Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Nāgārjuna’s verses on choosing a life partner open this 46-minute session, with Geshe Pema Tsering deliberately reading the passage more liberally than the standard translation — applying advice originally addressed to a king equally to anyone seeking a husband or wife. He unpacks three types of partners to avoid (those who side with enemies, domineering personalities, and those who steal from you) alongside three qualities to look for: shared values, genuine affection, and a nurturing disposition. He then argues that relationships founded on desire and attachment only intensify suffering, since attachment grows rather than resolves through indulgence. The session closes with two further topics from the same letter: eating food as medicine solely to maintain the body for Dharma practice, and scheduling sleep with the right motivation so that even rest is not wasted.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 LF 2004 11 02.mp3
UUID: bc4ab6a6-1761-4310-9b89-fa3f237c8b86
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Letter to a Friend (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-11-02
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.7 minutes
Words: ~3,875
It’s the battery’s running out. And mine too. So because all sentient beings have been as kind to us as as our mothers So in order to bring this out then, today, we’re going to listen to teachings on the letter to a friend, Nāgārjuna’s letter to a friend. And so please have the idea that by listening to these teachings you’re listening to these teachings in order to develop knowledge of these teachings, are to put them in practice and by putting them into practice, work towards becoming a Buddha. Geshe-la’s take on this next section, which is called taking a proper wife, is a lot more liberal than the translation I have in front of me, so I’m sticking with it.
Pardon? Wife. His yeah. So for starters, he started by saying taking it’s it’s called taking a proper wife because he’s talking to a king. If he had been talking to a queen, it would be taking a proper husband.
And if we’re going to take it for our own advice, then we we if we are looking for a husband, then we should look for a husband with these requirements. If we’re looking for a wife, then we should look for a wife with these requirements. Alright? So the first verse says, shun the three kinds of wives who are like a murderers by nature associating with your enemies, a tyrant scornful of her husband, and a thief who steals even small articles. Now, the murderers or the assassin means someone who is in in league with your enemies and could use their position to subvert the things that you wanna do, especially relevant to kings.
The next one, a tyrant, a scornful of her husband, someone who seeks to be completely in charge and won’t let anyone do anything that she or he doesn’t want. The third one is a thief who steals even small articles. So this is not things that we would be looking for in a life partner, whether it be a husband or a wife. Then the things that we would be looking for in a life life partner described in in the next verse, which says, one who is compliant yeah. See?
It says compliant, but this the word that they’re translating as compliant could also be as agreeable. Yeah. So compliant or agreeable. Agreeable sounds a lot better. And dear to a dear to the heart like a friend wishing to help like a mother.
And because of all these things, it says that that that because of all of these things, then they are like a a servant. So in the translation here, it says, one who is compliant as a sister, dear to a heart like a friend, wishing to help like a mother, and obedient as a servant. So Geshe-la said that the way he reads it, that if someone is like as agreeable as a sister, so it’s a relative, someone who’s in who’s interested in your interest. Yeah? Who’s looking out for your interest.
Dear to a heart like a friend is someone that you can get along with wishing to help like a mother. Mothers tend to want their children to be happy. So looking for someone who wants you to be happy. They take they get happiness from their children being happy. So it’s looking for someone who has that outlook for you.
And and then because of all of these things, then they’re not going to they’re going to behave in a way that’s conducive to your happiness. And that’s what he said it means when it says like a servant. So it’s not a I don’t know if this is very subtle, but there’s like in the translation, they have four things that you should be like. And Geshe-la says, from the first three, then the way that that would manifest would be that you’ll be in a a servant type role, but not that you should actually be as a servant. Okay.
And then it says someone who behaves like this will be honored as the family deity. Okay, so in more detail, the meaning of these verses is described. The first one, the first type of being, the first type of husband or wife that we don’t want is the one that is described as someone who’s like a murderess by nature associating with your enemies. I guess this should be pretty clear. If someone doesn’t like us very much, it’s not a very good idea to marry them.
