Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A story about a lice-ridden monk who turns out to be a hidden bodhisattva illustrates the central lesson of this 36-minute Q&A session with Geshe Pema Tsering: appearances are an unreliable guide to spiritual quality. He opens by correcting a common misreading of the Bodhisattva Way of Life text — “giving your body” means using your physical presence to serve others, not literal self-harm — with a practical aside on organ donation and the motivation that matters during the death process. He then addresses water offerings to the altar, arguing that all offerings ultimately benefit the giver rather than the Three Jewels, who need nothing we can provide. The discussion broadens to who most deserves generosity — monks, poor people, beggars — before Geshe-la closes with characteristic bluntness: if a fat monk and a starving dog both need food, give it to the dog.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2005 05 31Q Bodhisattvas Way of Life.mp3
UUID: 7ecabcf9-178c-4e9e-960a-862f96d0301f
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life 2005 Mar -2007 (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-05-31
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 36.2 minutes
Words: ~2,853
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Alright.
Alright. Okay. Sorry about that. I was just trying to make sure because it gets very complicated. I’m just trying to make sure that I get it very clear.
Okay. So I guess I said that in this text when it talks about giving your body giving your body, it’s not talking about giving your spare parts off till you die. Right? It’s actually talking about using your body to serve others. So it means seeing your physical being as being something that is a is like a servant to others.
So if you are using your life or using your body to serve others, yeah, then that’s what it means by giving your body. It doesn’t literally mean killing yourself and giving it to others, yeah? So it’s talking about using your body to be of service to others. Alright? So using your time, using your physical presence to be of benefit to others.
Okay? And that’s what it means in terms of giving your body. Now, in terms of whether you should give your organs at the time of death or not, that’s a different issue. It’s not what he’s talking about here, but it’s a different issue. And what Geshe-la said is that personally he thinks whether it’s beneficial or not depends on with what motivation you do it.
Alright? So if you think I’m giving by giving my spare my my body parts away after I die, may that be a cause for me to attain enlightenment, that the end you would be able to maintain that idea while you were going through the death process. Alright? Oh, they can take them. I don’t need them anymore.
May that be a cause for me to attain enlightenment, then you can see that it would not be a problem to have your organs taken out of you. If you think that you’re gonna be attached to your organs and then you’re not going to maintain that motivation, yeah, then it wouldn’t be beneficial. So it depends on what motivation you have for doing it. So if you had the idea, I’m gonna give my organs away because that’s the good thing to do, that makes me a good person, right? And then you have attachment to them when they start performing the operations and that’s not going to be helpful.
But if you can honestly believe that you’ll be able to say, well, I’m not gonna need them anymore. Alright? And and think that it’s fine to give them away, then he doesn’t think that that would be interfering with the death process too much. Yeah. Hero.
Yes. I have a question about offering pure water. So not water? Sorry. He’s saying his tea is good.
Oh, water. Water. He said it tastes good in his tea. Anyway, offering pure water. Okay.
Geshe says all phenomena manifest in dependence on imprints on your mind stream. So unless you had the imprints for pure water, you wouldn’t experience pure water. Anyway offering to your altar, is that does that mean offering? Okay. Alright.
If someone’s if you’re really thirsty and someone offers you water and it’s clean and refreshing, then you’re happy about it. That’s the reason you’re giving it because it’s a nice thing to give. Is that if you want to offer your personal qualities, you can do that too. But you offer water because it’s a nice thing to give. Not necessarily.
No. It’s to make our offering. So it’s talking about all different things that you can offer that people would like to receive. So you’re making an offering because that’s a good thing to do. It’s a offering of it’s being generous, and it’s it’s it’s a way to make merit.
Yeah? So offering all sorts of things. All the things here, it lists all the different things you’re offering. And one of the nice things a nice thing to give to someone would be clean fresh water. Alright.
Okay. So they talk about short term result. So if if you may they they said to have short term and long term results offering things like this. So, one of the things it says, if you keep offering and you keep being generous, mentally, you’re doing mentally offering things and mentally giving things away, then in future lives, then you won’t be short for any of these things. Short that you won’t have a shortage of light pure water and clean water in a nice environment.
And that’s like one of the results. Right? There’s more there’s more important results because through developing this mind where you’re constantly giving and making offerings, then the results of that is attaining Buddhahood. Right? But there’s also said to be kind of temporary results in that you’re you’re creating positive conditions.
