Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a live teaching example, Geshe Pema Tsering argues that the real enemy is never an external person but always one’s own self-grasping and self-cherishing. In this 45-minute session from an ongoing Heart Sūtra series, he walks through the fear of rebirth in lower realms, clarifies how refuge in the Three Jewels actually functions at death — karma determines the outcome, not divine rescue — and warns that onlookers who quietly cheer for one side in a war also accumulate negative karma. The commentary then returns to the sūtra text, introducing the two stages of the path of seeing: the uninterrupted path and the path of release, each containing eight moments tied to the four noble truths.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 19 HS 2003 03 25.mp3
UUID: c597d32d-ec9e-4ee5-8dd0-c576fe2222bc
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Heart Sūtra (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-03-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~4,161
Oh, yeah. So Lama Tsongkhapa said, at the time of death, I have no choice but to I I have no choice. Now you arrive. Okay. Lama Tsongkhapa said, at the time of death, I have no choice.
I may go to the lower realms. So who can protect me from the lower realms? To whom do I go for refuge? Only to the Three Jewels. And the reason that he was saying this was because if we think about going to the lower realms and the sufferings of the lower realms after death, then we get really scared.
And the only thing that can protect us from this fear is the Three Jewels. So, at the time of death, there is nowhere we can run to to escape the inevitable. At the time of death, nothing that we’ve done in this life in a worldly manner will be able to help us. None of the money that we have can help us, our friends and family can’t help us, our power can’t help us, the power we’ve accumulated in that life can’t help us, the ability that we have to trick people can’t help us. So the only thing that can help us then is the good deeds that we’ve done in that lifetime, the good Dharma that we’ve done in that lifetime and our refuge in the Three Jewels.
Apart from these two, nothing else can help us. So, if we actually think about our fear of death, we really don’t have any reason to be afraid of death itself. If dying was just going into a deep sleep and there was nothing that came in the next life, there would be no reason to be afraid of death because if that was the case, then death would just bring about a cessation of suffering. You have to suffer a lot now and if death was the end, then we wouldn’t have anything to be afraid of. But it’s not death itself that we actually have fear of if we look at it.
It’s where we’re going to be reborn in the next life. It’s the place of our next rebirth that could give us a lot of fear. So we don’t usually think about what’s gonna happen after we die. We actually have to take rebirth. There is no way that we can actually escape taking rebirth.
Where we’re going to be reborn next is the most frightening thing about death. Now the only thing that can protect us from that fear, can protect us from the lower realms is our faith in the Three Jewels because we have since beginningless time created so much negativity, that our negativity so far outweighs our positive actions that we can’t really use our positive actions to stop us from experiencing the lower realms. And even with this then we should be thinking about other people as well. There’s so many other people that don’t have any kind of faith in the Three Jewels that have to face death and that don’t think about what’s gonna happen to them in the next life. They don’t have this concept of the next life so they don’t have their fear of death is largely misplaced.
So, for example, the people that are fighting in the war at the moment, most of them are trying to find ways to make themselves not die because they have a fear of death, but they haven’t really thought about why it is exactly that they’re afraid of death. Okay. So the people at the moment, they they that are in the war that are fighting the Australians, the Americans, and the British, and the Iraqis that they’re fighting with. They’re fighting the Iraqis, and they actually think that if they win, then they’re going to be happy. They’re not thinking necessarily what’s going to happen to them at the time of death or what’s gonna happen after that.
All they keep thinking about is if we win, then we’ll be happy. But in actual fact, it’s gonna be very difficult for them to find happiness by winning this war. The the only thing that they’ve actually got that may help them afterwards is the fact that they have a two hundred billion dollar debt to pay off, and that may use up some of their negative karma. So the reason that they’re not going to be able to create happiness from this war is that the only reason they’re fighting the war is because they are grasping at self. They are grasping at their own sense of safety and they are trying to blame all of their misfortunes on someone else.
So, in order to protect themselves because of their self grasping, they are inflicting harm on other beings and the mistaken belief that this will protect them and make them happy. So they think that by fighting this war that when they win that they will actually become happy, that everything will be better for them. But they are actually really mistaken from that because everything they are doing in the war is creating intense negative karma that they will have to experience the results of in the future. So the more they think we’re getting closer, we’re getting closer, we’re going to win, we’re going to be happy, it’s actually the more suffering they’re creating for themselves by moving closer towards their goal. So, yeah, there’s not even this understanding that they’re actually doing a lot of destruction to the environment in process of war.
