Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Atisha’s pair of images — objects of attachment are like illusions, pleasant or unpleasant sounds are like echoes — opens this 71.5-minute session and sets the conceptual frame for everything that follows. Geshe Pema Tsering unpacks why both analogies point to the same insight: nothing we grasp at has the substance to deliver lasting happiness, a point he illustrates with a computer screen analogy and the observation that yesterday’s lunch is no more real than momos eaten in a dream. He traces the practical consequence: recognising samsaric happiness as contaminated leads to renunciation, which is the ground for bodhicitta, which in turn enables the Bodhisattva path. The session closes with a careful distinction between causal and resultant refuge — the external Three Jewels that guide us now versus the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha we will eventually realise within our own continuum.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2005 07 26 Bodhisattvas Way of Life.mp3
UUID: 8ea01cef-7890-4a1a-9a77-51f1995850db
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life 2005 Mar -2007 (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-07-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 71.5 minutes
Words: ~6,959
Hello? Yeah. That’s working. Yeah. That’s better.
Knows. I know. Does hero mean star in Japanese? Hero means hiro masa means do you know? As as I told you I can’t remember.
Hiro masa. Hero, you know, h So, Atisha in the guides in his path of the Bodhisattva. All right. So in his text called An Ornament for the Path of Bodhisattvas, or the Jewel of the Path of Bodhisattvas, Atisha said, when you see things that you’re when you find objects of attachment, see them as being an illusion, and when you hear things that are pleasant or unpleasant, remember they are an echo. So, when we’re experiencing things, when there’s things we’re attached to or when there’s things that we have aversion to, then we need to remember that the things that we are either attached to or have aversion to don’t actually exist.
They appear, but they don’t exist the way we hold onto them as existing because they are like an illusion. When we hear things that we find pleasant or we hear things that we find not so pleasant, then we should remind ourselves that all we’re hearing is the same thing as like an echo. It was a very old word for echo, and Geshe-la was explaining it to me by saying, when you go to a certain country and you say ah, then you hear ah. And I was like, what? Like a grunt?
And he said, no. You know, if I went somewhere and there’s like a I yelled out Ruth, and then I would hear Ruth back. Yeah. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Alright. So as I was gonna say, it’s good thing he explained it that way because I was about to say an olive an an oral or yeah. That’s what hearing is. Or no. An auditory hallucination, which doesn’t quite work as much as an echo, does it?
So reason that they’re described as an echo is because there it’s there’s it’s meaningless. There’s sounds that come along, but they don’t have any great meaning towards them, and they they they don’t they can’t by themselves create suffering or happiness. So this is this is what we this is precisely what we don’t do. We don’t look at things that we’re attached to or things that we have aversion to as being, illusory. We, hold them as being truly existent, and once we’ve hold out held on to something that we’re attached to, or something that we have aversion to as being real, as being something that can actually make us happy, or can actually cause suffering towards us, cause suffering for us, then we spend all our time after that chasing after that, working hard to achieve the things we want and working hard to get rid of the things we don’t want.
If we were able to perceive them as an illusion, if we were able to see their lack of inherent existence, they wouldn’t be able to bother us. We wouldn’t be developing attachment. We wouldn’t be developing aversion. We would be content with what we had, and we wouldn’t have to be grasping after external objects, ones that we like or ones we dislike. And this would happen for the things that we were attached to.
If we had the ability to perceive the things that we’re attached to as being illusory, we wouldn’t chase after them. And if we had the ability ability to see the things that made us angry as illusions, they wouldn’t make us angry. If we had the ability to realize there was nothing in the object that was making us angry that actually had the ability to make us angry, and that it was merely our minds reacting to something. If we were able to perceive these things that we’re angry at as being illusory, then we would not react with anger. We would be able to see that there was nothing to be angry at, that there was nothing coming at us from its side to make us angry, that the reason we were angry was our own mental state, and we wouldn’t react to anything external with anger.
So whether it was something that was we thought will make us happy or whether it’s something we think is making us angry, what we need to develop is the ability to see them as either like an illusion or like a an emanation or I don’t know. What’s another word? No. It’s not mirage. There’s a different word from mirage.
The only one this is only one I know for this is emanation, as in emanation body and stuff. Anyway but to make it easier, Geshe-la said it’s like a computer. Don’t know you use the word emanation. So, he said that anything that we see on a computer screen, we can interact with it, it appears to us, but we are under no illusion at all that that thing is existing inside the screen. We see it appear, we recognize its appearance, we interact with it, but we don’t think that if we take apart the screen that we’ll find it there.
