Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A monk who mistook a tantra’s promise of invisibility for literal fact — and proceeded to wander his monastery without robes — anchors the most memorable illustration in this 45-minute commentary by Geshe Pema Tsering on why bodhichitta is the foundation of all Mahāyāna practice. He works through its key benefits in sequence: why bodhichitta surpasses even the realization of emptiness (a diamond-versus-gold analogy), how it self-amplifies merit exponentially, how it purifies the four main obstacles to practice, and why sadhana without it accomplishes nothing. A second story — a Sera Je monk who stopped a flooding river by invoking the force of his bodhichitta — illustrates the power genuine altruistic intent can generate. The session closes with Q&A on caring for the body without self-attachment and whether sadhana practice is worthwhile before bodhichitta is fully developed.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 D BC 2004 05 04.mp3
UUID: 1451cbd9-70bd-4a9d-a61e-ab7c226c5a7d
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB How to Develop Bodhichitta (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-05-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~3,258
They may have an understanding of emptiness. This is nothing in comparison to the Bodhi minds, the bodhicitta, because bodhicitta is the intention to achieve enlightenment, the cause for achieving enlightenment and as the cause for achieving enlightenment its virtue is so much more powerful than the causes for liberation or whatever in the or whatever other realizations in the mind stream of Hīnayāna practitioners so just by the mere presence of bodhicitta anything that a bodhicitta does in its wonder in its power in its ability is said to be way beyond anything that even Arhats and even the people with the realization of emptiness who are under low vehicle can actually do. It’s going like it goes, okay, we’re on that page. We’re on the next page. We’re back here.
We’re over there. And I’m like, Another way of explaining why it so much more important to have bodhicitta than any other types of realization is that s likened to a there s another metaphor describing it, which is like a diamond and the other types of realization we have maybe like gold or silver platinum jewelry in that a diamond can have a flaw and it’s still a diamond and if you have gold and silver and everything like that with a flaw in it they have things added to it then they lose their potency. The reason that this metaphor is used is that in the first instance when bodhicitta is developed it s not said to be that strong it s not said to be that developed it still has It still doesn t have the strength that it eventually does just before beings become Buddhas. But even though it is not as strong as it could be, even though there is even a chance in beginning that people can lose bodhicitta, then it’s still by its nature the cause for developing Buddhahood. So it’s still by its nature this incredibly powerful thing.
So that’s why it’s likened to a diamond. So in this way, I said that bodhicitta is the most important thing for people to develop in terms of their practices because, with bodhicitta, anything that bodhicitta does becomes this incredibly powerful thing. If they have an understanding of emptiness, then that becomes much more powerful with bodhicitta. If they have their compassion is much more powerful because of bodhicitta. All of these other things are enhanced and stabilized by bodhicitta.
And the next benefit of developing bodhicitta is that you become a supreme object of offering. And now the reason that beings with bodhicitta in their mind stream become a supreme object of offering is for a start because it’s such a rare thing and it’s so difficult to develop it said that even the great Pandita Atisha Dipamkara who had to train for twelve years intensively in order to develop bodhicitta. So because it’s such a rare thing and achieve it becomes a focus for beings veneration and beings of all different types it becomes a focus for their veneration and the other thing that’s good about bodhicitta is as someone with bodhicitta, you give other people more of an opportunity to create merit, to create positive actions because they if they give you stuff, then they get more benefit than if you didn’t have it. And so because it took a teacher twelve years to develop bodhicitta when he was working with his teacher Serlingpa, then we should take that into consideration and not expect to develop bodhicitta by thinking about it for a few moments every day. It’s something that we need to put a lot of effort in, in order to develop it.
So, in actual fact, it means completely giving up or getting rid of any attachment that we have to self, any self-cherishing that we may have. So, as we can see, it’s a very, very difficult thing to develop. So the I’m sorry. And He said when someone manages to develop bodhicitta, then by itself it builds up. It by itself naturally accumulates merit.
It itself becomes stronger. It purifies obscurations and stops hindrances from coming to the person. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
That’s a bit of strange translation. It stops and purifies obscuration, so people’s clarity becomes more intense, and then it also stops obstacles from coming to them. It clears away obstacles that may come to So the reason that bodhicitta is said to develop itself and to become more powerful in itself and create merit exponentially is because we think about it, s very logical because bodhicitta is the thought to rid all sentient beings of suffering through becoming a Buddha. Now, all sentient beings are all beings. S said to be countless.
And if you take into consideration that you re trying to get rid of countless sentient beings suffering and that’s if for one being the types of suffering that they may experience is countless, then that becomes this is direct quote very countless. It means that in every moment, these beings who have bodhicitta are creating enormous amounts of merit, and that literally exponentially increases. Okay. So it also gets rid of these obscurations we have. Now, the reason that it says that it gets rid of obscurations is that since the beginning of this time up until now, we’ve habituated ourselves to thinking in an incorrect way.
