Auxiliary bodhisattva ethical restraints 40-46

• Relieving the sorrow of those grieving
• Providing physical support and working for other’s welfare
• Harmonizing our way of thinking and acting with Dharma friends
• Skillfully correcting others and acknowledging their good qualities

Gomchen Lamrim 99: Auxiliary Bodhisattva Ethical Restraints 40-46 (download)

Contemplation points

Venerable Chodron continued the commentary on the bodhisattva ethical code. Consider them one by one, in light of the commentary given. For each, consider the following:

1. Consider specific situations that have occurred in your own life in light of the precept. What holds you back from benefitting others in this way? What antidote(s) can you apply in the future to overcome this?
2. Why is this precept so important to the bodhisattva path? How does breaking it harm yourself and others? How does keeping it benefit yourself and others?
3. What are exceptions to the precept and why?
4. Resolve to be mindful of the precept in your daily life.

Precepts covered this week

To eliminate obstacles to the morality of benefiting others, abandon:

• Auxiliary Precept #40: Not relieving the sorrow of others.
• Auxiliary Precept #41: Not giving material possessions to those in need.
• Auxiliary Precept #42: Not working for the welfare of your circle of friends, disciples, servants, etc.
• Auxiliary Precept #43: Not acting in accordance with the wishes of others if doing so does not bring harm to yourself or others.
• Auxiliary Precept #44: Not praising those with good qualities.
• Auxiliary Precept #45: Not acting with whatever means are necessary according to the circumstances to stop someone who is doing harmful actions.
• Auxiliary Precept #46: Not using miraculous powers, if you possess this ability, in order to stop others from doing destructive actions.

Let’s start with our motivation. We’re in a section of the text that is talking about the bodhisattva deeds. A bodhisattva is somebody who aspires to become a fully awakened Buddha so that they can have the capacity to be of the greatest benefit to all other living beings. Generating that aspiration of full awakening depends on a lot of causes and conditions, and one of them that is very important is seeing the disadvantages of the self-centered thought and the benefits of cherishing others. Doing that is a complete reversal from how we usually think, which is the benefits of cherishing myself and the disadvantages of taking care of others. So, it’s a complete reversal of how we’ve been thinking up until now. As we start to make that change, our self-centered thought can really fight back very strongly and manifest as all sorts of grasping and craving and clinging—all of our little fits when we don’t get what we want and when we get what we don’t want. 

This is all to be expected. It’s all normal when we start to really reverse this tendency to think primarily of ourselves and relegate others to second place. But even though it’s normal for the self-centeredness to react like this, it’s also very painful, and it can be confusing as well. So, we need to have a certain kind of patience and kindness towards ourselves but also to be very firm in where we want to direct our mind. In other words, we need to stay centered on our heart-felt wish to become fully awakened buddhas and to stay centered on our incredible admiration for the bodhisattvas’ intention and their conduct and their deeds. With that kind of firmness in our intention, even though we face a self-centered thought and all of its little and big shenanigans, let’s cultivate that loving, compassionate, altruistic intention and have that as our motivation for listening to the Dharma this evening.

Identifying the self-centered mind

I think all of us really, sincerely aspire to become bodhisattvas and have that attitude that cherishes others more than self. And I think we all highly admire the bodhisattvas with their aspiration and their deeds. That’s something that’s important in your life, that you look up to them. Does it make you happy when you think of how the bodhisattvas are? Like when we went through the ten bodhisattva bhumis in Precious Garland, didn’t that make your mind happy? Were you thinking, “Wow! There are some people that can actually do that. Even if I can’t, there are some people who can, and someday I’ll be able to!” It’s really something that is quite inspiring.

We really want to go in that direction, and then, of course, we have the day-to-day reality that we have a very self-centered mind and that self-centeredness has been in place since beginningless time. The aspiration to be a bodhisattva is new; the self-centeredness is very old. But we want the self-centeredness to vanish like that. Wouldn’t it be nice if all we had to do is just say, “I’ve finished being self-centered,” and then it just goes away? But something that’s been in place since beginningless time is not going to roll over and say, “You’ve got me!” It’s going to put up a good fight. Our self-centeredness does that, doesn’t it? We all generate bodhicitta in the morning, so inspired, and then the first thing we do in the day, self-centeredness pops up—or the second, or the third, or the tenth or the twelfth. Sometimes we see the self-centeredness so often that we just get angry at it. Well, we don’t get angry at it; we get angry at ourselves. Getting angry at the self-centeredness is okay because that’s not who we are, but we get angry at ourselves for being self-centered. 

So then we go into “I’m so terrible. I’m so awful. I’m so selfish. What kind of a bodhisattva am I ever going to become? I’m never going to become one. Woe is me! This is terrible. I might as well go drink a beer and drown my troubles. I should just go drink a beer and watch the news. But that’s too awful, too. How about a movie instead? A sci-fi movie: that’ll be good for me. I need anything to just escape from myself because I’m so sick of this self-centered mind, and I’m so fed up with myself for being self-centered.” 

