Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute teaching, Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen opens with a striking analogy: the next life is like a long journey through unfamiliar territory, requiring both provisions and a guide. Dharma practice serves as both. He then anchors all teaching in two principles: benefit others when able, never harm—principles that encapsulate the entire path from Sūtra through Tantric practice. Moving to the Buddha’s first teaching, Geshe-la explains why Varanasi was chosen and how the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths three times in twelve lines, with each repetition bringing the five close disciples deeper into realization. The talk culminates in explaining that liberation means freedom from self-grasping, the root that binds us to saṃsāra. The teaching is open to newcomers and serious practitioners alike.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 4NT.mp3
UUID: b23e9c4d-3448-425b-9ced-b11fd2cdc97e
Teacher: Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen
Collection: The Four Noble Truths (Geshe Dhawa Gyaltsen)
Date: 1996 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.7 minutes
Words: ~2,024
The master Gungthang Mañjuśrī has advised, or said, that the future life — or our next life — is much, much farther than this very life. So for example, say if you have to travel to a place where you have never been, say a big forest, and you don’t know your way to get there. So you need someone to guide you. It’s a long, long, long way that you are traveling. So you need — like — you need food and things for you to have along the way.
So you need to carry things, which are like food and so on, with you. Plus, you need someone to guide you along the way, because one doesn’t know the way. So, sorry. So if you compare this life with your future life, then the future life or next rebirth is much farther, and so all that helps — like the food and so on that you prepare on your journey — similar to that, and even like the guide that leads you on the way — for your future, your next life, the best thing is to do Dharma practice. So because of that, we should practice Dharma.
So that which helps most for us, on a temporal basis or on an ultimate basis, is Dharma practice. And whatever Dharma practice one performs shouldn’t be mere words, but should come from the depth of the heart or mind. So, going into future life is, I would say, a long and difficult journey. So the best thing that will help our journey to the future is to do Dharma practice. If one is to do Dharma practice, then that practice is like the path that you make for yourself — like the straight path that you make for your future.
So the main purpose of our Dharma practice is to subdue our mind. That practice is what brings about happiness for oneself — the happiness of the present, or temporal happiness, and the ultimate happiness. So making oneself responsible for oneself, and — what do you say — cherishing oneself, which means making oneself practice Dharma. If oneself doesn’t do that for oneself, then there is nothing outside that will do it for one.
So for one’s future life, one should do the practice of Dharma for oneself. So that practice, as His Holiness advises us, saying: if you are able to benefit others, then benefit; but don’t harm others. So these two lines summarize all our practice, all our Dharma practice. These two lines — to benefit if you can, and not to harm others — in these two lines hold the essence of all Mahāyāna teachings: that of the common Sūtra practice and the uncommon, like the Tantric practices — all included within these two lines.
So, sorry, this first line — to benefit if you can — in that it holds the whole full essence of the teachings of the Perfection Vehicle: that is the Sūtra part of the Buddha’s teachings and the Tantric part. And the second line, which says not to harm others, includes or summarizes the whole teachings of the lower vehicles, that is the Hearers and the Solitary Buddhas. So one should practice well, not just being narrow-minded — which is like, if one has to do something for oneself, just doing it right away and being very practical, but if one has to do it for others, then not being practical and not doing it. It shouldn’t be like that. So whatever Dharma practice that you perform should be practical — you should do as you say — and to make that practice become a cause of the fully enlightened state, it should be conjoined with the motivation of bodhicitta. So in the bodhicitta practice, there are two different practices: that of aspirational bodhicitta and exchanging oneself with others.
There are different ways one can generate these bodhicitta motivations. So, to bring happiness and remove the suffering of this life’s mother — of our own — that responsibility is totally up to one, up to us. And similarly, to bring happiness to the infinite mother sentient beings and remove their suffering — that responsibility too is ours. So at present, are we able to bring the perfect happiness to all mother sentient beings at this present time? Then it is not — it’s very difficult right now, at the present time.
So even the gods who are known as the top or supreme of the worldly beings — they too don’t have this total capability; they are not able to bring happiness to all mother sentient beings. Like Brahma and Indra don’t have these powers. And also those of the Hearers or Pratyekabuddha — they too don’t have the full power to bring happiness to all sentient beings. So the one who can do that, or provide happiness to all mother sentient beings, is only the Buddha, the Bhagawan — only that one has that capability. So thinking that one has the full responsibility to lead all sentient beings and bring happiness to all beings, but thinking that at present one is not able to do that, and to be able to do that one first needs to achieve Buddhahood or the enlightened state — and to be able to achieve that enlightened state, now I would listen to the teachings.
