Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of suffering falling from beings like hair from a shaved head anchors the central practice in this 45-minute session with Geshe Pema Tsering on developing bodhichitta. He opens by revisiting Lama Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects — how understanding karma cuts attachment to future lives, and how seeing samsaric pleasures as the suffering of change generates renunciation. He then argues that individual liberation leaves all other beings behind, making full Buddhahood the only adequate motivation. The second half gives step-by-step instructions for Tonglen, the giving-and-taking practice: taking on all beings’ sufferings — from hell-realm torment to a bodhisattva’s subtle obscurations — as black smoke destroying self-cherishing at the heart, then sending out happiness. Geshe Pema acknowledges the practice grows daunting once concept meets contemplation, and offers beginners a gentler start: taking on only their own day’s suffering.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 D BC 2004 06 22.mp3
UUID: f143bece-859a-4226-8329-c41a28e97f13
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB How to Develop Bodhichitta (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-06-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~3,744
Okay. In the three principal aspects of the path, Lama Tsongkhapa said, If we frequently contemplate the cause that cause and effect are non deceptive and the sufferings of saṃsāra, we stop the allure of future lives. Now, what this is referring to is that if we concentrate on how cause and result or karma affect us and how they are never deceptive. Happiness always follows from positivity and suffering always follows from negativity. If we understand that non deceptivity, then we will stop focusing on this life and also stop focusing on the allure of future lives.
So, at the moment, we have difficulty developing a mind striving for liberation or the mind of renunciation, which is the same thing. We have difficulty in this because we lack familiarisation and a strong belief in cause and effect. If we had a strong belief in cause and effect, then we would naturally work towards liberation because we would want to get out from under the sway of cause and effect. But because we haven’t familiarised ourselves with cause and effect, with karma, with the concept of karma thoroughly, then we’re still attached to our future experiences and even this life. Previously, last week, talked about the first two lines from this verse, which say, This life with leisure and endowment, which is difficult to find, is brief.
By familiarizing the mind with this, we stop the allure of this life. So in these two sections, we have the way to stop attachment to this life and how to stop attachment to future lives. And so if we want to stop attachment to this life, we think about death and impermanence and how it’s not going to last. If we want to stop attachment to future lives, we think about cause and effect. Through these two different sections of this verse, we’re able to develop the mind of renunciation.
Without our understanding of these things, it means that the development of the mind striving for liberation or the mind of renunciation is something that we don’t have. It’s difficult for us to cultivate and to experience, and that is the thought of wishing for liberation or seeking renunciation from saṃsāra. Now, reason that it’s difficult for us to develop this idea is because we don’t understand the nature of Samsāra. We don’t understand the nature of suffering properly. Through not understanding suffering, we’re actually attached to suffering in that we may do virtuous actions but because our virtuous actions are motivated by wanting happiness or a positive experience in either this life or in future lifetimes then what we’re doing actually becomes a cause for us to experience saṃsāra.
Or, I guess, I said, at least it is if you’re anything like him. He said every time that he thinks about something, it’s usually, Wouldn’t it be really good to have some kind of happiness in this life? Or one of the different types of happinesses that gods and humans experience. That’s our idea of happiness. That’s what we concentrate on when we think about experiencing happiness.
It’s the happiness that’s experienced in saṃsāra as a god or a human. We don’t really have a concept of what true happiness is, what the extinction of suffering is, and this true happiness that we experience when we attain nirvana. Yeah. So we don’t actually have this true understanding of the happiness of liberation, let alone having an understanding of the happiness of Buddhahood. And so what this means is that with this lack of understanding that anything that we do, any positive action that we do, is contaminated by the motivation with which we do it.
We do it with the idea that our idea of happiness is an experience of happiness, which is as a god or a human. So this means that we’re constantly creating the causes for being reborn in saṃsāra again. So we’re reborn because of our karma. We may have done positive actions to be reborn as a human, but because we have this attachment to the happiness of gods and humans, then everything that we do that’s positive becomes a cause for us to experience being reborn in saṃsāra. We’re reborn in saṃsāra because of our karma.