We see it appearing, but we know it’s not inherently there. We know it doesn’t have any solid existence that we can find inside the when we take the screen apart. So when these things that we are attached to, that we desire strongly, and when there’s things that we have aversion to, or where there’s things that are making us feel proud, or there’s things that are making us jealous, or there’s things that are making us that we relate to with ignorance, we have to recognize that all of these objects don’t exist from their side. We can’t say that it’s them that’s causing these things and if we’re able to view them as being like an illusion, like a mirage, then we can recognize that the thing that we need to deal with is our minds and then we won’t have any of the attachment. We can say, Well, that thing can’t actually make me happy.
That thing can’t actually make me angry, and if we can recognize it that way, then we won’t be disturbed by these emotions. And it’s the same with the things that we hear. Some of the things that we hear, we may find very, very pleasant and and, grasp onto them and try and, hold on to those things, and some of the things that we hear may be very unpleasant and we may react to the unpleasant things we hear with anger and frustration. But if we remember that these things that we’re listening to, the things that we hear are just like echoes, they have no inherent existence of their own, that they’re that they we can’t find them when we go searching for them, that they’re that they’re mere refractions of of I mean, the way that they affect they affect us is just like a a rebounding sound, then we we can stop ourselves from reacting in those ways. We can stop ourselves from being angry.
We can stop ourselves from being proud. We can stop ourselves from being attached to any of So any of these things, any of these sounds, any of these things that we’re attached to, we they are like echoes. They are like illusions. We can’t we can’t actually find any happiness from them. We may convince ourselves in the short term that we can find happiness from them because if we follow after them in this lifetime, then we may get a certain amount of what appears to us as being happiness in this lifetime.
But even that happiness will be like an illusion, like an echo. It won’t have any real substance, any real essence to it, and in the end by being attached to it, we’re just perpetuating saṃsāra. So any of these things, they have a superficial appearance, they do appear. It’s not like they don’t appear. I like the images on a computer screen, they do appear.
It’s not as if we can say, there is no appearance of suffering, there is no appearance of happiness, there is nothing, because there is things, we know there’s things, things appear to us. It’s just that they don’t have any essence, they don’t have any substance or any core to them that we can actually see as being reason why we’re experiencing suffering, or there is no essence to the suffering or the happiness that we experience. So, if we can come to understand that they are like illusions, that they are like mirages or echoes, and then we will stop being affected by the ill the illusory suffering and the illusory happiness and the illusory negative things that we hear and so So all of these things, all of these essenceless things that we chase after, all of the things that we think that bring us happiness or suffering in this lifetime, are said to be like an illusion or like an echo because they really have no essence. If they did have an essence, then we would have been able to collect them. We would have been Since we’ve been If there’s no Even in this lifetime, even if we don’t think about previous lifetimes, if happiness had an essence, if suffering had an essence, and if the things that we own had an essence, the things that make us happy had an essence, we could collect them and we wouldn’t have to worry anymore.
We wouldn’t be experiencing suffering because we could collect happiness and it wouldn’t go away, and we could collect the things that we wanted and they wouldn’t go away. They wouldn’t disintegrate, they wouldn’t get old, they stop being useful. If they really did exist, they wouldn’t change. If they had a true substance to them, they wouldn’t change and we wouldn’t have to worry about it, we could have just collected happiness, we could have collected all the things we need and we wouldn’t have anything to worry about. But this isn’t the way things exist.
Things constantly come and they go and they come and they go, and this is why they said that they’re like an illusion because they have no constant essential purpose or essential existence or true existence. If they had a true existence, they wouldn’t have changed. We’d be able to collect them. They don’t do that. We experience suffering.
We experience happiness. So this shows us that everything, because it’s in a state of flux, has no true existence. They they’re all like an illusion. They’re all like an echo. If the when an example that we can think of like this is that the food that we ate yesterday was delicious when we ate it, we really enjoyed it, we really may have had a really good experience of eating that food, but where is it today?
It’s just a memory. It’s just an illusion. If it was true, we could have taken it with us, but but it’s gone. If there’s a if there was something that was a truly existent cause for happiness, if there was something that was truly existent, it wouldn’t change. So Geshe-la said, the momos he may have eaten in his dream last night —
Do you guys know what momos are? Yeah. Okay. So the momos he may have eaten in his dream last night are just as real as the food he had for lunch yesterday. And I said, did you eat momos yesterday?
