Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of Geshe Pema Tsering pulling out an old textbook mid-session to read a precise definition of ignorance — then unpacking it phrase by phrase — sets the tone for this 45-minute commentary. He opens with Lama Tsongkhapa’s teaching that intention alone determines whether Dharma study is beneficial, then places saṃsāra and nirvana within the Lamrim’s middle scope. Two frameworks structure the analysis: the Four Noble Truths and the twelve links of dependent origination. The centrepiece is ignorance as the first link — the mental factor grasping at an inherent, autonomous self — illustrated by the relentless inner chatter of “I, I, I” that turns even virtuous actions into causes for rebirth. A careful distinction closes the session: this ignorance and the root ignorance of saṃsāra overlap but are not the same. Suited to practitioners familiar with Lamrim structure.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 SAN 2004 03 09.mp3
UUID: e7465632-037f-44cb-a325-aed0abf47219
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Samsāra and Nirvāṇa (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-03-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~3,733
Okay. Lama Tsongkhapa said that if the intention is beneficial, then the path is good. And if the intention is negative or the intention is harmful, then the path is bad. And what this refers to is that before we do any action, we have to have an intention to do that action. We have to have some movement in our mind that tends towards that action.
So whether it’s an action of body, speech and mind, then this is the case. So this preceding intention, motivation or mental movement is said to be the thing that turns our actions into being positive or negative. So even though that we’re looking at the Buddhist Dharma this evening and talking about it or listening to teachings on the Buddhist Dharma, just because it’s Buddhist Dharma doesn’t mean that it will be that much benefit to us or it will be that helpful to us if our motivation isn’t the right one. So we don’t perform beneficial or positive actions in dependence upon the action themselves. Whether something is positive or not depends on the motivation with which we do it.
Even though this may be a teaching or a class that is beneficial by its nature, whether we get anything out of it or not depends on which motivation we listen or which we come to the class with. And the thing that we’re talking about tonight is saṃsāra and nirvana. Now, in general, when we talk about saṃsāra and nirvana, we do it with the perspective of trying to reach nirvana and trying to abandon saṃsāra. And now, if we’re doing something with that intention or with that perspective, then the actions that we do from that point of view are what’s said to be the middle scope or the second level of motivation that we can develop. But in actual fact, this motivation isn’t good enough if we want to practice the Mahāyāna teachings and if we want to become a fully enlightened Buddha.
And so even though these teachings are by their nature from the middle scope of the Lamrim, then we really need to develop a higher scope, the best motivation that we can, which is to seek enlightenment in order to be a benefit to all beings. The reason that we need to focus in this way then is that because even though this may not be the highest motivation that we can develop, that is to achieve nirvana for ourselves and abandon saṃsāra, if we want to achieve Buddhahood, then we need to have this idea of getting out of saṃsāra as a basis for the development of that motivation. So we definitely need to work at that. So even though this is said to be a practice of the middling scope or the middle type of motivation we need to develop. It’s not something that’s unique to the the middling motivation or the intermediate motivation.
It’s something that forms a genuine part of the greatest motivation that we can develop. So we need to focus in this way. The middling motivation or the intermediate motivation is characterized by certain Buddhist practices. We have, for example, looking at the Four Noble Truths that are said to be an intrinsic part of the middle type of motivation that we can develop. The Four Noble Truths are the truth of suffering, the truth of the origin of suffering, the truth of cessation, and the truth of the path.
Through looking at these Four Noble Truths, then we can see what it is that causes us to experience suffering or saṃsāra and how we get rid of saṃsāra and attain nirvana. The path from saṃsāra to nirvana is included within the Four Noble Truths. Another way that we can look at the process experiencing suffering or the process of coming into saṃsāra is through what’s called the twelve links of dependent origination. Although the twelve links of dependent origination are explained in a different way to the process of the Four Noble Truths, The essence is the same in that we’re talking about how saṃsāra comes into being. There are these two different ways we can look at the experience of saṃsāra.
