Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute commentary, Geshe Pema Tsering works through a sharp inter-school dispute: the Sautrantikas charge that if all phenomena are “natural nirvana” as the Madhyamikas claim, then saṃsāra and nirvana collapse into one, making the bodhisattva path pointless. He dissolves the confusion by showing that “natural nirvana” in Mādhyamika usage means emptiness, not liberation — illustrated with the image of a dog that everyone calls a lion. He then traces how ignorance generates the three poisons, which generate karma, keeping saṃsāra turning — likening the cycle to a conjuror’s illusion that persists only while the conjuring continues. The session closes with Q&A on whether merit and karma differ, and whether killing in a dream counts as negative karma (yes, but weakly, since the victim was never real).
File metadata (for organising)
File: 78 BD 2002 10 24.mp3
UUID: c1cdf9e3-087c-4fa5-bc50-0ee352375d2d
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Deeds (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-10-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~2,600
There anymore, then the conjuring act ceases to be. In the same way, when we don’t have this collection of of when we don’t have this collection of karma and delusions come together, then there is no such thing as a human being. Not only does it cease to exist ultimately or or it’s a sentient being sentient being. Not only does it cease to exist ultimately, it ceases to exist conventionally as well. Okay.
So that was the fourth one. We’re now on to the the fifth one, which is getting rid of the argument that there is no difference between saṃsāra and nirvana. It depends on the next Well, it’s actually eight lines in Tibetan, but I think it comes to about ten in the English. Mhmm. And it starts with first thirteen.
Finishes halfway sorry. Finishes halfway through fifteen. Oh, yeah. Okay. So the next argument, which was getting, yeah, getting rid of the argument that there is no difference between saṃsāra and nirvana, comes down to a technical point, basically.
I’m trying — I was trying to figure out how to translate it — because the Sautrāntika say that the Madhyamikas say that all phenomena are natural nirvana, then they say that these phenomena cannot be saṃsāra, therefore old age and dying and things like that can’t be part of saṃsāra. But when the Madhyamikas actually say natural nirvana, what they actually mean is emptiness. Right? So in their words, nirvana is a synonym for emptiness.
But because the Sautrantikas don’t accept the concept of emptiness, what they think is that the Madhyamikas are saying that all phenomena are in nirvana. But they’re not actually saying this — they’re saying all phenomena are empty. So he says you have to add I have to he was making sure that I’d said that there’s two different types of nirvana, that they have a different idea of what nirvana is. The Madhyamikas think that when they talk about natural nirvana, they’re actually talking about emptiness. But the Sautrantikas aren’t saying this.
They’re saying that nirvana as in the cessation of suffering. Okay. Yeah. So when they talk about natural nirvana, they’re not talking about nirvana because nirvana is actually liberation. Right?
But what they’re talking about when they say natural natural nirvana is the emptiness, which is associated with liberation. It’s the thing that is permanent in nirvana, which is actually the emptiness of it. nirvana is something that is associated with it. Guess what? It’s the same thing as if you have a dog that looks like a lion.
So you go, Oh, that dog’s a lion, but it’s not really a lion. No one actually thinks it’s a lion. They just call it a lion. In the same way, when they say natural nirvana, they’re not actually talking about nirvana, they’re talking about emptiness. But because it’s associated I mean, with nirvana, then it’s called natural nirvana.
So that you guys have to understand that they when they say nirvana, there’s actually one that is nirvana and the other one isn’t. It’s a non nirvana that’s called nirvana. So when they talk about all phenomena being in nirvana, what they’re actually talking about is that all phenomena have this natural nirvana as a quality, which is emptiness. So the Sautrāntika is then saying: okay, but you say these things are in nirvana; at the same time, you say that suffering, old age, and death is saṃsāra, and you accept that to be saṃsāra.
Okay, so therefore the Sautrāntika is saying that if they say that all phenomena are natural nirvana, then there is no such thing as nirvana. Don’t differentiate between natural nirvana and nirvana. Then they say that that means that all phenomena must be in nirvana. And if that’s the case, then that means that there is no cessation to these objects because they’re in nirvana and not saṃsāra. And if they’re in nirvana, not saṃsāra, and there’s no cessation to saṃsāra, then that means that there’s no point into doing all that.
