Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The question of why saṃsāra’s pleasant experiences count as suffering just as much as its painful ones anchors Geshe Pema Tsering’s 74-minute commentary on Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. He traces the causal chain behind bodhicitta: spontaneous compassion for all beings requires first a genuine wish to be free from suffering oneself, which in turn requires seeing that all samsaric experience — including what we call happiness — is built on ignorance. Moving through verses 37–40, he shows why negative karma done for friends or against enemies ripens only on ourselves, and why death’s certainty — combined with its uncertain timing — makes purification urgent now. A sustained image compares life to walking toward a destination you can neither slow nor reverse. The session closes on a deathbed scene: surrounded by loved ones, yet dying alone.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2005 08 23 Bodhisattvas Way of Life.mp3
UUID: 88fd3589-af7c-437f-bc71-7da6e85dee28
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life 2005 Mar -2007 (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-08-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 74.5 minutes
Words: ~7,060
So to start off with, we’ve got to take a moment it’s a good idea to take a moment to look at our motivation for listening to the teachings. And in particular, considering that we are looking at a text called A Guide to the Way of Life, then we want to develop the motivation of the Bodhisattva. Now, in Bodhicaryāvatāra, Śāntideva said that, bodhicitta is a oh, sorry. The fruits of bodhicitta, are everlasting and continue to flourish. And so what he meant by this is that anything that you do that’s motivated by bodhicitta doesn’t the results of that action aren’t exhausted.
And not only are they not exhausted but they continue to bear fruit. So that means that anytime we do anything it’s really important that we take we look at our motivation and try and develop the idea of Bodhisattva to motivate us to do things. So if this is the case, then it’s important that we understand exactly what the mind of enlightenment is, exactly what the bodhicitta is. The easiest way or the clearest way for us to think about the mind of enlightenment is to think that it to remember that it is the thought that in order to establish all sentient beings as Buddhas, in order to in order that sentient beings become Buddhas, then we ourselves first need to become a Buddha so we can show them how to do that. So this the anything that’s motivated by that thought, anything that we’re doing because we want to become a Buddha so we can lead all sentient beings to Buddhahood and establish them as Buddhas is the mind of enlightenment, the bodhicitta.
So the bodhicitta, the real bodhicitta is also uncontrived, and what we mean when we say that it is uncontrived is that it’s not something that we need to focus on or put in effort to develop. If something is uncontrived, it means that it doesn’t have to be worked at; it’s something that comes about spontaneously. At the moment, we don’t have that kind of uncontrived bodhicitta or the uncontrived mind of enlightenment. So we need to contrive it, or we need to work at developing it. It doesn’t appear spontaneously in our mind.
It’s something that we need to structure or develop in order to be motivated by it. So this uncontrived bodhicitta, this spontaneously occurring bodhicitta isn’t something that we have in our mind stream at the moment. And the reason that we don’t have it in our mind stream at the moment is that we don’t have its closest cause or the direct cause for it. Now the direct cause for the development of the mind of enlightenment to the bodhicitta is what’s called great compassion. And since we don’t have great compassion, we don’t have uncontrived bodhicitta.
If we had great compassion, that is compassion that is focused on all sentient beings without excluding any, then we’d be able to develop bodhicitta. This is something that we need to put in a lot of effort to do, and because we need to put in a lot of effort to do it, it’s it’s pretty safe to say that we haven’t developed it yet. So again, there is two different types of great compassion. There is great compassion that is uncontrived and spontaneous, and then there is great compassion that we contrive, that we develop and we have to put in effort to experience. So, we can develop or work at having this idea of great compassion and that is wanting all beings without exception to be free from suffering.
It doesn’t spontaneously appear in our mind. So, it is something that we can work towards. It’s something that we can we have to think about before we can have that idea, but it’s not something that appears spontaneously or in a noncontrived state in our mind. So we don’t have uncontrived great compassion in our mind stream and the reason that we don’t have uncontrived great compassion in our mind stream is that we don’t have an uncontrived wish even for ourselves to be free from suffering. And in order for us to have a spontaneous wish for others to be free from suffering, we first need to have the idea that it’s good to be free ourselves from suffering and we don’t even have that.
