Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 33-minute commentary, Geshe Pema Tsering tackles a doubt beginners often feel but rarely voice: if we can’t actually take on other beings’ suffering, isn’t tonglen — the giving-and-taking practice — just pretending? He clarifies the real purpose: strengthening the mind and building positive merit rather than literally swapping karma. He walks through the practice step by step, starting with one’s own future suffering, expanding to loved ones, neutral beings, and finally all sentient beings, anchored by a verse from the Guru Puja prayer. He then introduces converting adverse circumstances — using one’s own illness as a prompt to absorb others’ worse suffering. The Q&A covers whether worry is virtuous, how to manage recurring attachment, why Buddhas cannot simply remove our karma, and how to understand a teacher’s illness without losing faith in their realization.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 D BC 2004 06 22.mp3
UUID: 43312140-89ad-4d81-812e-59b4f6fa051f
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB How to Develop Bodhichitta (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-06-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 33.3 minutes
Words: ~3,159
And then you can extend that out and imagine that it’s not just you’re suffering from this evening but also you’re suffering from tomorrow and then the next day and then the next month and then the next year and then this lifetime and then future lifetimes. And once you get used to this, you ve trained yourself gradually in developing this, then you start with the idea of people that you like a lot. Someone who you have an intense love for or strong feeling for, you imagine taking on their suffering and then you gradually increase the number of beings that you imagine that you are taking suffering from and then those that you feel ambivalent towards and then those you don’t like and then you gradually extend that out to as many sentient beings and develop the idea of all sentient beings that you’re taking on their suffering. You do this in a gradual way of retraining your mind. So in brief, the process of meditation is that we have this idea of taking on all of the sufferings of all sentient beings all of the types of suffering and obscurations that they may experience and we’re dissolving that into the self-cherishing at our heart and then at the same time as we’re doing that then we have the idea of giving all of the positive things we can to all sentient beings all of the happiness that we can to all sentient beings so that means we’re giving away all of the positive qualities that we may have now all of the positive things that we may do in the future and also if we rejoice in the positive virtue of all other beings, of the five classes of beings, then that means that we’re giving away their virtue the reasons for happiness of all beings to all sentient beings.
We’re using the idea of rejoicing in the virtues of all sentient beings to mean that we get this store of virtue and we’re able to give away more and more happiness and more causes for happiness to all sentient beings. You can get into a lot more detail about this practice, but it can basically be summed up by a verse again from Guru Puja Lam Rim, or Graduated Path prayer, that says and thus our venerable compassionate teachers we seek your blessings that all karmic debts obstacles and sufferings of mother beings may without exception ripen upon us right now and that we may give our happiness and virtue to others and therefore invest all beings with bliss. So you’re basically dealing with the idea that you are giving all sentient beings all of the happiness and all the experiences of happiness that they could possibly have in terms of true happiness. You’re giving that away and you’re asking for all the suffering of sentient beings to ripen on us right now so that the experience of suffering, take on the experience of suffering and giving away happiness. So this could be tricky because if beginners, in beginners, as in not bodhisattvas, then we may think, Well, I can’t really do that.
I can’t take on the suffering of all sentient beings. I couldn’t cope. We think, That’s not possible. I can’t take on the sufferings of all The truth is we can’t take on the sufferings of all sentient beings. This means that we may think, Well, this is a bit of a lie, really.
If I’m sitting here thinking, I’m going to take on all the sufferings of sentient beings, I know that it’s not really going to happen, so I’ll sit here pretending, but it’s not really going to happen. How is it? So, we may be thinking, Okay, well, this doesn’t make any much sense then. I’m imagining that I’m taking on all these beings suffering and I’m giving them all the happiness, but I couldn’t take on all their suffering. I can t give them all the happiness, so why am I doing this?
The idea of the practice is to strengthen our minds for two reasons. First of all, is to strengthen our minds, strengthen our abilities, and then again as people who don t have bodhicitta, trying to develop bodhicitta, what we need to do is create the causes for that, to create virtue and to do as many positive things as we can. This whole process of visualization, of giving and taking, is a very powerful positive practice. We can t take on other beings suffering, and we can t give away happiness to other beings. An individual’s personal experience of karma is determined by what their actions are.
You can’t change karma. You can’t change someone else’s karma. That’s up to the individual. Through this practice, what we’re doing is doing something positive and strengthening the mind, even though we may think we we know that this can’t actually happen. So, individual can’t swap our karma with someone else.
We can’t take other people’s karma from them. We can’t give our karma to other people. If that was the case, then Buddhas would have given us their positive merit. So we can t change that around at all. If a being doesn t purify a negative action, then the same continuum that created the negative has to experience the results of that negative action.
