Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Geshe Pema Tsering opens this 45-minute session by quoting Maitreya’s Ornament of Clear Realization to define bodhicitta, then uses the classical three-types-of-practitioner framework — aiming for good rebirth, personal liberation, or full Buddhahood — to establish what actually qualifies as practicing Dharma. He asks the audience to set one of these motivations before studying a Dalai Lama teaching titled “The Nature of the Mind is Clear and Knowing.” That teaching anchors the second half: because mind is transformable, the three root poisons — desire, anger, and ignorance — can be countered through their opposites. Geshe Pema illustrates with everyday examples, coveting a car and idealizing a partner, and explains the antidote logic for each before closing with the argument that watching and redirecting the mind is genuine autonomy, not constraint.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 MP 2003 05 06.mp3
UUID: 6053e2f8-f75c-4996-a7ce-a2ec0ef3ca9e
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Mind and its potential (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-05-06
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~4,673
There’s a text by Maitreya which is called the ornament of clear realization. And in this text, Maitreya says, you may ask what is bodhicitta? bodhicitta is seeing the sufferings of others and having seen the sufferings of others encouraging or engaging the mind in oneself that we will attain the state of a Buddha in order to be of the greatest benefit to all of those beings who are suffering. This is what we mean by bodhicitta. Within Buddhism, there’s two different paths.
There’s two different vehicles that people can travel on. One is called the Mahāyāna or the greater vehicle and the other is called the Hīnayāna or the the lesser vehicle. Now developing bodhicitta, this thought to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings means that the person who develops this is progressing as part of the greater vehicle on the greater path. Okay, so apart from there being two vehicles, there’s also three different types of beings they talk about. Now, greatest of these type of beings is the being who works with this intention, this bodhicitta intention is working towards attaining Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.
The middle type of being is someone whose main focus of meditation and practice is achieving liberation from suffering for their own sake. So, because everything they do that’s good or the merit that they accumulate or the good the things that they do that are supposed to focus on good, they are all said to be a cause for them to attain liberation and because that’s their their goal, liberation, and they become a middling type of being. And type of being, the third type of person who is trying to practice Buddhist Dharma is someone whose focus is on achieving a good rebirth in their next life so that is they either want to come back as a god or a human so if someone’s practicing with this as their goal someone’s doing good things and practicing Dharma because with this as their goal then they considered the lowest type of being now someone doesn’t have any of these as their focus that is they don’t have bodhicitta as their focus, they don’t have their individual liberation as their focus, and they don’t have achieving a good rebirth as their focus, then according to Buddhism, they’re not technically practicing Dharma.
They’re not technically practicing Buddhism if that’s not if one of those three isn’t their focus. And so, in Buddhism they talk a lot about Dharma and we talk about practicing Dharma and what that actually means. So, the definition we should be working with when we think about what Dharma means is that at the least something is Dharma if it’s done with the motivation of attaining a good rebirth next time around that’s at the least the next best the thing better to do than that is to do something with the motivation that this will be a cause for achieving liberation and the best part of possible motivation is to work for for our own Buddhahood in order to help all sentient beings so if it’s not one of these three things then it’s not Dharma it doesn’t come under the the definition of that it becomes we call a worldly practice or something that’s we’re doing something in order to gain some benefit in this life. Now, you think about it, most of the things that we actually do are done to try and benefit us in this life. We want to make money, we want to have a comfortable house, that’s all about this life and therefore that isn’t Dharma.
