Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Starting from the image of Buddha House — a century-old building raised without modern machinery by many hands — Geshe Pema Tsering anchors the teaching of cherishing others in concrete, everyday terms. In this 31.5-minute session he traces both the temporary kindness sentient beings show us (every meal, every shelter we use) and their ultimate role: without them there is no practice of generosity, patience, or ethics, and no path to Buddhahood. He quotes Langri Thangpa on valuing all beings more than a wish-fulfilling gem, and uses Śākyamūni Buddha to show why becoming enlightened — not temporary relief — is the only genuine help we can offer. The Q&A closes with a sharp question about the circular logic of other-cherishing for personal benefit; Geshe-la’s reply: the two minds cannot coexist, so sustained training gradually dissolves self-grasping.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 D BC 2004 06 15.mp3
UUID: f17e7df2-6fe3-404d-9d2f-167b5d66e606
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB How to Develop Bodhichitta (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-06-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 31.5 minutes
Words: ~2,397
All of these people that are involved, whether it’s by building the fields, whether it’s by fetching water and so on, there’s so many things that are involved or so many beings are involved in us just getting rice to eat. Another example we can look at is our houses. If you want to look at Buddha House, for example Buddha House is pretty old. Geshe-la thinks it’s about one hundred years old. If Buddha House is about one hundred years old, then that means that one hundred years ago imagine what kind of work they had to do to build it.
They didn’t have the same machinery as we have and it was a lot harder for them to build a house then than it would be now. They had to put in all this effort and all these people had to do all these different things to bring this house into being under more extreme conditions. Because of that, then we were able to use Buddha House today. If they hadn’t gone to the effort of building the house, we wouldn’t be able to use it today. This is one example, but everything that we interact with, we can see this in the same way: that it all comes about because of other beings’ kindness.
So it’s the same thing with all of the things that we with our individual homes, with our clothes, with the things that we eat, all of the things that we use come about because of other sentient beings. They’re brought to us through other sentient beings as kindness. In this way, we need to reflect on what we have and how we came to get that, and it’s all because of other beings’ kindness. So this is the temporary benefits that sentient beings have shown us. They also show us ultimate benefit because without sentient beings, there is no way that we can actually achieve Buddhahood.
Without sentient beings we can’t practice the perfections that we need to practice in order to become a Buddha. Without sentient beings there is no practice of giving or generosity. There’s no practice of ethics. There’s no practice of patience. There’s no practice of effort. There’s no way that we can achieve the conditions for becoming a Buddha if there weren’t sentient beings. So if we look at it in this way, we look at the way that every single positive situation that we can have in life, every single happiness that we can experience, all of these even temporarily, in terms of the temporary happiness we experience in saṃsāra and in terms of the ultimate happiness that we can experience by achieving personal liberation or by achieving Buddhahood, all of this happiness can only come about in dependence on other sentient beings. Because of other sentient beings kindness we experience things. Because of other sentient beings existence and kindness we can actually achieve Buddhahood even.
So if we think about it in this way then we can see that it’s absolutely necessary for us to cherish others more than it is to cherish ourselves. So we need to then see that we really should be cherishing others. We really should be thinking of others because anything that we experience as suffering comes about because we’re not cherishing others or from cherishing self. And everything that we experience as happiness comes about because we are cherishing others and we’re not cherishing self. So we really need to change the way that we look at things if we truly want to be happy.
So as Langri Thangpa, Kadampa Geshe said, By contemplating how I shall achieve supreme benefit due to all sentient beings more than I could achieve from any gem, may I cherish them all the more. So what this is referring to, if we believed that such a jewel as a wish fulfilling gem existed that could grant us all our wishes, then we would consider that very precious. If we something that could give us great happiness, we would consider it very precious. So if we had a big chunk of gold, then we would consider that very precious. And most people consider their parents to be very precious because of the kindness that they’ve shown them.
But even more than our parents, even more than a big chunk of gold that we may have, sentient beings are responsible for our experience of happiness, temporarily and ultimately. In this way, we really need to start thinking that it’s not just one sentient being, it’s not just one parent or one person who’s shown us kindness, We should feel this intense gratefulness and we should consider it precious. But in fact, all sentient beings have shown us this kindness and have given us the cause for developing happiness or have let us develop the causes for happiness. Sentient beings also ultimately have the power to or the ability to let us develop the conditions for achieving Buddhahood. So through sentient beings, in dependence on sentient beings, we’re able to achieve ultimate happiness.
So we should really be very, very, very grateful towards all sentient beings because of all this kindness that they’ve shown us. So but this doesn’t and the other thing we need to remember is this isn’t something that is going to happen overnight. It’s not something that happens easily. It’s something that we need to put a lot of effort into. We’ve been thinking about ourselves, focusing on ourselves, cherishing ourselves since beginningless time.
To turn that habit around, we need to put a lot of effort in. We need to put a lot of work into it so we start looking at others instead of looking at ourselves. We’re dealing with very ingrained habits that need to be changed here. To get rid of them, need to put in a lot of hard hard work and a lot of training in our mind to to start thinking of others instead of ourselves. So when we talk about working to make all other sentient beings happy, we’re not talking about necessarily giving them food, or trying to stop them from being ill, or trying to give them shelter and so on, right?
Because even if we were able to do that to every single being in one country, then we’d still have everyone to do that for in other countries as well. So there’s no end to that kind of endeavouring, to that kind of temporary help. This isn’t going to make sentient beings truly happy. In order for all sentient beings to be truly happy they need to know what true happiness is and they need to be able to establish the causes for true happiness. So the only way that we are able to show them what true happiness is or teach them what true happiness is and then show them how to establish the causes for true happiness is to become a Buddha ourselves.
