Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Geshe Pema Tsering opens with a striking detail: the Buddha’s first teaching on the Four Noble Truths took just sixteen Sanskrit words, yet encompasses all of Buddhism. After defining the four truths, he focuses on impermanence as a key characteristic of suffering — the body changes every sixty-fourth of a finger-click, so fast we mistake ourselves for stable beings. A cat-and-mouse analogy captures how aging and death sneak up unnoticed. He then argues for rebirth through the continuity of the sense of self, connects karma to future rebirths, and moves into the ten non-virtues — the three of body (killing, stealing, sexual misconduct) and the start of the four of speech — detailing the karmic consequence of each. Suited to students following a foundational Dharma series.
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File: 03 4NT 2003 06 23.mp3
UUID: fb1e916a-fd2e-43f9-8080-1a42a3dd89db
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB The four noble truths (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-06-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~4,070
So last week we were talking about how the first teaching of the Buddha that he ever gave was at Sarnath in India. Then he gave it to five of his disciples and it’s what’s called the four truths or the four truths of the aryas or four noble truths sometimes. The first among these is what’s called the truth of suffering that is that existence is suffering. This teaching that he gave referring to the Four Noble Truths that we talked about last week is actually very short. It only took him sixteen words in Sanskrit to say it but it actually his meaning is incredibly profound.
It’s said to be the root or the main teaching of Buddhism in general. You can encompass all of Buddhist teachings in this teaching. At first, after the Buddha reached enlightenment, wasn’t going to teach, but then people asked him how to stop suffering and attain happiness, and therefore, he started to teach. The Buddha taught for a very long time and he said he’s supposed to have taught eighty four thousand different teachings and different ways for people to achieve happiness. All of these different types of teachings can be fit within the teaching of the Four Noble Truths.
Even the Four Noble Truths can be said to fit within a further reduced Two Truths. The Buddha first taught these teachings of the Four Noble Truths to five yogis or five meditators that were his friends from before when he was doing ascetic practices and when these beings when these people heard the teachings in the Four Noble Truths.
Four of them achieved what’s called a there’s a type of meditative path, it’s called the path of the Ārya. On this path they have this thing where they’re meditating and they realize reality or the ultimate reality or the selflessness of the person and it’s what they call the ultimate reality. So four out of these five people having heard the four noble truths because they are great meditators anyway, instantly had this realization. The fifth one of this group actually achieved what’s called the path of seeing or seeing emptiness directly. So they just heard these sixteen words and instantly they had these amazing realizations.
So these guys weren’t everyday people though. They had spent not just that lifetime in meditation and study, but it said that they spent many lifetimes in meditation and study. So after all these lifetimes in meditation and study, when they first got the Buddhist teaching, then they were instantly able to realize it. Most people can’t do that because, for starters, they don’t have a single point of concentration properly or all these different levels of meditative ability. Because these people had that, just the teaching on the Four Noble Truths was enough for them to get these realizations.
The Four Noble Truths themselves are: the first is the truth of suffering that is that existence or saṃsāra is suffering. The second one is the truth of the origin of suffering how we suffer or why we suffer. The third one is that there is an end to suffering, which is called the truth of cessation. And the fourth one is the truth of the path or how we get to that end, which is the end of suffering.
So, from amongst these four, the first two, the truth of suffering and the truth of the origin of suffering suffering and its origins are things we need to get rid of. The last two the path and cessation are the two things we need to practice. So we need to attain the path and cessation and cease from the suffering and its causes. The truth of the origin of suffering is the negative actions that we engage in, that result, that’s karmic result is the experience of suffering.
So in order to want to stop engaging in those actions that cause the suffering we first of all have to understand suffering properly because if we don’t understand suffering then we can’t we won’t want to get rid of our causes of suffering, our actions that cause suffering to come about. So we talked about last week these three different types of sufferings. That was the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and pervasive suffering and how our existence is made up of these three different types of suffering. Another way we can talk about the first of the Four Noble Truths, the truth of suffering, is to talk about its aspects, its characteristics. So, the four characteristics that are usually ascribed to the Truth of Suffering is that it’s impermanent, that it is suffering, that it is empty, and that it is selfless.
