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 with an unsettling claim from the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation: our worst enemies are not other people but the negative emotions inside us — desire posing as a friend, anger posing as a protector. He sharpens the point with a stark comparison: suffering inflicted by every person on earth combined would be trivial beside what our own anger and attachment have caused since beginningless time. From there he covers three levels of motivation — from wishing for a good rebirth up to bodhicitta, the aspiration to reach Buddhahood for all beings — and why intention is what makes any action Dharma. The session closes on why anger, rooted in ignorance, hits a dead end while compassion, grounded in wisdom and mind’s limitless nature, does not.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 MP 2003 05 13.mp3
UUID: ccbc4f9f-8540-4853-987a-692cd885123e
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Mind and its potential (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-05-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~3,879
So there’s a prayer called the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation by a Tibetan man called Geshe Langri Thangpa. And in that he says, May we have all the good behaviors in our mind stream and may immediately when thoughts and afflictive emotions have come up that will be of harm to ourselves and others may we be able to stop those. And what this means is that we can’t just have a casual attitude towards trying to work with our mind. It has to be something that we deal with on the spot. Because of the destructive influence that negative emotions and afflictive emotions can have on our mind stream, we have to deal with them instantly when they arise and not think casually or without intensity about them.
So what happens is if we let these destructive emotions come up, so for example if we have the thought of desire or attachment to an object then what we let into our mind stream is a negative emotion that will be destructive to our mind stream and to others because we will be concentrating on actually obtaining the object instead of thinking about other beings so it’s destructive to ourselves and others and more obviously if we let anger come into our mind stream then anger is very destructive to ourselves in the fact that it eats away at our the positive karma that we’ve accumulated and can cause us to have a negative rebirth, and obviously it’s destructive towards the people that we focus the anger on as well. So we have to remember that negative emotions or negative states of mind are a really difficult enemy to get at because they are an enemy that pretends to be our friend. When these emotions come up, for example, when attachment or desire comes up, then have the idea that if we get the thing that we’re after, then that will make us happy. So because we have this idea we’re gonna be happy if we get it, then this thought presents itself as a friend because it’s saying, if you listen to me, I’ll you’ll be happy.
So what we need to do is to train our mind away from those, that thought pattern and realize that desire can only ever make us unhappy, can only ever produce us more suffering. So we have to understand that trying to grasp at more things and desiring for more things can never make us happy. Once we’ve understood that, then we can train our mind away from being caught up in desire. It’s the same with anger. Anger comes up as our friend.
Anger says, if you you get if you harm this person then, you’ll be safe if if you have anger then you’ll save yourself from this person harming you but this person this object or this object of our anger can never harm us as much as our negative emotions can harm us No matter how much harm they act out towards us, it’s not something that can harm our future. But if we indulge in negative emotions and we have this anger come up within us, then that is something that can actually harm we have to experience the causes of in the future. So anger and desire, these things are very bad enemies. The enemies that we may have on the outside that we may consider to be really bad, with those enemies, if we’re really kind and we’re really considerate and we think about them all the time, eventually they’ll probably come around to liking us, but with the other types of enemy, this hatred and this attachment, no matter how much we pander to them, they’re only gonna get worse. We can’t make them turn around we can’t turn them around from being negative influence into being a positive influence on us.
They just get worse and worse and worse the more that we pander to them, the more that we encourage them. So in that way, these negative emotions are much worse an enemy than any being could ever be. So these enemies, these enemies of negative thought patterns, of negative emotions, they’re the worst type of enemies we can have. They’re the type of enemies we shouldn’t bear for a second. We shouldn’t be patient with those enemies for a second.
As soon as we have an idea that they’re in our mind stream, we should destroy them as soon as possible because those are the enemies that can really do us the most harm and they’re the enemies that will cause us more suffering in the future. So even if every single being on the planet hated us as an enemy with a fierce hatred in them and they decided they were going to make us suffer as much much as they could, then and they decided they were going to kill us and torture us before they did. At most, we probably only last about a year, and this kind of suffering from that year would be nothing compared to the the suffering we’ve we’ve brought on ourselves since beginningless time by getting caught up in our desires and getting caught up in anger and these negative states of mind. So, these emotions are much more of an enemy to ourselves than any being could ever be. We could only ever suffer a little bit from everybody else, but we can suffer for an eternity from our own side, from our own power.
