Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A verse from Nāgārjuna’s Letter to a Friend — that wealth, looks, and learning are false ornaments compared to wisdom and compassion — opens this 45.7-minute talk by Geshe Pema Tsering. After noting that even five minutes of bodhicitta-motivated practice creates merit lasting until Buddhahood, he moves to the main topic: extending selflessness from persons to all phenomena. For ordinary beings, relative truth and inherent appearance are inseparably mixed “like milk into water” — we cannot separate how things exist from how they falsely appear. A classical master’s warning follows: repeating emptiness slogans without genuine meditation “scares emptiness away” and risks nihilism. He then introduces the next analytical step — determining whether the inherently existent self could be identical to or separate from the aggregates.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 TT 2004 10 12.mp3
UUID: 68037147-8a6d-4fc1-aa70-4a4cf363d42a
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Thought Transformation (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-10-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.7 minutes
Words: ~3,447
Letter to a Okay. Sorry. The in a letter to a friend by Nāgārjuna, he said the if even if you are from a good family, good looking, rich, and learned, if you don’t have the qualities of wisdom and Okay. Alright. Sorry.
He’s only quoting the last part of the verse. So I just got confused. Right. If you don’t even though you may be from a good family, be good looking, have lots of money, and lots of learning, if you don’t have qualities qualities of wisdom and and loving kind compassion, then you’re not really attractive or you’re not really worthy of veneration. The word is literally attractive, but it means, like yeah.
Not yes. And so in general, when we talk about qualities, we can talk about all different kinds of qualities. We can have the qualities that may help us in this lifetime in a worldly way, and they are the ones I talked about in the first line of this quote, coming from a good family, having lots of money, having good looks, having learning, any of these things. But then there are also qualities that can help us in the practice of Dharma, like the development of compassion and also the realisation of nirvana, the realisation of Buddhahood are also qualities that we can that the beings may have. So when this this quote is talking about qualities, it’s not about the qualities of this life.
It’s talking about the qualities that are either the development of liberation and Buddhahood or the development of the causes for liberation and Buddhahood. So these are the the real qualities that we should be looking for. These are the real ornaments for people. That’s the best way to put it. They’re real ornaments for people.
And so in Tibetan, the word for ornaments and jewelry is the same words which means to make beautiful. So it’s a play on words, which is fun to translate. So it’s saying that if we want to have real ornaments, if we want to have real qualities, then we need to develop we need to work towards nirvana and Buddhahood. If we any of the other ornaments or the so so called qualities of, you know, of worldly nature aren’t gonna help us truly in any way, aren’t going to make us truly beautiful. So we too can have we can be ornamented.
We can have these qualities. We it’s not just to beings who have full extreme more extreme, very profound realizations, meditative realizations that have these qualities. If we work hard at it, we can have qualities too. And through practicing the ten virtuous action, giving up the non ten non virtuous actions, practicing the three higher trainings. And as we’re training ourselves in these ways, we can be the those with positive qualities, those with ornaments as well.
So if we watch the way that our minds work, then we’ll notice that most of the things that we do in a day actually are focused on this lifetime, making ourselves happy in this lifetime. And but we do make an effort to try and practice Dharma as well. So this is not something that we need to look at a bit differently but even then if we’re not careful if we don’t focus on motivation instead of just going through the actions then that as well that our practice of Dharma can fall down into being a worldly worldly thing. This can happen because we can we can mix up our practice of Dharma with pride. We can mix up our practice of Dharma with appearances.
We can mix up our practice of Dharma with trying to get things from this lifetime, attachment to things from this lifetime. But even if in a whole day, and we can just concentrate on doing something positive for for five minutes, if we can do something with the motivation of attaining Buddhahood or nirvana for five minutes, and then that means that we will be ornamented with the positive qualities of five minutes. Alright? That’s very poetic. Ornamented with the positive qualities of five minutes, so our qualities will increase and increase.
And those these these ornaments that we’ve given ourselves through this positive practice for five minutes, they don’t go away until we become a Buddha. They don’t get they don’t their power doesn’t diminish until we become a Buddha. So if before we do something that’s positive, before we do any meditation or listen to teachings or or do any other virtuous activity, if we have the idea that I’m doing this in order to become a Buddha to be of the utmost benefit to all sentient beings, if we have that idea to start off with, and then when if we’re happy while we’re doing it, thinking, wow. I’ve got this opportunity to create causes for becoming a Buddha. And then afterwards, when we’ve finished, if we think, oh, may what I’ve done be a cause for me to become a Buddha, then we are actually establishing causes to become a Buddha.
The the way that we establish causes to become a Buddha is by our intention. So if our intention is positive, then the outcome if we intend sorry. If the intention of our positive action is to become a Buddha, then that will be the outcome of that positive action. So if we’re going to try and practice Buddhism, then we need at least to be focused on the next lifetime. If we’re going to try and strive to be a practitioner, then we should try and focus at least on nirvana.
