Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute commentary, Geshe Pema Tsering opens with a verse from Je Tsongkhapa — “lust for existence chains all beings; addiction to the pleasures of saṃsāra is only cured by renunciation” — and builds the entire session around that single claim. He argues that renunciation must come first: without a genuine wish to exit saṃsāra, even virtuous practice only deepens cyclic existence. The doctrinal core walks through the three types of suffering — suffering of suffering, suffering of change, and all-pervasive suffering — showing that humans habitually mistake the latter two for pleasure. A memorable analogy drives the point home: we resemble contented cows eating grass, oblivious that what we call happiness is samsaric circling viewed with pity by Buddhas and bodhisattvas. The session closes by linking renunciation naturally to compassion for all beings and to the three higher trainings of moral discipline, meditation, and wisdom.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 CAR 2002 10 05.mp3
UUID: 5b16645d-ad67-4e4a-aa1f-9a350af9419a
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Calm Abiding Retreat (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-10-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~3,270
Geshe-la started with a quote from Je Tsongkhapa, Lama Tsongkhapa, and it says something like, lust for existence chains all beings. Addiction to the pleasures of saṃsāra is only cured by renunciation. So seek renunciation first of all. And then Geshe-la said, why does it say that we need renunciation first of all? And that’s because renunciation is, like, the the the root of practice.
If we don’t have renunciation, if we don’t have renunciation being literally translated definite arising, like, definitely wanting to get out of saṃsāra. If we don’t have this thought, anything we do just becomes another cause to circle in saṃsāra. And saṃsāra has already existed since beginning this time and will continue to exist, will not have an end unless we develop this idea to get out of it. Therefore, anything that we do, any practices that we do, any meditations and teachings that we do, before we do them, we should first think about the idea of renunciation. So the next two lines that say saṃsāra is only cured by renunciation, so What this means when they say it is that what we’re actually seeking a cure to is the craving.
The craving is what makes up saṃsāra. In Tibetan it’s actually the same word. So we’re actually seeking a cure to saṃsāra of craving. Geshe-la says in the same way that we seek a cure to thirst in drinking water, and that is the only cure that will work. The only thing that will stop us being thirsty is a drink.
In the same way, the only thing that will stop our craving is renunciation. It’s the same principle. So therefore, we need to try and develop this first of all. And the other thing is it is the only thing that can break the things that bind us to saṃsāra because it’s like we’re bound. And the only way we can chop them is by developing renunciation.
So this becomes important further on and at the beginning. And so they say that if we have a mind that what is actually renunciation? Renunciation is a mind that turns away from saṃsāra. Turns its attraction to saṃsāra around. So if we have this turning around in our mind, that becomes renunciation.
And if we have renunciation at the beginning, then anything else we do, whether it be meditation on bodhicitta or trying to understand emptiness, all of these practices will become a lot easier and a lot more meaningful. So anything that we do without renunciation becomes a cause for saṃsāra because that’s what we’re actually looking for if we don’t have renunciation. We’re not looking for a way out. We’re looking for a better place in saṃsāra. So if we do something with a motivation motivation that I want happiness in saṃsāra, I want pleasures in saṃsāra, then that even if even if it is virtuous, the only outcome from it will be more samsaric pleasures instead of the final liberation.
And Geshe-la said if we then but if we develop renunciation, then everything we do, every practice that we do, every merit that we accumulate becomes a cause for liberation. And even beyond liberation, it can become a cause for achieving complete omniscience or Buddhahood. So it’s not easy. Like I said, it’s not easy for us to achieve to turn around our desires for saṃsāra because it’s all we know. Way we do this, part of the thing we do this, is to try and focus on the sufferings of saṃsāra and to realize that saṃsāra there is three types of suffering.
There is the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change and all pervasive suffering. So amongst these three different types of suffering, at the moment we only recognize the first, the suffering of suffering, as suffering. The other two, the suffering of change and the suffering of all pervasive suffering. We think these two are actually pleasure. We see the pleasures that we have in saṃsāra as pleasure when in fact they’re suffering.
They’re either the suffering of change or pervasive suffering. We just don’t recognize this at this stage. So we know about the suffering of suffering. The suffering of suffering is when we’re sick. The suffering of suffering is when our mind is disturbed and we feel negative emotions.
Suffering of suffering is when we don’t get money. The suffering of suffering is when things go wrong for us. We know about this suffering. So we know about this suffering so well that when it comes along, we don’t want it. We try to get rid of it.
We try and turn ourselves around from that suffering. So if we can apply this attitude to the other two types of suffering that we’re not as familiar with that is the suffering of change and all pervasive suffering that’s when renunciation comes about. When we turn away from what we see as pleasures in saṃsāra but are actually the suffering of change and all pervasive suffering. So animals can even say, this is the suffering of suffering and I don’t want this suffering.’ And animals have the capacity to turn around from that. But as humans, we should be able to think more broadly, we should be able to do the same thing for the other true sufferings.
