Without ethics, you cannot accomplish your well-being, so wanting to accomplish others’ is laughable. Therefore, without worldly aspirations, safeguard your ethical conduct. This is the practice of Bodhisattvas. 

In America, you find a lot of people who want to practise the Buddha-dharma, love the idea of bodhicitta, want to save all sentient beings, want to practise Tantra and do Dzogchen. But when you tell them to stop lying, sleeping around with other people, or drinking and drugging, they get really offended. The above verse is a warning that is exactly against this — wanting to do all sorts of high practices and thinking that we can get some results without a good foundation of ethical discipline. 

How in the world can we cultivate bodhicitta and help others if we are not even willing to restrain our negative actions that will harm them? Ethical conduct is the foundation of our well-being; without it, we will not have good rebirths with conducive circumstances for practising the Dharma, let alone gain any realisations that would help us accomplish others’ well-being. Keeping ethical conduct is worthwhile because it accrues so much benefit not only in future lives but in this life too. We get along better with other people and our mind is much happier. 

Ethical conduct can be of body, speech and mind. The Pratimoksha vows, some of the monastic vows and the five lay precepts govern physical and verbal actions. The Bodhisattva and Tantric vows also focus on physical and verbal actions, but especially highlight the acts at the level of the mind. Even the Pratimoksha vows get us to look at the mind because we have to look at why we may do things that contradict the vows that we have taken. Taking vows is a very good practice for increasing mindfulness of our actions and how we want to be in this world, and for increasing our alertness or vigilance, which checks up and sees how we are doing. As our mindfulness and alertness get firmer in the field of ethical conduct, there is a carry-over effect in our meditation because these two mental factors are very important for developing concentration. The carry-over effect from ethics into concentration eventually helps us to develop wisdom. 

We also want to make sure that we have a bodhicitta motivation behind our ethical conduct instead of worldly aspirations like wanting others to know that we are pure and holy. That is just ego contamination and conceit over ethical conduct. Another worldly aspiration is keeping ethical conduct simply because we want a good rebirth. Ethical conduct as a Bodhisattva practice is for the longer-term goal of accomplishing others’ welfare by attaining full awakening. 

“365 Gems of Wisdom” First Volume (January — March) e-book is out now!