Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A translation tangle opens this 16-minute Q&A from Geshe Pema Tsering’s Introduction to Buddhism course: a student’s question about whether realized beings suffer requires renegotiation between Geshe and interpreter before it can be properly addressed. Geshe explains that such beings feel no personal suffering because they have extinguished its causes — karma and afflictive emotions — illustrating this with a Tibetan story of a master who, when his son died, felt only compassion rather than grief. A follow-up question turns things practical: should ordinary practitioners trace the karmic roots of their own pain? Geshe’s answer is grounded — address causes you can identify and fix, accept those you cannot — and Śāntideva’s concise verse brings the same point home to close.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 ItB 2003 03 24.mp3
UUID: 68810606-2eaa-4426-becc-ef2a7012ad1d
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: IB Introduction to Buddhism (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-03-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 16.4 minutes
Words: ~1,163
Okay. I’m sorry. Yeah. It was just a because it’s it’s difficult because your question, it was when I translated it, Geshe was his point of view is so different. But when he was answering it, I was like, no, no, but that’s not his question.
And he’s like, well, this is the answer. And I was like, but because, yes, this is a cultural thing because it’s like, yeah. It’s diff it was difficult one to translate because he’s seeing But he thought you were So he wanted me to you again what your question is. Okay. So first of I have to tell you his answer, and then if that doesn’t make it clear, then I have to ask you again what your question is, which you probably will.
And then, anyway. Right. So So, the reason that they don’t experience suffering is because they have extinguished the causes for suffering being the negative karma and negative karma and afflictive emotions. So because there is no more cause for karma, for negative karma, the sorry. There’s no more cause for suffering, they don’t experience any more suffering.
Yeah. But Okay. Good way of clarifying. Clarifying. Uh-huh.
Yeah. Okay? Yes. Now if something happened to that being Uh-huh. That’s how things happen after they realized.
Yep. Yep. Okay, so that was good. Okay, so what happens is that I use the example of a child dying, right? If someone’s an ordinary being and their child dies, they suffer because their child’s died, alright?
And then there’s it was so I was kinda expanding on your question to try and make it clear. And then after they’ve realized emptiness, like, there’s a story in Tibet about a guy that was really high realized being whose son died. Yeah. Yeah. And so if he’d experienced that before he’d understood the nature of reality, then he would have experienced great suffering.
But because he experienced it after he’d realized the nature of reality, then he didn’t experience suffering because the causes for suffering had been extinguished. Right. So so he’s he didn’t experience the suffering then. He all he thought was, oh, this poor son, he’s died because of his karma and delusions, and he felt compassion for his son. So when people who’ve realized the nature of reality, and Buddhists, when they see suffering, they don’t see it as it’s not their suffering, it’s other people’s suffering, and they don’t think anything but compassion for the other being’s suffering.
Guess I said that’s because I didn’t explain it properly. It’s that. I didn’t. I’m not sure if I can articulate my question really well, but I’ll give it go. Yeah.
That’s a good question. So, any suffering that we experience is cause is karma and delusion. And any experience anything that we do now is creating the seeds for what will come about as come as our suffering in the future or the suffering or pleasure in the future. Now that doesn’t mean that right now if we’re suffering something that we shouldn’t do what we can in order to try and stop ourselves suffering. If it means taking medicine or it means going to see someone in order to limit or to decrease our suffering then we should do it but we should understand, a, that the suffering is only going to decrease if we have the karma for it to decrease, and that we have the karma to have means to to have means at hand that will decrease our suffering, and that we can’t completely obliterate suffering unless we destroy karma and delusion.
So even though we have these tools at hand that we can use in order to decrease our suffering, we have to understand that they will not destroy suffering. The only way that we can destroy suffering is by destroying our karma and delusions. But the mere fact that they’re there is also karma. So just in relation to Mhmm. To when you talked last week about there are sometimes when there’s big actions we do either positively or negatively that we can actually raise the karma in this lifetime.
Mhmm. So when yeah. I’m just wondering about, like, is there a process where you would be contemplating your actions? I don’t know. In terms like, is there any ever a point where you’d be contemplating the causes of karma from the suffering you’re experiencing or is that just a waste of time?
If you, if, the individual karma or karma in general? I think individual individual karma, so I think it’s about the disposition of like Why am I suffering this way? Yeah, Am I suffering in this way? Yeah. And what was the cause for cause is obviously what you’re advocating in the whole process which is coming to existence, the whole process of coming into existence as a human being to suffer.
Mhmm. Not to try and work out why? Wait. Why why? Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Alright. So if we have the means at hand to look for the cause to our suffering, for example, a lot of illnesses have a cause and if we can eliminate the cause, then we can eliminate the suffering of the illness, then we should use those means in order to eliminate that suffering. Most illnesses have a cause that we can can find in our bodies and then we can use the means we have at hand in order to eliminate that cause but there’s also a lot of illnesses that don’t have a cause that we can see clearly and in for those cases we have to accept that it’s just our karma and and deal with the consequences of it so if there is something that you can do, in order to find the cause if there’s a direct cause for something you can see it, then you should do something about stopping it. Right?
If the if you can stop the cause, you know, creating the suffering, you should stop it. If you can’t find it, then you have to accept. It comes from from your it’s just your karma, and then you have to just bear it. Okay. So that would be an applied for someone that’s suffering psychologically from.
And indeed Listen. Listen. There’s an eighth century Indian saint that said something like, and I don’t can’t translate texts directly, but he said something like, if you have a problem and you can do something about it, then do it. If there’s nothing you can do about if you you have a problem and there’s something you can do about it, do it and don’t worry about it. And if you have a a problem that you can’t do anything about, there’s no point worrying about it.
So if you can do something, do it. And if you can’t, just bear it. Oh, That was Śāntideva. What? Yeah.
Is that okay? Yeah. Yeah.