Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 46-minute opening session, Geshe Pema Tsering launches a series on Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra with a deliberate paradox: self-cherishing — the instinct we rely on for protection — is the root cause of every samsaric rebirth and every moment of suffering we have ever experienced. Drawing on two slogans from the Seven Points of Mind Training, “drive all blames into one” and “meditate on the kindness of all,” he argues that working for others is not self-sacrifice but the only approach that actually delivers what self-cherishing has always failed to provide. He then introduces the text itself: explains why the title means “how to enter the behavior of bodhisattvas,” identifies the accompanying commentary by Geltsabji (a student of Lama Tsongkhapa), and begins working through the opening homage, unpacking the praise of a Buddha’s enlightened body, speech, and mind.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 WBS 2005 02 01.mp3
UUID: 80fbbd9f-31c1-4bb5-8584-a845eaea4a24
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life 2005 Feb-Mar (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-02-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~4,444
Oh, yeah. So This evening we’re going to start our teachings on our Bodhicaryāvatāra by Śāntideva or the way of the Bodhisattva. But before we start listening to teachings on this, we really need to develop the right motivation. So whatever we do depends on the motivation. If we are not motivated to do something, we don’t do it.
So in this way, we need to remember how important our motivation for doing anything is. So the the best motivation for us to develop is the motivation of bodhicitta. Now in order for us to develop this motivation, we need to stop thinking of ourselves. Because Geshe-la said if we watch the way we think, most of the time when we do something, it’s for ourselves. It’s for our own happiness.
It’s for our own comfort. It’s for our own well-being. And we don’t tend to think of others. We just tend to think of what’s going to benefit ourselves. And so this is why in the mind training, the seven points of mind training, he says drive all blames into one and meditate on the kindness of all.
So we need to remember that all the problems that we have, all of the negative situations that we’ve created come about because of our self-cherishing. This is what the the one is when we should drive all blames into one, should drive it into the to our we should blame every suffering we have on our self-cherishing. This self-cherishing is something that we we have ingrained in our habit, in the way we are. We have habituated ourselves so strongly to this self-cherishing, this idea that we are incredibly important that all our thoughts spontaneously focus on what’s good for us, what’s good for ourselves, what’s going to make us happy. It’s difficult for us to focus on what’s going to make others happy, how we alleviate the suffering of others.
This is what we need to train ourselves to do, is to get rid of self-cherishing and to start to focus on others. Now if we want to practice the Mahāyāna, we want to practice the greater vehicle, the vehicle that takes us to Buddhahood, then we need to do this. And this teaching Bodhicaryāvatāra or the Way of the Bodhisattva is a Mahāyāna text. So we should try and develop a motivation that accords with the text that we’re looking at. So this expression, drive all blames into one, refers again to our self-cherishing, viewing ourselves as being important and holding onto this idea of a self, of a solid, inherently existent self, and then considering that self as the most important thing in existence, the thing that we have to focus on the most.
When it says drive all blames into one, it’s referring to the fact that if we want to know what or who is to blame for our experience of Samsāra, experiences in saṃsāra. If we wanna know who or what is to blame for our experience in the hell the rebirth that people take in their hell realms, the spirit realms, the animal realms as humans or as gods, and in this continual going through this continual process of being born, living, then dying, then being born again, then we need to look at self-cherishing. You need to understand that it’s through self-cherishing, it’s through considering ourselves to be the most important thing and holding onto this idea of a self, right, an Ātman, that we perpetuate this cycle. It’s through grasping onto ourselves in this way that we experience suffering. And so this is the thing that we should blame for any negative experience, any rebirth that we take in Samsāra.
We don’t tend to develop the causes because of sorry. Because of self-cherishing, we don’t tend to develop the causes for liberation or for Buddhahood. We only create the causes of what’s called throwing karma or the karma that perpetuates saṃsāra. So we only create reasons to be reborn in more suffering existence as opposed to creating the causes for release from saṃsāra, for liberation and Buddhahood. Because of this strong habit that we’ve had since beginningless time to view ourselves as important, because this acts as a base for us, for all the actions we do, it means that destroying that habit and developing bodhicitta is something that doesn’t happen easily.
