The 18 Advices for Developing a Good Heart

an interview with Alex Rivas, Certified ACI Teacher
by Christina Kasica, ACI Staff Member

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C: So we're here today with Alex Rivas, who is a certified ACI teacher who teaches the ACI 18 Foundation courses. And he is also a member of the ACI Mexico board. And Alex is going to talk with us today about the 18 advices that Geshe Michael Roach taught us in the recent Lam Rim, the Steps on the Path teaching in Guadalajara, Mexico, in July.

So, Alex, tell us a little bit about these 18 advices. What are they?

A: Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Christina. Thank you for having me here. It's always a pleasure to speak a little bit about these beautiful things. So Geshe Michael, when he was here in Mexico, he taught us 18 advices to develop a good heart, to be a good person--18 practical things you can do in your own life, with your family, in your business, with your kids, how to treat them better. It's just things you need to remember, to have them always with you. They are coming from Ben Kramer's book, 101 Belief Systems, I think. 

And it's like things that we should not contradict within ourselves. For example, you smile at people a lot, but you're just waiting for...they do something bad to you, but you smile at them and you're just waiting for revenge. Like you put them into places when you can get your revenge. So you are like contradicting yourself. You're not being good in your own heart.  You're not treating people well. 

So it's 18 advices like that, that we can all apply in our lives. It's beautiful.

C:  And Geshe Michael taught them a little bit as meditations. So are they advices, are they things you study, are they things you meditate on? Can you discuss that a little bit? 

A: Yeah, they are like the Lam Rim. They are just like meditations. They are teachings, but it's like meditations you can do like one after the other. And then you think about this. And this will lead you to this and like that. And here we are in the part of developing a good heart. They are meditations, they can be meditations, in fact we doing them as meditations. We are recording meditations in English. We are doing that, Paulina, Aldo here in Mexico,. and some others in home office. We will record them. I think we have like four or six already recorded. And then we will share them with the whole world. So they can translate them and they can do them in their own languages. That's the idea. Because this is for every person in the world, every gender, race, economic status. Everyone needs these advices.

C: And how does a meditation work? Are they long meditations? Can you do them during the day? Do you have to dedicate your meditation practice to it? What is your thinking?

A: We're trying to do them short. Because the main advice that Geshe Michael told us to give to people is to start with 10 minutes. Start your meditations little by little and add one minute each week. Like you start on Sunday, and then next Sunday, add one minute, and like that you will be building a steady and good meditation practice. Because if we try to do one hour, the first time, we will give up. That will be not good for us. So he recommended and he advised us to do 10 minutes, and then start increasing one minute each week. So we want to do them short and practical. Because we're all busy, we have tons of things to do. So we want to be practical.

C: Yes, great. And I have heard these meditations referred to as kadampas. So they're advices, they're meditations, how are they also kadampas? Can you tell us about that?

A: Yeah, I think the translation for kadampa, it's advice. I'm not sure, but he gave us another word: that is danzig. And it's like a pledge, a promise, something that you cannot give up. To have a good heart. Because if you're having them, if you're using these advices, you are a good person. You are trying at least to be a good person! But if you just abandon them--

I don't know, they talk about how to, for example, be a good person but not show off. Because we like to show off!  We like to. "Yeah, I gave a thousand dollars to charity!" And you tell everyone that you're giving a thousand dollars to charity. Or "I helped my mom to move!"  Like that. We want like people to recognize us. But here, they are showing us how to be a good person and not advertise that you're a good person. 

So it's like promises, but not in a bad way. "Oh, it's a promise. Now I have to stick with this." No, it's a promise because if you want to be a good person, you should be doing this. And sometimes we get confused on how to act. But these 18 advices give us a really good map on how to develop a good heart.

C: Give us a couple more examples off the top of your head, if you remember. You said something about don't lay in wait or something. Don't wait for revenge.

A: Yeah, like if they do something bad to you, then you go with them and you smile and you treat them good and you're showing like a fake face. And then you're just waiting for them, for you to get revenge, to strike. Because you want revenge. So that doesn't sound like a good heart. Yeah, like that. 

Just to not show off. He gave us this example of this amazing guy, who serves coffee. And you think that he's just there. And he even looks like huh huh huh. But he's very wise. And he's like a scientist. But he doesn't show off. He's just serving people. And we should be like that, serving people and not showing off.  "I serve better than you!" No. That's not logical here.

C: So these are 18 different ways that you can clean up your heart and make it better, both by not doing things that are not good, and doing things that are good--on a daily basis, though.

A: Yeah, of course, like upgrade constantly. Always keep your work steady. And always go for a higher thing--when you feel like you're settled and you're comfortable, go to a higher thing. Things like that. Don't just be there, living your life. You need to be serving and planting good seeds and stopping planting bad seeds in order to develop this good heart and have these amazing experiences and change your whole world to a beautiful world because you need to change your heart first. And then that will reflect in your own world. If you perfect yourself, your heart, your mind, then your world, is going to start to change. That's the idea. Change yourself, change your world.

C: Beautiful. So Alex, where can people around the world find these 18 meditations? Do we know anything about the plans for that?

A: Yeah, we're just making them. Here in Mexico we already launched this with Paulina Franco. She made the meditations, the scripts. But we're doing them in English right now. So they are not ready just yet, but keep waiting. Be aware that we are launching them and they're going to be very helpful for the whole world.

C: Great so we will just update people in the ACI newsletters and you will hear about where you can get them as soon as they are ready for global distribution. And we hope that it will help everyone in this time.

A: Yes, and please share them. Because if the people there please share them, because this is easy to do. There are hard practices, but this is easy. This is things that connect to everyone in this world and beyond. Everyone has these problems. And they can change little things about how they treat people and how they interact with others. 

So they're very important and very easy to apply. So please, when we put them out, share them, practice them, and then call! Tell us how it was for you. 

C: How your experience was! 

So stay tuned. Pay attention to the ACI website and the newsletters. And we will share ongoing availability of this wonderful new practice that Geshe Michael taught us in Guadalajara very soon. 

And thank you, Alex, for being with us today, and good luck with the translations of all these wonderful meditations.

A: Thank you!