Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Geshe Pema Tsering opens with a pointed observation: by his reckoning, perhaps one in a hundred people who call themselves Buddhists genuinely are, because real refuge — the conviction that the Buddha’s instructions can end suffering — if truly held, would move a practitioner to follow them all the way to Buddhahood. He defines Buddhist identity through the quality of refuge rather than outward appearance, and takes a notably inclusive stance: Christian, Muslim, and Hindu practitioners each have genuine refuge in their own traditions. Moving into doctrine, he unpacks the Three Jewels, then the three types of samsaric suffering — manifest pain, the suffering of change, and the pervasive suffering tied to the five aggregates — before closing with an overview of the Four Noble Truths and their sixteen characteristics. Pitched at newcomers and introductory philosophy students.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 2004 05 17 P and M.mp3
UUID: f9f9ff4e-5dbf-47fc-870b-58b74a533a83
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: IB Philosophy and Meditation (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-05-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~4,610
Non virtuous actions and the ten virtuous actions, the ways to behave ethically in Buddhism. And now if we’re going to introduce people to Buddhism, then it’s probably a good idea to explain what a Buddhist is. A Buddhist a Buddhist if they have what’s called a refuge in the Three Jewels, that is they seek protection or happiness through the Three Jewels of Buddhism, the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Someone can be wearing the robes of a monk and not be a Buddhist if they don’t have this sense of refuge. So it doesn’t really matter what clothes you wear or the way you look to describe that that doesn’t say whether you’re a Buddhist or not.
You become a Buddhist or you aren’t a Buddhist depending on whether you have this sense of refuge or not. So what we mean when we talk about refugees, what refuge actually entails, is a sense that whatever it is that we believe in has the ability to protect us from suffering. That is, the belief system in itself or the practices that go along with the belief system have the power or have the ability to stop us from experiencing suffering if we follow them. People can have refuge in any religious system. It doesn’t have to be a Buddhist religious system.
If you accept a religious belief system, then you are going for refuge to that religious belief system. Now the reason that most people develop belief or have commit themselves to a religious tradition is usually because they’re looking for a way to be happy and to protect themselves in this life and the next lifetime. This means that there is all different types of refuge that we can have. If people believe that the Christian religion has the ability to grant them protection from suffering, that it can show them the way to stop experiencing suffering and look after them in the lives to come, then they have Christian refuge. If people have belief in Shiva or other Hindu gods and they believe that Shiva or the other Hindu gods can protect them from suffering, that by following the instructions of Shiva or looking towards Shiva, then you can be protected from suffering in this and future lifetimes, then they have a Shaivite refuge.
It s the same also for Islamic people. If they believe that Allah can protect them from suffering and can show them the way to stop experiencing suffering in the next life also, and then they have an Islamic refuge. So there are many different types of refuge that we can develop or the sense of refuge that we can develop. So the Buddhist refuge the Buddhist idea of refuge is that the Buddha what are called the Three Jewels of Buddhism, the Buddha, the Dharma, his teachings, and the Sangha, that is the community of realized Buddhists or realized practitioners. These are the three that Buddhists actually go for refuge to.
If someone has a refuge and that s their objective refuge, then that means it s a Buddhist refuge. If someone s objective refuge is within the Christian faith, then they have a Christian refuge and so on and so forth. Now, to take refuge in something, at least from the Buddhist perspective, doesn t necessarily mean that you need to disparage other people s refuge. From the Buddhist perspective, you shouldn t say, Well, I have refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha. That doesn’t mean that a Christian’s refuge or a Muslim’s refuge or a Hindu’s refuge is not good.
From the Buddhist perspective, all refuge is good. Anyone who has a sense of looking towards a belief system, that is a good thing. It doesn’t have to be a Buddhist one. They all have an essence of refuge in them. It isn’t necessarily accepted in the Buddhist tradition that becoming a Buddhist means that you have to be disrespectful to everybody else.
