Giving up Vows

Giving up Vows

Giving Back Ordination Vows
Date Posted:
June 2008

A monk who had been ordained for over ten years and had served as an attendant to Rinpoche for a few years some time earlier, sent a message asking to give back his ordination vows. This was Rinpoche’s reply.

My dear one,
I received your message tonight. Thank you for your hard work in the past for the FPMT and for me. Thank you for all your patience. I know you had hard times in the past, especially when I gave teachings and so forth, because of the length of time, and maybe other things. However, you have sincerity and good humor, and are an intelligent person. So thank you.

If your mind leans stronger toward samsaric pleasure and not thinking of liberation, then it is better to return your vows properly to the geshe at your Dharma center. If you give back your vows properly, you will be able to take them again just before dying, so you can die a pure monk.

If your mind is wanting samsaric pleasure, and I tell you to stay a monk, you will feel like you are in a prison. I am not sure how many intelligent babies you are going to make.

Anyway, I am happy you stayed a monk a long time. You will enjoy the benefits for many lifetimes to come. If you did it with bodhicitta, then the benefits you experience will be infinitely more.

Thank you.
With much love and prayer...

Difficulties With Vows
Date Posted:
January 2006

A nun who taught at FPMT centers was having difficulties. She said that she was having many doubts, was not keeping her vows purely and felt that her vows were degenerating. When she taught, she felt she had to hide all these things and this made her uncomfortable and was very difficult for her. As a result, she felt unhappy and was thinking of giving up her vows. Rinpoche gave her the following advice.

You should rejoice more; you need to meditate on the perfect human rebirth, how precious each one is, and how useful, with great meaning. Think of the benefits that you can achieve with a perfect human rebirth. In each second, with a perfect human rebirth, one can achieve any happiness one wishes, because one can create the causes. With bodhicitta, in one second, you can create the causes of enlightenment, and that can also become the cause of achieving liberation along the way, and to have happiness in future lives, as well as happiness in this life. This shows how precious the perfect human rebirth is. It’s the most precious thing. Each second of it is unbelievably precious. Meditate on all these points extensively, such as how difficult it is to find again, and so on.

You should think about how many ants there are in one single field compared to how many people there are in the whole country. The number of people is so small when compared to the field’s ants, not even mentioning the number of ants on a mountain. Compared to that, the number of people in the world is small. So, the number of human beings is very little, and the number who are Buddhist is much smaller even than that, while the number who are not Buddhist is so huge. Then, the number of Buddhists who have met the unmistaken path is very small, and the number who have met the Mahayana teachings is even smaller. The number who have met tantra is the smallest. But you have met all these teachings of the Buddha, so you are the most fortunate one. You have also met the top guru in the world, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Of course, as for myself, I have no qualities, but you have met so many other great masters, the most qualified in the world, so you are the luckiest one.

In regards to living according to pure vows, even if you broke a branch vow, you haven’t broken any root vow. “Pure” depends on the different levels of definition. What makes one’s life pure is that at the end of the day, you purify negative karma and vices when you go to bed. That makes it pure.

Another example is a fully ordained monk who did not break the four root vows or the 13 residues; that is also living according to pure vows. Compared to one who broke their root vows, those who haven’t broken the root vows are pure.

You must also meditate on the lower realms’ suffering and on karma. That will help you to achieve happiness and a peaceful mind. What you need is contentment, and that comes only by cutting attachment and the dissatisfied mind. For that reason, you should meditate on impermanence, death, the suffering of the lower realms, and karma. That will help cut the expectations of receiving happiness in this life, and will cut all the superstitions. That will make your mind contented, and only this way will you have inner peace and happiness.

You should also read my book The Door to Satisfaction.