Do you ever feel like that? Do you ever think, “I want to toss in the towel. Can’t I have just a little bit of happiness? I know that the path is supposed to lead me to everlasting happiness, but can I have a little bit of happiness right now, too? This uprooting this self-centeredness is just too painful, it’s too much of a drag. I can’t stand it!”

That’s the actual self-centeredness talking right there! That’s it! Why are we in so much pain? It’s because the self-centeredness is our Chief-of-Staff. It runs the whole West Wing in our mind and the East Wing. We have a western part of ourselves and an east part; we have north and south. Self-centeredness runs the whole thing; it’s very efficient, very well organized. And it’s totally successful in making us believe that it is truth and therefore in making us very miserable. Even when we try to oppose it then instead of actually counteracting self-centeredness, we fall into self-centeredness’ booby trap, which is criticizing ourselves and telling ourselves what lousy practitioners we are because we’re falling into it. 

Are you seeing how clever the self-centered thought is? It is astonishingly clever! It’s better than anything Putin can do, you know? Self-centeredness infiltrates everything! So, it’s going to be quite difficult, but we just keep on keeping on, don’t we? What else is there to do? Is there anything else to do? Okay, it’s hard to get rid of self-centeredness, but what’s the alternative? We can luxuriate in self-centeredness. Is that going to bring us happiness? We’ve done that already. That’s why we decided to practice Dharma and try and counteract the self-centeredness, because we have luxuriated in it for so long and we’re fed up with that. 

There’s no other choice but to change. That doesn’t mean we change right away. We change slowly, step by step. It’s like when you go to India. When you go to India you have two choices: you either adjust to the way things are and are being done there, or you freak out and go back home. There are only two choices. It’s the same with self-centeredness. We either slowly chip away at it, or we just jump in and self-indulge. We’ve done the self-indulgence trip already, haven’t we? We can do a lot of skits about our self-indulgence trip. That might be very interesting.

The only alternative is slowly chipping away at it and saying to ourselves as we do that, “That’s good enough, dear.” It’s what Lama Yeshe always told us: “That’s good enough, dear.” You don’t have to be Buddha by next Tuesday. Just progress slowly, slowly, and that’s good enough. So, let’s practice that.

We’re in the section of the bodhisattva precepts that is talking specifically about how to eliminate obstacles to the ethical conduct of benefiting others. This is an extremely practical section of the bodhisattva precepts in which we can so clearly see our self-centeredness, because it talks about situations that come up very readily on a day-to-day basis in which self-centeredness just kind of takes over and runs the show.

40. Not Relieving the Sorrow of Others/ Not Easing others’ Distress.

We talked about not helping those who were in need, and we talked about avoiding taking care of the sick. We talked about not alleviating the suffering of others and not explaining what is proper conduct to those who are reckless. And now we’re on number forty, which is “Not Relieving the Sorrow of Others/Not Easing others’ Distress.”

When people are very mentally worried and upset, and if out of animosity we just do nothing to help them, then that is a transgression of this. Now, people are worried and upset most of the time, so does that mean that all we do all day is take care of everybody who is worried and upset? No. This precept is talking specifically about two situations. One is if you’ve lost a loved one, so you’re grieving a loss of somebody that you are very close to. And the other is if you’re grieving the loss of a significant amount of property, like losing your job, or your house got burned down by one of the fires, or a burglar came in and stole a significant amount of stuff from you. It’s something serious. It’s not just the day-to-day stresses and worries that other people have. Although sure, if we can brighten somebody’s day by helping them with a problem, let’s do it. But this precept is talking about more serious things. Because otherwise, like I said, it’s like some people every day have some new thing that they’re worried and stressed about. We can’t micromanage somebody else’s life.

Here the commentary talks about various categories of loved ones, from whom a separation can be very painful, such as “Parents or relatives, a spouse or a child, people who are employees who are like part of the family, kind and loving friends and companions, and helpful spiritual teachers.”

Or it might even be spiritual friends who have contributed to our spiritual development and people with whom we share the same Dharma values. It can be very difficult when those people die, and there can be a significant grieving process going on. I should say that if you’ve done a lot of meditation about impermanence and death then you’ve already imagined the passing away of many of these people, and you’ve made peace with that, and you’ve made peace with the people themselves. Because I think one thing that is difficult when somebody passes away is if we haven’t made peace with them in our own mind and then they die and there’s no more opportunity to do so. Then there’s a lot of guilt and confusion and so on. So, that really is an encouragement to apologize to whomever we feel we need to apologize to and forgive whomever we think we need to forgive so that on a day-to-day basis our mind is calm.

And I would add into that also that it’s helpful to stop the unrealistic expectations of people. As long as we hold on to unrealistic expectations, then the relationship with them is very fraught, and when they die the grieving process is quite difficult. But when we really come to peace in our own heart with what a situation is and who a person is, and we accept that at a very deep level, then when they pass away or when we’re about to pass away the mind is much more peaceful.

Separation from our property can also be difficult. You invest in something and then it crashes. Like I don’t know what hedge funds are, but it’s like with what Wall Street does. You invest in something like that, you trust somebody with your money, and the whole thing crashes and falls apart. That can be very difficult. And, of course, it can be difficult to deal with loss because of a natural disaster or something like that—you lose your property, you lose your home. 

