Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering uses the Dalai Lama’s story of a fly — buzzing during an actual teaching — to show that a human being with every spiritual advantage can still be, from one angle, less fortunate than that fly if reason is used to harm rather than help. The commentary builds toward this through a precise unpacking of pride: distinguishing arrogance from legitimate confidence, tracing how pride generates jealousy and anger, and explaining how turning attention to others’ good qualities rather than our own deflates it without requiring self-contempt. A Q&A section addresses how motivation transforms the same action into very different results, and closes with practical guidance: keep working for others, but only while the mind stays genuinely open and happy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 TT 2004 08 10.mp3
UUID: f928274d-903a-4651-9f9a-4e8aa862d225
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Thought Transformation (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-08-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.2 minutes
Words: ~3,667
This one? No. In order to destroy this concept concept of selfishness, which doesn’t bring happiness towards for us or for anyone else, then what we need to do is develop the attitude of altruism. Now it says that we need to develop this attitude of altruism from the bottom of our heart bone. So what this actually means though is like from the depths of our being, from the depths of our heart.
Now if we’re actually able to develop this idea of cherishing others, the attitude of altruism from the depths of our heart, then what that entails is actually the development of bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment, the thing that can cause us to become Buddhas. Obstacle that we can encounter in our pursuit of developing, cherishing others, in task of developing, cherishing thoughts, cherishing others, is pride, in which you view yourself as superior and others as inferior. That’s the that’s the worst thing that we can have that stops us from developing this other cherishing attitude. This one. So therefore, because pride is such a has such a disastrous effect on our development of our altruism, what we need to do is cultivate the antidote to pride.
You know, the antidote to pride is always to consider yourself to be less important than the person the other people you’re dealing with. So the the the the hook to this or the interesting thing about this is that the more humble your attitude is, the more hum the more good qualities that you develop. And the more humble your attitude is, the more happy you are. Because if you are experiencing intense pride or if you’re experiencing a sense of superiority over others, then there’s actually no way that you can experience happiness from that point of view. Now the reason that this that pride is never going to lead to happiness or that be well, while we’re experiencing intense pride, we’ll never experience true happiness is because pride leads to pride is something that needs to be sustained and if we are feeling superior to everybody else and for example we see qualities in someone else that we don’t have then we’re going to experience intense jealousy and if there’s something that people people challenge our sense of self in a way by thinking that we are not as good as we think we are then we get angry with them and we also may experience if we’re trying to look down on people all the time then we don’t have any real connection with them so through this process then pride leads to unhappiness and doesn’t lead to happiness.
So this pride, this arrogance, only create these kind of emotions within ourselves, but in our environment and with the people that we associate, we’re going to create an unpleasant atmosphere and also unhappiness in society in general increases. So if someone’s walking around thinking that they’re the best, then of course they’re not going to get along with people very well, and that’s not going to create a very harmonious atmosphere for anyone, including that person. I just asked Geshe-la a question because I’m a bit concerned about the way that this is translated translating it, this word, pride. Now it’s a the the the word in Tibetan actually means thinking you’ve got qualities you don’t. Right?
So taking pride in qualities you do have isn’t this. This is what we’re talking about here is, I guess, arrogance more than pride, but it’s like pride yeah. It did so there’s another word that’s usually translated as confidence, and I say, what’s the difference between confidence and pride in that case? And confidence is knowing you have a quality and not thinking you’re fantastic for it, and pride or arrogance is thinking you’re great because you have a quality. Yeah?
Okay. So the the foundation for our belief, our our our arrogant beliefs about self are actually spurious. If we think that that we’re better than anyone else, then our reasoning for thinking that is not correct. In this way, if we think if we look at the logic that we’ve used to develop our superior our feelings of superiority, then we can see that they don’t stand up. Now, we need to counter these by thinking about the positive qualities that others have and focusing also on our faults.
If we’re experiencing pride, if we can look into our faults, we can get over thinking that we’re tops. This one. So so this reasoning that we may have thinking that we’re fantastic, we can see that it’s faulty if we look at the faults that we have as opposed to our qualities. And if we look at the qualities of others as opposed to their faults, then we’re not going to be puffing ourselves up with a sense of pride that’s not based on anything logical. We may have qualities, but we’re not denying that we have qualities.
