Three defects of the vessel are explained in traditional Buddhist teachings as something students should avoid. Teachings on conduct can sound like a pretty heavy topic. But if we examine our lives, then every aspect of daily activity has rules of behavior.
For a Dharma student, correct conduct brings a tremendous advantage. Because we know how to properly listen to the teachings, we absorb them much more quickly. Thus, we should think of conduct instructions as a user manual that helps us navigate the learning process. And if we consider the examples of the three defects, we may find areas in our own approach that we can enhance and correct.
In this excerpt from Khenpo Gyaltsen’s A Lamp Illuminating the Path to Liberation: An Explanation of Essential Topics for Dharma Students, Khenpo gives us advice from classic Mahāyāna texts:
Not to listen is to be like a vessel (or pot) turned upside down. Not to be able to retain what you hear is to be like a pot with a hole in it. To mix negative emotions with what you hear is to be like a pot with poison in it.
A Lamp Illuminating the Path to Liberation: An Explanation of Essential Topics for Dharma Students by Khenpo Gyaltsen, pp. 13-14.
- The upside-down pot. When you are listening to the teachings, listen to what is being said and do not let yourself be distracted by anything else. Otherwise you will be like an upside-down pot on which liquid is being poured.
- The pot with a hole in it. If you just listen without remembering anything that you hear or understand, you will be like a pot with a leak: however much liquid is poured into it, nothing can stay. No matter how many teachings you hear, you can never assimilate them or put them into practice.
- The pot containing poison. If you listen to the teachings with a mind full of the five poisons of attachment, aversion, ignorance and so on, the dharma will not only fail to help your mind; it will also be changed into something that is not dharma at all, like nectar poured into a pot containing poison.