No. No. It doesn’t matter. So so the food that he ate yesterday has as little substantial as little substantiality as the momos he ate in his dreams. If it was if it was a if they were truly existent food, if it was truly any of the experiences, any of the things that we have were truly existent, they’d still be there.
So this is why they say that they the happiness that you achieve once you achieve nirvana, the happiness that you achieve once you achieve buddhahood, these are said to be true happiness because they don’t change. They’re really hard to get there. It’s really hard to become a Buddha. It’s really hard to attain nirvana. But once you get there, the happiness you experience doesn’t change.
And that’s why it’s said to be reliable happiness, true happiness, because it isn’t it doesn’t turn into memory. So if we really wanna work towards happiness, it makes more sense to work towards happiness that is happiness, that isn’t just an echo or an illusion that we get tricked tricked by, but that fades very very quickly. So, if we want real happiness and we we can achieve that through nirvana or attaining Buddhahood, and that’s why these are called ultimate happiness or ultimate pleasure or bliss. They’re not temporary happiness like we find in saṃsāra. It’s happiness that is like an illusion that doesn’t last, that is that turns into an an echo or becomes memory.
So most people don’t know about real happiness. They don’t know about happiness that can exist without changing and happiness that can be relied upon. And unless they are someone who not only has faith in the Buddhist teachings, but has the tendency or the dispensation to put it into practice, then they’re not going to know what this is. They’re going to know what the fleeting fleeting happinesses of Samsāra are, but they’re not gonna know that that that there could be such a thing as a true happiness that you get after this much hard work. So as people with the with the they call themselves Buddhist, people with this who consider themselves to be following the Buddhist teachings, and then we really need to work at putting this into practice, using this opportunity that we have, using this dispensation that we have towards this practice, and we need to put that into practice put towards this practice.
We need to use that and to apply these things and to work towards these goals. You know, Mhmm. Mhmm. Alright. So it’s hard for us to do that though, even as Buddhists, even if we have this belief or this inclination, it’s still something that’s very hard to put in practice.
And one of the reasons that it is very hard for us to put into practice is because we don’t have much many examples to follow. There aren’t many people that we can say, Well, know, they worked hard and they became a Buddha. We’ve got Buddha Śākyamūni and we’ve got Milarepa and that’s about it. We don’t have that many people that we can say, Okay, this is in their lifetime how they attained Buddhahood in one lifetime, in one body. We don’t have many times where we can say, that’s how you do it.
And because these people are so far away from us or so different to us, we may think, well, that’s a very different being, and I can’t do it. Oh, to me, it’s not So therefore, the belief becomes difficult to develop. The belief that we have the ability to do to do this becomes difficult to develop. So without this kind of example, without this experience of Buddhahood, without this experience of liberation, it’s very hard to convince ourselves that there’s something that’s worthwhile working towards, and it’s much easier to stick with what we know, and that is working towards the fleeting experiences of happiness that we may have in saṃsāra. Especially if we don’t recognize that working towards this fleeting happiness that we experience in saṃsāra is actually a cause for us to experience more suffering.
It creates more suffering, especially if we don’t know that. It’s very difficult for us to focus on a more abstract, unexperienced version of happiness, even if it may be ultimate and dependable, than it is for us to focus on the the fleeting experiences of happiness that we do know about. So when the Buddha came to Earth and performed the twelve deeds, then people could see clearly that he was a he was a a real Buddha. And even beings who didn’t have realizations could see that he was a real Buddha. But for us in these degenerate times, we don’t have the opportunity to run into someone like that.
And there are beings around who may be Buddhas, but in order for us to know for certain that they are Buddhas, we need to have gotten rid of the obscurations that inhibit our ability to see this. We need to get rid of our afflicted state so we can really perceive beings as Buddhas. Until we get rid of that, then we can’t see them as Buddhas. When we can, then we will be able to even in even in these kind of times. But it’s at the the time of the Buddha, they were very lucky even in the even though even ordinary beings were able to see a Buddha.