That’s like a worldly path. And so if we want to do something that’s Dharma, at the least we need to have this motivation of we’re doing it in order to get a good rebirth in our next life. So, for example, tonight we’re going to be working from a teaching that the Dalai Lama gave about what the nature of mind is and how we can work with our minds. Now, if we listen to this teaching with the motivation that we’re doing this for some worldly gain in this life, then even doing this activity doesn’t become Dharma. It’s it becomes like a worldly activity, becomes something that we hope will benefit in us in this life so the best thing that we should be trying to think is that I’m listening to this in order that I can attain realizations and attain Buddhahood so I can be a benefit to all beings that’s the best motivation we can listen to teaching with and if we can’t do that then we should listen to it with the motivation that we’re listening to this so we can achieve liberation from suffering for ourselves and at the least we should be listening to it with the idea that we will come with this could be a cause for us to come back in our next life in a good rebirth so if we listen without any of these motivations if we listen to it because it sounds nice or because we think we’ll get some temporal benefit from it, it’s still not practicing Dharma even though it’s a teaching by the Dalai Lama.
So if we listen to this teaching and we have this thought in our mind that there’s so many beings that are suffering so much and we really would like to help them in the best possible way and the best possible way for us to help them is to achieve Buddhahood so we can show them how not to suffer and we have this motivation then we’re that’s the best possible way that we can listen to the teachings. If we can’t do that, if we don’t feel up to doing that, then if we think I’m really suffering and I’m sick of suffering, I don’t want to suffer anymore, I want to be free from suffering and then we have this idea, I’m listening to this in order to myself free from suffering then that’s the next best way to listen to the teachings and if we can’t manage either of those if we at least think I don’t want to be reborn into as an animal or in a lower realm I want to be reborn as human or a God, if we have that as our motivation then we’re still practicing Dharma by listening to the teachings.
If we don’t have any of these motivations and we’re just listening to any old way, then that isn’t practicing Dharma, it becomes like a neutral karma that we’re participating in so the best thing is to try and be a greater person the next best thing a middling type person and the next best best and the next next best thing is to be a small type of dharma practitioner which is focusing on attaining a good rebirth in the next life but what we should really be trying to do is to try and get ourselves into a state where our motivation is actually that we’re doing this in order to be a benefit to all sentient beings and to attain Buddhahood in order to be the best benefit to them. So, if we go into this teasing with the motivation that we’re doing this in order to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings then what we’re doing here becomes incredibly important, a holy thing and something very precious that we should pay a lot of heed to and it’s not just in this instance studying this teaching and thinking about mind that we should do this anytime that we do any kind of a good deed or any try to practice any type of Dharma we should try and keep this motivation in mind it’s not just tonight that we should think about this but anytime we we we are being generous or anytime we’re trying to meditate we should try and keep this motivation in mind that is either to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings to achieve liberation for ourselves or to attain a good rebirth So, if we can because this is a teaching from the Mahāyāna tradition and because this is a teaching by the Dalai Lama, then we should really be trying to cultivate this mind that we are going to attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings so we can help all beings with their suffering.
And once we’ve got this idea clear in our head, then we should try and meditate on this for a couple of minutes. So the idea is to get this idea in your head beings are suffering. I don’t want them to suffer. I want to be of help to them. The best way I can do this is to attain my fullest potential and to have this idea in our head and then concentrate on that idea for a couple of minutes.
And and this is called meditating on bodhicitta just for a couple of minutes. So I just want to know if you all have a good motivation now. Now, the Dalai Lama titled this teaching that he gave, he entitled it, The Nature of the Mind is Clear and Knowing and what they actually mean by mind for starters is our stream of consciousness, thing that makes up our thoughts in our mind. Now, what they mean by clear is that there’s nothing that obstructs this. This is free from obstructions.
In its natural state, it is free from obstructions. And what they mean by knowing is that whatever the situation is that it’s perceiving, then mind knows what that situation is. So because our minds or the way that we think has takes on the aspect of whatever it is that is observing and this is what they mean by clear and knowing, that means that our mind can think all different things. We can have all kinds of different experiences because our mind has this aspect of being clear and knowing. That means that we have the ability to familiarize ourselves with positive things and to get rid of of negative things, for example, hatred and so on.
