Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. What makes an action Buddhist practice — the deed itself or the intention behind it? In this 44-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering opens the year’s first class by anchoring everything in that question. He outlines three levels of motivation: bodhicitta (working toward enlightenment for all beings), seeking personal liberation, or aspiring to a good rebirth — and explains why each is progressively harder to cultivate. The bulk of the session then introduces the six preparatory rites done before daily meditation: cleaning the room (framed as making space for invited Buddhas and Bodhisattvas), arranging offerings, sitting in correct posture, petitioning the merit field, offering mandalas with the seven-branch prayer, and requesting positive results from one’s practice. Suited to practitioners establishing a home meditation routine.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 DP 2004 01 27.mp3
UUID: ffb06526-db3e-49f8-8653-5a4df67f38ff
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Establishing a Daily Practice (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-01-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.8 minutes
Words: ~4,144
Okay. In the Sūtra of Pacification or Training, Buddha Śākyamūni said abandon all evil deeds, practice all virtuous actions, tame completely tame your mind. This is the teaching of the Buddha. Now, reason that he said this is to begin with, he said, completely abandon all evil doing. Now, they’re all negative actions.
And the reason that he said to completely abandon all negative actions is that by negative actions we by performing negative actions and then we set up a cause for experiencing suffering and so by performing negative actions we experience suffering so this is why we need to abandon negative actions. And the reason that he said to perform virtuous actions is because we need to perform virtuous actions if we want to experience happiness. So by performing virtuous actions, this is how we find enjoyment happiness in our lifetimes. So it’s the reason that this is the case is because we don’t want to experience suffering and we want to experience happiness. And it’s not just us that wants to experience happiness and doesn’t want to experience suffering.
All beings are in exactly the same in this way. So whether it’s another human or it’s an animal or it’s a ghost or it’s a god, all beings want to experience happiness and don’t want to experience suffering. This is the way this is something that’s it it it pervades all beings. It’s something that all beings have within them. And these positive outcomes or happiness.
They come about because of a cause that accords with them. That is to say you can’t have a cause and have an outcome that doesn’t accord with or doesn’t fit the pattern of the cause. So that means that if we do a positive action then we’re going to experience happiness as an outcome of that action and likewise if we do a negative action then we’re going to experience suffering as the outcome of that action. So the two things are completely set that one thing has to accord with another. The action has to accord with the outcome.
So in this way we need to perform positive actions and not perform negative actions and this is something that we need to do continually we can’t think or just rely on the virtuous action that we did last year we have to look back on the virtuous action that we did last year and then think okay if we did something positive we should rejoice in that and think may the virtuous actions that I did last year become a cause for me to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient And so we should also think that, okay, if last year we didn’t do so well, we didn’t manage to do anything that was that positive or we didn’t manage to perform as many good deeds as we wished we had, then we should think, okay, that’s gone now, and we should think that in order to benefit all mother sentient beings or sentient beings that have been our mothers, then we’re going to try harder this year. We’re going to do positive actions that will be of benefit to all all sentient beings. So today is the first day that we’re starting for the year. This is a new new year, and this is the first teaching of the year.
So we have to try and develop a motivation for the coming year. We have to think about why we’re doing this. So we have to focus on what’s going to happen because in tonight’s class where we’re going to talk about the way that we do the preliminaries that we need to do to do a meditation session, to do practice, and in Thursday night’s class where we’re talking about the fourth chapter of the ornament of clear realization. Now both of these things are virtuous actions or they can be virtuous actions whether we’re teaching or whether we’re listening so the person who’s teaching has to teach and the people who are listening then they have to listen but both of these things don’t become virtuous action by themselves. They become virtuous actions or they become Dharma practice by the motivation that we do these things with.
So we really need to set our motivation for the year. We need to think about why we’re doing these things and try and have a positive motivation for the whole year starting tonight. So if we continually think in this way, then that if we think about this, then that will be a benefit to us. We need to develop the right motivation for anything that we’re doing. So we need to have the motivation the best motivation that we can have is the motivation of what’s called bodhicitta.
So this is the motivation that we’re doing whatever it is that we’re doing in order to achieve enlightenment, full enlightenment to be a benefit to all beings. That’s the best type of motivation that we can try and develop. If we can’t manage this motivation, then we should try and do whatever it is that we’re doing with the motivation that we’re doing it in order to attain liberation. That is the liberation from suffering. That’s the next best motivation.