So, for example, we were talking last week about the three different types of suffering. Of these is all-pervasive suffering. One form that all pervasive suffering has is our body, what’s called our aggregates, a collection of causes and conditions that we call our physical self. So, this is what is considered to be pervasive suffering because by merely owning a body or by merely inhabiting a body, there is certain types of suffering that we must experience. And the reason that we actually took the body or were born was because of karma and delusions so therefore our bodies are said to be the truth of suffering.
Now, means that our bodies for example have these four aspects that we were talking about there are four aspects that are all the four characteristics of the truth of suffering that is our bodies are impermanent that means that they are changing in every second, they don’t abide steadily at any time, they are constantly changing from moment to moment we also experience outright suffering because of our bodies in one form or another whether it’s illness or uncomfortableness or whatever the other thing is that our bodies are empty and also that our bodies are selfless. The four aspects can be applied to this one example of the truth of suffering. So, for example, the first one of these characteristics is impermanence. What is meant by impermanence is that our body is changing in every moment. Now, a moment as defined in Buddhist texts is the sixty-fourth of a click of a finger.
So every sixty-fourth of a moment or every sixty-fourth of a click of a finger is said to be one moment so in every one of these moments our body is constantly changing but because it’s happening so fast and because we don’t have the perception to be able to see that it means that we don’t notice our body changing but this also means that our body changing in every single moment means that there isn’t a time when our body is solid. There isn’t a time when our body is inert or not changing. It’s constantly generating and then every moment is regenerating and then that moment is dissolving. So we don’t see this happening. We don’t see the changes that our physical being is going through.
So we think that we are exactly the same as we were yesterday and we think that tomorrow will be exactly the same as we are today. We don’t notice this moment by moment change. So we don’t notice it is changing. If we can’t be bothered thinking about it, then that’s fine. We seem to be a static entity.
But if we actually think about it, then we will be able to see that we are constantly changing. For example, when were just born we weren’t very much bigger than the palm of someone’s hand and then if we think about it now how did we get here then how did how did we we must have changed from being the size of a hand in order to be here If we don’t think about it again, we may not notice ourselves changing but in twenty years time we’ll probably look and feel different than we do now and then what we felt when we were a child. So we have to see that there is some change going on, it’s just that we don’t notice in the moment by moment that it happens, we only notice it when we look at vaster periods of time. So we don’t what’s actually happening, in fact, is that we’re changing in every moment and we’re changing a fair bit in every day. It’s just that we don’t recognise it, we don’t think about it, and because we don’t think about it, we see ourselves as being a solid, stable entity.
If we changing, if we were a static being and we weren’t being forced into a constant process of change by the negative karma that we have accumulated and hence the suffering that we are experiencing, then none of us would grow old. We would be able to choose how old we were so perhaps some people would choose to be sixteen, seventeen, eighteen or nineteen but no one would choose to be sixty. That wouldn’t be someone’s choice. Everyone would be trying to choose the age when they could get the most out of their body, for example. But because we’re constantly changing, because of our karma that we’ve accumulated, we don’t get this choice.
Geshe says he doesn’t know about everyone else, but if he had a choice, he’d stay sixteen, seventeen, eighteen forever, and he wouldn’t have ended up where he is now. He said he wouldn’t have changed, but because he hasn’t had any choice in it, because his body is manifested truth of suffering and is under the power of karma and delusion, it keeps changing and he hasn’t got really any say in what’s happening to it. So the way that our bodies are is that even if we’re not experiencing suffering now, because of our bodies we will experience suffering. We will either get sick or eventually we will have to die. There is something that our bodies, by their very nature, produce suffering.
It’s not just us that has this experience. All beings have this experience because they’re brought into life because of karma and delusion and because of that then they have their bodies themselves the truth of suffering so therefore they are in a constant state of change and that means also that any pleasure that they may experience from their body isn’t permanent. Any pleasure they experience from their body is momentary and decreases as soon as it’s experienced. The human experience is said to be made up of four different types of suffering: the suffering of birth, the suffering of illness, the suffering of aging, the suffering of death. But these aren’t things that we see in our everyday experience, they are not something we experience in a day to day way.
