Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Here is the paragraph:
A student who argued that China’s large population disproves the rarity of precious human rebirth gives this session one of its sharpest moments. In this 45-minute Lamrim commentary, Geshe Pema Tsering first examines what separates genuine Dharma practice from worldly activity: motivation. He outlines the three scopes — practice done for this life alone (worldly, not Dharma), for future high rebirth (small scope), for liberation (medium scope), or for the enlightenment of all beings (bodhicitta). He then covers the three causes required to obtain precious human rebirth again: moral discipline as the foundational seed, the six perfections as supporting conditions, and stainless prayers — illustrated with a seed-and-fertilizer analogy. The session closes on a sobering note: Geshe-la reflects that most practitioners, when they look honestly inside, find their actions resemble planting poison while hoping for a harvest of rice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 LR 2002 03 19.mp3
UUID: eb31f9d1-a450-486f-a013-2a356717492b
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Lam Rim 2002 Bodhisattva Deeds (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-03-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~3,346
A line from Buddhist teachings saying not to commit any negative karmas, but always do virtuous karmas. So if you the reason why he taught those teachings is that if you if we do commit non virtuous karma, then that that is what causes us to experience sufferings. And and if we to do a virtuous karma, that is what causes us to experience the pleasure or the happiness. So that’s why he taught those teachings. So now, in light of that, now we have to try, we have to make ourselves do virtuous karma.
So how our action becomes virtue depends on our motivation. So so now to make it all our practice such as doing meditation, making offerings or any other virtues, virtue virtue that you accumulate. If you do it solely for the sake of this very life, then that practice doesn’t becomes a Dharma practice. So if we to do these practice such as offering making offerings, doing meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and so on, just for the sake of this very life, to become rich, to become healthy, to become famous. For this reason if you do it then this practice is not known as a Dharma practice.
So even for that reason if you like even work really hard and try to do something, the result of that is not a pure, it doesn’t, it’s not a real Dharma practice and the hardship that you put towards doesn’t make it worthwhile. So even if you like with that kind of type of mind just for the sake of this very life that in order to become famous or in order to impress others that if you meditate day and night, days and days or do other practices that that doesn’t become a pure Dharma practice even though you do it but doesn’t become pure. It just becomes known as a worldly practice. So now what makes pure Dharma practice is the motivation. The motivation is doing these practices for the sake of others or for the sake of our future lives.
In order to benefit them or to that, I I will do these such and such practices. If you motivate like that then or if you motivate like for the sake of all mother sentient beings, I do my meditation. In that way, if you meditate then it becomes a Dharma practice too. So if you do your practice practice with the motivation for the sake of all mother sentient being, may I achieve full enlightened state. For that purpose, I’m doing this practice.
If you if you have that type of motivation, then it is known it is that great that is known as the great motivation, which is bodhicitta motivation. So so to able to generate this great mind bodhicitta, first you have to you have you have to have the aspiration to achieve liberation. That is the medium or the lowest scopes motivation. For that for in order to achieve liberation, I do this practice. So if you that has to be there first.
And then that leads one towards the great motivation. So so for the for the sake of my future life, may I do this such and such practice and may I achieve the highest rebirth in my future life, one of those higher rebirths such as human or gods and so on. If you have that type of motivation and do practices known as that is known as the the the small small known as the small beings or small scope. Yeah. That type of motivation is regarded smaller one.
So whether our practice becomes pure Dharma practice or not totally depends on our motivation and if we have one of these three motivation known as the motivation of a small scope, the medium and the greatest scope of these three, then that whatever practice you do out of those motivations becomes a Dharma practice, a pure Dharma practice. So so to to to looking upon ourselves what we wish is all all types of happiness and what we don’t wish is all types of unhappiness or suffering. Mhmm. So that type of state, like, where there’s where there’s all type of happiness and where there’s no suffering, that state is known as the state of Buddhahood. Mhmm.
So so we should seek that type of state. So in order to achieve that state, now whatever from now on whatever practice we do, whether it’s a meditation, it’s a prostrations or whether it’s any virtuous practice. I’m doing this in order to achieve that state. With that kind of motivation then your practice becomes a pure Dharma practice. So so now what we are here, getting here for is to receive teachings, the stages and the path.
And why we why we do this is in order to achieve the full state, the state of Buddhahood for the sake of other sentient beings. For that reason, we are doing this. So we need to have that type of motivation. I’m listening to this teaching, this Lamrim teaching, for the sake of all other sentient beings in order to achieve the fully enlightened state. If you have already generated that motivation, then you have to, like, what do call, follow-up with that, like, make it stronger.
