Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using Nāgārjuna’s Precious Garland as a starting point, Geshe Pema Tsering traces the mechanics of samsaric cycling — how grasping at the five aggregates generates self-grasping, which generates karma, which generates rebirth — and then works through three analytical reasonings for establishing emptiness: dependent origination, impermanence of nature, and the parts-based analysis of selfhood. He then maps the Lamrim sequence from renunciation through great compassion to bodhicitta, clarifying why emptiness alone leads to liberation but not Buddhahood. The talk’s most grounded passage uses a hundred-dollar bill to illustrate genuine renunciation — weighing two weeks of food against the karmic cost of grasping — before Geshe frankly admits he does not find renunciation in his own mind. The session closes by introducing the life story of Śākyamūni Buddha as a lived example of the path just described. Suited to practitioners with some Lamrim background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 PP 2003 07 01.mp3
UUID: b78e4a88-116e-4883-bb04-f99be9798875
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Presenting the path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-07-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~4,117
So, Nāgārjuna, in A Precious Garland, a text that he wrote said He said that until we die, we have these aggregates or these collections of things and we grasp at these collections of things. By grasping at those collections of things, then we grasp at existence and because we’ve grasped it at existence, then we have what’s called self grasping. Through self grasping, we then have karma, we develop karma and because of karma, then we’re born again, which means that we have these groups of things that we classify as aggregates or we exist. So, what this means is that what he’s describing here is the circle that we go through. So, we start with grasping at our aggregates, grasping at our form and our feelings and our thoughts as if they are real.
Then, because of that, we go through the process of becoming or we enter into Samsāra. Once we enter Samsāra, then we have self grasping. Through our self grasping we create karma, and the karma is what brings us into saṃsāra, so it acts in this cyclic way. So to start off with, as a non-Ārya being or as someone who hasn’t seen emptiness directly then we see our five aggregates as being truly existent so that’s what means by we grasp at our five aggregates, we grasp at our aggregates. Now the five aggregates are form form feeling, form feeling, discrimination, compounded phenomena and consciousness.
So these are different groups of different things that we, when taken together, we consider to be ourselves and as non-Ārya beings, we grasp at them as being inherently existent. Now, because we’re grasping at them as being inherently existent or truly established, then we think we exist as well, so that comes across as self grasping. And because of self grasping, we end up with two things: because we grasp at ourselves as truly existent, we end up with mind that cherishes ourselves and a mind that wants to protect ourselves. So, from the cherishing of self, then we have this desire to fulfill our desires. So, we have a mind that is searching the fulfillment of desires and then when those desires are not met, we have anger coming about.
So, through those things, then we develop more karma. So, those things act as a cause for us to develop more karma. In order to stop us circling in saṃsāra or taking rebirth, then we need to stop the collection of karma. In order to stop us collecting a negative karma, then we need to look past our self grasping. The way that we look through our self grasping is by realizing emptiness, realizing that things are empty of true existence.
That’s the way that we stop the cycle, but if we don’t stop the cycle then we continue to create karma which in turn means that we take rebirth which means we have these aggregates that we then cling to and by the power of self grasping create more karma. So, karma causes us to the collection of negative karma causes us to keep cycling in saṃsāra or in cyclic existence. Now, if we want to see through this, then we have to stop creating karma the way that we stop creating karma is to see that our self grasping isn’t isn’t real the way that we grasp at the five aggregates is as if they are real inherently existent things but they don’t even contain an atom of inherent existence or truly existent true existence so what we need to do is to see how things truly exist see the way that things truly exist and if we are able to see the way that things truly exist then we will stop grasping at our aggregates as being truly existent and then we’ll stop grasping at ourselves as well. We’ll stop holding ourselves to be important because we’ll see that ourselves don’t truly exist.
Now, what we need to do in this case is to establish that this mind grasping itself, this idea of us that we hold tightly to is what’s called a wrong consciousness. It’s not a valid consciousness. It’s nothing that is actually based in the true nature of things. So, once we recognize that as a wrong consciousness, then we will stop clinging to ourselves as being inherently existent. Once we stop clinging to ourselves as being inherently existent, we’ll stop creating karma or negative karma in order to support that concept of ourselves as being truly existent, and then we’ll stop being reborn in saṃsāra.
Seeing the true nature of reality, seeing voidness, puts a stop to us creating new karma or new saṃsāra karma. The main thing that it stops is what’s called a throwing karma, the karma that causes us to be reborn into the next life. Once we’ve seen the true nature of reality directly, then we stop developing this karma that causes us to be reborn. By continually meditating on the true nature of reality or emptiness, the lack of inherent existence, then the other karma that we’ve accumulated since beginningless time gradually becomes weaker and weaker and our understanding becomes firmer and firmer until the end our negative karma from beforehand is completely obliterated, is completely cleared away, and at that stage we reach liberation or nirvana. Okay, so, from all this, we can see that it’s incredibly difficult to achieve liberation.
