Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The session opens with a pointed corrective: Tibetans who kept good butter for themselves and offered inferior quality to shrine lamps were cultivating the wrong motivation entirely, Geshe Pema Tsering explains. In this 44-minute commentary on the preparatory rites of daily practice, he walks through the eight qualities of water offerings and their corresponding fruits — cool water brings long life; soft water, ease in grasping dharma; clean water, a pure mind — before explaining how even practitioners with no material resources can make vast offerings by mentally transforming beautiful things they encounter into gifts to the Three Jewels. He then covers the sevenfold sitting posture, generating refuge and bodhicitta, and visualizing the merit field across different styles of practice. A Q&A closes on whether ants have concepts in the Tibetan system, the difference between contaminated and uncontaminated aggregates, and what bliss nectar actually means when offering water bowls.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 DP 2004 02 10.mp3
UUID: 41baa8d7-3d3c-44de-a8be-6669ddb0466d
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Establishing a Daily Practice (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-02-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.6 minutes
Words: ~3,744
Now, often we actually focus on making offerings of water, and that’s the thing that we tend to offer the most is this offering of water that we think of as being bliss nectar. But there’s many other things that we can offer to the Buddha. So for example, flowers, scented water, incense, food, fruit, anything that we can actually afford to offer, anything that can bear to part with, we should make as many offerings as we can. The other thing is that we should be trying to offer as much as we can and as good quality as we can. Geshe-la said that in Tibet, it used to be the case that they would take the good tsampa for themselves and offer the tsampa they didn’t wanna eat to the Buddhas because they figured they don’t eat anyway.
And the other thing is if they were offering butter, they have lamps made from butter that they burn and they’d always keep the good butter for themselves and offer the bad butter to their offering lamps that they were giving, offering to the Buddha, the Dhamma and Sangha, and the representations of the three, of the body, speech, and mind of the Buddha, sorry. And so they had this idea of offering the bad bits and keeping the good bits for themselves. And he said that this isn’t a positive motivation or a positive action to do if keeping the good bits for yourself and offering the bad bits to the Buddhas. Yeah. So we should be trying to make any types of offerings that we can.
So if we can make offer representations of what are called the seven royal emblems or the eight auspicious symbols or anything of this that has an auspicious or positive nature to it, then we should try and make offerings of these things. But we shouldn’t think that we can’t offer anything. We shouldn’t think that if we don’t have material wealth or we don’t have the resources to make big offerings that that means that we can’t offer anything. So we shouldn’t think Geshe said for example, like he shouldn’t think I’m a monk, I have nothing to offer. Because offering is a mental act, not a physical one.
So we can see things and think that we are offering them. We can transform our appreciation of beautiful things into an offering to the Buddhas. So there is many different flowers in the world. If we see a flower that we particularly find beautiful, we can think I offer this to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and the body, speech and mind of the Buddha. We can think that if we are driving along and we see a field of beautiful flowers, then we can make an offering of that and a good car or anything that we see that we appreciate that we really appreciate in terms of what it is for its beauty, we can make an offering of that to the Buddhas.
Okay. Right. Now, we should also be thinking that when we’re offering this water that it has all these different qualities and for every one of the qualities that we’re offering that there is a positive outcome from that positive quality that we’re offering that’s part of water. Now Geshe-la said this is based on Tibetan water and so we have to kind of adapt, okay? So the first one is if we offer water that’s cool and refreshing that means that we will, it should be that we will have a long life to practice Dharma.
If we offer water that tastes good it should be a cause for us to always be able to get tasty food. If we offer food that’s smooth, sorry if we offer water that’s smooth by its texture then that should be a cause for us to develop flexibility or subtlety of body and mind. If we offer water that’s soft then that should be a cause for us to be able to understand the dharma easily. If we offer water that’s clean, then that should be a cause for our mind to be clean or our mind to be pure. If we offer water that doesn’t smell, then that will be a cause for us to get rid of the obscurations from our mind.
If we offer water that doesn’t harm the body in any way, then that will be a cause for us to experience a positive physical rebirth. And if we offer water that doesn’t harm the throat in any way, then that will be a cause for us to experience positive speech. Okay. So this is one another thing that we can do. We can offer water in this way.
Something else we can offer is, well something that’d be enormously beneficial for us to offer is, if we think about the fact that the qualities of a Buddha are said to be countless, right? So we’re trying to get this idea of countless qualities of a Buddha in our head. And that we think that in future, all sentient beings, all beings will become Buddhas. So they will every countless sentient being will have countless good qualities, right? So we’re trying to make our mind as expansive to include all the the qualities that that these beings will have, and then we get very happy about those good qualities.
