Abiding in the Retreat

By Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Abiding in the Retreat: A Nyung Nä Commentary combines several teachings given by Lama Zopa Rinpoche on nyung nä, a powerful two-day practice associated with Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion. Edited by Ven. Ailsa Cameron. 

Lama Zopa Rinpoche at Maitripa College, 2010. Photo by Marc Sakamoto.
5: The Benefits of the Eight Mahayana Precepts

The taking of the Eight Mahayana Precepts54 is known in Tibetan as theg chen so jong. Theg chen means Mahayana; so means to restore, or revive; and jong means to purify. So, the literal translation is “Mahayana restoring and purifying,” and it involves restoring, or reviving, the virtue that has been degenerated and purifying negative karma.

The method of the Eight Mahayana Precepts comes from the tantric text Dön yö shag pai kyi gyü. Since Dön yö shag pa is Amoghapasha and gyü means tantra, the name of the text is Tantra of Amoghapasha. That is the reference for this practice.

When To Take The Eight Mahayana Precepts

It’s good to take the Eight Mahayana Precepts on the Tibetan eighth, fifteenth and thirtieth days and especially on the special days of Buddha, such as the fifteen special days that celebrate Guru Shakyamuni Buddha performing miracles, when many kings and benefactors made offerings to Buddha and requested him to subdue the six Hindu founders. Any merit we accumulate during these fifteen days is increased 100 million times. Even though we mightn’t normally do much practice to accumulate merit because we are busy with other things, it is skillful to practice hard at this time. Since each merit is increased by so much, we can make our life highly meaningful in such a short time.

As I have already mentioned, Saka Dawa, the fourth Tibetan month, has three special Buddha days. Some teachings say that the eighth was the day that Guru Shakyamuni Buddha showed the action of coming out of his mother’s womb. The fifteenth, the full moon day, is the day that he achieved enlightenment under the bodhi tree in Bodhgaya, and the day that later he passed away in Kushinagar. There is another Buddha day that celebrates when Guru Shakyamuni Buddha first turned the Dharma wheel in Sarnath, and one that celebrates Buddha’s descent from the Thirty-­three Realm, where he had gone to teach his mother.

It’s extremely good to take the Eight Mahayana Precepts as often as you can, especially when you do retreat and particularly if you haven’t taken the lifetime ordination of thirty-­six, 253 or 364 precepts.

Since the Eight Mahayana Precepts are taken for only one day, I think it’s a particularly good practice for laypeople. Because a layperson’s life is extremely busy with working for their family, it’s very difficult for them to take vows. Therefore, Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s method is for them to take the Eight Mahayana Precepts on those special days when much more merit is accumulated. Laypeople should take the Eight Mahayana Precepts on whichever days they think they can take and keep them. Even though life is normally very busy, on certain days or once a month they should take and keep the eight precepts. Their life will then not be completely empty. When the person dies, even though they didn’t become a monk or nun and live in a monastery, their life is not completely empty because they’ve accumulated so much merit and performed so much purification. In this way they have made preparation to be reborn with the body of a happy transmigratory being, with a human or deva body; to find a perfect human rebirth again.

When one tiny bodhi seed is planted, a huge tree with so many branches that it can cover five hundred horse carriages can grow. And each year, so many seeds come from that tree. Even with external examples, incredible results can come from a small cause. With internal examples, such as the evolution of karma, the results are much greater. From a small good karma, there can be amazing results, much greater than with external examples that you can see with your eyes. Similarly, even if a negative karma is small, the negative results can be enormous, much greater than with external examples.

Take the example of one of the past lives of Shariputra. (In thangkas, Shariputra is one of the two arhats with begging bowls next to Guru Shakyamuni Buddha.) In a past life, while traveling, he stopped in a place that had paintings on the wall. That night Shariputra was fixing his shoes, and by the light in front of him, he saw a painting of Buddha on the wall. He was very attracted to that painting and kept on looking at the Buddha. He then generated a strong wish, “How wonderful it would be if I could be like this!”

That was the karma that enabled him in his next life to be born in India, to become a disciple of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha; to become an arhat, completely liberated from true suffering and true cause of suffering; and to always be with Buddha, hearing teachings and serving him. In fact, he was able to meet many buddhas. Just by generating the wish to become a buddha, one becomes able to meet many buddhas. That’s an incredible result.

Therefore, you can enjoy the result of keeping each of the eight precepts for many lifetimes even while you are in samsara, besides enjoying the ultimate result of enlightenment, the infinite qualities of a buddha’s holy body, holy speech and holy mind. Taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts for one day even once in your life has unbelievable results. If you could actually see all the results, they wouldn’t fit your mind. It’s like somebody who hasn’t seen that a huge bodhi tree with so many seeds can come from one small seed—they wouldn’t believe it. But those who have seen it can understand.

