Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Procrastination is the central theme Geshe Pema Tsering addresses in this 46-minute commentary on Śāntideva’s Bodhisattva Way of Life. He unpacks the verse “It’s so hard to find such ease and wealth,” explaining that the three causes for precious human rebirth — pure ethics, the six perfections, and stainless aspiration — are each rare and together vanishingly so, illustrated by Nāgārjuna’s image of a blind turtle surfacing once a century through the hole of a floating yoke. He then targets the habit of deferral — “I’ll practice tonight, when I’m old, in my holidays” — calling it self-defeat that actively undermines future chances. The Q&A addresses whether elderly practitioners retain precious human rebirth, Geshe-la’s counsel to carve out ninety minutes of genuine practice within a working day, and a three-part framework of motivation, action, and dedication for turning any activity into Dharma practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 WBS 2005 03 01.mp3
UUID: 5608f7b8-d31c-4983-9a53-cd99ec41417f
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life 2005 Feb-Mar (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-03-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.9 minutes
Words: ~3,818
Text means that people can get access to the text, put the teachings into practice and become Buddhist. So then the next section that we’re dealing with is actually what’s called explaining the path, explaining path of Buddhahood, which consists of most of the texts consist of. And this has two different sections to it. The first is that by describing how precious the human rebirth is, encouraging people to make the most of it. And the second part is the way that they can make the most of it.
So the first of these is dealt with in the line that says, It’s so hard to find such ease and wealth. This ease and wealth actually refers to the good things about having a precious human rebirth and the things that you don’t have to put up with when you have a precious human rebirth. So this state of having a rebirth which has all of these qualities and lacks all of these hindrances that it’s talking about here is very very very rare it’s something that’s incredibly hard to find now the reason that it’s hard to find is what is because accumulating the causes for it is very difficult and getting all the causes together that will result in a precious human rebirth are incredibly difficult so you need to have a combination of different things in order to bring this about the first is that you have ethics if you have if you have a one of the causes for a precious human rebirth is having a very pure ethics the second cause is for practice practicing the in terms of having a mahayana precious human rebirth it’s practicing the six perfections. And the third one is to have stainless prayers or stainless aspirations.
And so that is aspiration is not tainted with self-cherishing and so on. So because any of these three individually is rare, that the three of them together is even rarer, that this means that precious human rebirth is incredibly rare. So in order to bring the situation about where we have this rebirth in which we have what are called the Oh, yeah, I keep getting them around the wrong way, I keep hitting them. Sorry. Okay, so it’s the ten eases, no, the eight eases and the ten wealths according to this one.
Or as other times it’s translated as the eight leisures and the ten endowments. This is just as weird as eases and wealths. Okay. So if we have a situation where we have all of these, then we’ve had we’ve created the causes for those. And because we have that situation now, then we should be very, very happy because it means that in our past lifetimes, we have had very good ethics, very clean and well protected ethics.
It means that we have practiced the six perfections and we’ve made stainless prayers. And so in order for us to have created those have have performed those three actions, that means that we must have had a previous human rebirth in which we did this. So we’ve we’ve we’ve come to the end where sorry. Not the end. What we’re experiencing now is the end of a long process of developing the right causes and conditions to be in the body that we’re in now.
So because we have spent so long developing the causes and it’s so rare that we can bring other causes together to experience the type of rebirth that we have at the moment, it says whereby to render meaning for this human birth. If now I fail to turn it to my profit, how could such a chance be mine again? So this chance that we have now by having a precious human rebirth is incredibly rare. If we look into it, if we start investigating it, then we may get some kind of real appreciation for just how rare it is. So it basically means that in the past we have had immaculate ethics and practiced the six perfections and had stainless aspirations.
Alright? Now when it says stainless aspirations, it means that we have developed some understanding of emptiness and based on that understanding of emptiness, even if it’s in a contrived way, made to attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. So if we try and think about that now from our own experience, how often do we do that? How often do we able to develop that state? That’s the first thing.