But it also means that our mind has the ability and often does, is made up of different combinations of these things of good thoughts and bad and good motivations and negative motivations. So minds that are considered or types of ways of thinking that are considered positive is when we’re thinking in terms of compassion, in terms of loving kindness, in terms of renunciation, in terms of being free from hatred of any kind. These are considered positive types of ways of thinking. Negative ways of thinking are, for example, hatred, ignorance, anger, greed, pride, these kinds of ways of thinking. So what we need to know though is what the negative types of minds are and what the positive types of ways of thinking are.
So we can get rid of the negative ways that we think and try and cultivate the positive ways we think. So the most difficult and the most full on of the negative types of thinking is things like hatred, desire, and ignorance. Now, these three are the most difficult to get rid of and the most pervasive or influential of the negative types of mind. So, for example, if someone’s a really angry person and they get angry really quickly, there’s not much it doesn’t take much to set to to encourage their anger, then if they keep trying to cultivate these positive frames of mind, then that will soften how their anger to start off with. Then, it will decrease the amount of times that the anger arises and eventually by cultivating these positive types of mind, they will be able to get rid of their anger completely.
But it’s not something that happens instantly. It takes a lot of years and a lot of patience persistence in order to get rid of the anger. So it’s not just anger that we’re talking about here. There’s other negative emotions like desire, strongly desiring something and having ignorance about things that can also be alleviated by this persistent encouragement of more positive types of ways of thinking or more positive ways of thinking. For example, desire.
If we become very covetous about objects and and have a strong desire come up in us, for example, when we see a a type of car that we really want, that’s something that we we can really experience. It comes up really instantly and go, oh, I want that car. But if we every time we have these thoughts come up, if we start thinking about the actual shortcomings of that car, how it’s not going to last forever, how it’s going to break down and it’s not going to be a persistent source of happiness for us, then our desire for the car lessens somewhat. And if we keep doing these practices over and over again, at the start our desire may come up, but not as strongly as when we started and eventually it will peter out. So we can experience that in our day to day lives.
It’s not something we just have to read in books. It’s something we can actually experience if we put it into practice. Because when we think about it, what we actually concentrate on when we’re looking at things that we desire is the qualities of the things that we really are desiring after. We don’t think about the negative aspects of this car that we want. We spend a lot of time thinking about the qualities of the car, know, in which ways it will be a benefit to us and how much it can help us.
We think about those things where we don’t concentrate on the negative aspects of it and that encourages our desires, encourages our attachment to the car. So what we have to do is turn our mind away from that and start concentrating on the negative aspects as well to get a more realistic understanding about the car. Then in doing so, can lessen our attachment to the car. This also happens with the other negative traits. If we start concentrating on the opposite of those, then they as well become less and less.
Because in actual fact, these these qualities that we’re seeing in the car in the car or whatever it is that we want, they’re actually mistaken. They’re not they’re not they don’t actually inherently exist in the car. They’re not something that the car can give us more and more of, therefore, they don’t inherently exist. Now, the more negative state, the the fact that the car doesn’t actually exist the way that we perceive it to exist and therefore there’s no reason for us to have attachment to it, that is actually closer to the the truth of the situation. So we can rely on this more truthful way of looking at things as opposed to the superimpositions that we are placing on the car and are using to fuel our desire in the first place.
So these things are, the way you change your mind around is an antidote to the way that you’re originally sinking. So for example, still on desire, there’s usually a lot of desirous attachment that goes on between boyfriends and girlfriends or husbands and wives. And a lot of the time when people are either a male, whichever the combination is of these two people, a lot of the time the things that they’re desiring in them aren’t actually there. They’re superimposed on them and if they wait around long enough, they’ll actually find that out. You have this idea that there are a certain way and that that that’s the way they are and isn’t aren’t they wonderful?
They have this quality. They have that quality. They have this quality, but it’s actually mostly superimpositions that we’re putting on top of them the way they actually are to make them more desirous to us. That’s the way that our mind works. So if that’s the situation, then we have to look at the fact that they’re not they’re not everything that we think they are.
