Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “Can a meditator visualize being a Buddha while still praying to become one?” That apparent contradiction anchors a key section of this 46-minute commentary by Geshe Pema Tsering on the Bodhisattva vows. He opens with the perfection of giving — arguing the mind of generosity matters more than the physical act — and walks through a Guru Puja visualization in which practitioners mentally transform their bodies, possessions, and accumulated virtue into whatever each being desires. He then explains tantric guru yoga using an ocean metaphor to clarify what “inseparable from the Buddha” actually means: not disappearing into the Buddha, but becoming indistinguishable from that mind. The session moves into the perfection of ethics, covering three forms of moral discipline and the structure of Bodhisattva vows. A closing Q&A addresses harming insects and disease organisms, exploring how motivation — not just action — determines the weight of any transgression.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 BV 2005 03 05.mp3
UUID: 093584ca-3168-4b87-82d9-27307ccb8b44
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva vows (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-03-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~3,781
Okay. So in order to establish all sentient beings in the completed, perfected, highest kind of enlightenment, that state of being Buddhas, we first need to attain Buddhahood ourselves. In order to attain that state, we need to develop understanding and then be able to put that understanding into practice. So the first step of that is to develop understanding, and that’s what we should be motivated, that is what we should be motivated to do this morning. So we’re going through the perfection of giving.
And in terms of the perfection of giving, there is three different types of giving that you can do. You can give away physical things, you can give protection from fear, and you can give dharma. Now from amongst those, the first one we’re going to look at is giving away physical things. So that means giving of ourselves, our body, and our physical objects, our possessions. Now it’s said that you don’t necessarily need to have a lot of things in order to practice the perfection of giving, because there is what’s called a skillful method of bodhisattvas, which is to visualize or to perceive that you’re giving away a lot more than you actually are able to give away.
In this way, you’re training yourself in the act of being incredibly generous, even though you may not necessarily have a lot to give away. Okay. So the there’s two texts by Śāntideva who specifically talks mostly about the practices of bodhisattvas. And in both of these texts, he talks about the importance of giving or practicing giving and praises it a lot. Goes into an explanation of its benefits in great detail.
So what we get from this, though, what we get from his explanations in both of these texts, is that it’s not necessarily the physical act of giving that is the perfection of generosity. It’s the mind of giving. It’s the mind that seeks to give to beings, not necessarily having a lot of things that you can give away. It also says in these texts that as one of the main practices of Bodhisattvas that it’s impossible to attain Buddhahood quickly without practicing the perfection of generosity. And in order to bring about the state of Buddhahood, it’s very important to to adopt or to take on the the practice of generosity.
So not only in these two texts, but in many other different Buddhist texts and many other different Buddhist teachings, they talk about ways to perfect perfect giving. So that is to work to perform the paramita of giving. Now, if you perfected the Paramita of giving or perfected the practice of the perfection of giving, then you become a Buddha. So it’s not something that we don’t we can’t not practice yet. It’s something that we can start practice practicing, and we can start practicing to give, and we can start practice seeing to give motivated by bodhicitta, motivated by a wish to attain enlightenment.
But it’s not something that we can actually finish practicing or that we can perfect practicing until we attain Buddhahood. And so another way of saying the perfection of giving is to say to say Buddhahood. So Okay. So I’m sorry, I’m having a bit of trouble because this word paramita, which literally means to have gone to the other side, is oftentimes translated as perfection. And what Geshe-la just said was you have to perfect the paramita.
So when you try and say it is perfect the perfection, it kind of gets a bit difficult. You have to have you have perfected this practice of giving, which takes you to the other side, then you have become a Buddha. So this word that’s usually is the paramita or perfection means literally to that which or it means that which has gone to the other side, that which has achieved Buddhahood, has attained Buddhahood. But it it it can actually involve the process of attaining Buddhahood as well. So once you’ve perfected the practice of giving that leads you to Buddhahood, then you are a Buddha.
Okay. So because of this, because of the way we’ve been talking about the fact that it’s actually the mind of giving that we’re trying to develop, it’s not necessarily the ability to give physical objects. Then we start when we come to this verse in the Guru Puja that says, we seek your blessings. It’s verse number hundred and one. We seek your blessings to complete the perfection of generosity through the guideline teaching for enhancing the mind that gives without attachment, namely transforming our body’s wealth and collection of virtues the three times into the objects desired by each and every sentient being.