So, we may have a contrived thought occasionally that it would be a good idea if we weren’t experiencing the suffering of saṃsāra but it doesn’t manifest in ourselves, in our mind spontaneously. So in order for us to have bodhicitta spontaneously in our mind stream, we need great compassion spontaneously. In order for us us to have great compassion spontaneously, we need the thought for even ourselves to be liberated from suffering, to exist spontaneously in our mind stream. The reason that we don’t have a spontaneous wish to be truly free from suffering, know, for us for ourselves to be truly free from suffering in our mind stream is that in order for this to develop, we’d need to understand what suffering was. We’d need to understand the shortcomings of Sam saṃsāra and how our existence in saṃsāra is nothing but suffering.
So, the starting point for the development of bodhicitta is actually the recognition of the suffering of saṃsāra. So what we need to focus on are what the development of bodhicitta and personal renunciation is based on is this recognition or understanding that Samsāra is suffering. That not just the lower realms and not just manifest suffering but all of Samsāra is suffering. So this isn’t something that we recognize and because we don’t recognize that, because we don’t understand that, then not only do we not go on to then realize renunciation for ourselves, great loving kindness, and great compassion, as well as bodhicitta. It also means that we are so distracted by the things that we set out, that we think we have to achieve in saṃsāra, that also acts as something that stops us from developing these qualities.
So, we don’t see Samsāra as being something we need to abandon. We see big chunks of Samsāra as being things we want to achieve, happiness, as things we want to work towards. And as long as we continue to see some parts of saṃsāra as something that we want to achieve, something that we want to acquire, then we can’t abandon saṃsāra. We can’t get out of saṃsāra and work even towards personal nirvana. Until we recognize this, until we have the same reaction to all of Samsāra as we do to the suffering or manifest suffering, suffering of suffering or manifest suffering at the moment, then we haven’t recognized what Samsāra is.
We may be able to recognize manifest suffering and not want anything to do with that, but at the moment we don’t see suffering of change and pervasive suffering in the same way. We see suffering of change as being something that we want to accumulate, something we want to experience. It’s what we know as happiness. So, this is something that we want to hold on to. But if we want to really get out of Samsāra and we want to develop renunciation, we need to understand that the process by which we are accumulating positive karma which we experience the results of as this contaminated happiness is not one that leads us to true happiness.
So at the moment, we have this basis of ignorance and we accumulate positive and negative karma on that basis. Basis. So unless we recognize that we need to get rid of that basis in order to experience true happiness, we’re not going to get out of there. So we at the moment, do positive things, from an ignorant basis or mixed with ignorance and we experience the results of those positive things as happiness. And we do negative things based on ignorance and we experience the results of that as suffering.
But in order to get out of saṃsāra, we have to abandon the ignorance. We have to abandon the positive things we’ve done on based on ignorance and we have to abandon the negative things we’ve done based on ignorance. We need to realize that both of these things and both of the results of these actions are something that we need to abandon. So until we recognize that until we recognize that all of saṃsāra including the bits we may find enjoyable, are not worth holding on to are actually the causes of suffering, and then we can’t develop renunciation. And when we do have this idea, when we do recognize that any of the positive or negative experiences, any of the happiness or suffering that we experience in Samsāra is actually the result of karma that was based on delusion.
And then we’re when we recognize that, that’s when we can get out of Samsāra. When we recognize that the happiness we experience is a result of our ignorance, as well as the positive things we then we can start towards developing renunciation or looking for a definite way out of saṃsāra. So, this isn’t the way that we see it at the moment. At the moment, we see some parts of saṃsāra as being things we want to achieve and other parts of saṃsāra as being things we want to abandon. But, what we need to do is keep working on the idea again and again that all parts experiences of happiness that are a result of our positive actions that were based on ignorance, and the experiences of suffering that were a result of our negative actions that were based on ignorance, all of them are things that we need to abandon.
So we need to abandon the ignorance that causes us to grasp onto or hold onto Samsāra in its entirety and recognize that for what it is. Now this isn’t something that we can do instantly. It’s not something that is present in our mind stream spontaneously. So it’s something that we need to keep working at because what Although this idea of renunciation or definite exit isn’t spontaneously present in our mind stream, it’s possible that it can be. If we work at it enough, if we remind ourselves enough that the way that we hold on to things is not going to make us happy, that there is not an instance in Samsāra where we can experience true happiness.
That any of the experiences that we have in Samsāra come about because of, delusions, come about because of the karma that we’ve accumulated, while we’re under the influence of delusion or ignorance. Once we’ve realized this, we can develop the idea of renunciation and we can develop the idea of spontaneous or uncontrived renunciation. And on that basis, then we can work towards getting out of Samsāra. So we need to understand this. We don’t have that at the moment.