Alright? You’re creating a good environment in which to practice Dharma. So if you I said, so does that mean that if you make lots of offerings of pure water, you don’t have to live in Adelaide? And Geshe-la said, Adelaide’s a good place to live. I was it’s just the water.
Yeah. Okay. You don’t have to have a realization of emptiness to make a pure offering, but you have to remember that the three spheres, that is the person giving, the person, the being receiving, and the thing being given, and the act of being given, and none of them are inherently existent. So, if you can remember that while you’re actually doing the giving or making the offering, then it’s said to be a pure offering even if it’s not even if if don’t directly perceive that. So just to remember that none of it’s inherently existent.
Yes? Uh-huh. Sort of offer do you make it to [unintelligible]. Alright. No.
It’s true that the the Dharma jewel isn’t a person, so it’s hard to think of anything that true paths and true cessations would need. Yes? So the but the idea is that you’re making offerings to qualities. Yeah? And the qualities that don’t exist in isolation, qualities that exist in the continuum of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
Yeah? So or Ārya Bodhisattvas. So the offerings that you’re making aren’t for the benefit of the person you’re giving them or the be or the thing that you’re giving it to anyway. There’s nothing that you could give a Buddha that they couldn’t that they would need. And there’s nothing that you could give an Ārya that they would need.
Yeah? Or So there’s no possessions or anything that you give. You’re not giving to benefit the Buddhas and the Dharma and the Sangha. You’re giving to benefit yourself. Alright?
So you’re making offerings to get you to enlightenment. But they’re because they’re already getting there or there. Right? So it’s not just the dharma jewel that you have to think they don’t need it, but all of them. Uh-huh.
Uh-huh. Sure. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. So That’s I’m repeating it. Repeating it. So if you make offering of housing or clothes or food to the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas, they can actually wear things, you know, and they can act they do need things. They do need to eat.
They do need somewhere to stay. But if you can’t really do the same thing to a text or that represents a Dharma or to true paths and true cessations. Yeah? Yeah. To benefit us.
Yeah. Yeah. That they don’t need it. Uh-huh. Sure.
Sure. Okay. So the so the and then we’re giving it to you in order to benefit ourselves, but we’ve I’m saying let’s take you can check to see if I’ve got it. Okay. So if you give to the but if we’re giving to the the the teachers, to Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, then they if we give to them, then they have the facilities to or the the things they need to remain here to teach us.
So it really is for our benefit, yeah, that we give to them. It’s for our benefit? Yeah. That we’re giving to them even the people saying that we’re giving for our benefit. Yeah.
We’ll give yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. They’re only is that what he means when he says they’re only they’re it’s for our benefit because they can use them in order to benefit us? Alright.
So Geshe-la doesn’t think that we should have that kind of a fixed or limited idea of what we’re giving. Alright? He said that in terms of the Dharma jewel, what you’re talking about is the qualities. Because they don’t exist in in isolation, they exist in the continuum of sentient beings. If those beings didn’t have those qualities, then they wouldn’t be the Buddha jewel, they wouldn’t be the Sangha jewel.
Right? So, you’re it’s just a different way of differentiating them out, but the actual things that you’re making the offerings to is the beings. Yeah? And then you think, okay, I’m giving them because of this quality, so I’m also making this offering to this this quality. And he said that if you’re giving to someone and thinking if by giving this then they will benefit me because they will maintain or they will go on, then that’s a he said that’s a limited way of making the offering to try make it as expansive a reason for giving as possible so that I’m making an offering to this being because of the person who’s passing on the Buddha jewel to me, the Dharma jewel to me, the Sangha jewel to me, and by passing them on to me, they’re helping me develop them, and by developing them, then I will be able to benefit all sentient beings.
So try and make it as vast as possible. So they may be able to help you and they may not be able to help you, but the idea is to offer as much as you can to as many beings as you can, whether they’re there or not, and think that by doing this may I become enlightened. Alright. So in Tibetan culture, what that means is that you get people tend to make offerings to to to very big monasteries with thousands of monks in there and the hope that some of them by the by like, working working the numbers that they’ll they’ll manage to give offerings to people who deserve it anyway. Right?
And he said, and even if they can’t make offerings to big monasteries, then they’ll try and get two or three monks and think, well, at least they’ve got vows. Right? And he gets this even if they have no other qualities, at least you’re making an offering to the vows. So he that if it’s it’s also good to offer to people who really need it. So in terms of the two two beggars or poor people that really, really need help.