It can’t be changed around like that. But this is a practice in order to develop a strength of mind and a positive merit. So, something that’s like an add on or something that you can do in combination with this practice is something that s called converting adverse circumstances through thought into the path to enlightenment. Now, one of these practices is that we may experience all of these different negative experiences illness, enemy, spirits whatever it is that we’re going to experience and we may wish to put the blame onto those and say okay this is the reason for my experience of this negative situation If we’re actually practicing mind training in this way we’re practicing exchange of self and others we can actually use these negative experiences in a positive way and view what would usually be a negative experience as a positive opportunity to develop ourselves. And so we could think that for example if we’re experiencing an illness then we could think that okay I’m experiencing this illness now but that’s actually a good thing because this means that the results of this negative activity I did in the past that was the cause for this illness are now being purified and it can give us the opportunity that we think well the beings in the hell realms and the other realms that have much more suffering in them than the human realm, they are experiencing much worse suffering than this.
May their illnesses, may their suffering be subsumed by my illness, may that become part of my illness, and may I take on their suffering in this way. So this means that through this practice of giving and taking that we can turn every experience that we have that we may have seen as negative into a positive experience, an opportunity for us to practice this idea of giving and taking. Okay, so we can stop there and if anyone has any questions on that. Yes. Do you think worrying about someone else is creating negative karma or is it positive towards helping the other one?
So no, actually, being worried about others, concern for others is a positive thing because if we’re concerned for others then that’s the development of the mind of compassion because we have this idea that we want the other being to be free from suffering. That’s why we worry about them. The worry comes about because we think we want them to be happy. So if we have this thought, I want them to be happy, I’m worried about their situation now, then that’s like a virtuous thought. Also, if we don’t have this thought, I wish them to be happy or I’m worried about them and I want them to be happy, then we don’t try and find a way to help them.
But the thing is, what we have to do in this stage is by being reminded by our worrying about them, we think, Well, how can I help them? And if we can’t help them, then all we can actually do is pray for them, think, May they be free from this suffering they’re experiencing. But there’s no point just worrying about it without actually trying to figure out a way to help them yeah so if we have this idea of worry about someone then we’re going to try and figure out a way to help them yeah but if we are concerned for someone else, we try and think of a way to help them and we have no way to help them, then there s no point continuing on with a worried mind, yes? So, if we can do something to help them, then we should do something to help them. If we can’t do something to help them, then we should try and keep this idea of finding a way to help them, so through prayer, hoping that they find a better situation.
But to worry without being able to do anything is not very helpful or purposeful. Okay. So so it’s not negative if we keep thinking about it, but there’s no point to it. So if we’re thinking about how somebody’s experiencing some kind of suffering, then we should try and do whatever we can to try and get that person out of that experience suffering. If we can’t help them and we can’t find anyone else who can help them, then we really need to reflect on karma and think that they’re experiencing the results of some very intense negative karma and it’s really sad for them to have to experience this, and may they be able to purify that karma and may they not have to experience the results of any more negative karma, so we can think in this way.
That, if we continue to think about it and we can’t help them, no one else can help them, we’re continually worrying about it, there’s not much point to worrying about it. But if we’re continually thinking about the poor things, they’re experiencing this horrible situation, that’s still actually virtuous because we’re still thinking about others. We’re still focused on we’re still focused on how to benefit others or and what we could possibly do to help them. So that’s like the in this case, So you have this idea that there’s this other being, and they’re experiencing suffering, and you don’t want them to experience suffering you want them to experience happiness. So if you have these two ideas that you don’t want them to experience suffering, then that’s the idea of compassion and you don’t want them to experience then that’s love and kindness.
So you’re focusing on these beings in a positive way because you want them to be free of suffering. So if you’re thinking about how you can help people in that, that’s still a positive thought. So you’re recognizing that it’s attachment, you’re recognizing that it’s still that it’s subject to change, but you’re still right. Yes, there is one. The other way to do it is to keep okay.
When we have attachment, we have an object for ourselves. So we have an object for our attachment. It’s something that we’re really that we grab at. We don’t just have attachment without something being we’re attached to. There’s one other way of doing it, is that every time that this thought comes up is to lead our minds away from it.
Our mind would think, Oh, there’s that thought again. I’m attached to that thing and go, Okay, I’m not going there, and then think about something else concentrate on something else. So you avoid the object of the strong attachment with your mind. You don’t let your mind go there. Concentrate on other things, and also focusing on the faults of the object, that it s not a source of true happiness.
