Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A story about a meditator who snaps angrily at an interruption — while supposedly meditating on patience — opens Geshe Pema Tsering’s 45-minute final session on the Eight Verses of Mind Transformation. He uses it to argue that enemies and difficult people are more precious than friends: like a doctor who cuts yet heals, those who harm us are the only ones who can give us genuine patience and equanimous compassion. He then walks through Tonglen — the breath-based practice of sending happiness out and drawing others’ suffering in — explaining why even beginners who lack the ability to truly take on others’ pain benefit from the visualization. The session closes on the eighth verse: virtuous acts tainted by worldly motives fail to become real Dharma, and seeing phenomena as illusory dissolves the attachment that chains us to saṃsāra. Best suited to those who have followed the series from the beginning.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 TT 2004 08 31.mp3
UUID: c5ab4a65-5649-4098-8354-83f83c3069b0
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Thought Transformation (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-08-31
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~3,187
Yeah. Yeah. So this is the last teaching on the Eight Verses of Mind Transformation. Develop the right motivation for listening to the teachings. The best motivation that you can have to listen to the teachings is to think that by listening to this, you will develop understanding of it.
And through developing understanding of these verses, then you’ll be able to put them into practice. And through putting them into practice, you’ll be able to become a Buddha. Through becoming a Buddha, lead all sentient beings to a state beyond sorrow. So this is the motivation of bodhicitta because you’re doing listening to these teachings in order to be a benefit to all sentient beings. So because we have to finish this evening, we don’t have enough time to meditate, so just get on with it.
Yeah. Okay. I think I understand, but I’m not quite sure. So I’ll try my best. Alright.
So there’s a so and the the the verse that we’re dealing with says that if someone is that we have assisted and we put a lot of hope in them because we’ve helped them so much if they then turn around and are harmful to us then we have to see them as being according to this practice we should see them as being like a teacher to us because then they’re giving us the opportunity to practice patience and showing us how to practice patience. So this means that they can be different people, both of them we have to deal with it on the circumstances in some cases if someone’s being negative towards us or treating us or harming us and we turn around to be helpful to be friendly to them then that will dissolve the situation and other times if we just are calm and don’t react then that will help the situation so it depends on the situation sometimes it’s best to be calm and react and other times it’s best sorry, be calm and not react. In other times, it’s best to be friendly. So even though that they don’t have necessarily have the motivation to help us, then we can actually turn that situation into something that they are helping us.
They may have the motivation that they want to harm us or to be negative towards us, but they can actually end up helping us if we are able to develop the right motivation to deal with the situation that we’re in. And so because we have the it depends on how we deal with it as opposed to what their motivation towards us And this is Okay. So this is the way it’s explained in many different texts that if they it doesn’t matter what the motivation of the person that’s acting towards us has. If we are able to practice patience and practice kindness with regards to them, then it gives us the opportunity to develop to create virtues for ourselves despite what their motivation is. So if we can do this also with the illnesses.
This one. Alright. So this is a similar situation to when we go to a Now if we go to a doctor and doctors can do all sorts of negative things to us and we don’t see them as being our enemies. Even chop us open and and take things out of us or or give us lots of evil medicine or like medicine that tastes disgusting and and you’ve put all sorts of tests, take our blood and so forth. We don’t think that they’re our enemy.
We don’t think, Oh, they did all these horrible things to me, because we can see that the doctor is actually benefiting us by doing all these things to us. They’re helping us by doing all of these things to us. It’s the same thing when we encounter people that are being negative towards us, that are harming us. If we can think about the positive qualities that we can develop from those experiences, then we’re not going to see the person that’s harming us as being our enemy. We’re going to see the person that’s harming us as being someone who gives us the opportunity to develop qualities.
In the same way that a doctor, even though they’re performing, they’re doing all these things to us, we see them as being someone that’s actually is actually helping us. So in this way, enemies are incredibly important because enemies or people that are negative towards us give us the opportunity to develop patience. We can’t develop patience when we’re dealing with other people that we may be respectful to, like our teachers or our parents. In order for us to develop patience, we need someone that is trying to harm us. In this way, we really need to see people that are our enemies or someone that we have great difficulties with as being very precious to us and some someone that we can really use to develop patience.
So this is like there’s a a Tibetan story about a man who was a meditator, and he was meditating on patience. He was focusing on patience. Someone came up to him and said, Hey, what are you doing? He said, I’m meditating on patience. He went back to his meditation and the same person was very persistent and came up again and said, Sorry, what are you doing?