We just need to put our qualities in context. If we look at the positive qualities that we have compared to the positive qualities of a Buddha or the positive qualities of an or the positive qualities of someone who’s had any kind of realisation, then they’re not that great. This is the kind of thing that we need to compare it to in order for it to develop a sense of humility about our achievements. As opposed to doing that, what we tend to do is think it’s not so much recognising our qualities as a problem it’s the importance that we put on those qualities. It’s not thinking I don’t have qualities it’s thinking my qualities are important.
My qualities mean that I stand out from everybody else. My qualities make me a more special person than anyone else. Now, this isn’t to say though that what we need to do is make ourselves feel miserable. Right? If we if we are thinking, have no qualities, I am worthless, I can’t do anything, then that’s not the point either.
We are this is the the we need to remember that we are capable of becoming Buddhas, and there is nothing that is greater than that that we can achieve. So we have while while we we don’t want to be caught up on our positive qualities, we don’t wanna be thinking that we have no we have no potential either. Alright? We need to recognize our situation, but we shouldn’t let our mind become deflated thinking that we can’t do anything. We’re hopeless because this is not the case.
So what we tend to do is we tend to focus on others’ faults and our own qualities. If we turn that around and started focusing on our faults and others’ qualities did I say that the right way? Yeah. And then then our sense of pride diminishes. This isn’t to ignore our qualities and others’ faults, but just not to focus on them.
Now this is a teaching room, like I said, that was given by the Dalai Lama, and it was given somewhere where there was flies because the next thing he says is for example there was a fly flying in front of him when he was giving this teaching right and he says so if we take as a comparison this fly buzzing in front of him which was there and isn’t now but anyway and himself then from one point of view, then he would seem to be infinitely more important than the fly. This is the dialogue he said he would seem to be infinitely more important than the fly. Unlike the fly, he has a precious human rebirth. Unlike the fly, he’s a monk unlike the fly, he has the ability to reason and this poor fly suffers from ignorance, he’s like under the sway of ignorance so completely that it doesn’t have the ability to reason. It doesn’t have the any way or means to practice Dharma with any success, and it has no logical understanding.
So that’s from one point of view, but from another point of view you could say, well, this fly may not have the ability to practice Dharma and do things in a positive way, but it also doesn’t have the ability to create intense negative karma by using this ability to rationalize and this ability to use logic. It doesn’t have the potential that a human does to use the positive qualities that they have accumulated in a very negative way. So in the same way that the fly hasn’t got this potential to do very positive things, it also doesn’t have the potential to do incredibly negative things the same way as a human does. So actually, from this perspective, if a human being takes the opportunity they have as a human being and misuses it in order to create suffering, in order to create in in order to indulge in negative actions, in in order to harm others, then their lifetime is actually less important, is is less less to be cherished than the lifetime of a fly, than the experience of being born as a fly. Because as a fly, you can’t be doing these incredibly negative things.
So if he says that if he, pretending to be a practitioner, pretending to be a monk, using his human rebirth in a negative way was to do, things to harm people, then those negative things would be much more powerful than anything that this poor fly could do. So in this way, he, as a human being, even though as a human being, have an enormous potential to do good, you also have an enormous potential to do negative things. You have the ability to reason. You have the ability to consciously engage in actions with a very direct intention, a fly doesn’t necessarily have the ability to do. So in this way, from that perspective, then the Dalai Lama says his rebirth could be more negative, and his situation could be more negative than the flies as well, than the fly.
So if you think in this way, if you think, okay, I have this opportunity, the fly has that opportunity, but I may be using it negatively and the fly may not be, then in this way, automatically, your sense of your self importance can be, you know, gotten, what I don’t know, gotten rid of. I can’t think of a word to Diminished. Diminished. That’s the word I was looking for. I’m having one of those days.
