Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The burning-house analogy anchors this 46-minute session: Geshe Pema Tsering argues that genuine renunciation requires the same urgent, exit-seeking fear one feels in a house on fire — not vague unease, but a drive to find the door. He then makes a counterintuitive case that samsaric happiness is more dangerous than actual flames, since fire ends quickly while attachment to samsaric pleasures prolongs suffering across countless lives. The commentary moves to verse four of Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, working through the eighteen qualities of a precious human rebirth — the eight freedoms and ten endowments — what causes produce them, and why so few who hold these conditions make real use of them. It closes with Geshe Pema Tsering’s candid, self-deprecating reflection on how easy it is to drift through even sincere practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 17 WBS 2005 03 08.mp3
UUID: 4054c26d-3a8c-436f-98a8-d4d0d570cf4e
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: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~4,637
In the four hundred verses of the Madhyamaka by Āryadeva, he said, Without turning away the things of this life, there is no end to the ocean of suffering of saṃsāra. For this reason, why not, because of this you have every reason to be afraid of death and rebirth. So what this is talking about is that unless we turn away from creating the causes for saṃsāra, unless we turn away from the things that we consider to be the causes for happiness but actually act as reasons for us to get stuck in Samsāra, then we’re going to continually experience suffering, we’re continually going to be born and die and born and die and continually experience the sufferings of saṃsāra. So because this is the fate of anyone who doesn’t abandon attachment to samsaric things that cause suffering, then we shouldn’t really be afraid of rebirth again and again in We shouldn’t be afraid of being reborn in the lower realms. We should be afraid of the suffering that you experience in Samsāra.
So the beginning of the verse where it says there is no end to the ocean there’s no if you can somehow indulge in the attachments and the craving of saṃsāra and reach a state of peace, reach an end to the ocean of suffering, a shore to the ocean of suffering, there is no respite and there is no edge to the end of saṃsāra if you continually indulge in the causes for saṃsāra, so you can’t actually attain true happiness or a respite from suffering by trying working really hard to get what you want in saṃsāra. Mhmm. Mhmm. Unless we achieve enlightenment, Buddhahood, or personal liberation, there is no way that our suffering will end. This isn’t a way that we generally think about things.
Usually have this idea that if we are experiencing suffering, it will only be temporary and if we do this or that or if we put into practice this plan or this way of doing things, then somehow or other our suffering will go away, that there will be an end to our suffering. But in actual fact, even though the nature of our suffering may change, we may go from experiencing manifest suffering to the suffering of change, We don’t get out of suffering until we attain Buddhahood or we attain nirvana. We may think that we’ve stopped experiencing suffering because we’re experiencing saṃsāra happiness, Samsāra happiness by its nature is still suffering. While we’re in saṃsāra we constantly experience suffering. There is no true happiness in saṃsāra.
Given this situation when the Aryas, those who have realized nature of reality and the Buddhas and arhats look at our situation they’re thinking why aren’t these people terrified why aren’t these people extremely fearful of what’s going to happen to them next because all these negative situations can come about, but yet they seem to be chasing after little pleasures that aren’t going to help them much. What’s wrong with them? What this means is that we need to be afraid. We need to be afraid of the state of saṃsāra, the experiences that we could have in saṃsāra. If we’re not afraid of what could happen to us in saṃsāra, we don’t look at the lower existences or the different types of suffering we can experience as a human or the suffering of change experienced in the higher realms, in fact all of saṃsāra with fear, then we can’t turn away from saṃsāra.
So if we don’t have this sense of fear about what could happen to us in saṃsāra, then we’re not going to develop a mind of renunciation and we’re not going to develop a mind or a way of thinking in which we’re striving towards liberation. Without the fear of saṃsāra, we’re not going to want to turn away from saṃsāra. So this word, fear, doesn’t necessarily mean worry. It means thinking I don’t want that to happen having a reaction to something and thinking I don’t want that to happen so I’m gonna do whatever I can to not let that situation come about so we need to have this reaction to saṃsāra we need have developed our minds so that we know what’s going on in Samsāra and we have a fear about what could happen to us in Samsāra, so we want to do everything that we can to get out of that situation. So we don’t want to experience suffering, but it’s very rare that we experience a fear of suffering, a fear of what’s going to happen to us if we continue on in saṃsāra.
