Verse 5: Give up bad friends
Verse 5 of Gyalse Tokme Zangpo’s 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva, from the section “The preliminaries.” Below: the verse in three translations and what seven teachers say about it.
Open in the study browser →In bad company, the three poisons increase. The activities of learning, reflecting, and meditating decline, and love and compassion are lost. Give up bad companions. This is the way of a bodhisattva.
The practice of all the bodhisattvas is to avoid destructive friends, In whose company the three poisons of the mind grow stronger, And we engage less and less in study, reflection and meditation, So that love and compassion fade away until they are no more.
With some friends, the three poisons keep growing, Study, reflection, and meditation weaken, And loving kindness and compassion fall away. Give up bad friends — this is the practice of a bodhisattva.
The drinking-and-smoking example: you pick up a new friend's habits without noticing. Abandoning such companions requires no fight — "we simply do not agree with their habits and they would naturally stay away from us." The point is protecting bodhicitta from contamination.
A detrimental friend is one whose company extinguishes love and compassion and erodes study; abandon them "like contagious disease." With right guru and friends one progresses smoothly; with wrong company, good qualities perish.
The crucial nuance — "bad friends, or misleading friends, are those who basically, in all good faith, lead us away from our Dharma practice." Not villains: people who ridicule practice or crowd it out, or keep us agitated (his example: the perpetually politics-enraged friend). Matters most for those not yet firmly grounded. Hard cases like marriage: sustain the relationship while maintaining practice; if separation becomes necessary, do it without ill will. Part 2
The farmer analogy: a skilled farmer uses even waste productively — an adept can transform poisons into wisdom. Ordinary practitioners can't yet, so for us the association simply degrades virtue. Know which one you are.
"Negative friends are much worse because they contaminate our pure mind and destroy our virtuous roots." External conditions shape the inner state, but one's own mind remains the root; group study with virtuous friends is the best protection.
"Bad friends don't come with horns on their head… they're people who really mean well" — often our closest relations, who value only this life's money, comfort, reputation, and advise accordingly. Giving them up needs no hostility: stay polite and compassionate, stop relying on their counsel — distinguish social courtesy from spiritual reliance. Verses 4–6 · Sangye Khadro
The gardener frame: "when you plant a garden, you take care to create an environment in which the plants you want to grow can grow." Early in practice, deliberately cultivate supportive conditions; apply the verse to your own reactive patterns rather than externalizing blame; build capacity before exposing yourself to difficulty. Tricycle verse 5 · Talk 3 (2006)
striking consensus on tone — no aversion, no drama (GR: just stop agreeing; TC: courtesy without reliance; AB: no ill will even in separation). And a shared honesty: the "bad friends" are usually well-meaning people we love. KTGR/KM add the capacity question: protection first, transformation later. ---
Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche — The Heart of Compassion (Shambhala). A purchased book — no text is reproduced here.