So, this precept is saying to really take care of people and alleviate the distress as much as we can. Here in our world the biggest group of people suffering from that are refugees. Think of what refugees have gone through in their lives: often losing family members, losing their property, and even losing their human dignity. If we can reach out and be of service and of benefit to those people then it’s very good. And we can at least not hate them, at least have a neutral feeling if you can’t bring yourself to have compassion. But if we really think about other people’s plight and we think of how we would be in that situation then it’s like we have got to reach out and do something.

There are some exceptions for doing this. They are the same exceptions as for the thirty-fifth precept. The thirty-fifth precept was “Not Going to Help When it is Needed.” Exceptions here to not helping people in distress are: “If we’re sick, we’re busy with something else that’s important, we’re occupied with very positive and beneficial spiritual practice or we really lack the ability to be of benefit to them.” Or it’s if helping them would be harmful to our Dharma practice or their Dharma practice or would be harmful to a large group of people and stir up a lot of turmoil. Sometimes it might be better for people’s own spiritual growth they may be distressed, but you have to back away and just give them the time and space to figure it out themselves. Those are all situations in which it wouldn’t be a transgression.

41. Not Giving Wealth to Those Who Desire It/Not Giving Material Possessions to those in need

Then forty-one is “Not giving wealth to those who desire it.” This is involved with behaving badly towards the needy. Here it is “Not giving material possessions to those in need.” Somebody wants food, drink or other goods, and they ask for them in a respectful way, an appropriate manner, but then out of anger, animosity or jealousy or arrogance—some kind of strong klesha—we just say no. “I’m not going to give this to you. I don’t want to share what I have. Forget it.” This is so sad, because it’s kind of an attitude that I see in the country nowadays. I also see a lot of people saying, “No, this is not who we are as Americans.” But it saddens me when I see this kind of thing, not that I am crystal clear, pure in this either. 

This is when somebody asks for something and they need it, or even they don’t need it so badly but it’s useful for them, but out of stinginess or anger, jealousy—whatever—we don’t want to give them what they want. Now, does that mean that we give everybody everything that they do want? If it means that, then, for example, being kitchen manager is going to be living in the hell realm, yes? Because if you have to give everybody everything they want on every single day then you’re just going to go crazy! People are going to get more and more demanding. And isn’t it part of their spiritual practice to learn to be content with what is served and make due with what they have? Isn’t that part of the spiritual practice of training their mind? So, it doesn’t mean that you just go out of your way to give everybody everything they want. Because that’s really pretty ridiculous, isn’t it? And especially for people who are renunciants, they should renunciate. Stop and renunciate! We should do that. 

There’s no transgression if we don’t have the things that somebody is asking to have. There’s no fault in not giving something that would be harmful to the person in the present life. If somebody asks you for booze, or drugs or whatever, that is not kindness to give it to them. “It’s not a transgression if what the person asks us for would be injurious to the government or to the society at large.”

So, this might refer to people asking you for weapons, or asking you to sign something that isn’t the truth or, whatever. We’re not talking about doing underhanded things like that. “Similarly if giving something to someone would create conflict with the monastic precepts,” it’s not a transgression.

So, this might refer to a situation where giving something would violate the monastic precepts, or if not giving them something would actually be better for their spiritual practice. Somebody may get mad at you for not giving them what they want, but it may actually be better for them, for their spiritual practice. But you have to be in a position to be able to judge that. You can’t use that as an excuse for not sharing something, like: “I have this precious something, and it’s going to be bad for your spiritual practice if I give it to you, so I’ll just keep it myself.” It’s not like that.

42. Not Ensuring the Welfare of your Following/Not Working for the Welfare of your Circle of Friends, Disciples, Servants, and so forth

This misdeed is not caring for your following, so if you are in the role of being a teacher or a leader then you should care for the students or the disciples. You should look after them with the Dharma teachings and look after them with material if they are not able to provide that because they’re poor. So again, this means you don’t give them everything they want. Your responsibility is to give them food, clothing, a bed, a shelter, medicine. It doesn’t mean fulfilling their every desire and “need” because those are endless.

If we don’t take care of the people who are depending on us like that, it becomes a transgression if we do so out of anger and animosity—some very strong klesha, some very strong affliction. There are some exceptions to this. This comes in the vinaya actually, too. If you ordain somebody, then you’re responsible for giving them the Dharma and giving them the four requisites, providing that for them. Some teachers take that seriously; many teachers nowadays do not. Here we take that seriously, and so that’s one of the reasons why we are very careful about who ordains here to make sure that we can also fulfill our part of the bargain. 

Exceptions are if we are ill or if that person is already under the care of somebody else who can help them. Also, an exception is if it would be better for their spiritual practice if we don’t give them a particular teaching or a particular material support. You might ask, “How would that be good for somebody’s practice to not give them a certain teaching?” Well, maybe what they want to hear is not what they need to hear. Perhaps they’re asking for some advanced practice whereas what they really need to hear is something basic. It’s not doing them a favor to teach them the advanced practice which may make them confused when what they need is something basic. Similarly, if people do not take care of the things that you give them, if they’re very reckless with that and waste monastic resources, then I don’t think it’s important to keep on supplying them with one thing after another if they don’t take care of what they have already. 

