If you do not examine your errors, you may look like a practitioner but not act as one. Therefore, always examine your errors, and rid yourself of them. This is the practice of Bodhisattvas. 

What keeps us clean, clear and straight on the path? It is so easy for us to fade into complacency or hypocrisy, which I am sure all of us have had enough of in religion, politics and business. The whole point of our Dharma practice is not to look like a practitioner, but to purify our minds and enhance our good qualities. In our worldly ways, we do not care much about what is going on inside and care more about how we look on the outside. It is very easy to slip back into that old habit of, “Do I look like a practitioner? Do I look like I’m holy? Do I look like I’m trying hard? Do I look like I have faith? Do I look like I’m devoted?” We should be careful about trying to look good to avoid criticism or getting praise when our hearts are not completely there yet. 

The remedy is to examine our errors and try to counteract them. We should not feel guilty when we see our errors or beat ourselves up because guilt is also related to trying to look good. We must completely pull our minds out of that whole framework that says, “How do I look to other people, and do they approve of me?” Instead, we must do our best to be honest with ourselves and be very sincere in our hearts about what our motivation is and if it needs improvement. Being a hypocrite is very different from “fake it until you make it”, which has some value because we are consciously trying to engage in a form of behaviour that will change our mindset. This motivation is quite different from just trying to look like a good practitioner. It is very important to always look at our minds to see if we are trying to cover up what is going on inside by looking good on the outside, if we are being complacent and smug, or perhaps a little arrogant in our practice. By treating ourselves with kindness and compassion, we can then try and correct our motivation. 

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