We’ve developed ignorance in different ways, So we have countless different obscurations that we have in our mind stream to thinking clearly. If we start focusing on others instead of ourselves, then that s a very powerful way to purify those obscurations. But if we have bodhicitta that means that we are focusing on all other beings and not just ourselves. It s all other beings experiencing not only getting rid of all the different types of suffering that they have but also establishing all of those beings in a state of intense happiness so you can see that this thought is incredibly powerful and incredibly has an enormous benefits and also has a direct influence on the way our mind works and the way that it can directly influence our mind is to get rid of the obscurations that we have to change the way we think so that our obscurations disappear. The other thing that it can help us get rid of is what’s called obstacles.
Now, what these obstacles are taught us what these particular obstacles are is obstacles to practicing Dharma. Now, the reason that we have obstacles to practicing Dharma is for four different reasons. We can have obstacles to practicing Dharma through self grasping. We can have obstacles to practicing Dharma through our past karma, the negative karma that we’ve developed. We can have obstacles to practicing Dharma because of our destructive emotions, afflictive emotions.
Okay. So sorry. And we’ve yeah. The other one was self-cherishing. So we have self-cherishing, self grasping, afflictive emotions and karma.
By all of these four things, we experience obstacles to practicing. The development of bodhicitta, yeah, it gets rid of all of these. Yeah. And another thing about bodhicitta that makes it help with everything else is that it increases the outcome, increases the benefit of what the outcome will be. It means, for example, that if we do a virtuous action and we don’t have bodhicitta, then that’s still a virtuous action, but its results won’t be as powerful as if we did a virtuous action with bodhicitta.
Of course, if we have the motivation of bodhicitta to do something, then anything that we are doing doesn’t have a limited intention. It has the most vast intention that you could possibly have. For another example of this is, say, for example, if we were trying to develop an understanding of emptiness. If we develop an understanding of emptiness without bodhicitta, there is no way that that can become a cause for achieving Buddhahood. In order for an understanding of emptiness to become a cause for achieving Buddhahood, It needs to be come along with bodhicitta.
And so it may become a cause for us to achieve personal liberation. But if we add bodhicitta to this mix then we end up with the achievement of Buddhahood. So in this way, you can see adding bodhicitta increases the benefits in a very profound way. Okay. Another benefit that bodhicitta has that we can see how powerful it is, is if people are practicing a tantra and they’re using a sadhana, then it doesn’t matter because the word sadhana actually means or the way it’s translated into Tibetan actually means method for achieving, right?
So it doesn’t matter how many times someone does a sadhana or does a tantric practice if they don’t have bodhicitta they’re not going to achieve anything. We all a lot of different sadhana practices or a lot of different tantric practices. If we don’t have bodhicitta so we spend all this time doing Chenrezig and the Tārā practices or whatever it is that we’re doing as a practice. If there’s no bodhicitta if we don’t have bodhicitta in our mindstream, however, we’re not going to achieve what the method to achieve, which is the sadhana sets it up that we should achieve. Okay?
Sorry about the language thing there. Okay. So if we do have bodhicitta, however, then practicing sadhanas actually becomes like it is etymologically a method for achieving Buddhahood. All right? So the bodhicitta acts as a base to take us for us to actually achieve Buddhahood through those practices.
Okay. So for example, there’s a story about a rather stupid monk who used to live in Tibet like one hundred or two hundred years ago called Gendun. He had this thing. He was really into reading sadhanas or Tantric texts. He believed everything he read literally and didn’t understand that he needed bodhicitta for it all to come into play, yeah?
And so then he found this one tantra that said, If you do this tantra well, then what you will achieve is invisibility. You’ll be able to go everywhere you want without anyone seeing you, right? And he goes, okay. And he’s doing the sadhana. And then he thought, if I move, okay, now I must have become invisible, right?
And he just assumed you become invisible. And he said, if I’m invisible, I don’t need to wear So he took all his robes off and he was walking around the place and then Geshe-la said, That’s not the scariest thing. The scariest thing is that everyone looked at him and said, Oh no, he made another mistake. So they realized instantly what he’d done. Okay.
Oh, yes. I found it. Okay. Because I because I thought I wanna check this because it sounds very strange. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the bodhisattvas, anyone who has developed bodhicitta is said to be able to do miraculous things to be of benefit to other beings. An example of this: there was a teacher from Lhasa, who Geshe-la said actually came from Sera Je from his monastery.
There was a big flood in the river near Lhasa, and it was really dangerous for people because people were living near the banks of the river. Not only that, but a lot of people actually had to do trade across the river. Because if they didn’t do trade, wouldn’t eat and they were trying to cross the flooded river, which was really dangerous for them. So, there had to be sorry, this bodhisattva from the monastery looked down and saw this happening and he wanted to stop this happening so he took a rock down to the side of the river and he put the rock on the side of the river and it says that he said if it is true that I have bodhicitta, may the waters subside, may the waters subside right and he wrote that on a rock and put it next to the river. And the waters all subsided and people were able to go within hours and people were able to go across the river again.