This is what we should be thinking about, this practice by which we focus on the idea of giving to all beings beyond our own limited capacities at this stage. We’re developing the practice of giving. So when we get to this stage, at every stage of this prayer, then we imagine the teacher inseparable from the deity in front of us. Then imagine that we are receiving blessings, we’re receiving the ability to transform our mind so that we are able to put this practice into reality. And that is that we’re able to develop the mind that seeks to constantly give, whether it be our bodies or our things or our stores of virtue, all times to whoever needs it.
So this is what we’re trying to develop the ability to do. So we are trying to develop the ability to give without holding back for ourselves. This is actually a state of mind as opposed to a state of material possessions. So what we’re actually developing here is like doing a mental training for our mind so that we’re we’re developing the ability to give. And then the line says, into the objects, namely that we’re able to transform our bodies, wealth, and collections of virtue over the three times into the objects desired by each and every sentient being.
So what it’s talking about is that when we’re doing this visualization, we can we develop the ability to give mentally to beings whatever they want, whatever they desire. And if we are able to do this mentally at the beginning, eventually, we should be able try and do this physically as well, in reality as well. So the idea is when we’re doing the practice, doing this practice, doing this visualization practice, that we see ourselves transforming all the things that we hold hold dear into all the things the other that other beings want. Right? So we’re transforming our our physical possessions that we hold onto and we don’t wanna give away and our physical body that we we consider so precious.
We’re transforming that visualizing that we transform that into the things other people want. So if someone wants a car, we will visualize ourselves and our things being turned into a car that they want. If someone wants a house, we do that. If someone is very hungry, we transform ourselves into food ourselves and our possessions into food. If someone wants dharma, then we transform our mind into ability to give something that has the ability to give dharma.
So we go through all of these things and think about all the different things that beings could possibly want, and we visualize that our things that we hold precious, our possessions and ourself are transformed into those objects. So then we have visualized because at the beginning of saying this prayer, had this idea of the teacher inseparable from the deity in front of us. And then we we are requesting to develop this ability, to develop this ability, to spontaneously have this mind of giving to all sentient beings, even by transforming the things that we hold very dear into what they need. So we’re developing this mind of giving. And then after we’ve made this request, after we’ve made this prayer, we then imagine that from the deity inseparable from the teacher that we’re visualizing in front of us, that five different colored lights come down into us.
And as they come into us, they purify our mind stream. And not only our mind streams, but we visualize these lights going into the mind streams of all other sentient beings. And as they go into our mind streams, as they pervade our mind streams and the mind streams of other sentient beings, then they purify the negative states of mind that grasp onto possessions and grasp onto onto a a and they develop all the positive qualities of being able to give. So this means that they that we visualize that all the negative stains of miserliness or grasping onto possessions or grasping onto things for ourselves are obliterated or cleaned in our own minds and in the minds of other beings. And then at the same time as these are purified, then the positive quality of a mind that is constantly constantly willing to give is developed in these mind in everybody’s mind streams.
Okay. Okay. How much fun. I’m just trying to think of how on earth to translate this. First of all, that’s the end of the section that deals with development of the perfection of generosity.
The next section that we’re going to deal with is the section on the development of the perfection or the paramita of moral discipline. Now, at the beginning of each of these sections, we’re given a description of a meditation visual meditative visualization that we incorporate as part of the practice of the Guru Puja, which is the prayer that this that this, sorry, which is the text or the the practice that this prayer has come from. Right? This Lamrim prayer has come from. This graduated path prayer has come from.
Now, as it’s a Guru Puja practice, what we’re actually trying to achieve as part of this practice is what’s called guru yoga or union with the guru. Now, a guru or a teacher that we’re visualizing in this instance isn’t just a physical person who teaches us things. It’s not a physical being that we can say that’s my teacher or so on. What we’re actually trying to visualize, or what we’re actually trying to develop a perception of is the positive qualities of all everybody who has who has taught us anything. And we’re specifically looking at at visualizing that our own mind, which is also by its nature able to teach us things.
Yeah. The mind of our teachers, the mind of Lama Tsongkhapa, the mind of the Buddha, and our inseparable. Right? So this is what we we are we are focusing on the idea that we actually have all of the qualities that the teachers, the Buddha, that all these beings have. Because this is a this is it’s a tantric practice.