So therefore there’s no point being as attached to them as we may be now that’s if our mind is going towards attachment and craving and there’s this this strong attachment happening if our mind’s going the other way and we’re feeling anger alright and and and hatred towards someone, then what we need to do is to look at their qualities because anger and seeing them as a source of anger and hatred is also something we’re superimposing on them. It’s not something that’s coming actually from their side. So if we’re angry towards someone, we look at their qualities, and that acts as an antidote. If we’re feeling desirous or attached towards a situation or a person, then we have to realize that most of these qualities that we see in them are actually things that we’re making up and superimposing on them. It’s not the way that they actually are.
So so what we’re actually trying to do is change this mind because this mind is clear and knowing, therefore, we can change it. That’s the the the main point to it. But what’s actually happening is that since the the stock phrase is beginningless times, it basically means many, many, many, many, many millions of lives ago, that Since then, we have cultivated in our mind attachment, ignorance, anger. So we’ve got attachment, ignorance, and anger. Our mind naturally goes towards these things pretty easily.
It doesn’t take much to get us desire something. It doesn’t take much to get us angry or it doesn’t take much to to show our our ignorance. But on the other hand, if we’re trying to cultivate more positive states of mind like compassion or loving kindness or understanding the true nature of reality, they they take a lot of work. They’re not something that we’re familiar with. They’re not something that we have attuned our minds towards.
So therefore, if we wanna develop them, we have to actually work at it a fair bit. So because of the the way our mind works and that we’re really easily led into ignorance and attachment and hatred, then what a lot of people think when they start hearing about this is that if we start trying to control our mind and don’t let our mind run off after all of our desires, etcetera, then we don’t have any freedom, we don’t have any autonomy, any independence left because we are keeping on having to control our mind. Because our minds it feels like our mind’s natural state is to run hither and thither, then we think that if we start trying to control it, we we lose we lose our independence. So this isn’t actually the case. What’s actually the case is that we do have autonomy.
We do have independence. We have or we should have autonomy and independence enough to be able to distinguish what is wrong and what is right, what is going to cause us happiness, and what is going to cause us suffering, and then to make a choice to do the positive things and to abandon the negative things that are going to cause us suffering. So we we can make a choice without because of our independence, we can make a choice to do positive things, to practice compassion, to practice love and kindness, to try and understand the nature of reality. We can we can make a conscious choice to do that, and we can also make a conscious choice to abandon negative actions, to abandon hatred, to abandon attachment, to abandon abandon ignorance. So if our mind is going along a path that is correct and that suits us, that is going to cause us happiness, then we don’t have to change from that path.
But if our mind is making mistakes and doing actions that will cause us suffering, then we have to have enough independence to pull ourselves back from that and start changing our mind and start practicing more positive states of mind. And that is actually what is more like independence than just following where our mind goes. So the what we’re what we are in actual fact having to do is to cultivate, to encourage, to generate the positive feelings in our minds that will actually cause us to have happiness in the future, and we need to get rid of the negative and destructive states of mind that will cause us suffering in the future. So if we don’t do this, if we just think, oh, yeah. Well, I thought this, so I’m gonna do it.
And and if we have this this going on in our head all the time without checking what we’re thinking and just running after whatever it is that we’re thinking, then that isn’t really independence. Everything that we’re thinking is actually coming from our negative emotions that we’re so habituated in that we don’t really have independence. We’re we’re under this under the spell, we’re under the influence of our negative emotions of hate hatred and desire and and ignorance. So that’s not independence. Being able to make the choice is is is more like real independence.
But actual independence, actual autonomy comes from watching our mind and watching what it is saying, watching where where it is going, then judging whether that is correct or not. Because we usually we don’t do that. Usually, if something comes up in our mind, we just do it. We don’t think about what it is we’re actually sinking.
We don’t watch our minds. We don’t concentrate on the way that our minds are going. So if we want something to eat, we get something to eat. We don’t really think about the fact that we’re wanting something to eat. We’re and we wanna go somewhere, we just go.
