Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with a verse from Tsongkhapa’s Three Principal Aspects of the Path, Geshe Pema Tsering uses this 45-minute session to ground Heart Sūtra study in foundational Lamrim theory. He works through all three types of suffering — using everyday examples of overeating and moving between heat and shade to show how samsaric pleasures are the suffering of change in disguise — then explains how renunciation must be paired with bodhicitta, and how both depend ultimately on realising emptiness. The textual commentary opens with the prayer recited before perfection of wisdom sutras at Sera, Ganden, and Drepung monasteries, then begins unpacking the Sanskrit title, including why emptiness — described as the mother of all Buddhas — cannot be captured in words and never truly arises or ceases. Suited to practitioners with some Lamrim familiarity.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 HS 2003 02 04.mp3
UUID: a80f949b-349f-4fd9-8b79-c791a450b7ad
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Heart Sūtra (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-02-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~3,674
Okay. So Geshe-la said he wanted to start with a quote from the three principal aspects of the path by Lama Tsongkhapa. And then quote is, renunciation without pure bodhi mind does not bring forth the perfect bliss of unsurpassed enlightenment. Therefore, bodhisattvas generate the excellent bodhi mind. And the meaning of this is that renunciation is how we actually achieve liberation from saṃsāra, how we achieve nirvana.
But without blending it with the supreme bodhi mind, their mind wishing to reach enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings, there is no way that we can actually achieve enlightenment. So and also without after generating this mind, this mind of bodhicitta, if we don’t also develop an understanding of emptiness, if we don’t seek to experience emptiness directly, then there is no way of achieving enlightenment. So this is why the quote this quote is from a text called the three principal aspects of the path. And this is why these three are the three principal aspects of the path because they’re the three things you need in order to achieve Buddhahood. So at the end, you need the mind that realizes emptiness.
In the middle, you need the mind bodhicitta mind. And at the beginning, the root of these all all three of these is the mind of renunciation. So what is renunciation? Renunciation is a mind. It’s not a mind that we’ve actually achieved, we’ve actually generated at the moment, but it’s a mind that we can generate.
And this mind that we the mind of renunciation that we are able to generate, what it actually is is a mind that turns its its desire away from objects of saṃsāra. It turns its desire away from anything in saṃsāra that can cause us suffering, is everything in saṃsāra. So this mind that can turn its turn itself away from grasping at saṃsāra is the mind of renunciation. So actually achieving this, actually turning our mind away from the pleasurable aspects of saṃsāra is very difficult. If we can do this, we can achieve liberation, and we can achieve the the great pleasure of liberation.
But in the meantime, it’s very difficult to turn our mind away from the pleasure that we get from saṃsāra, whether it’s pleasure of mind or pleasure of body. There’s so many things that make us feel good, either mentally or physically, that it’s really hard for us and not want to have anything to do with those and actually strive for the great pleasure, the great satisfaction of being liberated from Samsāra. So the reason that we shouldn’t be trying to turn our mind away from this is that every time that we grasp it or every time we desire some kind of saṃsāra pleasure, in the end, it’s only the going to cause us suffering. It it may make us feel good in the beginning, but in its nature, it is a call it is it possesses what is called the suffering of change. That is it may feel good at the beginning, but then as you go along, it starts to not feel very good.
And eventually, even if it feels good all the way through your life, you you have to die, so you can’t take it with you when you go. And the other problem is that grasping at those kind of pleasures means that eventually that grasping mind is a negative mind and eventually the karma from that grasping mind is gonna come back at come back towards you in the form of some kind of suffering. So we have to see this and then turn our mind away from grasping at the pleasures of saṃsāra. So once we understand that this this pleasure that we get from saṃsāra actually has as his nature’s suffering, it’s easier to turn our mind from it. So the way that we can think about this is to realize that the sufferings that we have in saṃsāra, their nature is actually suffering.
And an example of this is, for example, if we enjoy some food and we start eating the food and it’s really yummy, Then we think, yeah, we’ll eat more and more, but the more we eat, actually the sicker we get. Because so if its nature was actually happiness, the more we ate, the better we’d feel. But actually what happens is the more that we eat, the actual, the sicker we feel. So that isn’t going to cause us a lasting happiness in the end. This is only an example of an unstable kind of happiness.