For people like us, it’s not possible at this moment. So what we need to do is get rid of anything that could be an obstacle to us perceiving this. Without doing that, then we’re not going to be able to So we may not have that that kind of experience, but what we do have is the Buddha’s words. What we do have is the and the Buddha’s instructions, and what we can experience is that when we follow that, that we can see how it changes our minds, that we can see how it affects us, we can we can know that from from firsthand experience. So, this is something that we need to to put a lot of effort into doing is to to learn from the Buddha’s the Buddha’s words and become sure of how that can change our minds through our own experiences.
So because we have these words, because we have these instruction, because we have the the this path laid out in front of us, and then it’s the way that we’re going to find out about it is, first of all, by becoming coming is is looking at the Buddha’s teachings. And the Buddha’s teachings are enormous, but what we also have is the idea of the graduated path that leads us through the Buddha’s teachings. And then, we also have the essence of this graduated path, which is the three principal aspects of that path, the ideas of renunciation of bodhicitta and the realization of emptiness. So, if we focus on those and at first we develop an understanding of these paths, if we develop a knowledge or we know about them. The way that we know about them is the way that we come to know about them is through first of all listening and reading about them, and then through contemplating on them, and then meditating on them.
So, we go through this threefold process of coming to know the path, and we go through this idea of learning about the path, and then we go through the idea of contemplating it, and then meditating on it. Meditating on The Tibetan word for meditation also has this other meaning of familiarization. So, it means coming to be so familiar with the path that we know it thoroughly. We know each section of it thoroughly. Then after we’ve done that, then we start putting it into practice.
We know which parts of the path we need to focus on, we know what’s going to come up. So, we’re so thoroughly familiar with it that we know what to do with our mind to follow it. So for the the first thing amongst these three then, the three principal aspects which are the core that we need to be focused on, is this idea of renunciation or this idea of turning away from saṃsāra. We turn away from saṃsāra. We work towards getting out of saṃsāra when we realize what’s wrong with it, when we come to view saṃsāra as being poison, as being poison that causes suffering.
This is one of the reasons Atisha said this first that we were talking about in the beginning, that is that we should view all things that we are attached to or have aversion to as being like as being like an illusion, and all things that we hear as being like an echo. He said he taught this so that we’d stop having we’d stop thinking that we were gonna get happiness out of them. We’d start seeing that the more we grabbed onto them, the less happiness we’re going to get out of them. So he said things are like an illusion, things are just emanations, things are like echoes. And he was saying this because if we can recognize this, if we can if we can bring ourselves to come bring ourselves to understand this, then we’re not going to chase after them.
We’re not going to be thinking, I need that, I don’t like that, this is going to make me happy. We’re going to realize that not only are they illusory, but they’re incredibly faulty, these things that we work so hard to get to, with these things we work so hard to achieve. Because by striving after them, we are creating the causes for suffering. By being ruled by our attachment and our aversion, then we are creating the causes for the perpetuation of saṃsāra and suffering. So, in this way, they’re not only illusory, but they’re also very faulty, and when we recognize that this is like poison and seek to get out of that state, really come to understand we need to get out of that state, then this is renunciation, or this is the is the path of definite emergence from saṃsāra.
So the happiness of one second. So the the happiness that we may be able to chase after in Samsāra, the happiness of gods, the happiness of demigods or titans, the happiness of humans, and and even animals have certain amount certain experiences of happiness. That that happiness is when we recognize that it’s not worth chasing after, that it’s so temporary, it’s so fleeting, it is like an illusion, it can’t satiate us, it just creates more suffering, and then we will want to leave that behind and strive for true happiness. When that happens without fabrication, without us working at it, when it happens spontaneously, when we have we have this that feeling constantly present within us, that’s when what’s what you call renunciation or definite emergence?
Sorry. It’s just that the word in Tibetan is to be focused on leaving Samsāra, and renunciation means to turn your back on something. But definite emergence really sounds weird, doesn’t it? Yeah. So people probably think that this is very strange that we can sit here and say that the happiness that you experience in saṃsāra is actually suffering by its nature.
Because we can think, well, that doesn’t make any sense. Happiness and suffering are mutually exclusive. How can you say that happiness is suffering? That doesn’t make any sense. Mhmm.
He said that’s what people probably think. So any of the happiness that we can experience in saṃsāra is what’s called contaminated happiness. Any of the happiness that we experience as a Buddha or in nirvana, someone who has achieved nirvana, is uncontaminated happiness. Why the happiness that we experience in saṃsāra is called contaminated happiness is because it has as its mates or as its friends, the afflicted states of being. We need to create positive potential in order to experience its results as happiness, but this positive potential, this positive karma that we are creating or accumulating has this comes along with, or it comes along with these afflicted states with ignorance, with attachment, with aversion.
