Bodhisattva ethical restraints: Auxiliary vows 19-22

• Auxiliary vows 17-20 are to eliminate obstacles to the far-reaching practice of fortitude. Abandon:

• 19. Refusing to accept the apologies of others.

• 20. Acting out thoughts of anger.

• Auxiliary vows 21-23 are to eliminate obstacles to the far-reaching practice of joyous effort. Abandon:

• 21. Gathering a circle of friends or disciples because of your desire for respect or profit.

• 22. Not dispelling the three types of laziness (sloth, attraction to destructive actions, and self-pity and discouragement).

Let’s bring our attention to impermanence and the fact that our life is impermanent. This opportunity to engage with the Dharma is similarly passing away in each moment. Realizing the preciousness of our life, let’s take advantage of each moment to learn, reflect, and meditate on the Buddha’s teachings so we can progress along the path, develop our qualities, and at some point, become fully-enlightened buddhas. 

Purpose of the bodhisattva precepts

We’ve been going through the bodhisattva precepts as part of the teachings that went on during the retreat. Some of you have been following it from the beginning; some of you are walking in today in the middle of it. If you’re in the latter group, everything is online so you can catch up and watch all the teachings that came before. 

These are the precepts that one takes when we want to follow the bodhisattva vehicle, when we have the aspiration to attain full enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. When we first generate that aspiration, it’s called “aspiring bodhicitta” because we aspire to Buddhahood. But at a certain point we want to really engage in the path, create the causes, and do the bodhisattva practices—that’s called “engaged bodhicitta.” At that point we take the bodhisattva precepts. The bodhisattva precepts have 18 root precepts and 46 auxiliary ones. We’ve covered the 18 roots and are now on number 19 of the auxiliary ones. 

The auxiliary precepts are divided according to the six far-reaching practices. Some of them are to protect us against actions that prevent generosity and the actions that prevent keeping ethical conduct. We’ve covered those two sections and are now in the middle of precepts—I believe there are four of them—that help protect us from actions that are opposed to the practice of fortitude, or patience.

Precepts protecting us from anger

What’s the thing opposed to fortitude or patience? Anger! These are all precepts that have to do with anger. Number 17 was “Responding to verbal abuse with verbal abuse and so forth.” That applies to four actions: (1) when insulted we insult back, (2) when somebody’s angry at us, we get angry back, (3) when they beat us, we beat them back, and (4) when they criticize us, we criticize them back.

The first one has to do with refraining from what we’ve been taught to do since we were kids, which is, “If they throw sand at you in the sandbox, throw sand back.” We’re trying to overcome that habit. Or maybe we weren’t taught that, but we certainly see it embodied in our society. 

Number 18 is neglecting those who are angry: “Neglecting those who are angry with us by not trying to pacify their anger.” That one had to do with if we did something that was rude or obnoxious and somebody was upset then we apologize to them. Even if we didn’t do anything, if their mind invented some kind of story and they have false information, we go and talk to them, give them the correct information, and somehow try to pacify the situation. In other words, not just say, “Oh, somebody’s mad at me, forget it; I don’t care.” Here it’s out of genuine care for the person that we try to clear things up with them—not because you’re trying to be a people-pleaser or taking care of your reputation out of attachment, or something like that. 

19. Not accepting others’ apologies.

Now we’re on number 19. Chandragomin calls it “Not accepting others’ apologies.” Here, it’s the same: “Refusing to accept the apologies of others.”

