Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A student question about whether it is too late to help someone at the moment of death anchors this 22-minute Q&A with Geshe Pema Tsering. His answer — help the dying refocus on their refuge, keep surroundings quiet, pray — leads into a broader point about why refuge practice must become habitual now, not improvised when dying. He clarifies that taking refuge in a lama means all lineage lamas, including Samantabhādra and Mañjuśrī, who are understood as embodied within one’s own teacher rather than separate figures. The session closes on the Dharma Jewel — the true paths and true cessations developing in an Ārya’s mental continuum — and on honest scale: realizing emptiness requires not one meditation session but lifetimes of sustained effort, though beginning that effort now is still genuinely beneficial.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2005 08 30Q Bodhisattvas Way of Life.mp3
UUID: b2a3c661-ac47-4b5d-b176-0cd51e12b9cb
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life 2005 Mar -2007 (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-08-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 22.1 minutes
Words: ~1,885
There’s three more. Come. And said he represents. Maybe maybe all of the So means all, and bhadra means good. So he’s saying maybe he represents all the good qualities of Buddha because it means all all the good.
His name means all the good. Oh, the engineer. Okay. So Samanta, yeah, Samanta is whole, and Bhadra is good. Same.
Same. Oh, in Tibetan, it’s. Yeah. So these all are the lamas as well, but in this instance, Samantabhādra, Mañjuśrī, and the Buddha, they’re lineage lamas and not necessarily our direct lamas, but we should be taking consideration all the lineage lamas and not just the our own lama that will direct lama. When you take refuge in the lama, it’s not just the direct lama, it’s all the lamas.
So the other thing is to remember that you don’t wanna necessarily see those as being separate. So the lama embodies all of the other teachers. They each embody all of the other teachers, and and so you’re not separating it out. So you are calling out always to the to the lamas, but these are lamas as well. And this practice is actually — no.
From now. No. Yeah. So if you if you start if you start trying to do it when you’re dying, you’re in trouble. Yeah.
It needs to start from now. He said if you’re if you’re not used to calling out for help, if you’re not used to looking for refuge, then when you get to the stage where you’re all where you’re dying, it’s not likely to come to mind. Yeah. No. It’s a really good thing to be calling out for help to the Three Jewels and the teachers when you’re dying.
It’s just very difficult because you’ve got all sorts of things happening to you. You’re sick. You don’t feel too good. You you’ve got your body’s disintegrating. So it’s good to start doing this practice now so that that’s what you do.
When you’re in trouble, you look to the Three Jewels for help, for protection. So that’s the point of starting now with these visualizations, this practice, this sense of refuge is that it’s such a habit that you do it even when you’re in pain. So if you develop a really strong habit doing it now, then when you die, then that’s where your mind will go. And if you don’t have a strong habit of doing that now, then it’d be difficult to generate that idea at the time of death. Yeah.
Are our prayers or intentions able to help them, or is it too late? Does everyone hear that? Yeah. Everyone but George with the headphones on. Okay.
So how do we help people when they’re dying? Because some people become really agitated when they’re dying and other people die calmly. Is it too late to help them then? Is or is there things that we can do to help them at that stage like Tonglen or what was the other one? Praying for them.
Praying for them. Okay. So at that time, first of all, he said that, of course, Tonglen anytime you do it is gonna be beneficial. Giving and taking meditation at any time is gonna be beneficial. But at the time of death, you’re not gonna be able to take their suffering away from them.
So it’ll be beneficial, but it it won’t necessarily help them in that instant that much. Right? So the best thing that I guess I said that you can do for someone who’s dying is to remind them to focus on anything that they believe in. So this idea of taking refuge isn’t something that’s exclusive to Buddhism. And the idea of turning to something for refuge is in all religions and and all belief systems.
There is a sense of looking to something based in based or focusing or relying on something. So for Buddhists, there is this idea of going to refuge to the Three Jewels, for other people, they have other refuges. So the thing that you’re trying you would be trying to encourage in someone who’s dying is to focus on that, to focus on their refuge, and not to be get distracted by other thoughts or other issues that they may have, and to to try and keep it for them as quiet as possible so they can focus on that, and try and keep reminding them of that and bringing them back to that so that they don’t get distracted into negative thoughts. And and he said, obviously, pray for them as well, but the main thing is to try and get them focused on their refuge. Yes?
That mean the only solution is is us to wanting to to wanting to Become a Buddha? I thought sorry. I just thought I had a bug, and I thought I nearly ate a bug, but it was a piece of fluff. So I’m alright. How great.
It’s a good time for a bug to commit suicide in my mouth. Uh-huh. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah.