You are extremely fortunate to teach Dharma to other sentient beings. Because even for the buddhas, whose highest action is to guide and benefit sentient beings by freeing them from the oceans of sufferings and bring them to enlightenment though eliminating the cause of suffering, this is only done through teaching Dharma. This is what you are doing now, so this is your most precious gift to sentient beings. Dharma is the only thing that cuts the cause of suffering, delusion, and karma, and eliminates the defilements. Only through this can sentient beings be free from all of samsara’s suffering. Only through this can they achieve liberation and enlightenment. Therefore, you should feel very fortunate.

Thinking of Disrobing
Date Posted:
January 2006

Rinpoche heard from a Sangha member who did a lot of Dharma work for him and for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He had been thinking that he might be able to do his work more effectively if he gave back his vows.

My very dear one,
Thank you for your hard work. Regarding your message, this is what I think: According to what the Buddha has said, the way you are thinking is silly. Most people disrobe because they have problems of strong desire or their vows have degenerated, but in your case that heavy problem doesn't exist. Just because you have a lot of work isn't a reason or an excuse to disrobe. In fact, to consider doing something like that in this life is a most foolish thought.

In the lamrim, it is mentioned that one should keep one’s vows at the risk of losing one’s life. You can see what this means. This shows clearly the value of living according to the vows. You can understand from it how important it is to keep one’s vows. It is saying that even if you have to give up your life, that is OK. It is better to give up your life than to give up your vows and to live on. As a person living according to pure vows, even if you have to die, or someone wants to kill you, there is no danger thanks to your living in those pure vows. If you are killed, you take a human rebirth. You take a young body to practice the Dharma and to continue your Dharma training.

It is said by Lama Tsongkhapa that the best practitioner of tantra is a fully ordained person, because keeping the pratimoksa vows is the best base for keeping the bodhisattva vows purely, and therefor the best base for keeping the tantric vows. An analogy is given in the texts that the pratimoksha vows are like the container, the bodhisattva vows are like the water, and tantric vows are like the reflection in the water.

Buddha said in the King of Concentration Sutra that if we compare the merit of someone who with a devotional mind offers food, drink, umbrellas, flags, and garlands of lights equal to the number of grains of sand in the river Ganges and makes that offering to buddhas equaling a million times a thousand million to the merit of someone who keeps one precept for one day and night in a time like now, a time in which the teachings of the One Gone to Bliss (Buddha) have degenerated, the merit of the latter is far greater.

So, now I leave the decision in your hands. So far I only know of one student who disrobed not for reasons of desire but because they were attached to wearing lay clothes. This is not the same as your case, but there is some similarity.

You are able to use your knowledge to help me and His Holiness the Dalai Lama and people in prison, so that is very, very great.

With much love and prayer...

Considering Giving Up Vows
Date Posted:
January 2006

Rinpoche offered the following advice to a monk who was considering giving up his vows. He had been very dedicated to serving others and working very hard for others. He had been a monk for some years, but recently his mind had become discouraged and he was thinking of giving up life as a monk to live a lay life.

You said that you think it is simpler and easier to live a lay life. However, I know you are a very nice person and very dedicated to serving others, and I think it would be a big pity for you to give up. I think your main problem is that you are not thinking correctly.

You said that you think lay life is fully alive and very easygoing, whereas a monk’s life is not easy, and one creates heavy negative karma. Your main mistake is that you don’t think of death. If you knew you were going to die tonight, there would be nothing else to do but practice Dharma. The only useful thing would be is to practice Dharma, and to live life with morality and as an ordained person. There is nothing better.

When you think that death is going to happen tomorrow or tonight, the conclusion comes to live according to the vows, in a monk’s life. Therefore, you are totally wrong to be thinking of a lay life. There is nothing else to do but what is useful: practice Dharma and live as an ordained person, as a monk. It becomes essential, the best thing to do, when you think of death. Therefore, the way you are thinking is crazy.