There’s no difference between what a Buddha does and what an ordinary being does, and that Buddhas are also in saṃsāra. So there’s no point doing any of the actions of a bodhisattva or an enlightened being in order to become enlightened because there is no enlightenment and the whole bodhisattva path is pointless. The other question. Geshe-la said, I think she got it. Yeah.
Saying, did you get it? Did you get it? Okay. So the answer that the Madhyamikas have to this argument is that unless the causes and conditions of ignorance — and it’s called compositional factors — unless these things which are caused by karma and delusion, unless these causes cut the continuation of this mind stream that is from these causes unless that is cut by the power of meditation on the path then there is no end to saṃsāra Beings continue to cycle in saṃsāra unless it is cut by this the power of this meditation. In the same way that if you perpetually keep up the conjuring tricks that make things appear to be there, then as long as you’re doing the conjuring tricks like it says saying mantras and things, then that conjured object is going to continue to maintain itself there.
In the same way as that, unless we get rid of our ignorance and delusion and the compositional factors that come about through karma and delusions, then there is no way that we can stop saṃsāra. We keep circling in saṃsāra. The other thing is that once we have stopped circling in saṃsāra and once we’ve cut this continuation of the causes which is karma and delusion, once we’ve chopped that, then not only does saṃsāra cease to exist at the ultimate level (which it never existed at), but it also ceases to exist conventionally. In the same way that the conjurer’s act ceases to exist once the conjuring is stopped. So so we have to know what saṃsāra is because saṃsāra exists by the power of causes and conditions, and these causes and conditions produce the illusionary like existence that we have in saṃsāra.
And if we can stop these causes and conditions, then we can stop saṃsāra. So usually when we think about saṃsāra, we think about it as being like the an existence. We think about it in beings in terms of what comes about because of causes and conditions. But when we’re thinking about saṃsāra, we have to understand that we are saṃsāra beings and that our saṃsāra comes about in dependence on our causes and conditions. And one of the main things that defines saṃsāra is that it has the aggregates.
It has these collections of things that we call I. That is the basis of our saṃsāra. This one? This one. So then if we wanna get rid of being under the control of this karma and delusions, then we have to get rid of karma and delusion.
If sorry. If we want to get rid of being under the ignorance that is caused by karma and delusion, then we have to get rid of the karma and And even in between these two, in between karma and delusion, then we should understand that karma comes about because of delusions. If there was no delusions, there would be no karma. So karma comes about in reliance on delusions. So karma comes about because of the three poisons that is attachment, aversion, and hatred.
Hatred? Yeah. Yeah. So attachment, aversion, and hatred — it comes about by the power of these three.
And and because of those three, then we create karma, and the cause for these three is is ignorance, which causes which is the same as being deluded. So when we talk about what we’re talking about when we talk about karma, it isn’t anything more than the actions that we perform in service of the three poisons. And most of the time when we out of the three poisons, is aversion and attraction or desire. They’re the ones that keep us going all the time. We think we see things we want and we try and pull them to us, and we think see things that are going to harm us or that we don’t want, and we try and push them away from us.
By the power of these two actions, then we create the causes for more delusions and it becomes a cycle. Then Geshe-la was saying that if we want to think about what karma is now this gets tricky because he said in Tibetan, the word for karma is le and the word for work is le ka. So they’re the same almost. Right? And he’s saying, if we want to think what’s karma, it’s not a big deal, it’s just work.
But it’s because the words sound the same in Tibetan. So, yeah, so one’s work and karma are basically the same, so we can’t think of it as being something big. It’s something that we do every day and something we interact with anymore. It’s not something separate from that. So so in the same way that most of the time when we’re doing work, we’re doing it for our own benefit.
In the same way that most of the time when we’re when we talk about karma, it’s karma that we’re doing things in order to help ourselves. And in this way, we’re creating more suffering for ourselves. It works in the same way — we think we’re doing things for our benefit. We think we’re doing things for our benefit. So everything that we do, we can count as being karma, whether it’s whether we’re sitting down or whether we decide to stand up.