The benefits of taking vows are emphasized in lam­rim teachings. For example, if a gelong, a fully ordained monk living in 253 precepts, makes a light offering with butter the size of a fingernail and a wick the size of a hair, he collects more merit than someone who doesn’t live in any precepts at all making a light offering with butter the size of this earth (or maybe hundreds of times the size of the earth) and a wick the size of Mount Meru. Even though the gelong’s offering is so tiny, because he has a body that is living in the ordination of a gelong, the merit is much greater than that of somebody without precepts who makes a huge offering. There is an incredibly big difference in the profit, in the merit.

There are differences when someone who doesn’t live in precepts and someone who lives in vows, such as the thirty-­six vows, do the same thing. When they both offer one stick of incense, one butter lamp or candle, recite OM MANI PADME HUM or do one prostration, there’s a big difference in the merit, like the difference between an atom and a mountain. Therefore, even though at other times it might be difficult, it’s extremely important to take the Eight Mahayana Precepts and live in those vows on the days when you are making a special effort to accumulate merit and practice purification by doing retreat or by making many offerings. You then accumulate so much merit. There is much greater profit in terms of merit.

A person who lives in vows is a skillful Dharma practitioner. It’s like a businessman investing his money wherever it’s most profitable. But that kind of business investment is nothing. This is much more important. If you have the opportunity to make merit and don’t take it, that loss of merit is a much greater loss than losing money. Ordinary people regard losing the opportunity to gain a million dollars as a great loss; but for Dharma practitioners, the greatest loss is not accumulating merit when they have the opportunity to do so. The greatest loss is the loss of good karma—money is nothing. Even for business people, all their success in business—all the money they can make and all the things they can get—depends on having created good karma. Without the good karma, that success wouldn’t happen. Dharma practitioners, those who understand and practice Dharma, regard not creating good karma while they have the opportunity as a great loss.

During a retreat you make many offerings. At other times you might be busy working for your family and doing many other activities. When you live with other people, and even when you live alone, it’s difficult for your activities to become Dharma. So at particular times, such as when you’re doing retreat, where you’re actually making offerings and doing other practices to accumulate merit, it’s very important to take precepts. The more precepts you take, the more merit you accumulate. There is much greater profit in regard to good karma.

Receiving the lineage

To take the Eight Mahayana Precepts, first you need to receive the lineage of the ordination. If you haven’t received the ordination of one-­day precepts before, you first have to receive the lineage from somebody you wish to recognize as a guru, a virtuous friend. The person from whom you receive the lineage of the ordination becomes your guru. It’s better to regard the person from whom you first received the ordination, whether Sangha or lay, male or female, as a virtuous friend.

If you don’t regard the person from whom you receive the ordination lineage as a guru, it means you could take a tantric initiation from someone without recognizing that person as a guru either.  However, just being there doesn’t mean that you receive an initiation. It’s a mental thing, not a physical thing. And if you don’t have the lineage of an initiation, you can’t pass the lineage to others.

Afterwards you can take the ordination from the altar. However, whether you have an altar or not, first visualize Guru Shakyamuni Buddha or Chenrezig surrounded by numberless buddhas and bodhisattvas, then take the ordination.

The benefits of taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts

Taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts has great benefits. The King of Concentration Sutra mentions,

The merit from taking and keeping one precept for a day and night in this time when the Dharma is degenerating and the teaching of the Buddha is about to stop is much more than that from making offerings of food and drink, umbrellas, banners and lights to one hundred billion buddhas for eons equal in number to the sand grains of the ocean.

Taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts also has great benefit from the side of the place. You can practice virtue for eons in a pure realm, but the merit from practicing one virtue in an impure realm such as ours for the duration of a finger snap is much greater. Therefore, taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts, which involves not just one virtue but eight, for the duration of even a finger snap collects infinite merit. If the benefit of keeping the precepts for the duration of a finger snap were materialized, it wouldn’t fit in space. It wouldn’t fit in the great three thousand galaxies.

There are also benefits from the nature of morality. Even the great black nagas, poisonous snakes and other harmful vicious beings cannot harm someone who is living in morality, in vows.

Those who live in morality also create the cause to be able to meet a buddha.

Living in morality is like having legs: it allows you to go to whichever place you wish to go, even to liberation. Living without morality is like not having legs.

Broken morality is like a broken pot, which cannot be used to hold water. Living in morality is like an unbroken pot in which you can keep nectar.

Taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts also has the benefit of enabling you to meet Maitreya Buddha’s teachings. Maitreya Buddha said,

During the time of Shakyamuni Buddha’s teachings, whoever listens to the teachings with devotion and protects the eight precepts will be born as a disciple in my retinue.

