Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A monk who breaks all four root vows commits less negative karma than someone who abandons their awakening mind even toward a stranger — this stark claim anchors Geshe Pema Tsering’s 45-minute session on maintaining bodhicitta. After recapping the seven-point cause-and-effect method from previous weeks, he lists bodhicitta’s practical benefits: veneration above arhats, immunity from harmful spirits, capacity for tantric practice, and power to purify heavy negative karma. He then covers four trainings for protecting this mind — recalling its benefits, arousing it six times daily, never mentally abandoning any being, and building merit to deepen the experience — before closing with a line-by-line Tibetan reading of the standard refuge-bodhicitta verse, showing how four short lines span three levels of aspiration from avoiding lower rebirths to full Mahāyāna commitment.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 29 2004 06 08 RG.mp3
UUID: 657e2305-06ac-40ad-9189-3800cfac8efe
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Essence of Refined Gold (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-06-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~4,007
So we need to develop the right motivation for listening to the teachings. And what we need to think about when we are developing the right motivation is what situation all beings are in and how they experience suffering in different ways. Now, without exception, all beings, including ourselves, don’t want to experience suffering and want to experience happiness. It’s something that’s a condition that all beings share. But although all beings want to experience happiness, they don’t know how to develop the causes for happiness and therefore how to actually experience happiness.
In seeking happiness, they actually usually establish the causes for experiencing suffering. So we experience these different types of suffering in saṃsāra the suffering manifest suffering or the suffering of change wherein the happiness that we experience doesn’t last. Mistaking this for true happiness beings strive for this instead of striving for true happiness, which is nirvana. Although they want happiness, they work really hard to establish the causes for suffering because they don’t know how to establish the causes for happiness. Seeking happiness, they actually work towards suffering.
What they need to do is to be able to understand what true happiness is, and to understand true happiness or liberation, they then develop the mind to achieve that liberation, and through seeking to achieve that liberation, they’ll start establishing the causes for that. So in order for us to develop this idea or develop the mind or the way of thinking that searches for nirvana, for true happiness, as opposed to being caught up in samsaric happiness, then we need to train our mind. We need to work on our mind to see what we’re focused on. Now, the thing that usually brings us undone, thing that usually catches us, is our attention to ourselves in this lifetime. We focus on how to make ourselves happy in the short term, which isn’t true happiness in this lifetime.
So what we need to do is to start focusing on at least what’s going to happen to us after we die, and preferably on how we can actually achieve true happiness. So the main cause that we’re dealing with here is grasping an inherent existence of self. It’s holding onto this idea that we exist as an independent, inherent unit. That’s the main problem. But the way that we find that this usually manifests, or what this usually causes for us in everyday life is that we are focused on this life how to achieve happiness in this life how to make ourselves comfortable right now or in the future that we can see or we can know about.
So this is the main thing that we need to overcome. So if we start to focus on what’s going to happen to us after death, realising that nothing that we experience as happiness now will last, and if we start focusing on how to establish the causes or how to create the causes to experience a positive rebirth, that motivation turns whatever we’re doing into being Dharma. If we’re not focused on the next lifetime, if we’re only focused on this lifetime, then whatever we do isn’t a Dharma action, isn’t a don’t know another way to translate it, isn’t a Buddhist action, I guess. So we need to focus on at least the next lifetime, but if we’re just focusing on the next lifetime and achieving a positive rebirth that’s not going to create the causes for us to experience liberation from saṃsāra to achieve nirvana we also need to focus on how to bring that about and the way that we focus on turning our backs on saṃsāra and working towards nirvana is by looking at cause and effect. The fact that even though we may be reborn into a positive rebirth, that doesn’t mean that we’re always going to be born into a positive rebirth in all our future lives.
If we continue to remain in saṃsāra at some stage, we have to experience the results of negative karma and be reborn in our lower realms. So, if we think about karma and we think about the fact that even though being reborn into a positive rebirth may mean we experience less suffering, it’s not the end of suffering, then these two ideas will lead us to want to get out of the cycle of saṃsāra being reborn again and again. If we want to get out of the cycle of saṃsāra, we need to work towards nirvana. So if we focus on what’s going to happen in the next life instead of this life, whatever we do is dharma. And if we then focus on the fact that we don’t wanna be reborn again and again and we wanna get out of saṃsāra, then that means that we’re focused on liberation.
