Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A striking pivot marks this 45-minute session: Geshe Pema Tsering opens with thought transformation — tracing all suffering to self-cherishing and all happiness to cherishing others, drawing on the first Pänchen Lama’s Guru Puja verse — then shifts entirely to emptiness. He establishes why even arhats retain self-cherishing and why only bodhicitta leads to Buddhahood, before walking through the first of four key points for understanding emptiness: identifying exactly what is to be refuted. Using a thief-catching analogy and a verse from Śāntideva, he explains why the autonomous, self-established self must be clearly identified before it can be negated, and warns that failing to do so risks collapsing into nihilism — illustrated by the pot example.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 TT 2004 09 14.mp3
UUID: 342d8f2b-3301-4342-8adb-7069f6d8a66d
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Thought Transformation (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-09-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~4,032
So the first Pänchen Lama in the text reviewing the stages of the path in the Guru Puja said that all positive qualities come from cherishing mother sentient beings and all negative experiences or all suffering comes from cherishing ourselves So what this is referring to is that if we want to look at who is the culprit for any experience of suffering we have, we have to look to our grasping at self as an inherent thing. And if we want to know what is the cause of experiencing any type of happiness, it’s through cherishing other sentient beings who have been their mothers in the past. So this mind is a cherishing self. This way of thinking that cherishes self and seeks happiness for the self. It’s constantly working towards experiencing for that self to experience happiness.
So it means that we’re because we have this idea of cherishing ourselves, we’re constantly creating karma. We’re constantly doing things in order to make ourselves happy. But the problem is, although we want to experience happiness and because we cherish ourselves because we think we’re important, we try and just make ourselves happy, Everything that we do with this motivation doesn’t actually make us happy. Everything we do with the motivation of self-cherishing is actually a cause for us to experience suffering. Now, this suffering is samsaric suffering.
It’s the nature of saṃsāra, so it can have different experience. We can have different experiences of it. If we do something positive with a self-cherishing attitude, we can experience a samsaric happiness. If we do something negative with a self-cherishing attitude, we may experience a manifest suffering in saṃsāra but anything that we do any positive action that we do if we’re doing it in order for ourselves to be happy then that motivation stops us from practising or implementing or creating the causes to develop nirvana to become enlightened to become a Buddha anything that we do that we’re doing in order to make ourselves better off anything that we do with the motivation of this will make me happier in a samsaric way, its results will be also saṃsāra. So so this idea of self-cherishing or this the mind that cherishes self or whichever way we wanna put it doesn’t need to be anything complicated.
It comes down to a very simple the very simple idea of considering ourselves to be very important. So this idea of self self importance isn’t something that any sentient being doesn’t have. So we have it. If we watch the way we think, we are constantly trying to make ourselves happy and trying to work towards happiness. There are also other animals.
If we look at any animal, we look at anybody, then there’s always this idea of working for happiness, working to make the self happy to to because the self is that important. So getting rid of self-cherishing, getting rid of this idea of the importance of self is is incredibly difficult. It’s an incredibly difficult process to complete and so even if people are able to start it to actually complete it is incredibly difficult and even our arhats, hearers and solitary realisers those who have attained nirvana haven’t gotten rid of self-cherishing. They’ve got rid of self grasping but not self-cherishing. The reason that they haven’t got rid of self-cherishing is the motivation for working towards nirvana, whether it’s in a solitary place or by listening to the teachings of Buddhas is to get out of saṃsāra themselves to develop the state of nirvana for themselves so even though they may have gotten rid of every afflictive emotion that they could possibly have they’ve gotten rid of their desire, hatred and greed completely they haven’t gotten rid of self-cherishing and so self-cherishing is what we need to get rid of if we are to develop a bodhicitta the mind of enlightenment we can’t become we can become arhats and still have self-cherishing but we can’t become buddhas and still have self-cherishing in order to become a buddha we need to turn our self-cherishing into other cherishing and be working selflessly for for others.
So the antidote to self-cherishing is the mind of enlightenment, the bodhicitta. And bodhicitta is cherishing others, is working for the benefit of others. self-cherishing is working for benefit of only self. So in order for us to turn this mind around, turn this mind on its head, need to start practicing cherishing others and we need to start practicing to let go of self-cherishing, to obliterate self-cherishing. So there’s two different aspects to working towards enlightenment and there’s two different parts to bodhicitta.
