Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 55-minute session, Geshe Kyab introduces a three-part framework comparing mundane and spiritual perspectives on love, life, and career. He begins with a striking example of a young actress whose suicide resulted from unbalanced, blind romantic love, then contrasts this with how spiritual practice—rooted in understanding impermanence and the suffering of change—can stabilize both romantic attachment and broader human connection. He explains how ordinary love, when coupled with spiritual understanding, becomes more resilient and powerful rather than jealous and unstable. He then pivots to define life: scientifically as all living organisms, but from a Buddhist view specifically as the conjunction of consciousness and the physical basis of warmth, which applies only to sentient beings, not plants or flowers. He emphasizes the rarity and preciousness of human birth and the necessity of using this life meaningfully through consistent practice. The teaching is practical and often contrarian, designed to provoke analysis rather than passive agreement.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Love, Life, Career part 1.mp3
UUID: 0af56487-dd34-4d5b-87ab-800ff1ad0064
Teacher: Geshe Kyab
Collection: Geshe Kyab Jan (Geshe Kyab)
Date: 2017 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 55.4 minutes
Words: ~5,001
Please take your seat. Judy, prayer book. Good evening, everyone. Good evening. Very nice to meet you, and happy New Year, late one.
Okay. Please look at the page number thirty four, please. I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, the Three Jewels. By the practice of giving other perfections, may I become Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering.
May all sentient beings abide. Liberty, free from attachment to friends, hatred from enemies. Bhagavan. Reverently I prostrate my body, speech, mind. I present clouds of every type of offering actually arrayed.
I declare all my negative actions accumulated since beginningless time, and rejoice in the matter of all holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence. Turn the wheel of Dharma. Dedicate this virtue. I imagine this ground. Adorned with Mount Meru, the four continents, the sun and the moon.
I imagine this as a Buddha field and offer it. May all sentient beings enjoy this pure realm. Om mani padme hum. Avalokiteśvara mantra, please. Thank you.
Today, my class is Love, Life and Career, which are the very common words. However, these are very important to understand the meaning of love, so is life and career. Career. So, this teaching, special teaching, I’m going to do two different perspectives. The mundane perspective love, life and career.
Then the next one is the spiritual perspective, love, life and career. I don’t want you to misunderstand, you know, but I will mix around. I will see how much smarter you are to distinguish these two things. So then later I will go into questions and answers also. So, first of all, mundane perspective, meaning of love, life and career.
What is love in a modern perspective? There are many scientific perspectives. There are many different definitions about love. Mainly the love can be one person to another person, and love can be one person to things, food, things like that. So there are many different definitions of love.
I’m talking about the mundane perspective. Mundane perspective is the ordinary, perspective, or they also translate it worldly perspective, worldly, that we are in this world. We are not talking about the spiritual perspective, especially the Buddhist spiritual perspective, not yet. So now the yes, love, it’s kind of a feeling, and I have some of the notes here about the love, you know. Sometimes person to person, I love my mother, I love my children, so one person to another person.
Then the pleasure perspective, to the pleasure perspective, I love that food, I love that outfits or shoes, and this and that, we talk about it. Then also love referred to as an emotion of strong attraction and personal attachment. There are many, many different. But the main thing is love is really the attachment, actually. Is attachment.
It is kind of an emotion, feeling, this attachment, yes. But we need it. Need it, even though it is mundane love, we need it in order to survive. But then, all these different loves that we love, so everything depends on how that particular person think about it, and how much is too much. See, these are very important to understand in today’s class.
I’m not saying mundane love is bad. There are some, absolutely yes. But everything depends on how the person can feel that emotion greatly, or moderate, or small. It depends on person to person. But it doesn’t matter which love is person to person, or person to things, or whatever it is.
