Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A Tibetan opera about a dakini who briefly descends to hell and returns becomes the entry point for Geshe Pema Tsering’s 36-minute Q&A on death, motivation, and rebirth. He opens by explaining why acts motivated by bodhicitta — even contaminated ones — still function as causes for liberation, making motivation the central practice concern. He then addresses why contemplating death now matters: not to generate fear but to build a practice habit strong enough that dying holds no terror. A student’s question on near-death experiences prompts the opera story, which he uses to map the death dissolution process — the initial white-light phase, followed by increasingly unsettling appearances of red and black. He also distinguishes “highest” rebirths (form and formless realms) from “best” ones, noting pure lands outrank saṃsāra’s peaks. Suited to students with some Lamrim background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2005 08 23Q Bodhisattvas Way of Life.mp3
UUID: a59b3cf7-1233-43fd-bce1-ff7ee1d93f84
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: 35.9 minutes
Words: ~2,555
Sure. Mhmm. Alright. Yes. This is exactly the situation we’re in and that’s why it’s so difficult to get out of saṃsāra.
Alright? So what this is also why, I guess, I said that we should be spending so much time thinking about our motivation for things. Alright? Because at the moment, we may have, everything we do may be based in ignorance, but we can also work towards getting out of that ignorance and achieving enlightenment. Yeah.
So, they’ll Sorry. Getting out of that ignorance and achieving enlightenment. So, this is why if we do anything that is motivated by bodhicitta or motivated by getting out of Samsāra, then that acts as a cause for us to get out of Samsāra. It’s a contaminated cause for us to get out of Samsāra, but it’s still a cause for us to get out of Samsāra. Yeah?
And the more of that kind of merit that we accumulate, the closer then we come to the development of a realization of emptiness. So the idea is that we keep doing things in a contaminated way until we can do them in a in an uncontaminated way. Yeah? When we can do them in an uncontaminated way, the results are much more profound. But up until that point, we need to keep doing them with contamination because that still acts as a cause to get out of Samsāra even if it’s a contaminated cause.
Did that make sense? So this is why motivation is so important. If we do anything with the motivation of attaining Buddhahood, alright, to benefit all sentient beings, then that becomes a cause for us to attain Buddhahood. Alright? It may be contaminated, but it’s still a cause.
If we if we do anything with the motivation of attaining liberation, that’s a cause for us to attain liberation. But we if because we just let our mind go, then we’re continually perpetuating saṃsāra, and we have to work really hard to have that as a motivation at the moment. Yes? He likes the expression “carpe diem”. Yes.
Uh-huh. I’m gonna die. Yeah. Mhmm. And and I think most people probably going to die.
Mhmm. Okay. Alright. If we were focusing on being scared of death, and we weren’t focusing on doing things to alleviate that fear, like practicing Dharma, then that would make sense. But the idea of focusing on a fear of death at the moment isn’t so we are meditating on fear, it’s so that we’re inspired or we are spurred on to practice Dharma, so that when we die, we don’t have to be afraid of anything.
Alright? So the point is now by remembering death when we’re not dying, that we will feel inspired to practice, so that when we do die, we don’t have anything to worry about. If we don’t think about it now because we think, oh, death’s scary. Don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to become afraid of death, so I’m not going to think about it.
Then that we have nothing to scare us into practicing. Alright. No motivation to practice and then at the time of death that’s when we’ll experience fear. Alright, but if we’ve done everything right, there’s nothing to fear at the time of death. So the idea is now to practice so when we die we’re not afraid.
Otherwise, the alternative is to not be afraid now and to get scared when we die. So Geshe-la said that if you’ve been practicing Dharma, then you would you would know that being afraid at the time of death is pointless. Yeah. So you don’t you don’t have to get to the stage where you realize everything, you just got to get to the stage where you know enough or you’ve practiced enough that you’re not afraid at the time of death. Yeah.