We rejoice in those good qualities, then we offer our rejoicing in the good qualities. Yeah? And that becomes an enormously powerful enormously powerful offering. So lots of the times we may think that it’s difficult for us to make offerings, but in actual fact, some of the most simple offerings, simplest thoughts that we can have can become very powerful, very vast offerings. Okay.
Really? Okay. So, the next one, the third of the preparatory rites is to sit in a comfortable place in what’s called the sevenfold posture of Vairochana, and go for refuge and generate the mind of enlightenment. Now sitting in a comfortable cushion and maintaining the sevenfold posture of Vairochana is the sevenfold posture, the seven points to the posture or way of sitting that was adopted by the Buddha Vairochana. And this includes having a straight back, having our eyes pointed downwards, having our tongue resting naturally in the top of our mouth and our legs crossed and so on.
If we went into every one of these in detail it would take too long and we did it before so we won’t go into those in detail but it’s the seven points, it’s sitting in the same way that the Buddha Vairochana sat. Then we have this mind of we’d say a refuge prayer, we generate the idea of refuge and then we generate the idea of enlightenment or develop the motivation of the bodhicitta through through prayers and and meditation. So, Geshe-la said that he doesn’t think that he has to go into too much detail about the the process or the way that you sit when you’re meditating because he thinks you’re a really good meditator. Meditator and that you know how to do it. And he said that it’s not even, the way that you sit and the way that you focus in meditation isn’t necessarily the main most important thing in terms of your meditation anyway.
It’s a support. The way we sit is a support for the meditation. It’s not the main focus of the meditation. So the most important thing is to develop the idea of refuge and to develop the idea of bodhicitta before you start doing any types of practice.
So this means that in order to develop the right idea of refuge, which is the most important, these two are the most important things in terms of our meditation, refuge depends on our understanding of the sufferings of saṃsāra and the qualities of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. So the the other thing that’s really important for us to develop is obviously bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment. So we need to develop this mind of enlightenment. This mind that is constantly striving for the to achieve Buddhahood in order to be a benefit to all sentient beings.
Now when we through practicing very hard and focusing on reminding ourselves of this motivation again and again when this mind comes about spontaneously without effort then in an unfabricated manner without us having to do any work on it then that’s true bodhicitta until then we have to keep working at developing that mind of bodhicitta or developing that enlightened mind. So these two things refuge and bodhicitta are very important basis or start to any practice that we do. Okay, the fourth one is to imagine what’s called the field of merit. What the field of merit refers to is we’re making offerings and starting a meditation practice by developing a sense of refuge in bodhicitta. And what we’re focusing on for these meditations and teachings is whether it’s the group of statues and images that we have of the Buddha, our teacher, our teachers, the images of Chenrezig or whatever it is that we’re focusing on, then we refer to this as being the merit field or the source from which we can garner merit.
In the same way that if we plant a seed then we get plants from this, if we make offerings or if we request this group of holy objects or holy beings for blessings then we get benefit from this, get merit from this. So what this one, number four refers to is the fact that we shouldn’t just thinking, okay this is a picture of my teacher, this is a statue of the Buddha, that is a thangka of Chenrezig or whoever it is then we should think that this is the actual beings and we are requesting them for blessings, we’re not just requesting their images for blessings. Now there’s different ways that we can think of the merit field. In the Guru Puja practice there is a very elaborate description of what a merit field should be visualized as or what we should be perceiving. There’s also another more simple description of a merit field that’s described in a practice called Ganden Lhagyama or the Hundred Deities of Ganden or Tuśita.
So there’s another visualization we could do there. And also if we’re just focusing on the images that are on our altar, the statues and the pictures of our teachers then that can be our merit field. It doesn’t have to accord with the complicated descriptions in these practices. Either that or if we’re focusing on a particular deity, Tārā or Chenrezig or one of these meditational deities, then we can use them as our merit field. So, when we’re doing practices that are focused on the Lamrim or the graduated path, developing, doing analytical or placement meditation based on the instructions in the graduated path, the usual layout for the merit field that we visualize is similar to that of the Guru Puja practice, which is up here.
