Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. What would happen to society if everyone abandoned the world like Milarepa? Geshe Pema Tsering’s answer — a society of Buddhas who need no food — frames the lively Q&A at the centre of this 44-minute session. The talk first completes his explanation of three attachments that block calm abiding, singling out attachment to this-life benefit as the root cause of samsaric cycling and the most urgent to overcome. Questions cover whether calm abiding can be integrated into a working life (a flat no) and how to tell whether an action genuinely serves the Dharma, including why a partly virtuous motivation still counts. The session closes with the story of a realized nun who disrobed to give birth to the scholars Asaṇga and Vasubandhu — an illustration that unconventional choices can carry a pure Dharma motivation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 CAR 2002 10 05.mp3
UUID: 4dd8e3a7-cb6b-4261-938c-10275fa8f26c
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Calm Abiding Retreat (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-10-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.6 minutes
Words: ~2,780
Okay. So we were talking about the second one, which was doing things for the sake of this life. So it’s very difficult for us to abandon this completely because we need food and we need places to sleep. And it’s a very subtle thing as well. So you you have to have a high level of insight into understanding when you’re doing something for this life and when you’re not doing something for life.
So it’s very difficult for us to see this. If we could see it and abandon it all, then we’d be way down the path. And so it’s difficult for us to do that, but we should try. Okay. We’re sorted now.
I’m sorry about that. Sometimes I haven’t I’m still having trouble with Geshe-la’s accent. Okay. The so there’s three of them. These three different types of attractions.
Geshe-la says that although we have to abandon all three of them, the most important one for us to try and abandon at the moment is the second one, which is attachment to getting a benefit for this life. And the reason that we have to abandon this, and this is the most important one for us to abandon, and the thing that we should be focusing on the most is that this is the one that causes us to circle in saṃsāra. This is the one that it changes us to saṃsāra and causes us suffering, the main one. Because once we abandon that, then the other two will naturally go away. We won’t be thinking, I will do my work today and I’ll do some practice tomorrow or I can’t do it because we’ll have to do it.
It comes down to if we focus on that that one, then the other two naturally come about. And if we don’t focus on that, then we anything that we do becomes a cause for staying in saṃsāra. So now we know what these three different types of attachments are. And if we can abandon these three, then we can actually achieve calm abiding. And this is like, abandoning this is the first of the five downfalls.
He’s abandoning these three different types of attachments. And so we can watch this when we’re doing our meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings. We can see if this comes up. If we do this, then if we do abandon it, we set the right preliminaries. We make the right conditions for us to be able to to practice and try and develop a calm abiding.
So his Geshe-la says that we should be like a. So Milarepa who was a great saint in the to in Tibet centuries ago who abandoned everything and lived in a a piece of rag in the hills. But but he said if you don’t do that, if you don’t get rid of all the different attachments, whether physically or or mentally, then it’s very difficult to achieve calm abiding. Okay. He said we it’s not that we should forget the other two.
It’s not that we should forget this procrastinating thing because if the procrastinating mental pattern or the I can’t do it mental pattern comes up in our head, then we have to get rid of them as well. But the main thing, the main one we have to concentrate on is this idea of getting rid of the attachment to this life because that’s the one that will undo us in this life and future lives. That’s the one that is the the key to the other two. So it relies on our own effort. If we can in our own meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings, if we can keep on watch on this and make sure that this doesn’t come up, make sure that we’re not doing these meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings for this life, then or for benefit in this life, then then that’s up to us.
It’s up to our own effort to put into our meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings in that way. And Geshe-la says, it’s like the same thing as ages ago. None of us here knew how to write, and we didn’t know our or our ABCDs. And now all of us can write without even thinking about it. We just know all these letters, and developing calm abiding is the same way.
Now we may not know the different tools that we need to develop calm abiding, but in the end, if we keep practicing it and learn it properly, then it will become as easy as writing our ABCDs. He said, so in that case, we should also put off the idea of I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll I’ll start meditating next year. I’ll start meditating next week. Whenever we get a chance, we should meditate.