We don’t think about what it is why why it is we’re going somewhere or what the consequences of us going will will be. If we get angry, we just get angry. We yell. We fight. We don’t think about it.
We just do it. If we have desires in some direction, then we just go and fulfill our desires and do whatever it is that we need to do in order to fulfill those desires without really thinking about it. It’s not something that we concentrate on a lot. We don’t concentrate on what we’re sinking very much. And in order to gain true independence of mind, we need to concentrate on what we’re actually sinking.
So the two most destructive types of negative mind that we actually experience are desire or attachment and hatred. The way that desire is so destructive is that desire is what chains us to saṃsāra. Desire is the reason that we keep circling in saṃsāra because it is so intrinsic to our being, so embedded in our minds that it happens so quickly we don’t even realize how much we do is based on our desires for something. Anger or hatred is incredibly destructive because what that does is destroy our positive states of mind. It destroys the the positive things that we have accumulated in our mind stream and in our lives because if we have anger, then that destroys our peace of mind and it destroys our our peaceful environments as well.
So these two are both very destructive, and how ignorance is really destructive is that ignorance of the true state of reality, ignorance of how reality really is, is the root cause for both anger and desire. If we understood how things really were, we wouldn’t get angry, and we wouldn’t desire things. So we really have to watch what our mind is doing in order to have some kind of control over our mind. It’s really strange because a lot of of the time when desire comes up in our mind, it comes up as a friend. It comes up as saying, this is mind that goes or this this way of thinking that says, well, if you just have that, you’ll feel better.
If you take that then or if you get that, then you’re gonna feel a lot better. That’s gonna make you happy. So you get a little bit and then that’s not enough, then you get, you know, if I just had a little bit more, I’d feel better. And it’s this perpetual cycle that keeps happening of a little bit more and a little bit something different. And then as a friend to this, it almost says as a friend, anger comes up as a friend to this because anger says, I’m gonna protect what I’ve got and I’m gonna protect myself.
It’s like the anger comes up because we think something we desire is being taken away from us in in one way or another. So anger acts as our friend. It says, I will protect. I will help. But what’s actually happening is that desire and anger aren’t really our friends.
They’re not actually helping us. They got come in the guise of a friend that will bring us happiness, and all they’re actually bringing us is suffering. So at start then, when we actually get things that we desire and we manage to hold on to them for a while, at the start we do get a bit of samsaric pleasure. We get some kind of happiness situation, from getting something we want. So, for example, if we get this new car that we’re so desirous of, and we’re driving around in it, then we’re going to feel happy for a bit.
It’s going to be, you know, I’ve got my car. I’m cruising around. It’s good. So, and then, and it’s the same thing when we’re in a relationship. When we start a relationship, we get the man or the woman that we wanted, then we get some sense of pleasure and happiness from that.
The problem is that it’s actually it’s it’s samsaric pleasure, but it’s not actually true happiness or true pleasure because it doesn’t last. It’s it’s it’s in its nature, it’s the suffering of change is what it’s called. It means that it doesn’t stay as happiness. It turns into suffering in one way or another. Hatred because desire and hatred are not things that are going to bring us happiness.
Desire and hatred are only things that will ultimately bring us to more suffering. We need to stop them in order to experience true happiness because until we are able to stop our desires and stop our hatred, then we actually don’t have any independence. We don’t have any autonomy. We we do whatever we desire. We’re we’re under the control of our desires and our hatred.
When we stop those, then we can experience true independence and autonomy. The problem being that in order to stop those completely, we need to understand the true nature of reality completely. We need to get rid of our ignorance because our ignorance is the the main cause for us to experience desire and hatred, and getting rid of ignorance completely is very difficult. Actually, anger is a lot easier to figure out that is bad because it’s it’s a lot easier for us to see that anger doesn’t help anything. If we get angry, then other people get angry at us and don’t like us, and we don’t create a peaceful situation for us to be in.
So we can see how anger isn’t helping us at all almost straight from the start.