Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The story of Big Road and Small Road — two brothers who received vastly different blessings at birth — anchors this 45-minute session from Geshe Pema Tsering on the benefits of keeping a clean practice space. He opens with five rewards of cleanliness: a clearer mind, benefit to others, attracting supportive deities, karma for virtue in future lives, and rebirth in a pure realm. The story then traces how Small Road, considered hopelessly slow-witted, attained arhatship by sweeping the monastery floor while reciting three short verses — and went on to become the Buddha’s foremost teacher of Dharma. A brief Q&A distinguishes worldly from non-worldly deities and which will avoid unclean spaces; the session closes with a short note on Atisha’s Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment as the Lamrim’s root text.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 DP 2004 01 27.mp3
UUID: 9e3bd438-0af8-4251-b837-5bf8cc1e17c0
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Establishing a Daily Practice (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-01-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~3,373
Benefits was that it made our mind clearer. The second is that it makes others’ minds clearer. The third is that it pleases the gods. The fourth one that it collects karma to be beautiful in our next life or, I guess, good person in our next life, and it also creates the causes for being reborn in celestial realms. Another benefit that it has is that it says in the sutras, the Buddha said in certain of his teachings that there are beings, there are deities, are two different types of deities or there are two different types of devas or celestial beings.
There are celestial beings which are said to be not worldly celestial beings, that is that they have attained enlightenment and there are different aspects of the enlightened mind. Now there’s also celestial beings that are worldly celestial beings that is that they are in saṃsāra but they have certain powers and different things that they can do to help or hinder beings. Now there’s certain of these deities or certain of these beings that want to help people who are practicing Dharma, to help people who are meditating. Certain of these energies that wish to help beings meditating. Certain of these beings that wish to help beings meditate.
Now, these beings don’t like dirty places, however, and if you don’t clean up, they won’t come. Now, the next benefit that was talked about was it collects the karma to be beautiful. Now, this can work in a superficial manner of having a healthy, beautiful body or being, but that’s a superficial rendition of what beauty actually is. And the most importantly beautiful thing that is said to be is the ethics that a person has, conduct, the virtuous conduct that they engage in. So it’s said that if you practice, do this practice, then you’re setting up the causes for you to be a virtuous ethical person in your next life because this is the greatest adornment or the greatest beauty that we could have is to do ethical things.
Now, the fifth one where it says reborn in a celestial realm. Now, being reborn in a celestial realm could be talking about worldly pleasure realms of existence that we can be born into, but we should try and think of it as being born into what are called pure realms. Now, there’s many different types of pure Buddha realms. And in these, there’s we have pure Buddha realms like Tuśita and Sukhāvati and Ogmin, Gandavyuha, Sukhāvati, Kashyapavati.
Kasishini. Yeah. There’s lots. I don’t know what the other one is. I don’t know how to translate the other one.
So there’s many different many of these different pure realms, and in any of these if we’re born in any of these pure realms, which are or or they’re called pure realms or Buddha realms, what is meant by a Buddha realm or pure realm is an existence where it’s very easy to create virtue or to collect virtuous karma to do positive actions and there’s not very much of a tendency to do negative action. So it’s basically an environment which is conducive to the practice of Dharma and isn’t conducive to the collection of negative karma. And so we can see the benefits of doing this practice properly by the story of oh, man. Yeah. And I’m I’m really sorry.
There’s Okay. Something. Okay. There was, two brothers, and they were, both students of when he was around. And the other oldest brother was called Big Road, which in Sanskrit sounds a lot better, but I can’t remember it.
This is Maha something. And the youngest brother was called Little Road, which is Panthaka, but I don’t remember it. These two brothers, the oldest brother was an amazing scholar because he received many blessings when he was a child. Okay. Alright.
Now this is a this story that’s used to illustrate how beneficial cleaning your room is is that at the time of Buddha Śākyamūni, when he was living in India, was a Brahmin couple that kept having children that kept dying. So every time they had a child, the child passed away and they were despairing of this and they didn’t quite know what to do so they went to see this wise old lady to ask her what they should do, and the old lady said, If you have another child, come and see me and I will figure out a way to benefit the child, right? So when they had the next child who was a boy, they took it to see this old lady and the old lady said to take the child and take some offerings and go and stand on a big road. They had a servant, a young girl who was helping them in the house. So they gave the child to the young girl and she went and took this child next to and they stood next to a really big road.
Now because it was a big road that meant that there was many people going backwards and forwards on it and the instruction she was given was that if the child to get as many blessings as the child could during the daytime from the people the holy people passing by and if the child survived to the end of the day then to bring it back to the house and if it didn’t survive to the end of the day then to bury the child. So she went beside this big road and many big shoes were coming past and she went up to all of them and asked for the blessings and they all said may this child have a long life, may it be free from illness, may the wishes of his parents come true, may it become an arhat or may it become a foe destroyer. So all these different monks all said or prayed for the child in this way. Eventually even the Buddha himself came along the road and she went up to the Buddha and said, Can you please bless this child? And the Buddha prayed that the child have a long life and so forth in the same way that the other monks had prayed.
