Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Geshe Pema Tsering’s image of a “bomb of compassion” — the right weapon against anger — lands midway through this 30-minute session, which begins by concluding the sevenfold cause-and-effect method for bodhicitta and the bodhicitta oath. Most of the session is Q&A: a student asks whether married practitioners can develop equanimity as effectively as monastics; Geshe-la confirms the process is identical for both, since the focus is recognising every being’s kindness. The anger question follows, recommending wisdom perceiving emptiness alongside compassion rather than fighting anger with anger. Two final questions probe Buddhist cosmology — karma as the subtle cause of physical matter, and why consciousness takes male or female bodies — with Abhidharma cited to explain that mind itself is neither. Accessible to students following the Lamrim series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 28 2004 06 01 RG.mp3
UUID: a2cce33a-39aa-4ea2-b73b-300e669bacdc
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Essence of Refined Gold (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-06-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 29.8 minutes
Words: ~2,523
Sentient beings in this way. So, at the moment, because we don’t have the ability to help even one sentient being, even a little bit, in terms of getting rid of the causes for suffering, Then we need to work hard to become a Buddha, because having become a Buddha, then we have the ability to do this. In accordance with this, then we need to take an oath. The oath is that we will work towards becoming a Buddha in order for us to help all beings in this way. If we give up on this hope, on this vow, or if we give up on this oath if we think, Forget it, then we’re going to end up in the lower realms.
So that’s the oath of bodhicitta. Therefore, in order to separate or to liberate all sentient beings from suffering in order to establish them in a state beyond sorrow then apart from achieving Buddhahood there is no way for me to do this so in order to separate all sentient beings from all suffering, to give them refuge, then I need to establish them in a Buddhahood, a completed, perfected Buddhahood, gives me the ability to lead all sentient beings into the highest state of happiness. That’s bodhicitta. Okay. We can finish this today.
And that is the end of the development of bodhicitta through the sevenfold cause and effect process in this text. Then Geshe-la asked if this is the translation. I was like, Yes, sometimes it doesn’t quite accord with it, and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. And I heard a rumor that the guy that wrote it didn’t actually know Tibetan when he did the translation. Yeah, he’s a talented man.
Yes? In a previous teaching, Geshe-la said how householders and monastics are married. What I wanna know is that, like, when you’re saying friends and stuff, you you especially in the four immeasurables, you’ve got that the equanimity of all of your sons, close and distant, etcetera. Anyway, what I what I need to stand was my confusion here is how is it that you can develop equanimity when you have a partner? Because aren’t you still holding someone close than others distant?
Yes. I just got chili chocolate drink. Sorry. It shouldn’t make any difference if someone’s meditating on equanimity, whether they have a wife or a husband or not, because the thing that they’re being equanimous about is that all beings have shown us great kindness. So, if you think that just as your wife or husband is showing you great kindness, then so have all sentient beings.
That doesn’t matter if you’re a monk or if you’re not a monk. If the person that you’re merit to, if you focus on them and show you great kindness and then focus that out to all sentient beings having shown you great kindness, it shouldn’t affect whether you’re specifically thinking about the person that you’re married to or not. Does that make sense? It’s equal in showing that they have shown you great kindness. So so So Geshe-la said that if he meditated on something then he would be doing it from the perspective of someone who is a monk, right?
But the process of meditating on equanimity doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman or a monk or a nun. It doesn’t matter because the process is the same. You’re still focusing on all sentient beings having shown you very intense kindness. So he said, It doesn’t matter if it’s him or if it’s Ramsey or whoever it is. He just pointed at him, that’s why I’m saying the point.
Okay, so no, the whole idea of celibacy vows is because of the practice of ethics. There’s lot of negative things that we involved with sex. So if you don’t have sex, don’t do a lot of negative things in that area. It’s a basis of developing ethics and one of the ways to develop ethics is through vows. If you start by taking the five lay vows, you re already practicing ethics.