So he said that if you had been practicing enough and you can he said it’s not a matter of developing realizations, it’s not a matter of, having purified all your negativities, it’s just having practiced enough that you have the habit of practicing. So that at the time of death, you know to rejoice in the positive things you’ve done as opposed to being regretting the things that you haven’t done. So you do the best that you can and then you can be comfortable with that. Yes? You can think I can rejoice in the things that I’ve done.
Right? So the thing is there’s no point thinking, oh, I’m not afraid of I’m not gonna be of death now because if I start start thinking about death now and not being afraid, then by when I die, I won’t be afraid. Alright? Because that doesn’t happen. People don’t not be afraid when they die.
Alright? I don’t know if that was good English, but anyway. Even if they don’t look like they’re afraid, yeah, we can’t see everything. Yeah. When you’re dying, you go through this disintegration process where the elements dissolve into another element.
And when one element dissolves into another element, all sorts of things appear to people. So the beginning of that death process isn’t that bad, but the actual death process itself can be terrifying for for people unless they have some sense of refuge, unless they have some sense of faith. Yeah. So or or some sense of of what’s happening. Yeah.
So, we need to be able to be prepared for death. And one way we’re not gonna be prepared for death unless we pay attention to death, unless we become afraid of what could happen if we didn’t practice at death. To be afraid. No. I’m joking.
To practice well enough to get ready for next life and to Mhmm. Highest A better rebirth. I mean, highest highest highest rebirth as much as possible. I mean, highest highest highest place to be reborn. I don’t know.
I’m gonna ask you. I don’t think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Hang on. Okay. Oh, yes. But we don’t want the highest place to be reborn. We want the best place to be reborn.
Alright. So what was the difference between the highest? Because the highest place in Samsāra would be the the the the On top of a mountain. No. No.
Geshe said the in terms of Samsāra, you say the highest place in Samsāra, you’re talking about the form and formless realms which you get into through states of subtle meditative concentration that don’t help you out very much. Right? So we don’t wanna go We don’t wanna think I wanna be reborn in the highest possible place. We think I wanna be reborn in the possible place to work towards enlightenment. Yeah?
So best is different to highest. Apart from that good. Yeah. Being reborn in God doesn’t help. So because because being reborn in as a God means that you burn up all your good merit and end up in hell, so you don’t wanna go there.
I mean, how do you call that brown? Pure lands. Pure lands. That’s a good thing. Yeah.
You can — pure lands are good. Okay. Like Sukhāvati. Sukhāvati. Yeah.
Sukhāvati? Yeah. Yeah. Are they all equal? There’s no there’s there’s always sometimes, but not in terms of what’s better and what’s worse because they’re all good.
Yeah. Pure lands. Yeah. Okay. Right.
Yes. But yeah. Uh-huh. Science. Some of them have, but not very yeah.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Mhmm. Yeah. Said I’m sorry. Yes. But Mhmm.
Mhmm. Yeah. Okay. Geshe-la said a lot. I I was just gonna say, I was what I was trying to watch that, and Jackie said, oh, do we have to watch this?
This is crap. And I said, if I don’t watch this, someone’s gonna ask a question on it. And Yeah. Yeah. It was funny, though.
I thought I bet someone asked about it. Okay. Uh-huh. He’s telling me about an opera. Like, is this for real?
Anyway. Alright. Sorry about that. But you thought that you went on. Geshe-la started going on about an opera, I’m going, what?
And then he was telling me about of the opera, and it sounded like an episode of neighbors. Anyway, so there was a there’s a woman. Oh, okay. So, guys, hang on. Sum it all up by saying this.
Right. So do you know about the opera? Okay. So there was this lady apparently who was married to someone else, but then her parents no. She was gonna get married to someone, but her parents decided she had to marry a prince and she didn’t really want to marry the prince because she didn’t think he was a very good man.
Then she had to marry this person who wasn’t a very good man and she ended up dying. Alright? Anyway, but actually apparently she wasn’t a real person. No, she was a real person, but she was a dakini pretending to be a real person. So when she died, she went to hell.
Alright? So that and when she was in hell, she met the person who was the first wife of her husband, had gone to hell because she was such a bad person with her husband. And then she came back from hell and said to the husband, you know, your ex wife’s your your your wife’s in hell because she did bad things. You don’t wanna go there, and he changed. Right?
