Verse 17: When treated with contempt: honor them as your teacher
Verse 17 of Gyalse Tokme Zangpo’s 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, from the section “Transforming adversity.” Below: the verse in three translations and what seven teachers say about it.
Open in the study browser →Even if an equal or lesser person humiliates you out of pride, respectfully place them like a guru on the crown of your head. This is the way of a bodhisattva.
Even if others, equal or inferior to me in status, Should, out of arrogance, disparage me, To honour them, as I would my teacher, By bowing down my head before them—this is the practice of all the bodhisattvas.
Even if your peers or subordinates, Put you down to make themselves look better, Treat them respectfully as you would your teacher: Put them above you — this is the practice of a bodhisattva.
(His briefest in this stretch.) First examine whether your own showing-off provoked it — the person is "like that of a doctor, coming to cure our sickness" of pride, teaching you that you're not so important. Meet them with gratitude.
First-person disclosure: "I do this sometimes" — when angered, sit, recite the Eight Verses line on holding oneself lowest, and visualize bowing to and praising that person, reversing the machinery that fed hatred. "If you feel shy about this, do it in a corner" — and on the street, pretend nothing's the matter.
Shantideva's perspective-exchange: feel how bitter it is to be looked down on from below. The contemptuous person is a guru because "they're teaching us not to be arrogant"; and since enlightenment depends equally on buddhas and sentient beings, all beings merit guru-like respect.
Contempt is medicine for pride — praise inflates, blame deflates. Distinctive: pride and frustration are mere conceptual constructs, so seeing through them teaches emptiness directly. Story: Rechungpa's scholarly pride, cured by Milarepa's display.
We tolerate a boss's contempt but not an inferior's — precisely where the practice bites. Sharp line between patience and passivity: never respond from anger, but keep judgment — precept-breakers can't stay in the Sangha ("like pouring a drop of yoghurt into a pot of milk"). Story: H.H. Jigme Phuntsok chanting "Whoever hurts me… I am always glad to accept it."
Winter Retreat vv16–21 talk.
Tricycle v17 framing quote: "We judge ourselves by our motives, and others by their actions." Talk 6 treats rivalry/pride friction.
HHDL's private-visualization practice is the most concrete, immediately usable instruction in the whole adversity block — a ready-made group exercise. KS again supplies the anti-passivity guardrail. ---
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche — The Heart of Compassion (Shambhala). A purchased book — no text is reproduced here.