Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with a verse from the Sūtra of Pacification — that negative karma never fades even after a hundred eons — Geshe Pema Tsering uses this 44.8-minute talk to trace the full arc from basic karma theory to bodhicitta. He covers karma’s exponential nature (slight actions can yield disproportionately vast results), then outlines two routes to purification: direct perception of emptiness or active regret paired with an antidote. The talk then resumes a running seven-point cause-and-effect method at step four — loving kindness that finds all beings appealing — before moving through great compassion (freedom from all three types of samsaric suffering) and the altruistic special intention, illustrated with a parents-and-children analogy. He arrives at a precise definition: bodhicitta is an uncontrived mind focused on Buddhahood for all beings — not a phrase to recite, but a realisation requiring sustained meditation.
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File: 07 D BC 2004 06 01.mp3
UUID: 52a68957-b7d5-4370-a6ad-766e03dbbcef
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB How to Develop Bodhichitta (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-06-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.8 minutes
Words: ~4,327
In the Sūtra of Pacification, Buddha Śākyamūni said the negative actions accumulated by embodied beings or sentient beings does not fade away or is not extinguished after even a hundred kalpas or a hundred eons. What this is referring to is the fact that whatever actions we do of body, speech or mind, if they’re a negative action then the influence will remain on our mind stream until such times as we experience their results as some form of suffering or until we purify them. These two outcomes can come from our negative actions. They can’t be anything else. They can’t just disappear, the results of the karma that we’ve accumulated.
So we have the choice of purifying it or experiencing its results. The way that we can purify our negative actions is by being able to meditate on emptiness directly. By perceiving emptiness directly, we can see the emptiness of the negative actions and the things we’ve done and this can purify our actions. The other way that we can purify our actions is by developing regret for them and then applying an antidote so that is first of all conceiving the idea that we’ve done something negative and then doing something to stop it or to stop us from doing it in the future. So the that was the first the first two lines are, as we said, any action that sentient beings perform creates an imprint on the mind stream that will not disappear even after one hundred eons.
The next two lines of the verse go something like, If they are not purified, it is certain that the results will be experienced. The other thing that we need to remember is that the results may not necessarily be experienced with a direct level of force. It doesn’t necessarily have to have a comparable amount of force between the action we perform and the results that we experience. What this means is we may perform a negative action that’s quite slight but the results we may experience from that slight negative action may be very profound suffering. Also, with a positive action, if we do something thatis a very slight positive action, then its results can even be Buddhahood because karma has this expanding exponential nature.
So what this means is that we need to be very aware of what it is that we re doing. We need to be very mindful of what it is that we re doing and we need to know how to perform positive actions and how to stop performing negative actions. If we think about it, we don’t spend a lot of our time thinking about whether our actions are positive or negative or what the outcomes of our actions are going to be. We spend most of our time concentrating on what we’re going to do in the short term. If we are at home one evening, we may be thinking about what we need to do the next morning.
We’re not necessarily thinking about how we’re going to attain enlightenment or how we’re to attain liberation. We’re thinking, What do I need to do tomorrow? What jobs have I got? How do I need to prepare to do the jobs that I’ve got to do tomorrow? The main intention behind that preparation is usually that we want to be happy in the short term.
We’re thinking what do I need to do tomorrow to make my life better. We’re not concentrating in the long term. We’re thinking about happiness tomorrow. We need to know what it is we need to do and we need to be aware of what it is we are doing. Because we’re not concentrating on how to get out of saṃsāra or how to achieve Buddhahood, it means that most of our actions come out of a desire for temporary happiness and therefore are negative.
What we need to concentrate on is how to get out of saṃsāra, and in order to do that we need to know what are the true causes for happiness and what are the causes for suffering. Once we know what they are, then we need to be mindful that that’s the way we’re behaving. If we’re focused on that, if we’re focused on the idea of doing something that’s positive, doing something that’s going to help us achieve true happiness and stopping ourselves from doing things that are going to make us experience suffering and continue to create the causes for saṃsāra, If that s the way we re thinking, then we re practicing Dharma. That s what the key part of practicing Dharma is focusing, being aware of what we re doing and creating the causes for happiness. So we need to know what it is that s positive and what it is that s negative and then when we are performing positive actions, then we need to try and develop the best motivation for any positive action that we perform.
