Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A verse addressed to a king — “Do not look upon another’s wife; think of her as a mother, sister, or daughter” — opens this 45-minute session in Geshe Pema Tsering’s commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Letter to a Friend. He works through graduated antidotes to desire: reframing others as family members, and — if lust persists — meditating on the body’s nine impure substances beneath the skin. He then addresses protecting the unsteady mind, comparing vigilance over one’s thoughts to guarding an only child or a priceless treasure. The session’s most vivid image is the kimbu fruit — alluring on the outside, fatally poisonous within — Nāgārjuna’s metaphor for samsaric pleasure. The commentary closes with the claim that conquering inner attachment is a greater heroism than winning any battle.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 LF 2004 09 21.mp3
UUID: 3508ec60-128c-43cd-95fa-ca8e591cc681
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Letter to a Friend (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-09-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~3,212
Okay. So in order to establish all sentient beings in the precious state of Buddhahood, I first of all need to become a Buddha. In order to become a Buddha, I need to know how to do that. So I need to. In order to become a Buddha, I need to develop bodhicitta.
In order to develop bodhicitta, need to know how to do that. So by listening to this teaching by the protector Nāgārjuna, may that be a cause for me to develop bodhicitta, both through creating merit, by giving me instruction and by giving me the impetus to put that instruction into practice. Through all these things, may I develop bodhicitta. May listening to this teaching be a cause for me to develop bodhicitta. We’re up to the section which is dealing with the antidotes to afflictive emotions, and specifically with the antidotes to desire. So the first of these is, in general, the way to use the antidotes in order to protect the vows The second one is, in particular, the way to protect the mind The next one is looking at meditating on the faults of desire and the next one is the benefits of vows through knowing the benefits of using your capabilities to keep vows and the last one is in particular the way to meditate internally or the way to apply antidotes internally to the arising of desire.
Okay. So the first one is how to use antidotes of the antidotes to desire and need to in order to protect the vows in general. Now this is, talking to a king, so it says it’s in order to keep his vows of in order to keep his vows to refrain from sexual misconduct and the verse says: Do not look upon another’s wife however, should you see her, think of her according to her age as a mother, a daughter or a sister If lust persists, then meditate well on impurity. So this means that to the king, if he comes in contact with a woman and he has desire for this woman, then he shouldn’t just think, this is a I don’t like them so I can’t have desire for them so therefore I should be disrespectful and he should like that person he should be respectful to that person but not see them in a desirous way so that means if they’re older then he should respect them and like them as if they’re a mother if they’re the same age as him as his sister or if they’re younger as a daughter so he can’t just go I can’t be desirous of them so therefore I can be disrespectful The other thing is if this doesn’t work if he still feels lust, if lust persists then the idea is to meditate on the impurity of the body that he’s attached to.
That Okay. So in the Jātaka tales. The Buddha said, if you the the way daughter. I’m trying to think of how to put this. If you if you it says, like, rely, but it means to, like, get involved with, yeah, another person’s wife then that is the way to it says madness shame and not being able to sleep at night what it means is that if you start doing this it’s a very shameless act because you’re not respecting any of the people involved.
Through that, that means your behavior is shameless because the idea of this shame is that you present yourself in accordance with your beliefs. So if you’re not doing if you’re doing this, then that’s, like, considered shameless. And it’s a it’s it’s not a way to have a happy, relaxed life. It’s what Geshe-la said. If you’re in this situation, then you’re not going to be happy and relaxed, and you’re not gonna sleep well.
So if it says then because of these reasons, because of the because of the confusion, because of the embarrassment, because of the harm, because of the not being able to sleep at night, because of all the faults that come along with chasing after other people’s wives, then you really should try and he said, You really shouldn’t look at other people’s wives in this way because of all of these faults. Because of all of these problems with looking at other people’s wives in this way, then you should really make an effort to It’s usually translated as ‘discriminate’, ‘discriminate’, so it’s like one of the five aggregates. You would say that that’s black or that’s white or that’s yellow or that’s blue. In this case, you would be saying this person is my mother or is my sister or is my daughter. You need to develop the reference point for them that is pivoted on these ideas as opposed to seeing them as a desirous being.
If this still doesn’t get rid of the lust that the king feels for someone else’s wife, then he should reflect on the smell and the disgustingness of the inside of other people’s bodies. When we relate to someone and feel desirous for someone’s body, we’re actually only relating to them on a very skin deep level. Apart people’s skin bodies are pretty disgusting If we take off the skin of a body we are left with pus and blood and bile and excrement and all of this is said to be nine repulsive substances to the body. And if we were just presented with these disgusting substances, we wouldn’t find it very attractive. So we need to look at the actual the object of our attraction as opposed to the way that it appears to us.