So therefore, we have this idea of working towards our own personal liberation from suffering, working towards the end to our own experience of saṃsāra. And if we think about this enough, then we have to start thinking about others as well. So we have this idea that we want to get ourselves out of saṃsāra, but then if we look around then we see there’s all these other beings that at some stage in the past, in some past life, have shown us great kindness, have even been our mother or father and looked after us for many years. So if we start thinking about these beings, then there’s not enough for us to just work towards our own individual nirvana. We need to start thinking about how to get everybody or every being out of saṃsāra.
So in order for us to get all sentient beings or all beings with mind out of saṃsāra, we need to become a Buddha so that we can show them how it’s done, can show them how to stop experiencing suffering and how to create the causes for happiness. Therefore, we develop this idea or this intention mind that is, we will work towards Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. Now, that intention or that mind is called the bodhicitta, or the mind of enlightenment. And so this is the motivation that we should try and listen to the teachings with. It’s a motivation that we should try and do as many things in the day as we can with because this will mean we’ll create the causes for achieving Buddhahood.
So we should think, I’m listening to these teachings in order to develop understanding of them, in order to be able to put them into practice, in order to be able to realize them through meditation and through realizing the points of this graduated path to enlightenment through meditation, practice and learning, then I will be able to become a Buddha. So this is a motivation we should try and develop to listen to the teachings. But the other thing that we have to be really careful of is that we stop having thoughts about how listening to these teachings will benefit us in this lifetime or in superficial ways. And then we should Okay. So the Geshe-la thinks that that you’ve meditated.
Okay. He thinks that you’ve always meditated in this morning. Oh, yeah. So just develop the right meditation for listening to the teachings you said, please. He wants to know if if you guys did meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings this morning.
This is like pop quiz. That’s that’s like that’s not fair. It’s like a pop quiz. Showing great faith in you. Okay.
So last week or in the previous weeks, we were going through the seven point cause and effect instructions on the development of bodhicitta. So it was about how to develop bodhicitta through focusing on how all beings have been our parents in past lives and maybe in future lives. Then we need to look at how to maintain the development of bodhicitta so first of all the text exhorts us not to let this idea of the development of bodhicitta be something that we just pray for or that we just focus on at the time of meditating or prayer. It’s something that we need to keep working on and actually try and develop. Then there are these four things that we can use in order to help that development and to increase the bodhi mind or bodhicitta after we’ve developed it.
The first one is the training of recollecting the beneficial effects of the bodhicitta. The second one is the training of giving rise to thoughts of the bodhicitta six times a day. And the third is the training of not mentally abandoning any of the beings for whom one has taken the vow of the bodhicitta. And the fourth one is training in increasing one’s one’s courage. So first of all, we need to look at the first one, the benefits of achieving or developing the mind of enlightenment, the bodhicitta.
So the first is to think about the first benefit is that once you develop the bodhicitta, then you become a place of offering or a thing of a being deserving of veneration by all gods and humans. Now, the reason that you become this is because if you have the bodhi mind or the if you have the mind working towards enlightenment, then you’re working for the benefit of all beings. There’s not a single being that you’re leaving out. You have this idea of working for all others. And as someone who has given up their own personal desires and temporary happiness in order to work for the benefit of others, and then you become someone who is deserving of veneration.
Then the next benefit that developing the bodhicitta, which the bodhicitta has, is that you are said to outshine the hearers and solitary realisers. That is the beings who are following the Hīnayāna path. Beings who are following the Hīnayāna path and have achieved nirvana on that path have immeasurable qualities. They have completely gotten rid of all suffering. They have immeasurable love and kindness.
They have all these amazing positive qualities. But because they don’t have this idea of working towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, then developing this mind, the mind of bodhicitta, means that outshine even those qualities that your qualities outshine even the qualities of arhats, those who have completed the hearer and solitary realiser paths. The next benefit of developing bodhicitta is that you become immune to harmful spirits and infectious diseases. Through focusing on others you do not create the karma for experiencing infectious diseases or harmful spirits affecting you. The other thing is once we’ve developed bodhicitta that developing our activities with regards to tantra isn’t said to be difficult.
Now there’s apparently and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to translate this through all because I don’t understand it properly but there’s apparently like five different types of activities that are associated with tantra that make you be able to practice tantra properly. So there’s something that’s called pacifying karma, there’s something else that’s called expansive karma, there’s something that’s called enriching karma. And there’s another one that’s called powerful karma. So you develop these particular activities or these particular actions or the ability to have these particular actions in dependence on bodhicitta. So that enables you to practice tantra properly. If you don’t have bodhicitta then you can’t practice tantra properly.