We can do it through the Four Noble Truths or the Twelve Links, but both of these are basically talking about the same thing but in different ways. So this means that, for example, when we talk about the origin of suffering, the origin of suffering is usually described as being two things: karma and delusion, or karma and klesha the Sanskrit word for afflictive emotions. Now, we can look at causes for us experiencing suffering in this way, or we can look at the causes for experiencing suffering from the point of view of the twelve links of dependent origination, and the first three of these, which is ignorance, what’s called connecting karma or samskaras, and consciousness. So if we want to look at afflictive emotions or the negative ways of thinking that cause us to create negative karma, then this is another way of looking at ignorance. Because from ignorance, we develop this connecting karma or this samskaras, which is the tendency towards action and then the consciousness comes about from that.
In this way, the development of those minds from the basic ignorance is a similar idea to the action of creating karma from the basis of a klesh or negative emotion. So in this way, then, when we look at the twelve links of dependent origination, we start off with ignorance, and then we come up with something called connecting karma or samskaras, the actions of life. And then we end up with consciousness, and after consciousness, the concept of name and form. And from the concept of name and form, we develop a sense of perception. From perception, we have contact, and from contact, we have feeling.
From feelings we develop craving, from craving we develop grasping or trying to take and then from that grasping we come into existence. From existence we experience birth and through birth we experience aging and death. Okay. Right. Now.
Okay, so Geshe-la pulled out one of his old textbooks from studying and said I can come up with a definition of ignorance, which is a bit tricky to translate on the spot. But anyway, here we go. The definition of ignorance when we’re talking about the Okay. Okay. Now that’s easier.
Alright. Now okay. Right. Okay. Yes.
Yes. Okay. So the definition, what we’re talking about when we talk about ignorance is something I’ve got to work backwards. It’s a what’s called a mental factor. So that’s not a main mind, it’s a mental factor.
So it’s like almost like a side thought that comes along with the consciousness. A mental factor which is ignorant to or has fault, is foggy about its understanding of the actual nature of existence and by way of this is a negative intention or a negative motivation which creates a it’s a negative intention which comes along with creation of throwing karma, which is understood to be the beginning of its own dependent origination. So I’ll try it again. No, no, no, I’m sure. You say it again?
Okay, so what we’re dealing with here is a mental factor. Mental factor is a side mind if you like, a mind that comes along with it. So it’s a mental factor that is foggy or ignorant in its understanding of the true nature of reality and in this way is the motivation with which we create throwing karma which is understood to be one with or the same as the origin of its dependent origination. So and Bate and Geshe-la said, so basically, what they’re talking about is grasping at true grasping at true existence. I get the text.
Great. Yeah. So we can break it down as well. So we can say that it’s something that’s a mental factor, that it is ignorance or tulpo, that is a misunderstanding of the true nature of reality, that it is the motivation with which we create the negative karma to be reborn in the next lifetime. And yeah.
Yeah. So, in general, when we talk about ignorance, we can be talking about ignorance with regards to a whole plethora of different things. So we can be ignorant about basic things, we can just not know something, or we can be ignorant about different Buddhist understandings from we cannot understand selflessness, we can be ignorant about the true nature of existence, we can be ignorant about the true nature of phenomena or the lack of inherent existence of self. There’s all these different things that we can be ignorant about. But when we’re talking about the first link in the twelve links of dependent origination, then what this ignorance is referring to is being ignorant about the lack of inherent existence, or that is grasping an inherent existence, believing inherent existence to be true.
So, what we’re talking about here, this grasping at true existence, is something that is in our mind stream but it’s very difficult for us to perceive that way of thinking that we have in our mind stream or we the way we think in this way. It’s difficult for us to recognize the way we think in this way. So what weire talking about here is the thing that takes ourselves and the phenomena we encounter as being inherently existent, as being truly there and something that doesn’t change, that doesn’t come into existence based on causes and conditions. So this means that when we have this idea of I, we think I’m doing this, I’m doing that, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do this. Along with this I, it’s not just an idea that this is a label that we’ve given ourselves.
This I appears to us as being inherently existent, as being a truly established thing and we grasp at that idea of self very strongly. It’s difficult for us to even recognize that we have this idea but if we just watch then we have this I, I, I, I about everything we do. And because we have this idea of an inherently existent I that pervades pervades our thoughts, then any action that we do, whether it’s virtuous or non virtuous, becomes a cause for us to experience rebirth in saṃsāra. Now it may not necessarily be a negative rebirth in Samsāra, but it will be a rebirth in Samsāra of some kind. If it’s a negative action, it could be the cause for us to be reborn in a hell realm or a spirit realm or an animal realm.