Everything really comes from the self-grasping mind, actually. Self-grasping mind and ego, so is the ignorance of the mind, or out of the like that. Ignorance of the mind, self-cherishing like that. Because of this love, like a mundane love, does not have the strong, really, essence or the kind of not really the great supporters. So, because of that, this mundane love can cause you so much pain and suffering, which is very important to understand.
But, we need it, you know. It’s very important. Doesn’t matter who you are. You are ordinary human beings or you are some practitioners, still we need this mundane love which is important. But then here is the one thing that is very important to understand this love is how this mundane love arises.
What is the cause of mundane love? If I don’t balance, what would be the consequence? These are very important to understand. Just loving each other, or loving food or things, if you look at that perspective, it’s not a big deal. But here we are talking about how big feelings or emotions you are having towards those objects.
That one is very important to look at. How much your mind is on that direction. Because if you do love someone greatly, if you do love someone blindly, then sometimes you can see so many problems. So many problems, so many tragedies, things like that happen. Recently, maybe a month ago, I saw the news.
A very young lady, she just started her career in a television show, becoming very famous. But suddenly, she took her life. She hanged herself. Then I was reading down what happened. After all, it was love.
That’s very foolish, actually. She was a love someone, one man, same kind of television, you know those players, but at some point that man cheated her, or whatever it is. Because of that reason, she’s suicidal, she hanged herself. She got killed because of the love, kind of a blind love, or kind of an immature love, or very much naive love, whatever you call it. So that’s a problem now.
She thought that anyone could be like that. She may have thought that she was in a very beautiful place, because she loved that young man. Same television show, they played some television series. But then after all, she really caused herself so much suffering, eventually she got killed by herself. Just one example.
There are very many examples like that. But what happened? We need to search the problem. We need to search why this happened. Although love is beautiful, it’s beautiful, what went wrong now?
So that’s what we need to understand. She couldn’t understand for some reason, but now here is something that is saying, What went wrong now? Her love. Her love was just love, you know. But the problem here is really, from my perspective, went through little bit of blind love.
Maybe one-sided love, I don’t know between them or whatever happened. The point here is that she was totally blind love, and main thing is that love wasn’t really balanced, maybe unbalanced love. Maybe she loved greatly, blindly. So that’s why all this tragedy happened. She couldn’t make this balance.
What happened was she didn’t have any spiritual teachings, I think. That’s what I’m thinking. She didn’t have any spiritual teachings. She couldn’t make any balance of that love, because of the jealousy after all. Because of her jealousy, she killed herself.
She was sad, she was angry. But then, if you look back, it’s such a tragedy. Such a young girl, and this beautiful girl just started her career, but now just ends because of that blind love. That kind of love is foolish. Absolutely, it’s very sad, you know.
But then now, Okay, go back. Because of that love is self-cherishing, actually, yes. And then she couldn’t manage, or she couldn’t really understand the real meaning of the love, I think. So that’s why everything went wrong, and tragedy happened. But on the other hand, now I’m going to the spiritual side, one by one.
I’m mixing. Spiritual love is of course, still you can love anyone. I mean, it’s Okay. Loving is good. But spiritual love is not just loving someone like an ordinary love or mundane love.
It goes a little higher. It goes a little higher, it becomes more profound love. You’re only really not loving that particular person, also you will love someone else too. I’m talking about a spiritual perspective. Need to love everyone, not only one person.
You need to love everyone. You must give love to everyone. So out of compassion, out of kindness, out of understanding all these beings, many lifetimes before, they really happen to be one of your friends and family. So there are many, many tools and techniques that you need to understand that you can be able to build this spiritual love. Spiritual love doesn’t mean that only loving other sentient beings, not loving your husband, or boyfriend, or girlfriend, or your dog, cats, or family.
No. Spiritual love is loving everyone. It’s a very different one. It’s a very, very powerful one. That’s what we need to do, because spiritual love is very unique.