In order for us to achieve liberation, then we have to understand the true nature of reality directly. In order for us to understand the true nature of reality directly, then we have to understand that these things that we think make up ourselves, like our consciousness and our form and our feeling, those things aren’t truly existent. We have to be able to stop grasping at them as if they are truly existent, as if they exist the way that they appear to us. That’s very difficult for us to do. We tend to think that our body and our consciousness and so forth are definitely truly existent and we’ll do whatever we can in order to help them out.
In order to establish this understanding of the way that things truly exist, oh dear the way that things truly exist, and there’s many different analytical reasonings that we can use. So, the first one that’s usually described is what’s called a dependent origination or dependent arising. Now, what this means is that if there’s causes and conditions for something to exist, then it exists, but it doesn’t exist merely because of itself. It’s dependent on causes and conditions. That’s the first one.
The next one that’s used to describe things is by trying to understand their nature. So by trying to understand something’s nature then we will see that it is that all functioning things arise, abide and disintegrate and they’re changing in every moment. So we can see that there isn’t anything that’s truly established as their nature. The third way of trying to establish emptiness is by the theory of saying something that we hold to be really there is dependent on its parts so for example if we say that we are ourselves and we think, okay, what is it that makes up me? Is it my physical body? Is it my consciousness? Is it my feeling? Which one of these is me?
And then we can see that it’s none of these things, and by establishing that we don’t exist in any of those different groupings, then we establish that we don’t truly exist. So, this is the way that we the reasonings that we use in order to try and understand emptiness. Once we’ve understood emptiness, then liberation is easy. So, if we use these theories in order to understand emptiness, then the cessation of suffering and liberation from suffering becomes an easy thing to accomplish. Okay, so just by merely focusing on emptiness and understanding the true nature of reality, then we can achieve liberation or nirvana, but we can’t achieve Buddhahood in this way.
In order for us to achieve Buddhahood, then we have to have the mind that’s called bodhicitta, the mind seeking to attain enlightenment, to be of benefit to all sentient beings. So if we don’t have this idea of working for all sentient beings towards final enlightenment, then we can’t actually achieve that enlightenment. Understanding emptiness can lead us to liberation, but it can’t lead us to Buddhahood. So in order to achieve Buddhahood, we need bodhicitta. But then even before bodhicitta, in order to achieve bodhicitta, we need a renunciation.
We need to have a mind that’s turned away from the sufferings of saṃsāra, whatever their form, and is working towards liberation. The reason that we need a renunciation before we can develop bodhicitta is that without understanding our own suffering we can’t understand the suffering of others and without understanding the suffering of others we can’t develop what’s called great compassion or the wish that all beings be free from suffering So, we need to develop renunciation before we can attain great compassion and by developing great compassion then we can develop bodhicitta. So, before any of these comes renunciation. So we need this thing called great compassion that acts as the key towards attaining bodhicitta, which we need to attain Buddhahood. Now before this we said we needed renunciation.
Now what renunciation is, is this is a mind that’s turned completely away from saṃsāra or cyclic existence. This doesn’t mean just turning away from unpleasant aspects of cyclic existence, but all the excellent things in cyclic existence as well. Anything that we think is happiness or pleasure in samsaric existence, in order to develop renunciation, we have to see it by its true nature, which is another type of suffering. So when we have a mind that without any effort on our part is continually striving towards liberation and has completely turned away from the attachments of cyclic existence, the pleasurable experiences of cyclic existence, that’s when we’ve developed renunciation. So, if we think about it, then renunciation is probably something that we don’t have at the moment.
We may think that we have renunciation or we may find that we can develop an idea of renunciation in our minds when we concentrate really hard on it and use a lot of analysis to get to that state, but when it comes to our day to day lives, then we don’t have renunciation. Renunciation is working towards liberation in the same way that we work towards saṃsāra in our daily lives by trying to get working to get the excellent things of saṃsāra, working to get money, working to get happiness for this lifetime, working to get comfort for ourselves. And the effort that we put into those is actually the opposite of renunciation. Renunciation is putting that effort into getting out of Samsāra and we spend most of our time working to stay in Samsāra by working towards these the excellent bits of Samsāra. Now, so, we may think that we have some sense of renunciation, but if we keep watching our minds this is how we understand what true renunciation is.
