Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Why is anger toward a bodhisattva heavier karma than toward an ordinary person? That question opens this 28-minute Q&A session with Geshe Pema Tsering. He explains that karma depends on the actor’s own action: getting angry at someone motivated purely to benefit others is worse precisely because that person does nothing to deserve it. Three further questions follow: whether searching for samsaric happiness is ever positive (only in realising it isn’t there); why we cling to memories when everything is impermanent (self-grasping fuels the “I did this” narrative, and over-analysis breeds agitation rather than concentration); and whether dharma practice requires rejecting worldly knowledge (no — even learning to drive a car becomes dharma when the motivation is to help). Suited to students with a basic grounding in Buddhist concepts.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2005 05 24Q Bodhisattvas Way of Life.mp3
UUID: bea4bd60-ab94-493c-998e-a2727493a12d
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life 2005 Mar -2007 (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-05-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 27.6 minutes
Words: ~2,054
And come yeah. And turn into very uptight people. Dear, Mhmm. Okay. It’s good if we can be as respectful as possible to all beings, but don’t make our minds too tight.
Mhmm. Hero. Yes. Reacted. Is the question.
For them to easily recognize the action, negative action. That’s why they that’s why why. It’s easier to recognize when you’re being angry at a Buddha than an ordinary being. For them to is it easily for them to recognize their action. Of an of the of the person who’s being angry?
Yes. Uh-huh. Because I’ve If it’s yeah. Yeah. It’s on they can recognize when people are being angry.
Yeah. But, you know, because, you know, for example, some people get angry towards those Uh-huh. People that’s what they recognize. Okay. Yeah.
Action is that why It’s the worst negative action. Okay. So the reason that it’s a greater non virtue or negative action to get angry at bodhisattvas and Buddhas than it is at ordinary beings is because you’re getting angry at someone whose only motivation is ever to work for the benefit of others. So you’re getting angry at someone who’s only working for other people. So to get angry at someone who’s purely motivated by helping others is a lot more negative than to get angry at someone who’s getting angry at you.
Yeah. And the and and another thing is and so that’s one reason. Right? So you’re getting angry at someone who in no way deserves your anger. No way deserves your anger.
Yeah? Not that anyone does, but they less so. And the other thing is this, you are being disrespectful to all of the positive qualities of a Bodhisattva. So there’s those two reasons. Okay.
But it doesn’t the way that you’re talking about it doesn’t make sense because karma doesn’t come from other people. It comes from us. Yeah? So if we’re doing something towards other beings, then the positive or the strength of the positive or negative actions that we’re performing depends on our action. So if we are being disrespectful to someone who has a lot of positive qualities, then that’s a heavier negative action.
If we are, being disrespectful to someone who deserves our respect, or for being angry at someone who doesn’t deserve or they has done the opposite of deserving our anger, yeah, then that’s obviously a stronger negative action. But if you say it’s because they can’t they can see our anger, that doesn’t make sense because that’s that means that our karma is being accumulated depending on what they’re doing, and it depends on what we’re doing. You more than I do. When Geshe-la talks, I always go, oh, he understands. I understand.
And then you’ll go, that’s more than me. Yes. Okay? Did everyone hear that? Pardon?
No. No. The computer didn’t hear it. Okay. So what’s wrong with looking for happiness if it leads you to dharma?
So if you’re looking for happiness somewhere and you don’t find it in in a lot of other, like, worldly things and you don’t find happiness in any of those places and you end up looking into dharma and and finding it there, isn’t the pursuit of happiness a good thing? Yeah. Yeah? Okay. Okay.
Oh, right. So, Geshe-la said, if if there was something positive about looking for happiness in Samsāra, you’d be able to find it. Yeah. And if you can’t find happiness in Samsāra, there’s no point looking for it. Yeah.
And so if you have figured out that there wasn’t any happiness in Samsāra, then that’s a good thing. Yeah? That’s that’s positive. Right? But actually looking for it in the first place when it’s not there isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Alright? So, if he said if it was a good thing, you would’ve found it. Yeah? So to figure out it’s not there is a good thing, but to look for it as if it’s there isn’t. But it’s it was a bit tricky to translate because there’s two different words you use for happiness, and one’s samsaric and the other’s not.
Yep. If things if things are changing moment by moment and impermanent, what is there to hang on to? Why do we hang on to the past? If things are changing moment by moment, why do we hang on to the past, you know, the memories and Mhmm. The path itself that we’ve trod?
Mhmm. And then Geshe-la — oh, shit. That picked up, didn’t it? Didn’t it go? Didn’t really?
Okay. self-cherishing, Self grasping. It’s because we have this really strong sense of self, then we’re always thinking about what we did. And Geshe-la said, I did this, I had that experience, and I did this. It’s actually similar thing to thinking, aren’t I good?
Then he said, it’s what we do naturally. It’s very it’s very strong tendency that we all have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I agree. Especially in my case, I’m always thinking about it. But but she seems to me that conceptually, we do need those steps to show us, you know, where we’ve been. Otherwise, we don’t make any sense of the world. Uh-huh.