I don’t know if anyone can see this picture. Alright. But in the middle of the Guru Puja’s merit field or the collection of holy beings that we’re making offerings to or doing practice focused on, in the Guru Puja one the focus is on Lama Tsongkhapa Jetsün Milarepa because the Guru Puja is actually a guru yoga practice or a blending of the mind, blending of our minds with the Guru’s mind focused on Lama Tsongkhapa. Now, if we’re doing the Lamrim practice, it’s basically the same merit field as this, but Lama Tsongkhapa is substituted with Buddha Śākyamūni because we think of where is the source or who is the first teacher or the source of the Lamrim tradition in this world that we’re in and that is Buddha Śākyamūni so therefore he’s the root teacher of the Lamrim or the graduated path. Now when we’re visualizing this Buddha Śākyamūni then we should imagine that Buddha Śākyamūni is the same or has the same energy, the same essence as our main teacher, our main teacher being the person that has had the major impact or given us the most instructions.
So we have the image of Buddha being inseparable from our main teacher and surrounded by all of the different holy beings whether they are Buddhas, Bodhisattvas or meditation or deities included in the merit field. There’s a couple of differences between this image here from the Guru Puja and the Graduated Path or Lamrim merit field but they’re basically the same and they have the same beings in it mainly. And if it’s very difficult to imagine all these people, so if it’s difficult to imagine all these people, then we can just focus on a mental image of Buddha Śākyamūni and think that Buddha Śākyamūni is the emanation or it contains all of the qualities of all the different teachers and all of the different holy beings that are included within the merit field. Oh, So we can stop here. Yeah.
Finish. Yeah. I had a question that related to the motivation of the beginning. Geshe-la was talking about the five aggregates pertaining to sentient beings. I have a difficulty in imagining an ant with a mental construction or a compositional factor.
I’m not sure that simply You mean, okay, mental composition as in Mental construction. Okay. Okay. That’s one of them, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s a mental That’s the way that it’s difficult to translate.
Because it basically means anything that doesn’t fit in the others. Okay, alright. Is all it really Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you’re not talking about discernment or perception, you’re talking about something that’s translated as either Discernment I’m taking to be it is this rather than that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay? But this This fourth one that’s translated as fourth one, this fourth category. Would it be covered just by the construction of something good or bad? Okay, so the five aggregates, it’s how, basically we’re asking how ants have something that’s usually translated as compositional factors, yeah?
So the five aggregates, or the five collections of stuff that make up us and all sentient beings are form, feeling, something that’s translated as discernment or perception, and this fourth one which is translated variously as compositional factors, constructions, mental activity, intellect, concepts, mental formations or karmic formations. That’s the fourth one by itself and then there’s the fifth one that’s consciousness, different types of consciousness. Now, I asked Geshe-la what this fourth one was because it’s so complicated in English, yeah? And he said, Okay, you’ve got form, you’ve got feeling, you’ve got discernment, you’ve got consciousness. Anything that’s not that is the fourth one.
So it makes up a whole bunch of stuff, yeah? And I said, For example, and he said, Any mind that isn’t covered by main consciousness or discernment or feeling. So anything that’s, so any mind, any thought that doesn’t come under one of those three comes under this fourth one. Yeah? But it’s not completely made up of minds or ways of thinking or thoughts.
It’s also things like time is in the fourth one. And so you have non what’s called neutral thoughts are in this one. Yeah? Neutral minds time like tomorrow, yesterday and today as it relates to any being is is part of this. Also things like the the beingness of a being.
Yeah? So the the beingness of a being is is part of this as well. Oh, Okay. So, the months of a being or the years of a being or the all of those, anything to do with time, they’re all included within this weird one. So, an ant wouldn’t necessarily have to have a concept in the way that human beings have a concept in order to have this aggregate.
And if they do have conceptuality, which is part of deluded mind, is just the good bad distinction enough to cover that? This is a thesis question. And everyone else is going, Sorry. No, that’s alright. Okay, hang on, what?
So, ants have Should we deal with this later? Yeah, probably, unless anyone else is fascinated by the minds of ants. Probably not. Helen’s nodding. Okay, so what we’re trying to establish, what ants can figure out.
Yeah, it’s the whole notion of having concept. Ants have a concept. It’s generally not conceivable by mind science. Yeah, that ants have concepts. That ants would have concepts.
Establishing that would be a real stretch. What I’m saying is that would ants have concept within the Tibetan system and would it be enough for an ant to determine this is good, this is bad, they have For it to be concept. Okay. Okay. From the Tibetan, what’s They have different concepts because a concept is something that they think about.