Everything is coming from this sense of self grasping and the sense of blaming others and not looking out for their own suffering instead of trying to understand that everything is coming about because of the results of karma and delusion. And in the process because they’re under the influence of delusion and creating more negativities, they’re doing things that they don’t even realize that are negativities that they actually have to pay have to experience the consequences of. For example, it’s not only humans that they’re killing in this world, it’s thousands and uncountable numbers of animals that will be killed by the bombs and the bullets and everything else that’s going on. Even from this unintentional collection of negative karma, they will have to experience the results of that in the future as well. So it’s not just these people that are actually fighting in the war that are being affected by it.
Because even us who aren’t fighting in the war, we still tend to have this mind that or we still have to still tend to have this thought pattern that if Australia, America and England win, then that’s a good thing. If we don’t think so much about the Iraqi people that are being killed, but we know that one Australian is being killed, And we have an empathy with this one Australian that’s being killed even though so many Iraqi people have been hurt and and or either hurt or killed. We don’t tend to think about them as much as this one person that we hear about and think, oh, an Australian. So we shouldn’t have this mind that separates the two out.
We should appreciate people that we don’t know and we don’t have anything in common with as much as this one person that we hear about on the news all the time. So we’ve actually got the danger of creating a lot of negative karma ourselves. If we have some sense of, oh, it’s better that it’s less difficult if the Iraqis are dying or even Americans are dying than if an Australian dies. And if we have like some moment of, oh, yes, they’re winning, or, oh, yes, they’re losing, then we have this danger of creating very much negativity because we’re we’re actually rejoicing in their negativity, in the negativity they’ve created. So so this rejoicing almost becomes as dangerous as the actual the things that they’re doing in Iraq.
This rejoicing in in the in the defeat of of someone else becomes a a very negative stream on our mind. When we see these things happen, we should be trying really hard to develop an equanimity in our mind that every single person is just as important and every single person wants to be happy and not suffer. And we should try and meditate on compassion for all these beings and not develop any sense of bias in our mind. So if if now we can see how easy it is for us to develop negative karma, then we get an understanding of how easy it is for us to go to the lower realms. If at the time of death that we have created a lot of negative karma, then we have to go to the lower realms because it’s a consequences of those actions.
If we created a lot of positive karma, we have the chance of being reborn in the higher realms, but it’s very difficult. So we we have to understand that we have every great likelihood of being born in the lower realms. So when we’re watching these pictures of the war on the television, we really should watch our minds and be concentrating on the thought that may all those people that are actually going to die in the war, or the people that are fighting in the war, something happen in their mind stream that they actually become open to the teachings of the Buddha or may in their next life, may they have conditions that make them have faith in the Buddha and the Dhamma and the Sangha and develop compassion in their hearts. Each single person, they’re not just the people on one side or the people on the other side, every single being that’s is is affected by this this conflict, may we think about it for all of those. And even if we can’t help them in any way, but that thought in our mind, will it be of immense benefit to us?
So then, for all these people and for ourselves as well, we should have this fear about what’s going to happen to us in the next lifetime. The best way that we can benefit ourselves by thinking on this fear, the best way to use it as a way to benefit ourselves is out of this fear, to look to something that we can trust and have faith in. The only thing that we can really trust and have faith in that can protect us from these experiences is the Three Jewels, So therefore we should develop in this faith in the Three Jewels and think of their qualities because we know that the the Three Jewels only exist in the continuum of Ārya beings from Ārya beings up. So there’s something that’s there’s something that we don’t possess at the moment, and because we don’t have the Three Jewels in our in our in our streams, then we have to look for refuge to them in other in other beings. So if we’re thinking of how it’s actually gonna help us by going for refuge to the Three Jewels, then it becomes one of the most powerful things we can do in terms of positive karma or positive merit in our mind streams is to go for refuge to the Three Jewels.