Do you guys hear that? Yes. And then if they heard it, then it came up, good. No. It’s good.
It’s good. For people who are listening at home, it’s good. Alright. So if we don’t have those kind of reference points, we can’t make any sense of the world. Geshe-la says he disagrees because he said, the more that we try and sort things out, the more we’re thinking.
Right? And the more that we think about things, the more agitation we’re creating in our mind. And the less that we hold on to the things that have happened in the past, the less we try and sort things out, and the more we start to focus on now, the greater our ability to meditate, to concentrate will become. When I walk down the street and I see shops, that concept of shops, that concept of what people are doing comes from my understanding of reality. If a new someone from the New Guinea jungle walked down the street Mhmm.
They’d be looking at all these atoms and molecules and shapes and colors and think, what the what? You know? Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what I’m saying?
So I have to have points of reference just to survive Okay. To make my way around this world. Okay. So Geshe-la said, it’s not like you work towards Buddhahood and become stupider and stupider and have less capacity to understand and understand. But if you try and figure everything out, everything out before you’re a Buddha, then you’re going to get lost.
Alright? In trying to figure everything out, there’s no way you can understand everything unless you try and become a Buddha. Alright? So, as a Buddha, you have the capacity to understand everything. Yeah.
And if you’re not a Buddha, you don’t. Alright? So it would make more sense to focus on what’s going to get you to that stage than to try and figure out the little bits that aren’t gonna get you anywhere in the first place. Yeah. So he said, if we focus on what’s going to help us, what is gonna help us attain that goal.
So if we focus on developing an understanding of, of impermanence and understanding of selflessness and understanding of the mental concentration, meditative concentration, then those are the tools that we can use to develop these realizations that will enable us to understand things that we can’t understand at the moment. But if you try and understand those things individually without following that path, we’re gonna get lost in understanding those things. Because at the moment when we try and understand these things, we’re trying to understand both on a motivation of attachment, hatred, pride, other negative emotions. Yeah. So our understanding isn’t gonna be clear to start off with.
Alright. So trying to sort it all out doesn’t help. Trying to work towards becoming a Buddha does. I can’t translate lots of food. So Oh, thank you.
Right. So there’s a lot of things that we don’t know. And if we try and figure things out, and if we keep yeah. Then then we’re not going to get there. The only way that we actually get there is by reversing the wrong thoughts that we have.
So reversing our, incorrect perception. And when we reverse our incorrect perception and make that understanding subtler and subtler and subtler, eventually we understand the way that things are. We see directly the way that things are and when we see the way that things are, like their final mode of abiding, emptiness and everything, we understand really what the situation is. We’re able to sort it out properly. So at the moment, we have this idea.
I did this. I went here. Uh-huh. So if you think about it then, I guess it’s they said the way that we mostly think about things is based on attachment and anger and ignorance. So if we’re thinking I did this and I did that, it’s like, oh, I enjoyed that.
I enjoyed this. I had a good time when I did that and that or the opposite anger, that person, I remember him. He did that to me. I’ve got to get him back. Yeah?
So most of our experience of self is is dependent on this the the the ideas based on attachment or aversion. Right? So they don’t necessarily help us. And it’s not being as caught up in those things that does actually help us. Someone’s got a Just to to follow though, does that does that mean to reject all knowledge that isn’t dharmic knowledge?
Isn’t Uh-huh. I’ll repeat that, George. Does that mean to reject all knowledge that isn’t dharma knowledge? I’m saying I I assume it does not mean that, but Okay. Yeah.
Okay. So Okay. So Geshe said he can’t think of anything that you could know that you that wouldn’t be dharma. Alright? So he said, it depends on whether you are the way that you’re using that knowledge and what you’re doing with it.
So even if it’s like finding out what politicians are doing, yeah, watching the news and that kind of thing. So you can approach that knowledge with a positive frame of reference, which practicing Dharma, you know, to find out what’s happening to be a benefit to to pray for people or or whatever it is. Or you can think, how can I use that knowledge? It depends on what you do with it. And I also say, about something as neutral as driving a car?
Yeah. So something that’s driving a car can’t help you practice Dharma, he said it can help you practice Dharma. He said if you have a car if you learn how to drive a car because you want to help people, that is practicing Dharma. So anything that you learn, it can be used to be beneficial and also harmful. So there isn’t anything that you can say, I shouldn’t know this or I don’t need to know this because Okay.
So so I guess the point was that you shouldn’t be trying to sort things out for the sake of sorting things out. So if you you’re in a situation where you’ve built a house before and you know how to build a house, and if you build the house and it’s gonna be a benefit to someone, then do it. Don’t sit there figuring out how you learn how to build a house, how important it is that you learn to to build the house and and putting everything everything into perspective in that way. Yeah? Into a like a figuring everything out in that way.
Right? If someone needs your help, you do it. You don’t get into all the you don’t have to get out into all of the mechanics of how you came to know it or all of those things as well. Yeah. Okay.
Okay. Unless anyone else is gonna be heartbroken if I I don’t ask another question.