And then if we can’t manage either of these motivations, then we should try and develop the motivation that we are doing whatever it is that we’re doing in order to have a good rebirth, that is a rebirth of a god or a human in which we won’t experience the sufferings of the lower realms so whatever it is that we are listening to whatever it is that we are practicing whatever it is that we are working hard at they become a positive action by our motivation. So we should think that whatever it is that we’re doing, we’re doing this for one of these motivations or for one of these reasons. So if we don’t have one of these motivations, if we don’t have the motivation that we’re doing this in order to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, if we don’t have the motivation that we’re doing it in order to achieve our own liberation from suffering, if we don’t have the motivation that we’re doing these things in order to achieve a positive rebirth as a God or a human, then we may have other motivations for doing something. We may have the motivation of being interested in a text or doing things because of an intellectual idea about a text or something we’re studying.
We may have the idea that by doing it then other people will think we’re a good person. We also may have the idea that by doing it we may be able get money some way or another. If we’re doing any practice or listening to any Dharma teachings through any of these motivations then apart from a tiny little bit of benefit they’re not going to be able to help us that much. So something doesn’t become a a Buddhist Dharma practice by the action. It becomes a practice by the motivation that we have for doing the action.
Okay. So so so this means because of this motivation, it means that we can turn any action that we do into a positive, like, dharmic or an action that’s going to have a positive result. Whether we’re walking, whether we’re driving a car, whether we’re going to work, whatever it is that we’re doing, if we do that with the motivation that we’re doing this in order to reach our fullest potential to help sentient beings or attain liberation and so forth then that becomes a positive Dharma action if we aren’t doing that and we’re doing something that looks very holy or very Buddhist then and we have this motivation of oh I’m just gonna go there and listen I’m not really interested but I’ll just go and listen or I’m gonna go because it’s like a show I want to watch or because people will think well of me If we have any of those motivations, then it’s it’s not it’s not a Dharma practice. It’s not something that’s going to it’s not something that’s going to have the result of improving our potential, improving our minds, improving the results we will experience. So it depends on the individual.
Any action that we do, whether it becomes an action that’s going to have an enormously positive result or depends on the individual themselves. It can be something that has the action of being dharma or has the action of being religious or holy in some way, but if it doesn’t have the motivation, then it doesn’t become a positive action. It becomes something that looks like it that isn’t. Whether something becomes dharma or not depends on the motivation, not the action itself. And this isn’t easy.
This is difficult doing working with this motivation because from for a very long time, we have been not thinking about others. The motivation that we’re trying to develop when we talk about Mahāyāna Buddhism is the motivation to achieve complete enlightenment to be of benefit to all sentient beings. And this isn’t something that we’re used to thinking about. We’re more used to thinking about ourselves and we’re more used to having cherishing our own selves and not thinking of others. We’re used to thinking about what we need and not thinking about others.
So if we want to develop this motivation that we need to develop in order to be able to practice Dharma, in order to be able to do true Buddhist actions, then we need to have this motivation of working towards enlightenment or attaining enlightenment in order to benefit all sentient beings. And that’s a difficult thought for us to come up with because of the way that our mind usually works and the self-cherishing that we usually engage in. So what this means is that we have to do a lot, really a lot of mind training and work very hard at training our mind in order to develop this thought. And it’s a similar situation when we’re talking about the motivation of achieving liberation for ourselves. That’s also very difficult for us to develop in our mind streams.
Now the reason it’s difficult for us to develop the idea of having the motivation of working towards liberation for our own benefit is we don’t know what liberation is. When we talk about liberation, we’re talking about an understanding or a realization of ultimate truth, and we don’t know what ultimate truth is. We don’t understand what ultimate truth is because of the way that we perceive things. So if we don’t understand what it is that we’re actually motivating ourselves to do, it’s very difficult to develop a motivation to do it. And so therefore, it’s difficult for us to even develop that motivation.
The the third type of motivation, the motivation that we are doing this in order to attain a good rebirth in the next life as a God or a human, that’s a fair bit easier for us to develop because we have an idea of what it’s like to be a human, about how much happiness we have as a human, and we have an idea about what the sufferings of people or beings in the lower realms are. So we have an idea about what happiness we want in terms of being a human, and if we think about a god, someone being born as a god or a deva, then that idea is that the idea with that realm is that it’s happier than we are now. There’s more pleasure than there is as a human. So it’s easier for us to want something that resembles that idea. So developing an idea of being reborn as a god and a human a fair bit easier than the other two motivations.