It’s just that it tends to be in Tibetan culture that they give to both because he said that you have this idea of you’re giving to the the Three Jewels if you’re giving to the monks and nuns. And and and you’re so that there’s more qualities that you’re being respectful to if you’re giving to monks and nuns as you’re not quite sure whether he said, not you can’t be sure whether all beggars have something that’s as equivalent of vows. A quality that’s the equivalent of vows. They may have, but you can’t be sure. So the the more qualities the being who you are making offerings to has, the more impact the offering the process of offering has.
Again, this depends. Alright. So the the this this is generally the case, but again, it depends on what motivation or what we’re thinking. Because Geshe-la said, in fact, any sentient being has shown us enormous kindness and has, done given made intense sacrifices for us. So if we can give to any sentient being with that in mind, alright, then that being becomes possessed of enormous qualities.
Alright? So it doesn’t it’s just that because the way our minds work, we’re not always concentrating on that. So because we’re not always concentrating on that, then sometimes it’s easier to give to people that we at least know are living in vows or there’s lots of them or or whatever it is. But then it gets weird. Uh-uh.
Okay. So Geshe said, it gets weird because we’re sitting here saying, well, you know, the more qualities the person you give to the in more intense the action is, but how how do we know? Yeah. Okay. So Geshe-la says it can be tricky.
He said that he knows this story of this. There was a monk who was said to be a bodhisattva with great clairvoyance who was coming to live in Lhasa. He doesn’t know where he was from in Tibet, but by the time he got to Lhasa, he was quite skanky. Alright? Smelly, yucky, and he had lice all over him.
Alright? He hadn’t he’d been sleeping rough for a month or so while he was on his way to Lhasa and he was carrying all his stuff with him, and he had you could see the lice and you could smell him. Alright? And as but he was also, you know, a very realized being. Yeah?
And as he came into Lhasa, there’s a there’s a a kora trail, like a circumambulation trail all around Lhasa where people walk around all the time and you get lots of groups of women who go for an evening stroll around the kora. Right? So, yeah, so you get lots of Okay. So they so they have this idea, they go for a stroll and get some merit while they’re doing it. Right?
So you get groups — Geshe-la said, you know, they’ll although the the groups of them walking around and they all look quite they all do themselves up, right, to do kora. Anyway, there’s this so this they came across so when he first came into Lhasa, this Bodhisattva, the skanky Bodhisattva with all the lice and carrying all the stuff, he started doing kora as well. So as he was doing kora, he kept running into groups of horrified looking posh Lhasa ladies who just like, oh. Right? And one of the ladies looked at him and said, oh, please don’t let me have a rebirth like that monk.
Alright? Yeah. And he turned around to her and said, you know, it’d be really difficult if you get a rebirth as good as mine. And she went, oops. And then because of that she was able to develop regret.
So yeah. So we don’t know. We don’t know. So this this so we don’t know. This person looked like really dirty, and he really didn’t he looked really like a beggar and very dirty, but it was a Bodhisattva, and she didn’t know.
There’s lots of story there’s lots of he taught a lot after he arrived. And yeah. Okay. So he went to Geshe-la’s monastery, and he was in an area of the monastery that was [unclear].. So he’s the same one that Geshe-la said that Khensur Rinpoche told a story about a few weeks ago when they were had a meeting, when they had they were having a meeting to see what they were to decide on the future for future direction for the monastery and what they should do in order to make plans for the future.
And this monk stood up and said, I think we all should get a hessian bag and a rope. So when we die, we can chuck our bodies in it and tie it up. That’s the plans we should make for the future, he said. Yeah. So he’s very important.
He’s a very amazing teacher. Yeah. Do I Heather. Are you gonna is it quick, Heather? Yeah.
I was just gonna say, I guess it’s a different form of giving, but making an offering of if you give to a starving dog or a hungry child Uh-huh. I guess that’s not the same merit as as making an offering To to the sangha. To the smelly dude with the Yes. The okay. Yeah.
All the same. Although it seems more Temporary imp But it seems more obvious. Obvious. Yeah. Okay.
It seems more obvious to give to starving dogs and child children child children then yeah. Okay. So Geshe-la reckons, if you have a fat monk and a starving dog, give the food to the dog. He said that that you’re not gonna hurt the monk by not giving them the food, and the dog really needs it. Uh-uh.
Uh-uh. So then if you have both a hungry dog and a hungry monk, alright, then give it to the monk. Yeah. Because they’re both really hungry. Yeah.
Is that okay? Thank you. Okay. [unclear]