Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of karma as a judge who never takes a holiday — accepting no plea bargains and missing nothing — opens this 102-minute session with Geshe Pema Tsering, part of his Bodhisattva Way of Life series. He unpacks tsultrim (the Tibetan word for ethics) as aligning behavior with Dharma and obeying the law of cause and effect. Moving to verses 9–12 of Chapter One, he covers bodhicitta’s power to instantly confer ‘Buddha’s heir’ status, the alchemist-stone analogy showing it transforming ordinary aggregates into a Buddha’s body, and its inexhaustible results — like a drop in an ocean that cannot evaporate until the ocean is empty. A Q&A closes with why we ask gurus not to pass into nirvana, whether blessings come from the object or the devotee’s faith, and how mindfulness counters bodhicitta’s degeneration.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2005 04 05 Bodhisattvas Way of life.mp3
UUID: e07e2988-7ae6-4521-b446-9ac108e7cd3a
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life 2005 Mar -2007 (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-04-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 102.2 minutes
Words: ~8,333
So in the Vinaya Sūtra, the Buddha Śākyamūni said that a few people experience happiness and a few people experience suffering. The experience of suffering comes about from not having ethics, and the experience of happiness comes about from maintaining ethics. So ethics or morality, what we mean when we talk about ethics or morality is, refraining from doing actions that are going to cause suffering or refraining from doing negative actions and, practicing positive actions. So if you refrain from doing negative actions and you practice doing positive actions, then that’s behaving ethically or that’s morality. But this also works the other way because if you are refraining if you are refraining from sorry.
If you are practicing morality, then what you’re doing, is, refraining from negative actions and practicing positive actions. And so you have ethics by behaving this way or not behaving. You don’t have ethics by not behaving well, and you, behave well if you have ethics. So so that he thinks that considering in Buddhist in Buddhism and in when he’s teaching and when you hear other people teaching, then they’ll talk about ethics and morality a lot that he should try and give you a very clear picture or a clear description of of what ethics and morality is. So in general, and we first talk about start talking about ethics and morality, we’re talking about the practice of abandoning the ten non virtuous actions.
And then by abandoning the ten non virtuous actions, the lack or the the anything that you do that isn’t those ten non virtuous actions becomes becomes virtuous actions. So not doing the non not doing non virtuous actions is a virtuous action. Yes? So there are ten non virtuous actions that should be abandoned, and the abandoning of those ten non virtuous actions are the ten virtuous actions. So in this way, we can define whether something is a is ethical or moral or not, depending on whether it’s abandoning negative actions or the positive action of having abandoned negative actions.
Now, why I was kind of going, oh — Geshe-la was going, ah — was that his description, his very clear description of of what this is depends on a Tibetan word that you’re not gonna understand. So the Tibetan word so if there’s any way I can think of it to translate it. The Tibetan word that’s usually translated as ethics or morality is tsultrim. Now tsultrim means the way or the the something that accords with something else. Alright?
So when your activities is accord with that which is going to lead to happiness, which is going to lead to a positive outcome. Right? Then that’s the first aspect of being ethical or morality. It’s it’s having something having your behavior or what you’re doing or your actions of body, speech, and mind accord with the dharma. Right?
And the second part of the word, which is trim means law. Right? So you can have you can have the law of people. You can have the law of land. You can have the law of an organization that you the the rules of an organization that you are working within.
So all of these have their own individual set of rules or their own individual trim. Right? And so, in this way, this word that’s translated ethics has these two parts. One of them is to make your behavior accord with dharma, and the other part is to obey obeying the rules, by not doing things that are going to, cause suffering, then you are naturally, doing that which accords with dharma. So it’s these two aspects.
The bit where it says abide by the law is when you’re not you’re abandoning the negative actions, and once you’ve abandoned the negative actions, then your positive actions accord with the dharma, and that’s the tsul bit. So if you want to do something Mhmm. So if if if you are doing something that isn’t going to lead to suffering, and that is going to lead to happiness, then that is something that sorry. That’s something that accords with dharma. So that is something that is along the same lines as the way.
Alright? Which is along the lines of the way that you should do it. And if you are going to stop doing something that’s negative, then, your behavior will naturally accord with the way or the path. So for example, if you refrain from killing, then that behavior refraining from killing is something that by its nature accords with the path of Buddhism. Now, the other part, the part where we’re saying we need to obey the law, you may wonder how something becomes ethical or moral from a Buddhist perspective.
Now the way that something becomes ethical or moral is by the outcome that it that it produces. So if we’re going to have a law, we need to have an enforcer of the law, something that enforces the law. Now in Buddhist philosophy, the thing that enforces the law is cause and effect. If you some if you do something negative, then the effect of that is a negative outcome. So the enforcer, the thing that we see as that as the judge, the enforcer of the law or the judge is these actions of karma.
