Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of a very sharp knife shaving hair with zero resistance anchors Geshe Pema Tsering’s detailed walkthrough of Tonglen — the giving-and-taking meditation at the heart of the Seven Points of Mind Training. In this 75-minute session, he guides practitioners step by step through the full Tonglen sequence: meditating on a mother’s kindness, recognising her suffering across countless rebirths, expanding that focus to all beings, and then breathing in their suffering and causes of suffering while breathing out happiness and positive qualities. He clarifies that the practice trains the mind rather than exchanging literal energies. An extended Q&A covers renunciation (framed as aspiration toward nirvana rather than rejection of saṃsāra), a comparison of Buddhist and Christian views on death and rebirth, and the gradual removal of obscurations along the five paths. Suited to practitioners already familiar with the Lamrim sequence.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 12 2005 07 31 MT.mp3
UUID: ece72930-d674-43fa-a6a2-55dc649ca8fa
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Mind Training (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-07-31
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 75.8 minutes
Words: ~6,503
So please take a moment to look at your motivation and, try and, focus on the idea of listening to this description of the, mind training practice in order to be able to so that you’ll be able to understand it, put it into practice, by putting it into practice, become a Buddha who can lead all sentient beings out of suffering. Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Okay. So the part we’re up to in the seven points of mind training is the actual meditation or the meditation procedure for, the taking and giving meditation or So we’ve been through this section on the preliminaries and the section of the main practice which dealt with absolute bodhicitta or emptiness. And now we’re looking at the section of the main practice which deals with relative bodhicitta. And so the main focus for that is, the practice of Tonglen, the practice of giving and taking. So, the way that we meditate on Tonglen sorry.
First of all, in the in the root text, says, sending and taking should be practiced alternately. These two should ride the breath. So, this, means that we should practice or visualize giving and taking, taking suffering and giving happiness, and base those that giving and taking on the breath. The way that we do this is described then by starting by saying by I need more coffee. Alright.
I’ll try that again. First of all, we have to sit down somewhere comfortable. The meditation starts by sitting somewhere and making ourselves comfortable. Yeah? Then, the way what we do is bring to mind, our mother or someone else.
If we don’t have a mother or we don’t particularly have good feelings for our mother, then someone else who has shown us, incredible kindness since we were a small child. Someone else who looked after us. So we bring them to mind. We have an idea of them as if they were sitting in front of us, as if our mother or this person who’s shown us great kindness is sitting in front of us. And then we start meditating on their love.
And what this meditating means is familiarizing ourselves with their love. So the word that’s translated into English from Sanskrit and Tibetan as meditation actually has this connotation of becoming thoroughly familiar with. So here it’s, the idea is meditation as in reminding ourselves of familiarizing ourselves with, what this person who’s shown us great kindness, usually our mother, has done for us. So the first thing that we think about is that when we were incredibly helpless as young children that they did all these things for us, including not so nice things like wiping our noses, cleaning us up, and then also making sure that we were healthy, protecting us from illness, and giving us food when we couldn’t get our food for ourselves. So protecting us when we’re in an incredibly vulnerable state.
We start thinking about all this kindness that they this person has shown us. The way that they’ve protected us and looked after us. So when we develop this idea of how much they’ve helped how much they’ve benefited us, we then think about the state that they’re in. So now the state that they’re in is that since beginningless time or since beyond the concept of time, these beings have been aimlessly wandering in saṃsāra from one rebirth to the next to the next to the next without any ability to determine their destination and without any ability to or without the knowledge to alleviate their own suffering. And even if they were born into a situation where they had all of the conditions to practice Dharma, to relieve their own suffering, to get themselves out of Samsāra, they didn’t take that opportunity.
They didn’t have the ability to take that opportunity. So they continued on experiencing all manner of different suffering. And we can think about the suffering that they’ve experienced in this life, the suffering they may have experienced when they were born as an animal, all sorts of suffering that they’ve experienced. So we have this idea of all, that this person was incredibly kind to us, that they have shown us, that they protected us, looked after us, and then we focus on how much they’ve suffered. So then we think about the way that they’ve had to keep dying again and again, and the difficulty they’ve had in taking rebirth, the suffering that they’ve experienced, the pain that they’ve gone through, the physical pain they’ve gone through, the mental torment that they’ve gone through.
And so, if we focus on these two things enough, we focus on this idea that this person has been incredibly kind to us and at the same time is suffering so much, then we’ll probably find that the natural response to that is that we’ll develop this idea that we want to alleviate their suffering. That because of their kindness and because of their suffering, it would be a good thing for us to do to try and alleviate their suffering in some way even if that means taking on their suffering for ourselves. Even if that means somehow ending up as their servant by having ourselves act. Okay. So one of the signs that we are generating this sense strongly is that the hairs on our arms will stand up.
Yeah? That you get they they they talk about you know how when you say, oh, what’s there’s an expression for it in English. Is it goosebumps? No. Yeah.