If it’s a positive action it could be a cause for us to be born as a human or in the bliss realms of the gods. In this way even our positive actions become what’s called throwing karma or they become the causes for us to be born into the next life, into a new life because along with these positive or negative actions comes the idea of everything existing. And this idea is in our mind stream. We carry this idea around with us, and it creates the impetus or the reason or the motivation for every action that we perform, whether that’s positive or negative action. So in this way, then, we’re always creating the causes for continuing in saṃsāra.
As saṃsāra beings, this is the way that we behave. This is the nature of the thoughts that we have. So this self grasping and seeing the self as being an inherent being is the is the reason that we do most of the things we do. So that because we can’t recognize this, because we don’t understand that that things aren’t inherently existent, that there is no inherent self, then we are it’s like we’re the slaves or we’re completely under the power of our negative emotions, and we go around creating our karmic causes for being reborn into saṃsāra in one way or another. We don’t have any control over this situation because we don’t perceive the way that things actually are.
If we’re able to perceive the way that things actually are and from the point of view of one of the philosophical schools, the autonomous school, this is if we’re able to perceive that we don’t have a self, an inherent self, and we’re able to perceive selflessness directly, that means that we don’t have any cause for creating negative karma. We don’t have any for creating throwing karma or the karma that’s going to cause us to be reborn in saṃsāra. So once we’ve perceived that there is no self, then we stop creating the causes for being reborn in saṃsāra. And as we’ve stopped creating the causes for being reborn in saṃsāra, then we’re able to step out from under the influence of our misconception step out from under the influence of this ignorance. And it said that the beings that have perceived the selflessness of personal, the beings that have perceived that there is no inherent self, are called Ārya beings or supreme beings.
Now these beings are able to behave in a way that is independent or autonomous and isn’t under the control of these negative ways of thinking Therefore, they’re not thrown into future lifetimes. This is difficult, however, for us to develop this understanding, and it takes a lot of different thought patterns or a lot of different mental training and analysis in order to develop that understanding. And so this sense of self that we have very strongly in us and we can feel when we say, I, I, I’m going to do this, or I, I, when have this idea of self, it becomes to us very strongly when we have a strong sense of who we are and what it is that we need. Now, this I is that sense of grasping at I or that idea of I is ignorance because it is grasping itself. And in order for us to perceive selflessness, then we have to understand that this I isn’t an inherent, fully autonomous thing.
The definition from the autonomous school’s point of view of what this I isn’t, the I that is non-existent is, is an autonomous, independent thing. Now this ‘I’ that we identify as ourselves isn’t an autonomous or independent thing. It comes about because of a whole bunch of causes and conditions coming together. If it wasn’t an autonomous, independent thing, it wouldn’t change. There would be nothing about us that could change because there would be a solid entity there that was because it would come into being by itself and because it was in control of itself, there would be no change happening there.
But there is constant change in the I that we perceive because of the different causes and conditions that cause this I to be. And so therefore we can see through the constant changes in the I that there is nothing solid there, there is nothing inherently existent there. And so this I that pops up, this idea of the I that pops up, then we have to recognize that that isn’t the way that we perceive it to be. It isn’t inherently existent. It isn’t an autonomous, independent thing.
So the sense of self we have is very strong. If we watch what we think, then a lot of the time we take ourselves to be this inherently existent, autonomous individual. When we talk about ourselves, when we say, I know, I went there, I did this, I did that, then that I that we’re talking about is something solid that we relate to as being an inherent thing with many different qualities. So we may think, I know things, I know things, therefore I’m here. I know all the things that I studied.
I studied English, I studied science, I studied maths, I know how to speak different languages. I have many good qualities. So this idea that we say about ourselves is a very solid identity that we hold on to, that we have this, There’s I and I do this and this is how I behave. But we may have all of these perceived qualities, but one thing we haven’t got is the way that we truly we don’t understand the way we truly exist, which isn’t as an autonomous I. Now another way that we can prove to ourselves that we we don’t inherently exist is if we look at the fact that if we did inherently exist and we were autonomous beings who were in control of ourselves, then we wouldn’t experience any suffering because if we look at the way that we are, then we experience suffering and we can’t do much about that suffering.