Attachment to lay life is due to not analyzing lay life well. There are many additional problems in lay life. When living a lay life, if your motivation is not of compassion, bodhicitta, unattached to this life and to samsara, or realizing emptiness and having mindfulness of emptiness and the object of refutation, then the attitude is always delusion, and all the actions that are performed create negative karma. That’s how lay life is. You are totally hallucinating to think that lay life is freedom. You are totally wrong.

When you don’t think and analyze well, then you think lay life is free. It looks as if they are free from karma, but they are not. There is so little freedom in lay life to practice Dharma. There are so many obligations – family, friends, parents, and children, so many things. Life is filled with them and it makes one unbelievably busy. On top of that, this life is filled with many distractions, inside and outside. Inside, the mind is filled with all the worldly things, following desire, and clinging to worldly things. Life is filled with distraction.

A monk’s life has much more freedom. There is always merit. Even if you don’t do any other special practices, you are still always collecting merit because you are living according to the vows. The number of vows of a fully ordained monk is 253 and as many vows as you have, you collect that much merit. So, merit is collected all the time just because one is living according to the vows.

Since you haven’t broken the major vows, you are totally silly to be attracted to the lay life. You are not analyzing lay life. As is mentioned in the ordination text, if one leaves the householder’s life – this life’s suffering and future lives’ suffering – and lives in the ordination of renunciation, then there is so much freedom and happiness in this life and also in future lives. Living the life of ordination and renunciation has so much freedom and happiness, and future lives have greater peace and happiness. So, we go from happiness to happiness to enlightenment. This gives us the greatest opportunity.

Also, you need to think about liberating yourself from samsara. That means eliminating the cause of delusion and karma. Otherwise, one will have to experience the suffering of samsara without end. So, one has to think of these important points and the bigger vision. The biggest problem is being in samsara and the biggest vision is to achieve enlightenment, free all sentient beings from suffering, and bring them to enlightenment. Therefore, one needs to practice Dharma for that. These are the reasons you should continue to be a monk. Because of some difficulty in your life, you think that lay life is much easier and there is more freedom. This is simply a hallucination coming from your own delusions. This is not Dharma wisdom. It is not how wisdom thinks. It’s how delusion thinks.

The essence is that there wouldn’t be any buddhas, bodhisattvas, or arhats if everybody thought the same way as you. If everyone thought that, when things were difficult, then they would give up practicing Dharma or give up the monk’s life because they had found some difficulty. With delusion, with your self-cherishing thought or attachment, you will always find some difficulty. But if everyone did what you want to do, then there would be no Buddha, bodhisattva, or arhat now.

Why are there so many buddhas, bodhisattvas, and arhats? Because even though they had all the same delusions and sufferings as you, they put effort into actualizing the path and eliminating all the defilements The buddhas, bodhisattvas, and arhats all actualized bodhicitta by letting go of the “I,” and attachment to samsara's happiness. That is why there are numberless buddhas, bodhisattvas, and arhats. Before, they were ordinary beings, but they made an effort and became buddhas, bodhisattvas, and arhats. So, you also can do this.

It is extremely important to analyze when these kinds of thoughts come. Analyze the benefits and shortcomings, and determine which way has benefits, and which way has no benefits but only shortcomings, and choose the one with benefits. Among those that have smaller or greater benefit, choose the greatest benefit, the one that causes happiness in future lives and causes liberation from samsara and full enlightenment. Choose those things rather than what causes more suffering in samsara and is the cause of the lower realms.

This is what to do when the thoughts come that you want to give up the life of ordination, Dharma practice, and so forth. When one has that mind, which is deluded, make a decision without becoming a friend of delusion. Without being a friend of delusion, but rather being in the middle, then you are able to see clearly the benefits and the shortcomings. This way, you proceed toward Dharma rather than following delusion. Otherwise, your thoughts can deceive and cheat you. They cheat you out of not only this life’s happiness but also out of your future lives’ happiness. You lose all your happiness, your future lives’ good rebirths, and your liberation from samsara and enlightenment.

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