From the Buddhist perspective, we say that your belief systems depend on the connections that you made with religions and the habits that you formed in previous lifetimes. For some people, they may have a strong connection to the Christian faith or to the Hindu faith or to the faith of Islam. This is because of the practices that they did in previous lifetimes. This is good for them to practice in this way, to practice their religion in this way. Other people may have a strong connection or a connection to the Three Jewels of Buddhism from previous lifetimes, and because of this, they may seek to become Buddhist or to do Buddhist practices.
So Geshe-la said he’s only really studied Buddhist Dharma, though, so he can’t give you talks on anything else. So because he studied Buddhist Dharma, then he’s gonna give you a chat about Buddhist Dharma. So someone is a Buddhist or is called a Buddhist or becomes a Buddhist, depending on whether they have this idea of refuge or not, depending on whether they have a belief that the Three Jewels of Buddhism have the ability to show them how not to experience suffering and to protect them from suffering. So, in order for them to have this belief, in order for them to have this sense of refuge, they have to know what the Three Jewels of Buddhism are. If you don’t know what the Three Jewels of Buddhism are, you can’t be a Buddhist.
The first of the Three Jewels of Buddhism is what’s called the Buddha jewel. The second is what’s called the Dharma jewel or the the expression of the Buddha’s wisdom. And the third is what’s called the Sangha jewel or the community jewel. So the first of these jewels, the Buddha jewel now, what is that? The Buddha jewel consists of beings who are Buddhas.
What a Buddha is someone who has completely gotten rid of all their negativities, all the negative aspects of mind, all their faults through a lot of hard work, and has developed in the same way all of their positive qualities. So their positive qualities become so vast said to be inconceivable. This is what a Buddha is. A Buddha is called sangye in Tibetan. Sang meaning to have purified everything, and gye meaning to have accumulated all that is good.
Now there is one historical Buddha that we usually refer to called Buddha, but they have said that there are many more Buddhas that we haven’t had the opportunity to necessarily hear about or to meet. Even though we can’t perceive that they are there, it doesn’t mean they aren’t there. In many texts, it talks about all different Buddhas other Buddhas. Jewel of the Three Jewels is what’s called the Dharma jewel or the realization jewel perhaps, wisdom jewel. Now, what this is referring to is the realizations or the understandings that come about in the minds of beings who have perceived the true nature of reality.
So if someone has the ability to see the way things actually are as opposed to the way that we see superimposed ideas on things, then that being is what’s called an Ārya or a Supreme Being. Now, in the mind stream of these Supreme Beings, there is said to be two types of there is said to be the realization that understands the lack of something, and there is supposed to be the realization that is practicing that understanding. So so the realization of the true nature of reality, right, is basically what the Dhamma jewel is. Now this can exist in the mind streams of beings who have developed this to a certain degree and also in the mind streams of those who developed it all the way, that is in the case of a Buddha. It s basically their qualities, realized qualities that beings have that have developed these types of understandings through study meditation.
Now the third third jewel is what’s called the Sanga jewel. Now the Sanga jewel is the community of realized practitioners. So we talked about these people that have a realization the true nature of reality. They understand the true nature of reality. So any being who has that realization is part of the Sangha jewel.
Right? So it’s the community of people who are realized. Yeah? Now, the realizations in their mind stream are said to be the Dharma jewel. The Buddha supposed to be all three of these because he or she is a realized being, has these realizations in their mind stream, and is also a Buddha.
So they they take in all Three Jewels. They’re a Buddha. They have the Dharma jewel in their mind stream, and they are also the Sangha jewel. Okay. So it may be difficult for us to develop or to understand what the difference between a realized being and an unrealized being is.
Therefore, the difference between an ordinary person and someone who is defined as a member of the Sangha jewel or an instance of the Sangha jewel. But we know about the historical Buddha and it is said that the historical Buddha had these realizations. So we can think of him as an instance of someone who has the who is part of the Sangha jewel. And in the mind stream of this being, there are these realizations, these two types of realizations. On the one hand, they have realized what it is that they need to abandon.
Lack bad habits, basically. They lack the bad habits of desire and anger and so on. So, the lack of the bad habits is said to be one realization. And on the other hand, they have developed positive qualities. So these two types of realizations or qualities, the lack of negative qualities and the development of positive qualities are said to be the Dharma jewel.
