Verse 31: Examine your own confusion
Verse 31 of Gyalse Tokme Zangpo’s 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, from the section “Final precepts, daily conduct.” Below: the verse in three translations and what seven teachers say about it.
Open in the study browser →Unless you examine your own confusion, you might look like a practitioner but not act like one. Therefore, always examine yourself and abandon confusion. This is the way of a bodhisattva.
The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to scrutinize oneself Continually and to rid oneself of faults whenever they appear. For unless one checks carefully to find one's own confusion, One might appear to be practising Dharma, but act against it.
If you don't go into your own confusion, You may just be a materialist in practitioner's clothing. Constantly go into your own confusion And put an end to it — this is the practice of a bodhisattva.
(Brief.) Purely reflexive: "all you need to do is to watch your mind and you will know its appearance" — bad thoughts and arising anger recognized immediately in their appearance. Constant review is the practice.
No commentary on the 1974 source (its theme is absorbed into his v32 teaching).
Only we witness our real motivation — "only we are the best judges of... what is really going on in our minds." The danger is cosmetic spirituality: outward prostrations driven inwardly by guilt, approval-craving, or conformity. The Dharma mirror must face inward, not out at others' failings.
Signature story: during the scholar Dalo's attack on Milarepa, the disciple Rechungpa grabbed a stick to defend the Dharma — and Milarepa sang him a song on patience, lest the defender violate the very thing defended. Delusion masquerades as virtue in scholar and yogi alike.
Practice without self-examination becomes "a facade, a mask." Turn the outward-judging mind inward, especially onto motivation — is ego secretly driving even bodhisattva-like activity? Cites the Sutra Requested by Sagaramati (examining one's own faults + protecting beings = the whole Mahayana) and Gampopa's "hidden faults of practitioners." Quote — H.H. Jigme Phuntsok, near his death: "We should always examine our own mind and be stable and not hurt living beings."
Winter Retreat vv29–37 talk.
His translation is the sharpest rendering: "a materialist in practitioner's clothing." Talk 11: engage confusion directly rather than analyze it intellectually. Tricycle v31 (video/subscriber).
the spiritual-materialism verse. KTGR's Rechungpa story is its perfect illustration — even "defending the Dharma" can be the fault the verse warns about. For a group leader (you), this is the verse the whole launch plan already knew: check the seat. ---
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche — The Heart of Compassion (Shambhala). A purchased book — no text is reproduced here.