It’s like when somebody’s mean and nasty or they betrayed our trust, and we’re mad: “I’m never going to forgive them!” Then they finally come and apologize, and we say, “No! I’m not forgiving you after what you did to me!” Has anybody here done that? I’ve been in that kind of situation, but they never apologized to me. I always thought, “Even if he does apologize, I’m not going to forgive.” That was about something that happened in seventh grade, so actually, I’m over it by now. But at that time, I thought never would I speak to the person ever again because he made a racist remark. I stormed out of the classroom in tears, went to the bathroom and cried. They had to coax me out the bathroom, and I said, “I’m never speaking to Peter Armetta as long as I live,” and we were in the same classes in high school and college. I’m waiting for him to turn up at one of these talks. [laughter] Also, I’m waiting for Rosie Knox to turn up at one, too. She was the girl that I got kicked out of our group in sixth grade. So, it’s all these kinds of things, terrible things, that you did to other people or they did to you. I don’t hold anything against Peter nowadays, but I sure hope he changes his ideas. 

So, not accepting others’ apologies.

In the preceding misdeed [which was about pacifying others’ anger] the persons are angry with us and we do nothing to appease their anger. Here the objects are the people who have hurt or offended us during an argument, for example, and then realizing their error, they apologize in a correct manner.

‘In a correct manner’ is important. It’s not just, “Oh, I’m sorry.” It’s not just an insincere apology, an apology to gain good credits, or something like that; the person has really thought about what they did and is sorry about it. And the way they apologized was in a respectful way, it wasn’t a shoddy sort of way.

But we decline to accept the apology because we refuse to give up our own feelings of anger and forgive them.

We are holding on to our anger because this is our identity, and that’s it. 

When we reject the apology out of animosity or ill-will, the misdeed is associated with afflictions. When we harbor no manifested feelings of animosity or ill-will but for lack of patience still do not want to accept their apology, it is a misdeed dissociated from afflictions.

Can you think of a situation where you have no manifest feelings of animosity or ill-will, but still, for lack of patience, don’t want to accept their apology? What would an example of that be? 

Audience: [Inaudible]

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): Yes, that’s true. If somebody grabs you when you’re on the way somewhere.

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: So, it’s not active animosity, but a kind of undercover animosity. It’s like, “Oh, I’ve forgiven you but I’m not going to get too close, don’t come near me.” But that would be active animosity.

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: Let’s think about that. What would an example of that be? Maybe he says it in the next sentence.

This might occur if they chose a bad moment to explain themselves, when we are particularly busy, for example, and it is for that reason that we refuse to listen and not because we want to hurt them.

So, you’re busy, you have a bunch of things on your plate, you’re in the middle of going somewhere, and it’s just, “I can’t talk now.” 

First of all, people are going to say, “What’s the difference between this and the second root one? The difference is that for the second root one, we need all four binding factors. For this one, we don’t need all four binding factors. 

The exceptions are similar to the previous. There is no misdeed in the following situations: It is better for the person’s spiritual development that we do not accept the apology.

So, if we feel it’s going to make the person grow up and reflect a little bit deeper, then not apologizing is permissible.

There are two exceptions in relationship to the object, the people apologizing. First is that they do not offer their apology properly according to custom.

In other words, it’s an off-the-cuff apology, like, “I’m writing you a two-line email saying I’m sorry for what happened,” but you don’t see any sincerity in it. That’s one exception.

The other is we have reason to believe that their apology is not sincere.

Or if it’s not offered respectfully. In saying that we don’t need to accept it, that doesn’t mean we’re entitled to hold on to our anger, it’s not saying that. It’s not saying hold on to your anger just because they haven’t apologized in a polite way, because from our side, holding on to our anger damages us. But rather you might need to say something like, “Let’s talk about it later; please think about this some more,” or something like that.

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: That’s why there’s this precept, because if we’re so stuck in our anger and somebody apologizes, we transgress this precept by not forgiving them. This is exactly what the precept is pointing to. It’s not justifying our anger because they didn’t apologize properly. They apologized but we’re not seeing it because we are so angry. 

The thing is with a lot of these precepts, we don’t know we’ve broken them until afterwards, because when we break them, we’re stuck in our view that what we’re thinking and doing is correct. That’s why it’s important to learn the precepts and really think about them beforehand; think about the kind of situations you’ve been in or could be in, and remember the precepts when you’re in conflict situations. Otherwise, we do wind up transgressing them and not knowing we transgressed them.