Another exception is when giving them something would conflict with monastic rules. It’s quite important in the monastic community that everybody is treated in an equal way—more or less equal. Of course, it never looks equal from our point-of-view. It always looks like somebody is getting more of something that we should actually have. You treat different people in different ways according to where they’re at and what they need. But somebody should not play favorites and give certain things to somebody they like and deprive somebody they don’t like of what they need.

Some other exceptions are when “Followers are sufficiently wealthy or capable of finding what they need themselves.” In that kind of situation you don’t need to provide for them. I remember once when I was living in Singapore, there was one woman who was not from Singapore, but she called and she asked if she could borrow money from me. I’d never heard of that kind of thing before, so I asked some of the other lay students what they thought about that. They were equally shocked, and they actually told this person, “We will loan you money,” but she didn’t take it from them. It was a very strange situation, so I really had to back away. Something did not seem right about the whole thing. And I think she could provide for herself.

Another exception is when “They have already received instructions on the teaching topic, furthermore they know it well and are capable of practicing accordingly.” Also, there may be somebody who asks you for a certain teaching or advice on a certain topic, but you’ve been giving that advice and you’ve been giving that teaching in a public forum so they’ve heard the teachings; they’ve heard the antidotes that apply to their problem. They’re coming and pulling and saying, “Please teach me this; please teach me this,” but they’ve already heard it. They haven’t listened to what they’ve heard. They haven’t put it into practice. In that kind of situation, it’s fair to say to them: “Please go back and review what you’ve heard and practice what you’ve heard, and after you’ve practiced it if you still have questions, or don’t understand something, then come and ask.”

Another exception occurs “If the intention of those people asking for instructions is questionable.” So, maybe somebody comes from another spiritual tradition, and they’re asking you for teachings on something so they can take it back to their own spiritual tradition. I remember when I was living in Seattle and some of the monks were there doing the mandalas and things. They had given a Medicine Buddha initiation, and somebody who wasn’t a Buddhist called and asked me if I would teach them how to do the Medicine Buddha practice so they could take it back to their non-buddhist group and teach it to the people there. And I had to say no, because the motivation wasn’t correct. They didn’t have refuge in the Three Jewels. I had to say “I’m very sorry, but I can’t do that.” 

Another exception is “If the people request the teaching and you know that they plan to use it to earn their livelihood.” They want to make themselves into big teachers, so they ask you for the teaching and then they have it and can go out and teach other people and collect a lot of offerings. Then it’s fair to turn down their request. Or another exception is “If they’re going to use the teaching to criticize Buddhism.” Maybe they are people who want to go proselytize in the Tibetan community, so they ask you to teach them some Dharma principles so they can go into the Tibetan community and criticize these principles and say it’s all hocus-pocus. There are plenty of people like that—they might be missionaries or political operatives—who want to go in and gain power over people who are Buddhists. So, they ask you to teach them something so they can go in and then criticize it. Of course, there, too, it’s fine to decline.

43. Not adjusting to others Thinking or not Acting in accordance with the Wishes of others if doing so does not bring Harm to Yourself or Others.

Does that mean that you always do what others want, as long as it doesn’t hurt them or you? Does it always mean that you just do what they want? That’s not what it’s talking about here. It’s talking about trying to harmonize our behavior with the people that we live with, especially our Dharma companions. It could apply in a monastery; it could apply in a Dharma center; it could apply with a group of Dharma friends or wherever—possibly in a family too. But this is talking about harmonizing our behavior with the behavior of the Dharma group. That’s assuming that the behavior of the Dharma group is good! If the behavior of the teacher and the Dharma students is not, then it’s better to go somewhere else. 

But here you are with people who are sincerely practicing, and then we try to harmonize our behavior with theirs. In other words, we don’t want to stick out in the group with special demands: “I need this. I need that. I don’t do this. I will do that. Doing this job is below my paygrade”—even though you aren’t being paid. “People like me don’t do this, so somebody else can do it”—things like that that we all do when we just don’t want to cooperate. “I’ve been asked to do that many times, you never ask so and so to do that, how come you always ask me?” So, that kind of behavior, you know what it is? We hear it all the time. “How come so and so gets to do this, but I don’t get to do it?” It sounds like a bunch of kids in their family, doesn’t it? 

We do this instead of really trying to live in harmony, trying to live peacefully with the other people that we live with. That means that we have to say to ourselves very clearly, “I am not going to get everything I want.” And we have to say to ourselves very clearly, “Not everybody is going to do things the way I want them to do things.” If I want all the cups upside down, I have to realize that this is not my private house, and I cannot dictate to everybody whether the cups are right side up or upside down. I have to realize that it’s in the eye of the cup-holder. And each cup-holder has their own reason for either putting it upside down or putting it right side up in the cupboard. And if I’m going to have a fit, there might be better things to have fits about than the cups. 