There’s this idea of working for self, realizing emptiness to get rid of the causes of suffering and there’s also the part the way we work for others which is more the relative bodhicitta. Both these parts are aspects of bodhicitta and both these parts are aspects of the path we need to follow in order to become Buddhas. But the key to it, the thing that we need to work on mainly is this idea of cherishing others more and cherishing self less because this is the way that we develop bodhicitta, the direct answer to self-cherishing. So we this is what we need to train our mind in, in cherishing others. And Through training our mind in cherishing others, we’ll be less likely to cherish ourselves.
Through training our mind in cherishing others, we’ll develop closer and closer to bodhicitta. It may seem difficult for us to come up with the idea of doing this in the beginning and put effort into it because all of our thoughts at the moment are on how to make ourselves happy and the idea of selflessly working for others may seem a very difficult task for us. But if we think about it, if we use logic and reasoning it makes no sense that we are completely stuck on ourselves and not considering other beings we’re one person other beings are countless and why is why is this one person that’s us more important than all other beings it doesn’t make sense that we should somehow think that we’re more important than every other being it would make more sense it would seem to work for the benefit of everybody else than just to focus on one person and so if we’re able to think along these lines and start focusing on others then our appreciation for other beings is going to grow and grow and grow and our focus on self is going to lessen to become less and less and yes through doing this then we work towards the development of bodhicitta and what the development of bodhicitta means is that we’re happy about working for others in the beginning it may be very difficult for us to focus on working for others but if we develop bodhicitta working for others becomes as fulfilling and happy about it as we are at the moment working for ourselves at the moment if someone says do something that’ll make you completely happy and we think okay that’s fine that’s easy I don’t have a problem with that but if people say do something that makes others happy then that can be more problematic that can be more difficult if you develop bodhicitta then in the same way that we like doing things that makes ourselves happy at the moment we’ll enjoy doing things that make other people happy it’s completely turning that around instead of enjoying making ourselves focusing on what we want and we’ll enjoy focusing on what others want and it will be just as easy to focus on what others want as it is at the moment to focus on what we want so this may seem like a way way off goal but what we need to do is to train in that to think of others more and then our focus on others will become more refined and more refined and more and this sense of focusing on self will become less and less eventually, it will develop into bodhicitta.
So we want ourselves to be happy. We want to to make ourselves happy. But if we really want to make ourselves happy, then we have to find the best way to make use of the lifetime we have at the moment and not waste it by pursuing things that aren’t going to make us happy but we may think is going to make us happy so what we really need to do is to make the most of our opportunity that we have at the moment we need to use it to utmost so that we actually get to be truly happy from the experience and there’s only two ways we can really do this we can either focus on our own benefit and work towards nirvana or we can focus on the benefit of others and work towards Buddhahood. So it comes down to these two choices. If we do much else, we’re basically wasting our lifetimes.
So we need to decide, do we focus on ourselves or do we focus on others? Okay. So to achieve a human rebirth is something that is very rare. To achieve a human rebirth where we have access to Dharma is something even rarer We’ve had many lifetimes where we haven’t been humans and if we looked at the percentage of different lives we’ve had that have actually been as a human in this middle state then there’s hardly any of the lifetimes we’ve experienced have been like this. And it’s not only just having a human rebirth that’s very rare, but having the kind of human rebirth that we have is even more rare.
If we look at the world, all the beings in the world, then there’d be less than one percent that actually have the opportunity or have the knowledge to practice ethics properly to create the causes for experiencing happiness and to abandon the causes for experiencing suffering. There isn’t that many people that can actually put this into practice. So once we have this opportunity, it’s imperative that we don’t waste it. We really need to make sure that we take the most from that opportunity. So we need to look at what we’re able to do.
If we are able, then we should try and think I’m going to do this for the benefit of all other sentient beings and work towards Buddhahood. And if we aren’t able to do that, then we should at least have the idea of working towards individual liberation for ourselves and nirvana for ourselves. These are the two main motivations that we should try and work with and when we figure out which one of these we want to work towards then we really need to put in a lot of effort and a lot of hard work into working towards those goals. If we do put in a lot of hard work and a lot of effort, then the results will be extraordinary. If we don’t put in this hard work and effort, then we’re we’ve wasted the opportunity that we have for achieving those goals.