So is the cause and effect relationship. So if you do something negative, experience a negative result. If you do something positive, you experience a positive result. So this is the law aspect. If you do something if you break the law, if you do things that are wrong, you experience the result.
But it’s not as if there’s some external being deciding what’s right or what’s wrong. It’s the it’s just the nature of cause and effect that the results of a negative action suffering. I said, so but maybe in the future, you’ll learn Tibetan and and then when I listen to what he was saying. So when we talk about morality, what we’re actually talking about is cause and effect and talking about the processes of karma. And if you do something, then it has a result.
If you do something positive, it has a negative positive, it has a positive result. Negative, it has a negative result. So the actual discussion of ethics or when we talk about ethics are actually talking about cause and effect. There there are two different descriptions of the same thing. Now the process of cause and effect and how we, should, abide or how we should behave, so that we experience positive results from positive actions as opposed to negative results from negative actions.
And it’s said to be three things that have always existed. The first is emptiness, the second is, dependent origination, and the third is cause and effect. So as soon as you have a being, as soon as you have a mind, then you have an action. And there’s no time where we stop acting in some way, we stop thinking in some way, we stop being in some way, or we stop that no activity of body, speech, and mind happening. So as soon as you have a being, you have karma.
And as soon as you have karma, you have a karma or cause, you have an effect. And so in this way, this is something that is perpetually occurring. And so, if for us to practice ethics, what we’re doing is, the things that are perpetually occurring within us are things that accord with Dharma and lead to happiness as opposed to that which doesn’t accord with Dharma leads to suffering. Mhmm. To pay all that.
Oh. So Geshe-la said, so in fact, we’re all like Richard. I can’t see him, but he’s he said, we’re all we’re we’re all like Richard because we’re all lawyers. So the reason that we’re all like lawyers is because if we’re on a on a a vast scale in every moment of our life where we are assessing what we’ve done and trying to we’re experiencing the results of our actions and trying to perhaps get out of things that we’ve done in the past. So if we’ve done something negative, and we have a we are guilty of doing something negative, then we’re trying to find a way to not repeat that action so we don’t keep ending up with more and more guilt in terms of guilt as in not innocence as opposed to feeling bad about yourself.
Yeah? And and we oh, hang on. Sorry. I was just explaining the difference between a lawyer and a judge. Right?
Because that’s why I was getting confused. I was like, hang on a second. So it’s to be the way that the the law works the in the countries we inhabit is that we grow up understanding that if we break the law, there are consequences. Alright? And we’re told from a very young age, if you do this, if you do that, if you kill someone, you go to jail.
If you go if you are found guilty of something then you have to, deal with the consequences of that action and that’s something that, we, see and experience from a very young age. So it’s basically the same thing that’s happening to us on a daily basis in that if we do something negative we experience the consequences of it. And if, but the judge that’s deciding whether we did it or not, or the the this is why I got confused. The judge is deciding whether we did it or not isn’t an external person. It’s the law of cause and effect.
Alright? So it’s a if we’ve done something negative then we the the the karma will come back at us. We’ll be judged by that negative action through karma and experience suffering. And so in a similar way to if we have done something to break the law that we end up experiencing the results of that through the courts, then we experience the results of our negative actions results for through their karmic result. But the problem is that karma is a much better is a much more hardworking judge or policeman than any of the people that we have working for us in in in the government at the moment, he said.
The he said because judges and policemen tend to be human beings who want to experience happiness themselves, they can be distracted by holidays and looking after their own interests. But karma, the law of cause and effect, the law of dependent origination doesn’t take a holiday. It doesn’t miss anything. So either we purify the negative actions that we’ve done or we experience the consequences of those actions. We can’t pull one over on karma.
Alright? We may be able to we may be able to trick judges, we may be able to trick police people, we may be able to say, I didn’t know. I can only be responsible for the laws that I knew about. We may be able to get away with all sorts of things, but, we can’t do that with karma. There’s no there’s no way around it.
There’s no there’s no, plea bargaining. So if if we do something positive then because karma is always works, it’s always aware, not aware as in that’s not the right word. There is no pause in karma, then that means we’ll experience the results of it. If we’ve done something positive, then we’ll definitely, unless we get very angry and wipe out our clusters of good karma, we will experience the results of that karma. And likewise, if we’ve done something negative, unless we purify that negative action, unless we repent and do acts of atonement, then we will experience the results of that negative action.
There’s no way we can get out of the law of cause and effect. If there is something that if there is something that we’ve done that’s positive, we will experience positive results. If there’s something negative, we’ll experience negative results. And the only things that act as a variable to that is our either our anger, which makes us lose our positive stores of karma, or our purifying our negative negative actions, you know, through regret. Now, the this this law though isn’t as if the the thing about this is the law of cause and effect is that the person really in charge of our actions and what the therefore, what the results of those actions will be is ourselves.