These are the little things that people do that drive us totally buggy, you know? And we feel like we have to comment on every little thing also. So, you know what? I’m going to comment today on everything that I’ve really been fed up with for a long time. “I’m just so fed up that people are so uncooperative. Every time I walk up those stairs on that side with that brown carpeting, they’re filthy! Doesn’t anybody in this joint vacuum the carpet? You walk up it! Go walk up it! I just walked up! There are little pieces of this, little pieces of that, and it’s brown, it doesn’t even show the dirt, you’re only seeing the white stuff. You followed me, didn’t you see all that stuff sprinkled around? Nobody cleans up this joint! They expect me to do it!”

I could go on a fifteen minute rant about how filthy those stairs are, and how you really need to clean them! And what’s going to be the result of my fifteen minute rant about the stairs? It will be misery for me! That’s exactly it! Nobody will go vacuum. They’ll turn around to me and they’ll say, “You want them clean? You clean them.” How dare they speak to me that way! But they do! And I can tell them to shut up, and they don’t listen to that either. Hmmph, human Beings! You know? This is it, isn’t it? 

We can even make a big deal about everything we don’t like, but we have to learn to pick our battles. You realize you can’t control everything everybody does, so you choose the things that are really against the precepts or really against our in-house guidelines or really damaging to the community. You choose those things. Otherwise, you’re going to go crazy, and the people living with you will as well. But it’s so tempting, isn’t it? I mean, it’s just a little thing, and you know, they should be more mindful, shouldn’t they? They should be more mindful! We’re studying mindfulness. We’re studying, and we’re trying to practice mindfulness, but these people are not mindful. They just do this; they just do that. I’m tired!

So, isn’t it my job to correct them? Isn’t it my job? Like who in the world put this carpeting in here without any pad underneath it so that when people walk on it, the people downstairs hear them walk? Who in the world decided to do that? It wasn’t me! It was you! We should tear the carpeting up and put a pad under it! [laughter] 

The people who are allergic to carpeting didn’t want carpeting because they are allergic to it. They wanted stuff that goes clickety-clack, so we could put a rug on top and then you don’t go clickety-clack. But they didn’t want carpeting. I think they’re fine! If we put regular carpeting upstairs people would complain about the carpeting—constantly! They definitely would! Yes, because it’s not only the smell of the carpeting, but it has all the dust mites in it. We should replace it with the laminated stuff because that’s far healthier.

This is Samsara, isn’t it? And one of the sufferings of Samsara is not being able to get what you want. And do you see how that appears at such a microscopical level? I ponder that carpeting every time I walk up it. It wasn’t just this evening; it’s every time I walk up that carpeting, and it’s dirty all the time. How can I concentrate on writing the book when that carpet is dirty and I am worrying about it being dirty, and I’m thinking about the Dharma training of all those people who will not clean it. I’m thinking about how afflicted they are by self-centeredness, so I really have to teach them more about cherishing others and not being so self-centered and how that manifests in vacuuming the carpet. I am an indiscriminate blamer, an equal opportunity blamer! My eyes are bad, so if I can see the dirt, then you know it’s really bad! You see how important it is to try and harmonize our mind with others? So, clean the carpet! [laughter]

“Not adjusting to others’ thinking” can be dicey because sometimes what others want you to do, you know it’s not good but you don’t want to have a fight with that person. So, you just say, “Okay.” In some situations that’s valuable because what the fight is going to be over is something that’s not a big deal, but sometimes somebody is doing something that is really not too cool, and it warrants somebody saying something, but you’re all chickened out. Oh, now I can get you for that, too! “There are a bunch of chickens here! They will complain when they don’t get what they want, but when somebody is not following the guidelines, they will not offer that person advice.” That’s interesting, isn’t it? When they don’t get what they want and complain, they don’t worry whether people like them or not. If I want something I will complain and I will do whatever it takes to get it whether people like me or not. But when somebody else is doing something that is damaging to the group, I don’t want to say anything to them because they may get mad at me, and I don’t want somebody getting mad at me for that reason. If they get mad at me because I want something and they don’t want to give it to me, I don’t care. But if they get mad at me because I’m actually trying to help, then I care a lot. That’s stupid! Isn’t that stupid?

There are some exceptions. I know you are all looking for the exceptions! “What are the exceptions so I can not harmonize with the people I’m around.” One exception is when “What the people want us to do will not be good for them and could very well harm them.” So, not following what they want or adjusting to their thinking is good. John McCain did it. He gets the credit, but it’s actually Lisa Makowski and Susan Collins. Those are the people who were willing to suffer something to stand up for what they believe in and what’s right and what would benefit people.

Another exception is “If doing it would harm us” or” If what they want may do them good but would not suit a larger group of people”. Say one person in the community is on the warpath about one thing, but if you go ahead with what they want then the whole rest of the community is going to rebel. That’s not so good. That’s why it says, “When it would go against the wishes of the majority, then we should abstain from that to prevent that kind of hostile reaction.”

