Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Colorful balloons hanging in the room at Buddha House give Geshe Pema Tsering an unexpected teaching aid in this 45-minute Heart Sūtra session. He opens with mind-watching practice — guarding speech in company, monitoring thoughts when alone — then invites a frank daily audit: how many of our thoughts actually serve anything beyond this-life desire? He addresses the difficulty of building Mahāyāna motivation when rebirth and Buddhahood feel uncertain, offering karma’s visible cause-and-effect as a foothold for faith. The commentary then turns to emptiness: three overlapping descriptions of inherent existence, the classical magician’s-illusion analogy, and finally the balloons themselves — proof that objects arise through labeling and conditions, not from their own side.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 HS 2003 03 04.mp3
UUID: 32e18782-fb3b-4a26-aa2f-bb87683741b1
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Heart Sūtra (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-03-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~3,578
Many be aware of what you say and when you’re by yourself be aware of your mind so what he means by this is that when there’s many people around for instance you have to watch everything that you say and when you’re by yourself you have to watch every thought that you have. So if we don’t watch what we say when there’s a lot of people around there, there’s dangers of what by what we say we can make other people get angry and then by them getting angry they can lose their stores of merit. We can also create some sense of desire in them which can lead to non virtues, we can also offend them, we can create all sorts of different suffering. So if there’s many different people around them we have to watch everything we’re saying and try and say things that will encourage good from them. So the main point of this saying is we is for us to try and avoid the ten non virtues.
If we are by ourselves and we are watching our mind, we will also notice that our mind stream, all the different thoughts that we think are all related to, are all coming from ignorance and afflictive emotions. Because since beginningless time, we have habituated ourselves with with these negative emotions and emotions and thoughts, so therefore, naturally, arise in our minds at the moment. So we have to watch our minds all the time and if we have negative thoughts like anger and frustration and things like that then we should get rid of them and at the same time if we have positive thoughts for example love and compassion and the thought wishing to achieve enlightenment and patience and giving and all these sorts of thoughts then we should encourage them so the main point is that we’re watching our mind at all times in order to stop the negativities and encourage the positive So anger anger, hatred, ignorance, desire. I forgot one. Okay, so the one I forgot, there’s there’s ignorance, desire, attachment, anger and pride.
Alright? So these are the main things that we have in our mind. Most of our thoughts are made up from these negative emotions and amongst these five the one that occurs most probably is desire because we’re actually in the desire realm. Because of the realm that we’re in the one that comes to mind most is desire. So most of our thoughts come from these, so in order for us to develop more positive thoughts we have to stop these.
Main way of stopping desire is by thinking about the shortcomings of saṃsāra Most of our thoughts actually come from desire, we just don’t realize that most of our thoughts come from desire. So if we turn our mind so that we can see that most of our thoughts come from desire, then we realize what a problem it is. But it’s not something that we think about most of the time. For example, when we get up in the morning we’re thinking I have to do this so that I can have to get some food so I won’t feel hungry, I have to go to work so I can get some money, so I have some money, I have to eat something, I have to drink something, I have to go somewhere comfortable, most of these thoughts come from desire. So most of our thoughts even in day to day come from the fact of us desiring things.
They come out of a sense of desire for something. So we don’t realize this so we just get continually led around by or influenced by our desire without realizing it. On top of that most of the thoughts that we have are involved with desire for this life even. They don’t think about other lives, they’re just concentrating on this life. So we’re most of the time led around by our desire for making something more comfortable in this life.
And we don’t see the qualities of the other types of thoughts which could have a more positive influence on our mind like compassion and so forth. So if we think about it, most of the things that we do in a day to day process or in a year or in a month, most of the things that we’re doing is to benefit ourselves in this life out of a sense of desire and if we do do things to benefit us in our next life that is that they will lead us to attaining a good rebirth in our next life then there is a very small amount of things that we do that are good, that we do to benefit us in our next life and even from that there’s even fewer things that we do in order to achieve liberation and from achieving liberation there’s even fewer things that we do in order to achieve Buddhahood. So, if we think about it in this way, if we think, okay, I’ve done a lot of work today, what is it that I’ve done today? I’ve done a lot of different things. What was the purpose of doing most of those things?
Was the purpose of doing most of those things so I have a good rebirth or was it so I can achieve enlightenment or so I can achieve liberation was it in order to have satisfaction in this life? So if we think about what we’ve done since this morning until now then we can see it more clearly. In the same way that there isn’t much that we actually do in a day that is done in order to achieve Buddhahood, in the world there is not that many people practice some kind of religious practice consistently and amongst those that practice consistently there aren’t that many Buddhists and among Buddhists there aren’t that many Mahāyāna practitioners and amongst Mahāyāna practitioners there aren’t that many that actually have a continual practice so the amount of people that are actually striving for enlightenment in this world is only a few So even though there isn’t many people in the world that that are behaving like this, it comes down to the individual. It’s up to the individual whether how they use this time, if they use it to try and achieve Buddhahood, if they use it to try and achieve liberation or to try and achieve a better life.