It’s a fleeting happiness. The same is for at like today, it was really hot. And so we all think, well, we wanna be cooler. So we go to situation where it’s a bit cooler like a different in the shade or in the air conditioning. But if if we stay in that coldness for a while, then the coldness actually turns into suffering and we get too cold and then we wanna get warm.
So that shows that actually the act of getting cooler isn’t itself a stable form of happiness. So either of these two examples are an example of how pleasure can change into suffering and how we can’t really rely on it. So if we actually look at it, we actually look at these all these pleasures that we’re having, if we look at them clearly, we can see that what they actually cause is suffering. They don’t cause lasting happiness. They cause more suffering in the end.
So grasping after them, searching for them, and concentrating on getting them is not going to help us in any way. Okay, so the other type of suffering that we don’t usually think about is all pervasive suffering. And how all pervasive suffering comes about is that in the pursuit of these changeable sufferings that we call happiness that we were talking about before, we actually accumulate a lot of negative karma. In the pursuit of making ourselves feel better or feel good, we can get angry, we can get frustrated, we can have all these negative emotions. And from these negative emotions, we actually accumulate negative karma, which keeps us in saṃsāra, which keeps us under this way of what they call all pervasive suffering.
Okay, so there’s these two different types of suffering. There’s a suffering that we think is happiness. There’s suffering that is actually the pleasure that we get in Samsāra, which isn’t stable and eventually turns turns on us and becomes suffering. And then apart from that, there’s also this all pervasive suffering that since beginningless time in the search of the samsaric pleasures that are actually laced with suffering. The samsaric pleasures that are actually the suffering of change that we’ve been looking for.
We’ve accumulated a whole lot of karma and afflictive emotions that have caused us to be present in this all pervasive suffering that we cannot actually get out of until we achieve liberation. It is actually our very existence. So this is this is the explanation of the nature of suffering. It’s very hard for us to see this at the moment. It’s not something that comes to us instantly.
It’s just that it’s we have to think about the idea a lot and see if the idea works in our everyday situations. It’s not something that we can understand instantly. So the third type of suffering is actually called the suffering of suffering. And this type of suffering, we actually have a lot of experience about and we understand pretty well because it’s every time that we feel sick or every time we feel uncomfortable or every time we feel sad, it’s those kind of experiences that are called the suffering of suffering. So we understand this one.
This one’s easy for us to get our mind around. So we don’t really have to think about the suffering of suffering that much because we actually get it already. But the idea that we have to understand is that this the things that we usually call pleasures in saṃsāra, the things that that we are looking for to make ourselves feel better are actually, in the end, come back to being the suffering of suffering. They don’t stay as being the pleasure that we have invested so much effort into getting. They change it back into the suffering, the suffering that we already understand.
So what we actually have to do is train our minds to be able to see that all these samsaric pleasures aren’t in fact pleasure. They end up becoming the suffering of suffering. So once we understand this, the suffering of suffering, and we’re not the only ones that understand the suffering of suffering, even cats and horses and things like that understand suffering. They understand what it’s like to feel, to not feel that good. So once we understand that, then the next thing to try and understand is that all the things that we think are gonna bring us happiness are actually gonna bring us more suffering.
And then this trying to get away from this suffering of suffering and achieve samsaric pleasures actually causes the suffering of change and all pervasive suffering. So in order for us to be actually free of suffering, in order for us to be actually happy, the only way for us to do that is to achieve liberation. In order to do that, we have to give up our desire for these suffering of change and the suffering the all pervasive suffering that we see at the moment is good. So, this mind that wants to get rid of the desire for the suffering of change and the desire for all pervasive suffering, this mind that wants to achieve enlightenment by getting rid of those two things, this is the mind that we call renunciation. The generation of this mind is the first step on the path through, enlightenment.
So this mind of renunciation is the cause for liberation, but of achieving nirvana, of being coming free from saṃsāra, becoming free from suffering. But this isn’t good enough because if we alone are looking at our own freedom from suffering, then we’re not thinking about other sentient beings. And in order to want to get all other sentient beings out of suffering, we need to generate the mind of bodhicitta and bodhicitta is actually the mind that wants all beings to be free from suffering. That says, I will attain enlightenment in order that all sentient beings be free from suffering. So we need to generate this mind as well.