We should be able to see them as they truly are, as sufferings themselves. In the same way we naturally have an aversion to the suffering of suffering and then turn around our attachment to the suffering of change and all pervasive suffering, and then that becomes renunciation. But what’s harder is if we everything’s going great for us, we’ve got, like, good we’re living in a nice place, we have a nice environment, we have nice friends. And there’s there’s a word that has a translator which means all excellences, but that sounds a bit like we’ve just got heaps of good stuff. So if we have all these things, then it’s hard for us to think that this is suffering, but we have to recognize that this is suffering as well.
So we think, hey, this isn’t suffering. This is good. I want more of this. And we our mind becomes concentrated on achieving more of this. But that that thought, I want more of this kind of well, it’s suffering.
Gets to the sort of I want more of this kind of suffering is is not a right thought. It’s not okay. So even if we have a really amazing body and a really amazing wealth and everything is just fantastic for us. If we think in a hundred years we’re not going to have any of it, in a hundred years it’s all going to be gone. Therefore it’s not really helping us.
It doesn’t become an antidote to any of our suffering. It just becomes another form of suffering. So if we think like this, then we can turn around our attachment to it. And we should think that these things have actually come about from a a combination of of karma and negative thoughts. They didn’t the everything that we have comes from our karma.
So whether it’s our wealth or our health or our bodies or families, anything that we have, it comes from our karma. And our karma actually comes from our negative thoughts or our negative emotions. And and therefore, it’s it’s it’s not a good thing. And because it comes from the power of afflictive emotions or afflictive thoughts and karma, it also has in its essence that it is being destroyed moment by moment, that it is is fading away, that it doesn’t last. And because it doesn’t last and because it fades away, then it comes another cause for suffering.
So any of the enjoyments that we have in this life, including being well off and comfortable, if we keep trying to build this up, if we if Geshe was saying, like, if we keep trying to make ourselves fatter, then this becomes a cause to go to the lower realms. Because when that karma has finished, because its cause was karma, then its result will be suffering. So anything we do in this way can lead us to go to the lower realms, which is the hell realms, the animal realms, and the ghost realms. So therefore there’s no point in doing any of these actions. So if we think that the cause for this was karma, therefore what we are experiencing now is the suffering, the suffering of change, and what its result will be in the future is the suffering of suffering.
If we think in this way, then we don’t want it. We turn our mind away from it. It becomes a reason to get out of saṃsāra. So Geshe said, for himself at the moment, he thinks that samsaric pleasures are alright. He thinks, you know, I’m very comfortable.
This is fine. But he has likened himself to a cow. Because if you give grass to a the cow thinks, this is good. But we look at the cow and say, you know, that cow’s just eating grass, and we think that cow is suffering. So in the same way as the cow doesn’t realise that it’s only getting grass, we don’t realise that we’re only getting samsaric happiness and that’s not that good.
So to continue the analogy further, if a cow has nice grass somewhere nice to sleep, and people look after it, then the cow’s thinking that it’s doing alright. And in the same way, if we think we have a nice house to live in and we have good food to eat, then we think we’re doing alright. But we’re the same as the cow. We think what is actually suffering is pleasure, and we have to turn our minds away from that and try and look for something else. And in in order to protect ourselves, in order to protect our our nice house and our nice food, all our good bits, then we can get angry.
We can get angry, and we can hurt other people, and we can get negative minds, we can do actions of physical actions that are negative, mental actions that are negative, and say things that are negative. And from the power of all these negative actions, we end up in Samsāra again. We keep circling in Samsāra and there’s no way out. So Geshe said that that we have to if we look at it like this way, then we don’t want anything more to do it. So when the arhats, the arhats, the superior beings and the Pratyekabuddha and the Buddhas, they look at us, they see us like cows.
They say they think that they’re they’re having pleasure, but they’re still circling in Samsāra and they’re not gonna get out of Samsāra. So in the same way that way that we may look at a cow and say, you’re just eating grass. They’re looking at us and saying, look at the poor things. They’re just dealing with saṃsāra pleasures. So from from our birth to our death, to our new birth to our death in a cycle, there is no relaxing from suffering.
There’s no time out from suffering. We can keep suffering. The only way that we’re going to stop suffering is to become an arhat, to realize emptiness or to achieve Buddhahood or to get liberated from saṃsāra. That’s the only time that the suffering stops. And any time we may think that we’re not suffering, we’re just kidding ourselves because it will change.
So we have to wait until we realise these attainments before we get any break in our suffering. So the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas were once like us. They were once beings on a path. Because they know exactly what we’re going through and can see how we’re suffering and what’s going to happen to us, once they’ve achieved their goals, they set out paths in the scriptures and the texts saying, if you do this, then this will happen. When you do this, this will happen.