Because all people are actually striving for their own benefit it just depends in which way you want to focus your own benefit So we have to think about how old we are at this point in time and how we’ve used our life up to this point in time and what what we’ve done with our life that will actually be of ultimate benefit for us or how much time we’ve actually spent chasing after things that we desired and things that aren’t going to be of ultimate benefit to us and then we have to think that we don’t actually know how much time we have left in this lifetime we don’t know how many days are left or how many months or years are left so we should be thinking that we will make the best use of our time that we have now in every moment and learn from the amount of time that we have wasted chasing after our desires So whether something becomes beneficial or not, whether something becomes a cause for our ultimate happiness or not. It depends on the motivation. Something becomes dharma or doesn’t become dharma depending on the motivation that we go into it with.
So because everything relies on this motivation we should think first thing when we wake up in the morning everything that I do today may be a cause for me to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. If we can’t manage this aspiration, can think, May it be a cause for me to attain liberation? If we can’t manage that, then we should think, May it be a cause for me to attain rebirth in my next life as a human. So if have this motivation, then anything that we think or do or say during the daytime will become a cause for that, for our goal. But it’s actually really hard to develop this kind of motivation because Buddhahood seems a long long way away and we actually have to think about other people and that’s more difficult than thinking about ourselves and the other thing is that we may not actually even we even have doubts about whether there’s a future life and whether that we’re going to go to a new life after this.
So if we’ve got lots of doubts about whether we’re gonna be reborn or not, it’s kinda difficult for us to think about that next life if we don’t if we don’t actually know what’s gonna happen. So developing this motivation of working for a next life or for liberation or for attaining Buddhahood can is a very difficult thing. If we didn’t have any doubts, it’d be easy. We’d just go we’d just be thinking, okay. I’m going to come back as a human and we would work really hard in order to achieve that goal.
It would be the same as the way that we don’t really have any doubts about the qualities of what we can do with money. We think we know that we can do certain things if we have money so we get up in the morning and we go to work. We don’t think, oh, is money really going to help me in any way? We just need the money so we go to work. So if we had no doubts about our future life in the same way as we don’t have any doubts about how beneficial money can be to us, then we wouldn’t have any problem focusing on focusing on working towards that future life.
We wouldn’t get tired doing it. Because the other thing is we haven’t actually seen Buddhahood or we haven’t seen liberation either so we can have doubts about them as well. Is there such a thing as liberation? Is there such a thing as Buddhahood? Am I going to get a good rebirth if I do these things?
So because we’ve got these doubts about them, then it can become difficult to actually develop the motivation to do things. So the way that we can develop some kind of faith or belief in these things is if we look at the parts of the teachings of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas that we can actually see in this life, so if we’re looking at karma for example we can see how karma works in our lifetimes, we can see that there is a cause and effect so then once we’ve established this concept of cause and effect from our own experience then we can say okay the effect is the mind of a Buddha or a Bodhisattva and I can see that that happens and the cause for that is doing beneficial things and avoiding the ten non-virtues and so forth so therefore because that’s the cause for the results of a Buddha’s mind then I will do that. So if we look at the teachings then we can see by the wisdom of the teachings that came from the Buddha that he must have been a Buddha. Can also see that negative causes bring about negative results and it’s not even just Buddhism that says this.
In all different religions they’d say if you go around killing people, if you kill a lot of people, then you won’t won’t be a good cause a good result coming from that. You will not achieve a human rebirth or you will not go to a good place from those actions. That was a bit quick. Okay, so considering that we have all the conditions now, so we must have done something good in the past because we have all the conditions now. We’ve got all these conditions come together in terms of the eight freedoms and ten endowments that have come together from all the good causes that we have done in the past and we are now experiencing the result.
Everything we do with this life becomes very important because we have this great opportunity so we have to use it properly. So because we have this opportunity here then we have to make the most of it. It’s really important that we practice Dharma and that we don’t get involved or if we don’t become attached to the eight worldly dharmas so that we can put those to the side and concentrate on practicing Dharma. So because we’ve got this opportunity and we’re trying to put aside the eight worldly dharmas and trying to concentrate on Dharma, it’s not good enough that we’re just concentrating on Dharma. We have to concentrate on Mahāyāna Dharma and that means that we have to concentrate on achieving Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings.
So first of all we have to think about how there isn’t a single being that doesn’t want happiness and doesn’t want to be separated from suffering. There isn’t a single being like that and that because we have lived innumerable lives then at some stage in past each of these sentient beings has been our mother or our father and we want to repay them with the kindness that they showed us when they were our mother or their father that we have to develop a mind that can benefit them and we want to establish them in a place where they have no suffering and have no suffering and they are not separated from happiness and the only way that they can all do that is if they all achieve Buddhahood so the way that we can help them achieve Buddhahood the best is by achieving Buddhahood ourselves first, so that we can show them the way as well. In order to achieve this, are doing different things. Are studying the Heart Sūtra, we are doing our daily practices and we are here tonight. May all this be dedicated towards us achieving Buddhahood quickly and with this thought in mind we should meditate now.
