Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using the image of a vase with a hole that loses all its water, Geshe Pema Tsering opens this 44-minute commentary by grounding mindfulness in doctrinal necessity: without mental alertness, even vast stores of virtue and learning drain away. He first explains why wisdom realizing emptiness and bodhicitta are both indispensable for liberation — bodhicitta being more accessible and the primary vehicle for accumulating merit — then leads a brief meditation on altruistic intention. The main body works through five verses on the disadvantages of lacking mental alertness, using a watchman metaphor for how the mind must monitor its own movements, before turning to practical methods for sustaining mindfulness: keeping good company, recalling one’s teacher’s instructions, respecting vows, and cultivating the awareness that Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are always watching.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 19 Guide 2002 06 13.mp3
UUID: b9a11eda-96ae-4708-bb4c-663af9f19988
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-06-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.5 minutes
Words: ~2,422
Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. The Lord Buddha in the King of the Prayers stated that by training training in the wisdom and method, that wisdom realizing emptiness and the method, the bodhicitta altruistic intention, and through this, through the power of practicing those two, the wisdom realizing emptiness and the bodhicitta altruistic intention, may I be able to purify all the negativities or non virtuous and obscurations. The reason why one wishes to the wishes to free or purify all the negativities and the obscuration is because if one if one completely abandons all the negativities and the obscurations, then one becomes enlightened. So that prayer is is is wishing to attain enlightenment.
Wishful prayer to attain enlightenment by saying through training in the six perfection here that’s meant the wisdom, the perfection of wisdom which is wisdom realizing emptiness and the bodhicitta altruistic intention because, but through this, through practicing the or cultivating the wisdom realizing emptiness, one ends the the the cyclic cyclic existence. And and through bodhicitta, one ends the so called the solitary peace. So that passage or a verse comes from the text called The King of the Prayers which we always recite. So likewise, it is important for us to practice the purification which is purifying all the negativities and obscurations and so to purify all the negativities is through training in the ethical of ten ethical discipline of not committing ten non virtuous ten non virtuous and obscuration, which is as for the obscuration, there are obscurations of two which are the obscuration towards omniscience and obscuration towards liberation or arhathood. And so in order to purify all this obscuration, one has to have a wisdom realizing emptiness because wisdom realizing emptiness can directly counteract those two obscurations and purify them.
And in order to do so, or in order to develop the wisdom realizing emptiness, we need numbers of collections of the virtuous or merit. So in terms of merit, then practicing the bodhicitta or altruistic intention is the best method of cultivating a huge amount of virtues. So therefore, for us who seek liberation and enlightenment and in order to attain those two, the arhat or liberation from cyclic existence and the attainment of enlightenment, the wisdom realizing emptiness and bodhicitta are inevitable. One has, in order to attain this, those are required. Therefore, it is very important to cultivate those two.
And for emptiness, emptiness is a very subtle topic that eventually it is very difficult to establish emptiness itself. It needs hundreds of logical reasons to establish or to attain, have the proper understanding on the emptiness. And so without having a great collection of virtues or merit, wisdom realizing emptiness is very hard to attain. Therefore, it is very subtle. And the bodhicitta very important to have to collect the huge amount of virtues and merits.
bodhicitta is not like wisdom realizing emptiness. It is not that difficult. And if we train or meditate on bodhicitta then it not something like the emptiness that’s really hard to understand. It can be obtained as well as through our meditation and training we can experience or familiarize ourselves with altruistic intention, bodhicitta. So therefore, those two are very important.
So what we need to do here is all these motherly sentient beings are same as oneself. They are wishing happiness and do not want suffering. So because they are very kind to us, it is our responsibility to take the responsibility, the burden of freeing all motherly sentient beings from the entire sufferings and bring them to the state of ultimate happiness or Buddhahood. So for that purpose, one should hear, do a short meditation on altruistic intention wishing them that in order to, I shall practice this in order to free all these motherly sentient beings from the suffering and bring them to the state of ultimate and to do so, it is the only enlightened beings, or it is the only enlightened beings can fulfill such wishes. Therefore I shall strive to attain enlightenment for the sake of motherly sentient beings on such a mind, which is altruistic intention, we shall now do a short meditation.
So the last week, we started the topic called how to apply the mental alertness or mindfulness. And for that is two: the disadvantage of yeah, it has explaining in brief and explaining in detail. So we finished the first part. Now on to the second one, which is and which is going the disadvantage of not having the mental alertness or or mindfulness. Sorry.
It says the the explaining in details, it has two subdivisions, which is first one is the the disadvantage of not having mental alertness and the second one is explaining and how to apply the mental alertness or yeah. And about the first one of the which is the disadvantage of not having mental alertness has been explained in the next five verses. So I’m sure you know the text by heart. Yeah. Where have you stopped last one?
Yes. Starting from twenty fourth. First twenty fourth. One two three four and five twenty eight. So the the what it means is here that the person who is disturbed by the sufferings or illness like cancer or jaundice or so called lung in Tibetan, you know, yep.
And those person who are disturbed with illness can’t do the work like in a farmer or in the field and cannot do the work, physical job because of being tortured by diseases. So likewise, a person without the mental alertness and yeah mental alertness the person without mental alertness will not understand or the person without mental alertness, the practicing the virtuous, the text and so forth will not be very effective and even for those who have cultivated numbers of sources of virtue or numbers of virtues in the past and by not having mental alertness will gradually, will be all the knowledge will be diminished or we’ll lose knowledge because of because it is for example, it is like the vase with the hole at the bottom that no matter how much water you pour in and the later on, sooner or later, all the water will be released and it will remain empty. Fast. So so not only that, those who have the great knowledge of of of hearing or listening, contemplation and meditation. So no matter how much knowledge one has, later on, without the mental by lacking mental alertness, later on the person’s mind will be deluded by the disturbing emotions and their mind become so called like filthy and later on as a result of those, as a result of not having this all all this happens because of not having mental alertness and and later on as a result of this one may be take one may be born in the lower realms.
