Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. An example drawn from Mao Zedong’s rejection of karma — and the unavoidable consequences that still followed — opens this 37-minute session from Geshe Pema Tsering’s commentary on Letter to a Friend, leading into Nāgārjuna’s verse comparing people to mangoes: ripe inside but rough outside, appealing on the surface but rotten within. Geshe Pema Tsering unpacks all four types, then tests the framework against the Tibetan mad saint Drukpa Kunley, whose scandalous behavior masked bodhisattva motivation. A classroom exchange on flattery follows — noting that attachment to praise can only be fully abandoned at the path of seeing. The session closes on a student’s question about reversing the water-and-stone metaphor for thoughts: negative emotions lack a stable base and are like water, while insight into emptiness deepens like rock.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 LF 2004 09 14.mp3
UUID: df8fd38d-1bbe-4c79-abf0-4fb062368f07
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Letter to a Friend (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-09-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 36.9 minutes
Words: ~2,836
Because the other thing is to remember that out of everybody on the planet who has this precious rebirth, and not everybody has the opportunity to try and put some kind of ethical reasoning into effect out of all of the beings on the planet. Not many of them actually try and live by strict ethics and ethics with reason, like the process of or the philosophy of cause and effect. So, for example, there was many people who followed Mao Zedong, and he had this theory that there was no such thing as karma, that whatever you did in present moment, the end was material comfort, then the end is justified to whatever means he took. So he completely denied, and everyone who followed his view completely denied the process of cause and effect. And I thought that the cause and effect was whatever you could get in a material way out of life.
So this didn’t necessarily make cause and effect go away though. It’s not as if you can turn something into truth by thinking that that is the case. If that if that logic followed then we could decide that we didn’t want to experience suffering and it did go away. You can’t get rid of cause and effect just by deciding that you don’t like it or you don’t want to accept it. So these people following this view of Maoism, yeah, they completely rejected cause and effect and created really negative causes because they and not because they weren’t working from that principle.
But that doesn’t mean that they won’t have to experience the results of those causes that they created if they just weren’t aware of accept them or believe in them. So this is an example of beings who may have had other conditions that were going for them, like being born as a human but didn’t have the exposure or the belief in the law of cause and effect and therefore have ethics that are accorded with it. So the next thing that we need to do that we come to the next verse we come to is about how to find proper associates or friends. So in order to investigate whether someone should be a friend or not, we should follow this advice. Nāgārjuna says, people should be understood as being like mangoes.
There are unripe ones which seem ripe, ripe ones which seem unripe, unripe ones which appear unripe and ripe ones which appear ripe. Okay. Now what this refers to is that you can get a mango fruit that is unripe but seems ripe. So that means that this looks ripe when you look at it and but it’s unripe in the center. And this is like beings whose behavior is positive and looks from the outside like it’s that they’re a good person but actually their hearts or their minds aren’t right.
They’re destructive and they do negative things inside. And then you can also have people which they have good person inside but their behavior leaves a lot to be desired and they behave negatively so in this way that they may be a positive on the inside but their behavior is pretty bad and then you can also have people that are pretty bad and they behave really badly as well. And then the final type of person is someone who has a very good heart and mind and behaves well. And this final type of person is the one that we should try and collect as associates or or we should try and make friends with. So the type the first type of fruit that we are dealing with here is the type of fruit that you can look at the skin and you think, that’s a really good mango.
But then when you pull the skin back that you see that it’s still green. And this type of person is like someone who, when you first meet them, their behavior seems fine, but then and and and they project themselves as being a very good person. But then when you get to know them, that you see that they’re the way that they behave in terms of their mind the the way that they behave in terms of their the way they think, the motivation for doing this good behavior is negative. Then you may find some other people who have a very rough exterior and can behave in pretty gross and what’s the word I’m looking for vulgar that’s it in very vulgar ways and their minds are really nice and they’re very have very positive thoughts. Then that’s the then the next one is people who are rotten on the outside and rotten on the inside.
Their behavior is terrible and their the way they think is terrible. The final type of person is someone whose behavior matches the way that they think. And if we’re and both of these are very positive. They are constantly thinking of others and they have a very pure and thoughtful behavior as well as having very pure and thoughtful very pure and mindful thoughts so someone who has both of these qualities is said to be someone that we would be very fortunate to become associated with and therefore should make efforts to know. Okay.