So then we should think, okay, this evening, I’m going to listen to a teaching on emptiness. By developing understanding of emptiness or if not putting imprints or getting the habit of listening to teachings on emptiness, then through doing this I will develop the causes for becoming a Buddha so may what I’m doing now create the causes for me to become a Buddha and by so doing be of benefit to all sentient beings so we should focus on that you know, let’s rest in that thought for a few minutes. Okay. So this evening, we’re gonna talk about emptiness. But before we start, we should remember that this isn’t an easy subject.
So we were doing the four there’s what’s called the four key points, and they need to be examined when we’re trying to develop an understanding of emptiness. The first of which is that what is to be refuted. Yeah? I have no idea. What is to be refuted?
And the second thing is what are the full set of possibilities that could occur? The third one is how the self and the aggregates cannot be truly the same. And the fourth one is how the self and the aggregates cannot be truly different. From amongst those we’re dealing with the first one what is to be refuted. One of the first things that we need to refute is that which is called the self, the ātman, the autonomous permanent singular.
That’s what I’m looking for. Autonomous permanent singular self. We just gotta make sure that we’re at the right the same place. So the first thing that we’re trying to establish then is what is to be refuted. What if we’re going to be say something is we’re talking about emptiness then we want to know what is reality empty of so this is described by Śāntideva in Engaging in the Deeds of the Bodhisattvas when he said when you do not touch on the object of negation you will not grasp that it is not real so what this refers to is that if you don’t figure out what you think a self is or what the different positions on what a self is are then you can’t refute the self.
So you can’t figure this out that something is empty of something until you figure out what it is actually empty of. So an example of the way that this works and an analogy that’s given is that, for example, you can’t shoot an arrow at a target if you can’t see the target. So in the same way as saying you can’t refute self if you don’t establish what self is. So we need to we’re talking about something that is the negation or something. Emptiness is the negation or something.
We want to say that something doesn’t exist but before we can say something doesn’t exist we have to establish what that thing is that we’re saying doesn’t exist so if we’re dealing with what’s called a non affirming negative like selflessness or as there is just a complete lack of self then we need to establish self before we can establish selflessness Another example that’s given is that if you want to catch a thief, you need to know who the thief is. So when we’re dealing with selflessness, we need to refute what type of self no, sorry, we need to establish what type of self is being refuted to begin with. And so there’s many different descriptions for this self. The first one is a self that truly exists that is it exists from its sorry, it’s a self that truly exists The next thing is a a self that by its own nature can establish itself that it can establish itself by its own nature it can make itself be there by itself. And the next thing is self that is distinct from everything else.
That it is something that says it’s made up of its own parts. It’s established by its characteristics and it’s distinct from everything else in doing that. So actually these four things these four descriptions of what self is we’re talking about are all said to be synonyms. If something is able to be established by itself then it has to be truly existent. If it’s truly existent then it has to be able to be it has to be established by its own characteristics.
So if it’s established from its own side, sorry, I’ll go through them, I’m not sure if I said them all if something is established from its own side from its own power then it has to be established by its own characteristics if something is established by its own characteristics then it has to be truly existent these things are synonyms So the self that we’re trying to negate is a self therefore that is truly existent established by its own characteristics from its own side self This isn’t something that actually exists and the whole process of understand emptiness is to refute that conception. But before we can actually refute it, we need to know what it is we’re refuting. Okay, so the first thing that we’re dealing with here is we have to establish we have to prove wrong the first assertion that there is a self that is established by itself. So there’s a quote from the commentary to the four hundred verses, which is a text. Okay.
Sorry. This commentary, the four hundred commentary to the four hundred verses is a commentary to a text written by someone called Āryadeva who was a follower of Nāgārjuna. So the Nāgārjuna wrote one text, Āryadeva wrote a commentary to that and then Candrakīrti has written another commentary to that. Right? So there’s this whole string of Madhyamaka people.
Anyway, the quote actually says, the thing known as the self is an entity whose nature is not to be the outcome of any other functional phenomena. Selflessness is its non existence. So this means that if we are going to establish something as a self or as an entity unto itself it can’t come about because of anything else. It can’t come about because of any causes. It can’t come about because of any conditions.