Spiritual love comes from the selflessness mind, not from the self-cherishing. So that’s why spiritual becomes spiritual love is very powerful. It’s not only just the ins towards one person or a few people, it goes all over the universe, all over the sentient beings. So that’s why developing spiritual love is very important. You don’t need to be worried.
If you develop spiritual love, some people may feel, Oh, maybe I may lose my ordinary love towards my wife or husband? No, absolutely not. It will develop positively. Regular or ordinary love towards between the man and the woman or the children It’s not so strong. Maybe mothers love towards children, maybe they’re very strong, which is very different, very powerful.
Other than that, usually between men and women’s kind of love, boyfriend girlfriend kind of love, not so powerful, which I mentioned to you. Eventually, it disappears. Jealousy occurs, many bad things happen. But if you do know how to develop spiritual love, you can also be able to maintain this ordinary love. That this ordinary love will become also more powerful, not like a jealousy kind of ordinary love, or something like blind kind of ordinary love.
Or, if you don’t love me, I will kill myself. Not like that. Because you do know the spiritual love. Then this point is that spiritual love will help you to become more solid in love, also as an ordinary love. It supports you.
See? This is the point. Not everyone There are some Buddhist people get married together, men and women, both are Buddhists. So sometimes, if you look at it, their life is very long and positive. But they love each other the same as ordinary love, but they have extra support from their spiritual love.
They understand suffering of change. They do have a certain understanding of all the suffering, first noble truth, especially the suffering of the changed one. So that’s why there this ordinary love also becomes sometimes spiritual love also, you know? But still they can do all the ordinary things that ordinary people do. How beautiful.
My mother used to tell me she loved my father, you know. Of course, that’s ordinary love, but she was also saying, although my father passed away when I was a very young age, but when my father was alive, my mother and father very much loved each other, but their love was very good. Both ordinary love and spiritual love. They understand the suffering of change. But Western countries are very difficult to understand, so that’s why people get divorced very, very quickly.
When you get married, you’re already causing divorce. For me it seems to be like that. You know. You play beautiful musics in the church like this. I went there many times and I’m praying, Oh, how long is this going to be?
Sometimes not so much. On my own time in Florida, I saw I was in that place. After a few years, finished, you know. So that is the problem, because the problem is not understanding the spiritual love, I think. So my mother was telling me when I was young, actually nowadays what I’m understanding was that she actually saying suffering of the change, really.
Although she wasn’t actually saying the suffering of the change, but meaning what she was saying is the suffering of the change. Because every samsaric pleasure eventually changes pain and suffering. It’s very understandable. But we, as a human being, can be able to understand the suffering of change after analysing or meditating the second type of suffering, the suffering of change. There is no permanent happiness.
I mean, in a mundane perspective, I’m talking about it. All these worldly activities, we think these are great and better, but these are not really solid as concrete. Everything disappears after some time, because it’s called impermanent. It changes very quickly. It’s very important to understand.
But sometimes, when you love something, some people are very much blinded. They think that love is permanent. No. Please. No permanent.
There’s no permanent love until you achieve enlightenment. Otherwise, here in a mundane perspective, there’s no permanent love. So these are in advance you need to understand. So then when things fall apart in your life, you know now all these practices and paths, Okay, this is now happening. You can be able to deal with it very easily, very nicely, without getting any angry or upsetness.
So that’s why those people who practice spirituality do that. So, that’s why their married life is going to last long. But nowadays, in the Tibetan society, Tibetan people who live in the New York area, same as Westerners, all this happening because of the culture. Are influenced by the American culture. Other than that, I come from Sikkim.
Sikkim, we have many Tibetan people there, so still, there are some people who are already in the eighties, nineties, sixties, seventies. Their marriage life is solid and concrete. They are so loving each other, caring for each other. Beautiful. Why?
I think that’s the only answer. Do understand the suffering of change. Otherwise, it’s the same thing. You get married, you love each other, sometimes you lose your interest, you’re divorced, you get another one. But there is not any new one, only changing things is the new people, to new people.