So, yeah, there’s a man, a Tibetan mad saint who I was just asking Geshe-la about. And the best way I can think of to describe him to you is he walked into Lhasa and said, I’m an enlightened being, so bring me a beer and show me your women. All right and anyway so I was saying so which one of these four mangoes was Drukpa Kunley and Geshe-la said he would be the mango that was ripe on the inside and unripe on the outside and because he was a Bodhisattva he was doing all these things to stir people up and to shake up their ideas of what was right and self righteousness and so on and so Geshe-la said this is what Drukpa Kunley’s motivation was totally bodhicitta and he was constantly working for the benefit of but what this is saying is that if you start hanging around Drukpa Kunley and you start behaving like Drukpa Kunley but you don’t have Drukpa Kunley’s motivation then you’re in trouble so it’s saying that the best people to be hanging around aren’t necessarily the Drukpa Kunleys even though that they’re doing things for the right reasons that’s easy fix.
If you’re behaving well, I wanna be friends with you. If you are behaving well and trying to work on your mind, I wanna be friends with you. And and and he said, so and if you’re not behaving well, why should they be friends with you? If you’re if you’re if you’re not trying to be a good person and behaving well, why should they wanna be friends? He said, yes, if you can can if you can actually do that because it’s very difficult, especially if someone’s a very angry person.
Yeah. So if you’re able to practice patience, even dealing with a very angry person, then that’s good. If you can’t practice patience, then it’s not good. Yeah. Yeah.
So you Even if you don’t even if you’re just, like, saying it, you actually have the idea of saying something, like, to to have saying something pleasant to someone. So that’s why it says to be like a a flower, like it’s Yeah. Sorry. No. Honey.
I mean, he would say flower. I’m like, no. It wasn’t flower with honey. Okay. So the so, know, you’re giving them something sweet.
It’s it’s even the idea I’m saying this to make them happy is an idea of giving something sweet. It’s giving something pleasant. If by the on the other hand, you would say to them, you’re thief and a liar, right, then this isn’t pleasant. And it’s not coming from a place that’s gonna make them happy or it’s not going to create a pleasant idea in your head either. Okay.
So we’re having this discussion because I think it’s flattering. There we go. People flattering English. They said even if people know that they’re being flattered and they’re being buttered up. Thank you.
I keep going back to the bad way of saying it butted up and that they’re still impressed but they still think oh wow I know that person is just buttering me up but I’m really enjoying it and I said, even if they’re being manipulative, you know that they’re trying to manipulate you by just, again, this word keeps coming up in my mind that I’m trying not to say. And Geshe-la said, no, even if you know that they’re trying to, like, get something out of you and they’re just flattering you meaninglessly, you still enjoy it. And I was like, I don’t know. Because in Australia, it’s more like you don’t if people start going around flattering that we kind of go, oh, shut up, You know? And he goes, no.
No. People still enjoy it. You just don’t you just he said Australians just aren’t watching their mind enough to know that they enjoy it. He’s like, okay. He said, you’re in trouble because I’m gonna use you as an example.
If someone comes up to you and says, you’re bad, you’re not any good, you’re a bad person, then you get upset. If they like insult you or something, you’re gonna get upset. And he said, but if they come up and go, oh, it’s great. You know, she can speak Tibetan and she knows this and this and this. She’s great.
Then he goes, then you like it? And I was like, not always. And he goes, no. No. No.
No. You like it. Geshe-la said, Don’t give me that. You can’t get really He said, You may say that it’s not in Australian’s culture to enjoy being flattered, but actually getting rid of attachment to flattery is a, what do you call it, a path of seeing, something you abandon on the path of seeing when you realize emptiness. Because it’s like getting the only way that you can really get there’s the only way that you can really not be attached to being praised is if you’ve realized selflessness but that’s not what I was talking Sorry.
I’ll start up. I’ll shut up. But there’s I I think He goes, alright. So we’re not saying the same thing as flattery. Okay.
Even if we say this is there’s a difference between flattery and I can’t, you know, the one that I’m not trying to I’m trying not to say using the trying to get something out of people saying, oh, you’re great all the time. Right? It’s pretty late. Certainly not. Yeah, I was trying not to say that even.
