More Questions of Sönam Gyen
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tation. They’ll own yellow robes and shrine objects, but will sell them off as merchandise to collect and hoard [wealth]. The prescribed guidelines of the training will fade away and be abandoned. They will achieve wealth and food from the wrong livelihood [of selling] statues. They will suffer physical torture for food and clothing that will sustain outside, unrelated women. Intellectually, the afflictive emotions will be the lofty subject of discussion. Mentally, they will cogitate the five poisons continuously. They will wear householders’ clothes on their bodies. They’ll talk dirty when they see a woman. They’ll sidestep when they see a learned cleric. They’ll be happy when they see vows transgressed. They’ll get irritated when they see a mother or sister. They’ll smile and flirt when they see another beautiful woman. “Such are those who are known as renunciants. They look like renunciants in the daytime but are really laypeople by moonlight. They look like renunciants in the monastery but are really laypeople in town. They look like renunciants while in the ranks of dharma activities but are really laypeople elsewhere. They look like renunciants in retreat but are in fact laypeople when they buy and sell. They look like renunciants to others but are actually laypeople when they examine themselves. They look like renunciants to the people but are really laypeople in the eyes of the buddhas and bodhisattvas. They look like renunciants to the laity but are laypeople before their spiritual masters. To embodied beings they have the bodies of renunciants. To unembodied beings they are seen as actual vow-breakers. If you examine their clothes, all the guardians of the teaching are pleased, as it is a definite dwelling place for the buddhadharma. [However], if you examine their bodies, the women are pleased. They have the three [physical] defects. If you examine their speech, they like babbling and also have the four defects. If you examine their minds, they like gongpo spirits and also have the three defects.14 If you wonder where those problems originate, they come from not following the Book of Discipline (vinaya) and other scriptures and from falling under the power of indolent sloth. When there is no understanding of how to recognize the discipline of vows, the benefits of the three trainings decline. When the three levels of vows are damaged, the three poisons increase. “In the age when these yellow shapes cover the earth, the boundless sentient beings that are born there will have no refuge lords. Their fortune will be inferior. It will be difficult to suppress the increasing afflictive emotions. The result will be the unbearable suffering of the lower realms. It will be difficult to maintain the spread of the doctrine while the beings at time’s end