20. Maintaining angry thoughts.

Number 20 is “Maintaining angry thoughts.” Do you remember when we discussed generosity? There was a precept about not doing anything to counteract our thoughts of attachment. This is the same regarding anger—not doing anything to counteract our angry thoughts. 

Here it says, “Acting out thoughts of anger”—this is simply maintaining the thoughts of anger.

This fault consists of not applying the antidotes to anger.

You know how sometimes when you’re mad, you don’t even think of the antidotes? We’re so imbued with our righteousness, and how we’re right and they’re wrong, that we don’t even see this as a case of anger that needs antidotes. We see it as a case of, “They’ve done something to me, and I’m going to retaliate because that’s what they deserve.” That was two precepts ago, but so often we don’t even think of this thing as we’re angry. We are just stuck in the middle of it, that’s all. 

The thing is that after you’ve been at teachings enough, and after you’ve done enough meditation, that’s when you begin to see your own anger and sense your own anger. There’s a little nagging feeling in the back of the mind that tells you you’re angry: “You’re angry, this is a non-virtuous state.” But we just respond with, “Shut up!” [laughter] It’s kind of this little voice in there saying, “You’re angry.” That’s good that we’re able to detect our anger. Sometimes we detect it because of the feelings in our body: our stomach is tight, our heart is beating. Or you can see sometimes in what I call a particular flavor in the mind; you might call it a mood. When we’re in a bad mood, there’s basically low-grade anger. Isn’t that what a bad mood is? I know for me a bad mood is low-grade anger, and I’m looking for somebody to dump it on. The more we can recognize these things, the more we can apply an antidote and not follow through on them. 

This fault consists of not applying the antidotes to anger. We are angry and do nothing to try and control it. When we realize that we are angry, we make no effort to fight it by applying the appropriate remedies, such as recalling its drawbacks.

Or thinking that we’re the ones who created the karma to be in the situation, or thinking that the other person is suffering, or any of these many antidotes to anger. We should think about them.

By simply letting it [the anger] run its course we commit the fourth secondary misdeed related to patience, which is then associated with afflictions.

We don’t do anything, we just let the anger continue, and that’s when we start ruminating: “Oh, they did this, and they did this, and they did that, and next time I see them I’m going to do this, and I’m going to say that.” And then we go and talk to our friends: “Oh, do you know what so-and-so just did? …” We do that so that our friends are on our side. Because that’s one of their duties as friends, to side with us; if they don’t side with us, who needs them? But actually, a good friend is going to be a friend who says, “Oh, you sound, maybe not angry, but upset.” It’s easier for us to acknowledge being upset, and they get around to helping us see that we’re not just upset, we’re angry. 

If we sincerely try to stop the flow of our anger but do not succeed, there’s no misdeed. The principle is the same as for the second misdeed, maintaining thoughts of desire: as we have tried our best to check the affliction, in the event that we fail, there is no fault.

Just like that one, if we try to counteract the anger but we’re still angry, we haven’t broken the precept because we’ve tried. So, we should always at least try. 

The first of the four misdeeds contrary to the practice of patience [or fortitude] is failing to resist the temptation to retaliate under four different circumstances. The second is doing nothing to stop the anger that we have provoked in others. The third is refusing to let other people placate our anger by accepting their apology, and the fourth is persisting in feeling angry without making the slightest effort to stem our wrath.

These precepts are really something, aren’t they? They’re really hitting the nail on the head about what’s going on when we’re angry.

The explanation of the four secondary misdeeds relative to patience [or fortitude] provides useful guidelines for dealing with a variety of situations in which we frequently find ourselves in our daily lives. If we take the trouble to learn what is taught, perhaps we will no longer be at such a loss to deal with them. 