And if we can determine whether we do something negative or we do something positive. We can put in the effort to do something positive and experience positive results or we can get caught up in negative activities and experience negative results. So although, the law of karma of cause and effect is unfailing, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have any control over this situation because we can, choose to do positive things and work hard at doing positive things, which means we’ll experience positive results. So therefore, we need to work hard at trying to do positive things so we can experience positive results. And we need to work hard at abandoning negative actions so we can stop experiencing the results of negative actions.
And there’s something that makes our positive actions more positive and our negative actions less intense — sorry, something that makes our positive actions more powerful and our negative actions more powerful is both the intention with which we do them and the way that we reflect on them once we’ve performed these actions. So if we do something positive, with a and then afterwards rejoice or we’re really happy about the fact that we did something positive, then that lays, that adds weight to that positive action. Likewise, if we do something negative and then we’re happy about having done something negative and think I want to do that again, then that adds more weight to the negative aspect. So keeping this in mind, if we are focusing our motivation for doing a positive action just on ourself, then it will also have only a limited result. Whereas if we think I’m doing this positive action or I’m refraining from doing this negative action to benefit all sentient beings, then it adds strength strength to the energy of the positive action.
So if we do something in the beginning motivated by the wish to attain enlightenment to benefit all sentient beings, and then we do the positive action in the middle, and then afterwards we, rejoice in us having done that positive action becomes a very strong positive action. Given that so thinking on this then, if we have the idea that I regret all the negative things that I’ve done, and from this day forward, I’m going to practice ethics. I’m going to practice morality until from this day until the day that I die in order to be a benefit to all sentient beings, and this means my actions of body, speech, mind, then this becomes a powerful motivation. So Geshe-la asked if you could meditate on this idea for a couple of minutes. Oh, okay.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Think this one’s running out too, but I’ll use it too.
Yeah. It was just it kept going on and then fading. Oh, okay. So it’s just. Strong.
But this one’s not too good either. Alright. Okay. Okay. Mhmm.
Right. We are up to Sorry. I was still searching for battery. Geshe said, I’ve got some. Okay.
So we’re up to verse verse number nine in the first chapter, now this says, should bodhicitta come to birth in one who suffers in the dungeons of saṃsāra, in that instant, he he is called the Buddha’s heir, worshipful alike worshipful alike to gods and men. Right? So what this means is that a bodhicitta is so precious that who ever’s mind stream it arises in, although they’re still an ordinary being, although they may not be a powerful god or they may not and then definitely not a Buddha yet, then just the fact that they possess bodhicitta in their mind stream makes them someone who is worthy of veneration. And not only that, but they’re then called the sons or daughters of the Buddha, in that they are likened to the Buddha because they possess this precious way of thinking.
So there are two different types of bodhicitta that can be developed. There is aspirational bodhicitta and engaging bodhicitta. Once someone has developed either of these types of bodhicitta, in that very instant and without a moment’s gap, they are known by the special name of being, the, offspring of the Buddhas, the the children of the Buddhas. So this name can instantly be applied to them. And also, they be as beings with this this special name.
The worldly gods and ordinary beings, should — will — do this to them? What would you say? Yeah. This is I don’t know how to say it. Put their hands in prayerful salute or whatever, and prostrate and make offerings to them.
So they become deserve deserving of this, of prayers, offerings, and prayers and offerings and respect in that instant. So the reason that they’re so deserving of respect and they become objects of veneration and things that should be given beings that should be given offerings to and should be prayed to or treated with this kind of veneration It’s because even though that they may be ordinary beings who are walking on the earth and it says are still wandering within the still wandering within the, prison of saṃsāra, are still stuck in the mournful and sorrowful state of being in saṃsāra. The mind that they have developed has the ability to liberate themselves and other beings from this prison of suffering that is saṃsāra. So because of its potential and because of its because of the fact that it is generated in beings that may not necessarily even have any other qualities, it’s said to be very rare and very precious and therefore deserving of respect. So the next section then deals with this is why so first of all, this is why one of the reasons or how precious bodhicitta is.
Then it goes on to explain just how precious bodhicitta is by way of its, several of its, qualities. It actually calls them analogies — I don’t know if that word actually works in English, but anyway, by six different characteristics. So the first of these is the way that it makes inferior things become superior, the way it makes, the way it is difficult in difficult to attain it and it is of great value, the way it is inexhaustible, it it has an inexhaustible effect and how that effect is magnified, the way it is it has the potential for the way that it has the potential to protect from great fear, the way that it can destroy negativities without difficulty, and the way that the its benefits are taught in the sutras. Okay. So the So the next verse then says, which is dealing with how bodhicitta turns ordinary things or inferior things into supreme supreme things, says that it like the supreme sorry.
