Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The “sweet poison” analogy — samsaric happiness tastes pleasant but creates only more suffering — gives this 45-minute Lamrim commentary its sharpest edge. Geshe Pema Tsering argues that most practitioners hold liberation as a vague, pleasant idea rather than an urgent need, and uses a thirst-for-water image to describe the single-pointed craving for nirvana we should be cultivating instead. He then unpacks Lama Tsongkhapa’s verse line by line: why this human life outvalues a wish-fulfilling gem, the grain-and-husk image for worldly versus Dharma activity, and the lightning-flash simile for life’s brevity. The session closes by introducing the three scopes of spiritual motivation and reading Atisha’s definition of the lowest-scope practitioner — someone who has at least shifted focus from this life to the next. Suited to students following a Lamrim course.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 2004 03 09 RG.mp3
UUID: d7a64d47-201a-4060-93c5-cd5787894238
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Essence of Refined Gold (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-03-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~4,405
Thank you. Come here, you said, please. Michelle, you married? Just got a card from his one of his teachers in Sera, one of his main teachers. He just got excited, he left his glasses in the room.
He got the card and goes, I go for refuge! And then got all confused and then came out. This is a sign of respect when they get something for someone at the teacher. Oh, yeah. Oh, that’s specific word for each single line of a text, I can never remember.
Worship. So we’re we’re going through the graduated path. When we go through the graduated path, first of all, have to set our motivation properly. So the motivation that we need to have to listen to this is we need to be thinking that we’re listening to these teachings, we’re looking at these teachings, and Geshe-la’s from his perspective is teaching these teachings in order that we develop understanding from them. From that understanding, then we can put the teachings into practice.
By putting the teachings into practice, then we can develop the understandings we need and the realizations we need in order to attain the final enlightenment. Because just like us, all other sentient beings don’t want to experience suffering. They want to experience happiness. In order for us to show them how to experience happiness, we need to become Buddhas. So in order to attain that state of Buddhahood, then this is the reason that we are studying this graduated path.
So we’ve been going through the graduated path and we’re going through the teachings on the section about precious human rebirth. That is the situation that we now find ourselves in. That is a birth or a body which has all of the conditions and endowments that we need in order to be able to practice Dharma properly and practice it well. So it s then explaining to us that we really need to take the essence from this lifetime. We need to make the most of this lifetime and get whatever we can out of it.
Because in the past we put in a lot of effort and we did a lot of good deeds in order to attain this state that we are now in. So if we don’t use this result, this body that we have now, to benefit ourselves more, then it’s like we’re completely wasting it. It would be like we went on a really long trip in order to get something from a very foreign land. And then when we got there, we forgot about why we had come there and we started playing and mucking around and then came back without getting what it was we set out to get in the first place. So all this effort that we’ve put in to get where we are, we need to make the most of that and try and engage in doing Dharma practices now.
We already have a sense of this idea that we need to achieve liberation, that we want to achieve realizations or go into nirvana. We have an idea of that, but we don’t have it very strongly. We have a kind of foggy idea of it or a wavering idea of it. And we need to develop that idea. We need to strengthen that idea till we become like very thirsty people searching for water our search for liberation.
Until we completely understand that Samsāra is nothing but suffering and we need to get out of Samsāra and attain liberation. We need to get out of Samsāra so we can experience true happiness. We know that if we re really, really thirsty, we start looking at water differently. Every time we get near some water when we re very thirsty, it becomes the center of our attention and we spend our time trying to find water. And if we do get it, we see it with new eyes or a different way of looking at it.
So this is what we need to develop in terms of looking at nirvana or liberation. We need to develop the mind that is craving for nirvana, is single mindedly concentrated on nirvana. So this is difficult for us to develop that strong sense of yearning for liberation because of the way that our mind works at the moment, we have really strong habits that focus on trying to achieve saṃsāra instead of trying to achieve nirvana or trying to achieve liberation. We may have this vague idea that achieving liberation may be a good thing, but we’re very caught up in the qualities or the good characteristics that we perceive in saṃsāra. And because we see saṃsāra as being something worthy, we see it as having all these good qualities in it, then we can’t see past that view we have to seeing how much we need to work towards nirvana.
So we may have developed this idea of it would be a good thing to be liberated, would be a good thing to have achieved this. But that idea gets clouded in or gets confused with our striving for things of saṃsāra, for samsaric happiness, which we see the qualities of that or the perceived positive qualities of that clearer than we do the idea of attaining nirvana. Okay. If we’re really, really thirsty, then we don’t think about much apart from water. Yeah.