That means that that’s the easiest motivation we can we can do that still means that we’re practicing Dharma, we should try and develop one of these motivations. And Geshe-la said that this evening he’s going to teach on what are called the preparatory practices or the preparatory rites of doing a meditation session. We should and he’s gonna go through these. So we should think I’m going through hearing about the preparatory rights or the the ways to prepare to do a meditation session with this motivation, the best motivation that we can develop. Now these these from these words called the six preparatory rites or the six things you do before you meditate.
And these things are are handed down to us through a teacher called Serlingpa who was the person who developed the idea. Now they’re based on the teachings of the Buddha but the Buddha did not classify them in this manner. Then after the Buddha had passed away and his teachings had gone on for several generations and through several teachers, it became evident that there needed to be a process for getting through the teachings that he had taught. Now these things that we do are usually meditations that are done before one meditates on the Lamrim or the graduated path, which is the process to go through in order to reach enlightenment. So these are the practices that the preparatory things or the preliminary practices that one does before practicing the meditations of the graduated path.
So, general, we know that these are the teachings of the Buddha, that they were generally talked about by the Buddha. But the role that Lama Serlingpa played in this process was he codified things to make it clearer for people to go through the process in their meditation. So in general we can say that this is still the teachings of the Buddha. It’s just that Serlingpa codified things to make it easier for people who were struggling with the Buddha’s teachings so they followed all of the different things they needed to do. And this practice of these preparatory rites came in conjunction with the practice of the graduated path or the Lamrim which was another way of getting the points of the Buddhist path a clear way that people can follow.
So this teaching was handed from Serlingpa to Atisha, who was an Indian pandit, and Atisha took them to Tibet. Okay. So these practices, these preparations or preliminary things, what you do before any type of meditation that you do, any daily meditations that you do should be preceded by these practices. If we want to start doing a meditation practice, then it should have these preparatory rites or preliminary things to do done before them before their main practice. So now we know what we’re going to be talking about these these these preliminary things that we need to do in order to establish a meditation practice.
And now we should think, okay, we have an idea of what it is that we’re going to be listening to, and we need to have the right motivation for listening to those teachings. And as Geshe-la says, as you mentioned before, the right motivation or the best motivation we can have is the motivation of bodhicitta, or the wish to attain enlightenment to the benefit of all sentient beings. So we should try and meditate for a few minutes and develop that idea or that concept. So we should think, I need to attain enlightenment to be of benefit to all sentient beings in order to establish all sentient beings in a state beyond sorrow. Now in order for me to do that then I’m going to listen to these teachings on the preliminary practices that I need to do before doing a daily meditation.
So that’s my reason for listening to these teachings and that’s what I’m going to be listening to. Now when we talk about these preliminary practices or the preliminary rites or preliminary things to do before we start doing meditation. Usually when this was talked about, these rites were talked about, it was before any meditation session because most of the time when people were doing a Dharma practice beforehand or when they’re doing Dharma practice as a full time occupation then they don’t only do one meditation session a day they do many meditation sessions in a day and they talk about a time in a meditation session and a time between meditation sessions and that’s all that they’re focusing on. Now we’re not able to do this. We need to do go to work and we have we’re too busy to do this.
So what we should try and do is to establish at least one meditation session in the morning. So what happens is when we wake up, we go through these before we start to meditate, go through these preparatory rites. But we should also try and remember to do these things as many times as we can during the daytime and we should try and remember to do them or some of them whatever we can of them before we go to sleep at nighttime. So this means that we’re setting our motivation or we’re setting ourselves intentionally. We’re starting our day with these positive things in the morning and then if we finish off with them at night, then whatever we do in the daytime becomes positive.
Now the six that we’re talking about here is, first of all we need to clean the room and arrange the images of the Three Jewels and our meditation deities and so forth. That’s the first of the six preliminaries the second one is to arrange offerings that were obtained honestly the third one is sitting on a comfortable cushion and maintaining the sevenfold posture of Vairochana to generate the mind of enlightenment and refuge. The fourth one is to petition the merit field or the refuge field. The fifth one is to offer mandalas and the seven branches of prayers and the seven branch prayer. Sorry.