It’s a bit like when a cat is trying to get a mouse. If the cat is actually going to get the mouse, then the mouse doesn’t know that the cat is coming. And it’s the same with the sufferings we experience with our body, with our old age and eventually death. It’s not that we realise them, it’s just that it’s like the cat pouncing on us and we don’t even realise it’s come. It’s snuck up on us from behind.
So the other thing is that if anybody who’s born ultimately has to die, there’s not someone who can say, Well, I’m able to buy my way out of death. I’m a very wealthy person. There’s no one who can say, I’ve got so much power. I can use my power to stop myself dying.
There’s no one who’s such a good runner that they can run away from it. It’s something that is going to arrive one day and it’s something that we need to accept. Nobody can say, I’m going to keep living forever because it’s not a reality. So we have to accept that we’re going to die and this dying, after being born, is death. Dying is also a part of impermanence.
So because death is something that’s certain and it’s not something that we should be that surprised about, it’s not something that we should think is shocking. What basically happens is we breathe out and we don’t breathe in and then we die. That’s simply the way the death happens. After we die, then we also have to be reborn. Because of our karma, we have to be reborn.
It’s not like the consciousness disappears or something disappears, our life force does not disappear. We have to go on to somewhere else. Where we’re going to be born depends on what we’ve done in this life, whether positive or negative. So, if we’ve done something positive and we die well, then that’s good for us. We’ll have a good rebirth.
If we’ve done negative things, then we have the danger of being reborn in what are called the lower realms, then the suffering there, the suffering we will experience is immeasurable, especially compared to what we experience now, whether it’s in the what is called like the hell realms or the spirit realms or the animal realms the sufferings of these different realms are said to be immeasurable so that could be what happens if we don’t try and do positive things and that is also a reason why it also makes us understand suffering better. So, after death, there comes about rebirth and rebirth, we have to be reborn somewhere. The consciousness has to go somewhere, it can’t just disappear. Now, some people say they don’t believe in rebirth, they don’t believe in the consciousness going anywhere after death. They think that death is the end.
There’s lots of people in the world that actually believe this. Just believing that we’re not going to go anywhere after death doesn’t stop us going anywhere after death. If someone says I don’t accept rebirth then even when they die their consciousness still has to go somewhere. Just not believing in something doesn’t make it not happen. So, this consciousness after death has to go somewhere because if it still has karma and delusion attached to it, then it has to take rebirth somewhere.
So if we want to try and establish in our minds that future and past lives exist, then we should try and think about the fact that why do we think that we exist now what is it that makes us think that we’re here and if we think about it we have this sense of I this is me this is what I’m doing and we consider ourselves to be pretty important most of the time so where does this sense of I’m here and I’m important come from? If we look back to yesterday then we had the idea that we’re me and I’m important yesterday as well. A couple of months ago we had this idea, a few years ago we had this idea and if we go back even when we were a child we had this idea me. So that has to go back to somewhere that had to come from somewhere this idea of me being me had to come from somewhere and if we go back further then we can see that even in the mother’s womb people there’s this idea of self has to be there Then even before that, before conception, there has to be this sense of self, this being had to come from somewhere.
So, the consciousness had to come from somewhere. So, where did it come from? Then it has to come from what’s called an intermediate state or the Bardo in between lives. So that came before conception. And then before the Bardo state, there was another death.
Then before that death, there was another life. So if we work backwards, then we can see that there can be logic in the idea that there is a past life. Then if we can see that there was a past life, we can use that line of reasoning into the future and see that because there was a past life, then there will necessarily be a future life. So some people say, yeah, I don’t think future lives and past lives exist. And the reason I don’t think future and past lives exist is because I don’t remember them.
If there was a past life, why don’t I remember it? If there if I remembered it, then I believe it, but I don’t remember it, therefore, it can’t exist. So, the main reason that we can’t remember anything from our past lives is because our memories from our past lives were linked to that body, that sense of self we had in the past life and because in this life we consider our body and ourselves to be us that means that we can’t remember anything that isn’t associated with this body so Geshe-la says he can’t remember anything apart from being a kid but he always felt a strong link to this body so that will probably be why because we define ourselves by who we are now then we can’t remember who we were before. And in the same way, as that happens, we don’t know who we’re going to be in the future because at the moment we consider we hold on so tightly to our sense of self now that we can’t see beyond what we are now. So therefore, we don’t know what we’re going to be in the future.
