Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A classroom debate anchors this 25-minute commentary when a student challenges Geshe Pema Tsering over a verse in Nāgārjuna’s Letter to a Friend describing a young woman’s body as an impure vessel. Geshe-la turns the objection into teaching: the text is addressed to a king driven by sensual craving, so Nāgārjuna targets the object of that king’s attachment — not women in general. This exchange opens onto the session’s central argument: that overcoming inner craving is far harder, and more valuable, than conquering kingdoms or other people. The lion’s roar image captures it — a lion frightens without effort, but realising emptiness demands real discipline. Geshe Pema Tsering closes with a precise definition of attachment as a mind superimposing attractive qualities onto objects that do not actually possess them.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 LF 2004 09 21.mp3
UUID: 313d8cd9-3975-4648-9275-c8497136e98f
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Letter to a Friend (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-09-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 24.9 minutes
Words: ~1,678
Hello. So if an ordinary being is able to know if someone is able to control the way that they interact with the objects of the five senses and is able to perceive these for what they are and not become distracted or engaged with those objects and caught up in the pursuit of those objects then this is the highest road that a person can take This is the most difficult thing to do and beneficial thing to do to apply antidotes, the good antidotes, to the attachments or interaction Antidotes to getting caught up in the objects of the five senses is the way that is respected by the wise and engaged in by the wise. It’s fairly easy for someone to become in charge of or take control or defeat other humans to end up being the king or to end up being the head general or whatever it is or to even have fights with people and win That’s a fairly easy thing to do In fact, many animals can do this We can see animals fighting someone will win and they’ll be in charge It doesn’t take a great capacity mental capacity It doesn’t take a lot of perseverance It doesn’t take a lot of patience It is much more easier than trying to overcome the internal neurosis But if we can actually overcome our internal thought processes that are so habitually focused on objects of the senses, then we have done something that is much more not only beneficial but much more difficult.
So we can see this in the world today. We can see many politicians. We can see many world leaders that have managed to conquer, many other, countries, many other peoples, but don’t seem to have been able to conquer their own hatred, don’t seem to have been able to conquer their own greed, and don’t seem to have been able to conquer their own desires. This one. So this is illustrated by a quote from the Buddha where he said, because the lion is the most feared being in the jungle and fears none.
Their roar creates fright in all other animals, but not in themselves. In the same way, the lion of men, which is said to be the Buddha when proclaiming emptiness or proclaiming Śūnyatā strikes fear in the hearts of all those who can’t perceive this but doesn’t scare those who have it’s saying that you can create fear in people without or herbivorous animals without having to do much. A lion just has to roar, that’s it. He doesn’t have to actually engage in a lot of mental exercises to do that. But if you have developed the ability to perceive emptiness, then nothing scares you This is what it’s saying: the Buddha, through proclaiming emptiness, can strike fear in the hearts of those who are holding onto sensual objects and don’t perceive things that way.
But if someone has actually perceived things this way, then this light the lion’s roar of the Buddha, the proclamation of Śūnyatā, isn’t going to scare them. Geshe-la was laughing at me because I’m all agitated because he says stuff about women. He’s like he said, you’re going, oh, I’m not like that. And yeah. And I was like, but it doesn’t say it about men, but he’s just laughing at me.
Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Geshe-la was laughing at me because he goes, you’re all offended because they say that women’s insides are all yucky. Okay.
Anyway, it says the next verse says, look upon the body of a young maiden apart from ornaments and clothing to be like a totally impure vessel covered with skin, difficult to satisfy, bad smelling, and with impurities issuing from the nine bodily doors. And I was like, And Gesh was like, Are you because he’s got I probably should say that I was going ape about the way that women were treated. He goes, You’ve got self-cherishing. Anyway, so he’s continuing that theme on. And I said, It relates to men as well, Geshe-la.
And he said, No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t say that there. And I said, Oh! And he said, No, it does. The reason that it says this about women in this way is because it’s a teaching directed to a man.