But doing things are the same as the old one. There’s not any new pleasure. Nothing. Same thing. New people, new body, after all, finish.
And again you change another one, then another one. So, if you look at it that way, we are very much like a mi ngom pa, tong pa. That’s what we call it. In Tibetan we call it mi ngom pa, tong pa. Suffering of dissatisfaction.
So that’s a problem. Suffering of dissatisfaction never satisfied. But then now, the question is, are you enjoying that changing things? You enjoying it? If you say yes, you’ve got it then.
Mostly, no, because they are unhappy, so that’s why they change around people to people, people to people, sometimes things, whatever it is like that. But this is just, I’m not judging you. This is, I’m giving you a teaching. You need to analyse it. Main thing is, when you hear the teachings, maybe sometimes you may offend it, that’s your problem, not my problem.
Because you need to understand the core of the teachings. You shouldn’t be offended. You have to analyse what Geshe-la was saying. You need to meditate. Meditate and think about it.
Are so many wisdoms I’m giving you here. Not that there is something that the book says. Even though I don’t think the book mentions this kind of teaching, love life and career, no. I just created it. I thought, you know, because I did this one in Florida, people loved it.
It’s a lot of help, so that’s why I created it. So it’s good to understand. So this one is also a little of a noble truth also, especially the suffering of change. That is very important to understand. So, when you listen to Buddhist teachings, sometimes you can hear, Wow, Geshe-la is talking to me.
That’s a good one. Yes, that’s a good thing to think about. Geshe-la is talking to me. Which is good. Then you can listen to what would be the antidotes.
How can I fix it? My own mind. Whatever he was saying is truthful or artificial. Can just check it out. You can judge yourself.
You don’t need to listen to what I’m going to say. But at least if you analyse it, this will help you. So now look at it. Spiritual life is out of compassion and loving all other sentient beings. Ordinary love is only one side love.
Only the one-sided love. Love towards only close people. That’s ordinary love. It’s a very, very narrow minded kind of love, a very small love. But now spiritual love is a very much wider spirit to all other sentient beings, starting from your own friends and family, which is the more powerful love.
That is supposed to be what we are practising. So this will help you to improve also ordinary love. Now life is the There are many things we need to talk about, but there is no time. Now life is very, very important to understand. First of all, mundane perspective, what does mean life?
I think the scientists, which I will talk about today in this perspective, I will talk about the science, how their ways of definition of life. I think science life is both sides, inanimate and animate. Both sides talk about life. I have some of the notes here, and this is their saying that life is almost like there are various forms of life that exist, such as plants, like those kinds of plants, animals, and like fungi, protist, then the bacteria, archae, and main thing is the archae bacteria, I think. So plants, they talk about life in plants and also those fungals, you know, and their protests.
I think this is a kind of living organism, these protests. So anyway, now here is, let’s say, plants and flowers. They talk about their life, and so are the animals and human beings also. So that means the inanimate life, so is the animate life. Of course, this is totally different from Buddhist spiritual perspective we really see life.
Of course, for mundane, life is everywhere. Even though fungus do have life, so do plants and flowers, so do the beings, as human beings and animals, to have life. So now, what is the mundane perspective of life? What is life? Is there any meaning of life?
Just living organisms, I think. Something live. I don’t think there is a deep definition of life in science. Only they talk about just one thing, and sometimes they talk about many different analogies, different titles. Other than that, there is not so much deep that science talks about life.
But now the spiritual perspective, Buddhist perspective, life is Wow, we don’t talk about their life as inanimate, only the animated, only inside. Not from the inanimate life. No. Plants, flowers, fungus, we don’t talk about their life. No.
Because life in the spiritual The meaning of life is It is the It is an organic basis of heat and consciousness. Okay? It is organ, but the basis of heat and consciousness, that is called life. So now if it is the basis of heat consciousness, then that’s it. Plants have no consciousness, flowers have no consciousness, fungus have no consciousness, they have no life.