You re still practicing ethics through vows, right? So, in that case, then, you don t sleep around and things like that, so that s one form of vow. Then, if you take the novice vows, which are the Getsul vows, then you take ten vows, and so then you’re practicing with those ten vows and that includes celibacy. And then, if you take the Gelong or the Bhikśu or Bhikśunī vows. So there’s, I think, two hundred and fifty or something Bhikśu vows and three hundred and something Bhikśunī vows.
So Bhikśunī is a Gelong ma in Tibetan, and Gelong is a Bhikśu in Tibetan. So you re basically building the number of vows you are and your ethics become a lot stricter. Okay. So it’s about developing ethics, it’s not equanimity. He doesn’t reckon.
It’s not he doesn’t think there’s a link between Yeah. So he doesn’t think there’s a link because you can develop bodhicitta with a wife. A husband. It’s all the same. It’s exactly the same.
Like your mom or something. That’s a scary thought. He said, yeah, so you could think about their kindness. Yeah, but he says, as long as you don’t just stop there, and you think that, Okay, they may have shown you great kindness in this lifetime, but in other lifetimes, other people have shown you the same amount of kindness and the same amount of love. Whether it’s them or whether it’s a bug that you just passed on the road or whether it’s a being that you have no concept of in this lifetime.
All of these beings have shown you great kindness beforehand, so you extend that out and think of all beings in that way and that’s the way you develop a bodhicitta. Yeah, Geshe-la said if you don’t have love for one person, you can’t have for all. Yeah. So you have to see all beings like that. Annihilate it.
But, yeah. Well, I’m wondering is, isn’t that like throwing hate to hate? Uh-huh.
Wouldn’t it be better to send that part of your mind or whatever, love? I didn’t actually get the question that was asked. Okay. He said, Yeah, you’re supposed to wipe it out. And I said, with what?
He said bomb it. Bomb your worry. Bomb. He just said bomb it. Okay.
Yeah, yeah. He’s like, Yeah, he’s into it. Anyway, he said, Yeah, you’re supposed to use weapons to get rid of it. You’re supposed to use the weapon of wisdom perceiving emptiness and the weapon of compassion to get rid of these things. So, you can’t get rid of hate with hate.
Use compassion. I was like, Yeah. And a bomb, do they have bombs? He goes, Yeah, use bomb of compassion. So, you’re getting rid of it because it’s harmful, but you do it with positive weapons.
That’s fine. You can do that. So if you realize that anger isn t inherently existent, then it loses its power. I’ve got a few today. Are you alright?
We’re still under time. I’m timing these things out. According to Buddhist philosophy, what is the cause for us to have manifested into material physical form universally from whatever we were existing before physical existence? What is the cause? Like Big Bang and stuff, is that what you’re talking about?
Yes. Okay. Grossly, the cause for matter was the preceding cause of matter, so whatever caused matter to condense. Because matter is like energy condensing into matter. Mostly gross.
As in the big bang. As in what? As in the big bang. That kind of thing. Yeah?
And so it’s grossly So the gross proceeding cause of matter is always matter, right? So something causes matter to come into existence is matter. It has to be physical form causing physical form to come into existence. Same as mental consciousness creates mental consciousness. That s the gross form of it.
The subtle cause of is karma. So you have matter blending and having causes for each other as a gross cause, and the subtle cause is the karma of the beings who created that situation. For example, if we take the rice container that Geshe-la has there, the gross causes for that is the physical matter that makes it up, and the subtle causes for it are the karma that beings have to have that thing in their existence. Okay. So it s a very, very subtle thing though.
How karma works is the most subtle thing for us to understand. We create physical, mental, and verbal karma consistently. Because it s such a subtle thing, every moment is a different aspect of karma. How that manifests in terms of physical form is something that only a Buddha s mind can understand because it s so subtle, but we can understand the gross mechanics of it. So we have created through our karma that causes us to experience the world as it is and that karma we share with other people on this planet.
He said, but karma is tricky. Yeah. But on a gross level, trying to understand how physical things happen on a gross level isn’t that difficult. It’s like what scientists talk about, basically, like things come into being because of particles and quarks and stuff. That’s really similar in that way.