All of these things are counted as karma. And when we come here to listen to dharma, we’re actually doing it because we want happiness as well. So this is another aspect of our karma. But hopefully, if we come here to listen to Dharma, we’re not just thinking about the happiness of this life. We’re thinking about the happiness of future life or the ultimate happiness of liberation or or Buddhahood.
So because of delusions, we collect karma. And if we collect good karma, then we go to good places into good rebirths. And if we collect bad karma, then we go to bad rebirths. And this is the way that saṃsāra turns. So if we’ve if we’ve understood emptiness, then we don’t create any negative don’t create any negative karma.
We create positive karma, but because we don’t we’re not attached to anything, then we stop creating negative karma. So so if we understand emptiness and we stop creating and we stop creating negativity and therefore we can purify ourselves. In order to understand emptiness, we have to understand that things are like an illusion. And when we talk about like an illusion, what we’re talking about is that they’re like they are on TV. And no one’s going to go out of their way to create or do things to help something on TV.
So in the same way, we shouldn’t be trying to try to try and help our illusionary like selves because that’s not gonna help us with anything. So because we’re not trying to accrue any we’re not trying to help ourselves help ourselves and in the process of helping ourselves creating negative karma, then the we stop creating we stop creating negative karma and have and have the ability to try and understand emptiness better. And by understanding emptiness better, then we can achieve Buddhahood, and this should be the end goal. Sorry. I meant to say liberation and enlightenment because then after we’ve got this idea of our own liberation, then we have to just start thinking about the sufferings of other beings.
And then when we’ve extended it to all beings, then it becomes a cause for achieving enlightenment. And so now that we’ve all achieved enlightenment, then we can stop. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So if anyone has any questions.
Okay. So there’s Merit isn’t just positive action. Merit also includes things like positive imprints on our consciousness and other things that aren’t included in karma, in practicing good acts. So there’s things that don’t come under the heading of karma that are considered merit. So he said, yeah, that is a negativity if you’re killing people in your dreams.
It’s not a negativity that includes the, the final act of killing, and it’s not the same thing as killing in terms of negativity, but it still is a negativity because it comes about in, based on imprints from past lives. So this is where the idea to kill in dreams comes from. Therefore, it’s negativity. But in the same way that, if you go to kill something that isn’t there, it doesn’t have this idea of the base of the negativity, the killing people in dreams because it also doesn’t have the base of the negativity, then neither of these is anywhere near as strong as karma as killing someone for real, for that isn’t really there. Illusory like being there is really there.
Yeah. So so it’s still negative, but it’s not that strong a negativity. It said that usually when we talk about sleep, that sleep is a changeable factor. Sleep is something that can either change into being positive, negative, or stay neutral. Because it’s it’s by its nature neutral, therefore it can change.
And if we’re dreaming about killing people, then this is the sleep has become negative. It doesn’t actually have the the same strength as killing someone, but their actual sleep time has become negative. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Is something that you need to purify because it’s a negativity, and all negativities need to be purified. So if you if you really wake up and realize that it’s something you need to purify. So we should be thinking that that that wasn’t a very good thing I did, killing someone in my dream, and that isn’t something that is gonna cause happiness. And because it’s something that’s not gonna cause happiness, then I should try and refrain from doing this. And so, from now on, may I stop may I refrain from doing this, and please bless me to be able to refrain from doing this, and with this thought in mind to do practices I do that.
Yeah. Yeah. Is it possible that some dreams you know, I think I really can’t remember many examples of of being sort of So I just I had a dream that told me, Go shoot people. And every time I shot them, they turned into a ghost and disappeared and they were trying to hurt people. Right?
And I said, Okay, is this a That was my example. Right? And he said, I said, Is that a negativity? And he went, Yes. That’s definitely a negativity.
And I said, But they weren’t real people. They were like ghosts. And he said, But they weren’t real people to start off with. It was a dream. And then I said, But someone told me to do it.
And he said, That wasn’t Spreet Sahota. That was your delusion. So it was a it was a yeah. He said it’s a it’s still a it’s still a negativity. It’s just not as strong a negativity because it wasn’t a real person to start off with.