How to Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas by Lama Zopa Rinpoche & Gordon McDougall

Author:Lama Zopa Rinpoche & Gordon McDougall
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive
Published: 2012-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

If the root is medicinal, so are its shoots,

If poisonous, no need to say its shoots will be the same.

What makes an act positive or negative is not how it looks

Or its size, but the good or bad intention behind it. [40]

If the root of a plant is medicinal, the flowers, fruit and the rest of the plant will be medicinal, but if the root is poisonous, the rest of the plant will be poisonous too. The result of an action depends on the motivation with which it’s done. A great bodhisattva is permitted to do the seven actions of killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, telling lies, slandering, gossiping and speaking harshly because he or she has such great compassion for others that all actions are transformed into virtue.

If we have no idea what a virtuous action is, then whatever we do will be based on ignorance. Even if we try to meditate using some simple physical yoga or watching the breath, since we lack Dharma wisdom we’re really just imitating Dharma practitioners, like monkeys imitate people, and it’s extremely difficult to make our actions pure.

We really need to be mindful of every action, to check why we’re about to do something to see if there’s the taint of the thought of the eight worldly dharmas. If there is and we see that doing the action will become the cause of suffering, we can change our motivation to a virtuous one and the resulting action will then become the cause of perfect peace, enlightenment. A Kadampa geshe, Lama Gyamaba, said,

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