Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A verse comparing a desirable body to a jeweled vase — beautiful outside, filled with filth within — anchors this 45-minute commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Letter to a Friend. Geshe Pema Tsering walks through the antidote to desire: meditating on the body’s unclean contents, then showing how all cravings — for food, clothes, physical pleasure — are self-reinforcing and never satisfied, like a leper burning himself seeking comfort. He then shifts to the deeper remedy: perceiving emptiness (shunyata), tracing the path from conceptual understanding through inference to direct, non-conceptual realization, which alone can uproot desire at its source. The session closes on Nāgārjuna’s argument that wisdom and morality outweigh worldly standing, with Sakya Pandita and the Jātaka tales illustrating that virtue, not birth or wealth, secures happiness in future lives.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 LF 2004 10 12.mp3
UUID: 4efac8e3-bca6-4f38-8320-e0f353649eac
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Letter to a Friend (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-10-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~3,015
So the section we’re in in the text is is about the section that’s about dealing with objects of desire. And it seems that the king was was very desirous of young women. Because of this, the next verse describes a process by which he can turn around his desires by seeing the faults of desires and seeing the unsatisfactory nature of desires. In doing this, Nāgārjuna focuses on the faults of the object of his of the king’s desires. Okay.
So this the the verse that we’re up to in the root text says, a young maiden’s body full of odor comprised of nine apertures is similar to a container of every filth, difficult to fill and cloaked in skin, should be viewed apart from its adornments. So what this is saying is that if you have, like, a if being women have jewelry and everything on them to that’s not the way they really are. So the same thing is if you take off the skin, then underneath it is all these different types of filth. Now, just because it’s talking about women’s bodies here doesn’t mean that it’s exclusive to women’s bodies. It’s talking about women’s bodies because it’s addressing a king who had a problem being desirous for women.
So it doesn’t matter if you’re a male or a female. The idea is to focus on the thing that you are attached to and try and develop a detachment from this thing that you’re attached to. Okay. So the next verse goes on to the to liken this attachment to other people’s bodies as being like a leper craving for comfort when tormented by maggots. So therefore, he exposes his body to fire but is not soothed.
So what this is talking about is that we think that fire may give us comfort in some way. It may give us water. We may be attached to it. But if we try and grasp onto it, we’re going to get burned. And this is the same thing that’s happening when we are trying to find comfort from indulging in our desires.
By indulging in our desires, by following after our desires, we may think that we’re going to be comforted, we may think that we’re going to become happier, experience pleasure, but in actual fact, what we’re doing is creating more suffering for ourselves in this lifetime and in future lifetimes. So it may appeal to us as being comforting, may appeal to us as being something that’s going to make us happy, that is following our desires. But in actual fact, all they’re going all we’re going to get from this is suffering. So the antidote to being attached to other people’s bodies is to think about how they actually are, to look, to ponder on what it is that we’re actually attached to. So in general, if because this is addressed to a king, if you’re talking about the way that people are dressed up, so if the women now have good clothes and good jewelry and be prettied up in this way.
But if you were to take all this away and look at the actual body itself, even the body of a young person, then this body is made up of all sorts of unclean, not very nice smelling things. So we have to in order to get rid of attachment, you can use this antidote to realise this. And the way to focus on the uncleanliness of the body so this is the object that we’re desiring and it’s also our own bodies as well is that this body without jewellery or jewellery and clothes is just full of bad smells. If you look through what’s called the nine doors, then you’ll find all sorts of unclean substances. So you find flesh and you find pus and you find blood and bones and if you look at it this way then the body really isn’t that nice it’s just a container for all sorts of yucky stuff so if we’re able to apply this logic, we can if we’re supposed to be able to apply this way of reasoning or this way of thought, then that can act as an antidote for our desires to other other beings.
So in general, satisfying the body has no end. So if we think about all of the things that we are desirous of, whether it be food, whether it be clothes, whether it be other people, whether it be any objects that help the body or any behaviour that we think serves the body, there’s no end to any of this. There’s no satisfaction to be derived from any of this. For example, with food, as much as we eat, the next day we’re going to want to eat again. It’s not as if we can eat enough to never need to eat again.
We constantly have to eat. We constantly have to try and satisfy satisfy our hunger. And also with clothes, we can get new clothes and we may think that that’s great for a couple of days, but then after that we’re going to want some better clothes, also newer clothes, also some more suitable clothes. We’re constantly craving after these things. And also with physical behaviour with people we may feel that we’re satisfied for a while but it never lasts we’re constantly craving for that as well.
