Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Anchored in a Guru Puja verse — that self-cherishing is the door to all suffering while cherishing others is the foundation of all good — Geshe Pema Tsering opens this 46-minute commentary on two minds needed for Buddhahood: bodhicitta and realization of emptiness. He maps self-cherishing as the root of all suffering, presents the exchange of self for others as the heart of Buddhist practice, and covers rejoicing in the merit of five classes of beings — Buddhas, bodhisattvas, two types of arhats, and ordinary beings — as the most efficient tool for accumulating merit. The second half works through two Mādhyamika debates from chapter nine of the Bodhicaryāvatāra: whether illusion-like beings can be reborn, and whether harming an illusion creates negative karma, distinguishing the negativity of intent from the negativity of harming a conscious being.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 77 BD 2002 10 24.mp3
UUID: bbb7edf1-408e-44ed-9dd0-fb16d2b02d3a
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Deeds (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-10-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.1 minutes
Words: ~3,781
Yeah. So Geshe-la quoted from the Guru Puja that was written by the Pänchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen. It says, since cherishing others since cherishing ourselves is the doorway to all torment, while cherishing our mothers is the foundation of all that is good, we seek your blessings to make our core practice the yoga of exchange of self for others. So the doorway, the entrance to all the different types of suffering is this idea that cherishes ourselves, the idea that things that we are important, that the self is something that should be held as precious. So because of this clinging and this putting ourselves, making ourselves important, then this is the door through which we experience all these different types of suffering, the door through which we experience the three main types of suffering, that is the suffering of suffering, the suffering change, and all pervasive suffering.
Every single different suffering all come from this idea of cherishing ourselves and holding ourselves to be important. So on the other hand, this idea that holds all mother sentient beings to be precious is the thing that is the door or the foundation for everything that’s good that can come to us. All the different qualities that we can possibly have come from the the idea of holding other beings to be precious and holding to cherish to cherish them and, yeah, holding them as precious and wishing them to be free from suffering and also for them to find happiness. Wishing them to be free from suffering is what we call compassion. Wishing them to be happy is what we call love and kindness.
If we have these two aspects, then we are holding other sentient beings to be precious. This becomes the foundation for all different all different good qualities. That includes everything from having qualities that are good in the short term, qualities that can be of benefit to us in the short term in this lifetime or even in at this time, and it goes all the way up until the qualities that we need to achieve Buddhahood. So because this this idea of holding mothers all mother sentient beings or all other sentient beings as our mother and therefore cherishing them, because this idea or this practice or this yoga is the heart of all Buddhist practice, then the the then it requests the lamas to bless them to be able whoever’s saying the prayer or bless us, whoever’s saying the prayer, to be able to do this practice, to be able to cherish all beings as if they were our mothers and to concentrate on this, because this practice is the heart of all different every single different Buddhist practice, and it’s the thing that we should be concentrating on. So this idea of of cherishing us ourselves is actually the thing the most one of the most difficult things to get rid of.
It’s one of the things that is the hardest to cut at the root. But if we can do that, then every and make everything we do for the benefit of all beings and not just ourselves, and this is the most important thing for us to concentrate on, the the hope that we can do that. So this is what is telling us to do here. He’s telling us to concentrate on this idea of making everything we do be for the benefit of all sentient beings and not just for ourselves because this is the heart of the of the Buddhist practice. Practice.
So this isn’t the usual way that we think. We’re usually thinking if we see a lot of suffering how how for other people, we don’t hold it as as as important as if something really small happens to ourselves, and we spend a lot of time thinking about how we can get ourselves out of a situation that is making us suffering. We invest all our energy and all our time into getting out of small sufferings for ourselves, and we don’t necessarily think about big sufferings that other people are experiencing. We can kind of go, Oh, dear. Oh, oh, no.
You hear about other people, but we don’t in Tibetan, have the expression, and yeah. That’s what Geshe was saying. We say, Oh, dear. About other people, but we don’t really think we don’t spend as much time invested we don’t invest as much time and energy in getting them out of their sufferings as we do getting ourselves out of little, small sufferings. So if we can’t get rid of this self-cherishing, if we can’t get rid of this idea that we hold ourselves to be really important, then there’s no way that we can develop great compassion or bodhicitta.