Life is the only thing we need to talk about is beings who breathe, you know, like a human life. human beings, animals, and small ants creatures, we need to talk about their life. Not for the plants, not for the flowers or the fungus. So first of all, this is what I wanted you to understand, the spiritual side. So that means that life is the only beings — that’s what we call beings, human beings, animal beings, hungry ghosts, hell beings, demi-gods, ghosts, or whatever it is — those kinds of beings do have lives.
Because the definition of life is the basis of heat and consciousness. It is in conjunction with the basis of heat and consciousness. So that makes a lot of sense also. So that means when you cut out the plants and flowers In Buddhism, we don’t talk about, Oh, you killed plants, or you killed flowers. We don’t call them kill, because they have no life.
Then there’s no killing. There’s no killing, no non-virtue, there’s no killing, because there is no life. Only when you kill human beings, ants, and those creatures, then we need to talk about the killings. Why? Because of this, they have lives.
Do you understand now? Little bit confused? See? Oh, good. Like this or like this good?
Only when you kill human beings, animals and those small creatures, then that one we call non virtue of killing. So that’s non virtue of killing. One of the ten non virtuous actions. But when you really destroy the flowers, I don’t think then, you know, now there are many lives. How can we do offering, killing flowers and offering to Buddha?
If flowers have life, then now we are killing, almost like sacrificing them, you see, because we are offering flowers. We are offering plants. So then now, we kill so many objects here. No. So that’s why Buddhism does not talk about life in flowers or plants.
That makes a lot of sense now. So that means when you really pluck the flowers, or what do call that? When you destroy the trees, you are not killing anyone. Only you are destroying the trees and flowers. Of course, it’s not good for the environment, but there is no killing sin.
That’s my point here. Only killing sin is when you kill animals, human beings or non human beings, beings who are really breathing, if you kill them, if you destroy them, then it’s called killing. So at this point, now when I say the definition of life, which is the organ basis of heat and consciousness, it makes a lot of sense, like consciousness. These are the Buddhist perspectives, like a spiritual perspective, matter, not just matter, a kind of object, substances or matters. In Buddhism, products are divided into three categories: matter, consciousness, and non associated composite phenomena.
These are the matters. All these things are matters. Consciousness is the mind, animate. Consciousness is the mind, eyes, consciousness, ears, nose, tongue, body, Consciousness is only possessed by beings, human beings. Do you have consciousness?
Animals, insects, those small creatures? Then we need to talk about consciousness. But flowers and plants do not have consciousness. So that’s why when you destroy the flower, you are not killing anything. You are only destroying the flowers and the plants.
However, when you destroy the ants and small creatures, then we pronounce killing, because you took the life. Why is killing? Because you took the life, which is very different. So see, life is like this. Also, spiritual side is the long life, good life, especially the human life is very much precious human life, which we have already obtained.
I did talk about this in my previous year’s class. Such a life we obtain, it doesn’t matter what life we have, long life or short life. Of course, long life is better than short life, generally speaking. But just obtaining human life from Buddhist perspective is very precious. An unbelievable kind of precious life that we all obtain.
So now, this life, we must cherish. We must make it useful. We must understand the purpose of life. What is the purpose of life? Why are here?
These are very important to understand. First of all, human life is very precious. human life is very, very difficult to obtain, very difficult to get. So, in the previous lifetime, we had so many positive karma. We had many, many great merits.
Because of that, now in this lifetime, we all really became or were born as a human being. So that means, I think, we really accumulated such great karma in past lifetimes. So this is very understandable. Otherwise, we cannot have a human life. No.
We can be animals or any other creatures. Those areas are everywhere. If you look at the backside of the Buddha house, there are many, many small creatures. We can be. Unfortunately, those creatures born like that, because of their past lifetime, accumulated so many negative karma, so that’s why are born those kind of creatures.