So the thing also, though, is this maintaining a humble view of yourself in order to counter pride doesn’t mean that you should become a doormat means if you are and get if you meet people or you encounter people who are trying to influence you into performing negative actions, who are performing negative actions, and it is necessary to use some kind of forceful means to stop them, then by all means, you should do it. So when you do encounter these situations, then you should definitely reply to these people in the in and even sometimes in a very strong way if that is what is necessary. But any reactions that you should have to people, you should try and remember, that these beings are responsible for you your development of positive qualities and therefore should be afforded respect and love. And so even though you may need to respond to them in a fairly strong way, then that reaction should still come from a position of love and kindness and respect. Oh, so we can stop there for the session.
Alright. And if you have any questions, then we can we can ask them. Yes. Mhmm. So you’re talking about when you say some things, you’re talking about actions?
Yeah. Okay. I have to pull the faces. So he’s guess I said we really need to investigate. Right?
We need to investigate before we perform any action. Now through investigating, we can establish whether any action that we’re about to perform is going to be beneficial or not. If it’s going to be beneficial, then we should engage in it. And if it’s not going to be beneficial, then we shouldn’t engage in it. And so through this, we are able to develop the right motivation.
So if our investigations lead us to establish one thing, and then we can establish the right motivation. So if you do a positive action, for example so it it depends on the motivation, but there are some things that are by their nature negative and some things that are by their nature positive. But perhaps a positive motivation may outweigh the negative action. So for example, if you are going to make an offering to a Buddha, which is a positive action, and you do that with the motivation of achieving enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings or personal liberation, then that action becomes a very strong positive action. And this is very poor face.
He goes, but if you do it with the idea of if I make this offering, everyone’s gonna think I’m good. He goes, it’s it’s virtuous, but it’s a poor face, but and I can’t do the face, but it’s not very virtuous. So so the results aren’t going to be very helpful. So it’s a virtuous action, but the the motivation makes its results very limited. In a similar way that if you kill something with the motivation of helping beings or helping that that being in some way, you have that insight, then that action itself is negative, but it becomes much more much less it’s much less negative depending on the motivation.
Yes? Yes. Sure, sure. And again, So the the point of this prayer is in order to strengthen your mind. Right?
And in actual fact, yes, as a Buddha, you’re able to benefit sentient beings more, but it’s easy. Alright? For Buddhists to benefit beings, it’s not something they even have to think about. They just happen spontaneously. Their effort is spontaneous.
There is no hard work involved. Alright? And, actually, benefiting beings as a sentient being is much more difficult. So what you’re doing by this prayer is a is developing the idea of giving up everything to benefit sentient beings, developing your strength of mind. So if you’re going to compare the effort that a Buddha has to put in to benefit beings with the effort that a sentient being has to put in to benefit beings, and a sentient being actually has to put in more effort.
So you’re trying to develop a much greater strength of mind by developing this aspiration. So if by thinking in this way, then people with bodhicitta develop their bodhicitta more intensely because they’re more thinking of others more their strength the strength of their prayer becomes more forceful, and people without it are able to develop it develop it more. Okay. So what happens if you have this idea when you’re saying this prayer that I’m thinking this prayer so I can become a Buddha quicker? It’s not actually because I wanna work for sentient beings.
Alright? That’s about self grasping. Alright? It’s about you you. Yeah?
It’s about cherishing yourself. If you have this idea of even if it means giving up Buddhahood to work for sentient beings, then that’s okay. Then that’s all about others. Alright? So it’s like this you’re telling yourself a lie if you’re thinking, I’m saying this, but in actual fact, I really wanna become a Buddha, and I’m not as interested in others.
Alright? Then that’s that’s, like, not not making use of the aspiration as much. So to achieve Buddhahood, you actually have to be to give have the idea of giving up Buddhahood in order to benefit beings. So actually So for Bodhisattvas, they don’t necessarily have this idea of working for their own benefit. Everything they’re doing is for the benefit of others.
Even achieving Buddhahood is not for their own benefit. It’s for the benefit of others. So for them, this idea manifests spontaneously, this idea of working for the benefit of others. For us, it’s something we need to work at. So if we have this clause in our head, I seek Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, that’s not as profound for us as thinking, I will work for the benefit of all sentient beings no matter what.