And it gave us a path that we can follow. So this is why we can look at these texts and find our way to the final goals of Buddhahood and and our own individual nirvana that they set out. So when we talk about all pervading suffering, all pervasive suffering and saṃsāra are actually synonyms. Because any time that we are in saṃsāra we are here by the force of karma and delusions. And any time that we are in saṃsāra then we have all pervasive suffering.
So these two end up being synonyms. So we have to realise that even from birth to death, without respite, without a break, then this is all pervasive suffering. And that pervasive suffering of saṃsāra cannot be separated. And this is hard to realize that this suffering is all pervasive. But if we do realize this, if we do realize suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, then we develop a disdain for saṃsāra.
We develop a need to get out of saṃsāra. And this need to get out of saṃsāra in all its forms is renunciation. Once we understand properly the sufferings of saṃsāra, then the renunciation comes about spontaneously. So the other thing that happens is if we have this thought in our mind that we don’t want to suffer, that we want out of saṃsāra because it is just suffering and there’s nothing else in suffering. If developed this hard to reach thought and renunciation comes about, then it becomes only natural that we don’t want anyone else to suffer as well, that we want everybody else to get to achieve peace as well and not have to go through these different forms of suffering.
So if we’re if we’re a politician, if we’re a head lama, if we’re if we have a if we have a motorcycle, if we have a car, if we have a really nice airplane, and even Geshe-la said if we have an atom bomb, it doesn’t matter how much power we have, how much cars we have, how much money we have, how good looking we have, we are, how many boyfriends and girlfriends we have, we are still suffering. He said the only people that are an exception to this are the people who have realized emptiness, the bodhisattvas and the buddhas. They are the only people that aren’t the same as us. They’re the only people that aren’t suffering. So even when we look at these people and we think, oh wow, they’ve got everything, they don’t.
They’re the same as us. They’re suffering. And no matter how good they think they are, they’re not. They’re the same as us. So So he said even if you’re a really expert doctor and something else that I didn’t get.
But if you’re a really expert doctor, then you can say you can say other people are sick, and you can see when but you can’t say when they’re gonna die, and you can’t even stop yourself from dying. So even if you have this knowledge, it’s not gonna help you with anything. So if there’s no other way that we can be helped, then the only thing that we can do is to get rid of these three sufferings, especially the ones that are less obvious to us, the pervasive suffering and the suffering of change. That’s the only way that we can get rid of to get rid of them is the only way that we can not suffer in these ways. So we have to think that it’s not only us that are suffering, all sentient beings are suffering.
All sentient beings are suffering and we should develop the thought that they should be free from suffering as well, that they shouldn’t have to deal with any of these things, that our mind becomes the idea that these beings should be separated from all types of suffering. So now we know that our minds are the same sort of minds as all those people who have everything, and then we can have compassion for them, and we can try and get us all out of saṃsāra. So so that now that we have this mind, should be setting our motivation for anything that we do the rest of the time by thinking that we want ourselves to be free from suffering and all sentient beings to be free from suffering. And the two ways to do this is the ultimate goal of achieving Buddhahood and for everybody else to achieve Buddhahood, or at the least to get everyone out of saṃsāra to liberate all beings from saṃsāra. People that we may think have everything, even we need to think about getting them out of Samsāra.
Because they’re the same as us, and no matter how good they think they are, then they they still need our help. So we should be thinking about setting this as our motivation to try and achieve Buddhavut for all of them. So we should think about getting rid of all the sufferings, not just of ourselves, but of the other people, whether they’re experts in one field or another or what they can do or anything. We we should be just thinking that they’re the same as us, and we’re getting we’re going to think of a way get rid of all their sufferings and our sufferings as well. And even if we may not understand all these different types of sufferings, even if we don’t understand how all these sufferings manifest, then there’s something that we can understand pretty simply that beings don’t want to suffer and beings want happiness.
Animals want happiness and animals don’t want to suffer. humans want happiness and humans don’t want to suffer. And even if we don’t understand the intricacies of it, then we can understand this part. So all of all the things that we experience, everything that we understand comes from the power of karma and delusions. And the only people that don’t have a mind that works in this way are Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
They are the only people that don’t have suffering and have true happiness. Therefore, we should be trying to work to become like those, and not just for ourselves, but for so that all beings can do this. So most of us don’t know what happiness is. Most us experience something we think is happiness, which is actually suffering, and we don’t understand what true happiness is. So therefore, we keep going after happiness that isn’t really happiness.
So whoever we are, whatever we’re doing, and wherever we’re from, we all want to be free from suffering, and we all want happiness. So if we actually want to be separated from suffering and want to be joined with happiness, then the only way to do this is to get out of saṃsāra. So in order to achieve this this only true happiness of liberation, then what we need to do is to abandon misdeeds and to accumulate virtue. So if we’re a Buddhist, what we have to abandon is all the misdeeds and all the things that can cause us to come into saṃsāra. What we have to accumulate is the three higher trainings.
The three higher trainings are wisdom, meditation, and discipline, moral discipline.