So the next verse is that was about specifically about viewing other people’s wives and it also though has to do it in an internal perspective about how to protect the mind. Now it says, protect the unsteady mind just as you would protect learning, a son, a treasure, or a life. It doesn’t actually say sun in the thing. It says a son. Anyway, withdraw the mind from sensual pleasures just as you withdraw yourself from a vicious snake, poison, a weapon, an enemy, or fire. What the unsteady mind means is if your mind is distracted, if your mind is running after this and that, it gets all caught up in neurotic thought patterns or in destructive emotions.
If we want to protect the mind, if we want to protect ourselves from doing negative things, we really need to be very vigilant about looking after the mind, looking after what we think, making sure that our mind doesn’t become agitated and confused and distracted by attachment to external objects. So if we had Sorry. I just got to the bit about learning. Was thinking, I don’t remember what he said about learning. Anyway, if we have an education or we have the ability to read and be able to listen to teachings or whatever it is, then we should really protect that ability.
We wouldn’t want to waste that ability. The other thing it says that we shouldn’t waste our we shouldn’t be distracted from looking after our mind in the same way that a mother would be vigilant in looking after her only child. If a mother had an only child, then this would mean a lot to her, and she would want to protect that child, and we would concentrate on that child a lot. The other thing is if we had treasure, then we would be trying to make sure that robbers didn’t come along and steal that treasure. So we’d be very vigilant in making sure that it was protected as well.
The other thing is our lives. We spend a lot of time thinking about making protecting ourselves from being hurt, making sure that we don’t get killed in one way or another So like we protect these things we need to protect our mind from becoming distracted and confused and getting caught up in destructive or negative emotions This confusion and this distraction is likened to poison, weapons, an enemy of fire in any of these things. It can bring about harm and can bring about harm to us physically and harm to us mentally. It says that we should see, getting caught up in sensual pleasures, as any one of these negative, sorry, any one of these harmful things like fire, weapons, and stuff. Course.
So when our mind becomes distracted by objects of delusion, attachment, aversion or indifference then we need to protect the mind if we protect the mind from these objects it means that we don’t become engaged or engrossed in these objects Now the way that we need to protect the mind is, as I’ve said, through seeing the undistracted mind as its its child as our only child or as our greatest treasure or as more important than our lives. Seeing a distracted mind, being caught up in this attachment to objects that cause delusion as being, like a poisonous snake, as being like a weapon that can harm us or, kill us, as being like an enemy who seeks to create obstacles and problems for us or as being like a fire that could burn us to death so this is the way that we should relate to these objects or our perception of these objects. What this means is that when we feel this attachment and this strong desire towards these objects, then we should instantly and quickly as instantly and as quickly as we can. Instantly or as quickly as we can, we should apply antidotes to that attachment and withdraw ourselves from that attachment because of how destructive it can be.
Okay. So Oh, yes. So in a similar quote with a the same meaning from the A Bodhicaryāvatāra by Śāntideva, he said the first line is, thinking on the suffering of hell and so on, I will see desire as a weapon. Now what this means is that if we become slaves or servants to our emotions or to our destructive emotions, if we become slaves to desire, slaves to anger, slaves to slaves to ignorance, slaves to, hatred and jealousy, then we end up in hell or we end up in a lower realm. If we are if we aren’t in control of our, states, if we are not in control of our mental states, then we, we project ourselves into negative external states.
Okay? So as desire realm beings, which is what we are, most of our negative emotions actually come about because of our desires. Now the main thing that we have as a fundamental experience is a desire to be happy. Now when this desire to be happy is thwarted, we may experience, suffering and therefore, become angry, become, jealous, become, hateful or whatever it is. But there’s this basic thought underneath it that we actually want to be happy, that we’re desiring to be happy.
This is a basic emotion that we need to work with is attachment and desire. As desire realm beings, we need to view this desire, this attachment to grasping as a weapon that’s hurting us. It’s the reason that we create negative karma. It’s the reason that we experience suffering, it’s our grasping onto things We can see it as a weapon that we’re using to hurt ourselves We can see it as poison that makes us ill We can see it as fire that can burn us when we try and engage with it, and we can also see it as a cliff because Geshe-la said, you know, if you fall off a cliff, you could die. And, we could also see it as an enemy, that, at every turn is trying to thwart us, is trying to harm us.
So, then the next thing is to, see the faults of, saṃsāra. So this is, what Nāgārjuna is explaining in the next verse where he says, the lord of conquerors, being the Buddha, have declared desires to be like the kimbu fruits, for they are the cause of misery. Since their iron chains bind worldlings, in the prison of Samsāra renounced them. I have never heard ‘worldlings’ before. Okay.