It becomes such a powerful powerful thought that it acts as an immense benefit on our our mind streams. Having this faith in the Three Jewels an incredible benefit to our mind stream it’s not like at the time of death by going for refuge to the Three Jewels that by their blessings they can hold their hand out to us and lead us into the higher realms and stop us from going to the lower realms What happens to us at the time of death is completely dependent on our karma and delusions on what on the karma that we’ve created. But by having this faith and going for refuge to the Three Jewels, then we create this incredibly positive mind stream and that we bring their power into our mind stream we get their blessings by having faith in them so by this process in our mind then we’re creating all positivity in our mind and that can stop us from going to the lower realms it’s not that they have a choice in whether we go or not because otherwise they wouldn’t let us have any suffering at all but they can bless our minds by us having faith in them and that can stop us from having to experience this stronger suffering.
So it’s so it’s not that by just having some faith in these rituals that we will escape the lower realms. How we escape the lower realms is entirely dependent on our karma. But if we have faith in the Three Jewels and if we have faith in karma, the cause and effect of karma, And if we have faith in dependent arising, then our actions will be in accordance with that. We won’t do any gross negativities and we will try and abandon the other negativities that we do do and and this along with the merit that we’re creating by having faith in these objects we will create a positive positive situation in our mind stream and at the time of death, that will be of guidance to us. That will be of help to us.
But if on the other hand, we don’t have any faith in the Three Jewels, we don’t have any belief in karma, we don’t have any belief in dependent arising, we think that any types of Dharma practice, anything, are a waste of time and we’re not interested in them. If we spend all our lives chasing after samsaric pleasures, if we think about what’s going make us happy tomorrow or the next day, or and get caught up in our desires and try and enjoy our lives to the fullest in terms of trying to make this life as happy as it can be and not thinking about anything else. Then at the time of death, it’s not like the Buddhists can go, Oh, you have a little bit of you’ve turned around and asked for my help, I can hold out my hand to you and give you my blessings. They can’t do that. Their blessings depend on our faith, and their blessings depend on the good deeds that we do.
If we behave in this manner and everything that we do is focused on this life and the pleasures of saṃsāra, then at the time of death, the only thing that we’re gonna get blessings from is, like, the blessings of self grasping and the blessings of yeah. The blessings in. Okay. So the only thing is we’re gonna get the blessings from are self grasping and self-cherishing at the sign of death, and these aren’t going to help us that much. So these these these blessings from self grasping and self-cherishing, they’re not gonna do anything.
There’s nothing positive they can do. All they do is create negativities in our mind. The blessings we need are the blessings of the Three Jewels. So we have to focus on doing things in order to get the blessings of the Three Jewels, not self grasping and self-cherishing. And so this is what we don’t quite understand properly.
We have this self grasping and this self-cherishing so much that we have this idea in our head that we want to be happy and we don’t want to suffer, and we want to experience true happiness and we don’t want to experience suffering. But we don’t realize that the only true happiness we’re going to get is by practicing virtue and trying and getting the blessings of the Three Jewels by practicing virtue and having faith in them. We don’t realize this, so we go after samsaric pleasures which may give us a little bit of pleasure but don’t last long. And in the end, they they end up hurting us more than they did than the pleasure that they gave us. It’s just because we don’t know.
We don’t understand. It’s like we’re given we’re given black poison, and it’s put in front of us. But because it tastes good, we keep eating it. Because it’s sweet, we think, oh, that’s fine, and keep eating it without realizing that it’s poison. So at the time of death, the only things that will really help us will be the positive karma that we accumulated and our faith in the Three Jewels.
Everything else that we’ve done everything else that we’ve done by the power of our our our karma and delusions, by the power of our self grasping self grasping and our self-cherishing, they will only cause act as a cause for us to go to the lower realms. If we don’t wanna go to the lower realms and we want to go to the higher realms, then that all has to depend on our faith in the Three Jewels and our refuge in the Three Jewels and likewise on our the positive actions that we have done. There’s a lot of misconception about how the Three Jewels can help us at the time of death, how this refuge actually works for us when we’re dying. A lot of people think that if they think about Three Jewels at the time of death, then that means that the Buddhas and the Dhamma or the Sangha are going to come down and take them by their hand and lead them into the next life. Or they think that at the time of death, the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha are going to show up and show them a map and say, If you go this way, then you’ll end up in the lower realm.
So come this way. Don’t go that way. This is the way to get to the higher realms. But this isn’t the way that it works. If at the time of death, we have a strong refuge, then that acts as an immense source of refuge, sorry, of merit for us to give us enough merit to be reborn in the higher realms.