We under need to understand that we need to work on that and to remind ourselves constantly that the positive things, that we experience in Samsāra are not worth holding on to, that they too come about through our ignorance. We need to But we also need to remind ourselves that we have the capability, that we have the ability to develop uncontrived renunciation. So the key point that we need to remember is that anything that appears to us is actually suffering. Anything that we experience is actually suffering. Because anything that we experience is saṃsāra.
And so we need to remember that. But not only just about our own experiences, but about all other sentient beings. As long as beings are in saṃsāra, then they experience suffering. So if we remember that, if we remember that all of saṃsāra is suffering, but not just for ourselves, but all other beings who are who want to be happy and don’t want to experience suffering in the same way as us. Then we’re going to want to work to get everybody out of that situation, to get everybody out of suffering because not only ourselves but all other sentient beings also have the capacity to get rid of that suffering or to, to be let out of that suffering.
So if we have this idea that whatever it is we’re doing is we’re doing it in order to get rid of all that suffering to lead ourselves and other beings out of that experience of suffering. And then this is the key part of bodhicitta. This is the key idea in bodhicitta. This we’re doing whatever it is we’re doing to alleviate, to truly alleviate the suffering, all the different types of suffering, of ourselves and all sentient beings. So if we can remind ourselves of that, when we are before we do anything, whether it’s listening to a teaching on the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, or making an offering or meditating or doing a prostration, anything that we’re doing.
If we can remind ourselves of this fact before we do it, then that means that our action is motivated by the enlightened mind. So we may not have the uncontrived enlightened mind, but if we work with from that basis that we’re doing whatever we’re doing to truly relieve suffering, then we can develop a contrived, consciously worked-out sense of the enlightened mind before we do anything. So anything that we can do, where we have that as a motivation, anything that we can do where we think if in order for all sentient beings to be relieved of all suffering, I’m going to become a Buddha and lead them out of that state. Anything anything that we can do that’s motivated by that idea, even if it isn’t a spontaneous thought, will bear fruit or results, positive results until its aim has been achieved. So that is anything that we any positive action that we do that’s motivated by that idea will continue to bear positive results until we attain enlightenment.
So it doesn’t run out. It’s not as if we do something positive once, and then the results have gone when we experience one instance of happiness. The results of anything we do motivated by bodhicitta continue with us until we become enlightened. So so if we can think then that the reason I’m listening to this teaching on the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life is to attain Buddhahood and so I can lead all sentient beings out of suffering and I can alleviate the suffering, all the suffering of myself and others. So have that idea in mind, think about that as our motivation and meditate on it for one minute.
Said he didn’t want you to meditate for that long tonight because he thinks that you spend a lot of time meditating. So he says it’s an important thing to get your motivation right, but he thinks you guys are all really good meditators and do it all the time anyway. And I said, what made you think that? Said, but everyone seems to be really interested in meditation, so I thought they did it. Oh, yeah.
Mhmm. Alright. So the bit we’re up to is, verse thirty seven, and that comes under this the, title in the commentary that says, confessing oh, sorry. Regretting the negativities we perform even now as we pursue unreliable things. And the verse says, and even in the brief course of this present life, so many friends and foes have passed away because of whom the evil deeds I have done still lie unbearable before me.
So what this means is that first of all, we need to recognize that this life that we have at the moment doesn’t last that long. It’s not something that is going to exist forever. It’s something that we need to recognize as fleeting. But even in this lifetime, we’ve had friends turn into enemies and enemies turn into friends. But what we’ve taken from our experience of seeing some people as being close to us and some people as being far from us or our enemies is that we have done things in order to make our the people close to us happy, and we’ve done things in order to make our enemies miserable.
And all of those things that we’ve done which were based on this idea that some people are close to me and some are far, and therefore I have to be nice to some and horrible to others. All of those things we done based on that idea are negative karma. And that negative karma that doesn’t ripen on anyone else but us. It’s not as if we can say the good things I’ve done for others, the negative karma I’ve sorry, the negative karma I’ve accumulated to benefit those close to me will ripen on those close to me. And it’s not as if we can say the negative karma I’ve accumulated to harm those I don’t like, will ripen on them.
