Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A man who gave away everything he owned to emulate Milarepa was dismayed to learn that Milarepa had actually been a beggar — this story, told by Geshe Pema Tsering, captures the session’s recurring question: do you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing? This 21.5-minute Q&A opens by clarifying how dedicating merit to sentient beings relates to bodhicitta, then moves through audience questions: how to respond when someone is harming an animal (patience and right timing, not reactive anger); when to offer spiritual advice (only when asked); and why seeing sentient beings as purely as possible carries a non-Tantric meaning here — remembering their kindness and practicing right view rather than adopting a Tantric pure-perception framework. The session closes on perceiving all phenomena as the Buddha’s activity, explained through the absolute truth of non-inherent existence.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 32 2004 06 15RG.mp3
UUID: 06cd324a-276a-4b82-b10c-b6ef69c35785
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Essence of Refined Gold (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-06-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 21.5 minutes
Words: ~1,527
So in brief, this means that we should try and give away all of the or try and develop the motivation to be able to give away all of the things that have benefited us physically and all of the three times in order to develop the merit to become a Buddha. And also sorry. No, that was not right. And also all of the merit that we have accumulated during the three times, can imagine or try and think about giving that away without regret in order to be a benefit to sentient beings. So even though so because I was confused because I didn’t think he could give away merit.
I guess I said that, of course, you can give away merit, but not in the way that I was thinking about. He said that you can have this prayer that, May everything that I do, may I be able to give away my merit to all sentient beings, and may that be a cause for me to attain Buddhahood. So if you have this idea of our merit benefit other sentient beings, and this is a similar thing to the development of bodhicitta, because if you use your merit thinking, Okay, all the good things that I’ve done, may that be a cause for me to achieve Buddhahood, then as a Buddha, you’re there to benefit other sentient beings. Although you’re not directly able to give your stores of positive karma from you to someone else, what you can do is use your positive karma in order to benefit beings. Okay.
So we can finish there for today. I’ll leave it there. If anyone has questions, please ask them. Things that you have questions. Yep.
Yes? Taking responsibility for other people’s behaviors. Is that what you’re asking about? Yes. Okay.
Okay. Okay. So Geshe-la said that you don’t even if if you would only you would only stop them hurting the dog as well even if that was going to be ultimately beneficial. If that was just going to help them hit the dog more in the future because they were just going to get angrier at you and hit the dog more, then that’s not going to really help that situation either. So the idea is to approach all situations with patience, with regards to the person who’s doing the negative action, as well as patience and compassion for the person doing the negative action as well as the being receiving the results of that.
So if you say, Don’t hit that dog and get angry yourself and jump into that situation, that may not necessarily help. What you have to do is find a way to stop that happening. Find a way to stop the dog experiencing that suffering and that person having a mind that wants to be so destructive towards the dog, for example. Actually telling them at that instance when they’re incredibly angry and behaving irrationally may not necessarily help as much yet. What you should try and do is then to try and change the way that they look at dogs or the way they look at animals, and by pointing out the logic of it, banging a dog around isn’t going to help the dog learn, So the best thing to do is to try and be calmer with their dog.
It s the same in all different situations. It s not necessarily to react and think, I must do something. It s to try and find out what the best situation is going to be, to find a way to bring the best situation about. So so then your responsibility for other people’s behavior is to try and be an example and point out to them the negativities of their actions. It’s not to try and stop them, necessarily, doing something it’s to try and show them what the negative results of their action is.
Usually, if you start yelling at someone when they’re angry, that doesn’t actually help that situation. So the idea is maybe not at that time, but to try and find ways to stop that situation happening by either talking to them or trying to be a better example to them. So this doesn’t mean, though, that you sit back and let them beat up their dogs and kill them and stuff like that as well. You do what you can to stop that situation. It’s just that you don’t have to start explaining logic to them then when they’re very angry.
Yeah. Unasked for spiritual advice. If someone comes and asks you about it. If someone comes and asks you So if no one comes and asks you, don’t say anything. Yeah.
Right. So, yeah, and make sure you know. As I was just saying, better make they better make sure they know what they’re talking about too. And guess what I’ll say, yeah, of course, you don’t answer if you don’t if you can’t answer it. So you make sure that you know what the answer is, and then you try and say and you say, I’m answering this to the best of my ability.
Yeah. I get abandoning speaking harshly during one. Uh-huh. It says to see all sentient beings as purely as you can. Is that the same thing as looking at everything as enlightened energy?
That’s like — I’m just gonna think for a moment — something I can translate. It’s like in in developing a mantra or whatever. Yeah. On Yeah. Enlightened activity.
Enlightened activity. Yeah. Okay. No. Because that’s a tad tantric explanation.
I think part of the problem is that this word that s translated as correct here because it not Tantra. It s the same word. It s just that usually in Tantric context it gets translated as pure and in non Tantric context it gets translated as correct. Same word in Tibet. As in right view.
Yes, exactly as in right view. So from a worldly point of view that is referring to perception of karma, cause and effect. And in this instance, it s merely talking about remembering that all sentient beings have shown us great kindness and that they will act as a cause for us to attain enlightenment. So to remember that sentient beings have shown us great kindness and act as a cause for us to experience positive things, and they don’t harm us anyway — The only thing that harms us is our self grasping.
Okay. So there’s he said that there was a in answer to that, he’s gonna tell you a story about a guy in Tibet, right, back in the day who said, I’m going to be like Milarepa. I’m going to give away all of my possessions. And he did that. He went out and he gave away everything he owned.
And then he’s like, Man, I did all this to end up like Milarepa and I’ve just ended up a beggar. Yeah? And he’s like and then someone put tried to point out to him that Milarepa actually was a beggar. And and and this guy was like a bit disconcerted by that. He was like, But I didn’t wanna end up a beggar.
Wanted to end up like Milarepa. I said, so there’s a danger of that happening if you give away your stuff. You have to be able to think about what it would be like without anything as well. Yeah. So you have to watch what you’re you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
Yeah. So you have to look at it and what you’re what’s gonna help your situation the most. Yeah. Asked why we have five fingers and five toes. Because you have developed that you have the throwing karma to be born into a human body, and in this world human bodies usually have ten fingers and ten toes.
That’s because she hasn’t been thinking about karma enough, he said. Because most kids don’t think about karma enough. Oh, he said, and in that case, tell him that your parents gave you ten of each. Not karma. Yeah. You can be the last one.
Okay. So what does the the sentence mean to do everything So, if you’re talking about it from a relative point of view, then not all things are the activities of the Buddha. You can only say the positive actions of the activities of the Buddha. Couldn’t say the negative things of the activities of Buddha. Okay, it’s nearly the holidays.
But what this is actually referring to is perceiving things from the point of view of absolute truth, as opposed to relative truth. And so, in this instance, if you see all things as being not inherently existent, as being only labelled as such, then nothing exists inherently, so their nature is pure in the same way as the nature of the Buddha is pure. So they have the same nature as the nature of the Buddha. You’re viewing everything from the perspective of absolute truth, and in that way it’s indifferentiable from the the activities of the Buddha. Okay.