Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 10-minute Q&A exchange, Geshe Pema Tsering addresses three practical questions that surface during a Bodhisattva Way of Life retreat. He opens by reassuring a student that studying dharma in English is entirely workable, while stressing that effort is still needed to grasp precise dharma terminology — knowing the words is not the same as understanding their meaning. He then outlines a straightforward framework for creating the causes of a good human rebirth: restraining from unethical conduct, cultivating aspiration toward bodhicitta, practicing generosity and ethics, and purifying mistakes. The session closes with a pointed question about whether people in concentration camps could have held precious human rebirths, prompting his explanation of the eighteen required qualities — the eight leisures and ten opportunities. Suitable for students already familiar with basic Lamrim concepts.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 WBS 2005 03 08.mp3
UUID: 1b431e32-3150-4584-be85-8450052989b2
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life 2005 Feb-Mar (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-03-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 10.0 minutes
Words: ~828
Okay. So Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Geshe-la said he would take that and say, sure.
It depends on the individual experience. But he says he knows people that don’t know Tibetan that seem to have had a very, very good understanding of dharma and have developed realizations and understandings based on English. So of of course, you can study dharma in English. You know, it’s It’s to be able to lead to your understanding. There may be difficulties in understanding some of the philosophical concepts based on the fact that English doesn’t have specific words for some of them.
But most Tibetans don’t understand them. If you’re looking at a text, if you’re not someone who’s someone who looks at texts or studies texts, They ask me what they’re saying. Geshe-la said, so if you take Pälden as an example, if you put a text in front of her and you say, what does he say? She could tell you the words. She can read very well.
But then you say, what does it mean? She wouldn’t have a clue. Yeah? Unless you’re someone who actually puts a lot of effort into trying to understand text in Tibetan or whatever language it is, you’re not gonna understand it. It’s not just a matter of being about English.
So he said, you need to know what Dharma words mean. Dharma words mean certain things, very specific things in specific instances. So you need to put a lot of effort into trying to understand what’s being taught you. Yeah? As opposed to just thinking that word means that.
Alright? You need to put a lot of effort to understand what the Dharma words mean to get the definitions right to understand what they mean. Mhmm. Yes? As someone practice, I’m staying to uncontaminated prayers.
Mhmm. Perfect ethics and. If you you have to have done it because you wouldn’t have attained a perfect human rebirth without it. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Mhmm. Okay. Geshe-la said it’s very easy, we can do this. It’s not something that we can’t do. Right?
He said, you just don’t kill, don’t get drunk, don’t steal, don’t don’t engage in other, like, negative activities. Yeah? Don’t tell lies. No.
I’m just and and then when you haven’t done those things, you say, okay. By the power of me restraining from the from these unethical conduct, may I achieve a a good human rebirth in the future? May I become a bodhisattva? May I attain liberation? So in this way, you’re you’re having the aspiration.
You’re having aspiration towards Buddhahood. And that’s like that’s and then if you recognize or you take into account the non inherent existence of that prayer and the action in the end, then you are doing that practice. Alright? And so if you have the motivation for doing something positive in the beginning, you you practice generosity, you practice ethics, you practice in this way, you practice diligence and so on, and then you dedicate at the end of that. You are creating the causes for attaining your auspicious rebirth.
Yeah. And if you make a mistake, you purify it. Yeah. She thinks that you’re doing it anyway, so don’t worry. Yes.
So people are in concentration camps Uh-huh. All these things Uh-huh. In some previous Do they have a precious? Precious. No.
Were. I I have to use. Geshe said it’s difficult for us to know what is in the minds of others, so he would refrain from judging others even though they may look like they’re doing very negative things. And if they were doing what they were doing motivated by bodhicitta, which you can’t know because you can’t know their minds, then there could have been some bigger purpose to it. Okay, so if they weren’t bodhisattvas, they didn’t have a precious human rebirth.
They had a human rebirth, but not a precious human rebirth. And from if they weren’t bodhisattvas and they were performing those actions, then it’s very, very unlikely that they’re going to get another human rebirth for a very long time. So he said, I just described eighteen different qualities that you need to have to have a precious human rebirth. So they didn’t have all of those qualities in there as part of their human. They didn’t have faith in the dharma.
Didn’t have Yeah. So there was, like, eight leisures and ten opportunities. You need to have all of those in order to have a precious human rebirth. Well, what were the causes of and conditions that one can speculate of Uh-huh. That resulted in them being born human?
So they had the throwing karma, human throwing karma, so they were born as humans. So they must have done they must have had some positive karma in the past to be positive tainted karma in the past to be reborn as humans in that state. Very negative tendencies. Is everybody okay? Yes.