Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 35-minute talk, Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen uses logical reasoning to establish selflessness—showing with the example of a vase how neither persons nor objects exist independently of their parts—then outlines the foundational meditations for the path of accumulation. These include meditations on the impure nature of the body (its origins in blood and sperm), the four types of suffering (birth, aging, sickness, death), and the three broader categories of suffering (pain, change, pervasive unsatisfactoriness). Throughout, he emphasizes how understanding impermanence and suffering weakens delusions like attachment and hatred, cultivating the knowledge that leads toward liberation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 P and G.mp3
UUID: 5ccb13c2-09fc-4b95-be6f-bd9c6984a811
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: Paths and Grounds (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1995 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 35.7 minutes
Words: ~742
So if it do exist, like, self sufficiently or substantially, then then it has to exist from itself without depending on the aggregates or without depending on its cause and conditions. So, as the person is not existing substantially or substantially, that applies similar to the rest of phenomena which is the form and so on. So, as an example, if the vase exists substantially or sufficiently, then it has to exist from its own side without depending on its parts. So in order to perceive the vase, the vase has to depend on its parts, like the bottom or the top or on this depending on this part that we can perceive about. Similarly to perceive a person, it can be one perceived in dependence upon one of those aggregates, one of one of the five aggregates. So so because of that, the the vase or the person doesn’t exist substantially. So then the third one is subsequent cognition, and that is after you have the inferential cognition of selflessness in a person, when you remember that afterwards, that realization of selflessness of the person is the subsequent cognition. So in short, moment of those realizations, like second moment of realizing impermanence and so on, the second moment are known as the subsequent cognition.
So that practitioner on the path of hearers, on the path of accumulations meditates on the ugliness. So as an ugly is that which is not beautiful, is is is is not as ugly. So so that that object that one is attached to meditating on the ugly nature of it, which is which is the the filthy nature of it and and with the smelly and and not not not not having the pleasant appearance. It’s for how you meditate on the object. Can I give you we we you with Geshe-la’s. And similarly, the person on that path of accumulation meditates on the as as we explained before, the four close mindfulness.
Four close mindfulness. Four perfect abandonment. And then also meditated on suffering. So the four sufferings are known as the suffering of birth, the suffering of getting old, the suffering of sickness, and the suffering of death. These are known as the four thorns.
And similarly, one also meditates on the three types of suffering. So these are the three types of sufferings, suffering of pain, the suffering of change, and the pervasive suffering. For example, of suffering, as an example depends on what we have in our kidneys. And then suffering of change, for example, pleasant feeling. And then pervasive suffering is contaminated.
So the uncertainty of friends and the uncertainty of enemies? And the uncertainty of powers and wealth. And secondly, suffering of unsatisfactory. So suffering of unsatisfactory is that if we do experience some level of happiness, we never content. So like up and down means that sometimes one becomes leader and sometimes one loses that and one falls to an ordinary person.
The person on the path of accumulation, they meditate on these, and similarly they also meditate on their bodies, the contaminated body that they have, which is like the pure nature of the body, the happiness of the body, So so the if the person on on the the person who have entered the path, they they, see this body, which we see as pure, as dirty. And then they meditate on the dirty nature of this body. And as they meditate on the dirty nature of this body, it has this dirtiness. So it it is it has the nature of dirtiness, which is if you look to its cause, then it is caused by karma and delusion plus plus the blood and sperm. So so so because it has the nature of dirtiness, So, therefore, it is suffering, it is never happiness.
So, then this contaminated body is not permanent. It is impermanent because it is produced by cause and condition. So it’s not self existent. It is dependent on others. So, it depends on others which is as a person it has to depend on the aggregates.
So so so the the person on this path of accumulations, like, overpowers those different delusions, like attachment and hatred and so on? And they have they possess this quality and the qualities. They possess the qualities or the knowledge which leads towards liberation. So the practice of of these different paths is not not to not