Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A story about fifteen monks tricked into eating poisonous fruit at a newly rebuilt Sera Monastery anchors Geshe Pema Tsering’s 37-minute Q&A session from the Bodhisattva Way of Life series. He opens by sorting the four components of purification — recognition, remedy, restraint, reliance — noting that different texts order them differently, but that regret and restraint are the essential pair. He then draws a careful line between guilt and genuine regret: guilt may stop at “I did something wrong,” while regret presses to “that was not okay, and I won’t do it again.” Questions follow on the difference between karmic seeds and karmic imprints (seeds can be neutralized through practice; habitual imprints persist until emptiness is realized) and on whether an ocean separates saṃsāra from nirvana — Geshe concludes it is only self-grasping, a small thing we inflate into a vast obstacle. He closes with a compact image: fly the plane of bodhicitta on the fuel of emptiness.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2005 08 09Q Bodhisattvas Way of Life.mp3
UUID: c9b8ebcc-1f39-4e7f-9260-14a4ce32d4bc
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life 2005 Mar -2007 (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-08-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 37.2 minutes
Words: ~3,242
Tired. I was having trouble concentrating. Geshe said, you get tired too easily. Yes. Of course, he does, but you can go first.
Okay. So Geshe said that you’ll find different texts have different order. Alright? So you have four of them, but some people will put it one way and some people will put it in a different order. And in this text, it’s actually in two different orders.
Alright? So the first order and the first the first of these, you could translate it as recognition or regret. So that’s what two r’s for one thing. So if we just work with recognition for a start, okay? Because you recognize you’ve done something wrong, that’s like regret.
Okay? So we have in the first order here, recognition, then remedy, then recitations or restraint. Did I get them around the wrong way? I missed No. No.
Sorry. I did. I I was looking at the wrong one. Sorry. So we have recognition, then remedy, then restraint, and then reliance.
Yes? In the first order, there’s four r’s. Okay? In the second order that it has here, it starts with recognition, and then says reliance, and then says where did it go after that? Remedy and then restraint.
So the second order again was recognition, reliance, remedy, restraint. So there’s two different orders. And Geshe-la said, just then as I was finishing, he said, you’ll find them any possible combination of those you can think of, you’ll find and take somewhere. So from amongst these, the most the two that are the most important is this idea of regret and restraint. He said that they’re the two the key to actually purifying something.
So so this idea of recognizing what you’ve done and restraining from doing in the future are very important. And then you use the idea reliance is is is basing your practice on refuge and basing your practice on bodhicitta. So that’s the basis for the practice. And then the remedy is something that you do motivated by regret and restraint. Yeah.
So to to purify the action. So the basis for it he said is or the the key to the practice is recognizing what you’ve done and restraining yourself from doing in the future. And then the basis for it is relying on the refuge in bodhicitta and the practice that you do based on those motivations is a remedy. And he thinks from amongst all of those, the one that we should focus on the most is actually the idea of regret or recognition. Because unless we’ve recognized that we’ve done something wrong or we regret something that we’ve done that’s wrong, you don’t have this practice.
You don’t have the practice of purification. So that’s the thing to get clearly. That’s the most important thing to get clearly. So he said, if we have regret, we have strong regret for something we’ve done. If we recognize that we’ve done something wrong and we have regret for that, then we’re going to not wanna do it again.
And we’re going to wanna do whatever it takes to make up for what we’ve done in terms of positive actions. And we’re going to wanna meditate on bodhicitta and refuge and everything to act as a base or a guide for that for the purification process. So if we don’t have recognition recognition and regret, then the others won’t happen. And with them, the others will happen naturally. So So most of us don’t tend to develop regret.
Most of us tend to develop a, oh, well, it’s okay. It wasn’t that bad sense. And actually having an okay. It wasn’t that bad sense is a way of rejoicing in what we’ve done. And it actually strengthens the negative action we’ve done.
And so this idea of developing regret for what we’ve done is very important. Yeah? Is regret the same as guilt? What do you mean by guilt? Because I don’t think most people no, don’t.
