Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Avarice — the reluctance to release what we have — becomes the unexpected centre of this 12-minute session in Geshe Pema Tsering’s Bodhisattva Deeds series. The discussion moves through the second chapter’s opening material on making offerings before turning to the confession of negativities. A student question about whether offerings must be personally delivered prompts a key point: Buddhas comprehend intention directly, so physical delivery is not required and mental offerings accumulate genuine merit. Geshe Pema Tsering then draws a careful distinction — not following through on an intention to give is not itself non-virtuous, but reveals avarice; noticing attachment before making an offering, he advises, makes it wiser not to offer than to regret it afterward.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 BD 2002 02 21.mp3
UUID: f2113616-f744-4bf7-97a6-c0ff050a8c9f
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Deeds (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-02-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 12.1 minutes
Words: ~728
One shouldn’t be too concerned about this if one is not able to be there when the offering is made and so on. Because especially the Buddhas in the universe are always available for making offerings. They’re always in a sense there, and they understand when offerings are being made. So we don’t have to be concerned ourselves whether a particular offering is actually reaches its destination or not. Having the motivation to offer is as if the Buddhas are there just waiting for the offering to be made, waiting for us to think about making an offering.
And when when we do that, then that’s comprehended by the Buddhas themselves. So we should think more along those lines than be too concerned about the actual you know, whether the messenger taking the offering is gonna get there or not with it or what state of mind are they gonna be in when they get there or not. It really depends on one’s own mind when one makes the offering, and this is comprehended. Did it mention that you if you’re gonna make an offering, you have to offer it yourself? And what you thought that it it said that you had to actually make the offering yourself?
Here, in fact for instance, if one has one’s teacher is nearby, it there is more benefit if one actually goes there and makes the offering oneself. There is some more benefit in doing it that way in general. That is if they’re there in person than to simply sit sit in one’s room and make an offering like that. Or in fact, to go there, there’s more benefit to go there and make the actual offer. Also that, you know, one has one’s own altar and statues and so forth.
One can make an offering to the, you know, to the images that one has of one’s teacher on one’s altar directly like that. When one offers in that way, it can be a great benefit in making a personal offering in that way. And you Without even The actual chapter itself is called confessing negativities, but it also includes making offerings. So that occurs in the very beginning of the second chapter, making offerings. Then after that, it comes confessing negativities.
Yeah. Yeah. It is called the in Tibetan, it’s or the chapter on confessing negativities. Is that okay? Yes.
Thought I did have on the search that, if you have the thought to make an offering, you need to don’t. You don’t actually make the offering. It’s a negative. Actually, having a desire to give in initially, but then not carrying that out, there’s no special negativity that arises from something like that. Although, it does it perhaps indicates a certain avarice.
In Tibetan avarice is we don’t want to let go of what we have. And it’s different from actually if we made the offering and then took it back, that would certainly be a non virtuous thing to do. But simply having a thought to give, but then not carrying it through is not the same. It’s not, you know, a negative action like it would be to take the offering back, but it would indicate that there’s a certain amount of avarice. Yeah.
That’s true. If one has, like, avarice towards a particular object, one is too attached to it. One has the thought to give it, and then one realizes one is attached to it, then it’s probably better not to offer for that reason that if one regrets making the offering, then it’s not virtuous. But, certainly, the generation of the avarice or attachment to the object is nonvirtuous as well.
So, therefore, if one notices that one has a bit of attachment towards the object before one is about to give it, then it’s probably better not to give it and avoid that non virtue. But then, also, we shouldn’t be too worried by this point even though we have certain amount of attachment because we don’t when offering, we don’t have to actually make the offering, you know, physically make the offering either in order to gain the merit of making an offering. So this we need to keep in mind.
We can accumulate merit in that way through making offerings without having this thought of ownership of the object.