Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with Milarepa’s example of abandoning all possessions, Geshe Pema Tsering connects awareness of death with Dharma motivation in this 45-minute session. He walks through the three scopes of practice — seeking a good rebirth, attaining personal liberation from saṃsāra, and generating bodhicitta — arguing that even one minute of practice dedicated to Buddhahood for all beings is genuinely meaningful. The session then shifts to Chapter 9, verse 6 of the Bodhicaryāvatāra: a philosophical debate over whether direct perception proves true existence. The lower Hīnayāna schools argue yes — if we can see it, it exists as we perceive it. The Middle Way, or Mādhyamika school, replies that ordinary perception only validates conventional existence, not emptiness, the final nature of phenomena — a position supported with quotes from Candrakīrti and the King of Meditation Sūtra.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 Guide 2002 10 24.mp3
UUID: bb15b1d3-5cdf-4081-905c-eb8fc3de4a49
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-10-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.7 minutes
Words: ~3,338
So as Jetsün Milarepa said, if we put aside all our possessions and all the things that we hold and we go, we just go, then from that time on, our life becomes highly meaningful. And as Geshe-la said, this is because at some stage in the future, we are going to have to leave everything. We’re going to have to leave our parents. We’re going to have to leave all our possessions. We’re going to have to leave We’re going to have to leave all the people we know.
And this is when we die, of course. And then we have to go off by ourselves at that stage. But right now we may not be able to do exactly the same as Milarepa did and leave everything we have and go and meditate in a cave. We can’t do this because we have to work and all these things. But if we can do it for a a day or a couple of days, if we can’t do it for a whole day, if we can do it for fifteen minutes, if we can leave everything, then that in itself becomes highly meaningful.
So at the moment we aren’t actually thinking, we don’t usually think in this way. We usually think about this life and the things we have to do for this life and our possessions and our work and things like this. We concentrate on that. But if we can put that aside and concentrate on Dharma for a little while, and then we are actually being like Milarepa, if we are practicing Dharma, only we can know if we are practicing Dharma properly, only we can know if we are doing it for the right reasons. If we are doing this properly, then we discovered the most meaningful thing that we can do.
So if we asked everybody if they were going to die, then there was nobody that actually could answer that they weren’t. Every single person that we ask, are you going to die? Has to answer, yes, I am. If we asked everyone if they were preparing to die, then most people would say no. Most people wouldn’t even know what it meant to prepare to die.
They would say I might be doing a little bit or I might be doing this, but they wouldn’t actually know how to go about preparing to do this. So how do we do this? Well the main thing that we have to do is practicing, is by practicing Dharma. A good motivation for us to practice Dharma is for us to think that when we do die, of the things that we spend most of our time focusing on now, none of our possessions, none of our friends, none of our the things that we hold dear now in this life, we can’t take any of those with us. So this would set our motivation for practicing Dharma as being something that transcends this life and will become a very good motivation for when we start practicing Dharma.
So this thinking about the danger of death is actually really beneficial to us because if we didn’t have this thing hanging over us and we weren’t occasionally thinking, Oh, I’m going to die, then we wouldn’t practice Dharma. We’d be concentrating on things like work and the pleasures of this life more than doing Dharma, so it actually becomes helpful to us. But if we ask most people if they thought that death was helpful to them, they’d probably say no. So if we think about how we can spend our time properly and how we can be of the most benefit, then the thing we have to keep coming back to is that we have to practice Dharma. So when we then the question comes about is practicing Dharma, what does it mean to practice Dharma?
The way that we usually define what is Dharma is by doing virtuous things, doing things that are of benefit. Usually within these things that are of benefit, there’s a division of three. There’s things that are of benefit that come under our physical realm, there’s things that we can do of benefit that are speech, and there’s things that we can do of benefit that are in our minds. In terms of the things that we can do of benefit with our bodies, this includes things like helping people with medicine and taking care of them and things like that. In terms of what we can do with our speech, it can be saying mantras, reciting our refuge prayers, things like this come under the virtuous speech.
And in terms of our mind, if we have virtuous thoughts, such as a bodhicitta, or thinking about bodhicitta or thinking about how precious a human rebirth is or thinking about renunciation, if we concentrate on these things with our mind, then we’re doing virtuous things with our mind, things that will be of benefit. So even though these are what we consider to be doing Dharma or doing the spiritual practice, it actually more comes down to what our motivation is. So, example, our motivation is that we get pleasure and happiness and new things come to us in this life, then this doesn’t really become Dharma. It is one form of Dharma, but it’s not a very good one. We’re concentrating on getting rewards in this life.
And with this in mind, if we start doing mantras and we start doing any kind of practice, it doesn’t really help us out that much. So if we’re doing all these things, if saying mantras and when we’re doing practice, we’re doing it and thinking, Oh, this will make people say nice things about me. This will make me suffer less. This will make me more powerful. If we start thinking like that in our practice and concentrate about the benefits it will bring in this life, it actually doesn’t become true Dharma.