Yeah. Right. So the reason that you would be in this state is from a lack of mental strength. Alright? And we shouldn’t necessarily push ourselves beyond our the strength of our mental ability.
We need to develop our mental ability rather than pushing ourselves beyond our own capacity. Now the things that inhibit our mental strength is our self grasping. So by thinking I can’t help more anymore, I can’t be of any benefit, I’m stretched to the limit. But that’s a form of self grasping, of of thinking of self still. So therefore, that’s what that’s what wears people out.
That’s what tires people down. In actual fact, there is no limit to sentient beings sufferings. It’s sorry. The the the limit of sentient beings’ sufferings is inconceivable. Yeah?
And so in this way, there is you there there is no way you can completely fix everything, so you can just work as much as you can and increase your ability to work as much as you can or benefit as much as you can. Yeah? So what would be potential karma for that woman? Are you sure if she would give some of that karma that has to come back to the With interest? Okay.
So you would definitely be getting very, very beneficial results from this kind of work. Any time that you do anything with a selfless motivation for others and results of that action are positive. How positive the results are depends on the motivation for doing these actions. So if someone is doing them with the motivation of getting a good rebirth that’s what they’ll get if this we’re doing something with developing personal liberation then that’s what the result will be from those actions and if someone’s doing something with working towards Buddhahood then that’s the results they will get from that action But it’s not what’s defined as bodhicitta because there’s still a sense of self in there that’s feeling run down, that’s still feeling that it needs to be it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s not it doesn’t fulfill all the requirements of the definition of bodhicitta, right? And because they’re still self grasping in there, they’re still what will happen to me.
I’m worn out. I’m tired. I’m not I’m not dealing with this very well. Right? And while there’s that still that self grasping in there, it doesn’t fulfill the requirements of bodhicitta, and therefore, it’s the the view isn’t that as profound, but it’s still very beneficial.
Yeah. Uh-huh. And the other thing is it depends on like, I have to ask you, is she a Buddhist or not? Because that’s, like, gonna make Okay. So if if she’s not a Buddhist, right, then she’s doing something with a different motivation, right, which doesn’t mean it’s a negative motivation, but it’s just given within a different set of constructs.
So whatever religion she believes in or whatever belief system is, then whatever it is that the goal that they work through in that religion is what she’s working for, and that’s her motivation, and that will be the result of her positive actions. Alright? So that’s that’s that’s from that, that’s that’s more of what the results would be if you weren’t a Buddhist. Right? Now in terms of if your Geshe-la said anytime that your mind becomes closed, like, shrinks down, is not open and happy, and you feel sad, tired, or depressed, then stop what you’re doing because it’s not there’s no point.
Alright? So if you aren’t able to keep your mind open and happy and relaxed relaxed while you’re benefiting others, you’re not really benefiting anyone. Alright? So if so if you if you’re if you can keep your mind open, keep doing things. If you can’t, then there’s no point doing it.
It’s not helping. Yep. Okay. If you’re then you do. Right?
If you’re us and you don’t have bodhicitta and you can’t give away everything very happily, then you do. This is about we have to make sure that we stay with a happy mind. This is a practice for bodhisattvas, and in order to develop bodhicitta, we need to develop this idea of completely cherishing others and not having a selfish thought. But we’re not there yet, so we need to cherish ourselves in order to get there and deal with the imprints, to keep habituating ourselves towards this idea of thinking of others till eventually, we will only think of others and not think of ourselves. And if you’re not thinking of yourself at all, you’re always happy.
Yeah? But at the moment, we can’t think like that, so we need to make to look after ourselves. So but what we’re trying to do is habituate ourselves into the into the idea of cherishing others and not practicing selfishness. So when we are meditating in this way, when we’re doing this mind training as a meditation, then we can you need to start working on the idea of being able to give away all our happiness to others, even if we can’t do it in real life. So if anyone has more questions, write them down for next week.
Yeah. Yeah. Geshe-la’s looking at me. I’m waffling on about him, and there’s people going like this. And Geshe-la’s like, are you tired, Ruth?
He’s like, why do wanna stop? I’m like, no.