Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The Buddha’s instruction to test his teachings like a goldsmith tests gold — melting, cutting, examining it before purchase — anchors this 45-minute talk by Geshe Pema Tsering for an IB Philosophy and Meditation class. He opens with the Buddhist premise that all beings seek happiness and avoid suffering, then walks systematically through the ten non-virtuous actions: three of body (killing, stealing, sexual misconduct), four of speech (lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, pointless chatter), and three of mind (covetousness, malicious intent, wrong views). At each step he clarifies that motivation — not just the act itself — determines whether something is negative, with examples ranging from tricking a car-hire company to lying as sweet poison. A short Q&A closes the session. Suited to newcomers encountering Buddhist ethics for the first time.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 2004 05 10 P and M.mp3
UUID: baa6de24-c83c-43c4-b3d0-ada3fc125749
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: IB Philosophy and Meditation (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-05-10
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~4,348
The teachings of the Buddha Śākyamūni because how you define a Buddhist is by whether they are a follower of the Buddha Śākyamūni or not So as followers of the Buddha Śākyamūni then if we’re going to introduce Buddhism then we should do so in the same way that he introduced his teachings to his followers. And one of the first things he ever said when he was introducing the teachings to his followers or students was that abandon all evil doing or abandon all wrongdoing and practice all virtuous actions. Now the reason that the Buddha said this was because he knew that no being actually wants to experience suffering and that every being wants to experience happiness and wants to try and avoid suffering. So the reason that he taught that we should do positive actions, that we should perform virtuous actions and we should refrain from performing negative actions or doing harmful things is because the results of doing harmful things is the experience of suffering and the results of doing positive things is the experience of happiness and he realized that this was the main focus for most beings they wanted to experience happiness they want to experience they think about experiencing happiness or try and find ways to experience happiness for most of their their time whether it’s in the daytime even in their dreams people are trying to figure out ways to experience happiness and to not have to experience suffering so as this seems to be the main thing that confronted beings then he sought to teach us a way for us to experience this happiness and not have to experience suffering.
So the Buddha explained his theory in this way. He then went on to say, though, that it wasn’t enough for his listeners or his followers or the people that were listening to his teachings just to accept what he said. It wasn’t enough for them to think, Okay, this is the Buddha and he’s a holy being, so therefore whatever he says has got to be right. The Buddha said that that wasn’t good enough. You couldn’t just accept what he said.
You couldn’t just take whatever he said at face value because you considered him to be a good person and a holy being he instructed everybody that came to see him to investigate anything that he had to say to take it apart to analyse it and there is a famous quote where he says do not accept anything that the Buddha says or the Tathāgata says, out of faith, or respect for me or respect for me examine it through fire through analysis and through cutting the same way you would examine gold that you’re about to buy and so what he’s talking about here is we don’t just stroll into a shop or we don’t just walk into a shop and buy some gold and put that much money down without examining it first without being utterly sure that it is gold that we are purchasing and not some fake version of gold when we’ve invested so much into buying it Before we buy gold then we want to be sure that what we are buying is gold so we have to go through a process of analysing this gold to see exactly what it is that we’re buying so first of all when we look we have to look at the gold then we have to examine whether it looks like gold right we say does it have the qualities of the visual qualities of gold can I can I be absolutely sure that what I’m buying is gold and even that isn’t enough if we really want to be sure what we’re getting is gold then we have to put it through a process the process of a goldsmith through doing things like melting it down to make sure that it’s gold cutting it to make sure that it’s gold and doing other sorts of tests in order to make sure that it is what we think it is?
It’s the same with the Buddha’s teachings. It’s not enough just to accept it. We have to analyse it before we start looking at it, see whether it makes sense, and then when we put it into practice we have to see from our experience whether it’s still making sense. And then after we’ve analyzed it in this way, then only then can we make a decision on its validity. The problem with this, however, is that it’s hard work and we don’t particularly want to do anything that sounds like hard work.
It’s very difficult for us to watch our mind because we don’t usually spend a lot of time in analyzing our mind and seeing what we’re thinking or examining what’s happening in our mind and this is what the Buddha was asking us to do to examine the way we think to examine to see if his teachings on the nature of mind those teachings on the way our mind works actually make sense and it’s difficult for us to do that it’s difficult for us to put in the effort to start examining our mind see what we’re thinking the reason it’s difficult for us to do that is because we have habituated ourselves so thoroughly to focusing on negative things to focusing on things that aren’t actually going to help us in the long run we’re overrun by our destructive emotions and we rarely put in the effort to try and change the way we think so because of this habituation because of these habits we’ve developed over countless lifetimes it means that for us to do something fairly negative is easy we don’t have to think about it too much but for us to try and actually do something positive to think of others instead of ourselves to perform something in a selfless manner actually takes a fair bit of it takes a lot of hard work.