So we need to stamp on these negative emotions before they can be of harm to us. Most of the time, we don’t recognize our negative emotions and this is why we don’t stop them. We don’t recognize them because we don’t think about what they’re actually doing and how they can be destructive to us. Geshe-la says that he’s the same. If he sits down and really tries hard to think about it, then he realizes that negative emotions cause suffering and if he indulges in negative emotions, he’s going to suffer.
But if he’s just doing his day to day tasks, he forgets all the time. So what is really important is examining our minds, understanding how these negative emotions come into being and how we have to stop them. If we think about it, then we’re actually like a slave to these negative emotions. When these negative emotions come up and we do whatever they tell us to, so we have no control over these types of minds. So if we wanna stop being a slave to them, then every time they come up, we have to stop them.
And the more we stop them, the the less strong they get, the more subtle they get, the the less powerful they become. Eventually, if we keep doing this practice, they completely disappear. These emotions will keep coming up even if we keep trying to stop them because that is the way that our mind is conditioned. The only way that we can completely get rid of these negative emotions is to realize the true nature of reality and realize the emptiness of inherent existence of reality. That’s the only way to get rid of these negative emotions completely because the root cause of these negative emotions is is ignorance and because of our ignorance we we continue to cultivate these negative emotions so that’s the only way we can get rid of them completely but because we don’t have this insight, because we’re beginners, then what we need to do is to deal with them on the spot, to try and deal with them as much as possible when we realize that they’re happening.
And in this way, then they will become more subtle and less powerful. So, we have to stop these negative types of mind patterns on the one hand and the other hand we should be trying to encourage positive patterns of mind, trying to concentrate on liberation, trying to concentrate on compassion, trying to concentrate on loving kindness, concentrating on the impermanence of objects, concentrating on the difficulty of obtaining a precious human rebirth, concentrating on exchanging where we are with where others are so we understand better. But we have to also remember this heart. Our mind has been conditioned since, they say beginningless time, whatever that means, since way back to be to to go towards negative things.
Our mind is really used to. It’s habituated into going quickly towards desire, following our desires, quickly towards anger. So in order to stop these things, have to do a lot of hard work. Have to be patient with ourselves and keep working at it and every time they come up instantly, try and get rid of them. But it’s not something that will be done easily.
It takes a lot of effort. So in order for us to achieve this really hard task, we need a really big motivation and the the really big motivation comes in terms of having this idea that we’re going to achieve Buddhahood because if we achieve Buddhahood then we can be of the most benefit to all beings, and we can help all beings abide in happiness and not experience suffering by showing them how to do this for themselves. So as a Buddha, we can be of most benefit so we have to become a Buddha and therefore in order to be of more benefit quickly, then we want to achieve the state of Buddhahood quicker. So we have this idea, I must achieve Buddhahood quickly in order to be of benefit for all sentient beings. And this idea is what’s called bodhicitta or the heart of enlightenment.
Practitioners of what’s called the greater vehicle of the Mahāyāna, that means that we can’t just try and think about establishing ourselves beyond sorrow or experiencing happiness without sorrow for ourselves. We have to think about all beings. So we start with this idea of recognizing our own suffering and recognizing that none of the pleasures of saṃsāra are actually going to be of long term benefit to us, so therefore we have to turn away from saṃsāra and start focusing on liberation and not just for ourselves but all beings have had some close connection to us in some life and therefore we should be trying to work towards complete Buddhahood in order be a benefit to them as well. And so this mind, thinking, may I quickly achieve Buddhahood for their benefit, is the mind that we should concentrate on. So we should try and keep this motivation with us when we try and do anything that we consider virtuous or good karma.