The best motivation that we can have to perform any action is to achieve Buddhahood. If we think, Okay, now that I know what’s a positive action, when I do that positive action, I think I’m doing this in order to attain Buddhahood, then that’s developing the right motivation. If we don’t have the ability to think in this way, then we may be someone who is focusing on achieving liberation so we may think that whatever we’re doing that’s positive action is a cause for us to achieve liberation. We also may be someone who’s trying to focus on achieving a positive rebirth and so we may think whatever we’re doing that’s positive is to achieve a positive So if we have this idea that whatever positive action it is that we’re doing, positive whatever positive actions it is that we’ve done, that they act as a cause for us to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, and then that makes our motivation the most advanced and the most beneficial motivation we can have. So the reason that we need to focus in this way, the reason that we need to be focused on Buddhahood and not just for our own benefit, but for the benefit of all sentient beings beings is because all sentient beings are exactly the same as us.
They all want to be happy as well. If we focus on the idea of everybody becoming happy or ceasing to experience suffering, then that’s the best motivation that we could have. Before we listen to any teachings, before we contemplate anything, before we meditate on anything, then we should think, The reason that I’m listening to this, the reason that I’m doing this is to create the causes, to give me understanding so I can, through my understanding, know what it is that I have to do and then put things into practice and meditate on what I need to know to create the causes or to create the base for me to progress and be able to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. And if I take my meritorious actions and think of those being mixed with the positive things that all sentient beings have done and have a joyful mind towards all of those positive things that sentient beings have done and then all the positive things that Arhats have done, solitary realizers have done, bodhisattvas and Buddhists have and have the idea that all of it is mixed together and I rejoice in that action then we think, May that be a cause.
My little virtue that I’m doing now, may that be mixed with the virtues of all beings all Buddhas and may that be a cause for me to achieve enlightenment. If we have that as our inspiration, whatever we do, we’ll do it well. We should try and develop that attitude before we listen to rest of the teaching. Tagongo. Mhmm.
So if we can meditate on that for a couple of minutes. So we were going through the seven point cause and effect instructions on how to develop bodhicitta and we’ve gone through the first four causes that is understanding all sentient beings to be our mother, remembering their kind no, it’s already done the first three. Remembering their kindness and seeking to repay their kindness. Now we’re up to the fourth cause which is loving kindness which finds all sentient beings appealing. What this is basically is another way of saying loving kindness and loving kindness is a wish that beings are free from suffering, sorry, are happy.
Getting everything confused. Yeah, that all sentient beings are happy, right? There’s two different ways of saying it. We can say loving kindness defines all sentient beings appealing and we can just say loving kindness. It’s basically the same thing.
The reason that it’s got the finds beings appealing bit in there is because at this stage we have this idea that those who are close to us and particularly our parents and people like that, we have this idea that they’re that we find ourselves wanting to do things for them and to try and make them happy. We have this idea that there’s other beings that are our enemy and that we don’t particularly like them. We don’t have any good feelings towards them so we don’t generate this sense of love towards them. What we’re dealing with here is after we focus on all beings having been our mother and showing us great kindness, then the idea is to find all beings appealing, to find all beings attractive in the way that we like them enough to want to help them. So if we have that as a general idea about beings that we think are a large number of people or certain people that we find them appealing and we want to do things in order to make them happy, that s called loving kindness that finds beings appealing.
In order for us to be on the right track in terms of this development, we need to develop great loving kindness. Not just loving kindness but great loving kindness and the adjective great indicates that it’s directed towards all sentient beings and not just those that we particularly feel close to. In order to develop this great loving kindness, we’re focusing on all sentient beings as being people that we care about and therefore we want them to be happy. When we say we want them to be happy, we don’t want them to just be happy for today or just be happy for this lifetime. We want them to be truly happy and to be truly happy they have to be completely free of saṃsāra.
But even just being free of saṃsāra isn’t the best type of happiness that they can experience. The best type of happiness that they can experience is to have achieved Buddhahood, to have become an all knowing, have the mind of all knowingness. Anyway, Nam kyandi, can you check up all of that? Nam kyandi. Yes, because that’s an adjective in English but it’s actually a noun in Tibetan but anyway, the all knowing one, we want them to become a is another way of saying the Buddha.
We want them to become a Buddha then they will have true happiness. This idea of finding them appealing and wanting them to be happy isn’t something we should see in a limited way. Something that we should see for each individual being in the most expansive way possible. So when we have developed this idea, when we have developed this thought of all sentient beings being happy in the complete happiness of Buddhahood, to the extent that this happens spontaneously in our mind stream, that this idea comes spontaneous ly to us and we don’t have to cultivate it, we don’t have to analyze in order to get it, then that means we’ve developed the great loving kindness. That’s the mark of having developed that when it happens spontaneously and continuously in our mind stream.