So, that none of the positive things that we’re able to do are actually and none of the although they may have positive potential for happiness, they’re not free of the contamination. So they while they may cause us to experience happiness, they’re not going to get us out of saṃsāra, and they’re going to help us perpetuate saṃsāra. Mhmm. But recognizing that this is suffering, recognizing these experiences of happiness that we have are suffering is very difficult because mainly because we’re very attached to them. To tell it for us to think, oh, my experiences of happiness aren’t really happiness is very difficult because they’re what we hold on to.
They’re what we are we we desire the most. So without recognizing this without recognizing that this happiness that we experience in Samsāra is contaminated, and we’re not going to recognize that it is because then is caused by karma and delusions, that by may have been a positive action, but it was accompanied by a negative state of mind or delusions, then we’re not going to want to get out of saṃsāra. And if we don’t recognize that the happiness of nirvana is an uncontaminated state, which isn’t accompanied by these states of mind, and therefore doesn’t disintegrate, can’t be torn down. Without recognizing that, we’re not gonna wanna get out of saṃsāra, and without wanting to get out of saṃsāra, we don’t get out of saṃsāra. We can’t get out of that state without wanting to.
We need to have that unfabricated desire to get out of saṃsāra. And without that unfabricated desire to get out of saṃsāra, which is renunciation, there can be no bodhicitta, and with no bodhicitta, there can’t be any buddhahood. We attain Buddhahood because of two reasons, one is method and one is wisdom. And the method for getting out of saṃsāra is the activities that are based on the thought of bodhicitta or the inspiration of bodhicitta or the the motivation, sorry, of bodhicitta. And so without method, there is no attaining Buddhahood either.
So when we talk about bodhicittas, you’ve probably heard a lot about bodhicitta because I seem to talk all the time about bodhicitta. So I won’t go into too much detail about bodhicitta except again to say that bodhicitta is this idea or this motivation that you will strive to get strive to attain Buddhahood in order to lead other sentient beings out of suffering because from the point of view of a Buddha, you’re able to see what will actually help So once we have developed this idea that we have to get ourselves out of saṃsāra because it is an experience like of suffering that’s like poison, then we develop the idea that we want to get other beings out of saṃsāra because they’re in the same state as us. And in order to do this, then we need to become a Buddha, and this idea is the idea of bodhicitta. So whatever we do, then we should try and motivate ourselves with that idea. And if we do something with the motivation that we’re doing it to attain Buddhahood so that we can lead sentient beings out of suffering, then that’s the best motivation we can have for doing anything, to alleviate this suffering of all beings through attaining Buddhahood.
And that’s what we should try and focus our our efforts on when we are motivating ourselves to do anything or when we’re focusing on why we’re doing anything. It’s developing this idea, this motivation. Okay. So that’s what we are going to for a little while, we’re going to look at this evening. It is the the path that Bodhisattvas, beings who have developed this motivation of bodhicitta, follow.
And so the text is the behavior of the sons of the victors, or the behavior of bodhisattvas. And so by developing an understanding of this, can come to know how to put into practice the path to Buddhahood that is followed by bodhisattvas. So it’s a good idea if we think about the idea of that we think about bodhicitta and develop a motivation of bodhicitta before we start looking at this text so we can think by learning it, can I come to understand it? By coming to understand it, maybe I’ll put it into practice. So okay.
I just told him what time was he. Oh, okay. So maybe meditate a little bit. Oh, yeah. But not for a long time.
Okay. So you can meditate, but not for very long. Just just focus on this idea that you’re listening to the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life in order to develop understanding, in order to be able put it into practice, to lead all beings to Buddhahood. He said that the time goes because I thought, oh, I should tell them this as well because I just said that. So I should say this one other thing so they don’t get confused about that, and then I think that would lead on to something else, and then the time’s gone.
So the next thing that we’re up to then in the guide to the way of life, the way of the Bodhisattva’s is pay sorry. Do not page. Verse number twenty five, the last two lines, which say, all abbots who transmit the vows, all learned masters, and all noble ones who practice Dharma. And this is from a section that’s titled physically prostrating to the abbot at the master and so on. So abbot is some an abbot is someone feels strange saying this.