If our mouths are really, really dry, the thing that we concentrate on all the time is trying to find water. We think of how do I get water? Where do I go to find water? We imagine what it will be like when we drink the water. We concentrate on it completely we re really thirsty.
That s where our minds go to water. So for us to develop that kind of intense longing or that intense concentration on trying to develop nirvana is very difficult. It’s difficult if we’re like us because we’re constantly getting caught up in the things we want from saṃsāra. So it’s a difficult thing for us to develop a thirst for saṃsāra sorry, a thirst for nirvana in the same way that we would have a thirst for water when our mouths are very, very dry. So at the moment, we have this idea, oh, it’d be really nice to be in nirvana or become able to achieve nirvana.
That’d be really nice, and I’d be happy all the time and it would be a really pleasant place to be in. And, Oh, what a nice idea, being a nice idea to have that realization, to be in nirvana. We had that idea and then it’s like, Oh, what do I have to do to get that? Give up this? No way!
You know, we think it’s a nice idea but then when it comes down to actually putting into practice thinking, You mean I have to give up all of the nice things I like about Samsāra? I have to stop being attached to all of these things, striving after them, then we start thinking, well maybe not. Our nice idea about nirvana seems to get muddled over by our ideas of what we think is actually going to give us happiness in the short term. So we may have a vague notion. We have a, Yeah, it’s a nice idea, but putting it into practice, then that’s more difficult for us.
And the reason for this is that we don’t see what saṃsāra really is. In order for us to attain nirvana, then we have to recognize saṃsāra for what it is, which is completely faulty. That there is no positive qualities in saṃsāra, that there is nothing that can create happiness in saṃsāra. And we don’t want to see that because that means giving up all the things that we cherish that will make us happy, all the things we think will make us happy. And to let go of those so we can attain nirvana or attain liberation is very difficult thing or idea to come out in our mind.
It’s a difficult idea to generate. So, reason we have a difficulty focusing on developing the mind striving towards liberation on nirvana is that we are very caught up in what we perceive to be happiness, what we perceive to be pleasurable. And what we perceive to be happiness and pleasurable is the is saṃsāra, the things in saṃsāra that make us happy. And we think that if we strive after these things, then we will become happy. And we have this idea that by working hard or striving towards them and getting them, then we can make ourselves happy in Samsāra.
We have this idea. And those are the things that make us feel happy at the moment. That s the habits we have. That s the things we know make us feel happy in the short term because we have experience of them. But they’re a bit like really, really sweet poison.
The well, poison that’s really, really sweet, even though it’s by its nature poison, doesn’t stop us wanting to eat it because we want to taste the sweetness. We get pleasure from eating something sweet. So even though we know that by its nature it’s poison, we still have this desire to eat it. Unless we totally understand that it is truly poison and it’s going to kill us, right? If there s something that we can t see as directly as poison but we have a vague notion of poison, we re still going to eat it.
We re still going to take it. We re still going to eat it just to get the sweetness that comes instantly from that experience. So this is the same thing with our craving for samsaric happiness. It gives us a short term happiness, so therefore we strive after it. But it doesn’t create true happiness it creates more suffering.
Because it is samsaric happiness and not true happiness, it is like poison in that it creates suffering. Our striving after samsaric happiness creates suffering. We may eat some very sweet poison and enjoy ourselves while we’re eating it, but we don’t think about the fact that from two days from then we’re going to die. It’s the same thing with us striving for samsaric happiness. We think about how we’re enjoying the temporary results of that.
We don realize that we re creating the causes to experience death and rebirth and death and rebirth and different types of suffering. And then we also have to recognize that these things that we re striving after, that we view as happiness, aren’t by their nature happiness they’re by their nature suffering. So this means that there’s nothing stable in that happiness. There’s nothing we can rely on in that happiness. And even if we spend a long time trying to develop that happiness or to get to yet a to experience a pleasurable experience, after all the effort that we put in to experience that pleasurable experience, it doesn’t last.
It turns into suffering. We don’t get happier and happier from it. We get sadder and sadder, or we experience more and more suffering from that. So that’s because it’s by its nature suffering. It’s the suffering of change.
It’s not true happiness. It’s just pleasurable for a very short amount of time. Okay, it’s like then what Lama Tsongkhapa says Lama Tsongkhapa says in his text, human life found but this one time is more precious than a wish fulfilling gem. So hard to regain and so easily lost is as brief as a flash of lightning. So seeing this, we should discard worldly activity like the husk of a grain and strive day and night to take life’s essence.
So this human rebirth can take us to liberation, so we need to take that essence from it. So when it says discard worldly activity like the husk of a grain, there is nothing that we can use a grain husk for. We can’t get any sustenance from the husks of grain. We can’t digest it properly. Therefore, we can’t get anything to give us strength from it.