And because of this, because it survived the day, getting the blessings from everybody and was brought back to the house, the child was called Big Root. Okay. So then they had another child who was a son again, and they took it to the old lady, and she said to do a similar thing to what they’ve done with the older child. But the girl the the servant girl that they gave it to this time was a bit lazy and wasn’t really interested in taking a kid to the side of the road, getting people to bless it very much. So she went to this small street at the back of of the village they lived in.
And yeah. She was she was was someone who wanted to have fun instead of standing in the sun next to the road. So she took it to this small road where she could no one was going to come along. So she didn’t have to do as much work and didn’t have to go up and ask people for blessings all the time. And nobody came to this road this was a small street that nobody went up and down on so that meant that there was no there was no arhats that came along there was no bhikshus that you know monks or nuns coming along that could bless it so she didn’t run into anyone all day.
Until the Buddha, because he has omniscience and knew everything, thought that this child was going to be beneficial to other beings and he could help this child, he came along himself and he made prayers for this child. He said, have a long life, made his child not meet with many obstacles, made his child’s parents’ wishes be fulfilled, and made this child achieve arhatship and made it be beneficial to beings. So therefore, that child was called Small Road. Alright. So was the older brother an arhat yet?
Yeah? When when we left off, the brother wasn’t an arhat. Okay. So Big Road. Right?
Big Road becomes his ex amazing scholar because everyone was was praying for him, and he becomes he has this amazing mind where he can remember everything and he just has to hear it once and he remembers everything. First of all because he comes from a Brahmin family he studies all the Brahmin texts all the Vedas and he understands them all perfectly. And once he studied all those he goes to the Buddha and starts studying Buddhist philosophy and becomes a fully ordained monk and then very quickly becomes an Arhat or someone who has realized nirvana because of his understanding and his sharp mind. And this happens really quickly and he’s living next to the Buddha and one of his arhats, one of his chief disciples. But Little Road, because he didn’t get any blessings, he was the opposite.
He was very stupid. And he was so stupid, in fact, that if someone told him the word Buddha, would by the time he’d learned the da, he’d forgotten the And then he’d try and learn the bu again and he’d forget the da. So he couldn’t even put a word together in his mind. But because he was the son of a Brahmin, it was the tradition for the sons of Brahmin to study the Vedas. So his father first of all sent him to the first teacher in town and that teacher spent ages trying to get him to remember one word or two words and this poor small road who couldn’t remember anything.
Once he gave up on him and chucked him out, the father sent him to the other teacher in town who also chucked him out because he really was really badly stupid and couldn’t remember anything. He couldn’t remember two words, let alone remembering the vedas. And so this poor kid then went back to live with his parents and his parents died and then he had no one to look after him. And eventually he became poorer and poorer and poorer and became like a beggar who was wandering around because he was really quite moronic and couldn’t remember anything. And then he went to see his older brother when he had absolutely nothing left.
Went to ask for help from his older brother who was an arhat living next to the Buddha. And his older brother spent six months trying to teach him three words and it didn’t work. He couldn’t remember three words of instruction. So the older brother gives up on him as well because he had he didn’t sorry, the older brother didn’t give up on him. The older brother, because of his clairvoyance, just could see that by being harsh with his younger brother, he would do him more benefit than he would if he was kind to him.
So he tucked him out of the monastery and said, You can’t come back in here. You’re too stupid. You can’t learn anything. There’s no point in you being here. Get out.
Yeah? And so he was outside the monastery with nowhere to go and nothing to do and no money and no one to turn to and Śākyamūni Buddha arrived on the scene and came up to him and said, What’s wrong? And he started talking about how he was so stupid and how he lost his parents and he couldn’t learn anything. And when he started talking about his situation, he started to cry. He was so bad that the Buddha told him that he had to start by polishing people’s the other monk’s shoes, the fully ordained monk’s shoes, and he made the monks let him do that because it wasn’t the usual thing.
So he told them to let him polish his shoes because he needed the merit. So by polishing the shoes, managed to remember three verses of teaching. Now these three verses of teaching, he was then supposed to recite while he was sweeping the monastery floor. And so by the blessings of the Buddha, once he’d swept one side of the room, the other side became full of rubbish again and then he had to sweep that side. So he kept sweeping and sweeping and sweeping while reciting this verse.
And through the merits that he collected by doing this by sweeping with his motivation then he was able to understand the meaning of the verses which was this is not dirt this is obscurations I’m getting rid of obscurations like this and so he came to understand the meaning of the verses. Now by understanding that meaning properly, he was able to meditate on that meaning. By doing that, he was able to clear away the obscurations of his negative emotions and mind, and he became an arhat. Right. Now sweeping an arhat.