We have to watch our minds, and we’ll see that most of the time, our minds are chasing after saṃsāra as opposed to renouncing it. So if we watch our minds, can see that we don’t actually have this idea of renunciation at the moment if another way of looking at renunciation is that renunciation a mind with renunciation sees saṃsāra as being like poison and in the same way that we wouldn’t knowingly drink poison, a mind that is renounced wouldn’t knowingly indulge in Samsāra, so we can see that we don’t really have this. If we want a car for example, if someone says to us here have a hundred dollars, we don’t have a mind that thinks oh that hundred dollars or that car that wanting that could be poison, we don’t have that mind at all, we think I want the money and I want the car, so we have we don’t we don’t stop that, we don’t have haven’t stopped those those thoughts in our head, and so therefore by not stopping them then we haven’t stopped Samsāra. In order for us to stop Samsāra, we have to stop our attachment to the good things of Samsāra as well as the negative things of Samsāra, so we have to work to stop our attachment to the excellent things in saṃsāra as well as the negative things.
So Geshe says when he watches his mind, he doesn’t see renunciation there at all. He said when he he watches his mind, he sees himself wanting things of saṃsāra and hasn’t been able to abandon the wanting of the different things in Samsāra from his mind. So he thinks it’s a very difficult thing to be able to develop this renunciation because it’s completely abandoning any of the things we want or we work towards of a samsaric nature. Even the next lifetime can be very difficult we spend so much time trying to make ourselves comfortable in this lifetime and enjoy to get the things we desire in this lifetime that we can have trouble trying to concentrate even on the next lifetime let alone try to develop renunciation, let alone try to develop bodhicitta. Just even thinking about the next life instead of this can be incredibly difficult.
So the only way that we can cut through Samsāra, the only way that we can stop ourselves collecting karma that will cause us to cycle in Samsāra is by analyzing, is by working through what saṃsāra is because at the moment we think saṃsāra is alright really we may not say have that thought exactly but the way we act is that saṃsāra is alright but saṃsāra is actually nothing but faulty it’s nothing but fault even for example if someone gives us a hundred dollars we think oh yay I’ve got a hundred dollars but they’re grasping at the hundred dollars is not a good thing having a hundred dollars or feeling desire towards a hundred dollars isn’t a good thing having that grasping at a hundred dollars means that we’ve created a negative we’ve done something negative and therefore we have the negative karma that results the negative result to experience from a negative action so the the hundred dollars in fact is actually or the grasping at hundred dollars is actually a cause for us to experience suffering in the future so we have to see it for what it truly is which is a faulty thing and something that’s going to cause us suffering as opposed to the way we look at it now which is as a good thing.
Need to stop this grasping where it is now, because grasping it even a hundred dollars is the cause for not only more suffering in this life, but it’s a cause for being reborn in Samsāra in the next life. And that may not necessarily be as a human either, that we can be reborn as a reborn in a hell realm or in a hell state. We can be born as a spirit or a hungry ghost or an animal or in a more difficult human existence. Those are the results of partaking in desirous actions or desiring the things of saṃsāra. So so this is the way we have to look at it.
We’ve gotta take this hundred dollars again. Now the good things about a hundred dollars is that it could maybe in India, it’ll give us a food for a month, but here, we’ve decided two weeks. Okay. So it’ll give us food for two weeks. That’s what a hundred dollars can do for us.
That’s on the one side. Okay. So okay. So two weeks. Two weeks we get food for, that’s on the one hand.
On the other hand, by grasping at the hundred dollars we can be reborn in a lower realm, we can experience some kind of suffering in the future, some kind of horrendous suffering in the future. So if we weigh the two things up, then the one hundred dollars is actually going to do us more harm than good. So we have to think of it that like this. Grasping at the one hundred dollars may get us food for two weeks, but it also could get us a rebirth in hell, or it could also get us some kind of intense suffering in the future. We have to look at things from both sides, and if we do it that way, then we can see that grasping one hundred dollars really isn’t worth it.
So if we keep doing this, if we keep applying this principle in the way we look at things, then we’ll understand that not only the hundred dollars, but even the way that we grasp at our body, the way that we grasp at all our possessions, anything that we grasp at is a cause for us to be born in saṃsāra so anything we grasp that really isn’t worth it anything that we are desirous of really isn’t worth it if we keep doing this if we keep thinking like this over and over again about anything that we are grasping anything that we are desirous towards then we can actually develop renunciation. If we keep doing this, then that’s the way we can develop renunciation. So if we see that all the things of Samsāra, all of the pleasures and all of the objects of saṃsāra that we grasp at, if we see that they actually don’t have many good qualities and they actually have a lot of faults, and if we keep doing a lot of analytical meditation on this and keep doing mind training reminding ourselves of this and we do that as much as we can, then eventually we’ll develop this idea of renunciation that may be very strained and fabricated.