That’s why it’s so important to learn these precepts, contemplate them on the cushion and think of all sorts of different situations in our life where these precepts may apply. We can start with taking situations from the past where we didn’t accept somebody’s apology, we didn’t apologize to them, we retaliated, or we kept on with our anger. Think of those situations in the past and go through them, but now practice the thought-training practices, and try to counteract the anger, because a lot of those situations from the past we’re still angry about now. And if you call them up in your mind, you can get yourself really revved up. So, take those things out and see how to apply the antidotes now, but also imagine what it was like in the actual situation and think of how you can think and practice should a similar kind of situation happen in the future.

This is important for being able to make changes in ourselves, in our lives. Because if we don’t, if we just listen to the teachings on the precept and think, “Yes, anger is bad,” then later we forget it and just keep on going, so does our anger, nothing really changes. We just devise better ways to justify it, hide it, say that it’s not our fault, and all our usual tricks. That was number twenty.

Now we’re going to talk about the three misdeeds contrary to far-reaching joyous effort. Joyous effort is taking delight in virtue. It’s the mind that is happy to do virtuous activities. 

21. Eager for gains and honors, gathering a following; Gathering a circle of friends or students because of one’s desire for wealth or profit. 

Number 21 says, “Eager for gains and honors, gathering a following,” or “Gathering a circle of friends or students because of one’s desire for wealth or profit.” A lot of these bodhisattva precepts are for people who’ve been around the Dharma a while. You’ve been around enough, you know something. There are some people who are beginners who think, “Oh, it would be so nice to be the center of the groupies, have a whole little trail of groupies following around after me. Or maybe not a whole trail, maybe just even one. Somebody who is going to give me presents, who is going to give me money, who is going to talk so nicely about me to me, give me honor and respect and then talk to other people and tell them how I’m highly realized and what a fantastic this and that I am.”

So, it’s wanting gain and honor, collecting people and pretending to teach them, or actually teaching them but the motivation is a bit rotten, isn’t it? Because when you teach, you’re supposed to sincerely care for the welfare of the people that you’re giving Dharma instructions to. Here, maybe you kind of care for them, but you kind of care for them because they care for you a whole lot, you know? They’re so nice and they get you this, they get you that, and they all bow down. Then you start thinking, “Oh, I must be really important, all these people go like this when I walk by, and they always bring me this and that,” and then your joyous effort stops because you get totally arrogant and complacent, so your own practice falls apart. 

Dagpo Rinpoche says:

The first of the three secondary misdeeds, contrary to the practice of [joyous] effort is described as ‘base initial activities,’ for it involves gathering a circle of followers purely out of desire for personal gain, honors, and services.

It’s not just the honors, and it’s not just the gain, it’s that they serve you. So, you have all your little gofers—that’s what we call them, the gofers as in “Go for this, go for that…”—and they offer you services; they run around doing things for you. I mean, it’s one thing to have a gofer with devotion and a teacher who is really doing good work and needs the help. But this one is against when your motivation is kind of rotten. 

Normally we accept followers for their sake and not for ours, because we are concerned for their well-being. Since we try to attract people, students for example, for the wrong reasons, the fault is associated with afflictions.

The reasons could be mostly attachment and arrogance: attachment to reputation or attachment to whatever they give you.

We only desire gifts and favors and hope that others will respect us and serve us by doing our shopping or giving us a massage, for example.

I wonder how he came up with that example. Somebody in his center must have been doing something specific. That’s an interesting example.

When our motives in taking on students are not tainted by attachment to gain, signs of respect and services, we can accept any assistance that others might offer us without committing a misdeed.

Because there is very much that give-and-take when there is the relationship of mentor and student, then the mentor mentors and gives guidance and so on, and the student gives offerings, services, and hopefully some respect. So, it’s not dismantling that relationship; it’s saying when you have that relationship, you need a pure motivation for it. 