But if at the time of death we are overcome by attachment or overcome by fear or we’re overcome by our self grasping in some form or other, then that just becomes a cause for us to be born in the lower realms. So what we need to know is how to go for refuge, because if we can go for refuge properly, then at the time of death, if we focus on refuge and we’re not distracted by our self grasping, then we will be able to have a good rebirth. So it comes down to being pretty simple. On the one hand, if we focus on refuge, then we end up in the higher realms, and if we focus if if we’re overcome by our negativities, then we go to the lower realms, but what we need to do in order to to make sure that happens is to understand fully in our lifetimes what going for refuge is and to practice it. Okay.
The Buddha said that we are our own refuge, and we are our own worst enemy. What he mean meant by this is if we have faith in the Three Jewels and go for refuge, and if we create merit, and we believe karma and we understand how it works, so therefore we don’t do anything negative that’s going to cause us suffering in the future, if we proceed in this manner, then we are our own best refuge. We stop ourselves from suffering. If we don’t do this, on the other hand, and we create a lot of negativities, and we don’t do anything based on the principles of karma, and we don’t have any respect for the Three Jewels, and we don’t even have respect for sentient beings, then we are our own worst enemy in that we will have to experience the results of this negative karma we have accumulated, and that will come about in the form of suffering. So the Americans, the Australians, and the British at the moment think that Iraq or the Taliban, whoever it is, is their enemy.
But it’s not their real enemy. Their real enemy is their self grasping and their self-cherishing. If they didn’t have self grasping and self-cherishing, they wouldn’t have any enemies that are actually outside themselves. So they’re mistaken in their belief that their enemies are outside themselves because what they should really be looking at is their self grasping and their self-cherishing. So the Americans and the Australians and the British, because they don’t understand that their real enemy is their self grasping, actually see their real enemy as Saddam Hussein.
And because they think that Saddam Hussein is their enemy, they’ve gone after him, and they’ve created this war. Now Saddam Hussein is a is a is a person or a being, so therefore, he can’t be the real enemy because the real enemy is never a a human a human being or a different kind of being. The real enemy is always their own person’s mind in the form of their own self grasping and their own self-cherishing. So once they’ve done that and they’ve decided that he’s their enemy, then they go after him. And then what happens from the other side is that Saddam Hussein doesn’t realize that his self grasping and his self-cherishing is the real enemy, so he decides it’s the Americans that are the real enemy.
And then they they fight each other, misunderstanding that the real enemy is never a being. It’s always a mind. And it even becomes a worse mistake because this person that they see as their as their enemy, as their their opponent, is actually someone who has been their mother or their father or someone they owe a great kindness to. So in both ways, they’ve they’re not only mistaken in terms of not seeing the enemy right, they have mistaken the other way and not seen a person as being their mother from a previous life. So they’ve mistaken in two ways.
So in the same way as they’re slaves to their self grasping, we’re actually also slaves to our self grasping. It may not come out as something as as obvious as this, but we are slaves to our self grasping, and we have to understand that in order to understand what saṃsāra is in order to get out of saṃsāra. So what we should be doing is having this thought that there’s all these people suffering. In order to help all these people suffering, may I achieve enlightenment to be of benefit to all of these beings to in order to help them. May I use all the causes of merit that I’ve created by practicing and rejoicing in the other beings that I practice as well, and by doing things like studying the Heart Sūtra, may I use all those sources of merit in order to become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings, and especially the beings at the moment, especially focusing on the beings that are at war at the moment and the beings that are suffering because of the war.
So if we can meditate on this. Right. Okay. So we were going through the Heart Sūtra, and we’re up to the part of the Heart Sūtra which actually refers to the object of meditation on the path of seeing. And we’re referring to the bit of the Heart Sūtra which says, Śāriputra, likewise all phenomena are merely empty, having no characteristics.
They are not produced and do not cease. They have no defilement and no separation from defilement. They have no decrease and no increase. Yeah. Yeah.
Now what what this is actually referring to is Okay. So, yeah, what this is actually referring to is on the path of seeing, there is actually two paths. Path of seeing is emptiness is realized directly. And on the path of seeing, there is actually two parts to the path of seeing. There’s what’s called the uninterrupted path and the path of release.
Now, in the uninterrupted path, there is eight moments which are called the eight moments of forbearance. And on the the path of release there is also eight moments which are called the eight moments of understanding or knowledge. Now, these eight moments on the path of release are also divided into two for each of the four noble truths, or two things related to the four noble truths.