Second thing is now if we look around if we look at our own minds or we look at the way that the the way that the world’s going at the moment, how many times people practice the six perfections or the six paramita? Ethics and patience and and generosity and meditation based on this idea of bodhicitta. How many times does that happen? So that’s also incredibly rare. So it means that we must have done that in the past.
And again, if we look at what we do ourselves and we look at the way that the general behavior is in the societies we interact with, then we must it was very, very rare for us to have done that in the past. Alright. How many times in this lifetime do we actually do that now? And then again on top of that we had fantastic ethics. Alright.
So if we watch the way that our minds work at the moment, how good are ethics this time around? Alright. So all of these three different things came together at some stage in the past to give us the result of having this lifetime we have now. So that means it’s very very rare if we think about how many times one of those things will come up in our lifetime or in and when we look around other people then we can see how how truly remarkable it was and that they all came together in the past to give us the result of the human rebirth, precious human rebirth they’re experiencing now. So this is why these three verses talk about how we really need to make the most of this opportunity that we have at the moment because if we don’t make the most of it, then it’s it’s and we completely waste it, then the the chances of it coming about again in the future are pretty slim.
We need to but if we do make the the most of it, it means that we have an opportunity to create the causes for Buddhahood. And even if we’re not even if we’re not able to attain Buddhahood in this lifetime we can do a lot of things that create reasons for us to become Buddhahood in the future in future lifetime so we can practice things with aspiration of becoming a Buddha do things with aspiration of becoming a Buddha or the motivation of working towards Buddhahood and this creates more and more reasons why we will become a Buddha. So even even if we don’t completely fulfill the the even the potential that we have in this human rebirth, then we can still work towards fulfilling that potential. So this is what it means to take the to render this life meaningful or to make the most of this lifetime is to use it in the best possible way, which is to work towards Buddhahood. Yeah.
So with the last line where it says, How could such a chance be mine again? And this is really an interesting line because it points to something that we may tend to do as well that we really shouldn’t do, and that’s to think, Well, you know, I’m not going to become a Buddha this time. I can’t create the causes for Buddhahood this time so what I should do is try and focus on having a good human rebirth so I can work towards Buddhahood in the future right this is a mistake now this isn’t taking the essence from this lifetime this is a form of laziness alright this is a self defeatism because if you decide that you’re going to start working towards Buddhahood at some point in the future you’re not creating the causes to have that opportunity, alright so by thinking I’ll put it off until every I am able to do it in the next lifetime you’re actually you’re actually creating the causes not to have a chance to do it in the next lifetime so if you start working for it now even if you’re doing little things, then you are creating more of a chance to have that opportunity in the future.
So we tend to do this a lot even not just in terms of future lifetimes, but even in terms of future days. Right? And so or in future hours. Oh, I don’t have enough to do any meditation or practice this morning, I’ll do it tonight. I don’t have enough time to do it tonight, I’ll do it tomorrow.
I don’t have enough time to do it when I’m young, I’ll do it when I’m old. I don’t have enough time to do it when I’ve got work, I’ll do it in my holidays. Mean I’ll try, I don’t know how to translate, probably guess the wimp. So we push it back and back and back and back and back and back until it ends up in the next life. So by by doing this, we are not taking the opportunity that we have right in front of us.
There’s no end to samsaric work. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So the Tibetans have a saying, work is really bad, it never runs out. It’s like, it’s as pointless as shaving.
And what this means is like if someone’s old person, no matter how much they pull out their hairs on their face it’s just gonna grow back the next day yeah and so it’s the same thing that is saying it’s like with the work we do for like what’s called samsaric work or work in saṃsāra no matter how much we do it never runs out it’s never gonna finish alright the more we do the more we have to do it’s just a perpetuating cycle. So it’s something that we need to make a conscious effort about, not something that we just finish when we finish our work because the work never finishes. So by having this human body, we have something that we can use to attain Buddhahood, to attain personal liberation, and to attain a good rebirth in the future. All of these things can be accomplished based on this human body that we have now, but based on the life that we are born into, that we’ve created the causes to be born into. But, in order for us to bring these things about we need to put in a lot of effort.