From this development of loving kindness towards all beings, we then move on to great compassion which is also focused on all beings. Compassion is the idea that all sentient beings should be free from suffering and it comes straight away after the idea that all beings are happy because the way they are happy is to be free from suffering. But when we say they are free from suffering, we want them to be free from suffering. It’s not the kind of suffering that we usually spend all our time trying to avoid which is the suffering or manifest suffering. When we say we want all sentient beings to be free from suffering, we re talking about the three different kinds of suffering that pervade samsaric existence.
So that s manifest suffering or the suffering that we know about now that manifests in all these different ways like illness and losing things that we want and not getting things that we want and then having things come to us that we don t want. All of these types of experiences are forms of suffering. There s that suffering but also the suffering of change. They are clinging to samsaric happiness without recognizing that that is actually suffering. Then the very basis of saṃsāra which is grasping of inherent self, the ignorance that grasps our inherent self.
We’re wishing that they are free from all of those types of suffering but even after that, even after someone has perceived selflessness and has perceived emptiness, the lack of intrinsic existence of all phenomena, they still have what are called obscurations to knowledge and these obscurations to knowledge are subtle forms of ignorance that we can’t really conceive of at the moment but they stop people’s experience of more powerful types of happiness as is experienced by a Buddha. So we’re actually also wishing that they’re free of those as well, these obscurations to knowledge. So it’s not just a limited idea that we want them to free from suffering today in minor ways. It’s a very vast concept and it’s called Great Compassion because it’s focused on all sentient beings without even missing one out. So these things are very vast and very difficult to get our heads around.
When we’re talking about loving kindness, so there’s this idea of all sentient beings experiencing the most perfect type of happiness that is possible for them to experience. When we’re talking about great compassion, we’re saying that all sentient beings be free from any type of suffering even in terms of subtle obscurations to their knowledge. This is a very subtle understanding that we need to develop. What happens is because we think it’s a bit too hard to try and work on that understanding, walk around saying, Oh, love and kindness, and we’re just talking about it but we don’t have a clue what we’re talking about. We tend to just like say it but not actually think about what it means.
So if we really want to get there, if we really want to work on it, then we need to try and develop the subtlety of our mind so we can conceive of these ideas and we need to try and develop our understanding of these things so we can actually develop these so that can lead us to understanding these views. We talk about having compassion for all sentient beings and we keep saying have compassion for all sentient beings but we don’t actually have the idea of ourselves even being free from suffering. We can’t even develop that idea. We’re usually thinking about ourselves being free from suffering, manifest suffering in the next few minutes, let alone all different kinds of suffering forever after we’ve achieved liberation. So we need to put in some hard work if we want to try and develop our understandings of these things, if we want to try and develop bodhicitta, we need to work at it, we need to meditate on it a long time, we need to acclimatize our minds towards it.
We need to start first of all too with an understanding of suffering and an understanding of our own suffering and what it is that we need to work towards because if we can’t figure this out for ourselves, we can’t extend that understanding towards all beings. Itis difficult to develop an understanding of renunciation of wanting ourselves to be in a state beyond sorrow. Itis more difficult to develop this idea towards all sentient beings but if we ve developed it towards ourselves then we re a large percentage of the way there. Once we understand that we ourselves want to be free from suffering and saṃsāra in all these different ways, then s easier for us to understand that all sentient beings also want to experience this kind of happiness and be free from this suffering. But at the moment, that s not the way we think.
We get caught up in little things that we think we want to be that will make us happy and we end up just confused. So, this is the same. It works the same for both love and kindness and compassion. In order for us to have love and kindness and compassion for all sentient beings we need to have it for ourselves first. We need to understand personally that we want to be free from all suffering and we want to experience happiness.
If we develop those ideas for ourselves, then we can extend them out for other sentient beings. So we need to work hard in order to develop these understandings because they’re not easy for us to develop an understanding of. We need to understand what it is that we’re actually working towards in terms of happiness and we need to understand what we’re trying to get away from in terms of suffering and how there’s all these different types of suffering that we may experience. The only type of suffering that we tend to be able to focus on at the moment is what’s called manifest suffering or the suffering of suffering. This is things like illness that we may experience and we know that suffering and we don’t know we don’t want to experience it.
But even with that, even though we know we don’t want to experience it, we don’t really look at what its causes are so much and we don’t try and get rid of the causes for that suffering so we don’t have to experience it. This means we don’t focus on anger and desire and things like that in a sufficient enough way for us to get rid of them and therefore get rid of the causes for suffering. So developing loving kindness and compassion is difficult for us. Even developing the idea of refuge is difficult for us. In general, we call ourselves Buddhists and we call ourselves Mahayanas but a Buddhist is defined by whether they have refuge or not and it can be difficult for us to try and develop even that idea in our minds to him that we really take refuge as opposed to speaking the words.