It is also necessary in order to achieve Buddhahood that we generate this mind of bodhicitta. And so the definition of bodhicitta is this, I don’t want any beings to suffer. I know. I I don’t want any beings to I want all beings to be happy. I don’t want any beings to suffer.
In order for them to be free from suffering, I have to achieve Buddhahood in order to show them how not to suffer. So therefore, I will achieve Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings. That’s the mental process involved in the mind of bodhicitta. Sorry I made a mistake. The bodhicitta isn’t that thought process.
It’s that thing at the end of that thought process. But then I guess you’re saying that in order for us to develop this mind of bodhicitta, we have to first develop renunciation in ourselves. We first of all have to understand that we want ourselves to be free from suffering, that we want ourselves to experience peace. And then we have to after developing this, then we’re able to develop the idea that we want all sentient beings to be free from suffering and we want all sentient beings to experience bliss. And in order to do that, we will achieve Buddhahood.
So, the first thing we think is that we don’t want ourselves to experience any suffering. We want ourselves to be free from the sufferings of saṃsāra, and enjoy peace. In the same way, we don’t want anyone else to experience suffering. We want everybody else to be free from the sufferings of Samsāra and achieve peace. And in order to do that, we want to generate the mind to achieve enlightenment in order to show everybody else how to do that as well.
So if we start thinking, anything that I do, may that be dedicated towards me? May I do this in order to achieve enlightenment in in for the benefit of all sentient beings. So then whatever it is, whether it’s whether we’re meditating, whether it’s whether we’re working, whether it’s whether we’re whether we’re talking to someone, any of these things become a a root of virtue. They become a a base for us to achieve to accumulate merit. So Geshe said that right now we’re studying, the Heart Sūtra and he’s thinking, okay, the reason that I’m trying to explain the Heart Sūtra to these people is that I can achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings and in the same way in listening to the teachings on the Heart Sūtra, you should be thinking, I’m listening to the teachings on the Heart Sūtra in order that I can achieve enlightenment to benefit all sentient beings And with this thought in mind, it’d be best to, do a little meditation now.
Okay, so now we’re up to the actual commentary on the text, but this has two parts. There’s the preliminaries before you recite the text and the actual text itself. Out of those two, the first one that’s discussed in the commentary is the preliminaries that are to be recited that are recited in the three major monasteries of the Gelugpa tradition that were in Tibet and are now in India, which are called Sera, Ganden, and Drepung. So in those monasteries, before they recite any type of any type of the perfection of wisdom sutras, they say a little prayer, which Geshe-la can say very quickly. And it actually says, I bow down to the mother of the conquerors of the three times, the perfection of wisdom, inexpressible by words or thoughts, which is unproduced and unceased like the entity of the sky, the object of the wisdom of unique knowledge.
And and this tradition is said to come from, the son of the Buddha whose name was Rahula. Rahula was said to have said this, this prayer to his mother, and then from that tradition, the people in Sera, Ganden, and Drepung started doing it before they recited, perfection of wisdom sutras. So the bit that says the perfection of wisdom is inexpressible by word or thought what this is actually referring to is the when the superior beings have realized emptiness directly they can actually see emptiness they can actually think about emptiness but they don’t have the words to describe it they can’t explain it to anyone. They can understand it, but they can’t describe it. They can’t let people other people know about it.
So the the superior beings in the Buddhas can’t actually describe, emptiness. They can talk about emptiness, but they can’t actually describe it directly in the same way that, for example, if you’re going to describe a something as being sweet or white or whatever, could talk about its shape, you could talk about its taste, you could talk about its smell and all these things in order to describe it, but emptiness cannot be verbalized like this. So this emptiness is also not generated and it doesn’t cease. Most things that we see in our existence, most functioning things have a generation point and they cease at some stage, but emptiness does neither of these things. It’s like space.
It not space in the sky, like uncompounded space, and it doesn’t come into existence. It doesn’t cease, and and it it it is permanent. So this when we say it’s like space, what we’re talking about by space is the lack of something. So space can’t be described in terms of its shape or its taste or its feel because it is is is the mere lack of something. So when we when we talk about space beginning, it doesn’t begin because the absence of something can’t begin and it can’t in that same way, way, it can’t, cease to be because, it didn’t begin in the first place.