So that’s the next positive quality of developing bodhicitta. Then also once we’ve developed bodhicitta we don’t create the causes to be born in the lower realms. We have the ability to develop qualities quicker. This is another positive aspect of we also have the ability to purify even the harshest of our negative actions that we have performed in the past. We can do this when we’re focusing on others instead of ourselves through bodhicitta.
So, in other words, if the bodhicitta or the enlightened mind or the mind striving for enlightenment was turned into form, then the space it would take up would be greater than the sky. So you could measure the qualities of bodhicitta by giving it a certain amount of space, then it would be larger than the sky. So the next thing we need to look at in order to help us maintain the training in the Buddha mind or in the awakening mind is to look at the faults of not having this mind or not protecting the development of this mind or actually when we have that idea of working towards enlightenment for the benefits of all sentient beings then abandoning it. So there’s negative consequences of behaving in this way. So, it actually comes under the heading of the training of giving rise to the thoughts of bodhicitta six times a day.
But the whole point of having that training, of thinking about bodhicitta six times a day, is so we don’t forget it, so we don’t get caught up in other things and abandon the idea of bodhicitta. So it’s said that giving up the enlightened attitude towards even a stranger once we’ve developed it. Giving up the enlightened attitude towards even a stranger is heavier for it has heavier karmic consequences than if a monk was to break their four root vows to not kill, steal, tell lies about having spiritual attainments or to have sexual intercourse. So that’s supposed to have heavy karmic repercussions if monks do that. And the idea of giving up the bodhi mind is said to be even more fallen than that.
So this is why we have this practice of saying, reminding ourselves of bodhicitta, six times a day, three times in the day, and three times in the evening. And, the usual prayer that’s used, for to remind ourselves of this, from this text anyway is the one we said at the beginning of the teachings, which is the Sangye Chö dang Tsog kyi Chog nam la, which means I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the highest assembly. From the virtuous merit that I collect by practicing giving in other perfections may attain the state of the Buddha to be able to benefit all sentient beings. That we’re not supposed to give up this idea at inappropriate times. Now, the inappropriate time to give this up is any time before we become a Buddha, because once we have become a Buddha, we don’t have to focus on becoming a Buddha anymore.
So this prayer, as we said at the beginning of the teachings, is a very, very powerful prayer because it has all of these different aspects in it. In a in a way, it’s a it’s a aspirational prayer. We have this day, I go for refuge until I’m enlightened. It’s like a something we’re we’re wishing for, we’re aspiring towards, yeah? So it has that way.
Another thing that it does for us is to act as a reminder. If we say this prayer all the time, we’re reminded about what we should be focusing on and what we should be trying to abandon. So it acts as an aspiration, also as a reminder, and then it also acts as, in a way, like a promise as well. So because of this and because it talks about refuge and it talks about bodhicitta, it’s a really good idea to try and keep saying it or keep reminding yourself of this prayer when you can. So if we if we also look at this prayer, when it says, I go for refuge until I am enlightened until I am enlightened to the Buddha at the time of the highest assembly.
And then that that refuge that it mentions in that first two lines of the of the verse is actually what’s called Mahāyāna refuge or Buddha refuge. Not Buddha refuge. Mahāyāna refuge. That doesn’t make sense, does it? Anyway, because there’s we can also take a refuge.
There’s a Hīnayāna refuge or a lower vehicle refuge, which is that we take refuge until the end of our life times in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. When we take vows, that’s usually sometimes the vow that you take: Until the end of this lifetime, I take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. But what this is talking about is a much vaster concept of going for refuge until all the way up into becoming a Buddha. So in this way, you’re not only looking for refuge from being reborn in a negative state, which is a Hīnayāna refuge, but you’re also looking for refuge from saṃsāra in general, which is this idea of working towards liberation yourself, which is still Hīnayāna. And then it’s also got this idea of completing the path and actually becoming a Buddha, which incorporates the Mahāyāna refuge.
So it has these three stages within those two lines. Okay. So the next two lines because you have to say them in Tibetan a lot. I’m gonna and Geshe-la explained it in Tibetan, not in English. Then I’m gonna go through what they they actually are in Tibetan.
So where it says ‘daki’, that means ‘me’. And then you say ‘daki jinsok gi pe re’. Now, jinsok means a collection of it’s what’s in the translation as giving and other perfections. But it says Another way that you could read it and the way that Geshe-la’s read it is to say giving and all other positive actions. If you say all other positive actions and not just other perfections, it’s supposed to take into account all of the positive things that all of the five classes of beings have done.