And the sixth one is Okay. Yes. So so number four is petitioning the merit field and number five offers a mandala and seven branch prayer.
And number six is to request that from this positive action we’re about to perform may that have a positive outcome. That’s something that we should try and do as much as we can is to think from this positive action may that have a positive outcome but the petitioning the merit field is something that we do when we visualize all the beings in there or the beings in the objects in the merit field and then we are requesting them to bless or give us blessings for our meditation so they’re both requesting, but they’re requesting different things. So the final one is we’re saying this, may this meditation practice be something that’s in is very important or is very, becomes very beneficial. Okay. So the thing that we’re petitioning for is what’s called the three important or the three immensely beneficial reasons or causes or goals that we’re after.
Now, the first of these is that we get now I can’t feel it. It’s the first mic back through there. Okay. So the first one that we the first great purpose or the first goal is that we pray for blessings that we increase all of the positive minds or the positive thoughts or the understandings that we have. So this takes into account things like the five paths and the different realizations that we need to accrue, that we need to develop in order to achieve Buddhahood.
The second one is that we get rid of all the negative minds, the negative ways of thinking, the negative obscurations, emotional obscurations that we have that obscure our understanding. That’s the second. And the third great purpose or the third great goal is that all of obstacles to us knowing what we don’t know are gotten rid of. So this includes things like illnesses which may stop us meditating, it includes not having the right circumstances to be able to practice Dharma and losing our life at a young age, these kind of things are obstacles we need to get rid of, that we’re praying to get rid Okay. So that was a a rough overview of these preliminary exercises that are usually done at the beginning of a meditation session, but they’re also something that we should try and do whenever we have a chance.
Okay. So we’re gonna go through these in stage by stage then. And the first is the the preparatory practice of cleaning up or sweeping. Sweeping, cleaning up the place that we’re going to meditate in. And now the basis for this practice or the source for this practice is a sūtra by the Buddha, the historical Buddha, where he said to the Bodhisattvas that he was teaching, he said to them that realization and understandings come about in a clean place.
Now the reason that we clean up before we do meditations is this. When we’re doing these meditations, especially meditations on the graduated path, then we are inviting what’s called the merit field, which is a collection of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and virtuous objects and deities and so forth, we invite them into our space. Alright? So we invite them into the place where we’re meditating. Now, we don’t want to be inviting them somewhere that isn’t very clean because that’s not very apt. So for example, if we were going to invite a very important person, if we’re going to invite some kind of minister or high person into our home, before we invited them, we would clean up, we would make some preparations for that person to come.
We’re not just talking about one important person here, we’re talking about a big collection of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. So we want to make the place as clean as possible before they arrive. So, again, this action becomes the preparatory practice or becomes a preliminary practice to meditation by the motivation that we have when we’re doing it. So we need to not just doing it without thinking about it or doing it and cleaning up for another purpose, cleaning up because we have to. We’re cleaning up because we’re thinking that all these bodhisattvas and Buddhas are about to arrive, that we’re to invite them into our visualization in this room.
So we want to have a clean place for them to arrive. Now creating a clean place for Buddhas and Bodhisattvas to come into is a positive action. So we should be thinking, Geshe-la says that we should be thinking as he said before of these three motivations. We’re doing this positive action in order to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, or we’re doing this positive action in order to achieve liberation for our own sake, or we’re doing this positive action in order to attain a positive rebirth in the future as a God or a human. So if we have one of these motivations as our motivation while we’re doing this cleaning up, then that becomes a positive preparatory practice and we think by this may these these results come about.
So if we don’t do that and we think, well, I really want to have a nice place for me to meditate in, or we think if I make it a nice place and everyone will think that I’m very clean, and we have those as our motivation for doing this cleaning up before we meditate, then we’ll get the results then. We will have the result of having a clean place to meditate in, but it won’t be a very heavily virtuous action. We’ll have a result which is that we’re in a clean place and all people will say, Wow, their place is clean. But it won’t be the positive action that it would be if our motivation was that we were doing this in order to invite the bodhisattvas into a clean place, order to create merit, in order to achieve enlightenment or liberation or a positive rebirth. So again, the motivation is incredibly important.