So, if we use this analytical process, if we keep thinking about these ideas about past and future lives and we’ll probably start to see that this is actually the way things are if we keep going over it again and and again in our heads and then we may come to see that this is the way things are and now if we want to know what causes us to have good and bad rebirths then that depends on what our actions are now so because we’ve got a human life now that is in general fairly good then we must have done something positive in the past in order to attain this human birth. If we want to attain a good human rebirth in the future then we have to do positive things now. So, if you do something positive it has a good outcome if you do something negative it has a negative outcome. So, if we want to have a positive rebirth we do positive things now So whatever happiness we’re experiencing now, whatever good things that we have in our lives come about because we did something positive in the past. In actual fact, we must have done something pretty good in past lives to have the life that we have now.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that we had to have been a Buddhist in our past lives because every different religion, lots of different religions have this idea of working towards a future life. They are working towards different things whether it’s Buddhism or Christianity or Islam or different types of Buddhism. They have this idea of working towards a future life in them. So, if we were dedicating our virtues towards a future life, If we dedicated our virtues towards a future life in a previous life, then we will be experiencing the results of that karma in this life. We’ll be experiencing pleasantness in this life.
So not just Buddhism but lots of different religions say that we should be working for something other than this life. In Buddhism, in fact, it’s said that any work that we do for this life isn’t practicing Dharma or isn’t doing any type of religious practice — this is called worldly practice which results will be very minor in their influence in order for us to practice Dharma or practice religion then the motivation has to at least be for the next life life in other different religions it says similar things that we should be working for something after this life different religions accept that there is some type of future life and then the people following them are working towards that and not this life which is like a worldly existence. So Geshe says he doesn’t have that much experience with other religions though because he spent most of his life in a Buddhist monastery. He said though that in Buddhist terms, if you are beginning to try and do a Dharma practice then the first thing to do is to practice what’s called the ten virtues — to put them into practice and abandon the ten non-virtues.
So, the ten non virtues, is three non virtues of body, four non virtues of speech and three non virtues of mind. The three non-virtues of body are said to be killing, stealing or taking what isn’t yours, and sexual misconduct. So, at the same time as abandoning these three non-virtuous actions of body, at the time of abandoning negative actions, we’re also practicing ethics. We’re practicing the ethics of non killing, the ethics of not stealing and the ethics of not engaging in sexual misconduct or good sexual conduct. So, for the first one, the non virtue of killing, what they’re talking about here is mainly not killing other humans.
That’s the grossest form of the non-virtue of killing but it also means trying not to kill any animals at all or any creatures at all because killing small animals or small creatures is still a negativity. It may not be as strong as a negativity as killing a human, but it’s still a negativity. From the Buddhist perspective, the outcome of killing, the result of killing, the karmic result of killing is that people’s lives are shortened and that they experience illness or different types of physical illness. That means that, from the Buddhist perspective, any type of illness that we’re experiencing now or if we experience a short life, that’s because we have killed in previous lives or in this life. For example, also with stealing, the results of stealing in past lives is that in this life we will experience people stealing from us.
We’ll experience trying to work hard towards getting financial rewards and not actually getting them. We’ll experience people tricking us with regards to money and things like that. So anything that we experience in this life which is like that is said to be the result of stealing in previous lives or in this life? The result of sexual misconduct in previous lives or in this life means that we will have people who are our partners or husbands or wives treating us with disrespect in certain ways or we will experience some kind of violation or something as a result of things that we’ve done of a similar fashion in previous lives The result is similar to the cause in this case as well. These are what’s called the three non virtues of body.
They’re all related to the body in some way or another. They’re usually put in a group together because their results are usually physical in some way and the cause is usually physical as well. So the four non virtues of speech are said to be lying, slander or divisive speech, harsh speech and speaking nonsense. So they’re all different ways that we can do non virtue with our speech and so they’re all put together in a group. Okay.
So lying. What what lying entails is saying something is so when it isn’t, or isn’t when it is. So that includes everything from from trying to deceive someone very purposely to to making a joke. The difference is though that there’s different degrees to how harsh the results of this.