Shamelessness

SHAMELESSNESS    [ngo tsha med pa]

(always appears along with elation/depression, ignorance, laziness and lack of faith) What is shamelessness? It is not restraining oneself by taking one's perversions as one's norm. It is an emotional event associated with passion-lust, aversion-hatred, and bewilderment-erring. It aids all basic and proximate emotions.

It is a strong objective tendency [blo] not to restrain one's shortcomings by taking oneself or an ideology as the norm. For instance, when a bhiksu is in a situation where he might have to consume alcohol and he refrains from doing so by thinking, "It is not for me to do," he takes himself as the norm and this restraint from evil is self-respect. The opposite is shamelessness.