You’d have to say the word that they’re translating as an abbot is someone who gives you vows, because an abbot is the head of a monastery, isn’t it? Yes. So the word that they’re translating as abbot in this instance, it means someone who gives you vows. They can be any type of any type of individual liberation vows. And this person who is a, what they called a learned master are the people who give you other types of of vows and other types of teachings.
And so the the types of vows that are given by abbots yes. Both of them say abbots. Are individual liberation vows of a lay person, a novice monk and nun, and a fully ordained monk and nun. So the previous ones, the novice, monk and nuns vows are called the preceding vows and the fully ordained ones are called the complete vows. So likewise also, the people who give you, as it says, practice generosity by giving you Bodhisattva and Tantric vows are called masters or or or I’ve lost my verse again.
My masters or learned masters. And there’s also the other people that are worth prostrating to, it says in the last line, are people who practice the Dharma. So this means that people who are following the Buddha’s path, the Bodhisattva’s path, who actually put into practice all the things that it says in the Bodhisattva’s path in their daily life, so they’re also worth showing respect to. This one. Refuge, and that comes in the next section.
And it has two different parts. There is what’s called causal refuge and resultant refuge. But refuge in general is said to be very, very important. So, refuge is a sense that you want protection or safe direction from the suffering of saṃsāra and that you have found something that you can rely on to give you that, something that you can rely on to lead you out of the suffering of saṃsāra and into the happiness of nirvana or Buddhahood. So, in terms of a Buddhist refuge, that means having a clear understanding that the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha are the direction from which you can attain refuge from the sufferings of saṃsāra by putting into practice and developing the Dharma taught by the Buddha with the help of the Sangha.
And then, this is something that’s an attitude, it’s a knowing. Knowing or having faith, like clear faith in this idea that the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha are the way out of suffering. That’s what refuge is. So, there’s also something that you can do which is called taking refuge vows, which is a ceremony you take. This isn’t refuge per se, it’s it’s a ceremony of refuge vows.
So, refuge is a state of mind. It’s believing or it’s more like knowing. This is a word that’s translated into English usually as faith. And if you think of faith as I think there’s a quote in the bible that says the evidence of things not seen. Alright?
That fits well with it, but it’s clear, and it’s clear and it’s a knowing believing believing and knowing in one word. Yeah? It’s not knowing or seeing that the Buddha is a that it has the ability to do this, to lead you out of suffering, but also comes along with this idea of wanting to get out of saṃsāra and seeing it as something that you need protection from. So, that state of mind is refuge. Whether If you take refuge vows and you don’t have that state of mind, you still don’t have refuge.
And if you take if you don’t have refuge vows and you do have that state of mind, you’ve got refuge. Alright? So the vows are something that should help you to solidify that state of mind, but you don’t have refuge or not have refuge determining depending on whether you’ve taken refuge vows or not. Have refuge depending on whether you have this state of mind or not. Refuge is said to be very, very important because it’s key to getting out of saṃsāra, and it’s also in terms of Buddhism, it defines Mhmm.
So when we talk about refuge then, we have two different types of refuge. You have you may have you have refuge which is called causal refuge. The refuge that acts as a cause and then you also have what’s called resultant refuge or the refuge that is the result. So when we talk about refuge, we need to remember that there are these two different aspects to it. There’s causal and resultant refuge.
This one. Mhmm. So when we talk about causal refuge, an example of causal refuge would be Buddha Śākyamūni. Now the reason that you would say Buddha Śākyamūni as an example of causal refuge is that Buddha Śākyamūni himself is an example or it contains all Three Jewels. The Buddha himself is the person of the Buddha Śākyamūni is a Buddha.
The realizations within his mental continuum are the realizations within his mental continuum are the Dharma, and the fact that he’s an ārya being who helps beings beings along the path means that he’s a Sangha as well. And so, would be someone who it says, has it says, so therefore we have a definition, I’ll try that sentence again, we have a definition of a causal refuge that is something that we can hold as a base for liberation from fear that has realized or holds the Three Jewels. So, something that we can use as a base to get liberated from saṃsāra, something that we can use as a as as a means to get out. So we can talk about these three different there’s three these three different aspects to the to the jewels, and Buddha Śākyamūni encompasses all three of them. And it’s a external being.
Not an external being in the externally exists, but external being and being not us. Right? Okay. Is it because usually you say external being to mean yeah. Externally existent.
