Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A Milarepa verse — “Fearing death I fled to the hills; after seeing the emptiness of my mind, I lost all fear” — opens this 45-minute session and fixes its central thread: realizing emptiness is what actually dissolves the fear of death. Geshe Pema Tsering argues that no one can guarantee they will be alive tomorrow, that youth and health offer no real protection, and that only Dharma practice can help at the moment of dying. He maps this urgency onto the three levels of motivation: aiming for a good rebirth, for liberation, or for Buddhahood for all beings. The session then turns to the Heart Sūtra’s four modes of emptiness applied to the five aggregates, explaining why form is addressed first — it is the “glass” in which the other, mental aggregates abide — before closing on how searching for an inherently existing “I” among those aggregates finds nothing at all.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 17 HS 2003 03 11.mp3
UUID: 0fd436c3-e08a-4878-9cfe-9d6394fef7f4
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Heart Sūtra (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-03-11
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~3,208
Jetsün Milarepa said, fearing death, I fled to the hills, But and after I had seen the emptiness of my previous state of mind, now when I think of death, I have no fear or sorrow. Most of us not like Milarepa, most of us don’t think of death very often. If we did think of death very often, then we would spend most of our time practicing Dharma because the fear of death would make our Dharma practice very meaningful and would impel us to want to practice Dharma. This is Milarepa. Because Milarepa thought about death a lot, he went open to the hills and meditated a lot as well. When he was meditating what he actually saw was that his mind and when it says the nature of my mind before it means the mind that he’d had since beginningless time so he saw that the nature of this mind was actually empty that it was not inherently existent, that it wasn’t naturally existent. So because he saw this, then he lost his fear of death. Because Jetsün Milarepa saw the emptiness of this mind, because he understood the emptiness of that mind and meditated on it, by the power of this meditation he was able to abandon both obstructions to liberation and the obstructions to omniscience.
In the abandoning of these two obstructions of his mind, was able to achieve complete Buddhahood. So because Jetsün Milarepa was able to see the nature of his mind, By doing so, he was able to abandon death. What they actually mean by abandoning death is, that not that he didn’t die, but that he was originally like us in that our death his death and our death comes about by the power of karma and delusion in the same way as our birth comes about by the power of karma and delusion so by understanding the true nature of existence and understanding the true nature of his mind he was able to achieve Buddhahood and by achieving Buddhahood he had escaped the power of karma and delusion therefore he had abandoned death. And because he had escaped the power of karma and delusion and had no suffering anymore, then he wasn’t afraid of death anymore. And because there was no suffering, then death wasn’t suffering and therefore his fear of death had disappeared.
By the power of karma and delusion, we get sick, by the power of karma and delusion we grow old, and by the power of karma and delusion we die. So, we are born by the power of karma and delusion we must die by the power of karma and delusion. Everything that we do in accordance with these four sufferings, the suffering of birth, the suffering of illness, the suffering of growing old, the suffering of death, they all come about because of karma and delusions. And how do karma and delusions come about? They come about because in a previous time, then we accumulated negative and positive merit and negative and positive karma, and that ripens in this lifetime as being born, as getting sick, as growing old and as dying.
So if we are actually trying to think about death properly, then we start thinking about death and the fact that we have no escape from death and that we must die because of the power of karma and delusion, we actually get scared. If we are thinking about death properly, will get scared Because we will think, well, nothing that I do now can be of benefit to that. But there is something that we can do now that will be of benefit to us at the time of death and that is to practice Dharma in any of its forms. So, if we do this, then the practice of thinking about death becomes a good reminder to us to practice Dharma. By doing this, then we are thinking about death properly.
Even though we have this idea that we’re going to die, we don’t actually think that it’s going to happen tomorrow and we don’t think it’s going happen the next day and we probably don’t think it’s going to happen next year. We think that it’s probably going to happen but because we don’t think it’s gonna happen very soon, it loses its power. This sense that we’re gonna die loses its power and becomes a quite weaker thought. The thought that we are going to keep living becomes a much stronger thought. We don’t concentrate on the fact that we are going to die.
So there is there’s not a person that isn’t going to die. We can’t think that we’re not going to die because there isn’t a single person that isn’t isn’t going to die. Some people in the past had great realizations and Buddha even, with all his realizations, still passed away. So, we can’t think that we can escape death. If we have a lot of money, we can’t buy our way out of death, we can’t plead our way out of death, we can’t practice Tantra in order not to die.
There is no way that we can escape death. The only way that you can escape the suffering of death is to achieve liberation, because with achieving liberation, the suffering of death ceases to exist. So there’s also nowhere we can go that we can escape death. There’s nowhere we can think, well, if I just go to that place and I stay there for a while, then I’m not gonna die because wherever we go, then death will follow us there. And there’s nothing there’s nothing that we can do within our powers to stop it happening.
