Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 15-minute Q&A exchange, Geshe Pema Tsering opens with an unsettling premise: simply existing causes unintentional harm, and what determines the weight of the resulting karma is intention. Moving to the ethics of eating, he argues that any food — meat or vegetables — involves harming animals to some degree. His teacher’s response to elderly Tibetan women who harassed Geshe-la over eating fish is characteristically blunt: from the cow’s and the fish’s perspective, both equally want to live. The 2004 tsunami then becomes a vivid illustration of karmic consequence — fishing communities who killed sea creatures were ultimately killed by the sea — and Geshe-la applies the same framework to Tibet’s loss of its homeland. He closes with the paired reasons to avoid killing: it harms others, and it returns as suffering to oneself. Conversational and accessible, suited to practitioners with a basic grounding in karma.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 BV 2005 03 05.mp3
UUID: 8ece9131-ecd1-4bd7-8775-d75271733446
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva vows (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-03-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 15.0 minutes
Words: ~1,151
Yeah. And that’s all negative. Oh, yeah. That’s that’s that’s all that’s sorry? That’s that’s all negative action.
That’s all if if we don’t know we’re doing it, then it’s a smaller negative action. But but just by inhabiting a human body, we’re killing things. So there’s a concept — part of the cycle of saṃsāra that you’re stuck in a situation where you’re harming beings just by your presence. Uh-uh. Yeah.
But the thing is the thing is that negative actions and positive actions, there’s big vast variety in the strength of them, in the the strength of the strength of the action and the strength of the result. So if something’s done with no intention and no negative thoughts, alright, then the results of that negative action are going to be very small. Alright? But if something’s done with a very strong negative intention, then the results of that negative action are very very strong. Alright?
So it as it’s the same as we’re constantly we’re constantly doing negative things just by existing very, very small negative things. We’re constantly experiencing very, very small amounts of suffering just by existing. Alright? So this is, like, low level that happens all the time. But if we’re going to do something with a very strong negative intention to harm others and to hurt, then that’s going to obviously have much more powerful results.
Yeah. Eating Oh, okay. Most, eating meat is a negative thing because someone’s an animal has been killed in order for us to eat meat. So, obviously, it’s negative where where what we’re doing is involved in the harm of animals. Yeah.
But in anything that we eat is involved in the harm of animals. Does that make sense? That sounds like a really bad construction. It involves harming animals. Yeah?
Anything we eat involves harming animals, whether it’s through yeah. Whether it’s vegetables or whether it’s meat. The whole process of getting food involves harming Oh, I shouldn’t hang out with old Tibetan ladies. And I I get I get harassed by old Tibetan ladies every time I’m going home. So I’m going home to say, don’t eat fish.
So he reckons that, of course, that makes a difference how many animals you’re eating in one meal. And I told him about the grandmothers harassing me, and he said, well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? People aren’t as big as cows. He reckons from a cow’s point of view and a fish’s point of view, they’re both pretty important. So if you’re a fish, then you’re not gonna wanna get killed and eaten.
And if you’re a cow, you’re not gonna wanna get killed and eaten. So he doesn’t think that they’re from their perspective, because they both wanna be happy and they both don’t wanna be killed and eaten, that there would be any difference. But in terms of a human, a human isn’t considered to be the same as an animal because a human has more potential to help and a greater capacity to to do certain things. So to kill a human is said to be a much greater fault than to kill an animal because you’re killing more potential. Yes.
Someone’s asking. Yeah. Geshe-la says that he thinks that of course, that’s the practice of bodhisattvas. They’re, like, less worried about themselves and more worried about others. They they even get to a stage where they can give away their own body.
This better be quick. Yes. Yes. There’s no issue. There shouldn’t be any distinct there really isn’t any distinction between killing someone who is perceived as being an enemy and killing someone who’s perceived as being a friend.
Right? Killing is wrong. Killing hurts, harms beings. So the the main point is that killing isn’t the main point is that killing isn’t helpful.
The main point is killing isn’t appropriate. It harms beings, and all beings wanna be happy and don’t want to die. So so the the other thing is to is to remember that killing has has repercussions. Right? That’s the more you kill, the more that you are setting up a situation to experience suffering, to experience shortening of life yourself.
Geshe-la said that recently there was a tsunami that wiped out all coastal villages all across across Asia. And then many people kept saying the it was the waves that killed them. Yeah. But from a Buddhist perspective, waves aren’t a being. Wave can’t kill anyone.
Alright? The only people that can kill people are the people that make the causes and conditions to to die. Alright? External conditions don’t kill you. You create the causes and conditions to die yourself.
Yeah? And so for him it seemed a bit sad. It was really sad that he was thinking about the people that maintained themselves by killing in the sea, by taking from the sea, or ended up being killed by the sea. So he thought that that was, like, a really sad situation that they were born in those states where they relied on the sea, relied on killing sea creatures to live, and then eventually the sea killed them. But he said he But he said not just these people, the Tibetans are the same.
He said that it’s not very nice not having your own country. It’s not very nice being a refugee. It’s not very nice and not and not saying not having somewhere that you can call home. Yeah? And he said but, you know, it’s not it’s not correct to say that it’s the Chinese fault.
It’s not correct to say that Chinese came and took our country because it was the Tibetans’ responsibility. It was the Tibetans’ karma that led to them losing their country. And so it it comes back to an individual. If you do negative things, if you do kill, if you do it purposely, then you are going to experience the results of the negative actions you perform. So the the trick is that well, the problem is that in performing these actions, in performing killing and everything, we shouldn’t just be thinking no.
We we can’t we don’t just have to think about the fact that that is going to harm another being, but also that it’s going come back at us. Yeah, so whatever we do, we have to experience the results of it. So we shouldn’t kill because it harms others. We shouldn’t kill because we’re going to end up experiencing suffering because of it in the future as well. Sucks.
Okay. So then we have — page twenty-six from the morning text.
Okay. I was going to say that I feel like a one man band and someone should because maybe someone else can do that. Can’t imagine. No. No.
No. You do it. Alright. Okay.