Another exception is “If it’s to respect monastic precepts or guidelines.” Say you’re visiting your family and they want to take you out to the bar or they want to take you to Vegas for the weekend so you can have a good time. You’re not going to go gambling; you’re just going to be in Vegas doing something. This is a problem if it’s going to infringe on keeping your monastic precepts, if it’s going to look bad to other people. Can you imagine monastics in Vegas on the strip? Actually, I have an example from Singapore. They have casinos in Singapore, and the Singaporians have to pay at least $100 dollars to go. The foreigners can go free, because they want the foreigners to lose their money but not the Singaporians. So, there was one monk who was going into the gym or to the pool or something, but it was in the casino. That wasn’t so cool.

I have to confess a situation like this on my part. I was attending a Gonzaga University program that studies why people hate. It was a whole conference. But it was in a casino, and I went one day. It wasn’t in the gambling part of the casino but in the conference room. So, I went to this conference in the casino and then, to top it off, Bill Miller was picking me up—in his red sports car! So, I was waiting in front of a casino for a married man in a red sports car to pick me up! Bill and I were laughing and laughing about this. [laughter]

Audience: Venerable, my family went to Vegas and when I was over to visit they were telling me that while they were walking on the strip or somewhere around there, they saw someone who was dressed in robes of red and yellow. This person purported to be a real monk, and he was asking for alms and donations. You can tell what kinds of questions I was getting from my family after that, and I was trying to explain to them that I don’t think that a serious monastic practitioner would be out there on the strip or anywhere near there asking for alms. But it was kind of hard to explain.

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): There’s been talk that it’s happened in New York as well, and in Singapore it happens often. These people are usually not monastics. They’re dressing up and doing this in order to get some profit. It’s extremely negative karma to pretend to be a monastic and receive donations from people who have faith when you are not one. 

Audience: And the sad thing was that of course they were thinking about me and felt sympathetic for that person. I think they told me that they gave him a donation, so that was kind of sad.

VTC: Yes, this is difficult. It’s nice that they were sympathetic towards the person but not so good that the person was most likely phony baloney.

Another exception to doing this is “If it serves to subdue the non-buddhists,” or “If it will help draw other people away from wrongdoing and encourage them to lead better lives.”

44. Not praising Good Qualities

When people have good qualities—either spiritual knowledge or realizations or kind human qualities that are very valuable, like good values or principles, or they just do something well—then we should acknowledge that. It’s a problem if instead of acknowledging it, we’re angry or jealous and don’t want to acknowledge somebody else’s good qualities or praise them because we’re afraid if we praise them then we’re losing out. It’s like, “If I praise them then it makes them better than me and it makes me inferior and so I can’t stand to do that.”

Actually, praising others should be part of our Dharma practice, and if you make it part of your practice you can feel really happy because it feels nice to praise other people. When we have to point out people’s faults to them, that’s not so pleasant. But when we can actually praise them for what they do well, they’re happy and we’re happy. And I think it’s an important part of our practice to be able to do that because it really works against pride, and it works against jealousy. So, it’s helpful to really train our mind to praise those who are worthy of praise. Of course, if it makes them feel uncomfortable, don’t do that because you don’t want to make somebody feel uncomfortable. If you see somebody working hard in their practice or trying hard or slowly expanding their mind or dealing with something that’s been hard for them, then it’s very good to comment on that and give them support and encouragement.

But the thing with this is, like with everything else, we think that other people should practice this more in relationship to us: “Because they don’t appreciate my good qualities and they don’t appreciate everything I’ve done and they really should appreciate that more. And it’s part of their Dharma practice to praise others, so why aren’t they doing their Dharma practice and appreciating my good qualities? After all I do for them, after how hard I’ve struggled to develop these qualities, and they don’t appreciate them!” That’s the way we are.

This precept is like the talk in Working with Anger. It’s not meant for your companions, it’s meant for us. It’s a way for us to learn to praise others, to train our mind to see others’ good qualities and point those good qualities out. It’s a way for us to encourage other people instead of always picking at them. Again, you see why these things are so helpful on a day-to-day basis, aren’t they? They’re just talking about our day-to-day interactions with people. It’s about trying to have a good attitude towards other people, and it makes us feel happier when we do. When all we do is look around and pick faults we feel miserable. 

When I was talking to Venerable Sangye Khadro this afternoon, I was telling her that years ago we sat at ordination order, and I would look up the line and pick faults with each person who was senior to me and I would look down the line and pick faults with each person who was junior to me. So, whether I said it to them or not, in my mind it was like: “This one does this, and this one does that and me. I’m very good, and that person does that and that.” I was so miserable with that kind of attitude, and it got to a point where I couldn’t bear the misery, so I really had to start to make myself change and train myself. 

Why was I picking faults at everybody? I was jealous because they had good qualities I didn’t have. It was plain old jealousy, but I didn’t recognize it as jealousy. I had to actually look at it and identify it—“This is jealousy”—and experience the pain of jealousy to be able to then say, “Okay, each person has a good quality, and I need to learn to appreciate that quality.” Because it’s good that there’s a variety of people who all have different good qualities. If just because I don’t have that quality, it means nobody in the world should have it, then the whole world would really be in a big jam! It’s important to be able to really look and appreciate people’s qualities. And I found when I actually trained my mind to do that I was so much happier, so much happier.