And then if we keep working at it, that fabricated renunciation will slowly turn into real unfabricated, effortless renunciation and we’ll be able to develop renunciation. So if we keep doing a lot of meditation on this, if we keep analyzing things, if we keep looking at the qualities and the our thoughts of all the objects that we’re grasping at, then we will do as well as developing this mind that’s turned away from them, is not grasping at these objects or pleasures of saṃsāra at the same time we’ll understand that liberation is possible that by not grasping at these things that by not having our mind turned towards saṃsāra objects and desires, we’ll begin to see that liberation, the cessation of suffering is also possible. Along with this mind that’s abandoning negative things, we’ll have a mind we’ll develop a way of thinking that’s working towards liberation at the same time. The two things will come together. So until we develop renunciation, then we’re stuck in saṃsāra.
Even though it may seem like a difficult thing to develop, it’s what we’ve got to keep working at, it’s what we’ve got to keep training our mind in, the thing we need to focus on. Even though it may seem difficult, we don’t have any choice. Unless we work on it, we’re stuck here. See, the thing is that we don’t actually have much familiarity with working towards liberation. It’s not something that our mind is is attuned to or it doesn’t come naturally to our minds.
We have had, however, the same consciousness since beginningless time that has been working towards that’s been working towards satisfying our own, I’m sorry, towards satisfying our own desires, towards getting angry when we don’t get our own desires. Our mind’s been habituated in this pattern since beginning less time. So therefore, it’s very easy for us to continue in this pattern because our mind knows it very well. But that pattern is what’s stopping us from achieving renunciation and from working towards liberation. So in this way So in this way, it’s almost as if we are a slave to desires and a slave to our grasping self.
Now if we ask ourselves, am I a slave to my desires? Am I a slave to anger? Am I a slave to the to the way that I grasp at my idea of self or am I a slave to the way I consider myself? And then we probably say no no way I’m not I’m not a slave at all to these things, but if we start watching our mind then we will come to the understanding that we are a slave to these things when we don’t get something we want we become angry If we even the fact that we want something in the first place is because we have self grasping and because we’re grasping at this idea of ourself as being an important solid thing, then everything we do comes about because of that self grasping. There’s no independence there.
There’s no autonomy. Everything comes about because of our trying our our the way that we consider ourself to exist. Okay, so we have to develop this idea of renunciation, seeing the faults of saṃsāra, wanting to work towards the cessation of suffering. We have to develop that mind. Then, we have to develop bodhicitta, because it’s not only good to do it for ourselves, but we have to do it for all sentient beings.
Then we have to develop a mind that understands emptiness or the true nature of reality directly, and once we’ve got all these things done, it’ll be okay. We should try and develop this mind that what I’m about to do, I’m doing it in order that I may develop renunciation and in order after developing renunciation, develop bodhicitta, then develop a mind that understands emptiness and work towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. Achieving enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings because from that from from achieving emptiness sorry. From achieving Buddhahood, I can be of the most benefit to them. And then on that, we should meditate on that thought.
So Oh, yeah. So tonight, we’re going to tell the story of the life of the of Buddha Śākyamūni. Now we had a bit of trouble finding a text which actually had the life story of the Buddha Śākyamūni in it, but eventually said, found one, but Geshe-la wanted to warn you that he doesn’t know how good the text is that he’s using. If we’re telling if we’re if we’re telling the life story of the Buddha, so the first thing that we need to remember is that the Buddha Śākyamūni used to be exactly like us. He used to be a sentient being with negative emotions, negative thoughts, collected negative karma and so forth.
Then he started developing renunciation, did these practices we’re talking about, developed renunciation, met a teacher. The teacher showed him the path. He relied on the teacher and developed an understanding of emptiness and bodhicitta. And then through practicing emptiness and bodhicitta became a Buddha. So that’s something that we need to know before we start hearing the life story of Śākyamūni Buddha on this earth two thousand five hundred years ago.
Okay. So the Buddha had done all these practices and achieved enlightenment, and where he was living after he achieved enlightenment was a place called Tuśita, which was called a pure land, and he was the king of this pure land. And he had a name, which I can’t understand. So the name of the king of this pure land called Tuśita is always the one with the white lotus face, but I’m sure it sounds better in Sanskrit. Sure it sounds better in Hindi and yeah.
But yeah. It’s so whoever’s the king of this pure land is called Yeah. It’s called the Oh, Yeah. That’s better. So he’s the king of this So at this stage, the Buddha was living in Tuśita, and at this stage, the lifespan of humans on Earth was about a hundred years.
It it decreased to about a hundred years. So at this stage, the Buddha looked down at Earth and decided that that was a good time to take rebirth on earth in order to be able to teach the beings that were living on earth.