Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 22-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering explains why Nāgārjuna’s Letter to a Friend — written for a layperson rather than a monk — gives special weight to generosity and ethics as the twin pillars of lay practice. He begins with impermanence: because material things cannot truly satisfy, their best use is generosity toward worthy recipients — ordained practitioners of any religion, the sick and destitute, teachers, and parents. A verse from Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakośa reinforces why giving to realized beings, bodhisattvas, and parents yields inexpressible merit. The session then moves to ethics, citing Nāgārjuna’s verse that morality is the ground on which all virtue rests. Geshe Pema Tsering closes by contrasting how laypeople and monastics encounter these same practices differently given their respective life situations. Well suited to lay Buddhist practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 LF 2004 08 24.mp3
UUID: 34baea36-234f-48c8-9f5d-8f12571c476d
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Letter to a Friend (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-08-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 21.8 minutes
Words: ~1,898
Then we’ll see that. And anything that we can have, whether it be food or clothes or material objects, any of these things, are impermanent. And as they are impermanent in this way, what this means is that we can’t actually ever find satisfaction from them. Their impermanence means they can’t give us satisfaction. The fact that they have this quality or this fault means we can’t rely on them.
Means that chasing after material things in order to make us happy is a pointless exercise because they are impermanent, including even our physical bodies. After we’ve recognised this, if we understand this, then we can see the ephemerality and the insubstantiality of these material things. We can see that they can’t actually give us satisfaction. What we can then do is to try and make the best use of these material things that we may have. The best use that we can make of these material things is to try and help beings who may be lacking in these objects.
There are different ways that we can do this. We can give to those who are monks and nuns. That’s one way, because this is really beneficial for us and for them, because we get merit and we also are enabling them to continue in the life of a religious person. But we don’t have to just give to Buddhists, monks and nuns. The word that they’ve got here is Brahmans.
Vagasila — it actually refers to anybody who is a meditator, anyone who is practicing a religious life in any religion. They are worthy objects of offerings. By making offerings to these people, we are enabling them to continue doing virtuous actions. Therefore, we get the good karma of being able to give, and they continue to be of benefit to sentient beings. The other beings that are worthy of help that we should try and give to are those that are really ill, those that are destitute and are experiencing all kinds of extreme suffering.
As well as this, the people that we should have respect for, the people that have shown us great kindness in this lifetime, for example, our teachers and our parents. It’s also very good to give to these beings and try and benefit them in any way that we can. This is the type of way that we can practice generosity. The benefits that practicing generosity has is that it stops us from feeling miserly, and this miserliness comes about from showing too much respect or holding onto material things as if they are substantial, as if they are actually going to help us. If we are able to practice this form of generosity without any regret for these actions and also with respect to the beings that we are giving to, then this becomes practice of the perfection of generosity.
It is the best friend that we can actually have for the future. We may think that storing wealth is going to benefit us in the future, but in actual fact, if we want to create the conditions for having a positive existence, if we want to create the conditions for experiencing happiness in the future, the best way that we can help ourselves is to give. Okay. So this description is backed up by a quote from the Abhidharmakośa by Vasubandhu, in which Vasubandhu, an Indian scholar and saint, said, to give to if you give to Aryas, beings who have realized the nature of reality, your parents, those who are ill, those who are who teach the Dharma, those who, while still ordinary beings, have developed bodhicitta, then their benefits from these acts of giving cannot be expressed. It’s obvious why giving to beings who have achieved full realizations.
Yes. Good. Would be beneficial. Don’t need to Geshe-la said, don’t need to explain that, why giving to the merit you can get from giving to someone with that kind of realization is beneficial. Also, giving to your parents is very beneficial to give anything that you can to your parents, to help your parents in any way, to help the sick and to help those that expand the dharma, to be able to support them in being able to give you more knowledge to improve your understanding.
Also, it says, Bodhisattvas, they are ordinary beings, have bodhicitta. So there’s two different types of bodhicitta. Those who have developed bodhicitta but haven’t realized emptiness, haven’t realized the lack of inherent existence of reality, and those that have developed bodhicitta and realize the lack of inherent existence of reality. This is saying to ordinary bodhisattvas and to all aryas, which is aryas of all the different vehicles or all those who have realized the lack of inherent existence of all the different vehicles. So if you’re able to give to any of these beings, it says in then the benefits of this giving are said to be inexpressible.
They’re so great. Okay. So the next verse is actually the second section of the the middling motivation. Now this second section of the middling motivation is talking about ethics. And the actual verse from Nāgārjuna’s letter says, you should practice a morality unbroken, not debased, undefiled, untainted, and uncorrupted.