I said rebirth, nirvana, or Buddhahood. That I thought that covered all the bases. So the Buddha explained to us how to do it. He put forward the path. He said, if you do positive things like this, you’ll experience happiness.
If you do negative things like this, you’ll experience suffering. If you meditate on compassion and emptiness, then you’ll develop understandings and insight. If you continue to do things that harm others and harm yourself, then you create suffering. Alright? He explained it all to us, but whether we actually put it into practice and do it for ourselves depends on us, depends on our will, depends on our focus.
Focus. So he told us how to do it. He gave us all the tools to to do it, but whether we actually put it into practice or not depends on our will. Yeah. Yeah.
Sure. Yeah. Definitely. The Buddha taught in all different ways to suit all different sorts of people and to get them to see different things. So, there’s some people who have a tendency towards or were practicing the Bodhisattva path, and he taught them how to be Bodhisattvas.
And there was others who were practicing the path of a solitary realizer, and he taught them how to follow that path. And there’s others who followed the path of a hearer, and he taught them how to follow that path. But the tricky thing is teaching ordinary beings like us, right, because we don’t wanna hear it. Yeah? So the main thing that he tries to teach ordinary beings is this idea that saṃsāra is suffering.
So if you can get the idea that saṃsāra is suffering, into your head, then you wanna get out of saṃsāra and you’ll be on the path. But actually getting that across to people is very difficult because they don’t wanna hear that the things that they hold dear are actually suffering. It’s a very difficult thing to get across. And so the way that he gets that across is is incredibly multifarious. Different.
There’s many different ways. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So Geshe-la said that we’re not like Monkey because Monkey was on the path.
He already had realizations, and we don’t have realizations. So the the way Monkey, the Monk, and all of them had realizations. And so the way that they’re going to be explained things to is gonna be different to the way that we’re explained to. And Geshe said the main way that the Buddha wants us to get things is to start thinking about suffering and impermanence.
If we get that, then we’ll get on we’ll be on the right track. Impermanence. And and refuge. Yeah. And then and then we also need to if if we think about this basis of refuge that’s dependent on suffering and impermanence, then we can then also do meditation on bodhicitta and emptiness.
Yes. Last question. No. Sorry. No.
I told I I told him. He said they all know it. Okay. Sorry. I was Geshe was going, they do know.
You’re just being you’re just being rude. And and I was like, they don’t know. And and and can you say because otherwise I feel like I have to say it and I don’t it’s not my job. And then Geshe said, they do know. And then he goes now he goes, oh, okay.
The Dharma jewel is the qualities of an Ārya. So, there’s two parts to it. There is the things they’ve realized and the things that they’ve given up. So, the realizations or the paths, the true paths of an Ārya’s mind — their realization of emptiness, their great compassion, their bodhicitta, their insights in terms of mundane insights, all of the qualities, the positive qualities that they’ve developed in their continuum. And the true cessation is all the things they’ve given up.
So along the paths, when you go through different stages, there’s a whole list of things that you give up. Like you give up perceiving things as being inherently existent. You give up being attached to things. You give up what’s the other one he said? You give up holding some close and seeing others as distant.
Right? So there’s all of the things you give up and there’s all of the things that you develop. So those abandonments and realizations in the mental continuum of an Ārya being is the true Dharma jewel. He said, yeah. But you’ve gotta do a lot before they come about.
Like, you have to develop real renunciation and real bodhicitta. And then when you finally go on to develop a sense of a a direct realization of emptiness, then you start developing the grounds and Oh, when you do realize emptiness, then then you have those qualities. You have the basis of those qualities. But Geshe-la said, but you can’t just say when I meditate, these will come about. Right?
You have to say, when I keep meditating and keep meditating and keep working and working and working and working and working for lifetimes, then they’ll come about, he said. So you can’t just say when I meditate? He said he will he he he said, did he just say when he meditates? And I was like, yeah. And he goes, no.
You have to say meditate and meditate and meditate and meditate for lifetime and lifetime and lifetime. Yeah.
But he said, but don’t worry. Meditating is still helpful even when you’re not developing true paths and true cessations. Yeah. So the way that you take refuge in those qualities is by reminding yourself that if you have them, you have no fear and you have no suffering. So you take refuge in them by seeking to develop them in order to obliterate or get rid of fear and suffering.
Okay. I said, guess what? He said, is there any other questions? I said, probably not because I told them it was the last question, so they’re probably scared. And Geshe-la said, well, you better ask them if there’s any other questions.
Tell me, do. Memorize it. He said, okay. If there’s not Sure. That’s fine.