There’s “No misdeed if we’re too sick to express our appreciation, or if people are in the middle of a conversation.” We don’t have to interrupt people in order to praise them. “If people don’t have any desire for our acclaim or if we know that it wouldn’t make them feel comfortable” then don’t praise them or don’t praise them in public. Praising others does not mean you praise them for qualities that they do not have. This is not a precept encouraging people to lie; that clearly would be not beneficial. It’s okay to “Abstain from praising someone if you hope to help them tame their own mind or to respect monastic rules or to subdue some non-buddhists, or if we suspect that by praising somebody it might encourage their arrogance.” In those cases, it’s okay not to praise them.

45. Not Correcting others

Now this is a precept that everybody likes: “It’s a fault not to correct others. I want to hear this one! Now I can have all the juice for correcting others that I want because it’s a fault not to.” But it’s not actually like that. This one is about not correcting people who are acting against the Dharma, not correcting people who are doing something that is very harmful and damaging and the situation calls for it. It says, “Not acting with whatever means are necessary according to the circumstances to stop someone from doing harmful actions.” If it’s a situation where you have the ability to stop somebody who is doing harmful actions, either they’re harming themselves or they’re harming others, but you don’t intervene and try and help, then it’s a transgression.

When out of anger or animosity or jealousy or arrogance or whatever, we don’t scold people who need to be scolded or expel people who need to be expelled or give advice to people who are not following the precepts or not keeping the guidelines, then we are transgressing this bodhisattva precept. Again, this doesn’t mean we go around correcting everybody, but if there is a situation where somebody is doing something clearly harmful to themselves or others, it’s a transgression if we don’t offer them some help and try and reverse their behavior.

Even in vinaya there’s a whole set of things. There’s banishing people; there’s expelling them; there’s suspending them. Sometimes there are quite drastic measures taken for people who are really acting totally crazy in the sense of breaking precepts, bringing dishonor to the community and so on. There’s all these things of what you have to do if somebody is acting like that. It’s saying if you don’t do that and you let somebody continue to do something that is creating a lot of negative karma for themselves or harming the community or disgracing the Dharma—if you just say, “They’re going to get angry at me” and so don’t do anything—that’s not acceptable.

This mainly concerns monastic communities, but it could apply to Dharma centers, too. It might be in the case of somebody behaving in a way that’s very detrimental to the Dharma. Maybe they’re spreading rumors; they’re spreading false gossip; they’re accusing people of doing horrible things that those people have never done. Or it could apply if somebody is sleeping around with many people or they’re embezzling money from the center or wasting things—then it’s important to actually say something.

Here they say, “First we should subdue our own anger,” so we don’t blow up in their face, but then “We need to say something to them.” So, we try to say something in a nice way. If that doesn’t work then we need to “Reprimand them a little bit more forcefully,” and if that doesn’t work then you really need to sometimes tell the person they need to leave. Or you need to do whatever else is necessary to subdue that person. Sometimes, unfortunately that happens, and you need to do something like that. It’s best not to wait until it becomes a really dire situation, a really, really difficult situation.

Exceptions are when we’re waiting for the right moment to act and the right moment hasn’t come, or when the people who have misbehaved are so angry that you can’t say anything to them because they won’t listen to you. In that kind of situation, too, there is no fault if you don’t act. Also, if the person sees their mistake and they feel a great deal of remorse, so they’re making amends, then you don’t need to step in and correct them because they’re already in the process of doing that for themselves.

If we sense that correcting the people will lead to quarrels, verbal abuse, fist fights and eventually to litigation, there’s no problem with not correcting them. And if we believe that it would cause disturbances and a schism in the monastic community then there’s no problem in not doing something.

46. Not Using Miraculous Powers if you Possess Them to Stop Others from doing Destructive Actions

Then the last one is “Not using miraculous powers if you possess them to stop others from doing destructive actions.” This is one I keep. [laughter] So, this is talking about not repressing wrongdoers and so forth by paranormal powers. If somebody is doing something harmful and you have those kinds of paranormal or supernormal powers, and there’s a way that you can use them to stop the person from doing something harmful, then if you don’t use them to do that, it’s a transgression. Again, that doesn’t mean that there’s permission to go around using your supernormal powers for getting a lot of fame and distinction and so on. This precept concerns only people who have those powers, not the rest of us. 

Audience: I’m just wondering if you happen to know stories from the Buddha’s time about two things that come to mind through these. I read about Channa, the charioteer. I was surprised to hear that in the Buddha’s death he had to offer this admonition and injunction for Channa where the community didn’t speak to him. I was sort of thinking about that. The other one is there seems to be something like fist fights or this and that, but I’ve never heard any stories about the Buddha’s monks or nuns of that time involving that. All I’ve heard are stories that are related maybe to the ignorance. I’ve read about those monks that killed themselves because they were mistaking the meditation guidelines, but I’ve never heard any stories related to attachment. I’ve heard stories of the monks and nuns of the Buddha’s time that related to attachment, but I’ve never really heard stories about people having fights.

Audience: There were?