So you said you have the idea. Okay. Oh, there’s that thought again. There’s that attachment. There’s that process.
So if you kind of keep stopping it when it comes out, then it’s gonna have less and less and less force when it does. If you go, okay. There’s that thought again. Don’t go there. Go somewhere else.
So then it’s gonna come up less and less. Why is that not? I didn’t actually get the question out yet, he said, of course, if you could take someone’s negative karma, the Buddhas would have taken all their negative karma, right? Okay, so we can help someone’s temporary situation but we can’t can t stop them creating the causes for suffering unless we are a Buddha who can show them the path towards becoming enlightened. We can help someone s temporary experience, but we can t take their negative experiences away from them.
The only way that someone can get rid of their experiences is by becoming a Buddha. So we can temporarily help them, but we can’t take their karma away from them. We can lessen their immediate situation, but we can’t take their negative karma away from them. So in this instance as well, we may be able to help them with their situation. We may be able to see that someone has and is experiencing suffering and we want to do something to help them, yeah?
But we can’t take their experience of suffering away from them and take it onto ourselves. We can’t take their illness and put it in ourselves. We can’t take the things that are happening to them and put it into our own continuum. We can help them deal with what they’re experiencing, but we can’t take the experience away from them. There was something else way before that I’ve forgotten.
The Buddha said, We can help alleviate or help people to experience the karma that they are going through now, but we can’t completely get rid of their causes for experiencing suffering unless we are able to show them how to become arhats or how to become Buddhas. The only people who can do that are Buddhas, so that s the whole point of becoming a Buddha. If the Buddhas could just take the karma away instead of showing us how to do it ourselves, they would have done it. Yes. So, okay, first of all, you imagine this sense that we have of self-cherishing, which is this idea of I don’t want to experience anything bad.
I wanna to experience everything good, I’m the most important person, so it comes down to what I experience. Then you imagine that idea at your heart, a concept of that idea at your heart. And then what you’re doing is taking all the suffering from all other beings and you re bringing that into that idea. So you re dissolving that into that idea. It eats away at that idea because you re taking on the suffering into that concept of self.
And then you re taking away all of the good things from that idea as well. So you have the idea of self-cherishing and then you bring all the negative things into that idea of self-cherishing and then you take all the stuff away from it. It’s counterintuitive, it’s the opposite to what that thought would do naturally. Yes? When one’s teacher manifests something like sickness, if one’s learning is inappropriate for the reasons that the specialist said, what, if anything, can one do?
Uh-huh. Okay, so when this kind of thing happens, then we have to because we’re focusing on the teacher as being a Buddha. So we think that although the teacher is showing that they’re experiencing suffering, they’re not experiencing suffering in the same way that I would experience suffering, because Buddhas have transformed suffering. They’ve gone beyond suffering, so they don’t experience suffering. So then we think the teacher, even though they look like they’re experiencing suffering to us, aren’t actually experiencing suffering.
What they’re doing is showing suffering in order to somehow be of benefit to being. So whether it’s to make people generate compassion or whatever it is, they re showing suffering to somehow be of benefit to beings. This is the way that we need to deal with that situation. They’re manifesting this out of their kindness to beings. They’re manifesting this illness in order to teach people something.
Then we also think about how kind they are for showing this illness. The thing is then we also remember that because they came here to help us and we can only be helped by beings who have taken normal form, then the manifestation of this illness is part of the way that they’ve become a human in order to help us because we can only deal with humans, right? They actually have to have illnesses and have to have all of these experiences as part of their experience of being human. So we think how kind of them to take on this human body with all its problems in order to help us. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t help them because we think, Well, they came here in this human form in order to benefit us so they’re experiencing illness because they’ve been kind to being.
So we should try and do everything we can to help them because they’re taking on this form. We like long life prayers for teachers. Can we dedicate merit to them in order to learn to sort of but there’s, you know, there’s prayers to say the long life. Yeah. Sure.
Can you recite that? Or, you know Mhmm. Okay. So, yeah, that’s fine to pray for the teachers to live a long life and to do a long life prayers is a really good idea because then they’re only here to benefit us, so if we ask them to benefit us then they’re going to keep doing it. There’s a difference between this and the practice of giving and taking because you’re differentiating between illness and suffering.
Illness is suffering to those who perceive illness as being suffering and to those who have gone beyond suffering, then illness isn’t suffering it’s just something that they manifest or put up in order to be in a normal form and so forth. So praying for their long life and that s cool. Beneficial. No, it’s like refreshing. Yes.
And you can say dedicate merit to someone like that as well, can’t you? Yes. So there’s a Tibetan word for cool.