If we’re asked the question, Do you want to experience suffering? Then our immediate reaction is, No, we don’t want to experience suffering. But we rarely experience a feeling of agitation or fear in response to what could happen in the saṃsāra. Is it now on? This seems to be a bit of a strange situation, because we want to experience happiness, but in order for us to truly experience happiness, we need to have an aversion or a negative action towards the opposite of happiness which is suffering but we don’t usually do this we don’t necessarily think about what could happen to us we don’t spend many times thinking I could experience this kind of suffering or this kind of suffering or this kind of suffering this kind of suffering we seem spend most of our time pretending that suffering isn’t going to happen to us as opposed to being afraid of what suffering will happen to us if we stay in saṃsāra so while we’re pretending that nothing is going to happen to us we’re not looking for ways to get out of the situation we’re in.
While we’re pretending that nothing is going to happen to us, we can kid ourselves into the fact that we’re happy. So unless we accept that saṃsāra is by its nature suffering and develop a sense of fear about what could happen to us in that situation, weire not going to strive to get out of saṃsāra. So without a fear of saṃsāra, we don’t want to get out of saṃsāra, and without wanting to get out of saṃsāra we can’t achieve nirvana or Buddhahood. So we need to start by looking at what we are dealing with and developing a fear anxious let me get out of here quickly reaction. Pardon?
Yes, it’s not aversion though, it doesn’t work. Sorry? No, because anxiety is like, and it’s specifically not an agitation. It’s a particular sign. Okay, Geshe-la is going give us an example of the type of fear that we’re looking for.
Okay. So Geshe-la said if all of a sudden the house caught on fire, we would be afraid, but we wouldn’t be sitting there going, Oh, I’m afraid. What do I do? We’d be looking for the exit. It’s that sense of this idea of having a fear of a situation and then finding a way out of that situation.
So we’d all be like pushing each other out of the way to get out the window, he said. Because we’re afraid of the fire. Right? That we’re afraid of the fire. We’d be looking for a way out because we’re afraid of the fire.
So in the same way, if we actually see what saṃsāra was, if we could actually see saṃsāra for what it is, we’d be pushing him to get out of saṃsāra. So if we’re meditating on the faults of saṃsāra and we develop the same kind of reaction to saṃsāra as we would to a burning house, then we’re getting somewhere in our meditation. Until we get that scare, we’ve got to keep meditating. In this way, meditating to develop renunciation isn’t something that we’re supposed to think, Oh, meditating makes me feel so happy. If we are working on our meditation and we’re looking at the faults of saṃsāra and our reaction to saṃsāra becomes as strong as if we were in a burning house and we’re trying to find a way to get out of it, then when we’ve developed renunciation or a definite emergence.
We’re definitely getting out of there. This sense is what we’re looking for in order to practice Dharma properly. If we don’t focus on this and we just have a vague idea about what it is practice Dharma, then we’re not practicing it properly. We’re not going to get very far. We need to start with this idea of recognizing saṃsāra’s faults and wanting to get out of there.
And then after that, we will do all the virtuous things we can in order to get out of that situation. We’ll abandon all the negative things we need to abandon in order to get out of our saṃsāra. So if we don’t do this, if we don’t have this developed sense of fear for saṃsāra, and in response to that sense of fear for saṃsāra, look for a definite way to get out of saṃsāra, then we’re not going to get out of saṃsāra. In order to get out of saṃsāra, in order to attain Buddhahood, we need to start with a fear of saṃsāra. We need to start with a sense of the urgency of getting out of saṃsāra.
This is not something that feels very nice. It’s not something that we can understand the concept, understand the qualities of. We don’t understand how important it is or how necessary it is to meditate in this way, and it doesn’t feel very nice. It’s not something that we may necessarily comfortable with, meditating on the suffering of saṃsāra, how it can never make us happy. And so because it’s difficult, and because we don’t like doing things that are difficult, then we tend not to do it.
