Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 42-minute commentary, Geshe Pema Tsering examines the suffering of aging, anchored by Milarepa’s verse about struggling to rise from a seat, trembling when walking, and dropping “like a huge landslide” when sitting. He traces how aging strips away beauty, physical strength, and mental sharpness so gradually we barely notice — with self-deprecating asides about his own declining memory and face. Two images anchor the session: youth as a “borrowed face” eventually reclaimed, and gray hair and wrinkles as marks left by the Lord of Death, like a butcher tagging sheep for slaughter. A brief digression explains Milarepa’s reference to the illusory body — a highest yoga tantra attainment that freed him from these afflictions. Q&A covers collective karma, twins born of shared merit, and whether anger shapes the aging face. Part of an ongoing Lamrim series; basic familiarity with Buddhist concepts assumed.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 LR 2002 06 18.mp3
UUID: 11c7f110-8c6f-4896-836b-84fd08b2a5ee
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Lam Rim 2002 Bodhisattva Deeds (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-06-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.4 minutes
Words: ~2,876
Sufferings in our head and and and we go through and then forget it. It’s not the way one should do, to try to stop that suffering because because because if one do not, then then every time one goes through the rebirth and then take a yeah. Yeah. Receive a next another life, human life, one goes through the same suffering. And if excuse me.
One take rebirth in the lower rebirth, then it’s even worse than those. So therefore, don’t just neglect those suffering just by merely these are the sufferings, and then leave it. Should not do that way. One should try to practice and cultivate renunciation bodhicitta and try to attain nirvana or liberate oneself from cyclic existence or saṃsāra. Because as far as one is in cyclic existence, one will go through the sufferings.
So one may think, well, I have gone through all these sufferings now. I don’t have to go anymore. But that is a very wrong thought and shouldn’t be thinking because as far as one is in cyclic existence, this one will go again and again through those suffering. So therefore, in order to escape from those suffering, then one should should should cultivate or prep yeah. The the methods to free oneself from those suffering.
So by so should now develop a fear towards the suffering of the rebirths and and and and and perform practices? And now the second we go to the second one, which is suffering of aging. And suffering of aging, the first the the the the old At the time of the old age, you know, one has lost everything, all these beautiful skins and beautiful faces in one look during the forties or when young. And at the when one become old, during the age old, one lost all the beauty and become ugly. And and and one starts to lose the grace of the one’s body, you know, when once get old and all the you know?
Yep. Glory, actually, is it? The word glory or grace, whatever, it’s been yep. Seized as well as one’s one’s body’s strength also ceases. So, yeah, so the more one started to age, the more sufferings or things one loses, one’s body strength, the glories, grace and so forth, as well as one will not have the happiness, the same happiness as one used to receive during the childhood or a forties, as well as additional to those sufferings, one will have the death approaching.
And once five sense organs, you know, started to degenerate during the old age, and it is so true. Like like like, you know, when we got old, we started to use glasses. Oh my god. I’m using and and also one one one, you know, the the hearing, you know, it’s not that clear. So all these sufferings happened through the old age.
And and, for example, yep, once the five sense organ started to degenerate, and then the wisdoms, one’s memory, you know, can’t be very one wisdom is not that sharp enough as well as started to, you know, easy easy to forget things. And then one body tend to bend down. And and and and one sit down on the floor and get up and use all the four, you know, two hands, all the legs, hands and legs together and stand up. And when one sit down, one can’t no longer sit as one used to do in childhood, you know, very nicely and slowly, but just bent a little bit and just drops, you So yep. And then becomes like — and one’s hair started to become gray or white, and then lots of wrinkles started to come around the body or our face particularly.
And so all these sufferings we undergo through, but fact is we don’t realize that we are going through the sufferings. And here, the great master, the great yogi Milarepa has stated that the sufferings of old age, at the time, you know, when one felt like when one get up from the sitting position, feel like one’s been tied down, is really struggling to up. And when one walks, all the entire body limbs moves. And then one sits down, it’s like a huge landslide or a rock coming down, never comes slow. Boom.
These are the sufferings of old age. And at that moment, I, the yogi, has attained the illusory body. So illusory body is one of the attainments comes through the tantric practice. That whenever one attains the illusory body, the one’s body is like light. It’s very bright and feels very light and have no problem with that.
