Chapter 2Spiritual Friends, Refuge, Ethics, and Liberation

The first four verses established the ground: a precious human life, the right environment, and the motivation of renunciation. Now Tokme Zangpo turns to the relationships and commitments that shape the path. Who do you keep company with? Where do you place your trust? What moral foundation do you stand on? And what are you ultimately aiming for?

These five verses (5 through 9) correspond to a movement through the traditional three scopes of the practitioner. The preliminary practices (verses 5-7) address the companions and refuge that orient us correctly. Verse 8 speaks to the initial-scope practitioner concerned with avoiding lower rebirths. Verse 9 addresses the middle-scope practitioner who aspires to liberation from samsara altogether. Together, they form the bridge between the foundational contemplations and the great bodhisattva motivation that follows.

Verse 5: Giving Up Bad Friends

When you keep their company your three poisons increase, Your activities of hearing, thinking and meditating decline, And they make you lose your love and compassion. Give up bad friends -- This is the practice of bodhisattvas.

Tokme Zangpo is remarkably direct. He defines a "bad friend" not by their character in some abstract sense, but by the effect they have on you. The test is simple and threefold: Does this person's company increase your desire, hatred, and ignorance? Does your engagement with study, reflection, and meditation diminish when you are around them? Do your love and compassion shrink?

If the answer to any of these is yes, the instruction is clear: give them up.

This is not about judging others as bad people. It is about honest recognition of cause and effect in your inner life. Some relationships genuinely pull us downward. We drink more around certain friends. We gossip more in certain groups. We lose our aspiration for practice when we spend too much time in environments that normalize distraction and self-indulgence.

The instruction is especially challenging because these companions are often the people we enjoy being with most. The three poisons are, after all, addictive. The friend who makes us laugh at others' expense, the colleague who feeds our competitive streak, the social circle that encourages constant consumption -- these relationships can feel warm and comfortable precisely because they confirm our habitual patterns rather than challenging them.

Giving up bad friends does not require hostility. It simply means creating distance, spending less time, and not seeking out those influences. As Tokme Zangpo himself demonstrated in his own life, sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do -- for yourself and eventually for others -- is to step away from conditions that make awakening harder.

Verse 6: Cherishing Spiritual Teachers

When you rely on them your faults come to an end And your good qualities grow like the waxing moon. Cherish your spiritual teachers Even more than your own body -- This is the practice of bodhisattvas.

After the withdrawal comes the embrace. If verse 5 tells you whom to move away from, verse 6 tells you whom to move toward.

A genuine spiritual teacher is defined, again, by effect: in their presence, your faults diminish and your good qualities grow. The image of the waxing moon is beautiful -- it suggests gradual, steady illumination. Growth in the Dharma is rarely dramatic. It happens over time, through consistent exposure to wisdom and example. You begin to notice that you are a little less reactive, a little more patient, a little clearer in your motivation. The moon is waxing.

The instruction to cherish teachers "even more than your own body" may sound extreme, but it makes sense when you consider what is at stake. The body, however precious, will be lost at death. But the qualities awakened through genuine spiritual friendship -- the wisdom, compassion, and skillful means transmitted from teacher to student -- travel with you across lifetimes. The body serves this one life. A true teacher serves your deepest aspiration across all lives.

Importantly, this relationship is not about blind obedience. The tradition is very clear that a student should examine a teacher carefully before entrusting themselves. Like testing gold by cutting, rubbing, and heating, you should observe a teacher's conduct, question their understanding, and verify their qualities over time. But once you have found someone worthy of your trust, wholehearted devotion becomes the most powerful catalyst for transformation on the path.

Tokme Zangpo himself had many teachers. He studied under Lama Kunga Gyeltsen at Bodong, was examined by Jamyang Nyima Gyeltsen, and trained with masters like Buton Rinchen Drub. His own accomplishments -- earning the epithet "Tokme" (non-obstructed) for his brilliance in Abhidharma studies -- grew directly from his devotion to these teachers.

Verse 7: Taking Refuge in the Three Jewels

Bound himself in the jail of cyclic existence, What worldly god can give you protection? Therefore, when you seek refuge, Take refuge in the Three Jewels which will not betray you -- This is the practice of bodhisattvas.