Goosebumps. Yeah. Or yeah. And when something’s sorry? No.
No. No. No. That seal I got goosebumps, basically. That’s what we say, I think.
Yeah. But but it’s not like that scared me. It’s like, you know, when you react to something so strongly emotionally that you get goosebumps. Yeah? So that’s the type of response that you’re looking for.
By meditating on this again and again, strengthening the idea of what you’re focusing on eventually, you get goosebumps from the thought. Is that what you say? We actually say it made the hairs on my arm stand up, don’t we? Yeah. Pretty simple.
Anyway, My hair stand on Yes. Any of those. Alright. Yes. So we keep thinking about this.
We’re getting this idea of how kind this person has been to us, how much suffering they have experienced, that and that if we don’t do something about it, if we don’t find a way to try and show them how to stop suffering, they’re going to continually wander around Samsāra and finding themselves in all sorts of situations being reborn into all sorts of bodies uncontrollably by the force of their karma and just continually experience the most awful suffering if we don’t do something about it. So that what that leads to then, what that if we keep focusing on this enough, what that leads to is this idea that we can’t bear that to happen. We can’t let just let happen. So we have to do something about it. And this state of mind where we think I can’t bear that to happen is what’s called the love the love that can’t bear to think of the suffering of others.
And it’s the type the the result that we’re looking for when we start doing this meditation. We keep focusing on this idea of the suffering that other beings have experienced and the kindness that they’ve showed us until we develop this sense that our love for them doesn’t let us yeah, it makes us incapable of sit sitting back and watching their suffering. And we could also think about all of the negative karma that our mother has accumulated on behalf of ourselves. So if we watch the way that mothers behave, they’ll do all sorts of things to protect their children too, to make sure that their children’s lives, are going to be okay. And it may not have been necessarily our mother, but if we watch the way other mothers behave, then they will fight, sometimes to the death to protect their children and they’ll put themselves in all sorts of extreme situations to protect their children.
And, we can think that if our mother was in that same situation that she may well have done the same thing. Not only have they shown us great kindness, but they’ve accumulated all kinds negative karma or sorts of negative potential in order to protect us, in order to make sure that we’ve had a good life. Mhmm. So we have to be careful here and try and focus on what our mothers have done for us because we could drift off into this idea that, Well, you know, mom really wasn’t doing it for me. Was doing it for herself.
She was doing it for her to make sure that her offspring was fine and and that there’s a certain amount of self-cherishing in in those actions, you know. So it’s only her child that she looked after and so on. So we could find ourselves saying it wasn’t really about me, it was about her. But this isn’t helpful for the point of the So we could look at it from both sides but the one we have to focus on at this time when we’re doing this meditation is, the things that she’s done from us and we’ve got to look at it from our own point of view. The kindness that she’s shown us.
We’re not in a state where we’re judging our, at this this stage, we’re not judging, our mother’s, self-cherishing. We’re just, looking at their what what we’ve gotten, from the way that she’s looked after us or whoever it was or whoever it is we’re focusing on. So then we should when we’ve done this meditation, when we’ve reminded ourselves, familiarized ourselves with the suffering and the hardship that our mother or whoever it is we’re focused on has put themselves through in order to benefit us and the things that they’ll have to endure because they were looking out for us. Then what we would get to after meditating on this for ideas, we go on to the idea that, because they’ve helped us, it’s only right that we should try and help them, that we should try and, save save them from harm, save from any type of suffering that they may go go on to experience. Mhmm.
So then it says, but our old mom they always write in this, our old mom. Whatever they’ve done for us, they weren’t the only one to do this. We may know about the experience we may have personally experienced and remember, the kindness that our mother has shown us in this lifetime. It’s something that it’s easy for us to focus on. And because we have a memory of it, we can feel it if we start focusing on it.
But we’ve lived many other lifetimes and in all those other lifetimes, someone has been our mother. We haven’t had the same mother in every lifetime. So, even though we can’t remember the kindness that the mothers of our other lifetimes have shown us, their kindness is the same as or exceeds the kindness of our mother from this life or this person that we’re on as being extremely kind to us. So in this way then, we can expand our meditation out and not just think of the kindness that our mother of life has shown us, but also start to focus on the kindness that that all our old moms have shown us in all our different lives. So if we keep thinking if we contemplate on this for a while, if we think about that for a while, and we come up with this we’ll develop this feeling of true compassion or or pity or unbearable sadness for the beings that that have shown us this kindness and are experiencing suffering in this way.
These beings that wander around Samsāra without any idea of how to get rid of the the suffering that they are experiencing, without any idea of how to get rid of the causes for the suffering that they’ve experienced. And at the same time as experiencing suffering in this intense way, they’ve also shown us great kindness. They’ve also done amazingly nice things for us. And if we think about it even in an even more expansive way, then all of the happiness that we ever experience comes about because of other beings. All of the happiness that we’ve either we experience comes about either because someone has shown us kindness in one way we could look at that, or because, by being there, other beings have enabled us to create positive potential positive karma and then that we experience the results of that through as happiness.