Like generating or setting up this kind of motivation, listening to the teachings. And here we do a short meditation on that. Continuing from the last teaching: the Buddha turned the first Wheel of Dharma in Varanasi, and Geshe-la will give some reasons why he has chosen that place, or why the Buddha turned the first Wheel of Dharma in that place. So Buddha Śākyamūni came to this world and performed the twelve deeds, and there he also performed achieving the full enlightened state. And these deeds that he performed — how to say — he performed these deeds and he was already enlightened before that.
So when he showed these twelve deeds, one of them being achieving the full enlightened state — that is not the first time, I want to say, that he achieved enlightenment. So the reason is that, in knowledge — I want to say — beings achieve the enlightened stage, enlightenment, in a place called Akanishtha. A place called Akanishtha is where all beings come and achieve the enlightened state. So according to Sūtra teachings, all beings come to achieve the enlightened state — enlightenment — in this pure land which is known as Akanishtha. And there are also Tantric explanations, but Geshe-la said that he won’t go into details because if you explain more detail in that then the main subject won’t be finished.
So actually, Buddha Śākyamūni was enlightened many times even before that. And now, like, choosing this place for turning the first Wheel of Dharma — that place is a place which has been blessed by many past Buddhas and also where many offerings and many practices have been performed. And the Buddha himself — so that is also the place where past Buddhas, the Tathagatas, when they were Bodhisattvas, made many offerings and praises to all other Buddhas. So that’s one reason. And also it is the main sort of place of the sages.
And also it is the place where all the Tathagatas or the Buddhas are being praised by gods and nagas. So another reason is that those of the past three Buddhas who also turned the Wheel of Dharma — the first Wheel of Dharma — at the same place. And similarly, because of these past different reasons that place has been holy, and the future Buddhas too — like Maitreya and so on — will turn the Wheel of Dharma first. The first turning of the Wheel of Dharma will be at the same place. So then the disciples to whom Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths are known as the five close disciples. Mainly the five close disciples, and they are also attended by different gods like Brahma, Indra, and so on. But the main ones are the five.
There are five of them. So the first teaching which is given to these five disciples is the teaching on the Four Noble Truths. So the Four Noble Truths, known as having very few lines, carries extensive meaning, where he showed the cause and effect of saṃsāra and also where he showed the cause and effect of nirvana or liberation. So then the reason or the purpose that the Buddha taught these teachings is, I would say, in order to let following followers know what is to adopt and what is to abandon. So the way the Buddha explained the Four Noble Truths is that he expressed them three times.
He expressed them three times — three times, yeah — in three times, for a total of twelve lines. So he taught the Four Truths in three ways. So first, saying: This is the Noble Truth of Suffering. That’s how he said it.
So then in the second round he said: should understand suffering, should abandon the cause of suffering, and should achieve or accomplish the cessation, and then contemplate the path. So that’s how he taught. So again, the third four lines that he repeated — what do you say — understood suffering, abandoned — have abandoned the source of suffering or cause of suffering.
And have achieved — what do you say — the cessation. Accomplished. And have — what do you say — meditated on the path. So this is three ways of saying.
So these are in three ways he said it, and the first has four and then the second has four and then the third has four, which comes to a total of twelve. So then the purpose or the reason why he turned the Four Noble Truths in three ways, in twelve lines. Of the five close disciples, the first one is known as Kaundinya. So when Buddha explained the first four lines, I want to say, Kaundinya had — that disciple had — for the first time achieved the Path of Seeing. So then in the second explanation, the rest of the four and the gods around had achieved the Path of Seeing for the first time. So then, the third — the direct purpose or the reason for explaining the third time — is to make all the five holy disciples and many other gods actualize or gain the state of arhat.
So then the special purpose — the indirect purpose — of teaching the third time is to lead — I would say — to remove the self-grasping mind of sentient beings and gradually gain, gradually, let’s say, receive the different states of realization along the way. So the special purpose is to lead all sentient beings, to remove their self-grasping, and lead them to the arhat state. Self-grasping is what circles sentient beings in saṃsāra. So at present we are under control of sufferings. We experience sufferings, and for us to be free from this type of suffering, one needs to seek liberation.
So wishing to achieve the state of arhat and to be able to reach that state, one first needs this interest to achieve that state or liberation. So in order to bring this desire for liberation, one trains in two ways to gain this desire for liberation. That is: one is to contemplate over the nature of the Four Noble Truths, and the second is through contemplating the twelve links of interdependent origination. So liberation here is a state which is free from karma and delusions — or other examples, which are like a free — how to say — escaping from prison, or if you have been bound or tied by ropes, then getting released from that bondage. So how we are bound by karma and delusion is that this contaminated body or the aggregates that we have are bound by karma and delusions, in the same way that things are tied up by ropes.