Because I honestly think that most of us, when we’re speaking English, misuse the word guilt, guilt and we don’t know what we’re talking about. So I wanna know what you mean. Guilty is when you feel you feel really bad about That’s not guilty. Guilty is recognizing you’ve done something wrong. What you’re talking about is guilt complex.
I’m serious because I have to keep translating it so I’m like because because Not necessarily. Because guilty is like a sense of guilt as in I did something wrong. I’m guilty. I did something wrong. And that’s not necessarily there for I’m a bad person.
But is that regret? I’m not saying anything. None yet. What are you asking though? What do you mean by guilt?
I wanna know what you mean by guilt because do if you mean I did something bad and therefore I’m a bad person, that’s one thing. Yeah. That’s And if and if you’re thinking I did something bad, which is what guilty means, then that’s another thing. But that’s what you’re also you’re also regretting it by the fact that you’re thinking. I’m a bad person.
Well, I’m a bad person. I’m I’m a bad person, but I’ve done a bad thing. I’ve done a bad thing. Yeah. Okay.
Uh-huh. He’s good. Alright. Okay. So, Geshe said this feeling guilty, thinking thinking I did something bad is not quite the same as developing regret into this word that we’re translating as regret anyway.
Because he said, feeling guilty doesn’t necessarily mean that’s not okay. It’s not okay that I did that. So he said, if you have this idea I did something wrong and it’s not okay that I did something wrong, so I’m gonna try and not do it again. That’s a sense of regret. Just thinking I did something bad could be guilt.
Yeah? It doesn’t necessarily go on to say, and that wasn’t alright so I shouldn’t do it again. Yeah? And then he said, you can also think, I did something bad that makes me a bad person and not actually think that’s and that’s not okay. Alright?
You can think, I did something bad, I’m a bad person and then not go on to the next stage of thinking and that’s just not okay. Alright? So he said the idea of thinking that’s not okay is where it becomes regret. So you also wanted then you wanna do something about not doing it again. Okay.
So, I guess Geshe said if you if you ate fruit that looked really nice, but you knew was really gonna make you sick as soon as you ate it and you started to feel you’re sick, you think, oh, I shouldn’t have done that. Right? And that’s like the sense of regret. This idea of it wasn’t okay for me to do that. I shouldn’t have done that.
That’s regret. And that’s different from thinking what I did wasn’t right. It’s thinking I shouldn’t have done it. It wasn’t okay for me to do it. That that’s regret.
He said that sense of I shouldn’t have done that. I’m not gonna do it again. So Geshe said there was Uh-uh. Oh. When they first came to India, they were working in the field trying to Oh, yeah.
They were working in the fields trying to set up Sera Monastery. And there was a monk that had come down to join the monastery, Sera, but he was actually from Himachal Pradesh, which is an area of India. Right? So he knew all of the local trees and everything. So these guys didn’t have a clue because they were just out of Tibet, and they didn’t have a clue.
But this guy knew all the trees because he’d grown up. It’s like the Himalayas still, but the but it’s enough in India for him to know all the trees. And he played a trick on fifteen monks by telling them that there was a really that this fruit that he pointed out was really yum and that they should eat it. Yeah? And he was saying, oh, you really love it.
Try it. Try it. Try it. So fifteen of these monks went over and ate the fruit, and Geshe said, within an hour, no, not even fifteen minutes, they were all really ill and had to be rushed to hospital. And then when they’re in hospital, they had to be purged and they were vomiting all the time.
And he said, and no one died. And then he said, and I didn’t eat any. But but they were all pretty sick from eating this fruit. And so he said, that would be something they were regretting. He he ate it too.
He didn’t do it on purpose, he said. He he he sorry. I I misunderstood. He said he ate it too. He thought that’s like the fruit in where I grew up.
Oh, no. Sorry. He didn’t know. He ate them too. Yeah.
Uh-oh. Because it was like he said it was the place sorry. The fruit was like where he came from. But the fruit that was in his where he came from didn’t make you vomit, and this stuff did. So he got everyone to eat it, and they were all really sick.