Also, Geshe-la tells me that a worldling is a person who is in saṃsāra, someone who hasn’t developed renunciation. An ordinary being. Anyway, so when it says desires are like the kimbu fruit, are the cause of misery. Now Now what this is referring to is that because of our self-cherishing, because of our desires, because of our grasping at external objects, have been cycling in Samsāra since the beginning of time. We have had many, many lifetimes where we’ve experienced incredibly varied and consistently experienced various types of suffering.
This has all been caused because of our desires, because of our attachment, because of our grasping at self and because of our grasping at objects. The Buddha described this experience or attachment to saṃsāra as being like a person’s attachment to a kimbu fruit. Apparently, kimbu fruits I a guest goes, you know kimbu fruits?’ I’m like, no. A kimbu fruit is an Indian fruit that looks really nice on the outside. The skin is very charming and people have oftentimes died because they thought it was a really nice fruit, but the inside is so poisoned that they don’t have to eat much of it to die.
This is the way he’s describing saṃsāra: something that looks good on the outside but is actually poisonous for us. It actually creates such enormous experiences of suffering for us again and again and and again in many different lifetimes. So through our attachment, through our grasping at external objects because we perceive ourselves as being an inherently existent thing, then we are bound to saṃsāra. We are bound to the prison of saṃsāra. So if we wanna get out of saṃsāra, we have to renounce our attachments to these external objects.
We have to renounce our attachment to, these external pleasures. This one? External so things that we perceive as pleasures. So in this way, it’s the saṃsāra our experience of saṃsāra is very much like this this type of fruit. Because when we first experienced saṃsāra, when we first engage with sensual objects that cause us to experience saṃsāra, it’s a very pleasant experience.
It’s just only after that that we experience our sufferings. The suffering comes along with our wanting the pleasant experience that we first encounter. So this is why the Buddha likened it to this kimbu fruit, because if the kimbu fruit’s skin is apparently very delicious and is fine, but once people and it smells very nice and tastes very nice, but people start eating the kimbu fruit, then they usually die because it’s poisonous. So although they have a are, like, attracted and consider the the fruit to be very, very beautiful and very delicious, they also there’s this something coming along with it. There’s another experience that comes along with it, an experience of the poison killing them.
And this is the same thing that happens to us in Samsāra because the desires that we have, the attachments to these sensual experiences that we have from Samsāra are what chains us to Samsāra. They’re the the the iron what do you call those things? Fetters. Fetters. That’s it, you know, the dudes in the dungeons and stuff?
Okay, so the fetters hey? Work. The iron fetters that chain us to saṃsāra, that keep us in this prison of saṃsāra and they stop us from being able to experience liberation. This is something that we can experience on a day to day basis. For example, if we ate a delicious meal, right, when we first taste the delicious meal, it tastes good, right?
And we’re thinking, yes, I get to eat a delicious meal and we enjoy ourselves while we’re eating it. But as as we are taking in the delicious food, we’re also habituating ourselves to attachment. And by habituating ourselves to attachment, we’re creating the cause to experience saṃsāra, to be reborn again and again and again and experience suffering. So along with our delicious food come these chains and their suffering because of our attachment to it. So this is the same thing as this fruit.
We may be experiencing the positive or the happy and nice experiences through the things that we get in Samsāra, the objects that we desire after. But along with that, what we can’t see, what’s coming along with our attachment and our appropriation of these objects is these chains that stick us to Samsāra and make us experience suffering all the time. Uh-uh. So if we if we focus on the worldly things and we don’t even think about our next life or what’s going to happen after we die. And we this means that we are completely caught up in in attachment.
We’re caught completely caught up in the and all the things that we think we can get from saṃsāra. So if we’re being attached in this way, we’re not creating anything positive. We’re not creating any positive karma. And if we’re attached in this way, then this creates causes for us to experience death and it creates causes for us to experience being bound to saṃsāra and for also to being experience of all sorts of suffering and ultimately and it creates the causes for us to be born in negative states like hell and the lower realms. So if we’re attached to things, then we create the causes to experience the loss of things, and the loss of things is our experiences of the lower realm.
This one. That is. So Okay. So the the next verse is referring to the benefits of being able to control the sensors and protect vows. So the verse says, in choosing between the one who conquers attachment to the ever unsteady and momentary objects of the six sense organs and the one who conquers the enemy’s armies in battle, the wise know the first to be a far greater hero.
And Geshe-la said — the way he said it was, the wise prefer to conquer the unsteady objects of the six senses than to conquer in battle. Right? So you can read both in Tibetan. I was just like, oh, help, Geshe-la. That doesn’t say the same thing.
But anyway, he said it is exactly the same thing, that if you are wise, you can discriminate between the two, and therefore you’re going to want to do the one thing which is to and the one thing that is actually the most beneficial, which is to to fight against being attached to these objects. The reason that you fight being attached against being attached to these objects is because you cannot rely on them. They are unsteady, and they’re momentary. Be be if you’re attached to the objects of the senses, then, you’re going to experience suffering from that attachment.