So you have this idea of the practice of giving and then extend it out onto all virtues, all virtues that any beings may have done. And may rejoicing in those and our positive qualities being mixed with those positive qualities be a cause for us to attain the state of a Buddha. So when it says Daki Jin Sok Gi Pe Sönam Gi, that’s like all of the positive qualities may that do. And then ‘drola’ is literally a transmigratory being, which sounds terrible. So they’re just translated as sentient beings.
It says, ‘penchir’ is in order to benefit. Sangya is Buddha. And it actually says, ‘drub par shog’, which means, This is going to happen. It doesn’t mean, May this happen, it means, I’m going to do it. Does that makes sense?
So it’s not asking, may I be able to do this? It’s saying, I’m going to do it. And so saying this prayer this prayer has got all this intense meaning in it and it acts in all these different ways. But actually, it isn’t that difficult. There’s not many people who couldn’t say this prayer three times in the morning and three times in the evening.
It doesn’t take very long. It’s not very difficult. Okay. The next thing that we need to do is is to train to not mentally abandon any beings, that is to relate to all beings from the point of view of the enlightened mind, not having the idea that when they’re not ever giving up on the idea of working towards enlightenment to benefit them no matter what happens to us, no matter what other beings do to us. But sometimes beings will be our friend, sometimes they will be our enemy, sometimes they will be a stranger to us.
So if we start focusing on just those who are friendly to us and think we’re only going to achieve enlightenment for them, then that’s not a stable base to work from because not everyone is always going to be friendly to us. And not even some people are always going to be friendly to us. So sometimes people will be our relatives, sometimes they’ll be our friends, sometimes they’ll be our parents, sometimes they’ll be our enemies, sometimes they’re going to be nice to us, sometimes they’re going to be harmful towards us, they’re going to act harmfully towards us. So we need to keep our idea of working towards enlightenment for their benefit no matter what they do to us, no matter how they behave with us, because they’re not they can’t always be kind to us and loving to us, but that doesn’t mean that because they can’t always be like that, that we should abandon them when they’re not behaving nicely towards us, because that would be abandoning the mind of bodhicitta. Whether we’ve developed that mind or we’re trying to develop it, whether we’ve got bodhicitta or we’re trying to develop bodhicitta, then we should really keep protecting that idea of working towards enlightenment to benefit all beings no matter what those beings might happen to do.
And the fourth one is that if we have an experience of this mind, how to increase the power of that mind without letting it degenerate. If we have an experience of the bodhi mind then we should really try and use that and develop on it instead of letting it degenerate. So we should think how do I go about increasing this experience the strength of this experience and protecting it so one of the ways that we do this is by performing positive actions that can act as a cause for us to extend or develop this idea or this mind that we have. One of the best ways to develop merit is by making offerings to the Three Jewels, but that’s just one way. So it says making offerings to the Three Jewels, etc.
So there’s any positive action that we may perform, including rejoicing in the positive actions of any other beings. So we should try and extend that out to make that as vast as possible. Yeah. Well, we should sorry. We should train in wanting to extend that out and make it as vast as possible.
So the way that we help to develop one of the sorry. One of the ways that we help to develop bodhicitta in our mind stream, and once we have developed it, continue to expand it, is to abandon what are called the four negative or black actions and to practice the four positive or white actions in this and future lifetimes. Okay. So the first one of these is not we have to we should refrain from the black Dharma or the negative action of lying to or deceiving one’s abbot or teacher, a lama in this case, not just an ordinary teacher, a lama or anyone who is, anyone who is in possession of good, qualities. We should try and make good positive spiritual qualities.
We should try really hard not to deceive or lie to them in any way. So this is one of the heavy black dharmas or black negative actions. Now in order to make sure that we definitely do not deceive our abbots, teachers, or anyone else with good qualities at all, then the antidote to that is to refrain from telling lies or confusing people even in jest, yeah, at the for the sake of our lives, even for the sake of our life. So we shouldn’t tell lies even if it means we lose our life as as a practice for not Alright. Okay.
I just needed to clarify that. So then we shouldn’t be trying to confuse people and we shouldn’t be trying to tell lies to them, even to play jokes on them, because we start setting up this pattern for telling lies and then we can do something bad, like really bad, like to start telling lies to our teachers and everything. This doesn’t mean that we can’t make jokes with people. It doesn’t mean that we can’t tease people, but we have to let