Yeah. Said, that’s regret. They thought and and and they saw everyone else getting sick, and they think, oh, no. I shouldn’t have eaten that. That’s that’s what we’re looking for, he said.
But they didn’t know they’ve done anything wrong. No. He said no. They hadn’t done anything wrong. They hadn’t done anything wrong.
They hadn’t done anything wrong, but they had Because they thought that was really, really bad. As I guess, I said, he wasn’t describing the action of doing something negative. He was describing the action of developing regret. So what we’re trying to develop regret for is the negative things that we’ve done, the things that we feel guilty about. Yes?
So the the the the things that we have guilt for, yes, or feel guilty about, they have then we think I shouldn’t have done that. If you go into the stage of thinking I shouldn’t have done that and I won’t do it, that’s regret. So it’s not actually the actions you’re talking about. He was describing the the thing we need to develop. Yeah.
The the No. Yeah. May have trodden on, or does it have to be specific? You have to actually tread I mean, there any point in your daily practice I’m thinking of embracing regret for the things that you may have done Okay. Inadvertently.
Did everyone hear that? Okay. No. That’s fine. That’s good.
So Geshe said anything that you can think of as negative, you’ve done it. Alright? So it’s a good idea to purify it. And you said in all the different lifetimes and everything, every time everything that you can think of is negative, you’ve done. Yeah?
If we were able to purify, say, all our negative actions, would that would that cause us not to, experience a situation of suffering? Mhmm. Would it be that we might experience that same situation but not suffer? Mhmm. Mhmm.
Okay. Okay. Alright. Okay. So Geshe said the first thing is that the in order to purify all your negative actions means to become at least an arhat.
Alright? So he said, it’s something that you need to keep up until you know, he said it’s very difficult to do it. You have to keep up purifying all your negative actions. And to purify all your negative actions means to be free from suffering. And that means to be to be have achieved nirvana.
Yeah? So you gotta keep it up. And the second thing he says that not only Buddhas, alright, not only arhats, but also for us as well. Someone coming and yelling at us, someone creating an external situation of what you call it a situation of suffering isn’t much to do with us. Alright?
If someone yells at us and they’re angry, that’s their situation, not ours. Yeah? How we react to that is entirely up to us. So whether it’s whether it’s an arhat or whether it’s us, them being angry, them yelling at us isn’t our situation of suffering, it’s theirs. So if someone’s yelling and they’re creating suffering for themselves, appropriate response is compassion.
But we shouldn’t think that’s because of me. The reason they’re yelling is because of their anger. Yeah? And their and their appropriate response to anger is compassion. Sure.
Alright. Earlier on, talked about the consequence of negative actions. Mhmm. Actually produce karmic seeds Mhmm. Karmic imprints.
Same thing. Are they the same thing? Mhmm. And if so, are they the karmic seeds that we take into our next life? Alright.
So there are the Geshe-la said if you talk about karmic seeds now there he said the reason they’re called seeds is as as a metaphor. Yeah? Because seeds give rise to something else. Yeah? So they’re metaphorically called seeds.
Karmic seeds and karmic imprints can be the same thing and they can be other than the same thing, depending on what you’re talking about. So he said seeds that have the potential to cause suffering, are not the same thing as seeds that we’ve neutralized through purification practice which become like imprints. Yeah? But yes, they are the same things. They not only continue on to our future lifetimes but all the way up until we realize emptiness and are able to purify them.
So, the karmic seeds, the karmic seeds that have potential to cause either suffering or happiness are in our mind stream. The imprints which are the things that habituate us to behave in a certain way are in our mind stream. And we may be able to neutralize the seeds that are in our in our mindstream so that we don’t experience the results of those seeds, but we aren’t able to get rid of those or the imprints, the tendencies that we carry in our mindstream until we realize emptiness. Is that okay? Oh, yeah.
Yeah. What do you want here, I say? Yeah. Oh, how can you recognize? Said you had the face of a question asker.
Maybe stupid question, but if I may. Are no stupid questions. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay.