Whenever the opportunity comes our way, we should take it and try and make the best of it. So we finished this attachment to other things, and so we should leave it here for now. Yeah. Does anyone have any questions? Do you have to ask?
Is there any questions that you individually need to ask? The the because the I believe after it was in the discussion groups, you’re going through different questions to ask, but he wanted to know if there are any questions that you need to you need to ask now or that you need to ask personally. Are you thinking of any questions? You got a question? Oh, I’m thinking of a You’re thinking of a question.
So he says it actually comes up in the text little bit later. But just briefly, there’s you can either have a Buddha who is inseparable from your teacher, and it can be placed at your head or in your brow or at your heart or in in with your navel as well. Any of these. And it should be facing you. If it’s in front of your face, then it should be the Buddha looking at you, so facing you.
Yeah. And and it actually goes into explanation a bit later in the text as well. Yeah. Can we just go through the five downfalls again? Five But I’ve got them here if you need me.
Okay. Yeah. So we’ve got if if you understood, the first one was laziness and that it had four it had four antidotes. Okay.
So we have Okay. So they are Okay. The first one was a desire for the unbeneficial or laziness, sometimes translated. And the second one’s forgetfulness. The third one is dullness and agitation.
The fourth one is the nonapplication of antidotes. And the fifth one is the application of antidotes. But we’ll go through them with the antidotes. Any other questions? So he said you can ask some good questions this afternoon as well.
So now do some. So you guys have some questions?
Is that right? From the discussion groups? The question was in reference to the teaching this morning. If we all became like Jetsün Milarepa and abandon all attachments, then what would happen to society? And Geshe-la says, well, society would become really good.
It’d be a calmer society full of Milarepas, you know, so that would be a good thing. But I may ask him how they would all eat. He said then we’re all at the moment spending a lot of time trying to get a house and trying to get cars and trying to get possessions. And if we weren’t doing this and we were being like Milarepa, then we’d all be Buddhas, and there wouldn’t be a problem. He said that’s the prayer we say all the time.
We say this prayer, may all beings attain enlightenment. And if all beings were like Milarepa, then they’d all be enlightened, so all our prayers would be answered. He and I said, but how would they eat? How would these pew how would we all eat if everyone went into retreat? And he goes, yeah.
But if you’re Buddha, you don’t need to eat. If you have yes. If have you if you have this kind of concentration and you become completely absorbed and you don’t need food, And I said, what about any old people going into This isn’t working. I said I said, okay. What if it’s just everyone goes into retreat and there’s no one to give them food because when people go into retreat, they need people to bring them food, etcetera.
And he said, no. If people go into retreat and they do their practice well, then food will come. And I said, from where? He said, it just will. Yeah.
So yes. And he said, so if someone’s in retreat and they’re doing their practice properly, then the Buddhas will look at them and say, there’s someone who’s practicing the Dharma really well and they don’t have food, and they will give them food. And he said that the whole purpose of people giving people in retreat food is the people giving the food, not for the people in retreat. It’s so the people that are giving the food can create positive karma. It’s not for the benefit necessarily of the people in retreat.
He said no because we’re not Jetsün Milarepa, so we’re not at the same stage as that. We shouldn’t just head off to the hills. But we should and we do need to work to sustain ourselves, but it shouldn’t be our focus. We should be trying to work in order to get spare time to do practice, not not to work for the sake of working. So so even though that we’re not like and we do have to keep working and keep working, we should also try to keep practicing.
So because our aspiration should be to become like Milarepa, to become a Buddha. Therefore, we should keep practicing. And even if we have to keep working, remember to keep focusing on practicing. So if we keep having the asp an aspiration to become like and we keep working on it, then we will become like that. So I said so right now, we can’t like me we can’t head for the hills.
We’re not capable of it. And he said, yeah. If you’re like me, I think it’ll be very difficult. The second question is, is it possible to integrate development of Calm Abiding into daily life if you’re working?