And the being has completely developed all of these, completely gotten rid of all negativities, and completely developed all positivities is said to be a Buddha. So, this way, a Buddha is all Three Jewels. They are the Buddha. They have the realizations, therefore, they are the Dharma jewel. And they, So what refuge is is a belief that these beings and these realizations have the ability to to make us stop experience suffering and happiness.
So if we have this idea that this can actually happen and we have a sense of a prayer that this comes about, then that’s what we call refuge. But in order for us to bring that about, in order for us to develop this idea of of going to the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha for refuge, we need to know what it is that we need refuge from. So we need to know what suffering is. We need to know what it is that we actually need to find a way out of before we can recognise we need a way out of something. So we need to know what our real experience is, what our existential situation is.
And in order To understand this, need to understand suffering. We all understand suffering in terms of manifest suffering, in terms of discomfort and so on, and what’s called the suffering of the lower realms, like the suffering of being born as an animal or a spirit or something. But there are different types of samsaric suffering that we don’t actually know about. Samsaric suffering being the suffering of cyclic existence going from one rebirth to another. So we think we know what suffering is.
I in one way we do know what the most obvious form of suffering is. We know about illness, we know what it feels like to be sick in one way or another, and we know we don’t like feeling sick. Know we don’t like feeling off uncomfortable. We also know what it’s like if our enemies win against us or the people we are in conflict with win against us and we know that that’s suffering. We also know how good it feels to win if we’re competing against people we don’t particularly like.
So we all have this sense of suffering and happiness. We know what it’s like when feel really healthy and we’ve got some food and we’re enjoying doing something. Yeah. And we have all had experience of that kind of happiness. So this type of suffering, however, and this type of happiness or what we perceive to be happiness isn’t hang on.
If we think in this way, if we think that suffering and the lack of that type of suffering is happiness, and if I have what I want, then that’s happiness, that’s actually a sign that we don’t actually know what happiness is and we don’t actually know what suffering is. That we think that saṃsāra’s version of suffering and happiness is the real deal, but we don’t actually know what’s going on. If we talk about suffering from the Buddhist point of view, then this experience of suffering, the outright pain or loss or whatever it is, is only one form of suffering. It’s called the suffering of suffering or manifest suffering. And it doesn’t take anyone special to figure out that this is suffering and it’s something we don’t want.
Any being can understand that suffering. Any being can understand that this is a situation we don’t want to be in. Pigs, for example, know what it’s like to feel hungry and want to eat. Pigs, if they feel ill, don’t want to feel ill they want to feel happy. It’s all in us inherently.
We have this idea that we don’t want to experience suffering, we want to experience happiness in terms of this manifest suffering. But to actually get to the to the root of the problem, we need to do a lot more contemplation. Is that it doesn’t look at the whole picture. Because what we are doing is splitting things into what is an experience of happiness and what is an experience of suffering in a very limited way. So all of these things that we consider to be suffering, we then experience the lack of those and we consider that to be happiness.
So if we are an ideal or if we are really happy, then we consider that to be true happiness and we grasp that as if it is true happiness. But in actual fact, what we consider to be happiness is what’s known in Buddhism as the suffering of change. Now, the reason it’s called the suffering of change is that it doesn’t last. It’s not something that we can actually rely on. We may experience intense happiness or intense bliss, intense pleasure, but it doesn’t last.
We may be intensely happy and blissful for a day, a whole day, but may not continue on to the next day. We may even be intensely happy and blissful for an hour and it won’t continue on to the next hour or even for a minute and it won’t continue on to the next minute. And the reason it won’t continue on in this way is because by its nature it’s not happiness. By its nature, it’s actually suffering. If it was happiness by its nature, we would get more and more and more and more and more happy, and that’s not the way that things go.
We tend to start off really happy and end up not so happy. The third type of suffering is what’s called pervasive suffering. Now, all pervasive suffering is another way to say that which we think makes up us. Yeah? So, it’s what’s called the technical term is the five appropriated aggregates.