It’s something that we need to work at, that is quite difficult. So the reason that we don’t tend to develop causes for getting out of Samsāra and we tend to perpetuate our situation in saṃsāra is because we don’t look at what causes saṃsāra and the faults of perpetuating saṃsāra. We don’t look at the faults of self-cherishing, that is to say. We don’t look at the problem with considering ourselves to be the most important thing in existence and working around that idea. We don’t look at the problems with this view.
If we started to look at the problems with this view and we focus on the problems with viewing ourselves as being the most important things around, then we can start to see the problems with this and how it actually causes us suffering. We don’t see it. We don’t usually see self-cherishing as causing us suffering. We usually see self-cherishing as being what makes us happy. But if we actually look at the process of what’s happening, what makes us suffer is the fact that we’ve created the karma.
We’ve accumulated the karma and created the conditions to suffer. Now the reason that we have created the karma and conditions to suffer is because we’ve cherished ourselves so strongly. If we are able to start focusing on others, if we’re able to start loosening our grasp on ourselves, our grasp on this idea of holding onto the idea of how important we are, then we will stop creating as a strong karma for experiencing suffering. If we look at it this way, then in actual fact, even though we may instinctually think or have this instinct that looking after ourselves is the best thing to do, in actual fact, self-cherishing or looking after ourselves is the worst thing we can do for ourselves because it creates karma that causes us to suffer. And it’s this suffering that we want to get rid of when we try and protect ourselves from suffering or try and think about or or engage in self-cherishing in the first place.
But we don’t think in this way. If we keep thinking in this way and we keep looking at what actually makes us happy and what is actually going to make us suffer, then we’ll develop an understanding of this. If we don’t look at things in this way, if we don’t analyze in this fashion, then we’re going to continually perpetuate the causes for saṃsāra. If we look at the way that our mind works at the moment, then we’ll start to notice that we get up in the morning and we start doing things and we keep doing things all day and then before we go to bed at night we figure out what we’re going to do the next day and then the next day we get up and we keep doing things we we start doing things very early in the morning and we finish doing things at night alright we’re constantly doing something or another and if we look at the reason why we’re doing all these things, we’re doing all of these things, then we’ll find we’re doing all of these things to make ourselves happy, to make ourselves comfortable, to make ourselves feel good about something.
And we’re not looking at why we’re we’re not thinking about what effect us doing these things actually has. We’re continually motivated by this idea of making ourselves happy, but we haven’t thought about how the best way what what the best way to make ourselves happy is. So we’re constantly motivated by this idea of somehow getting a happiness or some kind of advantage for ourselves. And by by this motivation, we are constantly working. We’re constantly we constantly do things.
But if we look at this motivation that we have for doing these things, it’s not even about what’s going to make us happy in future lives. It’s about what’s going to make us happy in this life. And if we’re focusing on what’s going make us happy in this life, and we’re not focusing on what’s going to help others or benefit us in future lives, then nothing that we do is actually going to be a cause for us to experience happiness. We may think it’s happiness, we may think that the experiences that we have, that we get out of working this hard are happiness, but they’re not true happiness. They’re not stable happiness.
If we want true, ultimate stable happiness, then the only two types of happiness that we should be working towards is Buddhahood or nirvana or liberation. So we’re constantly motivated by this idea of making ourselves making ourselves happy. Now and by being constantly motivated by this idea of making ourselves happy actually means that we are creating the causes to experience suffering. If we are constantly trying to figure out ways to make ourselves happy in the short term, it means we’re ignoring the long term and we’re ignoring other people. Now we may try we may figure out that by doing something positive, we’ll experience we’ll positive results and try and create the causes for the experience of happiness in terms of the effect of actions, of cause and effect.