It’s mainly our attachment to the idea of happiness that means that we get born in the realms that we have been born in. If we were actually focusing towards true happiness, then we would be creating the causes for true happiness. So what we need to know then is, we need to know what our suffering is, and we need to understand that this happiness that we are so attached to, which we experience in the human and God realms, isn’t actually happiness it’s a form of suffering it’s the suffering of change. If we can understand this, if we understand that these things that we actually grasp after aren’t going to give us true happiness, that they are by their nature suffering, that we can say that we may experience them as happiness and we may perceive them as happiness. But if we understand that they aren’t happiness, that they’re suffering, this form of suffering which is the suffering of change, they’re unstable, then we won’t be as attached to them.
If we’re able to understand that these things that we now view as happiness are actually a form of suffering they are, by their nature, suffering then we will want to know what is true happiness, and then we can see that true happiness comes about through the achievement of liberation or through achieving Buddhahood. Seeing the faults of these things that we regard as happiness at the moment, seeing the faults of the happiness of being a human, the happiness of being a god, then we won’t want to strive after those kind of happinesses. We’ll want to get rid of those kind of happinesses, because we’ll understand that they are, by their nature, suffering instead of actually being the happiness that we think they are at the moment. So, abandoning them, throwing them away, not striving after them, will start to look towards what true happiness is, which is liberation or attainment of enlightenment. So even if we were to focus on our individual liberation from suffering our individual nirvana if we were to focus on achieving that and motivate ourselves by thinking of this, then this would only bring about the liberation of one being.
It wouldn’t help any of the other beings who have been our mothers in previous lifetimes. It wouldn’t help any of them if we were to achieve liberation. We can say this about the beings who have achieved great qualities by becoming arhats themselves. They have gotten themselves out of saṃsāra, but they aren’t in a position where they can get other beings out of saṃsāra. So even though they have achieved great personal qualities and developed themselves in this way, they aren’t able to get other beings out of that situation.
In order for us to repay the kindness of these other sentient beings, then what we really need to do is to work towards enlightenment. We need to work towards the full enlightenment of a Buddha in order to be of the most benefit to all sentient beings. If we are a fully enlightened Buddha, then we can lead all sentient beings and establish them in a state beyond sorrow. If we’re not a fully enlightened Buddha, we can’t do this. So this is the motivation that we need to try and develop the motivation of the enlightened mind, the motivation of bodhicitta.
This is what we need to focus on. So this means that we should carefully check our motivation before we do anything, before we say one Om Mani Padme Hum, we should check our motivation to see that we’re doing this in order to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. Before we read anything that can improve our mind, we should see what our motivation is for doing that before we listen to teachings, before whatever it is we do that’s positive. We should try and check our motivation to make sure that we’re doing whatever it is we’re doing for the benefit of all sentient beings in order for us to become a Buddha. That we should check our motivation to make sure that we are doing it in order to become a Buddha, to be a benefit to sentient beings.
Okay. So the main thing that we need to focus on then is the development of the mind, the mind of bodhicitta, the bodhi mind or the enlightened mind. We need to start developing that and make sure that that’s our motivation for whatever it is positive that we’re going to do. So in this instance, we should think that the reason that I’m listening to these teachings which are from the graduated path the reason that I’m going to try and understand these teachings, put these teachings into practice and meditate on these teachings is in order for me to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. When we say this, attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, there are two parts to this equation.
One part is to benefit all sentient beings, and that’s fulfilling the wishes of others or fulfilling the purpose of others. And then there s also the part to it which is we ourselves achieve Buddhahood, so that s fulfilling our own purpose. In developing the bodhi mind, then we have this idea of fulfilling ours and others purpose. With this idea in mind that we’re doing this in order to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, we should meditate for a few minutes. So, we should in order to benefit all sentient beings, I’m going to become a Buddha and meditate on that.
May this be a cause for me to become a Buddha. Meditate on that for a few minutes. Bookmark. So today, this evening, we’re going to go through the actual contemplation on the Exchanging Self for Others actual meditation procedure. Last week and the week before, we talked about the faults are resulting from self-cherishing and the good qualities resulting from cherishing others and this is what is explained in a verse from Guru Puja Lamrim prayer which says: This chronic disease of cherishing self is the cause giving rise to our unsought suffering.