These things are dependent on holding others to be dear and not ourselves to be dear. So if we can’t achieve Buddhahood without bodhicitta, and we can’t achieve bodhicitta without getting rid of our self-cherishing, and the best way to achieve getting the best way to get rid of our self-cherishing is to do this practice of exchanging ourselves for others to try and understand others’ suffering, then that is how this practice becomes so important and is described as being like the heart of the Buddhist practice. Because without that, then there’s no way to actually achieve Buddhahood. Right. So we’ve it’s not like that this is something new to us.
This is something that we have this is some way we’ve been thinking since beginningless time or since time immemorial. We’ve been thinking that we’ve been holding ourselves dear, and we’ve been under the influence of a of ignorance. So there’s these two aspects to it. There’s the self-cherishing and the ignorance, which is actually the ignorance of, holding things to be truly existent. So these things two things work together, and they work in our mind stream to create this situation where we’re trying very hard to make ourselves happy.
And by trying to make ourselves happy, we’re actually creating more suffering. And it’s this process that we have to to try and get rid of. So we so now that we know now that we know that we’ve actually been, like, a slave or a servant to these afflictive emotions, then we know what it is we have to get rid of, then we can get out from under their con control. We can get out from their under their control. And even though we may feel like we have experienced some kind of pleasure and happiness, we don’t actually know what it’s like to experience the pleasure and the happiness of liberation.
And if we can get out when we can get out of the control of these self-cherishing and this this holding things to be truly existent, then we can actually experience the true happiness and pleasure that comes about with achieving liberation. So once we’re once we’ve become a slave to these two things, once we’ve become a slave of of ignorance and self-cherishing, then there is no end to suffering. While we’re their slave, there is no end to suffering. But if we can get rid of them, if we can chop them away, then then there is an end to suffering. Then there is a then there is a a peace and a peace and a and happiness that we have no experience of until then.
So the idea is that we try to get rid of or we try to harm or to interfere with our our grasping itself, our our self-cherishing, and we have to try and make all that cherishing apply to all beings, to all beings that that have once been our mothers. We’re supposed to apply this cherishing to all of them. Because when we apply this cherishing to all of them, then everything we do comes to be for their benefit, comes to be that we can achieve Buddhahood in order to help them, in order to make them free from suffering. So, our purpose for doing anything becomes incredibly large, as opposed to being very small if it only belongs if it is only concerned with our own self-cherishing. So then it becomes like meditating on bodhicitta and meditating on great compassion become like the the tool or the weapon that can destroy self grasping.
They become the thing that we use as an antidote to self grasping. Geshe-la was saying, like, we can they can chop at it. So, therefore, this is the things that we need to concentrate on in order to achieve it. That is, yeah, bodhicitta. Sorry.
But we can’t actually get the direct antidote at it until we can achieve an understanding of selflessness or emptiness because this is the direct antidote to this self grasping. The direct antidote to self grasping is understanding emptiness directly. So this is the real thing that can get at it. Therefore, we need these two minds. We need to be concentrating and meditating on bodhicitta and the mind of compassion, and we also need to be meditating and concentrating on their mind on emptiness and how the mind realizes emptiness directly.
Because with these two these two minds, then we are able to achieve Buddhahood. So we should be thinking: may all the actions that I’ve done that are positive — in the past and the present and the future — may the merit for all of them be dedicated to achieving enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. We should have this thought, And we should also have a thought that we’re trying to that we can achieve enlightenment I mean, that we can understand emptiness in order to achieve this enlightenment. So these two thoughts should be working together because they’re the the basis for achieving enlightenment. So but in order to be able to achieve bodhicitta, to to have this mind of bodhicitta arise, we actually need a lot of merit, and we probably don’t have enough merit in ourselves, in our own experience to do that.