And if you haven’t generated that mind, then try to generate that mind. So at the very beginning, begin we begin the session with taking refuge and then the prayer on the seven limb prayers and did the Mandala offering. All these different level of virtue that we have already accumulated to our sitting here, dedicate all those merits and and generate this great mind for the sake of all mother sentient beings. I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll listen to the teachings or something. That type of motivation and please do short meditation on that.
So in the previous teaching, have completed those first two parts which is recognizing the precious human rebirth and and its value, how how meaningful or how valuable it is if we have that. And now we talk about the third part which is how how difficult it is to gain again. So this the how difficult to obtain this human rebirth again, it is explained under three parts which is through its cause how difficult it is to find and by nature by by nature how difficult it is to find and through the through an analogy or example how how difficult it is to find. So this precious human rebirth is very precious and it has great value and it is not easily obtained. So, contemplating on these points, how valuable it is, and how difficult it is for us to obtain again, contemplating on these points.
What you should do then is not to waste this precious human life even for a second. So so we’re fortunate to have this right now, this precious human birth and and it is very hard for us again, again in our future lives. So so we act, we have, we have got this because of because we have collected because and conditions in our past lives. So what causes our past life are created to get this precious human rebirth is that have preserved a pure moral disciplines or ethics, have practiced on the six perfections such as giving and so forth and have sent pure, what they call, stainless prayers, very strong prayers. So those are the causes for our for this human rebirth.
So this is what we need to do now to get again in our future life. So those who have this precious human birth is very few here. So it was it happened in the past one lama was giving teachings saying that they’re very rare who have this precious human birth, those who have precious human birth And one of the students who are listening to the teaching said, oh, Lama, you haven’t been to China. You should if you haven’t been to China, there’s a lot of people and a lot of human human humans in in China. So why this student said that?
Because he or she didn’t actually find out what precious human birth is. Didn’t know the qualities. So that’s why that’s why it’s very rare. That’s why it’s very rare with with human having these qualities. So generally, there are many human beings, but one with these qualities are very few.
So as it is explained in the past previous teachings, the precious human rebirth has the eighteen qualities, the ten endowments and eight freedoms. That is, excuse me. So one who have these eighteen qualities are known as precious human rebirth. We have precious human rebirth and one who don’t are known as ordinary human beings or those who don’t have these qualities. So here right now, we we tend to that we have these qualities.
So so but then, you shouldn’t just like examine or go around and looking for how many human beings have these qualities or just shouldn’t just be doing that. What actually now you should be doing is looking into yourself and whether you have those qualities or not. So so when we look into into the qualities that we have, then might be really hard for us to actually accumulate the cause for this again in our future life. So so when you actually look look into yourself and and analyze these precious qualities and what causes are required for these qualities, then when you look into yourself, into your mind, most of the time our mind is under the influence of delusions. And and most of our actions are negative actions that we tend to do.
So then there’s very few causes that we create to get this precious human rebirth. So just an example like early morning when you first get up, if we do look into our mind then what we think, the first thing is maybe our work or what we will be doing or some form of like attachment, attachment mind of attachment or or some form of negative mind that is arising in our mind. So so because of that, it’s very hard for us to accumulate these causes for precious human rebirth and even just to get this human rebirth where it has to have a pure cause too and that is the pure cause what we need a real cause is also to preserve pure moral disciplines. That is one of the main causes for human rebirth. Just a human rebirth would have the qualities.
So now to the causes that we need to again achieve this precious human rebirth with with these eighteen qualities. The basis, the foundation, the foundation cause is to preserve the pure moral discipline or the ethics. So like the the morality or the vow that you keep is known as the root cause for precious human rebirth. And such as for example, if you want a good harvest, you have to have a good seed to sow, to plant. So the seed, the seed for the for the sprout, you need what you call to keep pure moral discipline as a cause for human rebirth.
So as Nāgārjuna says in his teachings, Nāgārjuna explained his teaching saying, if you practice generosity as a result, you will receive wealth in your future. And So so then he goes on explaining if you keep your moral discipline or morality, then it it as a result, you have you get reborn into higher rebirth. That is human rebirth and so on. So so then if you practice patience or the perfection of patience, then as a result in your future, one is born physically attractive or beautiful, other peep it’s attractive to other people. So so even in the Buddha and so that taught that in his teachings in a in a the teaching saying that if you if you preserve a pure moral discipline, then that is what causes one that is what frees one from being born in those unfavorable states such as lower realms and so on.