Okay. There’s a difference between those two. Guess I said yes, but everybody likes flattery, even if it’s unless they recognize it as being like they’re like sucking up for want of a better way of putting it isn’t real flattery. So that’s why people don’t like it. Okay.
Yes. Now we finished the argument. Sorry. Just as I mentioned that with the mind, you can have thoughts like in water. Uh-huh.
And then air and then stone. Mhmm. Yeah. For me, it seems like I’ve got these beautiful sculptures of like, you know, Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Version. And when it comes to dharma, that sort of wriggling water. Yeah. So how can I change Sure?
That around? Did everyone hear that? Okay. He said that basically in the text it says that there’s different types of thoughts. You can have thoughts that are like pictures in water thoughts that are like pictures drawn in the sand or the earth and thoughts that are like carved sculptures that are made in stone and that you’re supposed to have thoughts have your negative emotions be like the pictures drawn in water and your Dharma practice as being like stone, said.
But for him, he’s got very beautiful sculptures of ignorance and attachment and everything. His Dharma practice is like pictures drawn in the water. How does he change that around? The actual nature of negative emotions is actually more like pictures drawn in water. So by understanding the nature of these things then you’ll be able to change these around.
So negative emotions don’t have a stable base. They don’t have there’s no the object that they take is not a valid object, the object that they take is not a stable base so by their nature they are actually like pictures drawn in water there is no substance to them There is no valid cognition happening. You’re not taking something true as your objective of the mind. So they are like pictures drawn in water. They have no substance.
But moving more towards an understanding of liberation and Buddhahood, the objects that you take in those cases are like stone. Are like they are something that you can rely on that you can see as a true image so in this way they may appear to you as being like this but the actual nature of them is that Dharma practice and the understandings that you develop they are like rocks and the negative emotions are like pictures drawn in water because they don’t get stronger and stronger they don’t they’re not substantial enough they’re not valid enough to continue on like that. No. But guess what he’s guess what he was saying was that the nature of these thoughts one is like rocks, the other one is like water so you can’t get subtler and subtler anger. You can’t really keep going with anger until your understanding of anger becomes subtler and subtler and clearer and clearer But when you’re working towards the liberation, you’re working towards the opposite of ignorance to knowledge to patience and so forth, your patience and your understanding and so forth can get subtler and subtler and clearer and clearer and more stable and more stable.
So one doesn’t have a valid base it can’t get stronger and the other one can get stronger. You can’t and so this is why one is it is actually in fact a practice of Dharma that it is by nature more like rocks by nature more stable and more valid and the other ones aren’t by their nature valid and stable. Can’t get that. So one’s true and one’s not true. So if you have something that you’re working towards that has a true base, then that’s going to be more stable.
Yeah. So once you’ve developed an yes. Once you’ve developed an insight of into emptiness, then you need to develop that insight. That insight needs to get subtler and subtler and subtler. And what actually is happening when the insight is getting subtler and subtler is that you use the practice of meditating on emptiness in order to dissolve or to get rid of any of the potentialities for negative emotions that you may have in your mind stream, any of the potentialities to experience negative karma that you may have in your mindstream.
And so the direct antidote to those is the experience of emptiness is the meditation on emptiness. So as you use emptiness meditation to see through to purify the negative imprints and the neurotic thought patterns in your mind then your understanding of emptiness becomes more subtle and more subtle and eventually become a Buddha. Yeah? So all of the neurotic thought patterns, all of the klesha that we have, all of the obscurations to omniscience and obscurations to liberation come about because of our misperception of reality, come about because we hold things as being solidly existent. Now when we perceive the true nature of reality, the lack of inherent existence and emptiness, this enables us to look at all of those patterns that we have, look at all of the negative potentialities that we have in our mind stream, the imprints we have in our mind stream.
And through doing this, to perceive them as being empty, and therefore, that is the direct antidote to those experiences. They don’t have a substantial yeah. It’s not yeah. Okay. So yes, so if we are if all of our negative the things that we look at negatively are a misperception and therefore they don’t have a all our negative emotions all of the way that we perceive things is a misperception that they because we have mistaken the object that we’re focusing on right so that means that they don’t have a stable base.
They are like water. Perceiving emptiness is something that is stable and is unchanging. It’s like a depth emptiness is a non changing phenomenon. So this means it is stable like rock. Is that okay?
Oh, yeah.