So to get rid of this attachment then we need to look at the way the of the things we’re attached to, whether ourselves or others, are a bit like a vase that is filthy inside and covered with jewels on the outside because we don’t look inside it we’re just looking at the outside, the external part of the vase, and thinking that that is very beautiful. But actually inside, it’s just covered with or it’s filled with filth. So in this way, when we look at when we find someone physically attractive and we are under the sway or like a slave to our desires in that way then if we can focus on how actually they are like a jeweled vase with filth inside, then this is a way to stop or get rid of our attachment. So not only do our desires never stop, but they tend to increase. The more we indulge in them, the greater that they get.
There’s no limit to what our desires can get us into. No, there’s no limit to our desires. There’s no limit to what we want if we keep indulging our desires but there’s also no limit to the suffering that this causes us because by indulging in our desires we perpetuate saṃsāra and by experiencing saṃsāra we’re constantly experiencing suffering. There’s nothing in Samsāra but suffering. So in order for us to stop our desires, we can’t we have to stop them.
We can’t try and fulfill them. Mhmm. So this this brings us to the next verse, which says like chasing after desires is like a leper craving for comfort and exposing their body to fires to be soothed. So what this is talking about is that we all want to be happy. We all want to experience comfort and happiness.
But the way that we usually go about it is by indulging in our desires, going after our what we perceive as our needs. But even if we achieve a sense of happiness from that, that happiness that we’re going to achieve from that is still samsaric happiness, it’s still what’s called the suffering of change, it’s still pervaded by causes and conditions and therefore unstable. So we may be thinking that we’re going to get happiness and we may be striving for happiness, we may be working very hard in order to get happiness. But in actual fact, what we experience at the end of that is another form of suffering. So then this because of this, it says that ordinary beings, those who haven’t developed wisdom properly, indulge in their desires and continually experience suffering.
But the the wise seek to put an end, to their desires to, to stop the continuum of desires, to stop the continuation of desires. And through doing this, they’re able to, pacify saṃsāra and to stop the perpetuation of Samsāra. In the sūtra of the turning of the wheel, the Buddha said, the sentient beings rely on desires. Through this, there’s these desires become more and more.
They grow exponentially. If you are going to rely on getting rid of desires by achieving the object or taking the object of your desires then there is no satisfaction there’s no end to your desires and so this explains is by following our desires by doing everything that we wish then we’re not going to find any satisfaction. So the way that we are going to be able to achieve happiness and feel content is not through following our desires, it’s by applying antidotes to our desires and not having the desires and therefore not having the desires in the first place. So So the next section that we’re after is not about dealing with the desires themselves, but it’s actually about getting rid of the seeds of desires as well, the causes for desire. So the next verse of the the next root verse of the text is in order to see the highest meaning, exercise proper attention towards all entities.
And there is no other dharma so virtuous. So that what the highest meaning means is the perception of shunyata, the perception of the lack of existence of our objects. So through perceiving, this, through training the mind in order to perceive this is which is what is meant by exercise proper attention towards all entities, that is to remind ourselves that all entities all phenomena are not inherently existent they only come into being through causes and conditions and have no inherent existence so if we’re able to do this then we can get rid of all of our negative states of mind now in order to get rid of our negative states of mind there is no better practice there is no better Dharma than this the perception of Śūnyatā, perception of emptiness. So because it is so it is the best way to get rid of all our afflictive emotions, our negative ways of thinking, then this is something that we really need to engage in. This practice is something we really need to engage in.
So what this is talking about is the perception of emptiness or the perception of the ultimate truth, and it’s said to be the unmistakable the wisdom perceiving the unmistakable ultimate truth. Now the unmistakable ultimate truth is that all objects, whether they are internal or external. Now this is talking about is external phenomena in terms of forms or smells or whatever it is that we come into contact with. And internal phenomena is our thoughts, our perceptions, different moments of consciousness. All of these, lack even an atom of true existence.
So even if we find if we search the the atoms of these objects or the the smallest parts of these objects, we can’t establish that as being inherently existent. Now this perception, the lack of inherent existence of even the atom, or the smallest parts of any of these phenomena is what’s called the wisdom perceiving emptiness, and this is what is talked about here as the highest meaning in this in the text. So this means that we need to make effort and to meditate and to familiarize ourselves with this understanding. So because this perception of emptiness is said to be the only way to completely get rid of all of the afflictions, like the root of the afflictions of desire and so forth. Then Nāgārjuna says that it’s imperative for for the king to develop perception of emptiness, perception of the lack of inherent existence of all phenomena.
