Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 27-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering opens by explaining why motivation determines the value of positive action: deeds done for self-benefit carry limited impact, while actions driven by the aspiration to achieve enlightenment for all beings retain potency until Buddhahood. The Q&A that follows is anchored by a vivid anecdote about a student who defiantly swatted a mosquito mid-teaching to challenge the ethics of non-harm. Geshe Pema Tsering addresses whether killing one animal to save human lives can be justified, then explains the Lamrim practice of meditating on impure qualities to weaken attachment — stressing that this is strictly an internal exercise, never to be voiced to another person — before closing with reflections on karmic imprints as the root of interpersonal attraction.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 LF 2004 10 12.mp3
UUID: 6bb38afb-9151-49aa-a42d-a1f958c97ea0
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Letter to a Friend (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-10-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 27.0 minutes
Words: ~1,859
We tend to have a general idea of this and tend to try and do positive things. We try to be generous. We try to have good ethics. But the importance of positive action doesn’t depend on the action itself, it depends on the motivation with which we do it. If we do something that’s nominally positive with a negative motivation, that isn’t going to help us very much.
The motivation that we should try and develop for doing these things, for practicing generosity, for practicing ethics, for practicing any of these things, is the motivation of attaining enlightenment to be of benefit to all sentient beings. This is the best motivation that we can develop, and it’s a motivation that doesn’t run out its impact doesn’t run out until we achieve enlightenment. If we do something with the motivation that this is a cause for us to achieve enlightenment, to be of benefit to all sentient beings, that the result of that action is the attainment of the bodies of the Buddha. Action doesn’t run out its potential, its influence on our mind stream doesn’t run out until we attain that state. So from now until then, it’s having a positive influence on our our continuum.
So this is a motivation that we need to develop. It’s not usually the motivation we do things with because we have this tendency in our continuum that we call instinctual self-cherishing or instinctual grasping. Because we instinctually think of ourselves first, think of how to protect ourselves first and don’t focus on other beings, it’s very difficult for us to develop this motivation. We have to work hard at developing this motivation. It’s not something that comes unnaturally to us.
Most of the time when we do something positive, we are doing it in order to help ourselves out, in order to make ourselves feel good in this lifetime, in order to establish ourselves in a good state in our next life, or the next life after that, or the next life after that. We don’t usually have this idea of achieving Buddhahood or nirvana. We may even have doubts about being able to do it. If we have doubts about being able to achieve something, we are not going to be able to achieve it. We may not believe that we can attain nirvana or not believe that we can attain Buddhahood, or we may just not focus on it very often because because of our instinctual self-cherishing.
So we need to work at it. We need to put in a lot of effort because this isn’t the way that we think most of the time. So if we’re going to do something positive, we should try to work hard and to develop the right motivation for doing So this is really important. This motivation is something that we really need to focus on, and it makes all the difference. If we are doing something, if we’re putting effort in to do something positive, then we want to get the most from that.
If we don’t have the right motivation, then the results from our positive actions will not be that beneficial. They’ll have a very limited impact on us. If we’re going make the effort to do something positive, we might as well get the most from that. The way that we get the most from that positive action is by developing the right motivation. In this way, having the right motivation is very important, and we need to really focus on it.
So we can stop there and if you have any questions. He said there might be a danger that Hillary has a question. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess I said if some people, when you tell them that they shouldn’t kill things, get really annoyed and start killing more.
And then I said, I have seen that in Chenrezig Institute. Geshe Tashi Tsering was giving a talk about don’t kill animals and don’t kill bugs. And this guy said, why not? Why can’t I kill a mosquito? And he went into his big explanation about you don’t have to and blah blah blah.
And the guy goes, I don’t believe you, and did that in the middle of the teaching. Killed the mosquito in the middle of the teaching. And so he said, if he said that, should’ve said, hey. Come here.
And then punch him in the face, and then see how is it was there a point to that? He said, so that’s what it feels like to the animals. It’s the same.
So he said, but we can wear clothes with mosquito repellent and stuff like that so you don’t get bitten and you’re still not killing things. So if you put stuff on, the moist ointment on that stops it from coming, then you don’t have that problem. So it’s yeah. So stop them from biting. And the other thing, Geshe-la said, if they’re biting us and there’s no illness coming, then what are they doing to us?
