Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Why do we fight back hard against people who hurt us, yet never apply antidotes to the emotions that have caused far greater harm since beginningless time? Geshe Pema Tsering opens this 44.5-minute commentary on Śāntideva’s Bodhisattva Way of Life with that contrast, using the image of a warrior’s battle scar worn with pride. He then works through verses 142–146 on the mode of abandoning disturbing emotions: recognizing them the moment they arise, holding firm resolve against them, and seeing why outer enemies can resurface while fully uprooted disturbing emotions never return. He introduces wisdom realizing emptiness as the root antidote, explaining that disturbing emotions only appear inherently existent — like images on a screen — but are not. The session ends with Q&A on handling food craving during practice and a comic story about Tibetan nomads visiting the Potala.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 Guide 2002 05 16.mp3
UUID: 69e145ab-47cf-442c-ac42-6ffe8ae5b0fe
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-05-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.5 minutes
Words: ~2,889
That really hurts what yeah. That that really hurts you. And then as a result of that, you you feel very angry and and and hatred towards the person. And your mind you’re not relaxed, and even at nighttime you lose your sleep and thinking of many many tricks or many ideas to cause harm to that person, hardly rest. So instead doing this, one should not do this, instead of doing this, should try to think and look for ideas to abandon or harm the disturbing emotions because they are the worse than the other ordinary enemies because these disturbing emotions from the very beginning, beginninglessness of the time, you know, been harming you and took you to lower rebirth many times, if you do not abandon those, they will still take you to the lower rebirth.
Disturbing emotions one has to work for oneself through applying antidotes. If does not apply any antidote towards the disturbing emotion they will never be defeated and never be abandoned. It’s not like defeating other the ordinary enemies. For the ordinary enemies, sometimes you don’t have to apply anything or you don’t have to retaliate it can be possible that your enemy could be killed by other person or it happens that the enemy will die according to his karma by himself or herself and you don’t have to work. Eventually they will disappear.
But for these disturbing emotions you have to do it by yourself. We need to have a lot of patience, not wait for them to go by themselves. It is true that we do completely opposite because, you know, for for those ordinary enemies, you know, when it when you have a fight, we have a fight with the other enemy. And we know that they’re trying to harm us and they come through the weapons, swords and so forth and you have in your hands as well and you know they will hit you but you’re still willing to take whatever the suffering that come and wanted to do something, which is called harming the other person. And whereas for disturbing emotions, we never apply antidote and we happily or willingly take them as yeah, take take them.
So which is not the right way of doing it. So therefore, you know, so so you try to apply antidote and to disturbing emotions and get rid of them and to do so it’s quite hard but should be very willingly and have courage to work, courage, have courage to abandon the disturbing emotions no matter how much time it takes and it is suitable to work and one should do so. So we act differently or or or opposite in our normal life. Here it looks like the ancient Tibetan system, you know. We people consider somebody who has a big scar on the head or somewhere, you know, thinking he he’d been in the battle or a fight and and somebody hit him and but he destroyed the person and and they say he’s a brave and so forth that we consider as well as person him or herself in a field with pride in the public.
Yes. You know, it was a good fight. And even though, you know. So in order to attain enlightenment or Buddhahood, we need to have the huge accumulation of of virtues or merit and abandoned the the obscurations. And and and yeah.
Abandon all the obscurations and and to do so and by doing such and we do practice to abandon the obscurations and collect the of merits, we never worked so hard because we’re thinking it happens because of these stubborn emotions, it never let us work hard to do positive things, because by, for example, doing practice to accumulate merits and the abandoned obscurations and disturbing emotions disturbs us in thinking, this I think I should stop here and have a rest. So because we see in our real life that those the people, the fishermen, butchers, farmers, businessmen and women, and so forth, they work very hard. And it’s all because of their own benefits just looking for temporary livings, but and they just undergo huge hardships. In reality, one does not really need to do so because work for this present life is just for now, eventually one has to pass and leave this present life. So instead of working very hard to sustain this rebirth, one should do very hard to more effort on towards the attainment of liberation and enlightenment because and it is appropriate to do so because because because those happiness the happiness of liberation and enlightenment are are the everlasting happiness.