It’s verse number ten, and it says, for like the supreme substance of the alchemist, it takes the impure form of human flesh and makes it makes of it the priceless body of a Buddha, such as bodhicitta, we should grasp it firmly. So what this is talking about is that at the moment the body that we have, the aggregates that we have appropriated are the result of karma and delusions. We arrive into this birth, we take on form, we have feelings and discrimination and consciousness and compounded factors. We have these things because we have created karma based on delusive states of mind. And so the result as the cause is impure, then the result is impure.
And that means that the bodies and the the collections of mental collections of thoughts that we have are impure because of their cause. So bodhicitta can change this however by developing bodhicitta, we are able to transform our present state into the purified, precious state of a Buddha. So bodhicitta is the cause that transforms ordinary beings into Buddhas because, it is the, motivation that that leads one to Buddhahood. So, in the same way then as an alchemist’s elixir, is said to be able to turn stone into gold, then bodhicitta is precious because it’s able to turn our ordinary contaminated aggregates into the purified precious aggregates of a Buddha or bodies of a Buddha. Sorry.
So this is why the Buddha said in the Alright. So there’s this there’s a lot of the Buddha sutras are are sutras that were requested by someone, like someone asked the Buddha a question, and the Buddha gave a teaching. So one of these people to ask the Buddha a question was someone who was called in Tibetan — no idea what that is in Sanskrit — but it was this guy called Drongpo Kye. And he said to, the Buddha, he asked the Buddha for a teaching on transform transforming the mind and using bodhicitta.
And so the Buddha, in this teaching, where the Buddha replied that, there is a a substance which sorry. The way that alchemists can turn that substance into gold, turns something that has, hardly any virtue or hardly any benefit into something that is immensely beneficial. And it’s the same process for it’s the same process for for transforming the body, speech, and mind of ordinary beings. By developing bodhicitta, they are transformed into the precious body, speech, and mind of a Buddha. And so it is said to be as precious as the or more precious than the alchemist’s stone or the thing that they’re able to the process by which the alchemist turn ordinary substances into gold.
So in verse number eleven then it says, if the perfect leaders of all migrating if the perfect leaders of all migrant beings have with boundless wisdom seen its priceless worth, we who wish to leave our nomad wandering should hold well to this precious bodhicitta. So the perfect leaders of all migrant beings is referring to the Buddhas. So the Buddhas have looked around at all of the different ways which you can attain enlightenment, you can work towards work towards getting out of saṃsāra. And when they’re looking at all of these things, so since they know everything, then they can look around more much more thoroughly than most of us. So since they can look around at all the different ways that you could attain a Buddha, they they have done this and the way that they say is the best or the the most essential part of the path to Buddhahood is the development of bodhicitta.
And so and then it says, if they’ve decided, if they’ve investigated and decided that the best way for us to become a Buddha, the the most essential point of the path is the development of bodhicitta, then if we wanna get out of Samsāra, if we want to attain Buddhahood and be a benefit to all sentient beings, if we stop being a wandering nomad, then we need to hold on to this precious bodhicitta. We need to develop it and protect it. Uh-huh. So there’s said to be nine different types of beings. Now the reason Uh-huh.
Uh-huh. Okay. So it it can mean many, and or it can mean a lot. Literally means nine. Right?
That doesn’t mean nine here, if that makes sense. It just means a lot. Okay. So why nine means a lot? I’m not sure, but anyway.
So there’s the the Buddhas are called the perfect leaders of all migrant beings because they wish with all their being, for all sentient beings to be free from all different types of suffering. Alright? All of the manifest all of the manifold sufferings that they can possibly experience. They want them to be free from all of those types of suffering and, lead them to a place where they only experience happiness. Or they they don’t which is completely free from suffering.
So as the this is what the Buddha ‘s are working towards, then, they are, are looking for something that will do that. Alright. This looking for something that will lead sentient beings out of saṃsāra that will lead beings out of suffering. And so, because they’re they’re looking for this, they hold bodhicitta to be the most precious, jewel or the most precious thing, that that can exist, because this is the key to leading all sentient beings out of saṃsāra, to leading them out of suffering. So because it’s this precious, then they keep, exhorting us not to neglect it, to see how how powerful and how beneficial that it is, and that we should work to to develop it and not do anything that is going to and that is going to diminish it.