We’re so self centered that if a mosquito takes a little bit of blood from us, we’re like, Look what it’s doing to me, and it’s not hurting us anyway. It’s just taking little bit of blood. If that’s not hurting us in any way, why are we so concerned about our little bit of blood compared to what the mosquito’s experiencing?
I don’t to give you. All that sort of stuff. I mean, if you’ve got a choice, you wear your stuff.
Sure. Sure. Sure. Say, if you’re lying, say your crocodile wants to eat you.
Also, the it showed he said that it very brave of the woman and everything. And also, obviously, if they’re going to kill an animal to save themselves, then they don’t have the ability to give away their body. A very difficult thing to do. But he said that if someone was saving her, then they have to look at the situation. They’re going to have the karma of killing an animal, but they also have the positive karma of saving someone’s life.
And so he thinks killing one animal to save two humans is probably if that’s what he has to do, it’s better. He doesn’t think you can do that. I said, probably don’t go and sleep in tents near crocodiles. Could the crocodile I mean, the kidding. You really want me to translate that?
He said you need realizations to figure that out. He’s now talking about Steve Irwin. Because I’ve seen a guy that he jumps on back of crocodiles’ heads every time he sees him. Oh my goodness. Oh, you wanna explain fetishes together?
No. Okay. Oh, man. Oh, because no. Yeah.
Probably something you need to know. Okay. Yes. They would have to focus on the faults of the things that they were attached to. Like, So if they’re thinking everything’s good, then nothing’s gonna be bad.
They’re gonna be attached to everything. So they need to deal with the things that they’re like thinking about exactly how dirty the things that they are attached to are. So that they would do things like if they got think about how they got crap on their hands, they wanna get it off quickly and the smell of it and all that sort of stuff. So focus on the faults of whatever they’re attached to. Yeah.
Okay. Sorry? Yeah. Yeah.
Sure. Okay. I need So first of all, this is a process that you go through in your own mind. It’s not something that you often say to people, you’re full of pus and blood and yuck, and I don’t I don’t feel attracted to you because of that. It’s a process that you go into in your own mind, because it’s something that you’re using in order to get rid of your own attachment.
It’s true that you’re trying to get rid of fake qualities that you’ve ascribed to someone else. So it is a process of developing, in a way, aversion to that person, but aversion to the fake qualities you have ascribed to them. You should never say it. I’m focusing on you in this way or this way or this way or you are just pus and everything. It’s not something you should ever say to anyone.
It’s a process that you’re doing in your own head to get rid of your own problems, your own desires, your own attachment. In a way, it is getting rid of superimposed qualities, and that way you are developing a way of being averse to the way that you have developed superimposed qualities on this person. But the way that you develop respect for other people is to think about the things that they have shown you kindness for in the past, the way that you’re connected and so on. It’s not based on superimposed qualities that you’ve put on them. It’s based on their kindness and so forth.
So you should have an aversion to the qualities that don’t exist that you’ve developed an idea of and have respect through thinking about the way they’ve helped you and had a connection with you in the past. So I said, now you’re being respectful. So so you don’t I heard a monk say to me, I’m not going to help you with the text because you’ve got a disgusting body. And I said, you don’t say that. In case you don’t know, that’s stupid.
The other thing is that you can’t really have this idea of that person’s body is disgusting because it’s no different to your body. So you can’t say, Okay, that person is disgusting, but I’m not. That’s not the process it is being attached to all bodies. So there’s no inherent within a physical body? A human rebirth, especially, is said to be a human body is supposed to be incredibly important.
It’s incredibly important and incredibly precious because, based on a human body, you’re able to achieve all of these realizations and get out of saṃsāra and become a Buddha and everything like that. Because of what you can do with it, it’s incredibly important. But if you said, does the flesh have qualities, does the blood have qualities, does the pus have qualities, no. So the it has no qualities, but we we put we superimpose qualities onto it, and we’ve become attached to it through the superimposition of those qualities. So it’s not the eye of the beholder, and he said, I don’t think it’s eye of the beholder.
I think it’s the karmic tendency and imprints that we have on our mindstream, that means we’re attracted to some people and not to others. So it depends on the connections that we have from people and karmic connections that we have with people, whether we find them attractive or not. Some people can look at the same person, and one person will feel very attracted to them in one way or another, and other people have no feelings toward them or an aversion.