Right? So basically, what that means is though the the groups of things that we put a label on and call us. Right? So we’re talking about our physical form, our feelings, our thoughts, our formations or ideas of self we have, and our consciousness. So, if we have these five groups of things, when they come together, then that’s what we consider ourselves to be, is something involved with those five groups.
According to Buddhism, those five groups are actually a result of our previous karmic actions and our previous deluded states, And as a result, they are by their nature suffering also. And because we have been associated with different forms since time immemorial, then it’s said that this experience of suffering has pervaded our existence. So once we know about all these different types of sufferings, then we can know what it is that we don’t want. We don’t wanna experience any of those types of sufferings. We wanna develop a state or realize something that is free from all those sufferings.
And that’s what we’re actually looking towards, the Three Jewels, in order to be able to show us how to develop that. So we look towards Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha as the means or the tools for us, the refuge for us from these experiences of suffering. Okay. So So so this refuge, though, isn’t a passive refuge. It’s not like like we say, Buddha made this happen and we don’t have to do anything.
Sense of refuge that we have or what we’re actually praying for is that we have the ability to follow the instructions that have been given to us so that we can avoid suffering and experience happiness. We request to be kind of empowered from our own side to be able to follow these instructions so we don’t experience suffering. We’re not asking Buddha to completely wipe out all our suffering and without us doing anything. So when we develop belief that if we follow the instructions of the Buddha, then we can get rid of our experience of suffering and develop happiness and develop ourselves in this way, then that belief or that mind that looks towards the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha in that way is refuge. So if we don’t have that sense of belief, then we don’t have refuge.
And if we don’t have refuge, then we’re not Buddhists. So if we have this idea that Buddha if we have a belief that Buddha, through his instructions and through his helpers, can lead us to that state, then we have this belief. If we don’t have that belief, we don’t have refuge. If we don’t have refuge, then we can’t can’t call ourselves Buddhist or we’re not Buddhist. So actually developing this idea of refuge or having this really firm belief in what the Buddha said is something that’s very difficult and very, if it’s if it’s developed, it’s very difficult to sustain.
So this means by Geshe-la’s reckoning that he’s that one in about a hundred, if you’re lucky, of people who call themselves Buddhists are actually Buddhists. Right. The reason he says this is because he says this because if they really did have belief in the Buddha’s, they Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha in this strong way, they would actually be Buddhas as opposed to Buddhists. Because the the way that the Buddha said that was if you do this, if you do this, if you do this, if you do this, then you become a Buddha. And this is what I did.
I meditated in this way. I did practice in this way. I abandoned doing these negative things, did these things. And by following these, you become Buddha. This is what I did.
This is what you can do. This is what the Buddha said again and again in his sutras, in his teachings. And so if people actually did believe what the Buddha said, then they would do what the Buddha said to do, and they’d be Buddhas. The reason that we are able to they would be able to attain that state, and we also are able to attain that state is because we have what’s called the Buddha nature or the the the aspect of a Buddha. That means that we have the ability to become a Buddha.
We have the potential to become a Buddha. And this is the same potential that Buddhas in the past have used in order to develop themselves into becoming a fully realized Buddha, who has completely gotten rid of their negativities and completely developed their positive qualities. Nature of our mind means that we also have to develop ourselves in this way. Now the the words of the Buddha’s teachings in the Tibetan tradition are divided into a hundred and eight volumes. So that is actual direct speech of the Buddha as opposed to commentaries on what the Buddha said.
So it’s in hundred and eight volumes in the Tibetan tradition and there’s a lot of texts in each of those volumes. So dealing with a huge canon. All of that, however, can be condensed into the first teaching of the Buddha, which is his teaching on the or the historical Buddha, which is his teaching on the four noble truth. So that means as Buddhists, then people should, having taken refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and the Sangha, follow the instructions of the Buddha, which is the way to develop the Dharma and you are helped along by the Sangha. Now, all of these instructions can be condensed, as you said, into the Four Noble Truths.