We should try and have this motivation that we’re doing this in order to be a benefit to all sentient beings because whatever we do, whether it becomes positive or not, whether it becomes a cause for enlightenment or not, depends on our motivation. It doesn’t matter what we do, if we do it with the wrong motivation, then it doesn’t become practicing Dharma, it doesn’t become a Buddhist practice. So at highest, if we can possibly get the thought in our mind, then we should be thinking, I’m doing this in order to attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. And if this is too difficult for us, then we should try and think, I’m doing this in order to achieve liberation for myself. And if this is difficult as well, then at the very least, we should be thinking, I’m doing this in order that in my next life, I attain the rebirth of a God or a human.
If we don’t have one of these three motivations, then what we’re doing doesn’t become Buddha’s practice. If we just have any other idea of, Oh, I’m just studying this for no particular reason, then, it may be of short term benefit to this life, but it’s not Dharma practice. So what we’re doing is concentrating on other beings at this stage. Most of the time we don’t concentrate on other beings. Most of the time we have what’s called self grasping.
We grasp at our concept of self and try and preserve and nourish this self. We don’t think about others, we think about us. If we actually look at most of the things that we do and most of the things that we think, usually about ourselves and not others. What we’re trying to do is turn our mind away from thinking about ourselves and think about all beings. This is a difficult thing to do, but it’s a really important thing to do as well.
We have to be thinking about all sentient beings or all beings. Now, all beings are beyond our ability to count them. We can’t count how many beings there are. And at the same time as we can’t count how many beings there are, we can’t count the qualities of a Buddha who has developed a compassion for all these beings. So that’s how vast our mind needs to be in terms of doing this.
If we’re just thinking about ourselves and what little benefit we can get out of it for ourselves, then it’s like we’re wasting opportunity to be of this enormous benefit and there isn’t as much point to it. So we should be thinking, I want to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, and I want to do it really quickly in this life, and if not this life, the next. And, yeah, he said quickly, quickly. And we with this thought in mind, trying to get this thought as like a a something to concentrate on. And then if we keep concentrating on that mind, then we’re meditating on that that that idea, then that would be a good idea for a couple of minutes.
So have to when we’re talking about the mind of anger, what we have to understand is that the basis of the mind of anger isn’t legitimate. It isn’t valid. What how anger develops is we take an object. First of all, we take the object and we have some either aversion or attraction to the object, usually if it’s anger we have an aversion, and we start by miscomprehending reality and not seeing that the object isn’t truly existent, that exists in reliance on causes and conditions and doesn’t exist truly. So we start with that misconception and then on top of that we put more superimpositions and more ideas that aren’t really there on top of this object in order to develop hatred towards it.
So the reason that we decide that we don’t like something and we angry towards it or we have we get hatred in our mind towards it is because we think that whatever this thing is, it’s going to stop us being happy. It’s going to stop us getting what we want. Alright? So that’s usually the reason that we don’t like something. This isn’t actually true because the desires that we’re putting onto things that the good qualities we’re putting onto the things that we desire are actually superimpositions as well, so therefore this object that we’re angry at isn’t actually a valid base for our anger because the anger is coming from superimpositions we’re putting on it, therefore it’s not a valid base for anger.
On the other hand, the base developing loving kindness, that is that we want all beings to be happy and not suffer, is a valid base to place a mind on, to develop a mind from. So on the one hand, the base of the mind for anger is not valid, and then on the other hand the base for the mind of loving kindness or the base for the idea of loving kindness is valid. So if we have two different ways of thinking and one of them has a valid base and one of them has a non valid base or isn’t reliable base and if we have those two working against each other for a long time then the base the mind or the consciousness that has the valid base will win out over the consciousness that has negative base. No, not negative. The consciousness that has the invalid base or the unreliable base.
So on the one hand, if we’re trying to focus on the mind of anger and we start or the the way of thinking that develops anger, and we concentrate on that, we meditate on anger. We we spend a lot of time meditating on anger and how to develop anger and try and cultivate anger and, put all our energies into becoming angrier and angrier. We may get a little bit braver, a little bit, but it’s not a real base for bravery, but we may get a little bit braver, but apart from that, we won’t get anywhere. Alright? On the other hand, if we concentrate on love, if we concentrate on developing compassion, then our understanding of reality will become finer and finer, and the ultimate is that we will be able to become a Buddha and be able to understand everything.