And in tantra, what that means is a I think you start with the end result. Alright? By pretending to be something, you eventually become it. Okay? So it’s not possible for us guru for us, Lama Tsongkhapa, the Buddha, all our teachers, no.
That’s about it. Yeah. All these things to be one thing. That’s not physically possible. Right?
But we’re not trying to do something physically. We’re trying to do something mentally. We’re trying to do a mental exercise, a meditative practice. Right? So in this meditative practice, we are visualizing that our positive qualities, the Buddha’s positive qualities, Lama Tsongkhapa’s positive qualities, all our teachers’ positive qualities are conjoined in one essence.
And this essence, or this conjunction of all of these positive qualities, has an understanding of emptiness, has realized emptiness directly, has fully developed bodhicitta, has all the positive qualities that we need to develop. So we’re visualizing and we’re practicing. We’re doing a mental exercise where we imagine ourselves developing these qualities. Okay. So when we’re doing this visualization and we visualize this being that is a combination of all of these positive qualities in some kind of physical visualized form in front of us.
Then we imagine the blessings or the transformative powers of this being coming into our our our mind stream in the form of of light. And then and then that visualization process, we’re transforming our our mind, where our mind transforms from being something that is our minds, sorry, and the minds of all other sentient beings. So imagine ourself surrounded by all sentient beings. Our minds and their minds are transformed by this transformative power into something that is free from negativities and has developed all positive qualities. It’s not actually happening.
But by the mental exercise, we are developing the the ability for that to happen. And pretty hard. So this becomes a bit problematic for us. Right? Because what we’re imagining on the one hand is that our minds, our beings have been completely joined with all of the positive qualities of the Buddha’s the Buddha’s, Lama Tsongkhapa, and their and our teachers.
Right? So we are in this way, from one point of view, we’re visualizing ourselves as our potential, as what we could be as a as a fully realized Buddha. Right? So that’s one hand. And the other hand, we’re saying, please bless me that I may be able to perform the perfections and become a Buddha.
Alright? So these these two things are complete Geshe-la says these two things are completely contradictory. So it may seem almost impossible to do this meditative visualization where a Buddha who isn’t a Buddha who needs to become a Buddha. Alright? So this just seems like a contradictory meditative process.
So it may seem to us as if there’s this complete contradiction in what we’re doing here, but what we’re actually do doing is meditating on the cause and the result at the same time. Now, the cause is if we work towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings and do these practices, do the practice of six perfections, we become a Buddha. So that’s the cause for a Buddha. The result of that practice is that we are a Buddha. So what we’re actually doing in this meditation is we are visualizing what we will be, and then developing the motivation to work towards that state.
Alright. So we are visualizing our our potential to be a Buddha and how that is in inseparably linked or inseparable from the qualities of Lama Tsongkhapa. And then at the same time we are developing that potential in ourselves as we do the practice. So we see what we will be in the future, and then we are working towards that state with our motivation in the present. So it may seem to us from one point of view that that is a contradiction, that we can be these two different things at once.
But what we’re actually doing is bringing the result into the path. We’re focusing on using what the result will be as a method for achieving that result. Okay. So in order to bring this about in order to bring about the transformation of ourselves into Buddhas and that our minds become inseparable from from the Buddhas, then one of the things that we need to practice in is hang on a second. I just thought that that’s probably gonna confuse you as well.
Okay. Okay. So I just had to check. This word inseparable, it doesn’t mean that our mind disappears into the mind of the Buddha. Alright?
It means that if we put we’re trying to work to the state where if we put our mind next to the Buddha’s mind, there would be no distinction between the two. Alright? So it’s a matter of inseparable as in two oceans flowing to each other. Can’t pick out one ocean from the other. Alright?
It doesn’t mean that we disappear into the Buddha. Okay? Our mind stream disappears into the Buddha. It means that our mind becomes so identical to the mind of a Buddha that we can’t we couldn’t separate them out. Okay.
So the second practice that we do in order to become a Buddha of the six perfections is the practice of ethics. Ethics has three different sections to it. Is ethics that means holding protecting vows. And the second section is the way to accumulate or to protect virtuous actions that we’ve done. And the third thing is the ethic or the ethos of working for the benefit of all sentient beings.
