locked. You can’t come in. You missed it” — and strict rules. 

Then the thing is: Why don’t you enforce discipline? Is it laziness? Is it that I don’t want people to dislike me? I want people to come because they will put offerings in the offering box? Why? Often people will not discipline somebody else because they feel that “If I discipline this other person, they’re not going to like me.” With children, of course… That also was a lesson that maybe was learned from another generation, at least in America, of the children of hippies — that they weren’t disciplined, and they could do whatever they want. 

Participant: That worked out well.

Dr. Berzin: That worked out not really very well, because many of the children of the hippies then felt that they weren’t loved, that the parents didn’t care enough to set the borders of what’s reasonable and what’s unreasonable. They felt very, very insecure, because they never knew what the limits were. 

Maybe we need to negotiate whether or not we’re going to start our classes strictly on time. Our Mexican friend shakes his head no. 

Participant: Next vow.

Dr. Berzin: Next vow. OK, we’ll go on to the next vow. 

Participant: He has a bonus, a Mexican bonus.

Dr. Berzin: Right. He gets an extra five minutes — an extra fifteen minutes — because of his culture. 

Participant: The Mexican vows are different.

Dr. Berzin: Right. The Mexican vows are different. For those who are listening, we’re not being racist here. It’s just that our dear Mexican student is always late, so we always make fun of him for that. 

But that’s a serious question. Do you discipline? With children we can say “OK, we discipline.” But do you discipline your friends? Do you discipline your students? Do you discipline your parents? 

Participant: Is it helping them or not?

Dr. Berzin: Yes, but are you punishing because of anger? That you have to really watch out for. This is very, very tricky, how do you enforce and stop unruly behavior or inappropriate behavior. One needs to be quite strict really, and that would be the kindest thing to do. 

[12] Not using such things as extraphysical powers or the ability to cast spells

Then the last one: not using such things as extraphysical powers (rdzu-’phrul) or the ability to cast spells. Certain situations call for special methods to help others, such as using powers. If we possess them but don’t use them when they would be appropriate and effective, we damage our ability to be of help. When situations really call for it, we try to use whatever talents, abilities, and attainments we have to benefit others. 

In general, if have extrasensory abilities, then it’s always advised, in the manner of the Kadampa Geshes, to never show them and to always claim that we don’t have them, and so on. Many Westerners of course are very skeptical in terms of: do such things actually exist? But I must say, from all the years that I spent in India closely with the Tibetans, that I have seen a number of demonstrations of such abilities and powers. I think it does exist. The best example I can think of was my own teacher Serkong Rinpoche. Once, we were driving in a jeep up the hill to a Dharma center in Dharamsala for some teaching or something like that, and we were on the road quite a way below the temple where this was. This was Tushita in Dharamsala. And Serkong Rinpoche said, “Hurry up. Go quickly. There’s a fire starting in the temple.” Sure enough: they drove the car quickly up this rocky dirt road, and when they got to the temple, one of the curtains had caught on fire from a candle. There was absolutely no way that Rinpoche could have seen this or known this by ordinary means when we were in the jeep well below the temple. 

In these situations, it’s important to actually use those powers in order to be of benefit.

Participant: Also, you’re then allowed to break the vow of letting people see these? Even though normally in tantra you shouldn’t.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Then he’s saying that it’s breaking a vow. I don’t know if it’s an actual vow (it’s not in the list of vows), but the tradition — the custom — that you don’t demonstrate or show these powers. You certainly don’t show them off like a parlor trick — pull a rabbit out of the hat so that you can...

Participant: Only in an emergency if it would help others.

Dr. Berzin: Only in emergencies that would help others? What about these classic examples of contests of magic powers between Milarepa and the sorcerer, and all these things? There are so many accounts of these.

Participant: But that was to help others.

Dr. Berzin: Right. That was to help others. Casting spells and so on. I mean, it starts to look like an action movie, doesn’t it? But I think on a certain level these things actually do exist, at least from what I’ve seen, and I’m a fairly skeptical Westerner. But I’ve seen some fairly amazing things in my days in India, so I do have some belief in this. If we have those powers or abilities, and it can help, use them. It’s saying: In any situation, whatever abilities we have, use them. Don’t hide them and be modest when necessity calls for it. OK? 

That completes the secondary bodhisattva vows. They are obviously very helpful guidelines that indicate: if we’re trying to follow a bodhisattva way of life, what do we need to watch out for? It’s very interesting the way that it is phrased in terms of things to watch out for and avoid, as opposed to things to do (although often it’s to avoid not doing so and so, and so and so). But in general, this fits in with the discussion of the ethics of avoiding the ten destructive actions. Our tendency is to act in a destructive way based on ignorance, isn’t it, and grasping for a truly existent me and all of that. What we really need to be mindful of is to... First of all, we need to be alert to be able to see when we’re acting in an inappropriate way based on our disturbing emotions and so on. And then stop it, refrain from it. 

These are very helpful guidelines. Of course, it’s not possible to promise that we will never, ever, ever do these things. But as we saw in the teachings when we started this discussion, there are certain things that would make it complete — completely negative, completely losing the vow — and we need to try to avoid them. If we do these things, don’t feel happy about it, don’t rejoice in it, don’t say “I’m never going to stop doing it,” and so on. Feel regret. There are many, many points here that can lessen the damage done by these various types of transgressions. 

OK. We’ll end here. And since Tsongkhapa speaks an awful lot about the tantric vows next, I think that, most of them, there’s not a problem in explaining them, and those that I think are inappropriate I won’t explain. OK? We’ll continue next time.

We end with the dedication. Whatever positive force, whatever understanding has come from all this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.