So these these leaders of beings, these experts in how to get out of Samsāra think that this bodhicitta is more precious than any other than any jewel in any of the continents. Continents. And they themselves being matchless or not having anyone that can compare with them and see all sentient beings as being like their only children who want to help them, want to lead them to Buddhahood. So through their wisdom and through their motivation, they would be, looking for the thing that would help us the most. And they have all agreed that this is that this this is their body mind the sorry.
Yeah. The body mind, the mind of enlightenment. So given this then, we should probably treasure this mind as well. We should probably try and hold look to it with respect and hold on to it and try and develop it as well. So the next verse deals with why deals with how bodhicitta’s results don’t become extinguished and in fact that they get vast and vast.
So the verse verse number twelve, and it says, all other virtues like the plantain tree produce their fruit, but then their force is spent. Alone the marvelous tree of bodhicitta will bear its fruit and grow unceasingly. Again, We’re having a little discussion because neither of us thought that the plantain tree had fruit. Well, hang on. So the the word that they have Okay.
So get the so hang on. The the one that they’ve translated as plantain is this thing that in Tibetan is a different word, and said that it doesn’t bear any fruit, nothing comes from it. Alright? And I then had to read the translation which says produce their fruit. And I was like, right.
That doesn’t quite work. But anyway, so Geshe said they may have some fruit, but they don’t last. There’s nothing. It doesn’t he he said that he he thought they have something that looks like a flower. This thing that they’ve translated plantain.
I don’t even know if that’s how you say it. And then they they instantly die, so they’re not something that can keep bearing any fruit that’s that bears fruit year after year after year. They have one flower and then they die. Then the tree dies. It doesn’t keep no more fruit comes from it.
So it said that if we do other virtuous actions and we do them motivated by any other motivation apart from bodhicitta, then we may be able to experience positive results from that action, but a positive results that will only happen once and that will not continue on. So you can do positive actions motivated by a good rebirth in the next life. You can be do positive actions by motivated by getting out of Samsāra and by becoming an Arhat or a solitary realizer. Or you can just do them on a worldly level thinking if I do this positive thing, something positive will happen to me in this lifetime. So we can do all of these things, but the the thing with that kind of or the characteristic of this kind of positive action is that its results, are very limited.
The results of doing a positive action with any motivation other than bodhicitta are very limited. We may get a good human rebirth, we may get out of saṃsāra, but then that’s it. That’s where the the end of the results are. But if we do something motivated by bodhicitta, then it continues to expand. The results continue to expand.
They’re not just focused on us, they’re focused on all beings. So they their results don’t reach their the results of anything done with that motivation doesn’t reach its ultimate point until all beings are enlightened. Alright. So in this way, it keeps expanding out. Something, that’s a positive action and it’s not motivated by bodhicitta, then, we will experience the results of that positive action.
But, they will only happen in a, one off or in a capacity that is limited in some way. So if we do things without a motivation of attaining any realizations, then we’ll have a very limited result to the positive action that we’ve done. If we do things with a limited the idea of attaining a limited realization or a limited positive rebirth, then they will have a limited result, and then their energy will be spent. If, however, instead of that, then we if we if we are motivated by bodhicitta, then this doesn’t ever this energy this the potential from that positive action is never spent or isn’t spent it’s motivation has been completed. So this doesn’t mean that the other positive results don’t come about.
It’s just that the force of the positive action we perform propelled by bodhicitta has a much more profound response. Sorry, profound result. So in this way, the wise recognize that the results of an action performed with the motivation of bodhicitta are not exhausted, are not finished. So the often quoted scripture that talks about this is the Sūtra requested, the sūtra requested by Lodro.
I don’t know what his name is in Sanskrit. Who said, that we’re to whom the Buddha replied, I’m sorry, that to whom the Buddha replied that if you take a drop of water and put it in the ocean, then that drop of water is not evaporated, is not destroyed until you’ve completely emptied the ocean. In the same way, if we dedicate a positive action and to do towards attaining enlightenment to benefit all sentient beings, and a particular positive action we’ve done was motivated by attaining enlightenment towards attaining enlightenment to benefit all sentient beings, then its capacity to benefit us isn’t exhausted until we attain enlightenment to benefit all sentient beings. So in this way, there is no limit to the benefit that it can have. And if we aren’t motivated by that action, then it’s not like we’ve dropped our drop of positive action into a sea of positive actions that cannot be exhausted — it is as if we have left it out to evaporate.
So that means that bodhicitta is very, very, very important. So if we wanna know why bodhicitta is so vast and so important why sorry. Then why the results of a motivation a bodhicitta motivation are so vast and why it is so important, then we need to look at what it is that bodhicitta actually does and what it is focused on. So to start off with bodhicitta is focused on all sentient beings attaining enlightenment. And considering sentient beings are countless, this means that the motivation is incredibly vast in terms of its object, in terms of the thing it’s focused on.