If it was a teaching directed to a woman, then they would be describing the female the male’s body in the same way. So it doesn’t depend on whether it’s a like, it’s not that all women’s bodies are disgusting and men’s aren’t. It’s just that he’s this this king was particularly attracted to women, so it’s talking about the objects which he is attracted to. So I have no reason to get agitated and angry, he said. Geshe-la said that if there had been a good practitioner who was a queen, then she would’ve no.
He said he didn’t say that. That sounds a I’m making him sound it’s saying worse. He said that there were good practitioners who were queens who came and requested teachings, and they got different instructions. If you have questions, you can ask them then. Being full of passing blood and urine and bile, So I guess it’s now saying, you don’t like Nāgārjuna, do you?
She didn’t say said, just because Geshe-la says that you can’t extrapolate out from what Nāgārjuna’s said to say that this means women are unpure and men are pure, because he’s not saying that. Although I said I have met monks that have told me that, Then he said, Well, they didn’t understand what Nāgārjuna was saying. He said, It’s talking about desires. If Nāgārjuna had been instructing his men about desiring something else, he would have talked about the faults of the other things that he was desiring. So he said, in actual fact, it kind of shows you that the king had an issue with desire more than anything else.
And so kind of pointing out the king’s faults as opposed to pointing out the faults of the things that he was attached to. Yes. Yeah. He’s like, yes.
Yeah. But he’s not going. I said Oh. Oh. And so I guess I was trying to point out that it’s got, like, nothing to do with was kept because he he’s basically picking on me because I had an argument with him about it.
Anyway, he said that it’s not like the king is saying this is the faults that you’ll find in female. Therefore, all men are great. This is an added thing that you are superimposing on it that other people have perhaps superimposed on it, he tells me. This is not what Nāgārjuna is saying. He’s saying that there’s faults in being attached to women.
And I was like, and he isn’t saying negative about women, he’s talking about desire. And I said, Okay, well what about the verse where he says that you should look for a wife that’s like the last bit says is submissive and behaves like servant? Geshe-la said, if he was talking to anyone else but a king in ancient India who had wars on all sides of his boundaries, that probably wouldn’t be appropriate. And so he said that these ancient kings were supposed to have had like one hundred or two hundred wives. So, yes, exactly.
He said this is the whole point of the teachings, and this was the teaching directed towards a king, and we have to keep that in mind the whole time we’re listening to it. Is because if you’re a king he said, First of all, there is no satisfaction in desire, so if you can get as many women as you want, you’re going to keep looking for them. He said, It’s not as if you can find a certain amount of women and go, Okay, I’m happy with one hundred. You’re going to keep looking. This is the whole point of these letters, teachings to the king and telling him to find wives that are going to be not focused on attachment and they’re going to be helpful to his running of the kingdom.
As a king, he could go, I want her, and I want her, and I want her. When he’s had it with them, he could start going like this. That was the way that kings worked. Nāgārjuna is trying to tell him that you don’t find happiness constantly running after your desires. Have to curb your desires and look for other qualities in wives.
Yeah. He said probably it sounds the same. Yeah. Yeah. How In a relationship?
No, in that relation, that relationship between mine and yours. Okay. The way that what the definition of attachment is a mind or a thought, a way of thinking that superimposes qualities on an object that it doesn’t have and therefore becomes attached to them. Yes. Otherwise, it’s not desire.
Anger or aversion works by superimposing qualities that are unattractive on an object and therefore developing aversion from them. Attachment works by the mind in superimposing qualities onto an object and becoming attached to those. So if the base is actually a quality, then it’s not desire. So for example, Buddhahood. But if you’re superimposing like this can make me happy onto the object and it’s not true, then that’s desire.
Same thing with negative. If you’re a negative, like, aversion or hatred, you’re saying this can make me unhappy, and that’s not true. So that that that’s the definition of aversion or hatred. Yes, of course, there’s many things that you can develop aversion to that are virtuous objects, for example, patience. Practicing patience is a virtuous object, but we often have an aversion to it.
And I said, yeah, especially if people are causing you to have aversion. Anyway So does anyone else else have any questions? Chris, are you scribbling, or do you have I guess I said he’s writing something. Does he want something? He’s just making sure.
Yeah.