So Okay. So in the same way that the definition of uncompounded space that is the lack of something, the definition of emptiness could be that it is the lack of inherent existence of something. And therefore, if something isn’t inherently doesn’t inherently exist in the beginning, if it doesn’t come into existence as an inherent object, then it can’t cease to exist because it never inherently existed in the first place. So this could be one way of looking at emptiness. So so the the the definition, and I don’t know if I got this right before, so of of uncompounded space is it doesn’t stop anything.
It’s it’s an absence of an absence something that stops something else. Alright? So, it’s in the same way that this is absence of something, when we talk about, emptiness because it’s the it’s the lack of something of an inherent existence. It’s really similar to space, in that we only know it’s there by the lack of something. Alright.
And so when we say that uncompounded space’s definition is that it can’t obstruct anything, can’t stop anything. The lack of some it’s the lack of obstruction. They’re in the same way emptiness, it can be defined as, the lack of, inherently existing. And because it doesn’t inherently exist, that means that it, it never was generated. And because it doesn’t inherently exist and was never generated, that that means that there’s nothing that can cease.
So that’s the way that, emptiness is, but we don’t actually see things like this. We see everything, all phenomena as being inherently existent, and it’s not very easy for our minds to change, when we’re in reference to that object. The way that we eventually want to see things in terms of emptiness takes a lot of hard work in order to get to that place. We have to follow a lot of arguments in our head. We have to use a lot of analytical meditation in order to change our mind about that.
So, so, line that says, I bow down to the mothers of the conquerors the three times. The reason that it says this is because what they’re actually talking about is this refers to a place of understanding that is an exalted wisdom. It’s like a really complicated wisdom or a really difficult to get at wisdom. That is actually the meditative equipoise of Ārya beings which are beings who have realized emptiness directly when they’re on the two paths of the Mahāyāna vehicle which are two of the five paths of the Mahāyāna vehicle which would be the path of seeing and the path of meditation.
Now, the ārya beings on these two paths, when they’re in meditative equipoise, realize emptiness directly. So, this mind, while it is in meditative equipoise that realizes emptiness directly is also called called the cause, for beings to attain enlightenment and this is why it’s always called the mother in terms of, in terms of the quote. It’s the mother of the conquerors of the three times because it is the cause for the, beings to achieve in enlightenment, and conquerors are Buddhas. So if they don’t have this mind that realizes emptiness, if they don’t have a mind understanding emptiness, these Ārya beings, these superior beings cannot actually become Buddhas. It is this mind that’s the cause for their Buddhahood.
Their Buddhahood actually comes from this understanding and they need to do that in order to achieve Buddhahood. It works. It goes backwards and forwards. And so this mind is what they’re actually referring to in this verse because this mind is the the cause of Buddhahood. Is is that is that understandable?
Do do you guys get it? He said it’s not really easy to under He said this is really hard topic to, understand because in order to understand it properly, we have to understand emptiness because we can’t understand emptiness, which is why we’re studying it. It makes it difficult to get at it. It has to be really hard. So the the next part of the commentary talks about the explanation of the actual text and this again is divided into two parts.
The first being the explanation of the title and the second being the explanation of the body of the text. The title has is is the name that has been given to the was actually given to the text. Okay. So the name of the text in Sanskrit is Bhagavati Prajñāpāramitā Hridaya, which means Bhagavati means it is like a female Bhagavan or Buddha. Prajñāpāramitā is a perfection of wisdom, and I can’t pronounce it properly.
Is heart. Now the reason the actual word for Bhagavata in Tibetan is which is is split into three different syllables. The first syllable means to destroy, and what they’re destroying is their karma and delusions. The second syllable means to avoid, and is like to abide beyond, or transcend, sorrow. The reason that it’s called a Bhagavati which is a female Bhagavan, is the ma is actually is the part where it refers to the mother, the mother of all of all Buddhas.
So it’s a female aspect. The the Prajñāpāramitā means the perfection of wisdom and the Hridaya is the heart. The reason is called the the heart. Sorry. Perfection of sorry.
First, the perfection of wisdom. When they talk about the perfection of wisdom, it’s actually a synonym for