So the first of these then is holding vows, the ethics of holding vows, the morality of living within vows. Again, these vows have in Buddhist terms, these vows have three different sections. You can have vows that are kept in order to attain liberation for yourself or nirvana for yourself. You can have vows that are kept in order to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings. And you can hold vows in terms of Tantric vows that accompany the practice of secret mantra.
Okay. So from within the first of these groups, the group of the individual liberation vows, there’s says to be seven sections, there are seven different types of vows that you can hold. The first of these is the vows of a fully ordained monk. Now, holding the vows of a fully ordained monk means that you hold two hundred and fifty three vows. For a fully ordained nun, you hold three sixty vows.
Now all of these vows are said to be subtle ones and more rough ones, ones that are more clear why you hold them and there are subtle ones that may seem more difficult to hold them and less clear as to why you would hold them. But the reason that all of these vows were given was to maintain the four root vows. The Buddha explained that in order to maintain those four root vows purely, then it was very beneficial to keep all the other vows. So because of this, he said that there were certain things that monks and nuns should do, and there are certain things that they shouldn’t do, and went through and listed off the things that they should do and shouldn’t do in the process of his teachings. Okay.
Then in terms of the Bodhisattva vows, there’s supposed to be eighteen eighteen sections to the root vows of the Bodhisattva and forty-six branch vows to the vows of Bodhisattva. So the forty-six branch vows. Okay. So so there’s eighteen different sections to the root vows of Bodhisattva and there are said to be forty six things that are close to that root vows. For example, if you are upholding the vows not to kill, then that would be stopping going up and squishing a bug.
Right? Holding the root vows that are associated with the vow not to kill would be not thinking I really want to hurt that bug. Right? Or not thinking if I just harm the bug in a certain way without killing it, I’ll get away with keeping my vows. So these are the the root parts.
These are the branch parts of the Bodhisattva vows. So if you if you break those the the branch vows, if you if you behave in a way that’s the contrary to the branch vows, you don’t actually lose the Bodhisattva vows from the root, but you have, like, what’s called a downfall in the vows. There’s a a slight Yeah. So if you have if you commit one of these forty eight forty six, sorry, branch an infraction of one of the forty six branch vows, you don’t actually lose the Bodhisattva vow, but you harm it or you you damage it in some way without losing it completely. So if you have some questions.
Kesha said he has tea, so he’ll drink tea. And if you guys have questions, answer. Yeah. Yeah. So the best thing the main thing to do is to practice patience with regards to bugs and rodents that come into our house.
If there we need to get rid of them to try and find ways to get rid of them without harm harming them because even if we need to if we even if we need to get rid of them, then killing them is still a negativity. So if we can do whatever we can to find ways not to harm them and to get rid of them or to take them to other places and everything without harming them. So I said, but sometimes we might have to kill something. He said, no. There’s lots of ways you can get rid of things without killing them.
I said there’s lots of places in Australia where there’s no people. Like, you can come with them there. Yeah. They might. That’s good.
Yes. No. No. The the bugs, and you can put the bugs in. Yes.
Yes. Okay. So Geshe-la said if you had a a bad disease that was based on bugs, then you wouldn’t he thinks that you should take medicine for it. But he said that if you took the medicine with the intention, I want to be healthy, that’s one thing. If you take the medicine with the intention, I want to kill all these little bugs in my system, I want to kill them all, then that’s another thing.
And it depends on what your motivation for doing that is. You could, I mean, seriously stand that outside the body too. Mhmm. So it’s constantly Mhmm. So you need to motivation.
Okay. And I guess I said, what do you mean rats can’t kill people? And I tried to explain the Black Death. And the thing. Yeah.
And he said he said, well, if there’s abs because the the thing is if they’re in our body, we can’t take the bugs out of our body. Right? But if there is a way to get rid of animals without killing them, then we should try all that we can do to get rid of them without killing them. Right? If there is absolutely no option and we have to do something to protect ourselves and other beings just to sustain ourselves, ourselves, should in that instance, we probably would have to kill them, but we shouldn’t think that that makes it okay.
It’s still a negative action to kill something. Just the strength of the negative action depends on the motivation. Mhmm. Mhmm. And that’s what you