That the only person who is going to experience, the results of negative things we’ve done to benefit those close to us and the negative things we’ve done to benefit those we don’t like is ourselves. We’re the only one who experiences the results of those. We can’t hand them over to other people. This one? Mhmm.
And it we die, the only person who is going to take that with them is ourselves. We can’t take our friends with us, but and we can’t take our enemies with us, but we will take our negative karma with us. This one? Mhmm. Mhmm.
Okay. Alright. So sorry. There’s this word I’m having trouble translating. So these people that we’ve done all these negative things towards, no, towards or away from, or because of, they said to be obstacles to our achievement of Buddhahood and Buddhahood and personal liberation.
They’re obstacles to these things, but they’re not someone we can they’re not beings we can dump our negative actions on. So we can’t say, I’ve done all these things for you, so therefore you take the negative results of that. We’re the we’re the only people that can that will experience the results of the negative things that we’ve done. So in this way then, these beings that we are either trying to help or harm in a negative way are said to be nothing more than hindrances or obstacles to our achievement of Buddhahood or liberation. So, there’s a quote in there that says, foes are hindering friends?
So this is not talking about people who may actually be trying to help us attain enlightenment or Buddhahood, but anyone that is an obstacle or acts as a through our attachment to them acts as an obstacle for our practice is not really helping us. It’s not really our friend. It’s not really showing us how to progress along the path. And Any being that we have through attachment to done negative things in order to please or in order to harm is not said to be a real friend. They said it says here they are a hindrance.
And that doesn’t sound very strong, does it? They’re a hindrance. In Tibetan, it sounds awful like you’re a beast or something, you know? And then in Tibetan, it’s like in English, comes out as you’re hindrance, but they’re not very nice to us. Anyway, so what we need to do is to remind ourselves of this again and again and again.
We need to remind ourselves that there’s no point doing things to help people who aren’t always going to be our friends, and by helping them, we’re hurting ourselves and them. There’s no point behaving like that. And there’s no point attacking our enemies because they’re not always going to be our enemies, and by attacking them, we’re creating negative karma for ourselves that isn’t gonna ripen on them. Alright? So we need to remind ourselves of this again and again and again.
And by reminding ourselves of this again and again, we develop a regret, a sense of regret for having done that in the past. For all the times that we’ve, done negative things to protect or help those close to us or we’ve done negative things to harm those that we didn’t like. So, basically, what it’s saying is Uh-huh. So what this is basically saying is we don’t need friends who are going to stop us working towards enlightenment and working towards liberation. They’re not friends that are worth having, because they’re not good enough friends to be able to take from us the negative things that we’ve done and experience the results of it themselves.
So anyone who’s encouraging us to do negative things, anyone that’s that we’re doing negative things in order to please or to help isn’t someone that we should really be seeing as a friend because they’re harming us and we’re harming ourselves of the way that we’re looking at them. So it can be a strange thing because we may think to ourselves, but I’m doing something for someone else’s benefit. I’m doing something to help them. But if the thing that we’re doing isn’t actually helping them, it’s harming them and it’s creating negative karma for ourselves, then we’re not actually doing anything for someone else’s benefit. It’s the way that it comes up into our mind though sometimes is, but I’m doing it for someone else.
But even though we’re doing something negative for someone else, the results of that negative action aren’t experienced by someone else. They’re experienced by us. Uh-huh. So the next thing that we were looking at is the fourth the fourth part of this section, which says, regretting negativities we perform due to not realizing at the time of our death is not certain. And this is explained in verse number thirty eight, which says, the thought never came to my mind that I too am a brief and passing thing and so through hatred, lust and ignorance, I’ve been the cause of many evils.
So this is what that we don’t think, okay, I’m I’m impermanent. My body is going to die and I’m going to pass on. We think of ourselves as being a truly existent, permanently existent thing and because we view ourselves ourselves in that way, then we do a lot of things that are based on the idea or based on hatred or lust or ignorance. So, we we perform things because we have this idea of self and therefore we think, okay, I need that, I don’t need that, or or or we’re ignorant about the way that true that we truly exist and we’ve done a lot of negative things because of that. We’ve done a lot of negative things because of that that we will actually have to experience the suffering of it unless we purify it.