It has to come about because of itself. If there’s something to truly exist naturally like this it has to come about by itself and there is no objects that come about by themselves All objects come about in dependence upon other things so this is one way we can refute the self If the self existed it wouldn’t need to rely on anything else and how can something come about when everything is interconnected? How can something come about without relying on anything else if everything is interconnected? That is? That is?
So this means that if the self is supposed to be something distinct in itself, that means that it can’t be the outcome of other things. It can’t rely on a specific set of conditions it can’t rely on a combination of causes and conditions it has to come about through its own power through its own force if something can’t do that you can’t say it’s a self you can’t say it’s a self contained entity you can’t say it’s an independent and if something’s not independent independently existent and doesn’t rely and has to rely on other things bring it into existence, you can’t say it’s the self. So these ideas that we may be putting forward, however, are are only kind of words of an argument, words of debate, words of philosophy. They don’t count for much unless we can personally experience this lack of self. The only way that we can really determine the lack of self is through much meditation, through familiarisation with these concepts.
So it’s not enough for us to just be able to have good answers when people throw the syllogisms or ideas at us. We need to be able to this and come from a place of experience if we’re describing this selflessness. The example that’s given that describes the difference between these two things is that it’s easy to say I know who the thief was he’s a person and then also I know who the thief was it was a person wearing white. Can say these things easily but it’s a lot more difficult to actually get out there run off run the person down and grab them. It’s a lot more difficult to go through that process than to just identify the person as this.
So this is like showing how although we may get a general idea of this selflessness and how selflessness comes about, we haven’t actually finished our work or developed that understanding thoroughly enough until we can experience that that reality directly. So this process that’s going on if we do that is that we’re relying for our understanding of emptiness on other people’s descriptions, we hear their presentation of what they’re saying we hear their logic and the way that they present things and we develop an understanding based on that now this way that we develop an understanding based on other people’s description is through a process called the generalized meaning of sound and the generic image. What this means is that if someone says something to us that’s called a generalized sound or generalized meaning of sound. So we get a general idea of something from the act of hearing it described and then in our minds we may develop an idea of that and that’s called a generalized image but a generalized image dependent on a generalized sound is not a direct experience. It’s mixed with concepts.
It’s mixed with our ideas of what things are and it’s not a personal experience. What we need to do is work on those ideas, the things that have been presented to us and we have a sound we’ve heard and it develops an idea in our head. We need to work on that idea again and again until our experience of that reality becomes direct and it’s described as being a vivid, naked, personal mental experience with nothing in between us and that experience. No thought processes, no conceptualization between us this understanding. So if we haven’t established what it is that we need to refute in the beginning, then we are in danger of it says falling into the trap of disproving the mutual interdependence of phenomena so we’re using all these arguments to prove that things don’t exist but if we don’t understand what it is that we’re disproving the existence of we can just try and convince ourselves of something and disprove the existence of reality and fall into what’s called nihilism or the extreme of nothingness thinking that nothing exists which is just as dangerous as the extreme of thinking that things do exist inherently.
In order to develop an understanding of the middle way between these two extremes we need to have a very solid and a very clear understanding of what it is that we are disproving the existence of. So this means for example if we take we look at a pot everyone’s pretty familiar with a pot so it says to focus on a pot because it’s not something we have to think too much on if we try and find the potness of pot what makes the pot a pot and we start dissecting it and then we may look at the mouth of the pot and go okay it’s the mouth of the pot that defines this is it the mouth of the pot that defines this pot as a pot and we have to say no because there was only a mouth of a pot there wouldn’t be a and then we have to look at the base of the pot and say okay is it the base of the pot that defines a pot as a pot but if we just had the base of a pot that wouldn’t be a pot either so we can’t say that it’s the base of the pot that defines pot as a pot and so you go through this process of every part of the pot looking for the potness of pot and you can’t find it anywhere so in the end you have to give up and say there is no pot but if you do that then you have gotten rid of the concept of pot there is no pot there but if you’re just focusing on the lack of pot, because you haven’t been able to find it, this is actually the extreme of nihilism.
This is the extreme of saying nothing exists because you couldn’t find the pot. It doesn’t exist.