Perceiving this, we seek your blessings to blame, begrudge and destroy the monstrous demon of selfishness. Having explained what the good qualities of cherishing others are and what the faults of cherishing self are, we then need to find a way to exchange those things to think about cherishing others and not cherishing self. Now when we talk about cherishing others and not cherishing self, what we’re basically talking about is liking or finding appealing, focusing on others as opposed to focusing or liking ourselves and thinking of ourselves as being the most important things. Up until now, since the beginning of this time, we have been constantly focusing on ourselves. We’ve been considering ourselves to be the most important thing, focusing on ourselves as being the most important thing.
If we watch the way that our mind works, then we’ll see that probably most of the thoughts that we have during the day during our lifetimes are about how important we ourselves are and are focused on this idea of self and how to nourish and cherish self, which is why we’re in saṃsāra still. It’s a different situation for bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas cherish others. bodhicitta is bodhicitta. When you get rid of self-cherishing and develop other cherishing, then that’s how you develop bodhicitta. We need to come up with a way of changing them around.
When we talk about the exchange, it’s equalization and interchange of self and others. What the equalisation is referring to is the fact that all sentient beings, just like ourselves, want to experience happiness and don’t want to experience suffering but are stuck in saṃsāra because of their misperception of reality and therefore experience suffering. In this way we’re all equal. The interchange self and comes about when we exchange the cherishing feeling of self we have for the cherishing feeling of others. So it doesn’t mean that we turn ourselves into someone else because that’s not possible.
We have to focus on what is possible and what is possible is for us to change this attitude of self-cherishing into an other cherishing attitude. Now the idea of changing this self-cherishing for other cherishing is likened to the fact that when you live on one side of a mountain, then the other side is considered the far side or the other side, right? But then if you went and lived on the other side of the mountain, then this side would be the far side, if that makes sense. So if you live in a place for a while, then somewhere far away is considered far away, But if you move somewhere far away then this would be considered far away. Okay, so your perception of where you are depends on your circumstances.
Another example that’s given in the commentary to this Guru Puja Graduated Path prayer, is that we can’t have a solid idea of how to cherish people because we may have someone that we really dislike that’s like an enemy to us and really have bad feelings towards them, but if they were then to go on and show us great kindness and become very close to us, then the way that we have perceived them would change. We may have started off not liking them at all, but if they’re continually kind to us, they’ll become our friend. What this is showing is that we have the ability to change the way we think and stop thinking of self-cherishing and start focusing on other cherishing. So the actual way that we do this in meditation is based on what’s called Tonglen or Tonglen. The Tong in that refers to the idea that we send out all of the positive things that we experience, all the happiness we experience, the virtue we have that could act as a cause for us to experience happiness. We give that away to all sentient beings.
We send that away. Then LEN part is talking about taking on the sufferings of sentient beings. It s taking away all of their suffering. We re taking that into ourselves. So it’s a practice of giving and taking.
So this practice of giving and taking of Tonglen is actually based on the development of compassion and loving kindness. So first of all when we talk about the len part of Tonglen which is the taking this is based on the idea of compassion if we have great compassion then we’re going to have the wish to take other beings suffering away from them and we have the idea of taking their experience of suffering away from them because this is the definition of compassion to wish that other beings are free from suffering. So if we have great compassion, the idea of taking other beings suffering is a natural thing. The giving aspect is the development of love and kindness because if we’re giving to sentient beings, then we’re giving them happiness and then the idea of love and kindness is this idea that we want beings to be happy so within the practice of giving and taking, within the practice of Tonglen we have this both of these things, loving kindness and compassion and it’s said that loving kindness and compassion are the main aspects of practice sorry, it s saying that giving and taking meditation practice is actually a practice of developing bodhicitta through compassion and loving kindness.
I guess they said, so therefore, that makes loving kindness I mean, the Tonglen practice, giving and taking practice hard. Do you think it’s hard? Okay. So, it sounds good if we say, Ah, Tonglen, that sounds good, yeah? And we have this idea of giving and taking, that’s a nice meditation, right?