I work on that theory anyway. Yes? I’m lucky I’m on the way I come to Australia. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
But two years and three months ago. Mhmm. And I look outside from the window in the airplane. Mhmm. Yeah.
Yeah. I was wondering, is there any ocean between the saṃsāra and nirvana? Is there any ocean, or is there any line? Boundary. Ocean.
Boundary? Is that what you’re saying? Ocean. I don’t understand the boundary. So border.
Border? You said you didn’t see a dotted line in the ocean. So I can’t understand if you’re talking about the dotted line in the ocean between That’s just a tangent. Yeah. Okay.
My point is that is is the ocean one is what? How do call that? Uh-huh. Is it someone who’s realized Top one. Top one.
Is it? Best. Best. Best one. What’s the next one?
Next best. Next best. The third one is a is it? No. No.
No. The best one is Buddha. The second one is solitary realizer. And the third one is a śrāvaka. Is that what you’re talking about?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And is there an ocean between the three of them? Yeah.
Between Samsāra and nirvana. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Is there an ocean? Do you know that ocean in Tibetan has double meaning?
One of them is I I don’t know Tibetan. No. No. But I’m just saying when I translate it, if you come back with a whack answer, don’t blame me. Alright?
Because ocean has two meanings. It means it means an ocean, but it also means vastness. What’s vastness? What’s vastness? Bigness.
Bigness. Yeah. Is so is that what you’re meaning in terms of the metaphor or not? No. I’m talking about Just a real ocean with water and salt and whales and I’m talking about the ocean in a Buddhist term.
Oh, okay. Yeah. So vastness. Alright. Okay.
No. There isn’t. And there’s no And and and it’s got two meanings in Tibetan, so I think we’re covered. Alright? Geshe-la said in between an arhat and nirvana, there’s not even this much.
There’s not even this much. Uh-huh. Okay. Just self grasping. Only a tiny little thing again.
If you can get rid of that, you’re already there. Then he said that self-cherishing. Yeah. Between Buddhahood and and Samsāra. Yeah?
He said only a tiny little difference. self-cherishing. Yeah. If you can get rid of that, you’re instantly there. So it’s only a small thing.
There’s no water in between the two. Mm-mm. And the total boundary is — no. Mm-mm.
Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Mm-mm.
Mm-mm. So he said it depends which way you look at it. Alright? He said, there’s definitely no water. Alright?
No water ocean. Yeah? But if you’re thinking of ocean as being vastness, yeah? He said if if you look at it from one perspective, you could say that that it could be something vast in between saṃsāra nirvana or saṃsāra and an arhat in this. It’s difficult to get rid of self-cherishing.
It’s difficult to recognise the truth of suffering and therefore it’s difficult to get out of Samsāra. So that could be like an ocean of difficultness. Yeah? In between the two. So is it?
An ocean, Yeah. Let me finish. An ocean of difficulties. And it’s difficult to get rid of self-cherishing and start cherishing others. So there could be an ocean of difficulties in between being an ordinary being and being a Buddha.
But he said, but actually, there’s not. It’s not that big a thing. It’s just that it’s difficult for us to get rid of it. Alright? So it’s not that big a deal.
It’s not that big a thing, self-cherishing and and self and holding on to self. It’s just that we make a big deal. No water. And he said, there is no water. There is the truth of suffering, and the truth is the origin of suffering.
So But what you so if you thought about it this way, in between saṃsāra and arhathood, there is the two the first two noble truths. Yeah? The truth suffering and the truth of the origin of suffering. Then that looks like a big deal. Yeah?
He said that looks like a vast ocean. But actually, the key to the truth of suffering and the truth of the origin of suffering is the ignorance that perceives self. Yeah? And that is very small. Yeah?
So that’s the key to those two instances of suffering. The suffering truth of suffering and the truth of origin of suffering. So if you think about it from it’s just one thing that’s in between saṃsāra and arhathood, then that’s not not very big. Okay. And said you have to fly the plane of bodhicitta on the fuel of emptiness.
Okay. That’s all. Okay, Hiro. You’re here now. You can do it, so I don’t have to sing.