So so he what he is mentioning here is there is these are the sufferings one has during old old age, you know, like moving entire body, felt like a rock, you know. Maybe you can make a big hole underneath. And then standing up when one felt like one’s been tied down. But at that moment, he hasn’t got those troubles because he has attained the illusory body. So in terms of that illusory body, it comes under the tantric context.
It’s one of the attainments of the tantric practice, and that has come to so called the third stage. It’s a completely different text now from the tantric teachings comes the so called the third stage where there is so called the isolation of the body, speech, and mind, and then comes through the very and that comes under the third one, the mind. And in terms of the mind, there is the one called the exemplary exemplary clear light. And that is actually exemplary clear light itself is the wisdom realizing emptiness. And for that exemplary, which mounts on the wind, which is so called the the the and which the wind that the the wisdom realizing emptiness or the exemplary clear light mounts on, and that wind act as a the the causal condition to that example of a clear light.
And through this, one obtains yeah, and that acts as the causal condition, that wind and then one attain the illusory body. So on that clear light is the illusory body is so called the the impure yeah. Impure illusory body. In terms of illusory body, it has two types, the pure and the impure illusory body. And the pure illusory body is the same way, attains, but comes under the fourth stage of the tantric practices that the same Instead of exemplary clear light, there is another clear light called the meaning clear light.
And that actually, the clear light is also the wisdom realizing emptiness. And that emptiness mounts on the wind, and that wind acts as a causal condition. And through this one attains the pure illusory body. So all those statues of the deities and so forth, they are actually the illusory bodies comes, arise from the wisdom realizing emptiness or clear light. Geshe-la said you may understand that.
So it hard to understand because this is the very upper teachings of the highest yoga tantra. The yep. Highest yoga tantra. And and and So it come it is a bit hard to understand. But here, great master, the yogi Milarepa was saying that because he has attained the illusory body of the higher tantric teachings, he is now free from the sufferings of birth, aging and so forth.
Yeah. And, yeah, these are the the sufferings of the cyclic existence’s birth. You know? The you know, Once, yep, body started to form, beautiful, wrinkles. And then later, turns out all the muscles of old age becoming you know?
Yeah. Yeah. So the meat is gone and dried out. And then, you know, the only skin And the bones, you know, you can see, Geshe-la says, almost like meat, you know, comes to bones. Then and then at the end, you know, one just becomes like, you know, completely lost, you know, mentally, you know, say, sort of like dementia thing, and one wonders, and I don’t know where one is.
So the great Kadampa masters have said that how the suffering of aging comes is if the suffering of the aging comes at one lot, then probably one becomes mental because one can’t handle, can’t bear it. Because, for example, if I were to sleep young and get up completely old, and all suffering comes at one, you know, it’s too much. One probably go, you know, yeah, crazy or mental. And so and so yeah. So the suffering of the old age do not come in that way.
It comes very gradually bit by bit. And and and and and through this one suffers because it comes very gradually, and that’s the reason we don’t recognize that we go through those sufferings. It is so true because for example, like myself, if at this stage how old I am and if I were to have all this all this sufferings I go through comes at one lot, I probably would go crazy and can’t handle it. For example, like when he was fifteen or something and he just got up and then realized he looks like what he looks like now, he probably can’t handle it. And I was saying, you know, that So he said that, you know, when he was young, it’s not I was saying Geshe-la may be looking very cool, But Geshe-la said that, yeah, when he was young and I can’t say that he was really, really good looking, but he can definitely say that he doesn’t look as ugly as he now.
So therefore, during the forties or when young, while one is young, it is once all the five sense organs are fresh and intact. At that moment, it’s best time to study and best time to practice because I can experience it, I experience it. I can understand that because there’s a huge difference between the text I read when I was young and the text I read nowadays. Because the things I read these days, you know, sometimes it’s hard to understand because of the mind’s been degenerating. And in addition to that, and not only that, if I read something now, sometimes and I quickly check.
They forget what I read. So these things happen. So it is the best opportunity, and one should not miss the opportunity because and and should not wait to get older and then do practice because it is really hard. At the time you get very old, and and one may one one will be busy looking after oneself rather than doing a practice. Yeah.
So it’s like, you know, your beautiful face during the childhood or forties or when young. It’s like the face you had just borrowed. And now that face has been taken out. Now it’s showing your real face now, which is Geshe-la said to look at his face. And then and and and it which is which is which is like a very that face is a real face, not something like you wear ugly mask on your face.