But when we actually start thinking about it, it gets a bit bit scarier, right? Because what we’re talking about is giving away all our happiness and taking on all other beings suffering, and that’s a much more difficult thing to get our head around and a very difficult thing for us to do as well the reason it’s a difficult thing for us to do is because we’re so habituated into we’re so used to cherishing ourselves or grasping onto this idea of self that we have since time before beyond the concept of time we’ve had this idea of self and on top of this idea of self we’ve also had this way of cherishing self or this way of doing things where we cherish self and don’t necessarily cherish others. What we’re trying to do here is to change that around, so it’s very difficult for us to contemplate the idea of giving away all of our happiness and taking on others’ suffering. Okay. So in the root text of the the this Okay.
Okay. Okay. So in the root text that this practice is taken from, it talks about the idea of training alternatively in giving and taking, like this idea of taking away suffering and then giving happiness, but we don’t necessarily have to do it that way. We can do it in different ways. You can have this idea of giving away all happiness or focusing on just giving away happiness, or you can also focus on taking away suffering, depending on what is easier to get your head around.
So in the text it says, Train alternatively in giving and taking, but you can actually do it in different ways, depending on what is easiest for your mind, what’s the ear that your mind can actually do. Although this may be the case that we can practice this in different ways, it actually goes on to explain that if you are giving away happiness to people who are experiencing suffering, this isn’t going to be as beneficial as if you first of all imagine taking away their suffering and then sending out happiness towards them. Because if people are experiencing suffering and you send out happiness to them, then the best they’re going to experience is a combination of suffering and happiness, so that would still be like a samsaric experience for them that you’re imagining. The best thing to do in that case is to first of all imagine you are taking away the suffering of all sentient beings and after they have their suffering taken away, you are giving out happiness to them. In this way, in order to develop this idea, we should first of all think that we are removing the suffering from all sentient beings who have been our mothers and shown us great kindness in order to generate compassion.
Then we should visualise that the suffering is being shed from their being as if they had shaved their head and their hair is falling off. The same way if you shave your head, the hair falls all the way and disappears, and in the same way you can visualise that you are taking away the suffering from sensitive beings and they’re losing their suffering. And then after their suffering has gone away, then you imagine that this suffering dissolves into the self-cherishing at the heart that we have at our heart. It becomes like black rays and dissolves into self-cherishing at our heart. Okay.
So then we can go into this bit where it’s talking about dissolving the suffering into self-cherishing in our heart. We can do this in much more detail. We can think about all the different sufferings that beings are experiencing in the hells, through heat and cold in the hungry ghost realms where they experience suffering of hunger and so forth, and in the human realms, in the god realms, all of the different beings all the way up to tenth level Bodhisattvas. Although tenth level Bodhisattvas may not have suffering, they still have mental obscurations, obstructions to omniscience and obstructions to Buddhahood. So we imagine that we’re taking all of this into a self-cherishing everything from the gross manifest sufferings of the hells all the way up until tenth level bodhisattvas’ mental obscurations.
And so in this way, then we imagine that all of the suffering and all of the obscurations, like I said, all of that is dissolved into self grasping heart. We imagine that we have this self grasping at the heart and all of these things dissolved into that through black smoke into that self grasping to destroy the self grasping at our heart. And then we imagine after that that all sentient beings are completely liberated from any obscuration of thought or any experience of suffering that they may have and then we get all happy about that and then we meditate happily on that idea that they’re completely free of all of these types of suffering and obscuration. So when you’re doing this meditation and imagining that you’re taking on the sufferings and the obscurations of all sentient beings, be careful not to take on the sufferings or perceived sufferings of either your teachers, your gurus or the Buddhas, because buddhas don’t have suffering and if you’re focusing on your teacher as being a buddha then you imagine that they don’t have suffering either.
You don’t have to take on any suffering from buddhas or gurus. Now for some people starting off with this idea of meditating on taking on the sufferings of all sentient beings is a very big thing and a very difficult thing. So there are ways of developing this idea, this meditation for these kind of people. Now, the first thing to do is, if you are having problems with the idea of taking on other suffering, is to start with the idea of taking on your own suffering. So in the morning you meditate on taking on your own suffering that you’re going to experience in that day.
So suffering you’re going to experience in the evening you imagine that coming in and eating away at your self-cherishing.