And we don’t particularly want to do something that takes a lot of hard work because we’re used to being fairly lazy in this regard. So in general, what the Buddha was talking about when he said to stop doing nonvirtuous actions and to do positive actions, were going to cause happiness, was he talked about what are called the ten non virtuous actions and the abandoning of those ten non virtuous actions which makes up the ten virtuous or ten positive actions. So these ten non virtuous actions were told that were said to be the causes of suffering, the causes of experiencing suffering or unhappiness in one form or another and most of the things that we can do that are negative and harmful are included within these ten non-virtuous actions so within the ten non-virtuous actions we have three actions of body, four actions of speech, and three actions of mind. And that makes ten. So the first three negative actions are usually pretty clear to us.
We can understand them pretty readily. These are the three negative actions of body. Now the first of these negative actions is to kill. Because it’s related to a body, it’s said to physical the physical aspect is said to be a negative action of body. The second is to steal or to take that which isn’t given, and the third is to engage in sexual misconduct.
So the next four are said to be the negative actions of speech So they are lying, slander or divisive speech like setting people against each other harsh speech and pointless chatter now the first of these lying is said to be a is said to be a negative action of speech because mainly when we tell lies it’s through our speech it’s related to the way we speak. But you can actually tell lies by gesturing towards people. And then it becomes like a physical action that’s negative. Because mainly lies are associated with our speech, then it’s said to be a negative action or a destructive of speech. And, yes, The first of these being the it’s interesting because in Tibetan, one of the words for telling a lie is to literally just speak shit.
Say that’s the way that they say it, but it’s not a swear word. So I don’t know why they say it. It’s not a swear word in Tibetan. Is basically the first of the negative actions of speech. Saying something isn’t that is, saying something isn’t is that isn’t or basically trying to confuse someone in a way that you can gain advantage from them.
That’s the first negative action of speech. The second negative action of speech is what’s called divisive speech and that basically means setting two people against each other who are friendly, who have good relationship by gossiping to one of them or trying to make out that the other person doesn’t like them or whatever it is. And that doesn’t necessarily need to be lying. So the next negative active speech is the negative act of speech of what’s called harsh speech or using words to try and inflict harm on someone this comes about when we have a negative thoughts towards someone it’s not just a non unintentioned remark but from a negative mind or a mind that seeks to harm someone if we then negative thought we then go and say something negative then that’s what the definition or the description of this third of the negative speech types of speech which is harsh speech. The fourth of these is the negative I’m just saying that so I can try and remember what it was it’s basically talking rubbish or pointless chatter talking about things that we really don’t have much reason to talk about and usually things that we are really attached to or obsessed with and we tend to talk about them without putting much thought into what we’re actually saying.
So it’s important to remember that not every time we use harsh words with someone does that necessarily have to be negative action that we’re talking about here it means harsh words with the intention to hurt as opposed to harsh words with the intention to help which would be for example if a parent is trying to warn their children not to do something because that will be harmed from that action then they may use harsh words to get the message across but they’re not coming from a motivation or a position of trying to harm the child they’re doing it out of affection or love for the child so that isn’t included within this negative action and then also you can chatter to someone to make them feel better you can chat with someone to lift their spirits or to make them feel better or to get a point across or whatever it is that we in whatever way we can help them by chatting to them so again this isn’t a negative action it comes down to what the motivation for any action is that we’re doing so motivation is positive then the action is positive.
If the motivation is negative, then the action is negative. So if we can go back to the negative actions of physical or body for a moment, it’s easy for us to understand what these are because it’s something that’s easy for most of us to accept because physical negativity is a very gross form of negativity and in that case is said to be a much more intense or much more forceful forceful form of negativity so for example with the first one any killing is said to be a negative action because you’re taking life from something but there’s different levels in that in the intensity of that action through how important their life is that they have. So, for example, if you kill an animal or a bug or something like that, then this is said to be a negative action because you’ve taken life. But it’s not a very rich or very precious life that they were leading. So it’s said to be less of a negative action than if you were to, say, kill a human.