Maitreya Buddha promised that you will become his disciple when he descends on this earth, that you will meet his teachings.

By living in morality by taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts, you are protected by the devas who are beyond samsara and even worldly devas. The white-­side guardians naturally protect you day and night, even though you don’t ask them to do so. Wherever you are, they protect you from interferences, from obstacles, day and night, all the time.

Also, as I’ve just mentioned, taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts has great benefit in terms of the merit you accumulate. Take the example of someone who doesn’t live in any vows making an offering to the Three Rare Sublime Ones of an ocean of butter with a wick the size of Mount Meru, and someone else who lives in just one precept making a tiny light offering using one drop of oil with a wick like the tip of a needle. This second person collects much greater merit than the first person without vows, who made such an incredible light offering. There’s no comparison at all. The first person’s merit becomes insignificant when compared to that of the person living in even one vow who makes one tiny offering. And with the Eight Mahayana Precepts you’re taking not just one vow but eight.

Another benefit is that your prayers will succeed. Any prayers you make during times you are living purely in your vows are very powerful. By taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts and keeping them without degeneration, you will definitely be able to accomplish whatever you pray for during the time of keeping the vows purely. That is the power of pure morality.

Even the ability to heal depends on how pure your morality is. With the power of pure morality you can benefit others by using mantras and other methods to stop disease and spirit harms, which make people crazy. You can also stop the problems of drought by doing naga pujas and so forth. Pujas have much more power if the person doing them lives purely in their vows. Your work for other sentient beings through teaching and other activities is also much more effective. Your blessings also have great power. Human beings and even spirits, devas and protectors listen to a person who lives in pure vows and do what that person asks them to.

Taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts also has the incredible benefit of bringing a human or deva body in future lives. By keeping the Eight Mahayana Precepts even once you receive a special human or deva body.

Another benefit is that the Eight Mahayana Precepts are very easy to take. You can bear hardships for a long time, for months or years, doing retreat and mantra recitation, but even if you do the recitation for many eons, if your mind is distracted it won’t bring any result. With other virtues, it’s necessary that your mind not be distracted at the beginning, in the middle and at the end. Otherwise, it’s difficult to receive the benefits as explained. But with the Eight Mahayana Precepts, you just need to be able to pay attention during the few minutes it takes to do the ceremony. During the rest of the day, even if your mind is distracted, it doesn’t become an obstacle; there’s still continuous great benefit. In accumulating merit by practicing the Eight Mahayana Precepts, you have to keep fewer precepts compared to other vows and for only a short time, and the ceremony is easy to recite. There is nothing more meaningful and nothing easier than taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts.

The final benefit from taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts is that you achieve liberation and enlightenment. It is mentioned in the sutra Requested by Indra that a person who keeps the Eight Mahayana Precepts on the Tibetan eighth and fifteenth days and on the special days when Buddha showed his psychic powers will become enlightened.

Taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts has unbelievable benefits. You’re not taking them only for yourself or only for the happiness of this life, for the happiness of future lives or for even liberation. You’re taking them purely to free all sentient beings from all their suffering and lead them to enlightenment.

Shortening the time

If somebody has such an uncontrolled mind that they can’t keep the precepts for one whole day, they can take them for just half a day—for the nighttime or the daytime, for example—for one hour or for even half an hour. Taking the vows for even such a short period has unbelievable benefits.

In the past, in India, Arya Katiyana gave precepts to a butcher and to a prostitute. Since butchers mostly work in the daytime and don’t kill at night, it was easy for the butcher to keep the precepts at night and not during the daytime. Arya Katiyana gave the butcher the vow not to kill at night. The butcher could not keep the vow in the daytime, but it was much better for him to keep the vow at night than not to take the vow at all. There was much benefit from this.

Since it was difficult for the prostitute to keep the vow to abstain from sexual intercourse during the nighttime and easy for her to keep it in the daytime, Arya Katiyana gave her the vow to abandon sexual intercourse in the daytime.

There are such scriptural references. There are ways of doing the practice so that even those with difficult minds are able to take the vows.

Even if you have degenerated one of the vows you have taken, it’s not skillful to think, “What’s the point of keeping vows?” and give up the rest. That is foolish. Even if one precept is broken, the rest aren’t broken, and there’s much merit in keeping the rest of the precepts. It’s a great loss if you give up all your vows because you have broken one.

Differences between the Mahayana and pratimoksha precepts

It might be helpful to know the differences between the Eight Mahayana Precepts and the eight general pratimoksha precepts. There are several differences between taking these eight precepts in the Mahayana way and taking the eight precepts to achieve self-­liberation, the sorrowless state of the Lesser Vehicle path.