We tend to even hear about it and think, Oh, I don’t want know about that. I don’t want to know about the faults of saṃsāra. It’s too hard. I want to do something that’s going make me feel good. Now, as soon as we do that, as soon as we turn our back on the true nature of saṃsāra and start trying to do things that make us feel good, then we’re still creating the causes for saṃsāra.
Whatever we’re doing, instead of getting us out of saṃsāra, is embedding us deeper in saṃsāra. Because we don’t feel comfortable with it, we turn away from it, and because we turn away from then we don’t actually get anywhere with our liberation. So if we keep meditating in this way and we work towards the stage where we’re developing a fear of saṃsāra, then we’ll stop having attachment to saṃsāra. If we start focusing on the faults of saṃsāra and if we start meditating on the faults of saṃsāra in order to develop this fear of saṃsāra, which will lead us to look for a way out of saṃsāra, then we are going to be less attached to the things that we consider to be good in saṃsāra at the moment. Now the reason that we’re going to be less attached to them is because if we’re focusing on the faults of saṃsāra, then we’ll see through the things that we actually hold to be good in saṃsāra at the moment.
Now the reason that we can’t rely on anything in saṃsāra is that every object that we think of as being good, every object or every situation that we think of being as being worth striving for in saṃsāra is by its nature both impermanent and suffering, alright? And so we can’t rely on it abiding long enough to give us true happiness. We can’t rely on anything that we think can make us happy staying around long enough to make us truly happy forever. At some point because it’s made up of a of compound of causes and conditions, those causes and conditions will end and that will cease to be. So we can’t rely on anything in saṃsāra.
And even while we are relying on it, it is still by its nature suffering. So the most difficult one for us to try and get our heads around when we’re focusing on this is the things that we can usually consider to be happiness in saṃsāra, the moments that we enjoy of happiness. So because we’re very attached to these moments, because we’re very attached to these things that we think make us happy, then it’s very difficult for us to see those as suffering. But the reason that they are is because they don’t last. None of the happiness that we experience in saṃsāra lasts.
Because is by its nature still suffering, no matter how hard we try and hold on to it, changes into manifest suffering at some point. It’s not reliable. So if we start thinking about things in this way, if we start looking at what Samsāra truly is, then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be afraid of everything in it. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be turning away from everything in it, because everything in it is a cause for suffering. Everything in it is a reason for us to get more attached and experience more suffering.
Sorry. All the things that we consider good in it are a reason for us to get more attached and experience more suffering in the future. So there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be afraid of saṃsāra, right? And there’s every reason we should be afraid of saṃsāra. Every experience we have of saṃsāra is another reason why we should be afraid of saṃsāra.
The things that we consider to be good in saṃsāra, the happiness we can experience in saṃsāra, is so temporary and so fleeting that it is thoroughly unreliable. Because of its unreliability, because it acts as a cause for us to experience attachment and therefore more suffering in the future, it is actually something that doesn’t have any true positive qualities. It may help us out in the short term, but all it’s going to do is cause us more suffering in the future. So in this way, there are absolutely no positive qualities in Samsāra, and there are all negative poor qualities in saṃsāra, everything to be afraid of in saṃsāra. So we may try and think of us think, wait a minute.
I don’t experience suffering all the time. There are moments when I experience happiness, and there are moments when I experience equanimity. And all I have to do is find a way to I can’t give up experiencing complete happiness. I’m I’m happy with equanimity. I just have to work at making them stay forever.
Alright? And we think if I can just work towards that, I’ll be okay. And that may be nice, but it’s not the way saṃsāra works. Alright? Samsāra is such a you’re you’re not relying on anything in saṃsāra, you’re not relying on anything stable.
Everything comes and goes. Nothing abides. Everything’s a combination of causes and conditions and different types of karma coming together. So equanimity doesn’t stay. We don’t stay in an equanimous state.
We don’t stay in a happy state. Everything’s constantly changing. We can’t rely on it to stay as one thing forever because its nature is constant change. So in this way, the happiness, the so called happiness that we could experience in saṃsāra and we grasp after in saṃsāra is as much is something that we should be as afraid of as the fire in the if the house bursts into fire, the flames the house. Both of them are going to be a cause for suffering.