So killing a human is said to be a very negative action because someone has this wonderful opportunity in this lifetime to experience being a human and then all of a sudden you’ve taken that opportunity away from them so in this way the negative actions of a body or the physical negative actions are negative actions by the base the negative actions in their nature so to kill is a negative action in its nature because you’re harming something’s base or that you’re harming something physically. It’s it’s base for being. And so by that, very it’s very nature. It’s a negative action. So in the same it’s the same way of stealing.
Like, stealing is a pretty negative action by its by its nature because we’re taking something that doesn’t belong from to to us from someone who it does belong to but there’s different levels of intensity of this action as well so for example if we went up and nicked a little bit of someone’s food when everybody had food so we were just teasing them kind of taking a little of their food it’s a very small negativity because we’ve actually stolen something that they did have but we’re not really harming them in any way so it’s not said to be very intense negativity if on the other hand through deceit we stole something that was very very important to someone else then that’s a heavier negativity but then we also shouldn’t think that it’s okay if we trick someone out of something as opposed to just nicking it off them right because both of those are negative and also it’s negative if we can get someone else to do the stealing for us like if we say to someone well can you go over there and get that from that person over there because I really want it right that’s our negative action it’s not so much the other person’s negative action but So there’s there’s different levels and different ways that we can we can go about stealing things as well.
Another way that we can steal from people is to trick them out of money that we owe them. So, for example, if we have bills we need to pay and we somehow convince the person that we have to pay the bill to that we don’t actually have to pay the bill to them. So, for example, if we have a hire car and for some reason we convince the person that we are hiring the car off that we took it for less days than we had actually taken it or something like that. So we’re basically conning them out of something that we should probably give them, then that’s another way we can steal from people. So it seems that we have we tend to have this idea that if we can trick people into giving us something that they don’t really want to give us by being really clever, that that makes us actually capable as opposed to deceitful and as opposed to thieves so we have this idea okay I can get away with that so that makes me a very capable person but any way that we use our cunning or we use our abilities to trick people out of what they what we probably what we should give them isn’t something that we should be happy about it is something that we should try and reflect on in a to see what its results are that in the karma or the karmic result of that action is that we experience some form of suffering.
So from the the next one was sexual misconduct. Now from the Buddhist perspective, the best way the best way to not have sexual misconduct is not to have sex to become a celibate monk or a nun but it is considered that to have a relationship with someone in a monogamous way is perfectly fine for someone who isn’t ordained like if they’re ordained to become a monk or nun and then do that then it’s not very good so it’s best to become a monk or a nun if that’s not what doesn’t work for you or you’re not interested in it then the next best thing to do is to have a monogamous relationship if you are in a monogamous relationship and you sleep around on your partner then that’s considered to be a fairly heavy negativity because what what you’re doing is harmful to your partner. Okay. So the the next negative action that we’re going through is the first of the negative actions of mind. These are much more subtle, less forceful in the karmic results that they bring about, but still need to watch.
And the first of these is mind obsessing over things that we don’t have but we want to get. So this includes other people’s things other people’s motorcars other people’s husbands, wives, partners, girlfriends or boyfriends other people’s clothes other people’s house other people’s lifestyle anything that it is that we think I need that and it’s someone else’s but I need it more than they do or I’ve got to get it right now the reason that this is a negative action is because basically creates a whole bunch of suffering for us even if we strive our whole lives to get those things we’re never going to reach satisfaction from that so what it does is like it creates this obsessive mindset that we’re constantly looking for other things so the nature of this negative action is this obsession of constantly grasping at things that we don’t have. This can be especially problematic when you go into shops, because he finds it very difficult to go into shops without having his mind come up or these thoughts come up. The next type of negative thing that we can do to ourselves is to have a harmful mind or a malicious mind which means that we keep constantly thinking about how we can harm someone who we have a grudge or we have some sort of hatred towards so we can see how this has a negative effect on us even in the short term because it’s impossible to be happy when you’re trying to hurt someone your mind isn’t a happy place to be if you’re constantly trying to hurt someone.
So this is a very, very virulent or very strong negative action that we can perform, this thinking of trying to harm someone. And the last of the harmful or negative actions that we can perform that are our thoughts, right, is what’s called wrong views or having incorrect or unhelpful ways of looking at things now this includes not having faith in anything or having this idea that the only things that we can believe in are the things that are right in front of our face if we can’t see something, can’t touch it, we can’t experience it personally, then that means it necessarily doesn’t exist. And there was also the idea of not believing in karma, not believing in cause and effect, not believing that our actions have any consequences. So these last three actions that we talked about have been actions of mind. They’re not things that we do with our body.
They’re not things that we do with speech. They’re things that we think. So because they’re things that we think Me? Yeah. That was English.