22. Not Dispelling laziness and the like

Number 22 two is “Not dispelling laziness and the like,” or “Not dispelling the three types of laziness.” Remember those? They are sloth, attraction to negative deeds and to being busy, and discouragement. So, it’s not dispelling the three kinds of laziness. In this one he just gives a very short explanation; it’s mostly about sloth, but we’re going to talk about it in terms of all three kinds of laziness. He says:

The second misdeed contrary to the practice of enthusiastic effort is described as ‘inaction.’ We commit a misdeed associated with afflictions when, out of laziness or sloth, we do nothing to reject the appeal of sleep, lying down, lolling on our side, and so on at the wrong time or for too long. The ‘wrong time’ is during the day and at the beginning and the end of the night. 

What the Buddha taught is that we should ideally sleep only in the middle of the night, for four hours at the middle of the night. The rest of the time we should be practicing and not sleeping during the day. The reason for this isn’t that the Buddha is trying make us miserable. The reason is that it’s very difficult to get a precious human life, and once we have this precious human life, moment-by-moment by moment it’s getting consumed and we’re approaching death. And at the time of death we can’t say, “Hold on, I’m not ready to die. I want some more time. I want to do more practice. I spent too long sleeping, so now I want to go back and do more practice.” We can’t do that at the time of death. 

So, the Buddha’s whole intention here is to try and get us to practice while we have the opportunity and not waste our time in sleeping when we don’t really need to sleep. As one friend of mine expressed it, “We’re so attached to sleep, but we aren’t even awake to enjoy it.” It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because when you wake up, whether you wake up after one hour or after six or after ten, do you really have more satisfaction or more happiness? It’s an interesting kind of thing. Sure, our body needs to sleep, especially when we’re sick or we’re not feeling well—sleep in some way is like medicine. This is talking about when it’s not our body, but it’s our mind that likes to sleep. It’s like, “It’s too noisy, too disturbing, I’m going to go zone out.” 

So, we sleep as much as possible, and sleeping is considered a pleasure, isn’t it? But we aren’t even awake to enjoy it. This hits me sometimes. I wake up in the morning and think, “What did I do for the last six and a half hours? It wasn’t like for six and a half hours I felt bliss and comfort or anything; I was simply unconscious, unless there were some dreams going on. But it’s not like during that time that I’m sleeping that I’m experiencing pleasure and enjoying the process of sleeping. Are you awake enough during sleep to enjoy the fact that you’re sleeping? I don’t know about you, but I’m just out.

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: Right. It’s true when our mind is exhausted and we’re falling asleep, that’s a very unpleasant feeling. Sleep removes that kind of unpleasantness. But you can get a certain amount of sleep, wake up, and feel refreshed. And you can get an hour or two hours or three hours or four hours more than that, and it doesn’t really do much more for making you feel well, except consume time. 

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: Yes, that’s true. Sometimes if you sleep too much when you wake up you feel even more tired.

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: And stupid, yes. That’s true. You feel very kind of groggy—”hung over” from sleep. 

We do not commit a misdeed by oversleeping when we are ill and therefore incapable of doing otherwise, or when we are excessively tired from travel, for example.

So, he’s saying when your body needs to sleep, that’s fine. Here we’re talking about sleeping when we don’t really need to sleep.

Moreover, as explained before, there is no misdeed if we try our best to overcome our laziness but fail.

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: I’m trying so hard to wake up.

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: But it’s so strange, because when we’re doing something like sitting and talking with our friends, we can stay talking with our friends until very late and not fall asleep. If you’re out at a social gathering, watching a good movie, or doing something else, you don’t fall asleep. But to do Dharma, we are just out. And yet, what’s more valuable to us at the end of the day, at the end of our life? 