It doesn’t become true Dharma practice. There may be limited benefit. We may get benefit back in this life in some form or another, but it doesn’t become a true Dharma for us. It just becomes another cause for saṃsāra. If we think at least about our future life and future lives, then this becomes true Dharma.
This becomes something that is right to do. So anytime that we’re doing any of these positive actions, if that’s our motivation, if it’s anything from thinking, I want a good rebirth up, then that is actually a Dharma practice. So if we’re doing it for this for this thought of the next life, if we’re doing it thinking, okay, if I practice if I practice now, then in my next life, I will have money, I’ll be born into a good family, I’ll be healthy, I’ll be beautiful, people will say good things about me, I’ll have good stuff. Then if we think like this, then it is dharma, but it’s the dharma of the lowest vehicle, of the of the low of the lowest scope. But if we’re thinking about it from the point of view of the middle scope or the middle being, then we can think, Okay, so if I become in my next life, even if I become — Geshe-la said — I was just checking because he said we could even become the king of America, and I thought that was a bit difficult.
Anyway, so he’s never writing on it. And so so okay. The president the American president. Right? So if we even if in our next life we become someone as powerful as the American president and we have everything that we need physically and everything that that that could be a benefit to us, it’s only going to it’s only gonna last at most a hundred years.
And Then we’re gonna die again and we’re gonna lose it all. So it’s not of any real benefit to us. This is how we should be sinking if we’re thinking from the middle scope. So if we’re if we’re thinking from the point of view of the middle scope, then what we should be concentrating in is trying to achieve liberation. That should be our motivation for all the practice that we do, because by thinking in the way we thought about that even if our next life is wonderful, it only lasts a hundred years, it won’t get us out of Samsāra, then this takes our view up a notch and we start concentrating on how to stop the cycle of rebirth altogether and how to get out of Samsāra.
So if we achieve liberation, for us ourselves, there’s no more suffering. There’s nothing but happiness. We don’t have to worry about our our karma and delusions creating more suffering for us. We we only experience pure happiness. So then if we’re thinking about it from the point of view of the higher scope, then this achieving personal liberation still isn’t good enough.
Because even though we may have completely obliterated our suffering and maybe experiencing nothing but happiness. We can’t take away other people’s suffering in that way. The only way that we can take away other people’s suffering is by achieving Buddhahood. So if we have this motivation, if before we say even one mantra, even before we say one om mani padme hum, if we say to ourselves, I’m doing this in order achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, then this becomes something that’s included within the greater scope. It becomes the highest thing that we can do.
If after every time we do any practice, we dedicate our merits and say, did this, may this be dedicated towards achieving enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. If we do this, then we will become part of the greatest scope, and this is the best thing that we can do. So even if we before meditating for one minute, if we think, I am going to meditate for one minute for the benefit of all so I can achieve Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings, Even if we do this, even if we dedicate anything we do, whether it’s saying mantras, whether it’s working, whatever it is, if we dedicate before we do this that we’re doing this for the benefit of all sentient beings, we become just a little bit like Milarepa. Because in the same way, if we’ve done that, then we’ve put aside our worldly concerns, we’ve put aside the other reasons that we do things, and what we’re doing becomes of great importance. It becomes the best thing that we can do.
And even though we may not be able to go and be completely like Milarepa and stay in a cave for the rest of our life, we become a little bit like him because we’ve done we’ve done this with our time. We haven’t wasted our time. We’ve made our time very meaningful. So if we have if we have this good motivation for whatever we do, if we’re doing this because we wanna achieve for the sake of all sentient beings, then we will. Then because of this the power of of this motivation and because of the power of the dedications of our practices, then we will eventually achieve Buddhahood for sentient beings.
Okay. So achieving Buddhahood, it relies on two minds. It relies on the mind of emptiness and the mind of bodhicitta, which is the mind wanting to achieve enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. It relies on these two minds. In order to achieve this Buddhahood, what we do is go through stages.
First of all, we try and develop renunciation, which leads to our own liberation. That, in conjunction with the thought of great compassion, which is that all beings be free from suffering, will lead to the idea of bodhicitta coming into our minds, which is may I achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. Therefore, after that, the idea then we have to concentrate on understanding emptiness, and then between from that, then comes about the full enlightenment. So if we start thinking that we have a lot of suffering and concentrate on our suffering, and then understand that all sentient beings also have this suffering, and that in order to make all of us, all sentient beings, free from suffering, that may I quickly achieve Buddhahood. If we think in this way, this is the way that we should set our motivation, and this is also what we should meditate on now.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Geshe said, now we’re on to the easy stuff. He he said this is tiring trying to figure out all this stuff. So we’re working through the emptiness session in the Bodhicaryāvatāra, and we’re up to the section where arguments between Hinayanists or the Sautrāntika school and the higher, what they call the Mādhyamika or Middle Way school.