It’s not a mask. It’s it’s it’s it’s a real face. And that is the actual face you’ve got and you are showing it to other people because you no longer have the borrowed face. And, yep, it is so true that in our whole body, it’s like that we have taken a lease or a loan that whenever the contract runs out, the owner will take things back. And it’s so true that all these bodies comes from the karma or action from the previous lives.
And as a result of the karma, we receive this, the body, and it will last until duration or the strength of the karma ends. When that karma ends, you know, we’ll leave this entire body. So and then during the old age, you just have, you know, your head your head started hands and head started to shake. You know? And and we just doing so is not you’re you’re chasing or or or yeah.
Or you’re blaming others. You know? It’s just that you have been hit by the stick of the Lord of Death. That means the time is coming. Oh, yeah.
And all the signs of the our hair is growing becoming gray and then the wrinkles coming on. Those are like the Lord of Death giving marks on us. It’s like the butcher who, when they slaughter the sheep, they just mark the sheep, and according to the marks, they kill them — today, tomorrow, next day, and so forth. So our wrinkles and so forth are like a mark from the Lord of Death. Yep.
And which is so true. And we’ll stop here and start from the suffering of sickness next week. Yeah. Too much. We’ll take one or two questions.
Yep. Okay. In terms of the sufferings, they haven’t got any specific Yeah. karma. It’s it’s all the same as others, the humans, and they go through the same sufferings.
Got And in terms of being born together, they have the so called collective karmas, you know, which they have cultivated together to born or individually have the same karma to born from the at the one time from the one parent or one mother have definitely have the karma, different karma. But in terms of the sufferings of the human, they have the same sufferings. Yes, In reality, the law of karma, understanding the karma is very, very subtle and nobody can explain it in a very, very, very detail, like completely except for the Buddhas because the karma is many and it’s very subtle. It’s really hard to understand all except for the Buddhas. And in terms of the the karma to to the the the power, strength, the karma of the present life one sustains and then it ceases and one loses the body, and taking the next life it depends on the karma.
The way of taking rebirth is the same, but the karma should be different or what sort of vessels one receives like in human or same as human rebirth or the lower rebirth like animals and so forth are the different karma to take the different vessels but way of taking a rebirth are the same. And according to the karma it will produce the similar results of individual karma. Even though it’s many and very subtle, but karma is infallible that there won’t be any mistakes in it. According to the karma, the result will come according to its cause and karma. But to explain so, only the Buddhas can do it.
Yes, question. I still have a spring chicken. Yeah. It’s real face in the same. It’s still the same as the young age because it’s still still still, you know, the the what what what teaching says was everything is being borrowed.
So and you look beautiful for a time being, but that runs out and comes the other borrowed face which is even more beautiful at the old age. And that’s still, in a sense what one got at the moment, you know. No longer the beautiful face is there. And it’s the yep, I don’t want to use the ugly anyway. The even more beautiful face is here, but that’s still the borrowed one at the time of the death.
One still loses it. Your mind from a lot of thinking of anger is your like, mind is Old face. It’s revealing your pattern of thinking. Or or you just say, just the results of the anger, so so forth. Well, it can’t be the the the results of the angers and so forth because it that this face is a result of the is the face of precious human rebirth.
It has to be a good result, has a good cause, but it may be a lack of patience and so forth when it comes. But some oldies have a cute little face. Those who have the cute little face must have maintained very good patience. Yeah. Okay.
That’s the last question. Yeah. It is yeah. It can be like, you know, the the both at the previous life had, for example, like, made a very beautiful statue together, worked together and made a beautiful statue of the Buddha. And then they make a prayers in future, may we be born together.
For example, there can be collective karma. As a result, they can be born together as a twin. So it’s so called the dedication prayers mainly. And this is how the dedication is very important. At the very end of the practice, the virtuous mind have cultivated and how one dedicates the virtues is very important.
So for example, like through the power of making these two beautiful statues and so forth, they may be born together. It’s a collective karma. Yeah. Mike. So we’ll do the dedication on page five.
So this is at the top. And then the long life prayer for His Holiness on page ten. And final lung, Guru Rinpoche, Rotating Breath on page thirty something. Thirty three.