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: Okay, so you’re on the cushion, you’re falling asleep. Do you get off the cushion and go to bed, or do you stay? Where’s the line between pushing and actively opposing your laziness? I think first we must learn to discern when we are actually tired from when tiredness is manifesting as a karmic obscuration. Because it often happens, we get enough sleep, we’re fine, but the moment we sit down to meditate, we’re falling asleep. So, it isn’t a question of lacking sleep. It’s more a question of: “Is this one of self-centered thought’s strategies for self-sabotage?” That’s the kind of laziness we want to challenge and not give into. When you know you slept enough, but you’re falling asleep because of laziness, sloth, karma, whatever, you want to do something about that. In that situation I think it’s very helpful to do some prostrations. If you’re falling asleep during your practice, meditate earlier—some people aren’t evening meditators. If you get tired in the evening, do your session earlier, or do prostrations, or lower the room temperature. If the room is a little cooler, it’s easier to stay awake. 

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: You’re saying that the feeling of tiredness that you have from the karmic obscuration and the self-centered thought is a totally different feeling of tiredness than when you’re physically tired from working. Yes, that’s true.

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: We’re talking about gross falling asleep. And we’re also talking about not really trying to moderate what our body and mind needs, but deciding, “I’ll just sleep until I wake up,” when we don’t really need to sleep that long. 

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: The purpose behind this is to really give us much more time to use for the Dharma. They often recommend trying to shorten your sleep—start with ten minutes; just sleep ten minutes less and see how you do. If you’re spending a lot of time sleeping and this is your precious human life that’s going by, start and see if you can sleep ten minutes less; see how you feel and how you do it. Your body can get used to it. I’m not saying everybody should go down to the four hours of sleep that the Buddha recommended, but if you’re really spending a long time sleeping and you don’t have as much time to practice or your mind is like, “I take refuge in sleep,” then consider shortening that period and really using your time.

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: Yes, but we’re the ones who create our lives, aren’t we? They had enough disturbing them, like wild animals and so forth. I’m sure that could help you stay awake. 

The second kind of laziness, which goes into the next precept that includes wasting a lot of time in idle talk has to do with attraction to distraction. It’s called being a successful worldly person. That’s what the second kind of laziness is: you are a very successful worldly person. You have a life. Everybody’s always telling you to have a life, so you’ve got your life, and you have your house, your mortgage, your 2.5 kids, your this and your that, your hobbies, movies and the TV. Maybe you don’t have all of these things, but you are very busy with all of your activities. Your calendar is full, you make appointments with your friends, and then when you meet them you both sit with your cell phones, talk to other people, and tell them how busy you are but that you’ll fit them in your schedule. 

So, we keep ourselves extremely busy with everything, but what is going to matter to us at the time of death? We have no time to study the Dharma, no time to go to retreats. Driving across town to the Dharma center is too long, but driving that same distance or longer to the cinema is fine. So, what we have time to do and what we don’t have time to do. You see some people are keeping themselves extraordinarily busy and don’t have any time for their practice. Their friends all think they’re great, everybody thinks that they’re the ideal person. They have a career, they have this and their hobbies, but they’re basically distracted in cyclic existence and not doing anything that’s really going to benefit them or benefit others. That’s considered a kind of laziness. Being too busy is being lazy. Being too busy with worldly things is being lazy in the Dharma.

Audience: [Inaudible]

Ven. Chodron: I see what you’re saying. You’re asking if old habits contribute to us either being slothful or being too busy.

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: Well, I think the actual thing about laziness is whether we’re counteracting the laziness or not. If how we’re treating ourselves is something that’s inducing laziness, we should try and counteract that. Like if you eat a huge meal at eleven o’clock at night, then go to bed, of course you can’t get up in the morning; that’s going to be something that you have to change, and I think it would come under this [precept]. Maybe not totally directly, the directly would be not being able to get up. But what’s the cause of it? Well, you’re having a big meal at eleven o’clock at night.

Audience: [Inaudible]

VTC: We create distraction to be too busy, to avoid the practice, yes. It’s so strange, isn’t it? And you can see how self-centered thought is at the root of it. Practice is good for us, and self-centered thought is sabotaging.