If we were to unpack, so to speak, the four noble truths and go into the details of the four noble truths, that in itself would fill volumes. But we can do it in a a condensed way and give an overview of the four noble truths. The first two of the two of the four noble truths of the Buddha is the truth of suffering and the truth of the origin of suffering, that is, how that there is suffering and that suffering has a cause. Now, these are the two of the Buddha’s Noble Truths that we practice most of the time now. That’s what we spend most of our time focusing on.
That is what we work really, really hard to achieve at the moment. We spend all that time developing the causes for suffering and experiencing the results of those causes. We don’t have to work real hard at it because it just comes pretty naturally to us, but it’s what we invest most of our energy and it’s what we spend most of our time doing. So what we spend most of our time doing is creating the causes for the for experiencing suffering. And what we don’t know about is the next two of the Buddha’s four noble truths.
That is the truth of cessation that suffering can end and the truth of the path that is the way to end suffering. We don’t know about these, so we don’t spend our time practicing them. And then so what we need to do then is we need to actually get rid of suffering and its causes. And in order for us to get rid of suffering and its causes, what we need to do is develop the other two truths. Is, we need to, through the truth of the path, or through practicing the path, come to the cessation of suffering.
So we spend most of our time focusing on what we think is happiness, but is actually suffering and its causes. And we put all our efforts and all our energies into practicing suffering and trying really hard to create the causes for suffering and focusing on the causes for suffering. The reason we don’t focus on the end of suffering and the path that leads to the end of suffering is because we don’t understand it properly. We don’t understand what is the situation we are in, so we don’t understand what it is that we actually have to get out of. If we were to develop our understanding of the truth of cessation and the truth of the path, then we could bring an end to suffering and its causes.
To actually do that properly, we need to have developed these realizations We don’t have those, so that means it’s very difficult. We actually have to work hard at creating the causes for the end of suffering, whereas if we sit back and relax, we can create the causes for suffering, and we can even do it in our dreams. We spend most of our time thinking about that. So that means it’s difficult for us to switch from creating the causes for suffering to creating the causes for the cessation of suffering because it means turning around all our habits. It means turning around the entire way we think.
And the way that we do this. So what we need to do in order to bring this about, in order to bring this huge transformation about is practice or to focus on what are called the three higher trainings. In order for us to develop an understanding of the Four Noble Truths, we can focus on the characteristics of the Four Noble Truths. So each of the four noble truth is said to have its own four specific characteristics. Alright?
And if you times four by four, you end up with sixteen. So then that’s what’s referred to as the sixteen characteristics of the four noble truths. So in order to understand the four noble truths, if we go through the different aspects of the Four Noble Truths, particularly in meditation, we can develop this understanding. The first four characteristics which relate to the First Noble Truth is that any instance of the First Noble Truth, that is, the truth of suffering, will be impermanent, will be by its nature suffering or miserable, will be by its nature also empty and self less. Now, one instance that we are very familiar with of the truth of suffering is our physical being, or the collection we were talking about before of our physical being, our emotions, our discrimination, the formations we consider ourselves, and our consciousness.
Now, the combination of those things is what’s called the self, or the idea of self. Now, if we look at that self, we can see through analysis, then we’ll see that all these four aspects or all these four characteristics are actually characteristics of the self. That is, the self is impermanent, the self aggregates are impermanent, and they are, by their nature, suffering, they are empty, and they are also selfless. So the first of these characteristics is a characteristic of impermanence. We know roughly that our physical being is impermanent.
We have a general idea of this. We know at some stage we have to die, and that means that our physical being will disintegrate. What we don’t understand, however, is that this is happening, and this process of disintegration is happening in every moment. We have this general idea that we’re a stable entity with no change happening in it. At least that’s how we perceive We think, Okay, I know I was here yesterday, and yesterday I did this, and this morning I got up and had my breakfast.
About lunchtime I ate my lunch, and this evening I ate my dinner, and that was all me, and I all experienced it, and there was no change involved. That’s the way we perceive even if we know at some stage we’re going to get old and die. It’s not the way that we perceive ourselves on a daily basis. On a daily basis we see ourselves as a