So the tool that we use in order to create merit is this idea of not only thinking about the good things that we’ve done, but thinking about the good things that all beings have done, including Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and Aryas and so forth, and rejoicing in that, rejoicing in the things that they’ve done. Then that is becomes the best tool, the best way to create the merit that we need in order to generate the bodhicitta that we need in order to become enlightened. So achieving an understanding of emptiness and achieving an understanding of or developing bodhicitta is something that takes a lot of merit, like we said. So the best way to when we’re doing this, when we’re trying to rejoice in other people’s merit, there’s a process we go through as we remember the we remember the good deeds that the five different types of beings have done, and the five different types of beings are Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, hearer arhats, and solitary realizer arhats, and ordinary beings like ourselves. So, we go through each of these and imagine the good things, the positive things that they’ve done.
And then, once we have imagined the good things these individuals, types of beings have done, then we have a glad heart about this. We rejoice in it. We become happy, and we think, oh, that was really good. Then this process is the best way for us to try and and collect merit. Because, also, trying to understand emptiness is very difficult.
If we don’t have a lot of merit, then we can’t understand emptiness. And if we don’t have if we don’t use a lot of philosophical reasoning paths, reasoning paths of reasoning, then we can’t understand it. And then we also need to rely on having access to a lot of scriptures so that we can try and get a basis for understanding emptiness. And the main thing that we need in order to do all of these is merit. So we need to concentrate on trying to accrue as much merit as possible.
So in order for us to achieve Buddhahood, the two things that we should be concentrating on is to meditate on bodhicitta and also to do this process of rejoicing in all in all other peep all other beings’ good good qualities and good deeds in order to accrue a lot of merit, in order to understand emptiness, and to generate bodhicitta. And then in order to achieve bodhicitta, we also have to realize that, first of all, we need to have renunciation. We need to turn around our attachment to saṃsāra and not have any attachment to it anymore. We need to yeah. It it’s hard to describe.
It’s it’s it’s like we’re attached to it, and we have to block the attachment to it in order to achieve renunciation. And then after we’ve achieved renunciation, then we can clearly look at what other beings want and not just ourselves. So in the same way that we can see that we have to concentrate on figuring out that saṃsāra doesn’t help us and makes us suffer when we think it’s when we think it’s making us happy. In the same way that we have to turn around that thought, we also have to generate that thought for the benefit of all other beings so that they don’t have to suffer in saṃsāra, that they can be free from saṃsāra. And in order for them to be free from saṃsāra, then we should try and achieve Buddhahood to to be to be able to bring that about, to be able to show them the way, not to suffer.
And so this thought that we will achieve Buddhahood for all of them is is bodhicitta, and this is what we should try and meditate on now. So whenever you meditate, you should I guess it says you should try and concentrate on these things at first. You should concentrate on compassion and then try and and develop bodhicitta before you start doing any type of meditation. And now we have to try and understand emptiness. And we’re not allowed to do it as a Svatāntrika or Sautrāntika.
Okay. So we were going through eliminating all these different arguments that the Svatāntrika school or the the Hīnayāna school put forward. And we’re up to it was eliminating a a list of debate debates. And we were up to the third of five, which was getting rid of the debate about nothing going from one life to another. So this argument depends on the next six lines in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, which is chapter nine and verses halfway through verse nine and ten.
And it says that the the argument that the Sautrantikas are putting forward this time is that if all sentient beings are like an illusion, then how can they be reborn? So so the Geshe said that the idea is that we have to understand the different words that are being used here. So the Sautrāntika say that sentient beings are actually existent, that they exist in the way that we that they appear. Whereas the Mādhyamika school is saying that they exist, yes, but they don’t exist in the way that they appear. They exist as being like an illusion.
Okay. So the argument that these Sautrantikas are using is that if you have an illusory horse or ox that is created by magic, that once it’s gone, it’s not going to come back again. So in the same way that if we are just illusions, once we’re gone, we’re not going to take rebirth again. So the answer that the Madhyamikas have to this is that in the same way that the illusory or mirage like horse or ox is actually created out of mantras, the power of people’s mantras or illusory tricks, then in the same way as that, then human not human, all sentient beings take rebirth because of the power of the collection of causes and conditions that come about because of ignorance and, karma and delusion. So by in the same way that these these illusions that people create from magic only last as long as the the thing that’s making the magic come about.
