Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen reveals how misperception—direct sensory error, not just conceptual confusion—feeds anger and attachment. In this 32-minute teaching, he uses classical Buddhist logic examples: seeing a white conch shell as yellow due to jaundice, the illusion of falling hair from high fever, perceiving one moon as two. These demonstrate how the mind mistakes its object in non-conceptual ways with emotional consequences. While avoiding the trigger object helps, he argues the real work is weakening anger once it arises. He teaches merit dedication as a safeguard—offering multiple dedication formulas (for enlightenment, spreading teachings, others’ welfare, ending suffering) to protect accumulated virtue. He clarifies a subtler mistake: confusing a fact like “sound is impermanent” with the generic image the mind constructs of it. For those exploring Buddhist epistemology and emotional training.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 Lo Rig.mp3
UUID: d7176c98-fb9e-4ed1-acee-16c67f70a424
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: Nature of the Mind (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1995 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 31.6 minutes
Words: ~1,829
So the non-conceptual mistaken awareness is that it’s mistaken with respect to its object of engagement — to its object which the awareness engages. Due to that mistake, it is known as the non-conceptual wrong consciousness. Mistaken with its object of engagement. So as an example, like, the conch shell itself is white, has a white color, but seeing its color as yellow. That’s one example. And like seeing one moon as two moons is another example.
And then the appearance that you have, like, the falling of hair. These are, like, the examples. And these are known as the non-conceptual wrong consciousness. So for example, how one sees the white conch shell as yellow — it is a person with a disease of jaundice. For him or her, the white conch shell appears as yellow.
So then this appearance of like the falling hair — this mistaken consciousness, when it appears — is that when one has a strong fever, a very strong fever, then at that point, one sees that one’s hair is falling down, falling. So like, consciousness apprehending or clearly perceiving non-existent things — that is like — though the thing doesn’t exist, like consciousness appearing it to exist. To the consciousness, it appears to be existing. So like the true moon, like seeing the single moon as double.
There is no double moon, but because of the mistaken eye consciousness, you see two moons. So the eye consciousness is mistaken due to different causes. And without causes, it won’t have a mistaken appearance. So to our mind, whatever appears to us, whatever object appears to us — these three have to be there, like the object, the senses, and the consciousness. These three have to be there to perceive — for an object to appear to us.
So for example, we’d say like, as an example, anger — for example, when one has anger, this also has to have these three. That is the eye consciousness, and then the uncommon empowering condition of the eye consciousness, and then the object — for example, a person as one’s enemy has to be there — like these three have to be there in order for one to have anger. In order for anger to exist. So same with the attachment.
Like, if one is attached to a thing in the shop, then in order to generate this attachment, they have to have these three. Eye consciousness, and then the organ, and then the object. Like, these three have to be there in order to generate the attachment. So because of that, if we — like, it’s important for us to stay far from or stay distant from the object of anger or object of our attachment.
So then, when these three are together and if anger comes out, if anger is produced, then it’s already produced. So what we have to do now is one has to reduce that, to destroy or to weaken one’s anger. Yeah. You have to see the faults of anger. So anger — when anger arises — it’s very bad.
That which — a moment of anger — that which destroys many of our past virtues. So in order not to get our virtue destroyed by anger, our virtue what we have accumulated — it’s very — what is it? — it is taught to dedicate. It’s taught to dedicate. If we dedicate, then it cannot be destroyed by anger.
So for example, if we dedicate with the thought of bodhicitta, whatever virtue or merit one accumulates through doing some wholesome actions — for example, like giving food to birds — and then whatever virtue you accumulate out of that, if you do dedicate that towards — for this — if you dedicate that merit to achieve the full enlightened state, or to become a cause for your full enlightened state, then it never gets destroyed by anger. And if one is not to dedicate in that way, you just leave it there accumulating virtue, then easily anger can destroy it.
So there are many ways of dedicating our merits. Like, we can dedicate to achieve the full enlightened state for the sake of other sentient beings. Or we can dedicate our merit that in order to spread the teaching in the whole world, in the whole universe. Or we can dedicate our merit towards all sentient beings in order for them to have happiness. Or we can dedicate that merit to remove all the sicknesses and hunger and thirst in the world.
So one can — if one can dedicate in these different ways. And whichever way, if one dedicates, once it has been dedicated, then it won’t get destroyed by anger. So we’ll be doing this much today. And if you have any question, you can ask. Mhmm.