I didn’t mean that. Alright. Mhmm. So we have there’s many different beings that we can think of as being the an instance of a causal causal refuge. So we we talked about Buddha Śākyamūni, and there’s also Chenrezig.
There’s heaps of different Buddhas that we can hear the stories of. We’re also encouraged to look at our teachers as Buddhas, our spiritual mentors as Buddhas. So by if we’re looking at if we’re able to yeah. Alright. Okay.
Sorry. I I had a point that I didn’t understand, and I didn’t wanna mess it up for you guys if I didn’t understand it. So we are encouraged encouraged to or we’re taught in the teachings or in in following Buddhist path, we’re told to look at our teachers as Buddhas. And so if we’re looking at someone as a Buddha, then we can see them as a source of refuge. The the so this this idea of refuge then comes from the idea of belief as opposed to the idea of seeing because unless we have realizations, we can’t see our teachers as Buddhas.
If we could see our teachers as Buddhas, we wouldn’t just see them as Buddhas, we see Chenrezig floating around and stuff as well. I said we see lots of Chenrezigs everywhere and everything. So the idea of seeing your teachers as a Buddha isn’t something that we’re capable of, but we do have this idea of being able to look at them as Buddhas. Look look at them as a Buddha, then we can develop this sense of belief and our refuge is at the stage of being belief also. If we could see a teacher as a Buddha, we wouldn’t see them as a normal human being.
But the way we usually see them as being is as a normal person or a monk or a nun, we don’t see them as being supreme emanation bodies or Buddhas. So, but even despite the fact that we can’t see them as Buddhas, because we’re looking at them as a Buddha, they’re still a valid source of refuge, right, as well as Chenrezig and the other beings. So, basically, when we’re talking about causal refuge, we’re talking about beings that instruct and guide and show us the path to Buddhahood, and that show us the path out of suffering. So this means all of the Buddhas, all of the myriad meditational deities, all of the bodhisattvas, all of the teachers — all of these beings are the ones that are showing us the way out of suffering and to Buddhahood. So so we they’re valid refuges for us, they’re what’s called but they are what’s called a causal refuge, not the resultant refuge.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. The resultant refuge. What the resultant refuge is the things that we can hold as a basis for liberation from suffering, which is the Three Jewels of the Buddha, and the Dharma, and the Sangha, which we will attain in our own which we will achieve, sorry, in our own continuum in the future.
So the Buddha that we will become is our resultant refuge. The realizations that we will develop is our resultant refuge. And the Buddha Bodhisattva that we will become before a Buddha and the and the aspect of the Sangha that is a Bodhisattva and a Buddha is Sorry. The aspect of a Bodhisattva and a Buddha that is the Sangha, that is part of community that leads beings from suffering is our Sangha refuge, our Sangha resultant refuge. So we don’t have we’re not a Buddha yet, we’re not a Bodhisattva, we don’t have these realizations yet, we’re not someone who’s entered the path and is a Sangha yet, but we will be.
So, we have to start taking refuge in what we will become, now. So, we have that which causes us to reach that state, which is the teachers and the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha that are external. And then, we also have the results of our path which is our own future Buddha, the Buddha that is us, the future Buddha that is us and the future realizations that are our Dharma jewel and the future helper that is our Sangha helper that is our Sangha jewel. So, we need to start taking refuge in them now because they are the ultimate safe direction from suffering that we have. That is how we actually get completely free from suffering by developing these Three Jewels in ourselves.
So the reason that the first group of beings is called the the causal refuge or the first group of beings and qualities is called the causal refuge, is because it’s through the Buddha, through the bodhisattvas, through their realizations, and through the spiritual community, the realized spiritual community, that we’re actually able to develop realizations, follow the Buddha’s path, and eventually become a Buddha. It’s through them that we’re able to, or them and their qualities, being the Dharma, that we’re able to get out of suffering. That’s the cause for us getting out of suffering. That’s the cause for our relief or refuge from suffering. Resultant Buddha, the reason that the resultant Buddha is Sorry, the resultant refuge is our own the Buddha that the future Buddha that is us, and the reason that our our future resultant refuge is the realizations we will achieve then, and the Bodhisattva that we will become, the Aryas that we will become, is because that is what comes about through the refuge we had in the causal refuge.
And this is something that we can also take refuge in, what that which we will become, as well as the external causes for getting us there, which is the causal refuge. Oh. Oh, yeah. Oh, dear. I said, no.
We didn’t get through a lot, but it was important. So if anyone has any questions.