Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Geshe Pema Tsering opens this 45-minute session with Śāntideva’s challenge: if we have the precious human rebirth and waste it, no greater ignorance exists. He argues that planning only for the next few years is a failure of real intelligence, then lands the point with a wry comparison: someone living only for this life’s comforts is no better than a dog — an Australian one, he specifies, well-fed and worry-free. He then returns to the ongoing death series, picking up at the fourth dying stage — when breath and heartbeat cease and a doctor would pronounce death — and explains why Buddhism disagrees. He introduces different schools’ views on levels of consciousness, the distinction between main mind and mental factors, and the three conditions required for any moment of perception to arise.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 DAR 2003 10 21.mp3
UUID: 40f5b6c1-a43f-47b7-80e6-ab9449a39aab
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Death and Rebirth (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-10-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~3,992
In the Bodhicaryāvatāra, Śāntideva said, having found what we have now, if we don’t use that in order to create merit, there is no greater stupidity or fallibility and there is no greater ignorance. Now, the thing that we have now, the thing that we found now that’s difficult to find is the eight leisures and the ten endowments of the precious human rebirth. Because it’s very difficult to find this and because we actually have it now, then we have to make effort or we have to use it in the best way possible. We have to accumulate as much merit as we can. If we don’t do this, then there is no greater or there is no larger mistake and there is no larger scope of ignorance, it This tends to be what we do, this is what we tend to do.
We tend to not realize how important this precious human rebirth is, and by not realizing how important it is, we tend to make this mistake and we tend to show our ignorance or be ignorant in this way. If we think about it, if we analyze it and we go over it in our minds, then we’ll see that what Śāntideva said makes sense. We’ll understand that the way that he presented it or the way he explains this is the only logical way that we can approach this. The problem is that we don’t think about it. We don’t tend to think about things in this way at all, ever.
We usually tend to think about what’s going to make us happy and what’s going to make us feel good in the very short term. We think about just this life or even more so, we don’t even usually tend to think about this life. We just tend to think about the next couple of years, you know, what’s going to happen in this year or in the next two or three years. We think, if I work and I do this, then I’m going to be happy in this amount of time, in this timeframe, I’m going to be happy. We think that thinking in this way is helping us.
We think that thinking in this way is like being friendly to ourselves or guiding us along, but it’s actually not. The only thing that we’re going to achieve from focusing on it in this way is more suffering. It acts as a cause for us to experience Samsāra in the future. If we don’t want to experience suffering, then we at least have to be thinking about the next life. That’s what the definition of practicing Dharma is.
We have to at least be focused on the next life. We haven’t had this habit. We’ve had this habit since the beginning of this time of doing negative things. What we need to be doing is focusing on what’s gonna get us out of here, what’s going to get us out of suffering, and this isn’t what we usually focus on. Not much of this we don’t listen.
We don’t hear much of this. Not much literally goes into our ears. We have a self-talk happening, which doesn’t enable us to be able to listen to this kind of stuff. We spend a lot of time telling people that we’re not stupid, that we have these certain qualities, we’ve done certain things, and that makes us intelligent. We’re not stupid at all.
And because we’re saying this all the time, we actually believe it as well. Know, we walk around and say, well, I’m not stupid. I know things. I’ve done things. I’ve done this and that and this and that, and therefore, I’m not stupid.
And because we’re saying this, we believe it. So, this doesn’t actually sink into our heads. It doesn’t sink into our it doesn’t go in through our ears because we’re too busy telling ourselves that we’re smart. But actually, thinking that we’re smart is stupid. Thinking that we know what’s going on, thinking that we know what to do is stupid because we don’t understand what’s happening.
If we want to look at someone and say, okay, who’s a really smart person, who really knows what’s going on, then we have to think about Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and arhats, people who have been able to or beings that have been able to perceive directly the nature of reality. They’re the ones that know what’s going on. The reason that they’re so smart is because they found a way to get out of suffering completely. We haven’t found a way to get out of suffering completely. We’re just experiencing through our ignorance, we experience suffering all the time.
Yeah. So if we wanna be smart, if we wanna be really smart instead of pretending that we’re smart and just practice and being arrogant instead of being smart, then we have to start trying to behave like Bodhisattvas and Buddhists. We have to start doing what it is that we need to do in order to get in the same state as them, in order to be able to understand, in order to perceive how things really are. So, we need to start practicing in the things that they said to practice and abandon the things that they said to abandon. We need to create virtues and abandon non virtues.