So we may try and create positive causes so we experience results. But if our motivation isn’t to get out of saṃsāra or to achieve Buddhahood, then even the positive things that we do, we will only experience the results of suffering because they will manifest in our lives as the suffering of change. That is what we usually call happiness, but it’s actually samsaric happiness and isn’t stable, isn’t something we can rely on. Now this word karma, this is when we think about what it is we’re accumulating in karma, where we’re doing something where you know, we’re doing something that we have to experience the results of. Now the word karma or leh in Tibetan is actually a word that etymologically means action.
So if we’re thinking I’m creating karma or I’m not creating karma, it’s not the way it works. Everything that we do, everything that we think, everything that we say is karma. Any action that we perform, any thought that we have that’s an activity of mind or any speech that we anything that we say that’s an activity of our speech or any physical action that we perform is all karma. The word karma just means action. So in Tibetan, the word for work is leka and the word for karma is le, and Geshe-la said..
So we shouldn’t disassociate these two things. We shouldn’t think I’m doing something and that’s something mundane and karma is this other concept that doesn’t somehow relate to my activities or the work that I’m doing, the things I’m doing because the things that we do are our karma. The things that we do are our activities. And there’s no distinction between this idea of karma and the things that we do, because the things that we do are our karma. So since beginning last time up until now, all the things that we’ve done, most of all of the actions that we perform, our strongest habit in terms of what we do is to think of ourselves, is to cherish ourselves, is consider ourselves before all others, and to work or create karma or do something based on that idea.
All that has led us to is different types of suffering and the different levels of samsaric existence and different rebirths we experience, different types of suffering. So when Geshe Chekawa in the seven points of mind training says drive all blames into one. The one that he’s talking about, the thing that we need to look at to that we need to blame for all our problems, for every negative thing that happens to us is this self-cherishing. We may think it’s external to us. We may think that it’s other people doing things to us.
But in fact, the thing that we need to blame is our self-cherishing. So the second part of this and two slogans from the seven points of mind training meditate or remember the kindness of all. Now what this is referring to is this fact that we’ve come to the understanding or we’ve been talking about how self-cherishing only creates suffering. How all our problems, the difficult situations that we have experienced since beginning of time can be blamed on self-cherishing. So then we need to look at what it is that will cause us happiness.
What it is that can help us create the causes to get out of saṃsāra, to achieve Buddhahood. And the way that we achieve Buddhahood, the way that we work to get out of saṃsāra is to create positive karma, to work positive way. And the way that we do this is by getting rid of self-cherishing and focusing on others. And so this one, says meditate or remind yourself of the kindness of all of of others or the kindness of all is because anytime that we experience something positive, it’s through the kindness of others. Anytime that we do something positive, positive action is relieving the suffering of others, is working towards the elimination of all suffering.
Just in the same way as we don’t want to experience suffering, no other beings want to experience suffering either. So if we recognize this and we’re working towards the elimination of that suffering, then that’s the way that we can actually get out of saṃsāra. Because of this, we really need to meditate on the kindness of all beings because by focusing on all beings, by thinking of others, then we’re creating the causes to get out of saṃsāra. So in the same way that we have wanted to be happy, but because we have looked at achieving our own happiness through self-cherishing and it hasn’t worked, Hang on. In the same way that we wanted to be happy, but we’ve tried to make ourselves happy by cherishing ourselves and it hasn’t worked, other sentient beings have done the same thing.
They’ve also tried to make themselves happy by cherishing themselves and it hasn’t worked for them either and they are experiencing suffering through the self-cherishing that they hold onto so tightly. So if we want to eliminate other beings suffering, we have to eliminate their self-cherishing. And the only way that we can eliminate their self-cherishing is by showing them how to do that, how to see the emptiness of the self that they’re clinging to and how to start focusing on others. So if we can develop this idea, if we can develop this idea that we want to eliminate all suffering in all sentient beings by eliminating the cause of that suffering, their self-cherishing. And in order to bring this about, we first of all need to get rid of our own self-cherishing so we can show them how to do it.