We can’t stop that sense of suffering. We can’t stop the suffering that comes our way. And if we were autonomous beings, we would be able to stop it. We would be able to say, Okay, I wanna be happy and I don’t want to be sad, so this is the way it’s going to be. But because we have to experience the results of the karma that we’ve accumulated, this doesn’t happen.
The other thing is that because we have this idea of this inherent self, like this is me, I’m an autonomous being, and therefore we think we can do that. We think that by doing certain things and not doing certain things then we can experience happiness and we won’t experience suffering. We think, I want to be happy, I don’t want to experience sadness or suffering. So we create a lot of karma in order to try and make ourselves happy, and we create a lot of karma in order to stop ourselves experiencing suffering. And both of these, because they’re done with this sense of self involved, like in order to stop ourselves suffering in order to make ourselves feel happy, all of those actions, all of that karma we accumulate is a cause for us to be reborn in saṃsāra.
It’s throwing karma. So this is what the ignorance in the twelve links of dependent origination is talking about, not understanding the true nature of objects, not understanding the true nature of phenomena, not understanding the true nature of ourselves. And because we don’t understand the true nature of ourselves, because we’re ignorant to the true nature of ourselves and reality, then we create the causes, or we create throwing karma, which can throw us into rebirth in saṃsāra. So this ignorance is the motivation for creating this throwing karma to make us be reborn in saṃsāra. Okay.
And another way that we can look at ignorance is there’s said to be three different three different ways of looking at ignorance, or three different main sources of ignorance. The first of which is this ignorance that we’ve talked about that is the first link of the twelve links of dependent origination. The second ignorance is said to be the ignorance that is the root cause of saṃsāra. And the third ignorance is the ignorance about the way that cause and effect or karma works. Okay.
So in in when we’re talking about Okay, so in Buddhist dialectics or in Buddhist philosophical systems, they have what are called these different pervasions, yeah? And one of them is a four way pervasion, okay? So this is debate one hundred and one. Okay, so in a four way pervasion it means that you can have two things, yeah? And these two things, it’s like subsets in school, okay?
You can have something that is both is A and B, or you can have something that is B not A, and you can have something that is A not B, and you can have something that is neither, so that’s a four way pervasion. Get that? The ignorance that is the first link of the twelve links of dependent origination and the ignorance that is the root of saṃsāra are said to have this four way pervasion. That you can have something that’s both, you can have something that’s neither, you can have something that’s one but not the other, and you can have something that is the other but not the one. So, for example, if we took grasping at the inherent existence of phenomena now grasping at the inherent existence of phenomena is an idea that is a root cause of saṃsāra or is the main cause of saṃsāra but it’s not the ignorance that is the first link in the twelve links of dependent origination.
And then you could have something that is grasping at the inherent existence of self, that is, grasping at the self as being an inherently existent entity. Now that grasping at the inherent existence of self is both the ignorance that is the first link of the twelve links of dependent origination and the root cause of saṃsāra. Okay. So for an example of something that is a root cause of saṃsāra not a root cause of saṃsāra but is the ignorance of the first of the twelve links is, for example, Okay. So there’s a path of seeing, which is a concentration state where you’re able to a realization where you’re able to get rid of the grasping at true existence.
During this realization process, or the development of this realization, the first moment of that realization is said to be where you ceased to see the self of persons as being an inherent thing. Now it’s not said to—you haven’t gotten rid of the root of saṃsāra until you’ve completely completed the path of seeing. So in this way, this first moment isn’t said to be the root of saṃsāra, but because it is grasping of the it’s letting go of grasping at the inherent self, then this type of mind is said to be the first link of the twelve links inherent existence, that type of ignorance. Or the abandonment of that kind of ignorance. So therefore, because it’s that you’re getting rid of something, then that ignorance that you’re getting rid of is the ignorance from the first of the twelve links, but it’s not the ignorance that’s the root of saṃsāra.