They’re humans only or beings only last as long as there is karma and delusion and karma and delusion and ignorance propelling them to into their from rebirth into the next rebirth. But the Sautrantikas or the Sūtra School, they don’t believe that. They say that if a being has existed since beginningless time, then that isn’t an illusion because illusions don’t last that long. Therefore, if something has existed since beginningless time, this doesn’t accord with saying that they don’t exist. It means that they have to exist because they’ve existed for so long, and illusions don’t last that long.
The answer from the Mādhyamika school is that you can’t test if something is illusion or not by the amount of time it takes by the amount of time it exists only. For example, if we have a dream and sometimes in a dream, it feels like we’ve been dreaming for, as if, an eon, and other times, we feel like we haven’t been dreaming at all. So the the dream itself may take a certain amount of time, but that isn’t the way that it is perceived to us. So they say that this discounts their line of reasoning, that they can’t use the line of reasoning that they were, that illusions last a long time because even in our dreams, it may seem like they last a long time.
So, the difference between a dream and no, sorry. The difference between an illusion is an illusion and a and something not the difference between a dream and an illusion is not that they may both I don’t know. Hang on a second. Okay. Okay.
So there isn’t a difference between both an illusion and a sentient being. Both of them are illusory, and both of them both of them are only conventional. It’s not that one is is real and the other one isn’t. They’re not different in this way. In this way, that they they accord.
Okay. So the next argument that we’re trying to get rid of is, dismissing the debate that there’s no difference between good and bad. And this depends or it relies for its arguments on the next ten lines, but it actually works out because I went through it, it actually works out to be nine lines. It’s ten lines in the Tibetan and nine lines in English. So it starts with verse eleven, twelve, and the first line of verse thirteen.
Yeah. Okay. So the argument that the Sautrantikas are putting forward this time is that if everything is like an illusion, then if we kill an illusion, this isn’t actually a sin or a bad thing to do. So therefore, if we kill people, that isn’t actually a bad thing to do because they’re an illusion. And the reply from the Madhyamikas is that if you have the intention of killing something that’s illusory no.
Sorry. If you kill something that’s illusory or you beat it or do anything bad like that to it with any kind of weapon, by by the fact that you have this thought in your head that that is a real human being or that is a real animal or a real being, then you actually accrue the negativity of what they call the badness of action. Yeah? It’s it’s like it’s a bad action, but it’s because it’s not a real it’s not a real being. Like, in in one way, if it was, like, something that wasn’t even human, let alone being an illusory human, if it doesn’t have breath and it doesn’t have mind, even if it doesn’t have these things, if you think that it’s a human and you go about bashing it up or killing it, then you then you’ve already done something bad even if it’s not you’re actually not hurting anyone.
But it doesn’t have what they call the base of, the base of a sin or the base of a bad deed because there isn’t actually anything that’s receiving the bad deed. So there’s no base for that bad deed, but in terms of the behavior that it is engaged in, it’s a bad deed or a sin. Okay. So if you So if you try and kill something that isn’t really there, that that doesn’t have life, that doesn’t have mind, and you go through the whole process of killing it and you wanted to kill it, then you still create this negativity, but it’s the negativity of action. Whereas, if it’s a if it’s a human being, if it’s something that has or not not necessarily a human being, any type of sentient being that has consciousness and life force in it, then once you’ve killed it, then you have created these two different types of negativity.
There’s the negativity of the the base, where, like, the negativity of actually hurting something that’s alive, and then there’s also the negativity of your behavior being negative. So when when we’re talking about the difference between killing something that we think is a real person and it’s not, it’s an illusion and killing something that is a real person is an illusion like person, then the difference between these two acts is that is not in the fact that one of them is truly existent and the other one isn’t because neither of them is truly existent. The difference between the two is that one possesses consciousness and the other one doesn’t. But they’re both not existent, but one of them has consciousness and the other one doesn’t. Therefore, when we perform an act towards something without consciousness, it actually doesn’t have this idea of a base for the negative action, but it still has a the idea of the negative behavior.
So then it says that in the same way that once we have this collection of different conditions that you when they talk about coming bringing something like a magic something magic to life, they’re using what they call a substantive mantra. It’s it’s like a conjuring a conjuring act. That’s what I’m trying to say. A conjuring act. Once you don’t have the the conditions that bring