We want to work towards that state. This is actually in the mind of bodhicitta. This idea of getting rid of our own self-cherishing so we can show others how to be rid of self-cherishing, so we can lead so we can separate all other beings from suffering and show them how to create happiness for themselves is the mind of enlightenment, the bodhicitta. So if we train ourselves in this, this is what these two sentences drive all blames into one and meditate on the kindness of all these two slogans or sentences are about is what we should be training in. If we keep training in this, if we keep looking at the problems with cherishing ourselves and seeing how all sentient beings want to be happy, don’t know how to be happy, and how kind they’ve been to us even even if it’s just by being the basis on which we can develop positive karma or the basis on which we can now work towards Buddhahood, then we can stop thinking of ourselves as being the most important thing.
We can start working for others. We can keep coming back to these reasons that self-cherishing doesn’t help us. Other sentient beings are just the same as us. They don’t want to experience suffering. They want to be happy.
If we keep training ourselves in this, then our understanding of that idea or our realization of this reality will become subtler it will become more detailed and subtler and subtler and subtler until we have this unfabricated spontaneous experience of this truth. This will dawn on us and at that stage we won’t be working for our own benefit. We’ll see completely the pointlessness of working for our own benefit, how it doesn’t help us and how other beings also want to be happy. By working to the alleviation of their suffering, that we ourselves can become completely enlightened Buddhas. Now when that moment dawns, when we have that spontaneous, unfabricated experience of working, seeing of working for others and giving up self-cherishing, giving up working for our own benefit, that we become bodhisattvas.
And as bodhisattvas or beings of enlightenment, there’s no problem working for others. We we won’t we will we’ll be completely happy doing anything for other people. If we think about it, if we were working for others in the same way that we work for ourselves, then alleviating the suffering of others would have the same meaning as alleviating our own suffering at the moment, and we could actually work towards bringing this about, and we wouldn’t struggle with performing any positive action And when we do this, when we get to the stage where we’re able to completely abandon self-cherishing and have this intense cherishing for others, this intense feel for others, which means that we work for their benefit constantly and don’t focus on what’s good for us. At this stage, we actually come close towards achieving the best thing for ourselves as well. We’ve been trying to achieve the best possible situation for ourselves through self-cherishing since beyond the concept of time, and it hasn’t worked for us.
We’re still miserable. We’re still experiencing suffering. But if we actually start working for others, the the interesting thing is that that brings about the best situation for us. By working for others, by getting rid of our self-cherishing and focusing on others, it’s not as if we abandon our own best interests. It’s actually in our own best interest to do this.
By focusing on others, by abandoning self-cherishing, we work towards Buddhahood, and it’s in our best interest to work towards Buddhahood. By becoming Buddhas, we completely get rid of all of our faults and we completely we complete the accumulation of positive qualities. We have absolutely no suffering, and we are constantly of the utmost benefit to all beings. So it’s a strange twist because in order to benefit ourselves the most, we need to get over the idea of trying to help ourselves. So please focus on this idea.
In order to benefit all sentient beings, in order to show all sentient beings how not to suffer by pointing out the by being able to show them how to give up self-cherishing, I myself need to get to that stage first to be able to show them how to do it. So in order to bring this about, I need to work towards enlightenment. And as an enlightened being, I’ll be able to benefit all sentient beings. And whatever I do, may this be a may this working towards that goal. And so may studying and looking at this text be a cause for me to reach that goal?
May that be a a reason why I reached that goal? So please try and think or meditate on these, this idea for a couple of minutes. Okay. So Okay. So the text that we’re going to be looking at is A Bodhicaryāvatāra by Śāntideva.
Now is a, a in this book that Geshe-la and I have here is accompanied by a commentary by Geltsabji was a student of Lama Tsongkhapa. So he wrote a commentary to the root text of A Bodhicaryāvatāra. And this book that we have here has both the root text in it and together, both of them together. So it’s mainly focused on the text of Śāntideva’s A Bodhicaryāvatāra or the way of the Bodhisattva. Yes?