So this is the way we need to do it. It’s not about temporarily relieving their suffering. It’s about becoming a Buddha so we can show them how to completely relieve their suffering and the causes of it. So we we need to do this a similar thing to what Śākyamūni Buddha did. And Śākyamūni Buddha didn’t stop all sentient beings from being hungry because he couldn’t do that.
If he started to try and give all beings all the food they need or try to stop them from being ill, there wouldn’t have been any end to that practice and there wouldn’t have been any ultimate benefit from that. So what he did was every time that he was doing something positive, was thinking this is for the benefit of all sentient beings. May I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings? So in this way, he was able, through doing positive actions for other beings, to use those positive actions to act as a cause for him to become a Buddha. And by becoming a Buddha, he was then able to show all sentient beings how to stop suffering and its causes properly.
And so by doing this then he’s able to ultimately benefit them. Whereas if he’d just gone around giving them food or whatever it was that they temporarily needed, it wouldn’t have been that much benefit as much benefit. Yeah. That’s. So so we can stop there for this evening and have a few questions.
Yeah. Yes. Have a question about. Okay. Okay.
I’d like to really, really like to help a partner who Uh-huh. Okay. [Question from audience member – unclear audio]
So do you think this person is behaving like a hungry ghost or they’re actually possessed by a hungry ghost? Are they, like, being very greedy? Is that what you’re talking about? And if you help them, do you think that they’re going to hell? Or if you’re trying to stop them going to Okay.
So what? Correct. Correct. Uh-huh. Criticize.
Yes. Okay. And they’ll get angry. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Alright. Okay. Now I understand. I was thinking yeah.
Okay. So, Geshe-la said that that can happen if you start criticizing someone directly and say that you’re doing a bad thing or you’re doing a negative thing, then they can get very angry. So the best way to deal with it then is to think or is to say to them, well this is what I think, right? This is just what I think. If you do something like that, then it’s going to have a negative outcome.
If you do something negative like that then the results are not going to be positive for people. They’re not going to be beneficial. If I do that then the results will be harmful. So I try and stop because of what the results will be. So instead of criticizing and saying what you’re doing is wrong what you say is I personally wouldn’t do that because I can see what the results are.
You’re looking for certain actions are from your point of view or generally as I think you Okay. Okay. So the reason that that would come about is because we weren’t focusing on the path properly. Because if we’re actually working towards Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, we’re not necessarily trying to relieve temporary suffering from other beings, right? And we don’t have any expectations towards those beings, so we can’t think, By doing this, this will make this person happy, and by doing this, this will make this person happy.
We’re not talking about making them happy by making sure they have the right circumstances, making sure that they have food and they have all of the physical possessions or the happy circumstances that they need. We’re talking about making them happy by developing the ability in ourselves to be able to show them the nature of reality so they stop grasping and are able to experience true happiness. So we’re not trying to relieve their temporary suffering. We’re trying to develop ourselves into a Buddha so we can show them how to become completely free of suffering, how to deal with their own minds and become completely free of suffering. So in that case, if we’re not dealing with what they might or might not need in a temporary situation, we’re dealing with working towards being able to help them develop their own potential so that they don’t experience suffering anymore.
What about the idea that their motivation was not Sure. Yeah. So it doesn’t matter what they were the reason they were doing it for, they still helped us out. Yeah. So it doesn’t matter if they were doing it for their own benefit or not, we still get the kickback from whatever it was they were doing.
Since you’re talking about virtue from the Mahāyāna point of view and not the Hīnayāna where’d he go From the Mahāyāna point of view and not from the Hīnayāna point of view. So someone who is practicing on the Hīnayāna path and is working towards their own liberation through doing this, through working towards their own liberation, creating virtues, Hīnayāna virtues, but they’re not creating Mahāyāna because no matter how much they meditate, they’re not creating the causes for Buddhahood. Alright. Woah. This is getting spooky.
Okay. So You can ask a question. I’ve got a mic. Yep. Yesterday you were saying in the beginning of the lesson that even though we’re Buddhists, we’re still just looking at the advantages of other-cherishing.
And presumably last week was about the disadvantages of self-cherishing. Cherishing. As I said, self-cherishing. Yes. If you keep those things in mind Uh-huh.
You’re still thinking there are disadvantages to cherishing myself. There are advantages to cherishing others. So I’m gonna do this so I’ll come out okay. So how do you get past that? Yeah.
Right. It seems that it’s a It’s a circle. Circle then. Yeah. Yeah.
And I I I don’t know how you break out of that. Okay, so what we’re trying to do by focusing on these things is develop our sense of cherishing others, right? And if we keep developing our sense of cherishing others, then that is the opposite of cherishing self. So by focusing on these things, focusing on these faults and these qualities, we develop the wish to want to focus on others. And if we keep training ourselves and focusing on others, our attachment to self diminishes because these two things can’t exist together.
So we’re trying to give ourselves reasons to focus on others and then through training ourselves in focusing on others our grasping at self becomes less and less and eventually gets completely obliterated. So we’re giving ourselves reasons to do it in the start but then through training ourselves we get rid of the cherishing self. Because of the inability of those two thoughts to exist simultaneously in We are focusing on others. It’s weird. Hey, it goes from one to the other.
If we’re focusing others, then we can’t be focusing on self. So we need to look into our mind and see which one we’re focusing on self or others, right? And then when we’re focusing on others we need to encourage