Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A journey to Lhasa — are you planning to go, or are you already walking? Geshe Pema Tsering opens this 22-minute session with that analogy to sharpen the distinction between aspiring and engaging bodhicitta, explaining why engaging bodhicitta carries greater benefit: merit accumulates even during sleep once the mind is committed to the bodhisattva practices. He then unpacks bodhicitta as a non-physical mental awareness carrying two aspirations — freeing beings from suffering and attaining Buddhahood in order to do so — before introducing the six causes and one result method attributed to Maitreya as the preparatory path. A vivid contrast follows: ordinary practitioners cry over personal hardship, while bodhisattvas are moved to tears by witnessing others’ suffering. The session closes with an atom-bomb analogy for how bodhicitta multiplies all virtue in one’s continuum. Proceeds largely as Q&A, suited to students already following the Bodhisattva Deeds series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 BD 2002 02 07.mp3
UUID: c091efef-0ebb-4d3f-9aa1-1519dd3f5f17
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Deeds (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-02-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 22.5 minutes
Words: ~1,038
After that, or I’ll be going in a few days and a week and so on. As distinct from someone that was actually going now would be the difference between one with aspiring and one with engaging bodhicitta. Even though they’re similar and they both aspire to get to Lhasa, the one that merely has the aspiring wish is thinking in future about actually engaging in the journey, whereas the person that’s actually engaging now in the journey also has the wish to get to Lhasa but is also acting upon it right now. So what the bodhisattva is engaging in that distinguishes them from someone with the aspiring bodhicitta is that they’re engaging in the practice of the six perfections or the four methods of collecting disciples and so on. So they’re distinguished by such an example as this.
Yeah. Is that clear, the distinction between aspiring bodhicitta and engaging bodhicitta? Any questions? They have equal importance. It’s just that one is distinguishing the one from the other by whether one is directly engaging in those practices of a bodhisattva or not.
But certainly, the one precedes the other. One needs aspiring in order to attain engaging. And they’re both equally important. Although they’re equally important, one can say there’s more benefit in engaging bodhicitta than in aspiring bodhicitta because it’s when one is developing engaging bodhicitta that one is actually accruing a merit through engaging in those practices, which one doesn’t do when one is merely aspiring to practice them. So even when one’s asleep as a being who is practicing engaging bodhicitta, one accumulates a vast amount of merit, and that doesn’t occur at the level of aspiring.
So one really reflects here that the mind and bodhicitta is in fact this type of mental awareness, which is qualified by these two aspirations: the wish to free all sentient beings from all levels of suffering and then aspires to the state of enlightenment in order to free all sentient beings. This is a, therefore, a type of mental awareness with two aspirations, one in the causal phase and one more in the resultant phase associated with that mental awareness. That mental awareness is not form. It’s not physical. So, therefore, it’s not even though it aspires to eliminate all of those sufferings, it’s not something which is really, in that sense, overwhelmed by the sufferings of sentient beings.
This is not physical.. And in fact, this reflection on the suffering of all sentient beings throughout the universe and then the sickness of sentient beings,, all the different levels of suffering, and then we’re aspiring to take on those sufferings and so on, also is like a a preparatory state preparatory practice to generating this state of bodhicitta. So it’s not so those meditations and teachings actually assist one in eventually attaining a state of bodhicitta. And these practices, for instance, taking on the sufferings of others and so on, are taken in the causal stages of bodhicitta, such as within the six causes, at the time of engaging in the six causes of bodhicitta, such as reflecting on the fact that all beings are one’s mothers, their kindness, repaying their kindness, great love, great compassion and so on. Within those practices, especially great love, great compassion, one takes on the sufferings of sentient beings, gives love to sentient beings.
So these are preparatory practices that one engages in, in order to attain the resultant state of bodhicitta? So there is, like, six causes and one result that are explained in the six causes and one result method of Maitreya, the specific instruction given by Maitreya. So we need to therefore reflect on what those six causes are and how they are practiced. You have a question? Yeah.
So really, this from this particular bodhisattva, through generating bodhicitta towards sentient beings and really not being able to bear or be patient with the sufferings of sentient beings, he would quite naturally begin to cry, not out of his own suffering, but really out of the inability to bear the sufferings of sentient beings which he could observe. For ourselves, we look at other beings and their suffering, and we’re not really affected. It doesn’t really we look and we we we’re not really affected very much by it. Of course, if it’s our own suffering, we start to cry, but not in relation to other beings. But the what?
The lineage of bodhicitta or the lineage of bodhisattvas really refers to those that have this mind. And having that mind, they do. They cry for the out of seeing the conditions of sentient beings. In general, when we look at our own situation and the problems that arise, then at times we shed a tear of anguish and so on. But here, bodhisattvas really do that when they look at the situations of others.
For ourselves, when we look at our own situation, it’s hard to bear, and so we tend to cry or we are susceptible to a tear emerging. But bodhisattvas when they view the situation of other beings, then they’re overwhelmed, and they’re affected in that way. Is that okay? Yeah. Yep.
Oh, the re they increase. Yep. Merely by the presence of bodhicitta, then the virtues within one’s continuum increase and continue to increase because of the very strength, the very nature of bodhicitta itself. Because bodhicitta is this awareness which is viewing the sufferings of sentient beings, aspiring that beings get beyond those sufferings, aspiring that we attain a state of Buddhahood in order to get beings beyond those sufferings. It has the potency, the power to increase all the virtues within one’s continuum and do this in a manifold way.
And that’s by the very strength of bodhicitta itself. It’s a little bit like an atom bomb that here you have a substance. You bring together enough of a substance, and it’s going to a particular substance, and it’s gonna create a great result. Similarly, with the substance of bodhicitta, then then the substance of virtue in one’s continuum becomes enhanced and produces a great result. Is Quite okay?
Yeah. Good. Oh, so we finished there. We’ll just do the dedication.