So people don’t have this sort of death in their mind very often and a lot of times people think I’m young. People don’t die when they’re young, I’m not going to die because I’m a young person. Or people think I’m not going to die, I’m a healthy person. Every time I go to the doctor he looks at me and says Yeah, you’re okay. So I’m not going to die.
But this isn’t the way it happens. There are mothers that have to bury their children and there’s lots of young people that die before the older people die. So you can’t say, Just because I’m young, I’m not going to die. Because there’s no way of knowing whether you’re going to die when you’re young or not. So and, likewise, the idea that I have a healthy body so therefore I’m not going to die doesn’t work either.
The doctor may tell you I have a healthy body today but that doesn’t mean that you’re not going to develop some kind of illness tomorrow or that you’re not going to have some accident or even if you eat the wrong food that can create a cause for death. So just the the the thought, I’m not going to die because I’m healthy, isn’t is not a valid thought either. So in this way, if someone asks us, Are you going to die tomorrow? Then we can’t say for certain that we’re not going to die tomorrow. There’s no one in the room that can say for certain that they’re not going to die tomorrow.
So if we can keep thinking, we have to think in this way. But we don’t usually think in this way. We usually think, well, I’m not gonna die tomorrow. So this becomes a much more powerful thought. If someone asks you to sign a document saying that you were definitely, absolutely not going to die tomorrow, you couldn’t do it.
If they wanted you to sign a document saying, most probably you’re not going to die tomorrow, maybe you could do that. But if it was to be absolutely certain and they said, you can put your name on the fact that you’re not going to die tomorrow, can you absolutely guarantee me that? Then you couldn’t actually do it. There’s no way that you could guarantee that. So we can’t say when it is that we are going to die.
Maybe we will live for about a hundred years, maybe we can live for that long. But also by the time most people reach ten, then they have had some experience of someone who dies before they are ten. Lots of people die when they reach ten years of age. So it’s impossible for us to say which one it’s going to be for us. He hasn’t even been in Buddha house for two years yet and already there’s been two people that come to the house that have passed away.
And in the same time, many people from his monastery in India had died. So he he can’t say we we can’t say whether whether we will actually be still be alive tomorrow or the next day, even if we do if we are healthy and we are young. There are many people that are healthy and young that still pass away, so we can’t say that it’s not going to happen. So thinking in this way we have to think that from today should practice Dharma because when we are dying, apart from the Dharma that we practiced, apart from the good merit that we have accumulated, then there’s nothing that can help us at the time of death. So no matter how much none of the money that we have at the moment will help us when we die.
None of the friends that we have at the moment can help us when we die, and none of the everyday things that we do can help us when we die. The only thing that can help us at the time of our death is Dharma, is the practice that we’ve done. So we should be trying to think that in the next life may I have a good rebirth at least in in terms of practicing Dharma because we we we can’t say when we’re going to die. Because in the world, there’s not many people that actually think about death, and there’s not many people that haven’t thought about death that practice Dharma. So because they haven’t thought about death and they’re not practicing Dharma, then they accumulate a lot of negativities and they because they’re, like, doing things by the power of desire or by because of desire, because of anger, because of pride.
They’re doing all these different things and doing nothing much but accumulating negativities because they don’t understand about death and they don’t sorry. They don’t think about death and they haven’t any knowledge of Dharma. So because we have had some exposure to Buddhist teachings and because we have some understanding of what of that we may die, because we have these experiences, then we should, like, enjoy meditating. We should at least try and concentrate on the next life. We should at least try and we can and if we can do better than that, try and concentrate on achieving liberation.
And even if we can do better than that, try and concentrate on achieving Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. Because we have this understanding that we may die, then we wanna make our life meaningful. And the best way to make it meaningful is by practicing Dharma. So because we have this understanding of death, then we should be concentrating on trying to develop one of the motivations of the three different types of being that is the lower type of being who is wishing for a good rebirth or a middling type of person who is wishing for liberation for themselves or trying to be the best type of person which is trying to work towards Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. So because most people don’t have an understanding of death, at the same time as they don’t have an understanding of death, there isn’t one person that doesn’t want to be happy and doesn’t want to be free from suffering because they don’t understand it themselves may I achieve Buddhahood we should be thinking may I achieve Buddhahood quickly, quickly in order to be able to help them And with this thought, we should meditate.
I’m Oh, yeah. Oh, tough. Do you guess she wants to know if you did a good meditation. You you have to meditate on these kind of things persistently, or you should. You just have to.