Because what? Yeah. Because of mind being deluded by the disturbing emotions. So therefore, so the one should try very hard to cultivate the mental alertness which is very important in order to protect one’s virtuous. So if one does not have the mental alertness then what happens is no matter how much virtuous, or collections of virtues, merit, and listening, and so forth, one have yeah, one have had in the past.
And later on, because of not having the proper mental alertness or mindfulness, then later on the person being subdued or influenced by the disturbing emotions like attachment, hatred, and anger, and so forth, deprived and so forth. Because of being under the influence of those disturbing emotions, one starts to cultivate the non virtuous. And as a result of this, one will not. One will lose all the virtuous one have attained as well as in future it in future one will not engage or one will not cultivate the virtuous because of being under the influence of disturbing emotions So it is like a very rich person whose possessions or money let’s say a person has two hundred thousand dollars or one hundred thousand dollars and then later on, you know, somebody steals the money, then the person is no longer rich but poor. So it will happen like that.
So therefore it is very important to cultivate put enthusiastic efforts to cultivate mental alertness. So and it’s very difficult time here. The and drenpa in Tibetan words, which are more or less similar. But the shes bzhin here is mental alertness, which I’ve been telling here, that yep, using the terms mental alertness, which means that the mental alertness is the one that it’s a mind which is like a watchman, you know, keep checking all the time where one’s mind is after other, whether it’s going after the non virtuous part or, yeah, non virtuous or virtuous part. So it is the mental alertness that examines or watches the mind all the time.
And there is other word called which is drenpa, the recollection. So it is very important to have mental alertness, which is like a watchman. And it and so if there is not a no guard here in the house then the thieves can break in and break through the house. So likewise the mental alertness is very important which watches one’s mind all the time the way it is going. Either it’s on positive side or negative or is it somebody stealing one’s mind, whether the thieves are coming, the thieves of disturbing emotions like attachment, anger and so forth.
If there comes and without sorry. If one does not have the mental alertness then one will not know when the attachment desire attachment, hatred and so forth are coming. Once they come, then one’s mind being under the influence of those non virtuous, disturbing emotions and one will collect the numbers of non virtuous that will destroy all the virtuous and that will destroy one’s merit. So, yeah, the mental alertness checks, examines one’s mind, guide whether the disturbing emotions are coming or not or the wisdom, sorry, where one’s mind is after. And after having known that, so it watches all the time.
And when the disturbing emotions and attachment and so forth are coming, then so called the recollection or mindfulness protects the disturbing emotions from coming into one’s mind. So with this through this, like mental alertness, watching and the recollection or the mindfulness and protects one’s mind. And then through this, one should train in the practices of so called taking and abandoning. So and now here, the second one is so called how to apply the method of cultivating or applying mindfulness, which has been which is explained in the next five verse starting from twenty eight, isn’t it, now? So the mindfulness is which is by that after having applied or developed the mental alertness which examines, which checking where one’s mind is going, and then through this, once one’s mind goes toward positive actions or towards the virtuous part, then the mindfulness protects that mind and let it be with the virtuous.
So therefore by doing so, the applying this mental alertness and the mindfulness protecting one’s mind and letting it be with the virtuous side all the time. And even one does so, but still the mind will scatter. It goes around. And it happens. It will go.
And whenever such things happen, then the mindfulness and the mental alertness should recall you know, sufferings of the lower rebirths and how the attachment, hatred, and so forth, emotions will cause us harm to oneself. And by knowing this, then recollect those with that mind back into the positive thoughts. So the method of applying our mindfulness is is very important to one’s company is very important. For example, being with one’s spiritual teachers, the proper friends or good friends or especially the spiritual friends should also recollect or recall the instructions of the teachings given by one’s teachers and thinking about the results of the non virtuous actions, knowing that the results of the non virtuous actions are suffering by doing so, as well as should have great respect and faith in one’s the training, precepts which are like individual vows one has taken, have respect in one’s own, the vows or value one’s vows so that one can be very mindful to protect that vows and so forth. So by doing so, the people who does such things or like being with good friends, recalling the teachings and so forth will always be mindful and those who not with the proper friends or a company then so called the non virtuous friends and by dealing with those, it always hard to be very mindful.
So yep. And and also one should remember that there are the numbers of Buddhas in the past and their numbers have attained enlightenment or there are numbers of Buddhas of the ten directions as well as Bodhisattvas. The Buddhas are enlightened and they have completed entire perfected themselves and free from all the obscurations attained enlightenment. And they can have seen all the truths directly. So therefore there is nothing which cannot be seen by Buddhas.
So by knowing this, one should be aware that in all the time, in each and every action whatever one do, there are Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who are always watching over you. So therefore is but should apply all this mental alertness and the mindfulness by making sure that Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are watching over you, that you will not do anything which will make you feel embarrassed and yeah, embarrassed as well as So in terms of saying that Buddhas and Bodhisattvas have been watching you for whole twenty four hours, and by knowing this, then make sure for one’s own purpose that you should not feel embarrassed that whatever you are doing, no matter who else is watching. But I don’t have to feel any embarrassed because I’m doing the right thing. And in terms of others that it’s still okay that I haven’t done anything to cause harm to others. So by knowing this, applying, being very mindful by thinking that everyone is watching at you And and and and to this, you know, apply this mental alertness and the mindfulness, making sure that you are doing the right thing.
Yep. Nice. So by doing so, then yeah. By doing so. So by doing so