So ants have ideas like this is good, this is bad, this is tasty, this is not. I need to eat, I don’t need to eat, I need to go somewhere, I don’t need to go somewhere. All of those things are considered concepts. Okay. Yeah, from the Tibetan Buddhist system.
So ants have concepts. I think so too. Five aggregates if five aggregates is synonymous with a five appropriated aggregates suffering? So bodhisattvas don’t have suffering? There’s a difference between the five aggregates and the five appropriated aggregates.
Alright? But, you know, But, that’s a different thing because Bodhisattvas have suffering. Yeah? Bodhisattvas haven’t got rid of suffering until. So, bodhisattvas have suffering up until they reach the eighth ground of the path of meditation where they get rid of still got the five aggregates at that point, though.
Yeah, no, Buddhas have five aggregates. This is the five appropriated aggregates. So that is aggregates that come into being based on karma and conditions as opposed to five aggregates which all beings can have. Does that make sense? So the five aggregates, Buddhists can have five aggregates, yeah?
But they can’t have five appropriated aggregates because five appropriated aggregates, right? Trying to think of ways to translate that. Five appropriated aggregates come into being based on karma and delusion. Five aggregates don’t necessarily do that. It doesn’t overlap, doesn’t pervade.
Contaminated aggregates. Maybe contaminated. Because in Tibetan it literally means ones that they’ve got. Got it. Yeah, so that’s why they say appropriated, but contaminated aggregates as opposed to aggregates.
Contaminated aggregates Yeah. I guess I reckon that’s alright. This is contaminated. That’s another way of saying it. That’s actually he said, yeah, that’s the same as saying you can say contaminated aggregates and not contaminated aggregates.
We just don’t usually, but you can say that. Yes. Mhmm. Mhmm. What bliss nectar is?
How you visualize it? Okay, so, when you’re offering the water, you don’t think this is water, You think this is bliss nectar, yeah? So then you have to know what bliss nectar is or whatever you’re gonna call it, emritta or nectar or whatever. What bliss nectar is, is something that is the same substance as the blissful experience that arhats or people who have completely gotten rid of suffering and Buddhas have. It’s something that is by nature complete happiness, fully qualified happiness that is beyond anything that we could probably conceive of as happiness because all of our experiences of happiness have been contaminated samsaric happiness.
So you think I’m offering complete happiness, fully qualified happiness in the form of this liquidy stuff, yeah? And so you think that you’re offering that. You don’t think of it as being water. Think of it offering as the bliss nectar of great happiness. When you’re offering.
Okay, so in this explanation, in the explanation from the Lamrim, yeah, then when you’re offering water, you’re offering bliss and they’re thinking that this bliss, you’re offering something that’s a bliss nectar, yeah? So you’re offering bliss. You don’t think the water is flowers, right? You’re thinking the water is bliss, yeah? So you don’t think the water is flowers which is actually jewels, you think the water is bliss, yeah?
Okay, and when you’re offering flowers, you think that that is something that’s in jewels that you’re offering, jewels of wisdom or jewels of realization you’re offering to the the Buddhas. And when you’re offering food, then Okay. So so when you’re offering So whatever we can offer then, we should try and transform it when we’re offering it. Right? So if you’re offering flowers and you think you should think that you’re offering ornaments and jewels to the to the to the Buddha’s.
When you’re offering food then you should think that you’re offering the best food that you can possibly give. You transform that into whatever it is whether even if it’s a biscuit that you’ve crumbled up then you should think that that’s like the best food you could offer. If you’re offering light then you should think that you’re offering them a crystal palace that’s completely clean. You’re offering them cleanliness where they are. If you’re offering them incense then you should think that you’re offering them the best smells that you can possibly think of.
So you can transform each individual offering in this way. But when you’re offering the bowls then you can think that this is bliss and that’s what you’re offering in terms of the seven different bowls. Okay. So if you wanna do it that way, then you should be trying to put flowers in one bowl. Okay?
Food in another bowl, a light in one of the bowls and so forth so that you’re offering that. But if you don’t want to do that and you just want to offer water then you just offer water and you think bliss nectar all good qualities and it’s coming back to me in order to develop myself, yeah? And if you’re thinking of you want to offer different things then you offer the different things. And the reason you have seven bowls is because it’s weird. Because there is seven different types of offering, but when you’re offering water, you don’t have to think it’s the seven different types of offering.
If you wanna make the seven different types of offering, make them. Yeah. Does that make sense? Seems so complicated. Yeah.
Yeah.