And so what we are ignorant of, mainly what we’re ignorant of is the fact that we are not permanent. That we are that we too are a brief and passing thing. So that this is that we haven’t remembered the certainty of death, that death is certain and that we don’t spend very long living, that our life is an adventitious thing. When the causes aren’t there, it’s not there. So having misunderstood this, we tend to be affected by the poisons or the negative states of mind of ignorance, attachment or lust or and anger or hatred.
And actions performed based on these emotions or based on these negative states are actually causes to be reborn in the lower realms. So if we don’t remember that we’re gonna die and we don’t remember that the time of death is uncertain, then we’re going to continue to do things that are based on these ideas. Sorry, that are based on these negative ways of thinking. So if we can remind ourselves that not only is death certain, but the time of death is uncertain, and that that at the time of death, nothing is going to help us apart from the positive, actions that we’ve done, apart from apart from the dharma, apart from our knowledge of the dharma and the positive actions that we’ve done, nothing is going to help us, then we are going to develop a regret for the negative things that we’ve done being ignorant about death and the certainty of death and the uncertain time of death. So if we remind ourselves of this, then we can use a meditation on our own thoughts of the experiences of those in the lower realms to make us want to us regret negative actions we’ve done without remembering that we’re gonna die.
So if we remember that we’re gonna die, then we’re not gonna wanna do things that lead us to experiences in the lower realms. But if we don’t remember that we’re gonna die, then we may do negative things that could lead us to experiences in the the lower realms. So by reminding ourselves that we are going to die, that will act as a cause for us to regret the negative things that we have done that could lead us to experience the lower realms. And one way to develop this regret is to focus on the suffering that beings in these these states and that are reborn into these states that are the result of suffering. Sorry.
Beings that are born into Hang on. I’ll try that sentence again. One way that we can develop regret for the negative actions we’ve done is by focusing on the suffering that those beings who are born in the lower realms have are experiencing as a result of the negative things that they’ve done in the past. So we can think about how anger and lust and, ignorance have led beings in the lower realms to be born reborn there and the suffering that they’re experiencing. Now, we talk about, the lower realms, we’re usually talking about three different, states.
We’re talking about the hells, the spirit realm or the hungry ghost realm, and of animals. We may think it’s very difficult for us to meditate or focus on the sufferings that are experienced in these realms because experience it. As humans, we don’t experience the same sort of suffering. But we can pay attention for a start to animals. We can see animals.
We may not be able to see beings in the hells or beings in the spirit realm or the the hungry ghost realms directly, but we can see we can see the animals directly and we can see what they go through directly. So the suffering that beings experience in the hells is said to be the the extreme sufferings of heat and cold. And the suffering that beings experience in the hungry ghost realms or the preta realms is said to be the the sufferings of thirst and hunger. And the suffering that beings experience that animals experience is the suffering of stupidity and the suffering of killing and being killed. Now, we may not have been born in those realms and we may not see those experiences directly, but we do experience things like this.
We get hot, we get cold, we get hungry, we get thirsty, we can act stupidly, and we can harm we can harm others who then harm us. We have these experiences. So when we have when we have those experiences, we can think, okay, this is what happens to beings in the lower realm. This is something that I’m experiencing so, I can reflect on through this experience. May I reflect on, what’s happening to these beings in these states.
And because I don’t want that to be the prime experience or the main experience of my life, then I’m not going to do anything negative. We can think in that way. This is something I don’t want to experience as the main my main experience in life, so I’m gonna stop doing the stop creating the causes for those kind of experiences. Mhmm. Mhmm.
And then one thing I forgot to say from last time was that we can also use those experiences as the experiences like the the experiences beings have in the lower realms and to develop regret for the negative things we’ve done. We can think I’m not gonna this in the future because I don’t want to experience those causes but also, I regret anything that I’ve done in the past that would lead me to that state. I really regret anything that’s gonna lead me to an experience of more intense suffering than the thirst or the hunger or the, the cold or the hot that I’m experiencing now. Alright, so the next section that we get to then is said, it’s called reflecting no. Yes?
Alright. So, reflecting on the way in which negativities bring about fear. And within this section, there are four main subsections. The first is that death is certain and we cannot add to our lifespan, yet our lifespan decreases without respite and to die whilst still possessing negativities is something to be afraid of. Now the second one in this section is one will have that we will have to experience suffering in this life as well if negativities are not purified.
