Examine Your Own Mistakes and Abandon Them

Dagpo Rinpoche said:

Abandon causing others to give rise to non-devotion and careless conduct.
Abandon hiding your own mistakes and announcing others’ mistakes.

From Trulshik Rinpoche’s root guru Rungphu Sangye, whose monastery was behind Mount Everest:

Even if you are learned in Dharma,
Not being careful in foregoing negative karma:
This is the mistake of a religious person.

Even if you have received great instructions,
Not subduing your mental continuum:
This is the mistake of a religious person.

With skillful means praising yourself,
But with skillful means criticizing others:
This is the mistake of a religious person.

The Jewel Garland says:

In examining your own mistakes, be like a seeing eye;
In examining others’ mistakes, be like a blind eye.

Rungphu Sangye said:

Like that, even though there are now mountains of mistakes in your mental continuum, you don’t see them, but you pay attention to even the atoms of mistakes of others. You keep the works for self as the basis, accomplishing only the method of this life, but then say you are working for others.

In the past you didn’t check your conduct, and because of that you cheated yourself. Your promises are done in Dharma, but your practice is done in negative karma. That is what it is saying.

Therefore, all the time examine again and again your own mistakes, your own hallucinations, then abandon them. This is the practice of the Victor’s Sons, the bodhisattvas. By examining your mistakes, abandon them.

Dromtönpa said that the greatest obstacles for vows, or ordination, are alcohol and women. Here my advice is that for a man it can be both men and women, and for a woman it can also be both men and women. Alcohol is the same for both.

Why do the teachings talk more about the shortcomings of women? Because in India and Tibet in the past most of the disciples were monks. This is why the shortcomings of women are mentioned.

Kadampa Geshe Potowa said:

On the basis of no need, if you obey bad friends and follow the conduct of bad friends, then your plans for this life and future lives go wrong. If you become closer to a dog, it’s like becoming closer to a wound.

Potowa uses this example because a dog has so much infection that easily spreads.

Generally, if a Dharma practitioner, especially one who has renounced the householder life, becomes closer to a childish female (this refers to a childish motivation of clinging only to this life’s happiness), then in this life he becomes closer to a bad reputation, and in his future life closer to the evil-gone realms.

This applies especially to women who make offering not with the devotion seeing the guru as Buddha or with unconditional loving kindness, but with the condition of unbearable attachment, giving material presents with a show of being very happy and loving. At that time, without cheating yourself, you have to be careful and not let yourself be immediately under the control of a tsunami of attachment. If you are not careful, because of the person being so happy and loving, you will totally lose yourself. Then later you will face great difficulties in life.

Here I want to say something: When a woman becomes very attached to you and affectionate to you with desire, you need to pay close attention to that person. You need to be watching and protecting yourself like the police, like your guru, like your doctor, like your parents. You need to be like a psychologist to yourself, to help yourself. You have to behave like this toward yourself.

Kadampa Geshe Sharawa said:

Women increase the three delusions,
Degenerate the activities of listening, reflecting and meditating,
And make you lose loving kindness and compassion.
Abandoning evil friends is the practice of a bodhisattva.