And by doing this and following the path as they set out, following what they do, then we if we start to follow the path, we’ll become a little bit smarter. Yeah? We’ll become a our understanding will come just a little bit broader or thorough. But even then, won’t be what’s called the definition of smart we won’t be really intelligent, because the only way we can be really intelligent is when we finish the path, when we are like Bodhisattvas and Buddhas, then we can really know what’s happening and understand things. In order to be intelligent or to be smart, then we have to follow the path of the very smart people, the Buddhists and Bodhisattvas.
The other thing we need to remember is that when we’re starting to practice starting to practice in accordance with the way of the intelligent ones, with the way of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, it’s not going to be easy, it’s not something that we’re going to find smooth. If we start doing it, then we’re going to come across difficult passages, we’re going to experience hardship. And at these times, experiencing hardship or difficulties, we may have doubts, we may have misunderstandings about things, and those doubts may be such that we think, perhaps this isn’t the path, perhaps this isn’t going to lead me anywhere. It’s too hard, it’s too difficult for me to do. So, we have to recognize that those doubts themselves are ignorance.
If we understood the true nature of reality, we wouldn’t have those those doubts. We wouldn’t be we wouldn’t be wondering why we have to work so hard. So we have to recognize those as doubts and keep working at it because the thing is it’s really easy for us to do negative things. It’s really easy for us to do non virtuous actions because we’ve been doing it for so long. It just happens it happens kinda naturally.
And so if we wanna change things, if we wanna work at it, then we have to work at it hard. So have to keep focusing on what we re doing and not try and get distracted or disheartened by the fact that it gets hard. The way that we stop ourselves from getting disheartened or the way that we deal with doubts is focus on the qualities or develop our belief or strengthen our faith in the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. We look at the things that the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, the arhats have said, and we examine them. By examining them, strengthen our faith in them, and by strengthening our faith in what they see, then we have more resolve, have more strength to push through and to keep working at it in terms of doing practice, in terms of training ourselves.
It s not just Dharma that this happens with any time we do anything, any time we try and train ourselves to do anything. It’s hard at first, and specifically with dharma for the first two or three years, it’s going to be really difficult, and we have to keep working at it and working at it. Eventually, about ten years or so, if we’ve been working at it a lot, it’ll start to feel fairly easy. It’s the same with many things that we do. At the start, they’re very difficult and they become easier.
We know that when we first start trying to learn to write anything or trying to learn to write another language at the beginning it’s very difficult but after a few years we read and we glance and we know what it says without even concentrating or without even putting in any effort so it’s the same thing with our Dharma practice at the beginning beginning, it’s gonna be tough, but if we keep doing it, it gets easier and easier and easier because we’ve developed a a pattern. We’ve developed a a familiarity, a habit with regards to it. So we need to put in effort. We need to try and make the most of this opportunity that we have, of this precious human rebirth that we have. If we think about it, there twelve hours in a day.
There’s twenty four hours in a whole day, but there’s usually twelve hours when we’re not sleeping or otherwise occupied. Now, within those twelve hours, if we can put aside two hours a day, just two hours a day to doing some kind of Dharma practice or doing something positive, we’re not going to waste our lives. Our lives won’t be wasted. We will have made use of them. By doing this, then we stop ourselves from being ignorant.
We stop ourselves from having made a mistake to throwing away this precious opportunity that we have. Because if we don’t do this, if we don’t make the most of this life that we have now, then there’s every likelihood that we won’t experience this opportunity again. If we completely waste the opportunity now, we may not get that opportunity again in the future. Anything that we do that’s focused on this life, anything we do that’s going to help us feel better in this life will only last for a very short amount of time. When we die, we can’t take it with us.
When we die, we can’t take any of the things that we’ve done for this life with us. Everything ends there. This life is like a dream, so we’re working really hard to make our dream better, even though there’s nothing solid there, there’s nothing substantial that we can take with us when we go on to the next life. If we don’t take advantage of this life, if we don’t use this life to practice Dharma and to try and establish ourselves in a good rebirth or to achieve liberation or to achieve Buddhahood, then we’re basically just like dogs, Well, at least Australian dogs because Australian dogs have good food have people looking after them and have a nice place to sleep and get everything they want. So, that’s the same as with us.