It’s not as if we can just sit back and let it happen or we can think that we’ll do it tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. We actually need to put in a lot of effort in order to bring these things about and there needs to be causes and conditions for these to bring these about. And if we don’t though, if we don’t make the best of this opportunity that we have, then creating a situation where we will achieve a precious human rebirth in the future is going to be very rare. Now if we look around us even with amongst humans there isn’t a lot of people who who have enough time for example to practice Dharma. So this word is sometimes translated as legends or eases or whatever is it means it almost literally means to have time, alright?
To have the time to do something to have the space to do it and If we look around then we’ll notice that a lot of people in a lot of situations are so consumed with just staying alive that they don’t have enough time to do this. Sorry, they don’t have enough time or they don’t have access into practice time. Mhmm. Okay. So, the precious human rebirth is described in letter to a friend, Nāgārjuna’s letter to a friend, as being so rare that it is like a turtle or tortoise, it has to be a turtle.
Turtle or tortoise, not tortoise because they don’t swim in this ocean. Okay, so a turtle coming up in the ocean once in every hundred years and just happening to stick their head through the hole in a yoke that just happens to be floating in the ocean. Alright so for those of us who didn’t grow up on a farm when you’re tying animals to things that animals get tied to, what do you call them? Carts or whatever right? You’ll see that they’re in India all the time but they put this wooden thing around their neck and then they tie the rope to the wooden thing around their neck they don’t put a bit in or anything they put a wooden thing around their and then they tie a rope to the wooden thing around the neck, alright, and then they steer the animals from the robes on the wooden things around their neck, right, so it’s like a big horseshoe, alright.
So it says if you, if there was one of these yoke things floating in the ocean and there was a turtle that came, stuck its head up out of the ocean every hundred years and they just happened to in all of the oceans of the world and that they could have been in, stick their head up through the hole in this yoke that could have been floating anywhere in the world, That’s about the same as your chances of getting a human rebirth if you’re an animal. Alright? If dying and being an animal and being reborn as a human. Okay. So, yeah, we can before we go into a new new section, we can stop there tonight.
And if you have any questions. Yeah. Yeah. So just I honestly seems like the more that I study with Geshe-la, the more difficult translating becomes. It just seems to be impossible.
Anyway, the Tibetan word that they’re using that we’re translating as precious human rebirth, right, is more literally and could be more literally translated but more long windedly translated as the base of a human body which gives rise to leisure and opportunity. So Geshe-la said that if someone is in that state and they have been practicing well their whole life and then they experience some kind of infirmity of body or their mental capacity towards the end of their life that they haven’t lost the human base so therefore they haven’t yeah they haven’t lost the human base for their precious existence or the human base that has these leisures and opportunities therefore they haven’t lost that precious human rebirth because they’ve still got body that’s the base right for that state their ability to practice at that stage is not as good as it was beforehand but there’s no reason to think that they they sorry so they won’t be probably able to achieve Buddhahood or a liberation in that state but as that they have practiced during all their life they would still be carrying the habits of the practice that they’ve done and that along with the positive actions that they have performed earlier in their life should act as a cause for them to attain a rebirth in a future life that has these leisures and opportunities which will enable them to practice Dharma.
It doesn’t say you have to become ordained, it says you have to practice Dharma, alright and he said so it doesn’t so whether you’re you’re ordained or not is not the point whether you’re motivated to attain Buddhahood or to attain liberation is the point yep so Geshe-la said there is twelve hours in a day, twenty four hours in one day and night period, right? If we can find an hour, an hour and a half in that twelve or twenty four hours to practice Dharma with a good motivation in a thorough way, then he doesn’t see why we shouldn’t work the other eleven hours, alright? And he said the other thing is too that if you chucked in all your work and decided that you were going to practice Dharma and you didn’t manage to get an hour of good Dharma practice in your twenty four hour period although you weren’t working, yeah, then that’s probably worse than, then I’m not, that’d be worse than going to work and trying to do that as well, alright, because you’re pretending to, there’s an element of pretense there as well. All right, so it’s not about looking like a dharma practitioner, it’s about actually doing it.