And then also the reason why great fear arises and the fourth part of this section is the way in which negativities cause one to be tormented by suffering in future lives. Alright. The next first is the bit about the the next first deals with the the the heading. Death is certain and we cannot add to our lifespan yet it decreases without respite and to die while still possessing negativities is fearful. That’s something to be afraid of.
That is verse number thirty nine from the text which says, never halting night or day, my life is slipping slipping by, and nothing that has passed can be regained, and what but death could be my destiny? So now what this is talking about is that in every moment, we’re getting closer to death, and we’re getting further away from being born. Alright? There’s no time where we can say, alright, I’m not going to move closer towards death now. I’m going to stay where I am.
It’s not possible. We’re constantly getting closer towards death. We’re constantly exhausting our lifespan, and there’s nothing that we can do to stop that. We can’t say, alright, I’m going to increase my lifespan by twenty years because I haven’t finished what I need to do. Alright?
The time of death is uncertain. We can’t, determine when it is that we’re going to die. And so death is coming, we need to recognize this even if we don’t. Alright? So we can’t think that we can push death behind a mountain.
Doesn’t make sense in English. Okay. So the the idea of the mountain, think, was Geshe said if we’re walking from one place to another and we keep walking, it’s not as if we can push the destination further and further away. Yeah. We’re gonna get there.
We can’t we can’t stop walking in in terms of getting closer to death. We can’t stop walking and we can’t increase the distance we have to go. Alright? And so and that we can’t bring things back either. We can’t if we’re constantly walking towards something, it’s not as if we can say, oh, I’ll bring the last twenty years back or the last twenty meters back, and I’ll experience that again.
Alright? What’s gone is gone, and what we are getting closer and closer to is death. What does that mean? We’re gonna die. Yeah?
Don’t be afraid. Take it easy. No. I said, that’s not a very happy thought, is it? Geshe-la.
And Geshe-la said, what do you mean? Happy not happy? It is. It’s a fact. We need to deal with it.
We’re gonna die. There is no place to relax. Mhmm. Alright. Okay.
So when we’re walking, when we are hanging out, well, guess let’s say when we’re going for a stroll and enjoying ourselves, right? And or not doing much. When we’re sleeping comfortably, comfortably, we are still When we’re doing all of these things, we’re still moving closer and closer towards death. There is not one moment in the night when we’re asleep or when we’re going for a stroll or when we’re making a going on a journey somewhere where our movement towards death stops. We’re constantly getting closer and closer and closer.
Alright. I was like telling him to look at your face because you’re like this. Anyway, so we we the the distance is was death is constantly getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and there is not one moment where we stop getting closer to death. And the other thing about death to remind remember is that the moment of death, may be uncertain, but the fact of death isn’t. So we’re all gonna die.
We just don’t know when. Yeah. And in every moment, we’re getting closer and closer and closer to death. Right? So given this, given that our the the the time towards what the the that our life isn’t getting any longer and we’re moving closer towards death and we don’t know when we’re going to die but we know that it’s certain, then we really want to purify anything that we’ve done that could cause us to experience more suffering in our next life.
It’s really important that we actually put in effort at nighttime and in the daytime whenever we can to try and get rid of or to try and purify anything that we may have done that could cause us to experience even more suffering or intense suffering in the lower realms in our next lifetime. And we’re gonna die, we just don’t know when. So it’s a good idea to make as much put in as much effort as we can to get rid of all our the to sorry, to nullify potential from our negative actions. So the next section then is the one dealing with the way we will have to experience suffering in this life as well as as well if negativities are not purified. So, this again has three sections.
The first one is that friends and loved ones cannot protect us from suffering. From the suffering of being killed if negativities are not cleansed. The second one is the fear that comes from not performing meritorious actions and the third one is the anguish of regret. So what the anguish of regret means is that when we’ve done something negative, we know we’ve done something negative. The sense of regretting what we’ve done is it can be a really horrible experience of suffering in and of itself.
Mhmm. Alright. So, the next bit then is friends and loved ones cannot protect you from suffering. And the first bit that deals with this is verse number forty, which says, when I’m lying in bed Oh, no. Wrong one.
There there I’ll be prostrate upon my bed and all around the ones I know and love, but I alone shall be the one to feel the cutting of the thread of life. So this is doesn’t quite come across in the translation. But there there is this idea that there’s that a bed is somewhere you like being. You know? It’s a comfortable place.