The way that the King is supposed to do this is to develop a conceptual understanding of emptiness. Through his conceptual understanding of emptiness, he can develop an inference. He can infer the lack of inherent existence. After inferring the lack of inherent existence, he can practice through the subsequent consciousnesses or the subsequent ways of thinking that follow this inference. And then through familiarising himself thoroughly with this idea that was developed through the inference, then he will develop a direct perception of emptiness.
Through developing this direct perception of emptiness, which is a not conceptual perception, and then he’ll be able to remove completely the seeds the including sorry, the seeds of the afflictive emotions, including desire. This is what the way what was explained by Nāgārjuna in a text called the Fundamental Wisdom or the Root of Wisdom. In this, he said, the concepts or the ideas that we develop through karma and delusion are elaborations that create elaborations, elaborations and elaborations. And the only way that we can get rid of this way that we’re elaborating on reality, the only way that we can get rid of our concepts about reality, our afflicted ways of thinking, is through the perception of emptiness. So that that was like a the brief description of emptiness and the qualities of emptiness.
And it’s already gone through the qualities of emptiness or how emptiness can work. And and then the shortcomings of desires, how desires and bad morality can affect us detrimentally. So then the next section this Nāgārjuna comes to is the praise of wisdom and morality. It was talking about the qualities that these possess. So the next verse of the root text says, though of high family, handsome, famous and much learning, a person is not worthy of honor if he lacks wisdom and morality.
So high family, obviously, as he’s talking to a king, The king comes from a high family, and he’s saying that he also is very handsome. People would generally view him as being someone of great standing or of being important. Then he’s also saying someone with much learning. So if he has these qualities, then usually people would honour someone like that, would be very respectful to someone like that and see that as being a sign of their importance. However, Nāgārjuna then says that if a person is not worthy a person like this, even, is not worthy of honor if he lacks wisdom and morality.
Now, this wisdom that he’s talking about here is the wisdom perceiving vastness or the wisdom perceiving emptiness. And then morality is the morality as described in this text. It’s saying that if someone possesses these two qualities, if they have wisdom and they have morality, even if they don’t have even if they’re not from a high family or an important family, even if they’re not good looking, even if they don’t have much learning, if they have this wisdom of emptiness and they have morality, then they should be venerated. They should be praised even without these other qualities, which, in Nāgārjuna’s opinion aren’t as important. So So and the well-spoken advice of Sakya Pandita, he also says that if someone is very good looking and if someone is a very from a very good family, and they have a very good, income, if they don’t have true qualities, then they don’t have any, they don’t have any real beauty or they don’t have any real attraction.
If they don’t have good qualities, they don’t have any real beauty or real attraction. So so if someone has if someone has wisdom and morality, if they have these qualities and they don’t have the family or the body or anything else very well, they’re still said to be worthy of praise. They’re still said to be what’s called a pure being or a realised being, so therefore, should be praised in this way. Right. So in the Jātaka tales, there’s tales of the previous lives of the Buddha.
Now the Buddha described this process by saying, if someone isn’t very generous and doesn’t have ethics, they haven’t trained in any of these perfections, the six perfections, then even though they may come from a good family, be very good looking, have a very good income, and have many other worldly qualities like that, then this isn’t good enough. It’s not going to help them in any way. They may have power, they may have wealth, they may have jewels, but it isn’t good enough. Because if they don’t do anything positive in their lifetime in order to benefit themselves in their future they may have all of these things now, but in the future they won’t. So it’s like in their future life, even though they have wealth now, they may not necessarily have wealth in the future life.
On the other hand, if someone doesn’t come from a good family, it comes from a lowly family but isn’t attached to negativity, isn’t attached to these things that only give temporary happiness If they practice generosity, if they practice morality and have these qualities, then they don’t have to worry about the next life. It says that they are filling up their stores of virtue like a large lake gets filled by the rains of summer. Says yeah. Geshe-la and I was just having this discussion because it says ocean. I’m like, that doesn’t make sense.
Ocean doesn’t change. And he goes, oh, I think it’s a big lake. So it’s the same word in Tibetan, big lake or ocean. In summer, when the rains come, these lakes become full. The person who is not satisfied with just having a good family, appearance and so on, but actually work to develop merit is making it certain that in future lives they’re going to have happiness.
In the same way that the rains fill up lakes, then practicing virtue in this life ensures that we’re going to have happiness in future lives.