Morality was declared the foundation for all virtue, just as the earth is for all things moving and unmoving. And what this briefly refers to is the fact that morality and the practice of ethics actually acts as a base for any other kinds of practice that we may want to engage in. If we don’t have morality, then it’s very difficult for us to practice any any of any meditation, any of the other practices that we may want to engage in. So we need to think of morality as being the base for anything else that we do. This one?
Oh, yeah. Guess I want to know if that’s okay. And we’ll finish there for today and keep going on the explanation of that first next week. Yeah. Yeah.
So the definition of the Dharma jewel, and the aspect of the Dharma which is realization, alright, is the true paths and true cessation in the continuums of. And I was just telling Geshe-la that’s probably the only definition I actually remember, and I have to learn about a hundred. So if my teacher heard me, he’d be very proud. But, yes, so it means that true paths and true cessations.
So the lack of the the lack of grasping an inherent existence and the realization of the lack of inherent existence in the continuum of those who have developed this realization of Śūnyatā is the definition of the Dharma jewel. Yes. Yes. Geshe-la thinks it’s really good for because it was actually taught to to laypeople. It was taught to a layperson, not taught to a monk.
Not that the other ones aren’t beneficial, but they’re taught to both those who are lay practitioners and those who are amongst the nuns, so they’re much more general. But this is specifically to laypeople, and you’ll find that this means that it puts a lot more focus on giving and the practice of generosity and also the practice of ethics than the other texts. If you are a layperson, a lot of time means that you’re very busy, so you need a practice that you can actually incorporate into your daily life. Generosity doesn’t just mean physical objects it means being generous with your time and generous with yourself as well. Two things, practicing ethics and practicing generosity, are something that laypeople have the time to do that they can do in their everyday life.
Okay. I left out something before. He said also that to develop an understanding of emptiness, to develop an understanding of meditation through practice is actually something that takes a lot of time. It’s not something that laypeople with full time jobs can put a lot of effort into, so this is why ethics and morality is emphasized. In actual fact, although ordained monks and nuns have to keep to very strict vows, that isn’t the main focus for their practice because that’s kind of done with the vows.
They to keep that to the sides, if you like. And their main focus is on working towards liberation and Buddhahood and practicing meditation and so forth. Lay people have to encounter situations that involve ethics on a day to day basis more often. If a monk or a nun is in a monastic situation, then they have certain rules that define everything that they do. So, the practice of ethics comes up, but not as often as it would for a lay person working in different environments, having different situations.
So, monks practice generosity, and they need to practice ethics. But it doesn’t have it doesn’t end up being one of the main focuses for them. And for laypeople, because of their situation, it becomes one of the main focuses for them. And the way that the Buddha set it up was that everyone is supposed to practice generosity. Right?
But the monks and nuns practice generosity in terms of their giving themselves and giving their time and giving the Dharma. And Lay people practice generosity more in terms of giving their material support in terms of time and working for others as well. So, yeah, it’s not like you can only do one. It’s just a matter of what you’re able to do in your life. So he said, you’ve got to do them all.
You can’t just go, I’m going to focus on ethics and practicing generosity. If you have patience, then if you are faced with a situation which you need to be ethical about, then that’s going to be more easy to deal with that situation. If you’re able to practice patience in situations of ethical conflict, then that’s going to be more easy for you to abide by your ethics. This text, right, is actually what’s called the collective works of an author. Okay?
So it’s the collected works of Tsongkhapa and his two main disciples, Gyaltsab Je and Khedrup Je. Apart from the two texts in the bottom corner, which aren’t. So the only reason that they have these, like, Buddhas on them, right, is because if you lift the Buddha up, below, it says what text it is. Because they’re all stacked up. Right?
So you can’t, like, just pick it up and say, wonder what the text this is. Yeah? But so for the Sungbum, for the collective works, you wanna lift it up and see what it is. But for those two, they’re separate text, so they don’t need one. Yeah.
Do you feel that two in one box is not as well? No. There’s two down in the bottom. Hang on. The orange corner.
Yeah. There’s an orange yeah. There’s an orange one without a flap. Yeah. And then there’s one with a with a flap, but no Buddha.
What about? Next to it. Everything else has a Buddha on it. Far as I can see. Ask how to, like, you know, become boring thing.
Okay. Well No way to stop. Yeah. No. It’s fine.
You’re good. This one. Is everyone okay? Yeah.