And if we’re going to try and follow the Mahāyāna, should try and focus on Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. So then we should think, I’m listening to these teachings in on the view, on emptiness, in order to develop understanding of that of those teachings, in order to have a realization of those teachings, in order to be able to meditate properly on those teachings, and through meditating on the emptiness of the and the suchness, then to become a Buddha and be of the most benefit to all sentient beings. So please meditate on this for a couple of minutes. So last week, we were talking about the way last week, three weeks ago, we were talking about the way to identify the self to be refuted when we talk about selflessness. Now the self to be refuted was said to be the thought of I as an inherently existent thing, that is a intrinsic part or an instinctual part of the way that we think.
This evening, we’re going to talk more about how all objects, not just the self of persons, actually appear this way. So it’s still called selflessness, but it says it says the selflessness of phenomenon as well as the selflessness of persons. Sorry about the clumsy English, but it doesn’t quite fit. Okay. So this selflessness is described in brief by Lozang as saying that anything that appears to ordinary beings, that is, those of us who have ignorance in our mind stream and, haven’t perceived the true nature of reality, anything that appears to us, is, the object to be refuted.
Anything that appears to us, as being inherently existent, and this is the way that we view things, is, what we need to refute in order to understand emptiness or, suchness. So if if we want to understand what it is that we need to, search for and not find in order to understand the emptiness of inherent existence, the answer is everything the way everything appears to us. And you can’t say that some things appear to us as being inherently existent and others don’t, because as ordinary beings, everything appears to us as being inherently existent. So the way that things appear to us is a mixture of relative truth that is the way that things are actually established and an inherently existent appearance that is based on what’s called a generalised image so these two things mix up in our head like milk into water. We can’t separate one out from another. We can’t separate out, the relative truth of objects, that is that they exist but not inherently, from the way that they we perceive them as existing, which is inherently existent.
The two ideas, the generalized image that we have of objects as being inherently existent and the way they exist is relative truth, a is mixed up so thoroughly that we can’t separate them out. So this means that we can’t say okay that exists exists inherently but this exists only as relative truth that’s not the way we perceive anything everything appears to us as being a mix of the two we can’t say one thing is we some things only appear to us as being a relative truth. Some things only appear to us as not existing inherently, and other things appear to us as existing inherently. This isn’t the way that our our mind works. Our mind perceives everything as being inherently existent.
For Aryas, that is beings who have perceived, shunyata or perceived the true nature of reality, then things are a little different. They, have when they they have two states of being. One of them is called meditative equipoise and the other one’s called post meditative equipoise. That is when they’re in meditation and in their states in between meditation. When they’re in meditation, they are in a meditative equipoise on emptiness itself.
So in that state, they are not perceiving a generalized image or a an inherently existent thing. They’re perceiving a lack of an inherently existent thing. And when they’re in a post meditative state, things appear to them as being illusory like, and so this means they appear to them as being relative truth. So for them, they can isolate out what is the generalized image from what is a relative truth. For us, however, this is impossible.
We don’t have the clarity or the understanding of the thing to be of emptiness to be able to do this, to be able to differentiate these two things out. So this means that if we want to know what we need to refute, in terms of, well, the, objects that we say doesn’t exist and therefore the objects don’t inherently exist, then that is the way that everything appears to us. The object to be refuted is the way everything appears to us. Okay. How much fun.
Alright. So this means that we can’t go, alright. Now I find the I’ll just find the object to be refuted, and I’ll ignore everything the way that appears to me, and I’ll just go over off and follow some analytical theories, come up with an idea of what is what it is that I need to refute and develop perception of emptiness. It’s not the way it works. We need to we need to work with the way that things appear to us because that’s what our problem is.
This is why we’re experiencing suffering and have afflicted emotions and so on and so forth. Now this is explained by someone called Jangkya Rolpai Dorje, and he says, a few of us with clearer minds. Now that’s talking about people who have had the opportunity to study and look at emptiness. And he said, these type of people tend to cling to slogans such as self-contained and established as true. So they walk around going, that’s not inherently existent.
That’s this that that’s not self contained. That’s not established is true, and repeat these things over and over again. But even though they do that, they still cling to the idea of inherently existent objects. So they may be saying it a lot, and they may be coming up with reasons why it’s why it’s not inherently existent, but they’re not actually working with their mind. They’re not actually trying to change the way they perceive things or meditating on it.
So in this way, what he says what they’re trying to do is find something very solid to cling onto as emptiness. So they think, okay. It’s nothing that is appearing to me. It’s nothing that’s, related to the way I experience the world. Emptiness should be as clear as the horns on an animal.
I should be able to grasp it. I should be able to see it. This isn’t the way that emptiness is. Emptiness is much more subtle than that and is related to everything that we perceive. And so it’s not going to stand out as easily as horns on something’s head or it’s and it’s not set to stand out as plainly as an unveiled a woman’s or it’s actually says a mother’s, see, that’s what I was confused about because mother can mean emptiness, and it can also mean mother.
