There's one thing, which you absolutely must respect, and if you don't respect this one thing, you will totally fail in your practice. (Woo! This is a big one isn't it?) What is the one thing that you absolutely must respect in this practice? Mara. Your own ignorance. If you don't respect your own ignorance, then all the respect towards to the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha won't mean anything. You can respect me a thousand per cent, but if you don't respect your own ignorance, you're not going to get far in this practice.
Mara is tricky. Mara is the trickiest thing in the whole world. Mara will get you when you're sitting down here. It will get you when you're standing up. It will get you when you walk out. It will get you when you go to the toilet. It likes to sleep with you. It likes to eat with you. It goes everywhere you go. It will continually try to scare and frighten you. You have to respect Mara. Mara is, in a sense, your enemy.
The greatest generals in history are always noted by one particular aspect: they respect the leader of the enemy. They respect their enemies. If you don't respect your enemies, your going to get beat up easily, because you wont be ready. You won't be aware of the enemy's forces. You won't be aware of the enemy's skills. You won't be aware of the enemy's ability to out-maneuver you, and this is very important with regard to Mara. Respect Mara.
When you're fully enlightened, Mara's gone, you don't have to worry, but before that time, you must respect it.
Every time that you relax on your respect of Mara, your practice tends to stagnate, maybe go backwards even, because you think, "I'm okay now - I've ended my big anger, I've ended my big fear, I have good relationships with my friends. No big deal. I don't get drunk any more; I don't have drugs any more... I'm okay now - I can relax, I don't have to meditate tonight. I don't think I'll do a retreat this year, I think a holiday would be much better." The minute we don't respect Mara, Mara's got us by the nose and pulls us down.
Now, that didn't quite answer the question, but that's the most important part of respect you have to really get in there.
So, "How does respect counteract negative qualities such as anger and greed?"
If you respect Mara, you will have less anger and greed. You will be aware of it coming up before it manifests; you'll be aware of it when it does manifest better, and you'll be aware of it afterward, and you'll reflect upon it, so as next time perhaps it won't come up as much as before. The more you respect Mara, the less you'll be feeding anger and fear, because you'll realize every bit of anger, every bit of greed is Mara's anger and Mara's greed. It's all conditioning, which Mara is in control of. So this ties in, right? The more you respect Mara, the more you're going to watch out for the anger and greed.
Mara wants to throw up its anger, you have to dodge it. You have respect that Mara's going to do it. You have to learn ways not to react to it. How are you going to defeat Mara? How are you going to defeat the anger? How are you going to defeat the greed? It's through respect, that these qualities are going to be counteracted.
A second question here was: "How do we cultivate respect?"
There are a lot of different ways to cultivate respect, depending on which type of respect you want to cultivate. I just talked a lot about cultivating respect on Mara. Fine.
There is the respect of the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha to cultivate. To consider what a wonderful man the Buddha was, that he did such a wonderful deed. Whether you believe in rebirth, or not, even if he only did everything he did in that lifetime, it's phenomenal what he achieved. Take at look all the teachings that are recorded in the scriptures; one guy figured all this out! Rosemary and I have been to dozens of teachers in order to get to where we are, but one guy figured all this out!
Respect for the teachings itself, the Dhamma. To cultivate respect towards the teachings, that's your medicine. What happens if you have a really bad stomach problem? You go to a doctor. The doctor gives you medicine, and says, "This'll fix it. I've done this before. Go ahead take the medicine." You take the bottle home with you, you put it up on a shelf, and you bow to it each day. Is that the respect that's right for the medicine? No! The respect for the medicine is to take it so it cures you. If you only buy a lot of Buddhist books, read them, put them on a shelf, and you think, "They're great, those books are great, you know". Uh-Uh, wrong type of respect. That's "all right" respect, but not the right type fully, complete. Complete respect is to actually practice the Dhamma. That's the real respect.
The third, of what we call "The Triple Gem" is the "Sangha." The noble Sangha is worthy of respect. Rosemary explained a little of this in the old students' talk. The Sangha has three levels. The one we respect fully is the "Noble" Sangha which means everyone who's partly or fully enlightened. They deserve our respect. They've really worked hard, they've ended tons of their anger and greed, some of them ended it totally, these people deserve our respect. They're our role models. As I was saying before, they are people we can look towards as examples of where we want to go.
The second level of Sangha is all of the monks and the nuns. We don't have to respect all of them, because some of them are not worthy of our respect, but to respect the organized religion, that's helpful too, because that's what keeps the teachings together. Without the religion, these teachings would have been lost long ago.
The third level of the Sangha is all the practitioners, all Buddhist practitioners. Again, some of them are not going to be worthy of respect, but to respect in general everyone who's practicing as "this is part of our family", even though individually, we may not respect some of them. To cultivate respect towards the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha, that's very helpful, also.
Cultivating respect towards your teachers. What have they given to you? What does it mean for you? How has your life changed because you've met some meditation teachers? For some of you it's been super-dramatic. How much do you owe that person? Can you cultivate that feeling of gratitude, respect? Can you work it into generosity, developing joy for everyone? Just like I teach on day ten morning, to have respect towards your teachers.
Respect towards your parents, if you had good parents. Some of us maybe did not, but if we did have good parents, can we respect them? Other teachers, at school, college, whatever. People who have helped us, people who have exhibited qualities that are very good and we admire, and we respect. If we respect the qualities, then let's respect the person who has them, too - if they really do exhibit it themselves, they portray it and have inspired us to do, also.
So there are quite a few different levels of respect, and cultivating each one is very helpful.
I'll just add another level to that - respecting ourselves. Let's not forget that we are a person trying to grow. Let's not forget our good Kamma. Let's not forget what many of us have been dedicating ourselves to do with our life now. We are somebody who deserves respect, so we can respect ourselves, as well.