And and that is what is known as the cause for the eight freedoms that that as known as one of the human qualities. So when we say keeping pure moral discipline, what are the disciplines? It is known as the ten non-virtuous acts, avoiding doing like avoiding the ten non-virtuous acts. So avoiding committing the ten non-virtuous acts and so on are known as keeping the pure moral discipline and now as the example before like we plant a seed that’s not enough, what we need is we need for that seed to sprout to grow into a plant, it needs all these different conditions, it needs water, fertilizer, warmth and heat and so on. So all these has to be there in order to have a good crop out of that seed. So similar to that, in order for us to achieve precious human rebirth with the qualities, it needs all these different causes such as on the basis of keeping pure moral discipline, you practice six perfections such as the practice of generosity and so on.
So then finally you need to have sent good prayers. You make good wishing prayers that are known as the stainless prayers. The prayers shouldn’t be with stain. So it’s a stainless prayer such as if you make prayers for the sake of this life, then it has some stain and also it says just to achieve for one’s one’s sake to achieve liberation for that. Again it has little stain, it’s not known as not the complete pure like like the bodhicitta prayers.
So so you should have stainless prayers. So and it says in the teaching that say if one has practiced one of the perfections such as giving strongly and doesn’t do the other practices such as morality and so on, then this is one gets reborn into naga realms. Naga’s are known as one who are very wealthy. So so again then if you do like just keep your practice morality, one of the one of the perfections and don’t practice generosity then say might be reborn as human but one is reborn very pure, sorry, very poor human beings and and because of being very poor can’t do much, one is stuck somewhere. So in general, when we don’t analyze our actions and we tend to do some practice, we do some meditation and of the time in our mind we think I’m not so bad, I’m doing okay.
That type of mind we have. Do you feel like that when you do something? Do you feel that you have you’re doing enough sound practice? So that’s how we feel. We only do some practice.
We feel we’re not that bad. We’re not that bad off. We are doing something. We did and we feel like that. And as in the teaching, one of the so called one of the So as this great master said, when I came to know what are the precepts, I found I haven’t kept them all the way.
I haven’t kept all all the precepts. When I when I I took the precepts, when I when you when sorry. Well, at the very beginning when you took the precepts, you you take the precepts from from master and at that time you have freshly, you have taken all the precepts. So at that time you are ordained into a monkhood or a fully ordained monks when you take those different precepts. That time he has the precepts but and later on life when he actually come to study what are the precepts, what are the vows to keep them, what are not to, what are to avoid.
At that time he found out that he haven’t, he actually didn’t kept any of those. So when he took the precept, he did have, he had taken the commitment to take the precept, he had it devised but when he actually came to know it, what are they, he didn’t actually kept it. So he have lost it when it’s like I’m sorry. I don’t know how to put it. I can’t say.
So when so when we analyze ourselves within our look inside and check the virtue or the good deeds that we do, then most of the cases it’s very rare that we do actual good pure virtue because in order to make a good, in order to commit a good virtuous action, it has to be complete complete one, has to be complete one with the first with the good motivation as we explained before in the beginning and when you’re actually performing your practice has to be very pure one too as it is, it has to be followed with the motivation continuously and not only that but it has to be completed with a good prayers known as the dedication. So if our virtuous actions conjoined with these three, then it is regarded good one, good virtuous practice. So because of that when you look up virtuous actions then most of the time we miss some of one of one or some of these. So as Geshe-la saying, as as what we do most of the time, he’s he’s saying, taking example as Geshe-la himself, most of the time his mind is under the control of delusions and because of being under the control of delusions, our mind or we, our actions become deluded or negative actions.
So if you like, if you put in and if you like, what do call, compare then most of your time you spend under delusions. And then if you if you look from one another side then he feels like, oh, he’s a monk here for decades as a monk, Not only that, he have studied some of the teachings and became Geshe and he have done quite quite okay. That’s that side of his mind feels that too. So so I feel did quite well but then if I really look inside, deep inside and check the really good ones, the really pure ones, one by one, then I find very hard to point this is a pure one or something like that. So as taking as himself, taking as example, that’s how he feels, that’s how it is.
And if it is someone more qualified than Geshe-la, then that will be different case. But then if it’s in same similar level, then that’s how most people are that’s how we will feel too. So so we like one shouldn’t be too like, what do you call? Too proud of what we what one is doing. One shouldn’t be too, like being too proud of what one is doing, one have done because when you look into yourself inside then if you have a real pure cause, then you have created, then then okay.
But if the if the cause that one have create creating is not pure, then then shouldn’t be so proud of those actions. So it’s like it becomes like this. So it becomes like this that actually what we we have planted a poisonous seed and then we’re hoping for in the future as when we come to harvest the seed we are hoping for rice or other type of grains that which is edible. So it becomes like that. We’re planting a poison and hoping for a medicine or something like that.
So why why it is like that because most of the cases, our mind is under the control of delusions as it is said again and because of that, it it creates the cause or it leads our action towards deluded actions. So so no no good good result it brings forth and if actually we have created a good cause, then definitely it brings a good result.