We are not. We are very fortunate. This is the opportunity to do more goodness, accumulate more merits and good karma within this lifetime. If you do that, then in next lifetime we will be much better than now. This way, gradually, we will progress.
We will improve development. Then one day we will achieve enlightenment. So this way, there is no shortcut to enlightenment. No. There is no shortcut to enlightenment.
Enlightenment takes time. So we must be patient. So we must understand all these teachings, we must understand all these different meditation teachings. Day by day, we need to really accumulate all this goodness. Then one day we will achieve the ultimate reality, which is the ultimate happiness.
Then at that moment, you will get a permanent happiness. Otherwise, just listening for a few teachings, meditating for a few days, and doing a few good things. Okay, wonderful, but that’s not enough. Consistency is very important. Look at what we call Buddhist practitioners.
Oh, I have been in the Buddha house for many, many years, thirty years, forty years, twenty years. But now you need to check your own state of mind, how much development is there. Are you achieved somewhere? You have to check it out. Sometimes it surprises you.
You know? See? Coming to a Buddha house is one thing, practice is another thing. Just coming to the Buddha I’m not saying it’s bad, of course it’s good, it will help you. But you have to check how much progress is there.
How much development is in your mind. These are very important, and you need to check it out. If there is some development, wonderful. If there is no development, then you need to do some work, you need to do some meditation. This way, you need to improve.
Oh, I’ve been in the monastery for thirty years, forty years, some monks. But then their behaviour, their attitude is worse than lay people. Then what is worth it, living in a monastery for thirty or forty years? Better to get out of the monastery, get married, have some children, because Tibetan people or population is not good. You know, Why just stay in the monastery, doing all these bad things, not development?
There are some monks like that. I used to tell some the monks just kidding around, You’re not listening to the teachings, not practising, only gossip, criticising others, this and that. Why not just get out of the monastery, get married, have some children? Maybe it’s good for the Tibetan population, you know. And you are also not accumulating negative karma, only backbiting.
How do you call it? Backbiting? Sometimes they talk on people’s backs, you know. Some people do that like that. So, that’s why understanding this human, precious human life is very important.
Very important. First of all, we are beings. We are not just flowers or something. Secondly, we are human beings. Among the beings, we are human beings.
Mi. That’s what we call mi. We understand the meanings. We can hear the teachings. We understand the meanings.
We can be able to analyze the meanings. We do have wisdom. I mean, if you look at the human brain, unbelievable. Very unbelievable, you know. So much of this, and all this, how do you say, brain cells that we have here, that we utilize greatly.
We have this wisdom. human wisdom is unbelievable. If look at it nowadays, all these technologies, computers, things that people are developing, everything comes from the human brain. But in the spiritual side, human can be able to achieve enlightenment, can be able to see emptiness directly. I mean, huge, than just developing some technology.
It’s because of the human brain, human wisdom. So We are, you know, we are human beings. Unbelievable. So now, we such a precious life to be obtained, but if you waste it, wow, then it’s very sad. What would be next life?
What would be if you do believe in the next life? That’s the only case. If you do believe in the next life, what would be if you were born as some kind of animals, creatures, cockroaches, rats, ants, mosquitoes? That would be so difficult. They have no choice to choose something, Oh, it’s too warm, I really need air conditioning.
No. Or, It’s too cold, I want this room heater. No. Cold or hot must live outside the air. That’s only.
On the other hand, they all the time scare to death, or somebody may harm me, you know, like that. But we are, as a human being, not in that position. I mean, unbelievable. So this perspective, if you look at that, really we need to do something. We need to do something to build some career.
Or it could be a mundane career, could be a spiritual career, we need to build something. We must progress something, pursue something to really make this human life meaningful. That’s what we need to do, isn’t it? Okay, next I will talk about career, but now I will take some breaks. Go ahead, and come back after fifteen minutes.
Yeah. Cold. Water is not so good.