The difference being this, when the house catches on fire, we have a better understanding that the fire could actually be a cause for suffering than we do of the so called happiness or the so called good bits in saṃsāra. So, I guess, listen, actually, the fire in the house is a little less dangerous than the samsaric happiness because if the fire caught up with us and burnt us alive, we wouldn’t be around to suffer for very long. If we’re focusing on samsaric happiness and we’re thinking this will make me feel okay, in actual fact since the beginning of this time we’ve been suffering because we’ve been so attached to samsaric happiness, and if we keep being attached to samsaric happiness, there is no end to our suffering. So the fire may burn us for a few moments, but being attached or the way we react to samsaric happiness is something that can make us suffer for a lot longer. So we’re said to be like childlike beginners, childlike ordinary beings who don’t get very much.
This is true because if we look at it, the way that children relate to things, they only relate to what’s going to affect them in the short term. They only look at what’s going to happen today or tomorrow. They’re not thinking about what can happen a long time in the future. This is the same way that we react to things. When we are looking for happiness, we only look at things in a very short term way.
What’s going to make us feel happy in this lifetime? What can make us not experience pain or suffering for just a little while longer? We are not looking at the long term results of these things at all. We’re only thinking about what could happen to us at the moment, in the short term. In this way, we’re very much like children.
Okay. So in order for us to really develop a mind seeking enlightenment, in order for us to really develop a mind seeking liberation, we need to have a mind afraid of saṃsāra for ourselves and for others. So if we think about the faults of saṃsāra, then there’s no reason not to be afraid of saṃsāra. There is every reason to be afraid of saṃsāra. So based on that on that idea, then the only thing really worth working towards, worth striving for is liberation or Buddhahood.
If we’re working towards liberation, it’s for our own benefit. If we’re working towards Buddhahood, it’s to get everybody out of Samsāra, every being out of Samsāra. This should really be our motivation for listening to the teachings, for doing anything, is to get out of saṃsāra, to get other beings out of saṃsāra. So please meditate on that idea for a couple of minutes because Geshe-la said if he goes into it much further, we’re gonna run out of time. Okay.
So we’re up to verse four of the first chapter of the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, and in particular, the last three lines of this verse where it says, whereby to render meaningful this human birth. If now I fail to turn it to my profit, how should such a chance be mine again? Now, this human birth that we’re talking about here is one that says said to be very difficult to attain and is supposed to be endowed with certain qualities. These are usually called ‘leisures and opportunities’. There are eight different leisures and ten different opportunities.
So in terms of what the eight different leisures or the eight different eight different things that don’t take up your no. Being free from eight things that could take up your time, but don’t because you’re free from them. Right? That’s what I mean by leisures. They are enumerated again in this text called Nāgārjuna’s letter to a friend as being first of all you are free from holding wrong views.
So that means you have time and space because you’re not holding wrong views that would encourage you to do other things apart from practice Dharma. The next thing that you’re free from is being born as an animal. Also free from being born as a preta, a ghost, and then free from being born in hell. Also, free from being in a land where there is no teachings of the Buddha and free from being in a a borderland which is full of barbarians. Also, with a precious human rebirth, you’re free from being mute or moronic, and also you’re free from being a long life god.
So these are said to be the eight things that you are free from if you have a precious human rebirth. Now, what it means to say that you’re free from these is that if you in any if you had any of these conditions or you were born into any of these situations, it would mean that there were things that would stop you from practicing Dharma. Right? If you didn’t have access to the Buddhist teaching, then you wouldn’t have the the space or the opportunity to practice Dharma. If you were born as a long life god, again, you wouldn’t have the opportunity to practice Dharma.
So when you are free from these things, you’re said to have the leisure not to have those hindrances. Okay, so they’re the eight things that you need to be free from in order to have a precious human rebirth. There’s also ten qualities that you need to have in order to have a precious human rebirth now from amongst these ten qualities there are five that rely on you that are based on yourself and there’s five that depend on other people now the five that depend on you the first is that you are you need to have been born in a central land so that is one way the Buddhist Dharma is present you need to be born with enough senses that means like physical senses and mental mental capacity to be able to practice the Dharma, to be able to do what you want to do with your your being. The next thing is to have to not be confused by extreme views, and also then to have faith in the Dharma. So these five are ones that Okay.
