The words of Gelek Rimpoche:
You have to respect the sangha no matter what may be. In the Buddhist tradition you have to pay respect to
those who have taken a vow, the monks and nuns, no matter what the individual person may be. From my
point of view I have to respect them, because they are Buddhist monks and nuns. Particularly a group of
four or more is an object of refuge, so you have to give your highest respect. What they are doing indi-
vidually is their responsibility; if they create non-virtues it is their problem. As far as I am concerned, my
problem is that I have to give respect to them.
You have to respect the sangha community. And it is not correct to say “This is our monk, we respect
him more and that one is their monk, we respect him less.” You can’t do that. That is creating a division
among the sangha community. Doing this creates a lot of non-virtues. Creating a schism is one of the five
limitless non-virtues. So one has to be very careful with the sangha community.
Not only do you have to respect the sangha of the yellow-red robed monks or nuns, but also your fel-
low travelers on the spiritual path you have to respect – you have to, you can’t avoid it.
Not only that; it counts for everybody, every human being, every sentient being. Always try to see the
qualities of the people and not the bad part of them. If you start looking at the bad part critically, there is an
endless bad part. If you look from the quality point of view, you’ll get something very good out of it. And
if you are trying to think of all the faults, then everybody will be very ‘faulty’, because there is no person
without faults. If you look from the ‘fault’ point of view you get all the faults all the time.
Buddha’s cousin, Devadatta, always saw a false Buddha, whatever he did he saw fault in it: “He did
this and that is to cheat, he did that and I can do much better, etc.” If you look from the fault point of view
then everything is faulty. But if you look from the quality point of the people, everything becomes quality.
So why should we choose to get bad karma by looking from the faults’ point of view? Don’t. Don’t look
‘fault’, give respect to others. Always see the beautiful part of somebody, see the good part of the people.
And if you are good, everybody will be good to you, I guarantee you that. And if you are bad to some-
body, vice versa you get the same result.