Okay. So he said, no. It’s not possible. There’s no way that it’s possible. And I said, even if we take our work as a object a focused object.
And he said, no. That’s not gonna happen. The if we have to work, we have to work, and we should try and find time, at some stage, try and develop pliancy on body, but you can’t combine the two. So is this how to identify actions not for the benefit of this life? Is that the question?
Motivation grasping? . Who wrote that? You made it come for I know. That’s from the album.
Oh, is that from me? It’s okay. It doesn’t matter if it’s not quite clear. I just didn’t quite understand what that was. Can you tell me That was the worst question I think.
Yes. Hi, Will. Did say your question? Yeah. How do you how do you identify an action and and be confident that it is an action for the benefit of future lives.
Uh-huh. And even though you might have the best intention, how do you actually identify that? Okay. Mhmm. Just for the benefit.
Yes. Not I told Geshe-la that it was quite cool out here, and then he was like, you told me it was cool. Okay.
It’s nice weather. I should have worn my jumper. I should have tried to. Okay. So you said that it’s it’s similar to if you have people that drive a car for a living, that they’re not just driving their car in order to get from one place to another place.
They’re actually driving it in order to make a living as well as getting from one place to another place. So they have these two functions in one car. So if we look at our he said it all comes down to our motivation. If our motivation for doing something is to achieve enlightenment, then then it becomes a virtuous act. And if it’s just for ourselves or just for the benefits of this life, then it isn’t a virtuous act.
And then but sometimes it isn’t as clear cut as this. There isn’t something to say, well, I’m drinking I I tried to use the example of saying, well, if I drink this water and I say I’m drinking this water for the benefit of all sentient beings, does that work? Right? And he said, it does in part because in part, you’re doing it for the benefit of all sentient beings, but in part, doing it because you’re thirsty. So even if we don’t have the ability to make everything he was saying and, again, I said, if even if we don’t have the ability to make everything we do for the benefit of all sentient beings, even having that thought mixed in with our other thoughts makes part of our motivation virtuous, even if it’s not all virtuous.
But it doesn’t necessarily work the other way. So if we say to ourselves, I’m gonna steal this food in order to eat, in order to practice Dharma, then that isn’t a virtuous action. It’s still a non virtuous action. So any of the ten non virtuous actions of body, speech, and mind that we do, even if our motivation is to practice Dharma or to achieve enlightenment, they’re still non virtuous. Yeah.
But this isn’t the case for our work. Our work can actually become a virtuous action if we try and turn this turn it around so we’re doing it in order to achieve something, in order to benefit beings and in order to achieve enlighten for ourselves. If we do it with that motivation, then anything we do can be positive. But not if I mean, because most he said most of our work isn’t inherently negative. So, therefore, we can make our work positive.
But if it’s a it’s a if it’s a non virtue to start off with, then it can’t be made into a a virtuous act. Pardon this one. Is that okay? Yeah. And the next?
Yeah. This is from the same group, but I wonder whether another group would like to there there was the one about the mother and the parenting. And that was an important question. That was So we were just wondering what would in terms of doing things avoiding doing things in this life Mhmm. What would be the best motivation when deciding to have kids?
Because that seems to be something that you do for because it can be a selfish thing. Mhmm. So is your way of having kids that with the correct motivation is good. I think it’s like the motivation for having kids as opposed to once you Once He goes he said that it’s definitely possible because his example is that there was a a nun who lived a long time ago who was a fully ordained nun who was living in India, and she had a high level of realization and had an insight that it would be beneficial for her to have children. So she actually disrobed and got married and gave birth to two children that became Asaṇga and Vasubandhu, who were two Indian scholars.
And Asaṇga was one of the two holders of the the Lamrim lineage. There’s two there’s two lineages that come into the Lamrim practice, and he was the holder of one of those. And he had visions of Maitreya and, yeah, and did all these amazing things. And his younger brother was also a really famous scholar. And and and then that was her and she actually gave birth to them and got pregnant with them in order to help all beings.
So