If we just take everything from this life and don’t dedicate anything to the future, if we’re not focusing on doing any Dharma practice with that, then might as well be dogs because that’s exactly the same thing that we’re doing. Because these Australian dogs, right, they spend all their lives, they get exactly what they want, they get all the food they need, they don’t have much suffering that they have to experience, but they don’t think much, because if you’ve got everything you want, then you’re not going to think about what you don’t have, and they don’t have any sense of thinking about anything else, so they just keep going through life in a fairly stupid way with no concerns either, so they just don’t think much at all, there’s nothing to think about. Now, if we’re going to use our human life in a similar way, if we’re going to think, Well, I’ve got this, I’ve got that, and I don’t need to worry about this, I’m just really happy, then basically we’re behaving like dogs. We’re behaving in a very simplified manner and we’re not using the faculties that we could use in order to practice Dharma, in order to think about other things.
So it’s a bit like we’re putting dog imprints in our mind, because we’re starting to behave like a dog even before we are one. So, if we can just put two hours a day aside in one way or another, focusing on doing spiritual stuff or doing things that are going to be a benefit to us after this life, sort of focus on the next life, then we’re bringing meaning to our life and we’re not behaving like this. There’s all different types of Dharma that we can practice in this way. There’s all different types of truths we can practice in this way, even the different religions. If you look at all the different religions in Islam, in Christianity, in Hinduism, in Buddhism, all of these religions talk about the future life, doing something in terms of working towards something after death, working towards something greater than this life.
So, in this way, they’re not wasting this lifetime because anyone who has this as their focus is doing something for a greater purpose than this lifetime. So, by doing this, anyone who has any of these faiths and practices in this way isn’t wasting lifetime. They’re not behaving like dogs. Okay. So but here we say that we’re we’re Buddhist.
We if we say we’re Buddhist, then we should try and focus our energies or focus onto one of the three motivations, the three motivations of the three different types of beings, of the three different scopes. From amongst these scopes, the best scope or the highest scope or the best motivation that we have is to focus on bodhicitta and understanding emptiness. We need to focus on these two things in order to achieve the highest purpose that we can. When we’re going to do anything, then we need to set bodhicitta as our motivation for anything that we do. What does bodhicitta mean?
Well, bodhicitta is the idea that we want all sentient beings to be free of all types of suffering. We want to establish all sentient beings in a happiness beyond suffering, and we want to establish all sentient beings in the state of Buddhahood. In order for us to do that, then we have to become Buddhas ourselves, because if we don’t become Buddhas ourselves, then we don’t know the clear path to lead other beings there. So this thought that we’re going to achieve Buddhahood in order to take all sentient beings to Buddhahood, that thought is bodhicitta, and we should think everything that we do, may the merit from this be a cause for me to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, so that in this way we transform whatever it is that we do with bodhicitta. We should think, in order to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, then I am listening to these teachings, I am teaching these teachings, or I am practicing these teachings, and we should think about this for a few minutes now.
Meditate on this for a few minutes now. Yeah. Wants to know if you meditated well. Okay. So we’re going through death.
Right? I was talking about death. And we’re going through death process, and we were getting to the getting there. We’re up to the fourth stage of the process of death which is associated with the fourth aggregate. The fourth aggregate is the aggregate of compositional factors.
Compositional factors everything that isn’t included within any of the other minds that we have. What happens at this stage is that the compositional factors dissolve, and their basis that they act on is what’s called the wind constituent or the wind element within the body. This means that our consciousness is weakening and the grosser elements are disintegrating. The external sign for this process is that our breath stops. This is the place where people stop breathing.
It’s not the end of the death process, but it’s a breathless place. An external sign is that we have the reddish glow from a flame, the a soft glow like a that like from a flame. It’s not bright like before. Okay, so this stage not only has our breath stopped, but our heart stopped beating at this stage. All the elements, up to the final elements, have dissolved into themselves, so our breath stops, our heart stops beating, and in actual fact, if a doctor came and looked at us then, they would say that we were dead.
They would, looking at our signs, assume that we were dead. But in actual fact, from the point of view of Buddhism or from the point of view of Buddhist teachings, we’re not actually dead at this point. We say that we’ve reached the time of death or the process of dying is in process, but we don’t say that we’ve actually died at this stage. So at this stage, all of our consciousness don’t work. Our faculties don’t work.