And in the Buddhist idea they talk about the four or five elements that bring physical form into being, which is like earth, water, fire and things like that. It’s a combination of these elements. Is it probable that for manifesting physical form, that we were all, like, instead of male and female, we’re a constant being. The two in one as a whole. Yeah.
What are you talking about? I’m sorry, because there’s about being male and female. Yeah, know. Understand that. So what are you talking about before we manifest into physical form?
Because as soon as you have a physical form, you have a birth. So with consciousness, right? I’m trying to get to Ah, where the conscience I’m trying to get to at Big Bang, for instance. Right? Uh-huh.
Before actually taking any form as in a body, whatever. Just this energy where we, like, accomplish a thing as in, like, negative and positive polarity, male and female in one. Right? And then having manifested into physical form Uh-huh. We become male and female.
So you’re asking is mine male or female? What I’m asking is is it is male and female positive, negative? They they join as one. Like, for instance, you reach the state of enlightenment. Wouldn’t it be natural then for that other part that would be negative or positive to be naturally drawn back to that state?
It’s like atoms splitting. Yeah. Yeah. I understand that. But you you there’s a difference between consciousness and form.
Physical form. Physical form. Physical form. It s like about six different things all coming together in that question, that s why it s difficult to and that s why I guess it s going, What? Oh, okay.
Okay. All right. Now, physically, this is about now for a start, right? Physically, we come into a physical existence dependent on the genes that our parents give us. We can have a male form or we can have a female form in a physical existence.
Now, physical existence we have comes about because of our karma. We develop this physical body because of the karma. It depends on our karma. The actual substance for the body comes from our parents, like the genes, the DNA, all that stuff comes from our parents. Our mind, which is the thing that creates the karma that causes us to develop a physical body, is neither male or female.
Neither. Our mind is clear and knowing. That’s the nature of our mind clear and knowing, yeah? It creates karma, and through that karma, we develop a male or a female body. It’s dependent on the karma, whether we become male or female, but the mind is neither.
So mind mind form separate. So our mind identifies with being a male or a female being, right? Therefore, we can have the sense of a male mind or a female mind because it’s identified with a male or a female existence. But the nature of that mind, the definition of that mind is neither male nor female. In fact, it’s not always human because we’ve been born as an animal.
We’ve been born in a hell before. Had all these existence. So, the one mind, based on its karma, develops these physical bodies as a manifestation of that karma, but the mind itself is neither male nor female, nor hell being nor God realm being. It’s a continuation of mind. Then why are we male and female instead of He said there are people who are both.
He said they are. So they have the karma to be both. Because of the karma that we’ve created to be in this kind of existence. It s pretty simple. If you have an attraction towards males, become a female.
Become a female and if you have attraction towards females, become a male at the time of your birth. It’s dependent on attachment. So the karma of attachment turns us into either a male or a female. And I said, some girls like girls and some boys like boys, and he goes, well, all sorts of things happen. I’m just trying to understand here, from right from the very beginning, why did we manifest male and female right from the very beginning?
Of what? I’m trying to Of what? The very beginning of what? That’s what you have to tell me. Big bang.
Of life. There is no beginning. There is no beginning. It says so in the Abhidharma. Yeah.
I was thinking about that, but that’s Okay, on earth, right? It said that the first Okay, so on earth, the reason it said Okay, so it said that on earth, the reason that males and females first originated was because of desire for physical form. They had a much more an earthly form, right? So in the beginning of this world existence, our form was much subtler and had less earth in it. Does that make sense?
Yeah, yeah. But because of an attachment to earth, yeah, yeah, then we developed more male and female senses more. So it was more subtle forms that became more animal forms. So it all comes from desire. But I was trying to get it because that’s like there s one aspect of that from Abhidharma and there s another aspect of it from which is like the history of the universe and everything.
And then there s another one of that from the collection of karma and everything. That kind of question. Do you know what I mean? So it s like translate gestures just going, What? Okay.