And then if we look at what it is setting out to achieve, it’s setting out to achieve Buddhahood. Now Buddhahood is a state in which a being has completely gotten rid of all negativities and developed all positive qualities. So they’ve gotten rid of all afflictive emotions completely from the root. And so this means all the afflictive emotions, pride, anger, all of these things, and they’re called the obscurations to liberation or the afflictive obscurations. They’ve also gotten rid of all obscurations to knowledge.
There’s nothing that Buddhas don’t know. They’ve gotten rid of all all different forms of ignorance. So, because it’s almost it’s because it’s impossible for us to comprehend the vastness of a Buddha Buddha’s positive qualities, this also shows us, why the motivation of bodhicitta is so important and its results are so vast. The object, the thing that we’re doing, the reason we’re doing this, we’re we’re working towards Buddhahood, is because of all sentient beings and they are countless. The object towards which we’re working, the goal that we’re working towards is Buddhahood, and its qualities are countless.
So in this way, it’s a very vast motivation. It’s very, all encompassing motivation. And then because of this then, we can see how powerful it is. This is it’s interesting because, bodhicitta is one of many different things that we probably need in order to attain enlightenment, but it acts as the main cause for us to attain enlightenment. Meditating on emptiness is incredibly important.
If we meditate on emptiness, then we’re able to purify our negative emotions and to get rid of the stains of past sorry, the imprints past karmic actions. But without bodhicitta, even if we realize emptiness, we can’t attain enlightenment. So in this way, bodhicitta is even more important than being able to realize emptiness. Of course of course, it helps us to realize emptiness because, the merit that we accumulate from attaining bodhicitta enables us to develop towards a realization of emptiness or lead to leads to a development of realization of emptiness. But it is said to be even more important than perceiving emptiness because you can perceive emptiness and still not attain enlightenment, but you can’t develop bodhicitta and keep improving your bodhicitta and not attain enlightenment.
Okay. Sorry. We can finish that. I just Geshe-la gave me a headache tablet from India, and I was saying, I think it’s made me all spicy. And he said, no.
No. It’s good medicine. I got it in India. I’m like, So if anyone has any questions, then it’s possible. Did you say anyone’s got a headache?
Yeah. No. For him. Or if you got a headache, he’s got some good medicine. Yeah.
I wanted to ask — why is it that in prayers and in Guru Pujas, we ask the Guru not to pass into nirvana? Because I would think that for them to achieve enlightenment and be able to benefit all sentient beings, then they would want to pass into nirvana, to be able to benefit sentient beings.
Mhmm. So asking them to remain in sorrow — I want to ask, why do we ask them to remain Mhmm. In sorrow? Remain Mhmm. In sorrow.
Hey. Did everybody hear that? Yeah? Said it wasn’t sorry. He just said it wasn’t the medicine that made you lightheaded, so you didn’t eat well enough.
They didn’t wanna insult me. Didn’t give me good medicine. I was just like yeah. Okay. Sorry.
Sorry. He’s saying I need to eat better. Okay. Okay. The reason that we request them not to pass into nirvana is because if they pass into nirvana, they can’t teach us.
Alright? So they’re they’re in a state where they’re not they we we can’t they can’t manifest in Samsāra. Alright? So in that state, that’s why we’re asking them, please don’t pass into nirvana stay here to teach us, because we need a way to get out of, saṃsāra. And if you’re not here, you can’t teach us.
This doesn’t mean that they experience saṃsāra when they’re in saṃsāra. They because if they’re purified, all the negative states, then they’re not going to experience suffering even if they are manifesting in saṃsāra for our benefit. Alright? So we’re not saying please don’t become a Buddha because in if you’re doing if you’re requesting someone to, not pass into nirvana, you’re assuming they’re already a Buddha. Alright?
But what we’re asking is that they don’t go into a state of nirvana and not work for the benefit of sentient beings who are in saṃsāra. So if they don’t manifest in saṃsāra, we’re asking them to keep manifesting in saṃsāra, but they’re not samsaric beings. So when it says to not pass beyond sorrow, what does that mean? Beyond sorrow means nirvana. Don’t go into nirvana.
So does that mean that they’re enlightened and they’re not suffering from sorrow? No. They don’t have any sorrow. Mhmm. Mhmm.
So so the the lamas or the gurus are not supposed to, supposed to be or the way that you the view at this stage is that you’re seeing them as Buddhas Yeah. Who have purposely taken on a normal aspect in order to be able to communicate with us, because if they passed into nirvana, they wouldn’t be able to communicate with us. So they come back in the form of an ordinary being so that they can pass on information to us. They can they can guide us out of, saṃsāra. Right?
