Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 39-minute teaching, Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen contrasts the harmful ascetic practices of non-Buddhist traditions—claiming that jumping from cliffs, self-immolation, or burning one’s body lead to enlightenment—with genuine Buddhist practices like maintaining proper meditation postures. He systematically analyzes the five false views that obstruct liberation: those that mistakenly hold non-existent things as real, such as a permanent self or Shiva as creator, and those that deny what actually exists, like karma and causality. Ignorance is explained as a mental factor that produces wrong views, doubt, and delusions. He also discusses how anger destroys merit and how one’s sense of self carries consequences across lifetimes. Best suited to practitioners with some familiarity with Buddhist philosophical analysis.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 27 Lo Rig.mp3
UUID: 5099cdf8-4550-4a98-b1bc-8cef04b7f620
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: Nature of the Mind (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1995 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 39.2 minutes
Words: ~1,558
Deluded wisdom — thinking that by doing these practices like the morality that is prescribed by different views, the bad views and ascetic practices — I’ll give you an example — thinking that through these practices one will be purified or one achieves liberation. That wisdom is known as the view of holding moralities and ascetic practices as supreme. So for example, the moralities that are introduced by the bad views — like the view of the transitory collection and so on.
If they are explaining that if one is to jump up from a cliff, one will gain liberation. Or the explanation saying that if one throws one’s body into fire, one achieves liberation. So like other ascetic practices — like saying that if you burn all five fingers, then you achieve liberation. So this ascetic practice. And the same thing — like jumping on top of a trishula, the three-pointed — yeah, three-pointed like what they usually do like in India — State fair. Trade show.
Yeah, like jumping on top of that. So by engaging in these actions — by engaging in those ascetic practices — people who believe that one gets purified or one achieves liberation, and they regard that as among the hardships or they regard that as the most supreme ascetic practice.
So but then within the Buddhist explanation, an ascetic practice is like keeping the postures while you meditate — like the seven or eight postures of Vairocana. Maintaining these is an ascetic practice. So the functions of this — the functions of holding moralities and ascetic practices as supreme — it functions as the obstacle. It functions such that one will not achieve the desired wish, which is the ultimate liberation. But and another thing is that one meets with the undesired things, which is like falling into the lower realms and so on.
Oh, yeah. So then the next — the last one, the last view — that is the wrong view. So the wrong view, as its definition or meaning, is deluded wisdom establishing the non-existence of existing phenomena. Non-existence of existing phenomena — which are like virtue, non-virtue, for example like virtue, non-virtue, cause, result — like coming from the past to the present and from the present going to the future and so on. Like all those existing phenomena — establishing that they don’t exist. That is the wrong view.
Oh, yeah. So then it functions as: it gives rise to what one has already established wrongly. So for example, we say that by abandoning non-virtue or by practicing virtue, one comes to achieve liberation, or high states. So just the opposite of that — saying that by abandoning non-virtue one doesn’t come to achieve liberation, or by practicing virtue one doesn’t come to achieve the high states and so on. That is how the wrong view functions.
For example, if one is explained that by practicing bodhicitta one will achieve enlightenment in the future — and thinking that it doesn’t work, or that it doesn’t exist — that is a function of wrong view. So there are five views which have been classified, and the first four of the views are classified as a view of holding something that does not exist as existent.
And then the one — the last one — is a view that holds existing things as non-existent. So the previous — things that actually do not exist, but holding them to be existing — is like: the self of a person actually doesn’t exist, but holding it to be existing, like the view of the transitory collection. And then that view — holding the self — holding being in one of the extremes. So then these bad views are holding it to be supreme.
And then holding the ascetic practices which are prescribed — or introduced — by those bad views as supreme. So these four views are known as things that actually don’t exist but holding the view that they exist. So then the next one is like holding Shiva as the creator of the world. So like the followers of Shiva, they accept the view that all the things — the environment and the beings within — are created by Shiva.
So that all is created by Shiva and not because of karma. So then this actually is not true — the view that all things are created by Shiva is a view of things that don’t exist but holding them as existing. But then as one understands — like, indirectly what one has to understand is that when one says all things are created by Shiva, indirectly one has to understand that the functioning of karma doesn’t work. Because of that, indirectly one has to understand that — and because of that, it is used as an example for things that exist but where one says they don’t exist. So if everything is created by Shiva — like the inhabitants and the surrounding environment — if all is created by Shiva?
So if it is so, then how could it be that there are many different types of personalities — some are good, some are beautiful, some are ugly? And how? So the same thing — some experience sufferings all the time, and as a refuge or protector, why would one give sufferings to others?
So we stop here for today. If you have any questions. Yeah. So yeah — it comes to harm one every time anger arises within one. Like, it comes to harm this life, and then it comes to harm also one’s future life. So like, how it comes to harm our virtue is that if one has good motivation and good — how to say — good action, the actual part, and if it has not been dedicated for the sake of enlightenment, for that purpose.
If it has not been dedicated for that purpose at the end and in conclusion, then the anger — like to say — destroys what virtue has given one as a result. So for example, if the result of the virtue is ripening in this life? So with anger, like the merit that one collects — anger cannot completely destroy it — it weakens the power of virtue or it takes a long time for one to experience the result. It puts back the result of virtue. So then, like, you are aware how different levels of anger destroy different levels of virtue. So like, to what level? Like for example, if one has anger — if one has a feeling of anger towards a high being, then that has the power to destroy a certain level of virtue. And medium level and then small level.
So it has different levels. So if the virtue has been dedicated — for example to increase the teachings of Buddha, or to achieve the full enlightenment for the sake of others — for those purposes, then those virtues that you have dedicated can bear fruit until one achieves the full enlightenment. Oh, yeah. Good. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. So general ignorance is not knowing its own object.
So Vasubandhu says. A mental factor — Vasubandhu says. Yes. So the meaning or definition of ignorance is a mental factor that is a dissimilar class from wisdom. Which is not knowing its object.
So which is the not knowing of its object — which is not knowing its object — and owned by the attachment. So which is owned by the attachment, the attachment of saṃsāra. So it is a consciousness which does not understand its object. So wisdom here is the wisdom realizing the selflessness of a person, and ignorance is the dissimilar class or the opposite of that. So that is what ignorance is.
So then its function is that it produces wrong views, doubt, and delusions. So for example, if one does not understand — or if one is ignorant of — the law of cause and effect, or of the Three Jewels of refuge objects and so on, then because of one’s ignorance, one may generate the wrong view. Yeah. That finishes explaining ignorance.
Finished explaining ignorance. Other questions? So one needs an object not to get angry. And like for example in this case — pointing to this — what we call: one cannot harm this in any way. We break this or we damage this because we are harming the person who owns it. So there has to be a person there to get angry at. Yeah. So at that time, what do you get angry at? Go hysterical, and you can feel the anger.
Mhmm. When other people — oh no — when a situation goes wrong and one feels angry, at that time, who one is feeling angry at is oneself. So a situation goes wrong because one does something wrong. So that time, one is angry at oneself.
So at that time, there is this wish to harm. Yeah. So there is an I — a sense of self — that comes from the past to this life and then goes to the future life. To that self, it gets harmed, like Candrakīrti has said. Yeah. Yeah. So we did like ten minutes overtime.
So sorry for that.