Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A student’s question about motivational categories opens this 24-minute Q&A from Geshe Pema Tsering’s Bodhisattva Way of Life series. He walks through the three Lamrim scopes — small (seeking higher rebirth), middle (seeking personal liberation), and great (seeking enlightenment for all beings) — then gives a concrete meditation instruction: compare the scale of causes and results at each level, from one brief human life up to infinite sentient beings. A practical caution sharpens the point: a practice driven only by this-life benefit produces no result if death comes first, because motivation determines where the ripening lands. He closes by noting that deity yoga requires renunciation, bodhicitta, and the wisdom realizing emptiness working together as a foundation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2005 10 25Q Bodhisattvas Way of Life.mp3
UUID: 85a5de69-8569-4636-b63f-c73f2a24a770
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Bodhisattva Way of Life 2005 Mar -2007 (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-10-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 23.6 minutes
Words: ~1,131
Loz? Yes. So then, Geshe-la says, what you say is right, what you say is correct. But then Geshe-la goes on to explain that this a technical division, right? So then the person the being which has as a motivation to his actions, higher rebirth as a god, as a human being, is what is called a being of small scope or a lesser being.
Then a person who understands that even high rebirth and human rebirth have a lot of suffering to it, and who wants to be free of all these, of all cyclic existence, and wants to achieve liberation for himself alone — then a being who has that motivation is called a being of middle scope. And again, a being who is not satisfied with that and wants to achieve enlightenment in order to be able to bring all sentient beings to enlightenment and liberation, then again, that being is called a being of great scope. And then if and then those persons, those beings who have motivation only to achieve happiness and benefit for this life alone, then those are called those are the ones who have a mundane motivation, the ordinary beings. And then again, there is another way that there are those beings who have a mixed motivation, who have in their minds not only the benefit of this life, but also have the benefit of future lives or benefits of liberation.
And then there are these mixed motivations. And then those who have these mixed motivations will also not be able will also not accomplish a proper Dharma practice. So it’s just a how do you say? Yes. It’s just a way to distinguish to categorize beings.
And yes. Yeah. That’s it. Yes? Lewis.
Loz. So what should we do in this case, right? And then, say, he’s telling us how we should meditate, right? So he’s instructing right now, he’s instructing us how we should meditate. We should think, okay, now if we are thinking only of this life, then we are talking about such a very brief period of time.
It’s no more than one hundred years or so. And then thinking of only of this life, we’re going to gather only very small inferior causes that will bring very small results. And we should think in this way. Now, if we and then after having thought this about this life, right, and we think about the future lives, if we think of engaging in activities for the benefit of future lives, and when we talk about future lives, we’re talking about a much how do you say, a much longer period of time, yes? We’re talking about a much longer period of time.
And then so those activities, which are motivated by this mind, bring much greater causes that will bring greater results. And again, if we think of achieving liberation, which is achieving a state which has no suffering whatsoever and has only happiness, and it’s a state state which accomplishes all the happiness for ourselves, then we are talking about something which is much more vast than just the benefit of future lives. And then again, with this motivation in mind, we will accomplish, we will gather within ourselves much greater causes that will bring much greater results. And again, if we think about it, that it’s just not all right to gather all this happiness only for ourselves. We should accomplish it for all sentient beings.
Then the amount of then the causes that we are going to gather to us within ourselves are infinitely greater than the other ones, and the results are going to be just in the same proportion, infinitely greater. And that’s how we should think. That’s how we should meditate, Geshe-la says. That’s how we should train our minds. So Geshe-la is saying that Geshe-la was explaining that there are three kinds of actions.
So one that I don’t remember those names or right now, neither in Tibetan or in English. But so one of them is that brings results to this life and the other one that brings results to the next life and the other one which brings results to many future lives. So Geshe-la explained that if we sit down to meditate or may achieve benefit in this life and so forth. So it’s very difficult, Geshe-la says, to obtain, to gain a result from such meditation actually in this life. This is very difficult.
So then if we engage in a practice and we have as a motivation, the benefit of this life, and then if that’s the motivation that impelled us, propelled this action, then when we die, result will not come about because we had in our minds only this life. So if it wasn’t if the result didn’t come in this life and we died, we’re not going to get the result in another life. So you have to think like this, he says. Because he says if if if you don’t get used to it, if you don’t think about it like in this way, then then it is difficult. But if you do think in this way in this way and if you get used to it, then it’s easy.
One more question. Yes? Okay. I I was can can we try to rephrase it? You have a bad practice.
Loz. Let’s see if I can put that. So can I say is yes, it really depends on the motivation you have? That’s what is going to make clear what is really going on. And then but he says also that if you are, for example, meditating in deity yoga, So then Geshe-la is also saying that if one is to engage in deity practice, deity yoga, one has to give proper reliance on renunciation and bodhicitta and the view how do you say, the wisdom realizing emptiness.
And then with these three working together, one engages in the daily practice. In essence, if one doesn’t have these three then a good result will not follow from So then, again, say it’s very important that we meditate, we train our minds and think about these topics. It’s we have to think about the sufferings of saṃsāra in order to develop renunciation. We have to think, we have to meditate and get and train our minds in the thought of enlightenment. We have also to think and train our minds in the view that realizes the emptiness of phenomena.
And then having trained well in these topics, in these meditation, then we engage in the, let’s say, daily practice, which is Mahāyāna practice. Okay. So we start here today, okay? Yes. He says it’s better.
He has been saying that the pain is diminishing. Good.