Now, we may it appear to us that as they’re in an ordinary form that they are experiencing sorrow and they experience illness and so on. But if someone’s made a conscious choice to manifest in that way in order to benefit beings, they’re not experiencing sorrow. Everything they do is motivated by bodhicitta and has an understanding of emptiness. So there’s no experience of sorrow on their behalf even though it may look like it to us. Uh-huh.
If they need to be water, they’ll be water. And they can be a dog. Mhmm. Yeah. Or dogs or cats.
They’ll manifest as dogs or cats. And so so the Buddhas, because they’ve taken they they’re for the benefit of all sensitive beings at all time, they’ll do whatever they can and manifest as whatever it takes in order to benefit sentient beings. Alright? So if being a dog will help them or a cat will help them or a water will help them or whatever it is, then they’ll manifest in that way. They’ll, you know, yeah — manifest, that’s the word.
So so obviously, one of the best ways for Buddha to help us is to manifest as a teacher that can guide us and teach us Dharma and so on. Alright? So the the point point of view of the Guru Puja, the view in the Guru Puja is that you see the teacher as a Buddha who is manifested in ordinary form in order to be beneficial to you. You know, what I was stuck on was that word sorrow. It’s just a translation of nirvana.
Yeah. That’s what I was gonna ask then is what they’re meaning the word sorrow to be not to pass beyond self existence. Is that what the word sorrow is? It doesn’t mean you’re not saying I said that they in the translation, it seems like they said, please abide in sorrow. But it’s not like they’re saying that.
They’re saying, please don’t piss off into Naravana, but probably a little more politely sorry. Yes. How many, I don’t mean exactly, beings have achieved or have gone to nirvana? Is it countless beings? You can’t count.
However many you can imagine. There’s a yeah. There’s no it’s countless. Yeah. Yeah.
I guess you said it depends on your vision as well. If you can see a statue as a Buddha, then it’s Buddha. If you can see another person as a Buddha, then they’re a Buddha. Depends on your vision as well. There’s no there’s no the reason that he said this is because there’s no, he said, there’s no count to Buddhas.
There’s no obstruction to Buddhas, and there’s no Yeah. Because the Buddha is an enlightened state of mind. Yeah. So it doesn’t it can’t be obstructed. It can’t be nailed down into one being.
Alright? Into one instance or one type of thing. So wherever that you’ve because Uh-huh. So there’s no obstruction to to Buddha. Right?
There’s no obstruction. There is no limit. There is no count count because it’s beyond this, beyond those kind of concepts. So, if you think there’s Buddha on my head, there’s Buddha on your head. If you think there’s Buddha in front of you, there’s Buddha in front of you.
If you think there’s Buddha in your mind, there’s Buddha in your mind. Alright? It’s a it’s not a concept that can be, structured down to one person in one instance and one time. It’s beyond that. Definition is one who has gotten rid of all faults and attained all positive qualities, if you can say there’s a Buddha here and there’s not a Buddha there, right, for a Buddha not to exist somewhere is a fault.
Right? So if you’re saying a Buddha is by definition something that is faultless, then they can be everywhere. Alright? Any Buddha can be anywhere at any time. So there’s no there’s no limits.
There’s no edge to a Buddha because being limited by a certain space or a certain time or a certain characteristic is is a a a a fault. Right. Okay. It’s not Okay. It’s not that there is no Buddha, it’s that nobody knows there is.
And it and guess what it says, so it depends on individual. If you don’t know there’s a Buddha, there is no Buddha. Woah. Yeah. Yeah.
Who was it? Okay. You I think you’re first. I was like, Geshe-la couldn’t see who was first. Uh-huh.
Is he a very sad person? Uh-huh. Okay. Okay. So if you think that is a Bodhisattva, then you’ll get the blessings from him for Bodhisattva.
Geshe-la said he thinks he’s a Buddha, so he hopes he gets the blessings of a Buddha. Because he thinks that he’s a he’s a manifestation he’s of Chenrezig. But he said that, to say that he has something inherent in him that, is Buddha or is a Bodhisattva is positing something externally existing, something inherently existing. So the the blessings of the Buddhas and the the power of the Buddha doesn’t come from necessarily from their side. It comes from what we believe.
But we need lots of blessings, so we should take a Buddha. Is it so I guess Guess I said it’s probably best to think of him as a Buddha because we need all the blessings we can get. And and and then you get like a bigger returns. You get more more advantages by thinking as a Buddha. Benefits of the Buddha don’t come from They they If they come directly from the Buddha, then the Buddha would have All the Buddhas would have benefited us us enough that we become enlightened.
It can come from our faith or our belief in the in the Buddhist and the Buddhist life. So they don’t rely on the the object. Rely on the faith or the devotion of the person who is approaching them. So see, the the this is why we have statues. Yeah.