And if if if we if if someone doesn’t like us very much and is marrying us for ulterior motives, then we should it’s it’s not going to help us in the end. Then this but this doesn’t just mean because it says here someone who’s a murderer, who may not like us so much they end up killing us and is obviously not going to be very beneficial to us. But it’s a it’s also talking about someone that may go go around with other people that may commit adultery on us or associate with people with other take other husbands or wives. So someone that’s going to harm us in that way isn’t someone that we should be really looking for as a partner. The first type of thing that we should try and stay away from when we are picking a husband or wife or partner.
Now, the second one says that as someone who is domineering, someone who sees themselves as the boss and doesn’t have respect for their partner, someone who seeks to dole out punishment and sees themselves as being either like a queen or a boss. It’s not someone that we really want as a partner a queen or a king or a boss. It’s not someone we want as a partner either. And a third type of person we don’t want as a partner is someone who steals everything from us. So even there’s people that have a tendency to steal even very little things from us and leave us with nothing.
So that’s the third type of partner that we don’t want. It’s best if we are going to pick someone as a husband or a wife or a partner that we pick someone who’s going to benefit us, that’s going to help us, that’s going to be a friend to us, and if they have these tendencies, then they’re not going to benefit us or help us, so it’s best not to pick them as a partner. So Geshe said, so if we are what we should look for in a husband if we’re looking for a husband and what we should look for in a wife if we’re looking for a wife is then someone who is dear, who is agreeable, who agrees with us or has things in common with us as a sister would or as a relative would. So someone who has the same wishes, the same values as we do. So that’s the first thing that’s important that we have a lot in that a lot that we agree with them about, a lot of common ground.
The second thing is that they are someone who looks after our interest and has respect for us, who holds us in their heart as a dear friend. So we should have a lot in common with them and a lot of common ground, a lot of things that we agree on, but then they also should care for us, should have respect for us and care for us and hold, like, and literally says hold us in their heart. The other thing that we need from a partner is someone who sees us as child, someone who would care for us the same way that a mother cares for a child that is doing whatever they can in order to be of a benefit for us and doing whatever they can in order to help us out. So that’s also very important in terms of developing a healthy connection or healthy relationship. The last one is that they should be like a servant in that they listen to what we say and try and put those things into practice.
And if someone behaves like this, then they should be venerated as if they were they like it says, the family deity. As if they were the deity of the family. So so Geshe-la says this is absolutely no reason why this should be just about men finding wives. The reason he would think that this specifically talks about men finding wives is because it’s it’s addressed to a king. So it’s telling the king how to find a wife.
It’s not telling a queen how to find a husband. So he would say that in the forefront of this chapter, in the forefront of these verses, there is this description of how to find a wife, but that’s because it was addressed to a king. But if anyone had any now, then the king himself should have known that this could have been describing the process of looking for a husband as well. So I guess this is, in general, what this is talking about is the fact that we should investigate thoroughly anyone who we’re going to take as a life partner. We should watch them, examine what they do, examine their values, examine their way of doing things.
And if we come to the conclusion after much examination that they are going to benefit us and make us happy, that’s the only time that we should actually choose to commit to them or to form a lasting partnership with them. This isn’t the way that we usually behave. Have this idea of instantly having an idea of someone and that doesn’t always work. Often times if we form a liaison based on desire, then we don’t know if it all of these other parts of the relationship are there. So if we form a relationship based on desire and then that’s the only basis for the relationship, then it’s not going to help us.
We’re going to be harmed by the experience. So we need to wait a while because at first we can’t see whether this is actually true or not. We can’t see if this person helping us. We can’t see if this person has these qualities that we need from a partner. So if we react at first and react from desire as opposed to reacting as to whether they have these qualities or not, we’re setting ourselves up to be hurt.
We’re setting ourselves up to be not to be benefited and to experience suffering. So this obviously only applies to those who aren’t monks and nuns because monks and nuns are hardly going to be those who wanna become monks and nuns or those who are monks and nuns are hardly going to be looking around for a wife or a husband. But for everybody who isn’t planning on becoming a monk or nun or is a monk or nun, then this is an important thing to engage in. We need to be certain that the people that we are going to be involved in involved with are going to benefit us and not harm us, and that we’re going to be able to benefit them and so on. So we need to investigate clearly and not make decisions based on rash experiences of lust or desire.