But from within the husk of a grain, we can extract the true essence of the rice or the wheat that we can get nutrients from. And this is the same as our experience of this lifetime. Worldly activity or things that only give us temporary pleasure in this lifetime are like the husk of a grain. There s no essence to them. There s nothing that we can use to sustain ourselves with them.
So what we need to do is actually go for the thing that can help us. And the thing that can help us is the practice of Dharma, is developing the mind to try and get out of saṃsāra. So that s the way we need to look at this lifetime. Get rid of the husk and go for the grain or try and get the grain out of the situation. So that means getting rid of the things of this life and taking up the practice of Dharma.
And so then it says, and strive day and night to take life’s essence or to take the essence from the grain. And the reason that it says this human life found by this one time is more precious than a wish fulfilling gem is that myth of the wish fulfilling gem is that it fulfills the wishes of this lifetime. Anything that you ask for in this lifetime, this gem, this mythological gem can grant. So you anything that you want, whether it be wealth or happiness or so forth it can grant you that. But it s only referring to fulfilling desires.
And what this human body can do is this human body can act as a base for us to achieve a good human rebirth in the next life. It can act as a base for us to achieve liberation and it can act as a base for us to achieve full enlightenment. So in this way, anything that we can achieve with this human body is much more powerful and much more far reaching than anything that a wish fulfilling gem can give us. So, when it says also that this human life is found by this one time and is hard to regain and easily lost, what this is referring to is the fact that in order for us to have achieved this human lifetime, we have to have done something very special or very difficult. We have to have practiced very good ethics and combined that practice of ethics with the practice of the six perfections generosity, patience and so forth.
With that practice then, we either have to have had those strong actions that we’ve committed in the past past or we had to have had what’s called a stainless wish. Now stainless wish or stainless aspiration is an aspiration that understands that things aren’t inherently existent. So any of these things is difficult to do. So the experience that we have now, we’re experiencing the results of that. Experiencing the results of something we did in the past, which was a very difficult thing to do.
So, in order for us to achieve that, to have achieved that cause, or to establish that cause, then we needed to have a whole range of causes and conditions at our disposal. So we needed to have an understanding of ethical conduct. And we needed to have a basis for that understanding of ethical conduct. And then we had to have an understanding of the practice of the perfections and the benefits of practicing those perfections. All we needed to have is some kind of understanding of emptiness.
So we needed to have been taught or instructed in the true nature of reality. And so for us to have had that experience in the past developed on that to create the situation we have now was a very difficult thing to come about. That’s what it refers to when it says that this human life is found but this one time and so hard to regain. When it says it’s so easily lost, what this is referring to is that this lifetime that we have isn’t something that lasts forever. It’s not something that has an unending cause.
Because in actual fact, because this body that we have, that we experience is a conditioned phenomena that is a phenomena that comes into being based on causes and conditions. When those causes and conditions are no longer there, then that body ceases to exist. Therefore, it’s not just that. It’s said that all conditioned phenomena are impermanent. And from a Mādhyamika philosophical perspective, means that all conditioned phenomena or all phenomena that come into being based on causes and conditions are in each moment in a constant process of change.
So we have this subtle level of impermanence but we also have a more gross level impermanence in that we don’t know when we are going to die. There’s many different things that can cause death that can come into our path. So we can die from disease. We can die from all sorts of things. We can even die from the very things that we use to try and sustain this body.
For example, food. We take food in order to sustain our body. We take food because we need it to keep our body going. But we can eat things that kill us as well. So even the things that we take on or we use to keep us going can actually be a cause for our our our demise.
So, the next one where it says is as brief as a flash of lightning. Now, what that refers to is a flash of lightning. If we don’t concentrate then we miss it. And in the same way, our life that we are experiencing now, while it may seem to us to last a long time, is not a very long time when we compare it to the concept of beginningless time. So if we think about the fact that we have constantly been going through rebirth and rebirth, birth and rebirth, birth and rebirth since time immemorial up until now, then the maximum of about one hundred years that we may exist in this body isn’t very long, comparatively speaking.
So in this way, it’s said that this lifetime is as brief as a flash of lightning. So once we look at it this way, then we really need to stop focusing on things that are gonna give us temporary happiness in this life because there really is no point to it. And we need to start focusing on how to achieve true happiness, how to achieve realizations that actually can help us because they are the only thing that does have a point. Okay. So now that we’ve established that having a precious human rebirth is something that we can’t take lightly and something that we need to take the essence of.