In regard to lay pratimoksha vows, there are the refuge-­only lay vow, the five lay vows and the eight lay vows, which are called nyer nä. Nyer means near and means abiding, so near abiding. It means that taking and living in these eight precepts makes you near to liberation. The term near abiding has great meaning, showing the result of the practice of living in the vows. These eight precepts bring a person near to liberation. The longer they keep the vows the nearer they become to achieving liberation.

Difference of motivation

One difference between the Eight Mahayana Precepts and the eight lay pratimoksha vows is the motivation. The Eight Mahayana Precepts should be taken with a motivation of bodhicitta. One takes the eight lay pratimoksha precepts to achieve liberation from samsara for oneself. In the Mahayana ordination, we take the eight precepts with a motivation of bodhicitta, so what do we get from this? It makes us near to great liberation, full enlightenment, for sentient beings.

Difference of visualization

Another difference is in the visualization. When you take the eight pratimoksha precepts, you don’t visualize all the buddhas and bodhisattvas. With the Eight Mahayana Precepts, you have to visualize all the buddhas and bodhisattvas, and you take the precepts in front of them.

One particular point is that we visualize the lama who gives the Eight Mahayana Precepts as a buddha. Why do we do this? Because the Eight Mahayana Precepts come from tantra, not from sutra. From the four types of tantra, this practice comes from Action Tantra. When you take the Eight Mahayana Precepts from a lama in relation to nyung nä, an Action Tantra practice, you visualize according to tantric guru yoga practice. Tantric practice involves training the mind in purity, in stopping impure ordinary appearances and conceptions.

To succeed in achieving realizations of the path, according to the Hinayana path, disciples devote themselves to the abbot or Dharma teacher as if he were Shakyamuni Buddha. They don’t visualize the abbot as Shakyamuni Buddha, but they respect and obey him as if he were Shakyamuni Buddha.

According to the sutra path of Paramitayana, to succeed in realizing the path, the disciple devotes to the virtuous friend, or Dharma teacher, by meditating that, in essence, they are a buddha. They try to generate the devotion that sees the virtuous friend as a buddha.

In tantra, to succeed in actualizing the path, the disciple devotes to the virtuous friend not only by looking at them as in essence a buddha but by even visualizing them in the aspect of a buddha. You think of the virtuous friend with that pure appearance. In this way, with the Hinayana, Paramitayana and Vajrayana, the method of devoting oneself to the virtuous friend becomes progressively more profound. It is because of these methods that one is able to achieve enlightenment by practicing Paramitayana and to achieve enlightenment quickly by practicing Vajrayana. It is Buddha’s skillful means to guide different levels of sentient beings to enlightenment.

The Eight Mahayana Precepts involve visualizing the virtuous friend as a buddha not only in essence, but even in aspect. Because this nyung nä practice is related to Chenrezig, we have to visualize the virtuous friend as Thousand-­Arm Chenrezig.

Difference of ordination

A third difference is that those who are ordained, who have renounced the householder’s life, can’t take the eight lay pratimoksha vows. Why can’t those who have taken higher vows take the eight lay precepts? Because taking lower vows while living in higher vows causes you to lose the higher vows. The Eight Mahayana Precepts can be taken by anyone, however, even by a fully ordained monk or nun. This is a third difference from the eight lay pratimoksha vows.

If you have a higher ordination, and especially if you don’t keep your vows strictly, taking the Eight Mahayana Precepts helps you to be able to keep even your higher vows purely that day, since the four branches of fasting and so forth are kept that day. The higher vows are all based on these eight precepts. There is this benefit.

In regard to precepts, those who are living in higher vows have taken many more precepts than these eight, but I think the additional thing is the practice of Action Tantra. If someone has taken an Action Tantra initiation, it makes sense for that person to practice the extra Action Tantra precepts, such as the outer yoga of keeping the body clean. Otherwise, if a person were a bodhisattva, I don’t think there would be much benefit for that person to just live in the vows with the motivation of bodhicitta, without the limbs of the precepts, because they have much higher vows. For someone who has taken more and higher precepts and is living in them purely, there wouldn’t be much benefit in taking fewer and lower precepts. However, if someone has taken an Action Tantra initiation, it makes some difference to take the branch vows, which have to do with outer yoga.

Also, in regard to the actual precepts, the eight precepts of the Hinayana path have only the eight precepts and no branches, such as avoiding black food and so forth. Why are the branches mentioned here? Because these Eight Mahayana Precepts are part of Action Tantra practice, and Action Tantra involves avoiding black food. In Action Tantra, the main emphasis is on outer yoga, such as keeping the body clean, rather than inner yoga. The purpose of not polluting your body is so that you don’t pollute your mind. You are then able to have clear concentration.


NOTES

54 See The Direct and Unmistaken Method for more on the Eight Mahayana Precepts.  [Return to text]