He wants to know if you’re understanding the Heart Sūtra. Okay, so we just finished the five kinds of emptiness, that’s the yoga ones and all that. And we’re up to the next bit which is the different descriptions of emptiness. So it says that the empty of inherent existence, the empty of inherent existence, empty by way of its own character and empty by way of its own entity are different ways that you can explain emptiness. But the thing to understand is that they all actually mean emptiness.
Whichever one makes more sense to us then we can follow that but they are described in different ways to give us a better understanding of what emptiness is. Okay, so as well as there being different ways that emptiness is described, there is also different examples that are used in order to convey emptiness. The first of these is an illusion and the illusion that is usually referred to is the tantric or magician’s trick of conjuring a horse or an ox. Now, this horse or an ox that is conjured up by the Tibetan magicians isn’t actually a horse or an ox but people would see it as being a horse or an ox. Its actual substance however they would say would be the mantra or the spell of the conjurer.
So, in the same way that the people who are seeing the conjured animal would say that’s an animal and not realize it’s true substance, in the same way as that, that when we see objects, we see them as being inherently existent and don’t see how they truly exist, which is empty of inherent existence. But to say that something is empty of inherent existence doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist at all because it does exist in terms of it exists terminologically. It exists because of our consciousness labeling it as existing. So, to say that it doesn’t exist at all is not right either, because it does exist by the power of the terminological labeling in the same way as the conjured animal exists by the people the animal being conjured by the magic of the conjurers. So that isn’t to say that things don’t exist, they do exist.
They exist because of the way that we label them as existing. So, that doesn’t mean that they exist from their own side. So, for example, if we see form then So, okay, we have to use We just have to do the balloons. Said something else first, he said, no, no, just the balloons. Okay, so balloons are a really good example because when we look at the balloons, we see them as existing as being green and blue and white and yellow and think that they exist in the way that they are appearing to us, but they don’t exist at all in the way that they are appearing to us, aside from our labeling them as being green and yellow and blue and red balloons and thinking that labeling them from that, then they don’t exactly actually exist from their own side.
So that means that they don’t exist at all in the way that they appear they exist to us. But they don’t exist in the way that we think they do because if they existed in the way that we thought they did they would be in your consciousness even before you came into Buddha House. So you didn’t know that these balloons were going to be here when you came to Buddha House. If they existed inherently they would have been in your idea of Buddha House before you came here, but they weren’t here the last time you came here, so you had no idea that that there would be balloons sitting in the room now, and if they had existed inherently, they would have been here inherently since then so you would be able to see it. You would have imagined that they’d be here, but because they’ve just sprung out of nothing, shows that they didn’t exist inherently.
They depended on the causes and conditions of putting them there and so on. But when we see them, we think that they’re actually existing from their own side. We don’t think, wow, I’m merely labeling these balloons. We think the balloons are there. So we come here and we see the balloons and we think the balloons are existing, they exist the way that they appear to us.
We don’t think, you know, it’s just my eye consciousness labeling those balloons because I have this prior experience of what a balloon is and then my eye sees this balloon and goes and the eye consciousness is labeling the balloon and therefore the balloon is merely labeled and doesn’t exist from its own side. We don’t actually think like that. We just say we just see the balloon and think the balloon exists. But if some if we didn’t have this experience that this was what you called a balloon, when we came in here, we wouldn’t think, ah, balloon, and we wouldn’t our eyes wouldn’t label balloon because they wouldn’t have that label. It would be something else.
It wouldn’t be our prior experience. The balloons wouldn’t be applicable, so our eyes and our mind would not be going balloon. So before, a long time ago, when the inventor of balloons was around, then they said when they first labeled them balloon, that was the first person to label them balloon and since then everybody else has been labeling them balloon and not only do we label them balloon, we also say there’s a green balloon, a blue balloon, a white balloon, all these different kinds of balloons. So, there’s this labeling going on in our head on the different types of balloons, the colors of balloons and the actual name itself, even balloon, are all different labels. So the labeling process comes all from our side.
If we see a balloon, we think: Well, balloons are white and yellow and green and they do this function. If we see a car, we think a motor is something that needs to be driven and if we see a human, we think well that’s a thing that eats and sleeps and drinks and so on. So this is the labeling process that we are constantly going through in our interactions with in our interactions with phenomena. So, this is why they’re using their word illusion because an illusion is like a gross version of what we do with reality and it’s something that we can understand because we know that the conjured animal doesn’t actually exist but we can see how we could be confused into thinking that that animal exists. This is why that example is used in order to explain the process that we go through in our mind with labeling with the more subtle aspects of existence.