So this quote that we were just going through is from Lama Tsongkhapa explained it in this way. And in order to practice the meditation on precious human rebirth, then we need to generate this idea that we’re going to take the essence from we’re going to take the essence from this lifetime, that we’re going to make the most of this lifetime. But once we’ve thought about that, once we’ve developed that idea, then we need to know how to take the essence from this lifetime. What it is that we need to do in order to make the most of this experience that we have now of this precious human rebirth. Now when we’re talking about this, Lamrim or the Graduated Path tradition says there is a couple of ways we need to approach this.
We need to develop an actual experience of these understandings and we need to practice the general foundations of the paths practices. And so this is a process that we need to go through in order to develop this understanding. And this explanation of what it is that we need to do is described under two different headings. The first of which is how the path of the three levels of spiritual application condenses all the teachings of the Buddha. So how this path that’s going to be expressed, that is the three different levels of motivation we need to go through.
How that actually is all of the teachings of the Buddha condensed into one text. And then the next section is the reason for leading aspirants through these three levels or the reason for guiding people who want to achieve enlightenment through these these different levels of development. Okay. So in the first section, how the path of the three levels of spiritual application, okay, condense all the teachings of the Buddha. And I said that the Buddha, from the first moment he developed the bodhicitta mind or the mind wishing for enlightenment all the way up until he not only achieved Buddhahood or the final Buddhahood, but then afterwards when he taught the Buddhadharma, all of these actions, all of the things he did were in order to be of were solely in order to be of benefit to all beings.
All of the things that he achieved were on the basis of trying to help all beings and all of the motivation the only motivation he had was to help beings. So this means that all of the Buddhist teachings come from the perspective of how they help beings or what it is that beings can get out of these teachings. So therefore when we talk about the Buddhist teachings we can talk about two ways these teachings help sentient beings. The first of which is in the short term the Buddha’s teachings help sentient beings to attain positive rebirth, experience temporary happiness and show them how not to experience the results of negative actions in the form of suffering. So that’s in the short term.
In the long term, it shows them how to achieve what’s called the final goodness, which means that it shows them how to achieve liberation and Buddhahood. So there’s these two different aspects to the Buddha’s teachings: how to achieve temporary happiness and how to achieve ultimate happiness. So the first one of these, how to achieve temporary happiness, how to achieve a positive rebirth and escape the sufferings of the lower realms, is said to be what’s called a common practice of the lower scope or a common practice of the initial or the lowest form of motivation. So common in that it’s common to the other two scopes as well. This one.
Okay. And now the the nature of the practitioner of the initial perspective or the type of being that is someone of the the lowest scope of motivation or the initial scope of motivation is described by Atisha in the Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment which was the original graduated path text. He says, Those who by the various methods aim at higher samsaric realms with their own interest in mind are known as spiritual aspirants of initial perspective or known as beings of the lower scope. Various means is that they apply the different teachings of the Buddha to their situation to achieve their aim which is to be reborn at higher samsaric happiness, which is being reborn as a god or a human, where one experiences a much happier rebirth than you would in the lower realms. And they’re doing this for their own reasons, for their own benefit.
They’re not doing it with the motivation of helping all sentient beings. Oh, so these beings or these people with this perspective, they are focusing on the next lifetime. They’re at least focusing on the next lifetime. They don’t work for the happiness in this lifetime so they’re not focused on how to make themselves happy in the short term. They’re at least focusing on the next life or the life after that.
So if we are constantly focused on how to make ourselves happy in the future in this lifetime, then that’s not even becoming a being of the lowest scope. It’s so even to become a being of the lowest scope or even to become what’s he called it here, aspirants of initial perspective, then we need to have this idea of focusing on what’s going to happen to us in the next lifetime, doing things in order to achieve rebirth as a god or a human. Once we develop that idea, and this is what we need to focus on in the beginning, is developing this idea of working towards future lives because working towards this life doesn’t help us that much. Then once we’ve developed this idea, then we become beginning beings of the lower scope. So this is the mind that this is the kind of thoughts we need to develop at the beginning.
This is the kind of way of thinking that we should be thinking about now. If we don’t think about this and if we’re just concentrated on what can make us happy in the short term, what can make us happy in this lifetime, then we’re acting a bit like animals because that’s what animals do. Animals focus on what’s going to make them happy in instant future. But as we’re born as humans then we have the potential and we have the ability to widen our focus more. We have the conscious ability to be able to focus on a wider perspective of what would make us happy or what’s going to show us happiness than we would as animals.
Animals can only see what’s going to make them happy in the short term. So if we behave in a way that we are just focusing on what’s gonna have make us happy in the short term, then we might as well be animals. We might as well have taken rebirth as an animal because we’re using a human life as if it was an animal life. So as humans then, we