So therefore one should try to one should practice as much as one can in meditation and so forth and during the meditation or practice one feels tired and so forth, and of course one will because one is not just working for the happiness of this present lifetime, because one is working to attain the happiness of the liberation and the enlightenment, so therefore it is of course one should and one will and it is hard, hard work to do so, but by knowing this think about at that at the time you feel tired, about that how much one has to work hard to attain the happiness of this life itself, but here oneself is working for the everlasting happiness, the happiness of liberation and enlightenment, and of course one will feel tired, but should try to rejoice that it is good I’m feeling tired because I’m working for a very big aim, that everlasting happiness and feel rejoice that you feel very tired but instead of stopping the practice, you should feel rejoice, you feel you feel very tired and put more, develop more courage and continue with the practice. So what we do is we always cut it.
We never develop bodhicitta altruistic intention and never apply antidote towards the disturbing emotions. So we know that the altruistic we develop altruistic intention and all the time in every day as well as we know the disturbing emotion harms us but we never apply antidote towards disturbing emotions. So and that becomes like we are doing it intentionally even though they harm us but we don’t apply antidote. By doing so knowingly it’s very sad and yeah, it’s like the person is but doing so is like a crazy, So therefore now we have seen the disadvantage or the faults of the disturbing emotions, therefore should now try in try to abandon those disturbing emotions in all the time. Through action as well as in thoughts.
You know that the disturbing emotion is to be abandoned now? If if you want to abandon an entirely disturbing emotion, you probably won’t be able to sit at the moment. They are not meant to be abandoned there, in a way. Now towards the third division subdivision, which is the mode of abandoning disturbing emotions. And which this is shown by the next five verses.
Is it a five? Yep. One two yep. One forty two, forty three, forty four, forty five, forty six. So therefore yeah.
So whenever disturbing emotions comes, first one should let it let it come and while it’s coming, you should realize, you should make one’s understand now this is the disturbing emotions and and by knowing it completely then grasp that disturbing yep grasp that disturbing emotions and then defeat it straight away. So yep, and when it comes recognize that this is the disturbing emotions and hold a grudge, isn’t it the word, towards the disturbing emotions and get rid of it and there is a little bit of debate in the next line saying, when we said they hold the grudge to disturbing emotions, if asked is that grudge is the real grudge? Is that the word grudge? Holding a grudge? Yeah.
If the question asked whether that grudge is a real grudge or not, it but it’s not the real grudge. Generally the grudge is a disturbing emotion but when we hold grudge on disturbing emotions and knowing that this is the disturbing emotion and do not want to develop the disturbing emotion and trying to get rid of the disturbing emotion and that grudge is not a real grudge, it’s not a disturbing emotion because it is the antidote to disturbing emotion. Should not take serious towards those action even even somebody cuts, kills you or cuts your body or chop your head and burns. These are not just it’s not not it’s not a great enemy because it just hurts only for this present life. So the real enemy is the disturbing emotions which has been harming you from the very beginninglessness of the time.
And so if one wants to harm anybody it should be that disturbing emotion and not just harm, try to look in many ways to do your worst to this disturbing emotion and try and let this those disturbing emotion never to come back. So yeah. Defeating the enemy of disturbing emotion is very hard. We always fail to challenge the disturbing emotions. Disturbing emotions, the enemy of disturbing emotion is not like the ordinary enemy.
Ordinary enemy can be defeated for a time being, like you can either defeat in the court case, or kill, or get rid of the person from the area or the region, but sooner or later it can be possible that person lives in the other country or other place and have his own children or had lots of gangs and so forth and later on take revenge or come back. Whereas disturbing emotions is not like that. It is very hard to abandon the enemy of disturbing emotions, but but when you once you when once you defeat those disturbing enemy of disturbing emotions and they are not like other enemy, they won’t come back. So therefore you should get rid of those disturbing emotions from the root or uproot it completely and by abandoning this, once you remove the disturbing emotion from its root, then they will never come back. Because whenever you abandon the disturbing emotion completely, you have attained the liberation or nirvana.
And attain, in order to abandon the disturbing emotion from its root, one needs to have one needs to have wisdom realizing emptiness. So at this stage, we are not, yep, able to abandon disturbing emotions because of because of lacking the wisdom realizing emptiness. So it happens because of not having the wisdom realizing emptiness. So therefore, in order to attain, in order to abandon the disturbing emotion one needs to have the wisdom realizing emptiness. So this shows that wisdom realizing emptiness is very important to cultivate.