This verse exposes the futility of misplaced trust. We naturally seek protection -- from suffering, from uncertainty, from the raw vulnerability of being alive. The question is: where do we turn?

Tokme Zangpo points out that worldly gods -- and by extension, worldly powers of any kind -- are themselves trapped in samsara. A prisoner cannot free another prisoner. Wealth cannot protect you from aging. Status cannot protect you from sickness. Political power cannot protect you from death. Even the gods of the desire and form realms, for all their magnificence, are bound by karma and will eventually fall from their exalted states.

The Three Jewels -- Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha -- offer a fundamentally different kind of refuge. The Buddha has actually traversed the path from confusion to awakening. The Dharma is the truth of that path, tested and verified by countless practitioners across millennia. The Sangha is the community of those who walk it together.

Taking refuge is not a passive act of worship. It is an active reorientation of your life. You are saying: "I recognize that worldly solutions cannot address the deepest problem of existence. I turn toward the path of awakening. I commit to that direction." This is what Dr. Berzin calls "taking safe direction" -- it is a navigational choice, not a petition to an external savior.

This verse also introduces an important distinction. Real refuge is something that will "not betray you." Worldly protections betray us not through malice but through their own impermanence and limitation. Only the path to awakening, because it addresses the root cause of suffering, can provide a refuge that holds.

Verse 8: Never Doing Wrong

The Subduer said all the unbearable suffering Of bad rebirths is the fruit of wrong-doing. Therefore, even at the cost of your life, Never do wrong -- This is the practice of bodhisattvas.

With this verse, Tokme Zangpo addresses the initial-scope practitioner -- someone whose primary motivation is to avoid the suffering of lower rebirths (in the hell, hungry ghost, and animal realms) and secure a favorable future existence.

The "Subduer" is the Buddha, and his teaching here is the law of karma: actions have consequences. Negative actions -- killing, stealing, lying, and the rest of the ten non-virtuous actions -- produce suffering as inevitably as seeds produce fruit. The suffering of the lower realms, which the texts describe in harrowing detail, is not arbitrary punishment. It is the natural result of harmful actions ripening on the mental continuum.

The strength of the instruction is remarkable: "even at the cost of your life." There is no circumstance, no pressure, no threat that justifies abandoning ethical conduct. This may sound impossibly demanding, but it follows logically from the understanding of karma. If you believe in the continuity of consciousness beyond this life, then dying with an intact moral foundation is infinitely preferable to surviving through harmful means only to face the consequences across future lifetimes.

In practical terms, this verse calls us to take ethical cause and effect seriously in the small decisions of everyday life. Not just the dramatic scenarios of life and death, but the daily choices: the small lie that seems harmless, the cutting remark we could hold back, the corners we cut when no one is watching. Each of these plants seeds.

Verse 9: Aspiring to Liberation

Like dew on the tip of a blade of grass, pleasures of the three worlds Last only a while and then vanish. Aspire to the never-changing Supreme state of liberation -- This is the practice of bodhisattvas.

The final verse in this section lifts the gaze from avoiding lower rebirths to aspiring for something far greater: liberation itself.

Tokme Zangpo uses one of the most exquisite images in the entire text. The pleasures of the three worlds -- the desire realm, the form realm, and the formless realm, encompassing every possible experience from the coarsest human pleasure to the most refined meditative bliss -- are like dew on the tip of a blade of grass. They glitter for a moment in the morning light, and then they are gone.

This is the contemplation of a middle-scope practitioner. Even if you manage to avoid lower rebirths, even if you achieve the most exalted states within samsara, the fundamental problem remains: everything conditioned is impermanent. The happiness of a human life ends. The bliss of a god's existence expires. Even the most profound meditative absorption in the formless realms eventually dissolves, and the meditator falls back into lower states.

The "never-changing supreme state of liberation" is nirvana -- the complete cessation of suffering and its causes. It is called "never-changing" because, unlike every samsaric pleasure, it does not arise from conditions and therefore cannot decay.

But notice the trajectory of the text. Having established the aspiration for liberation, Tokme Zangpo is about to pivot. The next verse will ask: if liberation is good, is it good enough? What about all those other beings, your mothers from beginningless time, still drowning in the ocean of samsara? Can you really rest in your own peace while they suffer?

That question -- the question of bodhicitta -- is where the text truly begins to soar.