So this is written from the point of view of the Mādhyamika school, so it’s them dismissing arguments put to them by the Sautrāntika School. And we’re up to an argument about difference between the different ways that they perceive emptiness or the of phenomena. So, on one hand, the Madhyamikas and the Sautrantikas or the Hinayanist schools, they agree on the fact that the elements and things that we see are established by valid cognition. In this way they agree, but what they don’t agree on is that in the way that they’re established. So the Mādhyamika school they say that because it is established in it is established like an illusion.
It’s established, but it’s established in a way that’s like an illusion. And the Sautrāntika school say that it’s established truly because it’s seen with the eyes and heard with the ears and so forth. So the Sautrāntika school or the Hīnayāna schools, they say that because we can see things then the way that we see them must be the way that they truly exist. They must exist the way that we see them. Whereas the Mādhyamika schools or the they call the higher schools, they say that just because we can see them doesn’t mean that they exist in the same way that we perceive them, because we can’t see their emptiness.
We can’t see their final mode of abiding, the way they truly are. We can’t see that directly. Therefore, they don’t exist the way that we can see them. So the next section of the text actually is divided into two. In the first part of the next section of the text, it talks about dismissing the argument that the lower schools have that us directly perceiving something is in direct contradiction to saying that it doesn’t exist truly.
And the second part is dismissing the argument that what Madhyamikas are saying actually contradicts scripture. So this dismissing the argument that it contradicts what we directly see is talked about in the next four lines, which is verse six of the tenth Who’s the tenth chapter? Ninth chapter? Sorry. I was trying remember how many chapter Yeah.
Ninth chapter. The sixth verse of the ninth chapter. Okay. So the way that the text is set out, it then goes on to describe an argument that’s set forth by the the lower schools and then the rebuttal from the higher schools, right? So the argument from the lower schools’ perspective states that if you guys say that all phenomena aren’t established by their nature or don’t exist because of their nature, then what is it that we see?
What is it that our perceptions can see when we look at things? Doesn’t the fact that they don’t exist truly contradict what we see or what we hear when we’re dealing with phenomena? That’s their argument. So if we can see something with our eyes, and we see it, and if we can hear something with our ears, and we hear that, or if we taste something and we can actually experience the taste, or when we can feel something, then we can actually experience the feeling. So what the Sautrantikas are saying is that saying that that is illusory-like or isn’t truly established contradicts our experience of those.
And they’re saying, but we can feel if we can feel it and we can see it or we can smell it, then it’s there. So answer that comes back from the Madhyamikas, that is the consequentialist school is that, okay, even though we can see, we can see things, we can hear things, we can smell things, even we can do all these things, and they are validated by our consciousness. What we’re actually validating is the convention of these things. The literal translation would be something like what everybody says it is. We’re we’re validating a a convention as opposed to validating the actual nature of the thing, which we are unable to validate because we only have a limited experience because we don’t have meditative insight.
So what we’re seeing is is something that exists, and it’s a valid thing that we’re seeing, but we don’t see its final nature. Therefore, there is no fault in what the Madhyamikas is saying. That’s what their argument is. So as ordinary beings, ordinary beings don’t have in their continuum consciousnesses that are capable of seeing the final way that things exist. Therefore, though we can validly cognize things outside us as existence, we can’t see their final mode of existence, which is actually emptiness.
We can’t validate that. So when we’re talking about validly cognizing things, we’re only talking about validly cognizing their conventional mode of existence. As the Buddha said in the king of meditation sūtra? This one? The mighty one.
The king of meditation sūtra. He said that the eye consciousness, the ear consciousness, and so forth aren’t capable of valid cognition. They are only capable of valid relative cognition. So and then then it talks about another quote from the, you know, Entry to the Middle Way by Candrakīrti. And he says in his quote that if ordinary beings can see the final mode of existence, then there’s no difference between ordinary beings and Ārya beings, which is people who have realized emptiness directly.
So therefore, if there’s no difference between beings who have realized emptiness directly and those who haven’t realized emptiness directly, then there’s no such thing as an Ārya being. There’s no such thing as someone who has realized emptiness. There’s no differentiation there. And as Gestrel said, then there’s also no point for us to do anything, because we’ve already realized everything. We’ve already realized emptiness directly.
So that’s the way that is what the reason why it’s described to be for that idea not to work from this text. So, therefore, people who can’t comprehend things properly can’t validly cognize things properly. So people who haven’t understood emptiness can’t validly cognize emptiness. They can’t see emptiness properly because they don’t understand what it is. So therefore, they can’t be relied upon to to have a valid cognition of something that they don’t understand.
So the Candrakīrti was a a Madhyamaka philosopher. So therefore, everything he said in his quote, he said from the point of view of Madhyamaka, and then we said to defend Madhyamaka. The next section has the them saying that the hang on. Sorry. So therefore Okay.
So now we have going back to the argument from the Sautrāntika’s point of view or the Hīnayāna’s point of view, and they’re saying things have to be established by their nature because worldly beings see them and say that and see them and experience them and label them as being established by their nature. So then the answer that comes back from the