If we don’t do this, if we start off making our decisions based on desire or based on attachment, then obviously those decisions aren’t going to be very helpful. If we make a decision instantly because we feel attached to someone or desirous of them and we’re working from that perspective then it makes it doesn’t make any sense that that could end up as a positive situation because we’re acting from a point of view of afflictive emotions. We’re not acting from a point of view of clarity. We’re not acting from a point of view of what can benefit us or benefit them. We’re acting from a point of view of being overcome by an afflictive emotion.
So it doesn’t make any sense that being overcome by an afflictive emotion can lead to anything but sorrow. If we act from this point of view, then we can’t expect that to end up in a good way. See, the problem with the desires problems with their attachments is that they don’t have any limit. It’s not as if we can if we get something we want today, if we get something that we are attached to today, that we won’t that’ll be the end. We won’t have any more attachment.
We won’t have any more desires. The desires and the attachment grow more and more and more and more. We get if if we engage in our desires, then we have more of a tendency towards engaging in desires and our attachment to things become stronger and stronger and stronger. And so whether that’s with being with a partner or with whatever it is, then we need to be really careful of this. We need to stop if we stop our attachments or if we stop our desires where they are, that’s the only way that they actually decrease.
Thanks. That’s the only way that they can decrease. They can’t decrease from engaging in them. They can’t decrease from giving weight to them. They can only decrease when we start.
They can only decrease when we stop them. They can only decrease when we have control over them. So whether it’s with a partner, whether it’s with our food, whether it’s with our drink, whatever it is, we need to deal with our attachments in a straight on way. We can’t think that by indulging in them that they’ll go away. So that the with with this Okay.
That was the end of the section that describes the practices associated with the lower vehicle, that is, the lowest motivation attaining a good rebirth. Now, on to the practices first one is the way to practice satisfaction and the way to regulate what we eat and drink. So that’s the first thing to be dealt with. And the second thing is the way that the mind comes out of saṃsāra and it seeks to to develop nirvana, especially in relation to putting in effort at both night and day. So with regards to that it describes the way to stop misusing sleep and incorporate sleep into practice of working towards nirvana.
So that means specifically to develop the right motivation for sleeping. He like, did you really say everything I said? And I was like, yes. I’ve got a witness now. Geshe-la said that the next verse is the only verse that he’s actually knows off by heart properly from this from this text.
He say most of the time he knows the text, only he hasn’t known any of the texts off by heart until this first, which says, food should be taken properly as though it were medicine, without desire or hatred, not for conceit, arrogance, or robustness, but only to maintain the body. So he knows that one off by heart. So first section where I said food should be taken properly as a medicine. Now, one of the things that this refers to is that we should take food that is going to benefit our body, not food that’s going to harm our body. If we take food that’s going to is is like poison that will benefit will not benefit our body, will harm it, then this is a a negative negative action.
It’s not something that we should engage in. What we should be doing is viewing the food that we take as medicine in order to keep our body going. So when it says food should be taken as though it were medicine, this kind of two meanings to it. The first is that we should take it as if we’re seeing it as being medicine that’s benefiting our body, but it also means that we should take food that is like medicine, food that will benefit our body, that will sustain our body, not food that will harm our body. The next thing is there’s different reasons, negative reasons that we can eat food and we should try and not eat with those motivations.
There’s different reasons that we eat food and some of them can be very negative. The first of which is to eat with desire, like being attached to the food that we’re eating. The other thing is to eat with hatred as motivation. So we shouldn’t eat because of being conceited about what we’re eating or to make us feel arrogant that we’re eating important food. And this one that I was cracking up laughing before and we shouldn’t eat in order to make ourselves fat with the motivation I’m eating in order to make myself fat.