It s something that we need to put a lot of effort into. And the same with developing this idea of bodhicitta. Before we develop the idea of bodhicitta, need to have these ideas of loving kindness and compassion and are things that we really need to keep working at, we really need to stick at doing because they are not something that we can just develop by talking about it. We need to keep working on it and even before then we need to start thinking about all beings as having shown us great kindness. Going through the process of seeing them as being our mothers, seeing them as being someone who has shown us great kindness, thinking that we want to repay that kindness.
Even after we’ve developed this idea of loving kindness and compassion, we then have to go on to develop the special intention or the altruistic intention that is that we’re going to deliver them from suffering ourselves before we can develop bodhicitta. The whole process is very difficult and something we really need to put a lot of work into in order to truly call ourselves Mahayanists. So we really need to work at developing these ideas of great compassion and great loving kindness in our continuum, in our mind stream. We need to put a lot of effort in in order to develop those in order for us to progress along the path. After we’ve developed these things, we then need to move on to the thing called altruistic intention or special insight.
Now, what this entails is the idea that all these beings are suffering. I really want them not to be suffering and to experience happiness. How do I bring this about? Then we think, Okay, I myself have to bring this about. I myself have to put the effort in in order to bring this about and this is what we call special insight.
Not just the idea that we wish all sentient beings to be free from suffering and to experience happiness but we’re going to make it happen. This is altruism. This altruism is something that needs to be worked on until it comes spontaneously as well. This is a similar thing as if you have parents and there’s two parents and they five or six children. Those two parents are going to work really hard if they have great love for their children to see that children are happy.
They take on the responsibility of making sure their children are healthy and happy for themselves and work towards that end. They don’t think, Okay, there’s five of them and there’s one or two of me. They just do it out of their love for their children. It s a similar thing even though there s one of us, we take on the responsibility of working towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, becoming a Buddha for the benefit of all sentient beings. So after we ve developed this idea that we ourselves want to get all beings out of the state of suffering and establish them in a state of happiness, we then come to the idea or the next step is to figure out how to do that.
We need to come up with a plan, a plan of action to make this come about, a way to bring this about. And if we think about that, then the only way that we can really lead all beings into a state of happiness and show them how to experience true happiness and get rid of all suffering is to become a Buddha. If we investigate, then there’s no other way that we can bring this about. There aren any other methods or there s no other ways that we can bring this about. This means that we need to become a Buddha and the reason we need to become a Buddha is so we can help all sentient beings be free from suffering.
When we start developing this idea, when this idea comes spontaneously that we need to become a Buddha in order to get all sentient beings out of suffering and make them happy then this is when we develop our bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment. Okay, so this mind of bodhicitta comes about after this process and when it actually comes about after this process because bodhicitta is only the mind that is unfabricated or uncontrived. Anything that we do up to the point of developing this uncontrived mind working towards this goal isn’t actually bodhicitta so any analysis or contemplation that we may do in order to develop this understanding isn t bodhicitta. bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment itself, is what s called a main mind or a main consciousness that is focused on the goal of achieving Buddhahood. Now there’s two different aspects to this idea or this concept.
It’s a main mind which is a concept. The two aspects to this are we are working towards Buddhahood and we re doing it for the benefit of all sentient beings. It s said that there s two aspirations or two wishes involved in this process. If we have a concept that is the object of this consciousness or the thing that this consciousness is focused on which is I am working towards Buddhahood. Along with this included in this process is this idea for the benefit of all sentient beings.
We’re working to Buddhahood, why? In order to benefit all sentient beings. Benefiting all sentient beings is the cause for us to develop this idea of striving towards Buddhahood. So the thing we’re focused on is Buddhahood. The reason we’re doing it is all sentient beings.
There’s two different aspirations included within this one thought. This development of bodhicitta isn’t something that comes about easily. It’s something that we have to put in a lot of work to develop and something we need to concentrate on if we want to progress along the Buddhist path. We don’t start with developing bodhicitta. We start with this idea of equanimity and we have to go from equanimity through seeing all sentient beings as our mother then remembering their kindness and then seeking to repay their kindness, meditating on the idea of loving kindness towards and finding all of them appealing.
Then we move on to the idea of this mind seeking to wishing them to all be free from suffering which is great compassion. Then the mind thinking that we ourselves, the idea that we ourselves should do that, that we ourselves should.