VTC: Oh yes! First of all, you have the monks from Kosambi who were so argumentative and the Buddha had to say, “Ciao, fellows! I’m going to the forest to meditate.” Because these guys wouldn’t listen to anything, they were just fighting each other. All precepts come from some situation. We have precepts not to drag people out of the room. Why is there the precept not to drag somebody out? It’s because it happened! There are a lot of precepts like that where people just really behaved very rudely and obnoxiously towards other people—lots of them! They’re in the stories. If you read the origin stories for the precepts, those stories are right there! “So-and-so this-and-that slugged somebody or dragged them out of the room.” There are lots of stories about people doing violent things and being angry. Read the vinaya.

And there are stories also of people being incredibly rude to the Buddha. You can’t imagine! Maybe it wasn’t physically violent, but it’s just like, “Wow! How could anybody treat somebody like the Buddha like that?” They were very, very hostile.

Audience: Does forty-five apply to everyday non-Dharma situations as well?

VTC: Forty-five is the one about not correcting, isn’t it?  So, this is when somebody is acting contrary to the Dharma. If somebody is doing something harmful to themselves or others and we’re able to step in and intervene and stop the situation, then we should do it. Again, this doesn’t mean we go around correcting everybody. We’re talking about where somebody is doing something very damaging. If you’re the parent of the teenager, good luck! It’s very difficult being the parent of a teenager! When do you say something? When do you not say something?

Audience: For forty-five, I think you said the last exception would cause a schism in the monastic community. I could see that happening if somebody is really misbehaving and other people either support that person or want to do the same behavior and someone wants to correct it, and they know that will cause a split. What do you do? You can’t just overlook that behavior.

VTC: Then you need to somehow be a little bit more skillful and maybe take some of the people aside and talk to them. You need to wait for the right moment and figure out the right way or another way to say something to somebody so that they don’t all go bonkers. Or maybe it’s a situation where there’s a whole contingent there, like the fighting in the White House that’s going on. You have all these different cliques, so maybe you have to separate people who are in the different cliques. You send them to a different monastery, or you send them somewhere else, in order to try and diffuse the situation and be able to talk to whomever you need to talk to.

Audience: Venerable, I have a question about number forty-two: “Not Working for the Welfare of your circle of Friends, Disciples and Servants.” If by helping them you could also possibly injure yourself in the process, are you going to?

VTC: It’s helping them by giving them the Dharma or giving them material aid if they need it. If giving them material aid would mean you don’t eat, then you think of another way to go about doing this.

Audience: You mentioned and exception is if the intention is questionable, and I wanted some elaboration on that one.

VTC: Well, if the other person is asking you for something and you think their intention is not quite so sincere, that there is something funny going on, then it’s fine to not give them whatever it is. These things are all really practical and you can see how all of them are hitting against our self-centered thought. It’s the self-centered thought that doesn’t like somebody, that’s jealous and wants them to suffer. We’re attached to our stuff. You can see it’s all about daily life interactions, isn’t it? These situations happen a lot. Of these particular ones here, the ethics of benefiting others is quite important.

Audience: What I’ve noticed more in these last two sessions is how discerning wisdom is a part of it, because how easily you could be tricked into thinking that you have the right motivation. So, it semes important to just spend some really serious time discerning where I am coming from when I am trying to do these things.

VTC: Right, exactly. It’s very helpful with each one of these to think of situations that we’ve either encountered in our lives or that we’ve heard about or read about and then to consider, “How would I act in that situation?” Or, you could ask, “How could I go about keeping this precept in that situation? What situations are exceptions; what situations are where I really have to overcome my own self-centeredness?” So, making lots of examples is really important.

Audience: I have to fess up that with a lot of these, my self-centered thought says, “It’s just too much trouble, too much time—too much, too much.” There is a part of me that will go and put her little toe in one of these to help, but if there is a little bit more of me asked to be invested in something, sometimes at certain levels I just say, “I don’t want to.” The self-centered thought goes into a form of laziness: “It’s just too much trouble. This is taking me a lot longer than I thought. Their struggle is taking me a lot longer, or the inconvenience or their sicknesses or whatever. It’s just taking too much time.”

Audience: When I reflect on each of these I think often that I sometimes won’t do something because I’m not so clear about it. Or sometimes I’ll do something because I’m not so clear about it. Either way, it’s kind of a mess. It just reminds me everyday to retake my bodhisattva precepts. It’s really helpful and really important because these are difficult. They are not simple; they are very difficult to do.

VTC: And it’s also going to be like everything else: we fall down and then we learn from our mistakes and we pick ourselves up and we go on. And it’s important also not to hold ourselves to some impossible standard of “I’ve got to get it right.” Who knows what in the world right is? But we do what we’re able to do, and also we realize that we’re not here to save the world. It’s not like we have to go over the top for everything to show how compassionate we are. It’s not that either.

Audience: Can we can get T-shirts that say: “Our self-centeredness has been fired as Chief of Staff from our West Wing, and it’s now under a new management”? [laughter]

VTC: That would be great for a T-shirt! It’s like: “Self-centeredness is being fired. The conventional I is under new management.”