You should. So we don’t usually think about death. We usually try and think about trying to help our body as it is at the moment and spend a lot of time concentrating on that. So we have to train it to think about death as well. Right.
Now, we’re studying from the Heart Sūtra. We’re up to the part in the Heart Sūtra, which Geshe-la can recite very quickly but I have to read for you. Says: is empty, emptiness is form, emptiness is no other than form, form is no other than emptiness. And these are what are called the four modes of emptiness. So the main purpose of these four or these four modes of emptiness, is to illustrate that the nature of form is emptiness, that the nature of emptiness is form.
Therefore, the nature of both of these, form and emptiness, emptiness and form, is of one nature, is of one essence. So in the same way that we can say form is emptiness, emptiness is form, we can also apply the other aggregates to this equation. For example, say that feeling is emptiness and emptiness is feeling or we can say that mental activity is emptiness and emptiness is mental activity or we can say that what’s the next one? They say karmic formations instead of yeah, karmic formations is emptiness and emptiness is karmic formations and consciousness is empty and emptiness is consciousness. I think in the translation in the folder they said recognition instead of mental activity.
So, all of these aggregates can be applied We can apply all of these aggregates to these four different types of emptinesses. For example, say consciousness is empty, emptiness is consciousness. Emptiness is no other than consciousness or consciousness is no other than emptiness. The reason that form is talked about first in the Heart Sūtra before the other four aggregates is because form is seen as the base for the other aggregates. It’s seen as the easiest thing to meditate on and as it’s the base for the other aggregates, if you can understand that form is emptiness and emptiness is form, then understanding that the other aggregates are also empty is supposed to be easier to do.
Okay, the reason that they say that form is like the basis for the other four aggregates is that most of the other four aggregates are actually mental, their minds, their consciousness, different types of mental activity or words used for all the different translations. The different kinds of mind, the different types of awareness. That’s the word. The different types of awareness. Apart from karmic formations, which also includes things like beings and time and things like that, which part of karmic formations is form and other parts of karmic formations are consciousness.
Form is seen as like the glass and the other four aggregates, which are mainly different types of awareness or minds, are seen as the content, like the water in the glass. So therefore, if you can establish the glass, it’s easier to understand the water. Okay, in the same way as if we break the glass, the water can no longer abide in the glass. If our body gets broken or if our body dies, then our consciousness can no longer abide in the body. So this is why they’re establishing form as the basis for the other aggregates.
So if we can establish that form is empty of inherent existence and doesn’t exist naturally or from its own side, then it’s easier for us to establish the things that are contained within form, namely the other four aggregates, that it’s easier for us to establish them as being empty of inherent existence. So, seeing the emptiness of form is the same thing as seeing the selflessness of phenomena and seeing the emptiness of consciousness is the same thing as seeing the selflessness of the person. So the best way to be able to think about emptiness is first of all to think about the emptiness of phenomena and then after we understand this, by understanding the emptiness of form, then we can understand easily more easily the emptiness of person, which is the emptiness of consciousness and the other aggregates. The reason that the emptiness of phenomena is established first is because what we are actually talking about when we are talking about person is that on the basis of the five aggregates, the merely labeled I that we say I, I, I about that is what we are talking about when we talk about the selflessness of the person.
In order to establish that, then we first have to understand the aggregates. First of all, when we’re trying to establish the emptiness of the five aggregates, those being aggregates of form, feeling, recognition, karmic formations and consciousness. First of all, we’re trying to establish the emptiness of the aggregate of form. It’s form, feeling, recognition, karmic formations and consciousness. When we’re concentrating on form, we’re looking at the body.
Then we can say, Okay, so what is the body? What is this form? Then we understand that the body doesn’t actually exist inherently. The body is made up of blood and flesh and bones and things like that. So we understand that it’s made up as a combination of things and it’s not an inherently existent thing.
Then in the same way as we’ve done that, then we apply this process to thoughts as well. We understand that our thoughts are not inherently existent things, they are made up of different parts, of feelings, which are like reactions to stimulus and they’re made up of consciousness and their karmic formations and recognition and things like that. So when we go looking for this sense of I, when we go looking for what it is that we’re labeling I, if we look in each of the different aggregates, if we look for example in form, we can’t find I anywhere and then if we look in consciousness, we can’t find I anywhere. If we look in feeling, we can’t find what it is that this I that we’re looking for. So once we’ve not been able to find this I that we keep referring to, then we have to come to the understanding that it doesn’t exist.
Okay, so when we’re talking about each of the individual aggregates, like form, if we are trying to understand the trying to look for the aggregate of form, us not being able to find the aggregate of form, actually finding the inherent existence of the aggregate of form is the selflessness of phenomena as as is