So like, for example, at the very beginning, when the first anger arises, that anger has to arise from like these three conditions coming together, the very beginning. So from the second moment of that, like, the object is already in our memory. Even if one is not actually meeting with the object, there’s a memory object there. So meeting with that, the anger sort of arises. So same thing like if a person — if you are angry at a person who is in India, if he or she writes you a letter, and then when you receive the letter, anger arises right there.
What is it? Yeah, that’s — well, it’s okay. Coming to — you have other — yeah. That’s wrong.
Mhmm. So how one gets the inferential cognition of — like, sound is impermanent — is through giving reasonings. You give different reasons and then through that, you have an inferential cognition of the sound being impermanent. So whatever is, like, conceptual, it is mistaken. So in this case, sound like — one is proven with different reasons that sound is impermanent. But then when it’s appearing to one, it appears together with a general image of the sound being impermanent. It appears together with the general image of the sound being impermanent. So this like the generic image or the meaning generality — this and sound being impermanent are two different things. Two different.
It’s not the same — two different things. And whenever these two arise as if they are in the same — like in one — it’s mistaken. So just the sound like — sound being impermanent — that’s this word. So the sound — that’s what you hear — sound being impermanent — and then like a sound being impermanent, that appearance is true.
Appears to one as being same. And that is what is mistaken. Like, we go with another example — like, apprehending a vase. Like, what we mean by general image or meaning generality is that, for example, if someone has never been to a different place and someone comes and explains that place to that person. And you have an image of the place.
So same thing, like, with the sound being impermanent — that sound being impermanent, and the general image, how it appears to one. These two — you have a — what is it — one whole thing as if they are the same. So that is what is mistaken.
Like, for example, you have a conception of Tibet. So and then, like, if someone tells you Tibet is like this — gives that explanation — then you have a conception which is a thought like Tibet is like that. So then, like, the Tibet — the word. The word. And what you hear, and then what appears to you — the appearance of Tibet.
These two — yeah. Yeah. These two, like, appear as being one. Yeah. Mhmm.
Yeah. Like, having a relation between these two. So the sound — like, just the hearing of the sound, sound being impermanent. These words, what do you hear? The sound and actually what appears to one.
These two — one holds to be like same. So the meaning generality — that’s another translation — but the general image of the sound being impermanent. And it is just the sound that you hear — sound is impermanent. These two, when we apprehend, one apprehends them as being same.
Apprehend that there is a relation between these two. So that way of perceiving — or that way of seeing it — is a mistake. Yeah. That is the mistaken. Yeah.
Mhmm. Sorry? Mhmm. Mhmm. So the sound which is — sound is impermanent.
That sound — yeah. Sound is impermanent. This this sound. The sound of the words. Yeah.
And and the general image. Yeah. Yeah. Other questions you have? Yeah.
Crazy. Mhmm. Mhmm. So when one is really angry, it doesn’t mean that you see like a very red — everything is very red — like, here it gets a little — but you have the appearance to your eye consciousness changes, which is you have an appearance of red.
Not like blue — red — but you have that kind of appearance. So you can check that. Like, after a big fight and then see — checking also whether it’s — so this, like, generally this appears. Like, when one is very angry, then not really red that you see, but you have that appearance to your eye consciousness is like a sort of reddish tinge. So in the same way, like, if a person causes you to be angry, now, like, what you see — the person before you are angry and after you are angry — you have the way it appears to you in two different ways.
So even like — the other person has taken no changes — no changes take place within the person that is other than oneself. But because of one’s preceding condition — whatever that is — an anger — that causes one to see that in different ways. So with this mistaken consciousness, like that, like this — four different ways it generates. So then it’s like we just mentioned one example, but then if you check, like, as long as if it’s a mistaken consciousness, then it’s caused by these different four different ways. So, like, with the other example — the grasping of self, for example — appearing to one — the grasping of self or person.
That is what is more like also a mistaken appearance. And if you look to its cause, then like — for a person — the ignorance is the one. The ignorance is the one — like, the cause for it. So like this, the preceding condition — whatever it is — whatever, with the anger, just the moment before that — it’s like the immediate preceding condition.
That is like the cause for the mistaking eye consciousness. But then if you look back, there are other causes also.