If one thinks the disturbing emotions are comes from the causes and conditions, as well as their If one says the disturbing emotion are causes and can come from causes and condition, as well as they are inherently existent, therefore we can’t or one can’t abandon the disturbing emotion. If one says so, If one says so, then it is not true because the person is saying that the disturbing emotions are inherent exist because they are they come from the causes and condition. So what we say here is because they are they come from the causes and condition, therefore they are not inherently existent because if they are inherently exist then it either it should exist in the external matters like a vast or within the internal matters like the five sense power or organs but they are not, and they are not between the internal and external matters or objects. So therefore those disturbing emotions are not inherent existence. So the disturbing emotions for us, it appears for us, they appear as inherently exist.
But in reality they are not. They are not inherently exist, they are like the same same as pictures on the TV and so forth. For us, appeared as inherently exist, but they are not. They are free of inherent existence. So therefore, you know, should not develop any fear towards the disturbing emotions because they they appear they appear to us as inherent inherently exist, but in reality they are not.
Therefore should not feel fear towards disturbing emotion. They can be abandoned from the root. Therefore, you should see them as free of inherent existence, and cultivate the wisdom, realizing emptiness to abandon, eradicate the disturbing emotions. So therefore it is suitable to work very hard or no matter how much one has to work to attain to perfect the wisdom, the perfection of wisdom. Mhmm.
Or or which is the wisdom realizing emptiness. So it is very sad and crazy to go after disturbing emotion or cultivate disturbing emotion knowingly that they cause they cause harm towards oneself and lead oneself into the lower rebirths like hell realms and so forth, so should not let oneself become a slave or a servant of the disturbing emotion. Do you think you can have a of disturbing emotion? We’ll give it a go. Yes, please.
Food. Yeah. Yeah. Fruit or food? Okay.
Okay. Oh, mud cake. Yeah. Yeah. What?
Yeah. Yep. What you can do is you please don’t see chocolate kind of mud cake or something dirty. What you need to do is at that moment one should not eat whatever the food is, food with the craving on it, instead you can you should think that I shall eat this because by eating this food it will sustain my body or my life or my body, which is to do practice and so forth. But thinking in that way eating the food, that is done without any craving, so it should be okay.
Or if one practices so called the deity yoga, deity yoga then one can eat as offering by visualizing oneself as deity and then making offering to the deities. Yeah. Does it gain any merit from that? For for yourself or for the insect? For fly.
For the fly? Yeah. Okay. Probably not. It’s make dirty, you know.
Probably not because because the the fly, you know, land on those probably after food or something and just stuck there unfortunately and probably not any virtues for that. Probably there’s nothing different there. Once there was this I think we told you before, there was it’s about a joke anyway, and the two nomads from the Tibet area, they went to Potala to see the Dalai Lama’s palace, and they’re just going in, they don’t know how to walk on the stairs and everything. So it’s like said, it’s a Potala palace and So what the two nomads traveled on a pilgrimage, so it reached the Potala palace and they have never seen a huge space, know, so they just stand at the bottom of the stairs and how they’re going to get up. And one person comes and goes up the stairs and he just, oh, it should be like that.
And they just hold their hands and their legs on the stairs and walk up. And then and then what? They went all through the entire building and they have a little fence at the edge of the building and the fence made out of stone and so forth and so forth. So there’s a little gap between like a little pillar between what’s this? What do you call?
Anyway, so little stands and little gaps between the stands. And because it’s so up in the hill, I just wanted to look down the town. The person one of the person put his head through the gap and he had a nice, you know, view the entire city. And later on now his friend came and said, alright, let’s go. So he just, and he tried to take his neck back and he stuck there, couldn’t take it out?
So another person said, and he tried so hard that he couldn’t take it back. So finally now he was giving his last word to a friend, sending message to his family down there. Well now I don’t think, you know, there’s a point waiting for me, you can go home and please give this message to my family. That I died very badly, that my neck stuck or my head stuck between whatever that thing is, but tell them I died in a very holy place. And then the friend said, no, no, don’t say that.
How did you get in? You know, he said, I just put my head in like this and it just came out straight away. So I was just thinking about the water ball, know. Know, died very badly but died in a nice place. Alright.
Sorry about it. How how can one know the disturbing emotions? If one apply antidotes regularly or every day, then it is quite obvious that one can understand in comparing the past and the present how much disturbing emotions, attachment and so forth one develops in a day or in a week, and and that is for the person who instantly or continuously apply antidote, not just for an hour or, you know, some days and then not, one can hardly know.