Sorry. One more. You have to be human. Yeah. Yeah.
So the fifth one is to be human. This one. Mhmm. Mhmm. We all actually have these five conditions that that are based on self.
If we didn’t have these things when Geshe-la doesn’t think it’s very likely we would be sitting here at Buddha House now. So the five conditions that we need to have a precious human rebirth that rely on others are: first of all, that the Buddha has to have come to this world, second of all, that the Buddha taught the Dharma third of all, that Dharma has continued, that it hasn’t petered out. And fourth of all, that there are followers of the Buddha. And lastly, that there are those who hold compassion for or who have compassion for others. They have love in their hearts for others.
So we we also have those five conditions. We can see that the Buddha’s teachings are still around and that there’s people still following them because we are followers of them, of the Buddha’s teachings. And then there is also love in the people with love in their hearts for other people as well. So all these five conditions are still around as well. Okay, so we have all of these conditions here.
We have the eighteen conditions that you need to have a precious human rebirth, and if we look around, and there’s many other people that have these eighteen conditions as well. Still, if we are going to look at it honestly, how many people with all these conditions actually practice Dharma? The answer to this is very few. If we look in our own mind stream and look at our own thoughts, we try and notice how many times we actually practice Dharma, then that’s pretty infrequent as well. The reason for this is because it’s harder to practice Dharma than it is to continue on with our habits of looking at this life and focusing on quick fixes.
It’s harder to focus on Dharma than it is to get a quick fix from saṃsāra. Another reason why this doesn’t happen is because we don’t look at the situation properly. It’s easier for us to pretend that saṃsāra is good and we don’t have a very, very rare opportunity than it is to accept that we have a very rare opportunity and understand that saṃsāra isn’t worth chasing after. Because of this, we not only need to have this base of the precious human rebirth, we actually need to do something with it. We actually need to make the most of it.
We actually need to take the essence which literally means make the most of this precious human rebirth. Alright. So we have this situation at the moment. We don’t tend to reflect or understand that we have this situation at the moment, but we do have this situation at the moment. And if we want to know why we have this situation at the moment, why we have this precious human rebirth, then the reason is that in the past lifetime that we when we were a different being well, when we were a different in a in a different body, we had perfect ethics and managed to perform what are called stainless prayers, those are prayers with some understanding of emptiness.
Based on those ethics and those stainless prayers, we managed to attain the human precious human rebirth that we have at the moment. So it was us in a different lifetime that they managed to create the causes for us to experience what we are now. Now, this was very difficult for us to do that, and it’s obviously not the being that we are at the moment that does it, because we don’t tend to appreciate most of the time, don’t tend to appreciate our situation we’re experiencing at the moment. I’m so sorry. I left one off.
There was also a reaction. No. So we also have to be we also to have good ethics to have stainless prayers and also be practicing the six perfections. Geshe-la says, So if he thinks about himself doing this and he knows about his experiences now, then he thinks it was pretty much of a fluke that he ended up with the precious human rebirth at this stage. He said that if he watches the way that he prays now, he may try and develop a good motivation at the beginning of his prayers, but at some point during it, he’s just reading it out.
Ends up just reading out the prayers. He may have been working to get a good motivation at the beginning, but trying to remember all of the things that he’s supposed to remember, how it’s all empty and he’s supposed to have a good motivation and so on, is very difficult as he actually does it. So he said, If you’re anything like him, then it’s it’s quite remarkable that you ended up with a human re precious human rebirth. No. Geshe-la said so.
Again, if you’re anything like him, without pondering on this and without thinking of what a fluke it was, he actually ended up with a precious human rebirth, then he isn’t really likely to actually try and make the most of this precious human rebirth. If he hasn’t thought again and again about just how lucky he is to be in this situation that he’s in now, then it becomes easy to waste this lifetime without being embarrassed about it, without thinking, oh, how stupid of me. Alright? So if you’re not