So I said, it’s it’s an opera again. And he said, yes. But the point is that the the the experience of her having going into that state when they describe her dying and when her coming back is really similar to the things they talk about with near death experiences, and it’s an opera from hundreds of years ago in Tibet. Alright? So that experience the idea of the near death experience is in Tibetan culture as well and they’ve talked about it and had experiences with it in different places.
Yeah? So she has this idea of of walking, but she’s a dakini so she can pick where she wants to go. Yeah? And then she comes back. Yeah?
But she hasn’t been dead that long. It was just for a few minutes, but she goes to hell and sees this lady. And it’s supposed to change everybody else’s life. So he said the whole thing of the near death experience was the main crux of this opera. Anyway, that putting that to one side, he said that the answer should be, that first of all, this idea of walking into the light is, links up with the first dissolution.
But it’s such a so it’s it’s only the first part of death. Yeah? So anything that someone’s experiencing there isn’t necessarily going to be what they experience in the whole death process. Alright? It’s just the first part.
It’s the first part. And then after that, when the elements start dissolving into each other, things get get scarier. Alright? So the first color that people see is white. Yeah?
But then they start seeing reds and blacks and and and duller colors and everything like that, which are much scarier for them and they they see different things in that experience. So what they’re talking about in the in the near death experience is only the first part of the dissolution process and it’s not supposed to be that bad. Yeah? It’s the other parts of the dissolution process that can get more difficult. Yeah?
So he said that if these but he said, but if these people are so have been so open to that experience, they feel so pervaded by love when they’re in that experience, and they come back and it dramatically transforms their life, we shouldn’t discount the fact that that they may be someone who is emanating that to teach other people. Yeah. So they could be someone who has has chosen to manifest that as a like a show that will help other people. Yeah? So that he said so that’s one way of looking at it because see because that’s what the woman in the opera did.
Right? She manifested that so she could help other people because she’s a dakini. Yeah? And but the but that isn’t necessarily the case. He said it also could be that that they were good people.
Yeah? That had done good things and they’re experiencing the results of that, but it wasn’t their time that their time hadn’t run out to die. So they had an experience of there being something beyond life, and that was enough to get them to change their life. Yeah? So he said, it could be either an ordinary being who’s had that experience, or a dakini — and he said dakinis.
He didn’t say no. Not — anyway. Not the dakini. No. But dakinis sometimes — anyway. Anyway so, anyway, there there could be people who are emanating that so that other people can learn from it.
Right? But he said that he would think that none of these people would have been going to hell because an experience where you’re going to die and to hell would have been a lot scarier than that. Even in the so he said it’s not certain that they wouldn’t have been because the latter parts of the dissolution process are much more scary than the than the beginning part. But that if someone feels filled with love when they’re dying, then that’s like a really good sign that they weren’t going to end up in a negative place. But if you’re going to die and you’re gonna go to a negative place, then you would start to feel like panic and and things like that as well.
Yes? Said no. And I said, what if you have a really strong connection with them? And he said, do you have a strong enough connection that you see things the way that they see them? That you as you can read their mind and you know exactly the way that they’re thinking all the time?
He said, that’s the sort of perception you’d need to be able to see what they’re experiencing or feeling what they’re experiencing after death. Okay. So I guess he said that he would think that that would be probably a result of our attachment to that person, that we would start worrying or having a possibility of, thinking that it’s possible that they’re in a state where they’re suffering, and that would be what our mind would tend towards more than anything else. Because we could think, okay, they could be in extreme suffering, and our mind would latch onto that pretty quickly. But unless you have clairvoyance, of course, and then you’d be able to to unless you have clairvoyance, and then you could see what was happening.
And then But not just like any ordinary clairvoyance. The word you use is like clear vision, literally clairvoyance, clear vision, not flashes of things. If you have that that those kind of realizations, then you can. Oh, yeah. I think time’s up.
And I said, is that okay? And he said, yes.