Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 13-minute closing Q&A, Geshe Pema Tsering takes up a question students often trip over: does asking “how is someone doing?” count as idle gossip? His answer turns entirely on motivation — asking from compassion is virtuous; asking from curiosity or self-interest makes it gossip. He then distinguishes between abandoning a non-virtue yourself and actively protecting others from it, using a brief example about a helpless animal to show that compassion-driven care is meritorious but sits outside the formal ten virtuous actions. The session closes with an explanation of why prostrating at the end of a teaching signals completion, followed by Geshe’s farewell encouragement to practice and meditate during a two-month break before his return to the group.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 DB K 2003 11 11.mp3
UUID: d8d502b1-d08c-4d54-8474-df40d2886bd0
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Karma (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-11-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 13.2 minutes
Words: ~896
So he said if you weigh a tiny bit, that would help, but you don’t have to worry at all, like, very much about it, he said. Because the main thing is to watch your motivation. You hear watch your motivation for doing things, and that’s the most important part of this. I mean, the okay. If sorry.
If I should have remembered to do that before. So if you if someone asks about how someone is or someone else is and they actually wanna know how they are and they really have concern for that person, is that idle gossip? Oh, yeah. It depend it it depends on the motivation. So if the motivation for asking these questions comes from compassion or comes from a sense of love or care, then that’s not idle gossip.
If if it’s because of wanting entertainment or because of wanting wanting something from that situation, then then it becomes idle gossip. So it depends on the Motivation. Motivation. Yes. It’s this it it’s the same word in Tibetan but in that as rubbish.
So it is talking rubbish. Rubbish of the mouth, it is. Yes. Anyway. I just guess that think it’s Okay.
Okay. I’ve got to repeat that for the tape. Remember to repeat it for the tape. Is it enough to exercise restraint and abandon the ten non-virtues, or do we have to go further and try and protect or encourage the ten virtuous actions, for example, protecting life and so forth and not speaking at all of idle gossip? So, yes, that that’s different because what you’re doing when you abandon something yourself is abandoning the nonvirtuous action of killing.
When you protect life, you’re stopping other people from killing. So that’s like a a different action. So so you you try and find all different ways that you can stop other people from killing as well as abandoning killing yourself. So that’s that’s a virtuous action as well, but it’s still you are you’ve abandoned the act of killing yourself, and you’re trying to help other people not kill. That’s what protecting yeah.
Sorry. So I said, so what about if there’s a cat and no one’s trying to kill it, but if you don’t help it like it’s a a baby, then it it will die. So and he said, yeah. That’s compassion. That’s practicing compassion, but it’s not it’s it’s virtuous it’s a virtuous thing to do, but it’s not related to these.
Does that make sense? Yep. Okay. So he said that the the way that well, the reason that you prostrate at the end of a teaching is because you’re saying, thank you for the teachings you give me. That’s enough.
Yeah? That’s like an I’ve received enough. And so if you prostrate at the end, that that’s like a to to show thanks for something that’s finished. Alright? And so if you don’t prostrate at the end, then it’s saying it’s not finished, and you’re setting up the situation for a to come for the meeting and the teaching is to continue in the future.
He said you don’t have to if you don’t want to. He said that was good. Okay. Okay. So Geshe said that, yeah, don’t he’s gonna be coming back on the fifteenth of January.
So if you want teachings then, that’s fine. Whenever the date he wasn’t sure I’m gonna go to correct date, but he said, when I get as soon as I get back, that’s fine. I can keep teaching. He said, so we’re that we’re not going to meet for a couple of months, but he’s praying that during that time you’re all kept safe and also that we can meet up again in the future when he comes back. And he also said that he wants to say, Well, he’s gone, and he’s going to try and keep continuing to do practice, and he wants to ask everyone to try and do that as well.
And if you have any spare time, don’t waste it. Try and accumulate merit and try to practice as much as you can. Try and meditate as much as you can, try and think about things as much as you can. And he prays that you’ll have a safe couple of months and that you we can all meet up in a couple of months’ time. So so, you know, Geshe-la said, so it it it works out as a good dependent arising thing.
Right? Because if you guys pray for him, then that helps him. And if you pay he prays for you, then that helps you so you can help each other out. Yeah? And the other thing too is to pray that until we all reach enlightenment that we have a connection and we can continue practicing and working together.
Oh, yeah. I don’t know. What time are we going here? On Saturday. His plane leaves at two thirty.
Yeah. Don’t know. Don’t know. I know. Don’t know.
I don’t don’t know. Except I’m going from Adelaide to Singapore but through Darwin. Okay. So I don’t know. Anyway, he said he’s going from Adelaide to Singapore, Singapore to Bangalore.
Bangalore. Bangalore to Sera Je. Bangalore to Sera. But Bangalore to Sera is in a in a in a car, not a plane. Give me.