So, the the the end of the process for both these different kinds of ways of thinking shows how reliable that they can be. On the one hand, doesn’t get us very far, and on the other hand, meditating on compassion and love gets us all the way. So, the angry mind or the angry consciousness, the angry way of thinking, it is not reliable. Relies on basic ignorance of reality. If we don’t have a basic ignorance of reality then we wouldn’t get angry and likewise we wouldn’t have pride and we wouldn’t be attached to all different objects.
What they rely on, what their base is, is this basic ignorance of not seeing reality for what it truly is and therefore these different negative ways of thinking come about. On the other hand, compassion and loving kindness, their basis of understanding is actually wisdom. It’s wisdom understanding the true nature of reality. The wisdom understanding that that we don’t have a true inherent existence and neither do the objects that we are focusing on. Therefore, there is no therefore, our compassion can be limitless towards those.
So if we’re relying on this wisdom, this wisdom that understands the true nature of reality, then our our compassion will grow and grow and grow more and more, and then our understanding will also grow more and more and more, and because we’re working with a valid base. We also have to understand that because the base of anger is not a legitimate base, it’s a base that we’ve constructed, it’s not a base that exists in accordance with the true nature of reality, then we can’t rely on it to give us immeasurable, immeasurable outcome. On the other hand, the nature of mind is such and the, nature of compassion is such that they can give us an immeasurable outcome. The example that’s given is that if for example we were trying to learn long jump, now how far we can jump in long jump depends on our body, alright? There’s only a certain distance that a human body can jump, and we can train and train and train and train, but we can’t get beyond that distance.
But on the other hand, mind doesn’t have that limitation. Mind doesn’t have this construct the same way that the human body does. So if we understand and clarify our mind and get to subtler and subtler and subtler states of mind, then we can eventually achieve omniscience or the omniscience of a Buddha because there is no limit to this mind. So we have to understand the distinction between these two things. One has a limit and the other one doesn’t.
So we kind of have a glimpse of an understanding of the limitless nature of mind when we try and remember things. We know from our experience that if we memorise one thing and move on to something else and memorise it, then we almost have this If we do it gradually, then we can remember a lot of different things, and it doesn’t seem that by remembering one thing, we lose our ability to remember something else. So the more that we remember, the more access we have to the different parts of our mind, then the more that we can actually remember, and this gives us kind of an understanding of, a basic understanding of the limitlessness of mind. But actually at this stage, because we’re only using the gross aspects of our mind, we can’t memorize that much. Because we’re not using the more subtler aspects of our mind, our memory does have a certain cutoff limit.
If we get to be better at meditating and get to understand our mind better and get to use the more subtle levels of our mind, then our ability to remember things and to clearly be able to understand things will become greater and greater as well. So if we go through these meditation practices and we develop the śamatha meditation and develop the calm abiding meditation, develop the ability to remain single pointedly concentrated on one object, and then along with that the special insight meditation or vipaśyanā meditation, then our ability to understand and retain will grow and grow exponentially along with our ability to see clearly into things and our ability to access the more subtle aspects of our mind. What can happen is that if we develop first of all this calm abiding technique of meditation and can concentrate single pointedly on something, then after that we apply that meditation into trying to develop insight into the true nature of reality and then by doing this we develop compassion for all beings and follow this process then at the same time we’re that meditative process then what happens to our afflictive emotions or negative thought patterns is that they grow less and less and less and eventually, they’re completely, eradicated from our minds, and our minds become, purely, soaked with all these good qualities.
And yeah. That was all I had to say. Yeah. Thought there was something else, but it wasn’t. Because the nature of our mind is clear and knowing, that means that we are able to get rid completely of these afflictive and negative thought patterns from our mind stream.
This also means that we have the ability to achieve Buddhahood, and we have the ability to achieve complete enlightenment because the nature of our mind is is clear and knowing. And it’s not only us that has the ability to achieve Buddhahood. Every single sentient being, every being with a a mind has the ability to achieve Buddhahood because the substance of the Buddha’s mind is the same as the substance of our minds because they’re both clear and knowing. They’re both that’s their their definition. That’s their nature.
The difference is the Buddha’s mind is is devoid of the negative emotions and ours aren’t.