When this person said this to him and interrupted his meditation and asked what he’s doing, he got really angry at him and said, I’m meditating on patience. Obviously, this shows that he wasn’t meditating on patience, that he didn’t use the opportunity of the person coming up and interrupting his meditation to develop patience, he actually got angry at him. If he had been able to turn that situation around and not get annoyed that his meditation had been interrupted, then he would have been able to actually meditate on patience, but since he got angry at it, he lost the opportunity to meditate on patience. So for reasons like this, if we want to develop compassion in bodhicitta and loving kindness towards all beings, we really need people that are going to act like an enemy to us because it’s only through people acting in this way towards us that we can develop the qualities that we need to perform the acts of a Bodhisattva so in this way then we really should have respect and caring for our enemies because they are the people who give us this precious gift of being able to develop these qualities.
Without developing patience and tolerance, without developing this compassion towards even those that harm us, you can’t develop true compassion. You can’t develop bodhicitta. In general, when we talk about compassion, we say that the compassion that we need to develop in order to become a Bodhisattva is free from attachment so that is that we’re not completely focused on feeling compassion for people we like and then not feeling compassion for people we don’t like if we want to develop the compassion that we need in order to become a Bodhisattva in order to develop Bodhisattva it has to be equanimous compassion focused on all beings. This means that we need to develop compassion towards those that we consider our enemies as well. If we’re not able to extend our compassion out towards all beings, including those that harm us, then we can’t develop fully qualified compassion.
And so the other thing is that if we don’t have experiences like this, if we don’t come across beings who inflict harm on us in this way or we don’t come across difficult situations, we don’t develop qualities as individuals. It’s through the difficult times and through the hard experiences that we have that we develop both as people and that we also develop empathy and compassion for others. If we haven’t had a negative experience, then we don’t empathize as much with others who are having that negative experience. So negative experiences with when we are harmed in one way or another, this is how we develop courage. This is how we develop strength of personality, strength of mind.
This is how we are able to train to improve our view and to to improve ourselves as people. In this way also, then we can see that our enemies are actually very useful. So if if we don’t if we don’t have these experiences, then we become, like, soft and and and unable to develop this compassion and this bodhicitta, they don’t come about easily. So we need to work at them for them to come about. And it’s through these experiences, it’s through the times when we have difficult situations that we are able to develop.
If we experience situations that we feel like we can’t handle or we can’t bear and we are able to practice patience and forbearance in those circumstances, then we develop strength of mind we develop our character. If we just had everything easy, we wouldn’t be able to do this. It’s in these practices that we actually can focus on and taking and developing ourselves even though we may be experiencing a tragic circumstance. So the the development of these characteristics, the development of bravery, the development of strength of mind, the development of, patience, the development of courage, they can only come about, through difficult circumstances. This word that is usually translated as enemies, gek she, is like any situation.
It can be a person or it can be a situation or anything that makes things difficult for us. Any of these circumstances are what we need in order to develop any of these circumstances, sorry, we can use in order to develop a strength of mind and compassion and so on. And our friends can’t teach us this. Our our parents can’t teach us this. Our teachers can’t teach us this.
The only situations that we can the the only things that can teach us this are these difficult situations or people. So the next verse of the the eight verses is verse number seven, which says, in short, I will learn to offer to everyone without exception all help and happiness directly and indirectly and respectfully take upon myself all all harm and suffering of my mothers. And so what this is talking about is basically the practice of Tonglen, of giving and taking. And so it says in a line that says, I will learn to offer to everyone without exception all help and happiness directly and indirectly. This is referring to the practice of giving all of the happiness that we have experienced to others and respectfully take upon myself all harm and suffering of my mothers.
All beings experience all different types of suffering, so we can do this practice where we take this suffering on in order to relieve them of their suffering. So what this stanza refers to, again, is the practice of giving and taking meditation. So this means that through the power of loving kindness and compassion, then we see the happiness and all of the causes of happiness that we have in ourselves, and we visualize ourselves sending into others. Through the power of loving kindness we see all the happiness and the causes of happiness that we have in ourselves and we see ourselves giving this away to others and through the power of compassion we see the suffering and the causes of suffering other people are experiencing and visualize ourselves taking on that suffering so in this way we’re giving away all the happiness and that’s motivated by compassion by loving kindness and we’re taking on all the suffering which is motivated by compassion So these two different aspects, idea of compassion, which seeks to free all sentient beings from suffering or wishes all sentient beings to be free of suffering, and the idea of loving kindness, which wishes all beings to be happy — these are the two main aspects of the development of bodhicitta and these are the two practices that Bodhisattvas engage in so this is what we need to focus on as well if we want to become Bodhisattvas, and then everyone should try and become a Bodhisattva.