I was just saying, I said, I didn’t actually finish because this it’s called Chö Jug in Tibetan, but in English, think there’s about four or five different ways to translate the title. So, yeah, anything with whey and Bodhisattva is usually this book. There’s so many. The Tibetan words for this, A Bodhicaryāvatāra, starts off with the word that means a bodhisattva. And then it it says their behavior or their activities or their what they do and then it says how to enter into the behavior.
So it’s literally translated how to enter into the behavior of Bodhisattvas, how to behave like a Bodhisattva. Now when you talk about the behavior of Bodhisattvas, this usually refers to this what are called the six perfections, which is described in this text. Now so that’s the title of the root text. The title of the text Geltsabji has written as a commentary to this root text is called A Description of a Ford that leads to that leads to Bodhisattvas or that leads to literally the son of the victors, alright, which is another way of saying Bodhisattvas. Alright?
So a description that acts as a ford, you know, when you ford a river. Yeah? And that’s to take you to the behavior of Bodhisattvas or that leads you to becoming a Bodhisattva. So basically, what it means is this is a commentary on the Bodhicaryāvatāra. In brief, that’s what it means.
Okay. So then the next thing that we come to is a table of contents. So this gives us an overview of what’s going to be discussed in this text the whole way through. And the first section in this overview of what’s in the text is what’s called the now there’s this word that’s usually translated as prostration, but doesn’t always mean prostrations. So basically means dipping your head or somehow bending yourself to show respect.
It doesn’t necessarily mean being prostrate on the floor. Okay? So somehow showing respect to, it says bowing to the feet or putting yourself lower than those with great compassion who are pure and honorable. So what this is referring to is all Buddhist texts start off with a homage to the teachers the teachers of the author and the Buddhas. So in this case, it’s a homage to Lama Tsongkhapa and Geltsabji’s other teachers as well as to the Buddha’s and the Buddhas and bodhisattvas of the ten directions.
Okay. I know this is gonna seem like I’m saying a lot less than Mokśa just said, but he then goes on to talk about the positive qualities of the body, speech, and mind of the teachers and the Buddhas. He just does it a lot more elaborately. So it is said that in terms of the Sorry. It’s just in it’s in poetry.
That’s what I said yesterday. I know I said a lot more, but it’s basically saying the same thing. So this is a bit tricky to translate. So the first thing that it talks about the when talking about the qualities of the teachers and the Buddhas to whom this author is prostrating before he actually gets to the main part of the text is to say that there is no that all faults have been eliminated from the wisdom of these teachers. So there’s all different types of obscurations or problems that we can have with the way that we perceive things.
So the problem comes in translating it with this word that they’ve used for their wisdom because it’s a synonym of a path. So it implies then that they have purified all that is to be purified on the paths and grounds of bodhisattvas, and in other words, a fully enlightened Buddhas. So and then the next section it says this they have the glorious markings of a glorious markings of the of the of a fully enlightened Buddha. And this this being that is the fully enlightened Buddha is not seen as being separate from the the essence of reality in its space like manner. So this is describing the qualities of the mind of a Buddha and the qualities of the physical being of a Buddha.
So saying that in terms of positive qualities of a Buddha’s mind, it’s completely separated from anything that could be a stain or anything that could be a negativity or obscuration. In terms of their physical being, it has all the glorious marks of a Buddha. And this physical state is not seen from the Buddha’s perspective. This physical state is not seen as being anything separated from what’s called the dharmadhatu or the expansive reality. So there’s no idea of a personal being that is associated with this manifest physical manifestation of the Buddha.
So the next thing that talks about is the positive qualities of the speech of a Buddha. It says motivated by great compassion. The Buddhas speak clearly with the sixty limbs of perfect speech and describe and and it said that their speech that the which has these sixty positive qualities is supposed to get rid of the stains of beings or the problems or the negative states of mind of beings in the same way that clear light as it vanquishes shadows. And without obstacle work for the benefit of all sentient beings in order to clear away their obscurations and show them how to