So he became an arhat. And then there was a bit of a side note. Side note. Okay. So he became an arhat, and he then — the Buddha said, it would be a really good idea if you went over and taught the nuns.
And then the nuns heard about this and they weren’t very impressed. They’re saying, look what they’re sending us, this moron who couldn’t learn three words in eight months. It’s just because we’re women and they don’t respect us enough. But we’re very educated because Geshe-la said these were weren’t these these nuns were so educated. They knew everything and they were elders and they were very, very respected people.
And so they thought it was an incredible insult to be sent this moron who could only learn three words of a text in eight months. What’s going on? And to get back at him for having the audacity to teach them then they first of all they went around town and they told everyone that some amazing teacher was gonna come, so heaps of people would come. So they thought that he’d be so shamed out he wouldn’t come back, alright, when he saw the people he’d made an idiot of himself in front of. And then they made him this enormous throne that he couldn’t actually climb up on to.
This would be a way for him to be completely humiliated and they could get back at him for having the audacity to think that he could teach them. This small road shows up at the teaching. He looks up at the throne and he has the clairvoyance now because he’s a foe destroyer(s) who’s gotten rid of self grasping completely. He has the clairvoyance to see. First of all, thought they either have a lot of faith in me or they have no respect for me at all and they’re teasing me.
And so by his clairvoyance, could see that they were teasing him. Yeah? So what he did was because of his abilities that he developed now, he put his hand on the throne and squished it down to his height. But because only some of the people in the room had realizations to see him doing that and other people didn’t see it, then only some people in the room developed faith in him. Then he got up on the throne and taught for seven days on these three verses that he’d been meditating on while he swept.
And by his teaching that, then there were people who were beginners who developed complete faith in the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. There were others that developed realizations just by hearing him teach that. So by this teaching by this teaching that he gave on for seven days on this these three verses that he’d been meditating on, most of the nuns either became arhats. They either became foe destroyers or they entered one of the paths or they merely developed bodhicitta — that was one of the least development they had — or they developed renunciation and all of the nuns developed these amazing understandings. So much so that the Buddha then said that this small road was his number one teacher.
He’s number one explainer of the Dharma. He was the from all of the arhats around the place, he was the best at explaining the Dharma. So he became number one teacher, or number one arhat. Yeah. So therefore, sweeping is very important.
Yeah. Do we have time for questions, or is it, like yeah. Oh, so he thinks you might have questions now. Maybe. No?
He said no? You have no question? Okay. Right. So from amongst deities, yeah, amongst deities, yeah, there’s the dark side and the light side right the dark side aren’t going show up to help you so don’t worry about them okay and now the light side yeah from amongst the light side you have worldly and non worldly deities right that I want to help beings who are practicing Dharma Yeah?
Now from amongst those, so from amongst you have the non worldly deities which are people who have realized the path of being, sorry, who have realized the path of seeing or above. They don’t care if it’s dirty or not. They’re gonna show up, right? But if it’s anyone from the path of seeing down, yeah, who’s a deity who’s on the the light side, yeah, who wants to help you practice, then they’re not gonna show up if it’s dirty. Yeah?
Yeah. The the they may see may see nectar instead of water, but they don’t go to places that are dirty because they don’t like dirt. So they don’t go anywhere near places that are dirty because they don’t want to experience anything negative. The the worldly deities aren’t beings who have bodhicitta that they’re out to help all sentient beings and they don’t care what happens. They’re beings who like pleasure and they have self grasping so they’re only going to places that make them happy.
And they don’t like dirt so they’re not going to go to places that are dirty because that doesn’t make them happy. Did you guys hear that? So Geshe-la said that these six preparatory practices were codified by Serlingpa and they’re used in conjunction with the Lamrim. Now, so the question is, was the Lamrim codified by Atisha or was it given to him by Serlingpa, who was Atisha’s teacher? Okay.
So the Lamrim is actually comes from Buddha, comes from Śākyamūni Buddha. The Buddha taught everything that was in the Lamrim or the graduated path. He taught the graduated path in his teachings. The preparatory practices were some of the Buddha’s teachings that were put together into these six practices by Serlingpa who was Atisha’s teacher. But it was Atisha who wrote the lamp on the path to — the Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment?
Oh, Yeah. Yeah. Enlightenment. Okay. The lamp on the path to Now the Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment is the first time that a text is written in this style that came after that in the Lamrim tradition.
But the Lamrim or the graduated path was taught by the Buddha. It was put together in that way by Atisha, though in this Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment. Okay. So the the Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment and is like the root text for the Lamrim tradition, for the graduated Path tradition. All of the other Lamrim or graduated path texts are commentaries on the Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment.
The. Maybe. I can’t remember. But but that I don’t know. No.
It’s definitely not. Yeah. Something like that. I don’t know. Something it’s something and something, but I don’t remember the last bit.
It has to get back to me in five years. I’ve gotta learn Sanskrit. Right. Whatever it is, it means big road and little road. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That is why. This?