Was no more danger to anyone living near the river or having to cross the river. And Geshe-la says he saw that rock when he was a kid and when he was there when he went to set up, and he was sure that it was there in nineteen fifty nine, but he doesn’t know if it still is. So if you have bodhicitta, whatever you wanna do, then you can do it. So there’s lots of times when we need when people need it to rain and when people need their harvest to grow, when they need their barley to grow, whatever it is they’re growing. And if you have bodhicitta, then you’re actually able to help people.
You’re able to because of the force of your karma, you’re able actually able to help others with these situations. If you don’t have bodhicitta, then you can’t. Yes. So we can stop there. And if anyone has a few questions well, we’ll yeah.
If anyone has a question, we’ll do a few questions. That makes sense. Not one person with few whatever. Yes? It seems to me that embodiment, having a body Mhmm.
Is is a source of of of of all sorts of self-cherishing and self-grasping. Every single thing related to having a body conditions us to grasp after self. So if we have to complete completely reverse that Mhmm. We’re having to completely reverse basically everything that our embodiment tells us. Mhmm.
So how do we look after this body in a way such that it will last long and Mhmm. Remain a useful vehicle? Mhmm. I was just thinking, did everyone hear that? I was thinking, can I put it back in words?
But did everyone hear it? Yeah. Oh, they heard it. Good. Now, I only have to think about how to say it in Tibetan.
All right. So we should look after it as a base for what we’re able to do with it. And so we should think, if I don’t have this body, then I’m not able to achieve Buddhahood. If I don’t have this body, I’m not able to achieve realizations. So, because this is the best base for me to achieve these realizations, I have to make sure that this base is stable and well looked after.
I have to give it food. I have to make sure it doesn’t get sick. I have to look after it the best I can. So, if you do it with this motivation, thinking that I have to look after this body because this body is my vehicle to developing realizations to getting out of saṃsāra, then it’s very possible to protect ourselves without being attached to ourselves. Okay.
So this precious human body with liberties and endowments is a very rare thing. We should remember that it’s a rare thing. We should be trying to establish the causes for attaining another rare thing in the future. We should be appreciating how rare it is. We should be trying to use it to its best advantage.
We should be trying to take the essence from this body that we have to get the most out of it while we’ve got it because when we lose it, we’re not sure what’s going to happen unless we try and make the most of what we’ve got at the moment. So, it’s a very important thing to have a precious human rebirth, and we shouldn’t be flippant about it. We should be taking appreciative of the fact that we have it. So the body with the liberties and endowments that we now experience had to come about through positive causes that were created in the past. And if we waste this opportunity that we’ve won for ourselves and we just focus on the happiness of this lifetime and spend our whole life in the pursuit of the happiness of this lifetime, then when we get to death, when we come to death or even if we were to die tomorrow, there would be absolutely no difference between us having had this precious body or any other existence that may not have been as beneficial to us.
So what we need to do is to use this body at the moment to create the causes for us to experience the same sort of birth in the next lifetime. So, if we use this body at the moment to practice Dharma, then that sets up the cause for being a person who can practice Dharma in the next lifetime. But if we don’t, then we are wasting this opportunity. We need to be very appreciative of the precious human body that we have and not waste the opportunity that it affords us. Did you understand?
Oh, you understand that, so I don’t need to translate that. Oh, yeah, yeah. No. He was saying you can’t practice tantra until you’ve developed bodhicitta. He said you can do sadhanas, right?
But a sadhana means a means for accomplishment. And you’re not accomplishing anything unless you have bodhicitta. So you can’t practice tantra without bodhicitta. But you can put imprints on your mind and make it more easy for you to practice tantra when you develop bodhicitta. So what we should do at the moment is that if we we have taken on tantric vows in order to be of benefit to all sentient beings.
That s a very positive thing. What we need to do is to develop the best contrived bodhicitta that we can before we do these practices to make them as powerful as we possibly can. Okay. So, what we’re able to do is by developing bodhicitta, like a contrived bodhicitta before we do a sadhana practice or a tantric practice, we’re able to get a similitude of practicing tantra. Developing a similitude of practicing tantra is a very powerful thing as well.
Hang on. Yeah, hang on. But practicing, you can’t practice tantra without bodhicitta. By doing the similitude of it. Okay.
Okay. Yeah, it s beneficial to do these practices because, first of all, before you do them, then you should be trying to cultivate bodhicitta before you start the practice, and that creates imprints on your mind stream. It habituates your mind towards thinking of others. Also, when you’re doing the practices, you’re also creating a pattern or imprint on your mind for doing those practices. That means is not only are you creating the imprints for doing those practices properly, but you re also creating merit, which can be a cause for you to develop bodhicitta.
So you re training your mind in bodhicitta by doing them, and you re training your mind in those practices, which will help you once you ve developed bodhicitta. Because as ordinary beings and as beginners, the imprint is the most is really important for us. Oh, yeah. Say, someone wants to develop, say, by making effort to develop a daily. Would it be better to instead of just trying to meditate on bodhicitta, to actually meditate on the foundations first?
Mhmm. Mhmm. Did everyone hear that? Wow. They can hear you’re whispering and they heard you So it’s it’s almost here, Geshe-la said that you should be doing meditations on renunciation before you do meditations on bodhicitta, but you can meditate on bodhicitta at any time as well.