Yeah. Because they’re things that we think, then they’re said to be negative actions of mind. Thanks. Okay. So those are the things that Buddha said, don’t do this because if you do this, then you’re not going to experience anything but suffering from those actions though the karmic results of those actions is suffering so if you want to experience happiness stay away from doing these ten negative actions So that’s what we shouldn’t do.
What we should do is abandon the things that we shouldn’t do. So it means that if we abstain from doing these negative actions then the abstinence itself is said to be a positive action it’s said to create the causes for experiencing happiness it’s like planting positive karmic seeds to experience happiness so if you wanna experience happiness, you stop doing those ten things. You abstain from doing the ten things, and the abstinence is called the ten virtuous actions. So the Buddha said that if you can abandon doing these ten non virtuous actions and perform the ten positive actions, then that acts as a basis for you to develop your meditative abilities and by developing your meditative abilities then you can progress in understanding and progress in realization and eventually you can become a Buddha yourself So the Buddha says I used to be like you and then I made myself into a Buddha and this is how I did it. I started by abandoning these ten non virtuous actions and then worked my way through meditative understanding to becoming a Buddha.
So this idea of not doing these ten non virtuous actions and positive and trying to abandon them and therefore practice the ten positive actions is a similar concept to what you’ll find in a lot of other religions. In a lot of other religions, say abstain from killing they say abstain from adultery they say don’t steal don’t hurt don’t have a harmful mind they say these things the difference between Buddhism and other religions is that in Buddhism they say that the people who are the beings who are doing all of these things so if someone is going around killing and stealing, killing, stealing, sleeping around, lying, making slandering, having incredibly harsh views and so forth, If they’re doing that even then their nature or their their essence is exactly the same as the Buddha’s essence. So that they still have the ability they still have the the seed if you like or the potential to become a Buddha a fully enlightened Buddha. So there’s no difference between the nature of the two things. And that’s something that’s not in other religions.
It’s not in Christianity or Islam or in Hinduism. Okay. And and also the idea of becoming a fully enlightened Buddha isn’t in the Hindu idea either. They have the idea of your nature being the same as the great Atma, but they don’t have the idea of yourself becoming Okay. So we may stop having the talk at the moment and then take some questions for ten to ten minutes.
No. But the main thing to kind of focus on or the main thing to take away is about the trying to get rid of the ten non virtuous actions. But, yeah, questions, if anyone has any. So Geshe-la just said that it’s a good thing to just kind of investigate that see if any of these actions do bring about happiness if they do tend to to bring about a feeling of a long term feeling of happiness so to to to start putting that idea into practice in your life seeing if any of them actually do bring about long term happiness or if they like the Buddha says, they don’t. Yeah.
Mhmm. Yeah. Right. Or not Uh-huh. And desire.
Yep. Yeah. Gonna help them. Yeah. Said, In any time when someone needs help, then you should give them help.
But giving them alcohol isn’t giving them help. Right? And he said, So the idea is that you can see that you think, oh, how unfortunate for these people they can’t clearly see how negative this alcohol is for them, how much it’s destroying them. Because of their lack of clarity, because of their lack of understanding, then they want this alcohol. But if I give them alcohol, I’m not helping them.
I he said to help them in all circumstances, but help them wisely. Don’t help them to their own destruction. Don’t help them to to hurt themselves. He said if they’re really thirsty, maybe you could give them juice or some water. Yeah.
You gotta pound it and burn it and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. You you can just examine that. Telling lies is like drinking sweet poison.
If it’s gonna benefit you in the short term, it’s not gonna benefit you in the long term. Lies hardly ever last so if someone finds out if some if you tell a lie someone’s going to find out that you’re a liar and you have to keep up putting a lot of energy and effort not to be found out Alright? So if you you can examine that, then you can see that lying isn’t gonna help you in any way. In fact, it’s it’s going to harm you in terms of your mental equilibrium and so forth. So you can examine it in that way.
So not only are you harming yourself in that situation because people won’t believe you, and you have to work not to get found out, but you’re also harming another person in that instance as well by deceiving them. And he said, but if you don’t, you’ll be very, very happy. So that there’s these beings called the arhats or foe destroyers, and they are said to have extinguished or gotten rid of all suffering. And the reason they’ve got rid of all suffering is because they’ve gotten rid of all the causes for suffering. So they’ve gotten rid of any negative action which could have as its result suffering.
And he said, but they’re very, very happy beings. Yeah. As I said as I said, it sounds a bit hard. Yep.