So, I guess I said if you don’t have a if you aren’t working, then you have to or if you’re not supporting yourself, then you have to have a reason for not supporting yourself. So if you’re not supporting yourself because you want to go and practice Dharma and you’re relying on the kindness of others to practice Dharma, then you really need to practice Dharma. If you’re not working because you’re sick, then you have a reason for not working and if you’re not working or you’re not supporting because you’re practicing Dharma, that’s another reason. But you have to be more careful if that’s what you’ve dedicated yourself to doing, that you actually do it because you’re taking you’re relying on the kindness of others to do that. So he thinks that if you’re going to be receiving money from a government, all right, it’s because you don’t have work, that he would hope that it was for a good reason.
So either that you were sick and you couldn’t work, or that there was some other thing that made you not be able to work as opposed to illness, like some sort of situation or that you were honestly looking for work and honestly couldn’t find it. And I said, so if you say I’m not gonna work because I’m gonna go suffering, is that that’s not okay I just managed to so I said if you go to the government and you say to them you know I have potential to make a job out of doing this this sport whatever it is and they give you money then that’s okay he goes I’ve seen it people make them a lot of money from playing football Sometimes. So any Dharma practice that you have done in the path leaves a tendency or an imprint on your mind stream. A habit is the development of a habit in your mind stream that will cause that is never wasted. It’s never wasted that is unless you turn into a very very angry person and manage to get rid of all of your positive tendencies through being very angry all the time because anger destroys So we say a prayer at the end of most Dharma practices and the end of teachings which starts off with Jya wa day and what we’re actually saying in that prayer is that this virtuous action that we perform may just be a cause for Buddhahood.
So if we dedicate our positive actions in that way to Buddhahood it means that the positive effect of those actions will not be exhausted until we achieve Buddhahood. So this is the reason that we do this that the actions in this way become a cause for us to become Buddhas and they will keep acting in a positive way on our mind stream until that happens. No. No. No.
No. There’s the lady next to you. You’re racing. Okay. So get so if your motivation is that whatever you’re doing is to attain Buddhahood or liberation or a good rebirth then what you’re doing isn’t work it’s Dharma practice.
If your motivation whatever you do with that motivation is either going to be positive or it’s going to be neutral but it’s never going to be negative. Yeah so if you do something there with a motivation of this is what I’m doing in order to get this out of it in a Samsaric way that’s like a form of work then that’s always going to have a negative connotation to it or a limited result if it’s positive. Hang on, the lady that was racing with Jo. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Sure. Sure. Sure. Mhmm. Mhmm.
So sitting in a position where we’re sitting with our back straight and our legs crossed when we’re meditating, or try it with look like we’re meditating, isn’t by its physical activity a positive action. Alright? It becomes a positive action depending on our motivation. So the process by which we can turn something into a Dharma practice is by starting it with a virtuous motivation like a motivation to attain enlightenment, liberation or a good rebirth. And then the actual activity that we’re doing is is virtuous by its nature.
And then we dedicate it at the end. If we do these three things, then whatever we’re doing as long as that activity is virtuous and motivated with and motivated well or with a good has a good motivation becomes Dharma practice. So the same process actually happens when we do something negative. So for example, if there’s something that we want, right, then we have this first of we’re motivated, I want that, and then we go through the action of getting it, and then when we’ve got it we think, yes, I’ve got it, alright, so that’s actually having a motivation, it’s however it’s a negative motivation this time, performing an action, however it’s a negative action this time, and then dedicating when we’re finished because we think yes I’ve got it, I’ve achieved what I wanted, right. So the same, we go through the same process every time that we perform an action whether it’s positive or negative, yeah.
The problem is that at this stage it’s much easier for us and much more spontaneous for us to want to do something negative like desire something, grab it, and then be happy about having it, than to do something positive. I think here I was first. And then if is it a long question or a short question? It’s a long question. Hiya.
Hiro. Objective. Can hold on to. Mhmm. Objective.
Do you know that the Hindi word for time is actually There’s one of the few things I could actually translate better into English. This looks written.