So this means focusing on these two things: the compassion that seeks all sentient beings to be free of suffering and the loving kindness that wishes all sentient beings to be happy. So for example, an instance of this would be if you actually came into contact with someone who was suffering intensely and you could actually see their suffering and experience their suffering, then you could actually practice Tonglen in that instance. So this is one way to train in this practice of giving and taking is when you meet someone who is manifestly and painfully suffering. So the way then that you would practice giving and taking meditation in reference with regards to someone that you’ve actually come into contact with or met that is experiencing intense suffering is that you would think is being here is experiencing intense suffering. It’s torturing them they’re experiencing the torture of intense suffering.
They don’t want to experience intense suffering they don’t want to experience suffering, in fact. They want to be free from suffering and experience happiness. This is what’s happened to them: even though they want to be free from suffering, they’re experiencing suffering. The reason that they’re experiencing suffering is because don’t know that suffering comes about through non-virtues, and happiness comes about through the practice of virtue. So, they haven’t understood that they need to give up non virtuous action and to practice virtuous action.
So because of this they’re experiencing suffering now so may they be free from that suffering may I take on that suffering that they are experiencing and may they develop the causes for the ultimate or final happiness, which is completely free from suffering. So you meditate or you familiarize yourself, visualize this thought. So there’s not many people that can actually do this. You need to be like a very realized Bodhisattva or someone with great yogic abilities to actually be able to see someone suffering and visualize yourself actually take it off them and take on the suffering yourself. For most of us, what this basically comes down to is a practice of visualization, where we imagine that we’re taking someone else’s suffering and we visualize ourselves taking on this suffering, even though it’s not actually going to happen because we don’t have the ability to do that.
Even though we are unable to actually take on other beings suffering at this stage because we haven’t developed these abilities, doing this visualization practice is enormously beneficial to us and can be very beneficial to the people we are focusing on. The reason that it’s very beneficial to us is because it strengthens our mind, it strengthens our resolve to be able to develop these abilities, to be able to actually truly work selflessly for others and not focus on ourselves, so it strengthens our resolve in this way. It becomes a cause for us to develop bodhicitta. If we are focusing on this kind of meditation, we are acting in a way that will encourage the development of bodhicitta. In these two different ways, and it’s a very powerful practice that can help to strengthen our mind and develop our resolve.
So the way that this practice is done is it is mounted on the breath. So this means that the giving of happiness is in the causes of giving of happiness and the causes of happiness is actually you you send that out on your breath, and then you actually take in other people’s suffering and the causes of suffering, or you visualize yourself taking in other people’s suffering and the causes of suffering on your in-breath. Okay. So the the last verse that we’ve come to I love it when this happens because Geshe-la’s just read the first two lines out in Tibetan and and go and explain them. And then the first two lines in Tibetan don’t line up with the first two lines in English.
So I have to try and find the bits he said. Okay, so I’m just going to read the whole verse and then give you his commentary. Also, the last verse says, Also, having not defiled all these by the stain of preconceptions of the eight worldly dharmas and by perceiving all phenomena as illusory, free from attachment, may I be released from bondage. So what this is talking about is that even though we may do virtuous actions and we may try and behave well and think of others and have compassion and so on a lot of the time the reasons we have for doing this are not in order to attain liberation or to become a Buddha. They are actually motivated by what are called the eight worldly dharmas or the eight worldly feelings.
Because they are motivated by those, they don’t become Dharma practice. They don’t actually become something that’s going to benefit us in the long run. Because they’re only motivated by achieving results in this life, then the most outcome that they can have is actually to achieve results in this life. This is something that we need to be very careful of because if we watch the way that our minds work, most of the time the reasons we’re doing things is to achieve a result at the moment or in this lifetime. We’re not focusing on the next life.
We’re not focusing on liberation or Buddhahood. Most of the time, this is what happens, and we need to be very careful when we are doing virtuous actions that our motivation is to achieve Buddhahood, is to achieve liberation, and not just to to get temporary happiness in this lifetime. And if, in conjunction with this, if we’re able to perceive that although the phenomena that we are engaged with are actually illusory, they’re like an illusion and they don’t have inherent existence, then we will be free from attachment, which is what entraps us in Samsāra. So if we’re able to perceive that things aren’t as they appear to us to be, that is, that they aren’t inherently existent things that can actually make an inherently existent eye happy, then we’re free from attachment to these objects. And If we’re free from attachment to these objects, we don’t create the causes for experiencing saṃsāra, and we experience liberation.
This means, in this way, what is actually binding us is our perception of inherent existence, our perception of an inherently existent self. And if we’re able to see through this, then the bindings that chain us to saṃsāra will be released. So what we really need to do is, with all of these practices, at the beginning, this verse, Geshe-la says, this is with regards to all of the practices that are previously described in