We don’t have a faculty of hearing, we don’t have a faculty of smell, we don’t have a faculty of taste or sight. None of those work anymore. But we can’t say that death finished at this stage, because we still have subtle forms of consciousness in our bodies at this point. We’re in the process of dying, but we can’t say that the actual death process has finished yet, and we can’t say that we’re actually dead, because there is still activity in the brain, is still in the mind, there is still consciousness processing in the person at this stage. Okay.
So at this stage, what’s going on is that there are many different levels of consciousness that we have in our minds. There’s very coarse levels and very subtle levels, and there’s many different explanations for how there are different coarse levels and subtle levels. Some people say there are nine, some different schools assert nine different levels of consciousness, eight, six, and some even say there’s only one level of consciousness. The only school, the Cittamātra School, asserts eight different levels of consciousness. They say there s the five sense consciousnesses, the mental consciousness, what s called the afflicted mentality or the afflicted basis for mind, and what s called the basis of all, or the Alaya Vijñāna.
Now, even though they assert eight, the most prevalent or the most common presentation of consciousnesses is that there are six consciousnesses, that is the five sense consciousnesses and the mental consciousness. Within those, however, there are rough and subtle versions of all of these consciousnesses. Okay. Now so from all of these different types of mind that are dissolving at this point, we say there’s all these different classes of mind, subtle and gross, but another way that they’re divided or another way they’re explained is in terms of there’s two different types of minds or two different types of consciousness. They talk about something called a main mind and another one being a mental factor.
Now, a main mind is a type of consciousness that perceives the mere entity. So, it’s the knowing of an entity, the knowing of an object is is is main mind consciousness. The thing that perceives the detail of that, the things that perceive the characteristics that distinguish that object are what’s called mental factors or secondary minds. So the characteristic or the definition of what mind is, of what consciousness is, is that it is said to be merely clear and knowing. Now the clear aspect of this mind, the clear aspect of mind is that it is not obstructed by anything.
It has the ability to perceive the object that it is focused on. So that unobstructed clarity or luminosity is one aspect of mind. The other aspect is knowing or the awareness of whatever object that it is focusing on. So we have these two different elements to what makes up mind, what makes up these consciousnesses that are dissolving. Okay.
So the reason we’re talking about the nature of the mind with regards to death is because if you don’t if the whole process of death is about how the mind comes apart from the body and how these subtle consciousnesses go into gross consciousness divide away into the subtle consciousness. If you don’t understand this, then you can’t understand the death process. So, that’s why it’s talking about the mind. Now, the for example to understand more about the mind if we talk about the visual consciousness for example and we need to understand that there are three conditions that we need in order to have this to have that type of mind there needs to be what’s called an observed object condition which basically means you need to be looking at something. Needs to have a color or shape.
It needs an immediately preceding condition which means a former moment of consciousness, and there needs to be what’s called an empowering condition, which is a physical sense faculty. So you need to have the subtle form in the eye that enables you to see. Okay, so when we’re talking about eye consciousness perceiving something, it has to have something that it can perceive. So that’s the first one. Then we need to have the actual eye consciousness itself.
And then with third one, the preceding moment, the immediately preceding cause has to be a moment of consciousness. This moment of consciousness that precedes this moment has to also have this quality of clear knowingness. If that preceding moment isn’t a moment of mind which is clear and knowing, you can’t have the next moment of mind. One moment of mind is dependent on the previous moment of mind. And so, at the same time, you also need this form, right?
You need this very subtle form, which enables us to be able to see something, so the very subtle inner eye faculty that is included within the eye. It’s not the eye itself, but it’s included within the eye. So if we don’t have that, then we don’t have the ability to see anything. So this has to come into conjunction with the consciousness. Okay.
So the other thing that we need in this instance then is we need the actual physical form, a visible form, to be present as well. So this means there’s all many different ways that we describe things by color and shape, but these two different elements of color and shape make up all physical forms. So when we have the different combinations of the colors and shape, then we have a form that can be actually apprehended by mind. So therefore, we need all these three different elements in order to have a consciousness perceiving something, an eye consciousness perceiving something. Okay, so what this basically all means is then that once we’ve gone through the process of death and once the doctor would say we were dead, what’s actually happened is the grosser elements of our consciousness have dissolved.