Somewhere where you usually feel very comfortable. Somewhere where it feels nice to relax in. Right? But here you are in that place that you feel very comfortable in when you’re dying, but it’s not a comfortable place to be. A place that may have been comfortable and relaxing for you before has become a place of pain.
And there may be all the people that have tried to make you feel comfortable and happy in your life circling you. So you may be surrounded by so many people that you can’t actually see all of them. All the people that have tried to help you in this lifetime, all the people that have that you’ve done things for in this lifetime, they they they would all be there. But at the time of your death, none of that is gonna help you. At the time of your death, none of those beings you’ve helped or done things for in that lifetime can actually help you.
And it’s you alone, or we alone, that will experience the suffering of dying. They can’t experience the suffering of dying for us, it’s only us that can experience that suffering. So, although we may have many things in the past, we may have created many we may have done many negative things or many destructive or harmful things in order to protect us our friends, in order to help those friends at that time when we are when we actually do need them, when we’re going to experience the results of those negative actions, they can’t do anything to help us. They can’t take away any of the suffering that we’re experiencing and they can’t alleviate the results of our negative actions. That depends on us alone.
So then the next two lines say, and when the vanguard of the deadly king has gripped me, what helped to me will be my friends or kin. So the vanguard of the deadly king. What this is referring to is the beings that chop you up in hell. Alright? So in hell, there’s like beings who chop people up or burn them or or inflict suffering on them in some ways.
And so, when they we’re in their grip, when we’re in a hell state where we’re being tortured all the time, the people that helped us, that we did things for are gonna be nowhere to be found. The negative action, the people that we’ve done negative actions in order to help or in order to make feel more comfortable are not gonna be anywhere near us being being out of protect us from those states. Uh-huh. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Mhmm. So if we haven’t done anything positive, if we haven’t done anything that we can rely on, any positive actions we’ve relied on, then at the time of death, we may be lying there surrounded by all the people, all our all our family, all our progeny, all our children, our children’s children, maybe heaps of people that would do anything to help us, but they’re not going to be able to help us. They’re not going to be able to stop our experience of death or the suffering that we experience at death, and we’re the only people who are going to experience that. And we’re the only people who are going to experience the fear of that. And not only that, but we’re the only people are going to be grabbed by the fiercely embodied — hang on.
How would you put it? We’re the only people that are going to be grabbed by the messengers of the demons who are, it says, fiercely embodied, so they don’t look very nice. And when we are going to be taken to the hells, and nothing that our friends or family can do would help us in that instance. So if we wanna help ourselves, if we actually do wanna experience happiness, then we need to practice Dharma and we need to have refuge without creating positive karma, without doing things that help others, without creating stores of merit, we’ve got no hope of reprieve from these situations. It’s not as if we can rely on our friends and family to get us out of that situation.
We need to create the positive karma or the positive merit to get out of that situation ourselves. So now it’s not very happy. It’s not very it doesn’t sound like a very nice place. So the thing is this. So it’s not very nice things to hear.
Right? Because we all wanna be happy and we don’t wanna just experience suffering. So in order for us to be happy though and not experience suffering, we need to know what to do to experience happiness, and we need to know what not to do in order to not experience suffering. But when we’re saying, okay, this happens. If you experience if you do this, you’re gonna experience suffering.
Then we think, I don’t wanna know about it. That sounds gross. I don’t wanna experience I don’t wanna think about experiencing suffering. So it doesn’t because we wanna be happy, we don’t like hearing even about suffering. So listening to this kind of talk or listening to these kind of teachings doesn’t usually make us feel very happy.
So the point though isn’t to sit there feeling miserable because sitting here feeling miserable and thinking, oh, I’m I’m going to hell and it’s miserable, doesn’t actually help us anyway. It doesn’t doesn’t do anything to get us out of a situation. Alright? Well, the point of them talking about this is so that we practice Dharma. The point isn’t to make us feel bad.
It’s to make us to inspire us to to give us a kick along to practice Dharma. Alright? To spur us on. That’s what I was looking for to practice Dharma. So if you sit there being miserable because you could experience suffering and you’re gonna experience suffering, then you’ve missed the point.
The problem is that when we start trying to practice Dharma and trying to work with our mind, then that gets hard too. So we think, don’t wanna do that either. So any way you look at it, you’re either gonna end up suffering one way or so or being hard and worn out the other. Yeah. Yeah.
So Geshe-la said yes, and that’s why we’re going through this whole idea of purification so we can get rid of the poo.