So this is a a an unveiled so it’s like a pun again, of emptiness and a mother’s unveiled face. Yes? And so it says, if you keep if you think that it’s going to be that clearly and you’re going to search for it if you’re going to search for it in this way, if you’re going to keep speaking at emptiness, and you’re going to keep, looking for something that gross, to hold on to as emptiness, then it says, if you keep, okay, it’s using this pun here, okay? So if you go up and you’re, like, yelling at a mother’s face saying, are you emptiness? Are you emptiness?
Is it that clear? They’re gonna run away. Alright? So it’s it’s saying that if you if you keep approaching the the the you keep approaching emptiness or trying to perceive emptiness by just speaking words and not trying to perceive it with your own mind, then it’s a bit like scare it will scare emptiness away. You won’t develop a perception of it.
So so what can happen if you keep doing that, if you keep yelling at so this is metaphor. If you keep yelling at your mother’s face, alright, and and you keep coming up with reasons and talking to them too much, they’re going to disappear. And this is is is likened to they’re gonna run away, and this is likened to, falling into the extreme of nihilism. So if you try and find emptiness relying on logic too much, then and relying on too much theory, then you’re going to fall into the extreme of nihilism, where you can’t find anything. So so this is this is what it’s referring to.
So what this means is that you need to have all the conditions to be able to perceive emptiness. It can’t be just based on trying to use logic. You need very specific instructions from a qualified teacher, and you also need the right accumulation of positive qualities within yourself through collection of merit and the right type of devotional wisdom and so on. So if you have all of these things then you develop the perception of emptiness. If you don’t have these things, then it’s very difficult to develop a perception of emptiness without these kind of instructions and these kind of qualities.
Okay. The other thing that I I I said I forgot something. I said, again, I forgot something. Goes, what did you forget? I was like, I remember what I forgot, I wouldn’t have forgotten it.
But then so we anyway, we figured it out. And the other thing is it’s not just it’s not only enough to have the the teachers with the instructions and also the internal qualities. We also need to do it take it easy with this with this developing these understandings and do it in a a relaxed manner and with no we’re not putting pressure on ourselves or anything like that in order to develop this understanding. Mhmm. So then it says that if you are able to identify the object that is to be refuted, if you’re able to figure out what it is that should be refuted, then by applying logic, like what’s called the king of logic, which is the logic of dependent origination, The mount it says the mountain of grasping at true existence will crumble.
So once you’ve been able to establish what it is that you’re refuting, what it is that you’re saying doesn’t exist, and then by applying correct reasoning to that object, then your grasping at that true object. That that that object you you perceive as true will crumble. So this this is as said again, you do not have to search for it. The thing, Oseeker, is within you. So what this is referring to is the fact that we don’t need to go on really long journeys to find emptiness or the lack of inherent existence.
We don’t need to search here and there and pay lots of money to go on expeditions. The thing that the the the place where we look for emptiness is within ourselves. Every time we say, I wanna do this or I need to do that, that’s the thing that we need to refute. That grasping an inherent existent inherently existent self is the object to be refuted. So it because it’s we don’t have to go so far, then he’s kinda suggesting that it’s easy, and that’s when Geshe-la laughed.
So then it says, because this is the case, meditate for months or years continually on the identification of the object to refute trying to find the what it is that we grasp at as being an inherently existent self. So this is like some advice for us saying, yeah, if if you want to understand selflessness, then this is what you need to do. So that was the first first section, which was the first key point of of understanding emptiness that is the thing to be refuted. Next key point is determining the full set of possibilities, so that means going through all the different ways that that self that we’re trying to refute could possibly exist. So what we’re talking about here is a process by which we analyze this self that we’ve talked about earlier.
First of all, need to find out the way that we perceive ourselves so if we or the way that we perceive phenomena and if we what if we investigate we’ll see that we instinctually think that things inherently exist we don’t think of them as coming into into being based on causes and conditions and then going away when those causes and conditions do no longer exist and therefore not being something that we should be attached to. We don’t perceive them as being like this. We think of things as being permanent, we think of things as being inherently existent, and therefore we grasp onto them in this way. And so if we investigate and see and look at the way that we perceive, especially ourselves, every time we say I, I or me, me, then we’ll know what is the object that we need to refute. And we need to look at the way that this thing appears to this self appears to us as existing.
And when it we look at the way that it appears to us as existing, it appears to us as existing as an independent autonomous thing. And because this doesn’t isn’t the way anything can exist, then we can refute its existence. So this means that the this object to be refuted, the thing that we’re trying to prove doesn’t exist and the cause of all of our problems is what’s called the instinctual sense of I or the instinctual sense of self. So if this instinctively exist in if this sorry. If this I that we instinctively feel exists inherently were to actually exist inherently, there could be only one of two ways, that it could possibly exist.
It could exist as being part of the groups of things that make us up or as being separate to the groups of things that make us up. So it could be, something that is the same as our, our physical form, our, feelings, our, discrimination, consciousness, and our the the time that we operate in and all of these things. It could be the same as that, and therefore, there something that we posit along with that group of things, or it can be something other than those group those groups of things.