If if if there was no power in the if the power was coming from the the substance, substance, then it would mean that clay had the potential to give us blessings. Alright? Or metal or wood or whatever it is that the Buddha statue is made out of. Obviously, this isn’t the case. The blessing that we get from statues is because we think this is the Buddha.
This is a this is a instance of the Buddha. And by this being a statue of the Buddha, then I’m getting the blessings of the Buddha. I’m making offerings to the Buddha. I’m doing this to the Buddha. And it’s our it’s our perception of that statue as Buddha that is why we get the blessings, not the actual material itself.
Because if we say that Buddhas are because it’s not as if Buddhas are inherently existent. Buddhas come about because of dependent origination and because we label them thus. Alright? So it’s the us labeling something as being a Buddha, that means we perceive it as a Buddha and therefore can get the blessings of a Buddha. Alright?
If if even if something may have the characteristic of a Buddha, if we don’t see it as a Buddha, we’re not going to get the blessings of a Buddha. So it’s it’s he says dependent origination is our, mind. Did that make sense? He said, oh, I don’t think he did. Okay.
Hang on. I think he said Richard because he knows your name. Oh, he said okay. Guess I think it was Richard first. Yes.
Yeah. Alright. I’m gonna ask you questions now as a result of that previous Uh-huh. That suggests that the delusion about a Buddha. As long as it’s not a judge’s question.
Okay. Okay. Yes. If you see someone as a Buddha who is an evil person, then you will get the, blessings of a Buddha because all beings at least have the essence of the Buddha, and the Buddha nature or the Tathāgatagarbha within them. So if you’re perceiving someone as a Buddha, then you’re perceiving directly their Buddha nature.
So the answer to the first question was yes. Okay. So the happiness that you experience the happiness that you experience after you steal the and drive it off really fast is a positive outcome. Yeah. From a previously positively no.
A previous positive action that you’ve performed. Alright? But the attachment that you have to that positive experience is going to cause suffering. Alright? So it is the positive it’s a positive the happiness so hang on.
Rejoicing in having gotten the car, yeah, is a result of taking the car, and that’s a negative sense of attachment. But the actual happiness itself is a result of something positive that you’ve done in the past. Yeah. So the attachment to that happiness is negative, but the happiness itself is positive. Yeah.
And the stealing is negative. Yeah. So, yes. Translated into Tibetan as arrogance has this idea of being better than you are, thinking you’re better than you are. So Geshe-la said, rejoicing in what you’ve done is to think I did something good, that’s a good thing.
Right? Being arrogant about it is to think, and therefore I’m better than everyone else. Oh, and therefore I I’ve I’ve I’ve I’ve done something that’s extraordinary and no one else can do or I’m yeah. It’s to go on from that state. So to be happy about having done something positive is to rejoice, is to be happy about it, but to go on from there and then therefore think I’m a bit good I’m a better person than anyone else.
I’m better than I am is arrogance. Yes. Yeah. And Nick and then Nick and then finish. Okay.
Okay. Okay. Okay. So Geshe-la said, yes, probably none of us have really got the right idea about what bodhicitta is. Right?
And therefore, we won’t have the exact results of a bodhicitta motivation when we do something. Yeah? But we’ll have something approximating it. And that means we’ll have something approximating the positive results. Alright?
So, again, that depends on how able we’re how our ability to perceive what it is, whether we have the what what results we will experience. Nick. I just got a question about bodhicitta. What methods can we use to protect the degeneration of bodhicitta? Protect the degeneration?
You mean protect us from degeneration? Yeah. To protect our development of bodhicitta from degeneration. Yeah. Yeah.
I was like, that sounds like something I’d say. Okay. So how do how can we protect bodhicitta from degeneration? Yeah? Yeah.
Okay. Okay. Or the the coming apart of bodhicitta is mindfulness and awareness. So you meditate on bodhicitta and then in order to stop it disintegrating then you make yourself aware and remind yourself of it again and again and again. And this is the way to stop it disintegrating.
So it’s difficult for us to do this. It’s something that we do have to use a lot of awareness and a lot of remembering or mindfulness in order to bring about because the thing that comes about for us spontaneously is to do things for our own benefit. And bodhicitta is a mind working for the benefit of all other beings. So those two things are directly opposite each other, directly in opposition. So in order for us to really develop fully qualified bodhicitta, we need to get rid of self-cherishing.
So this is very difficult for us. So it’s something that we need to keep working at, but we need to keep working at it from both ends, getting rid of self-cherishing and trying to protect bodhicitta. So we can sit there and think, I’m gonna achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. We can think that, and we can sit there and we can meditate on it. Yes.
Achieving enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. If then it came to actually giving our body away for even one sentient being, we’d have a problem. Okay. Okay.