And I was like, yeah, that that’s not in this culture. Yeah. So the only thing that we should eat with the idea that’s why I was cracking up is Is to maintain our body, to support our body so we can practice Dharma with the body. We need a body in order to be able to benefit beings. We need a body in order to be able to practice Dharma.
So we need to maintain that body, we need to look after that body, so this should be our motivation for eating. So when we are eating, then we should see food as being an antidote to an illness that is the illness that will come to us if we don’t eat. In the same way that we would rely on medicine, then we shouldn’t take too much food or too little food in order to sustain our body. If we took medicine, would take the right amount of medicine. In the same way, if we are taking food, then we should take the right amount of food.
The other thing is that we should have the right motivation for eating food. We should eat food with a motivation free from attachment and free from hatred. So our minds shouldn’t have these intentions when we go to eat. So, then it goes over similar territory as to what was in the first in this description. It goes through all these reasons why we shouldn’t reasons for eating that we shouldn’t have.
I was going say reasons why we shouldn’t be eating but it’s not that right reasons why reasons we shouldn’t have eating. The first of these is to make ourselves fat or maybe robust is the best a better way to put it very strong. So we shouldn’t be eating to make ourselves strong or powerful and we shouldn’t be eating in order to, be able to make ourselves be able to make ourselves be able to do, things that are only focused on this lifetime. We shouldn’t be eating in order to make ourselves feel important. We shouldn’t be eating in order to give ourselves a good complexion or in order to order to puff ourselves up, to make ourselves more important, feel more important than we are or have more put more importance on it than they should be.
So what we should be focusing on is that by taking sorry, forgot something. So what all of these descriptions of why we shouldn’t be eating refer to are reasons why we would be eating that only benefit this lifetime. So if we’re eating with the idea that we’re going to get some benefit out of it in this lifetime, that we’re going to be stronger, wealthier, more important, more respected, whatever it is, then that’s the wrong motivation for eating. The right motivation for eating, however, is that we should realize that we need this body in order to be able to practice Dharma. It’s an essential element of our practice of Dharma, this body that we have.
Because we need this body as a base to develop our Dharma practice or to accomplish our Dharma practice, then we need to sustain it and we need to help it. So this should be the only motivation that we eat with. So this is backed up by a quote from the Bodhicaryāvatāra, in which Śāntideva says that we need to be vigilant or we need to be aware of what it is that we are eating and find what is appropriate for us to eat and find and know what isn’t appropriate for us to eat. So we are looking for food to eat that won’t cause us to experience illness and protect our body. So we need to separate out that which is helpful to us, helpful to our bodies from that which isn’t helpful to our bodies and then we should only eat what is appropriate to us in order to sustain our bodies so we can practice Dharma.
Okay. The next section was how to make effort towards attaining enlightenment by only sleeping when it’s appropriate to sleep then sleeping with the right attitude or the right motivation. Verse from the root text, Nāgārjuna’s letter to a friend then says, Righteous One which is referring to the king, so I guess it’s like saying King La. Occupy yourself during the entire day in the first and last periods of the night so that even your time of repose is not fruitless. Recline attentively between those two periods.
What this is talking about is that for first two lines, occupy yourself during the entire day and the first and last periods of the night. So this is a saying that we should try and have every moment of our time being engaged in positive thoughts and having a positive motivation. So it also means not spending all our time sleeping. So it’s said to be that there are six watches or six periods of the day and night three of the day and three of the night. So it’s talking about the first part of the evening and the last part of the night isn’t some time where you’re supposed to be sleeping.
And then when you’re engaged in all activities during these times and during the day, then you should try and be engaged in those activities with a positive motivation, with mindfulness of what you’re doing and an idea of the motivation for what you’re doing. And it says, then so that even your time of repose, which is time of sleep, is not fruitless. Recline attentively between those two periods. So even when you’re going to sleep, make sure that you go to sleep with the right motivation, that you’re going to sleep with the right attitude, that you’re practicing mindfulness even while you’re going to sleep. And if you do that, then you’re not wasting that time.
You’re making the most of that opportunity as well.