So either by an in a direct way when we think about that everything that we get comes through other beings. And if we think that we could also think about their way that their existence enables us to create positive merit. So everything that’s good that’s ever happened to us comes from others. And everything that’s an experience of suffering comes from ourselves, because it’s our own sense of self-cherishing, it’s our own sense of, putting ourselves before others, our own holding onto the idea of self so strongly that creates, that leads us to karma, that is a creation of karma or negative potential that is the cause for suffering. So, we create our own suffering by our actions actions and all the good things that we’ve experienced come about in dependence on others.
So it makes more sense to focus on others than to focus on our own self-cherishing attitude. Oh, sorry. I I knew there was something else forgetting. And we’re not the only ones who’ve done that. All other beings are the same.
All other beings have not know by not knowing it, perpetuating their own suffering. And they’ve shown us incredible kindness, but they just keep on creating the causes for suffering. They just keep on holding onto themselves as being important and and having to experience results of that self-cherishing. So in this way, all other beings are really kind to us even though they may not appear to us as being this way all the time. We may think that what are you talking about?
That person is definitely not my friend. They’re my enemy. They always do. They they try to harm me. But if we think about it again, the problem isn’t so much the being themselves.
It’s their afflicted emotions. Because they’re trapped in saṃsāra and they’re creating the causes suffering, then they’re going to do things that we perceive as harming us. It’s because of their attachment, it’s because of their aversion, it’s because of their jealousy, it’s because of their pride, it’s because of their lack of equanimity that they’re going to attack us. It’s not because they’re a person that they’re going to attack us. It’s because of their afflictive emotions or their negative states of mind that they’re going to attack us.
So if we want to look at what the problem is, then we need to look at those states of mind. We need to look at those emotions and not the person, themselves. It’s the negative states, that create that situation. So then the only real response, the only intelligent response to those kind of emotions is actually compassion because we can think, well, these beings by acting this way are perpetuating saṃsāra for themselves. By being angry, being jealous, being proud, they’re perpetuating their own experience of suffering.
So they’ve shown me kindness in the past. They weren’t always my enemy. There’s no one that’s always been my enemy. So now they’re experiencing this negative state that’s going to lead to suffering. I really should have compassion for them.
We can think like this. Mhmm. Mhmm. So then the meditation practice that we start doing these days, the Tonglen or giving and taking meditation, is to think, alright, all of my old mothers are out there experiencing this suffering. Either they’re experiencing either manifest suffering that is suffering that’s happening to them now, because of creating the causes for it or they’re creating the causes for suffering by being angry, by being, proud, by, having all these negative states.
So, if I wanna help them, I can take on I can take away their suffering, take it, onto me. And we do this visualization that by, breathing in, we’re breathing in all of the suffering and all of the causes of suffering from all of these beings that have shown us great kindness, that have been so so wonderful to us, but are now experiencing such suffering or are creating the causes for experiencing suffering. So what we’ve what we start visualizing then after we’ve we’ve focused on there how kind they’ve been to us and how much they’re suffering. We start visualizing that we’re breathing in all of their suffering and all of the things that cause suffering in their mind stream. So we imagine that coming out of the mind stream of all of these beings is the suffering that they’re experiencing and the causes of that suffering which we can see as being all of their all of their afflicted states of mind, all of their, ignorant or negative ways of, thinking about things.
And then we can also imagine that all of the things that obscure their understanding are come are coming into us. Okay. So that we imagine it coming. Okay. So the first thing I was getting ahead of myself and it all seemed a bit strange.
The first thing that we need to focus on is this idea of the suffering coming out of the the mind streams. We’re not up to the bit where it’s smoke coming in us yet. We’re up to the bit where we’re focusing on what’s happening in the mind stream of other beings. And so what we imagine happening then is that all of the not just the experience of suffering that they may have, but also the causes for suffering that is there, the obscurations to knowledge that they have, and not only that, but the tendencies that they would have to do those things again. Alright?
So they may have be jealous and we may be imagining that jealousy is coming out of their mind stream and coming towards us. But they also may have a tendency towards being jealous in the future. And we also imagine that coming out of all of these beings, as many beings as we can imagine. And then we imagine that the things that are causing them not to see things properly are coming out of them. And this process of all of these negative states, these misunderstandings, these negative tendencies are coming out their mind stream.
We imagine it as being as easy as when a very sharp knife cuts hair. So when someone’s having their head shaved with a very sharp knife, the hair just falls away and there’s no resistance. There’s no tension in that process. The hair just falls away. So we visualize that all of these negative states, these experiences of suffering, these causes for suffering just fall away from the people, from the beings, like, hair falling away from a razor, a very sharp razor.
So it all faults falls out of their mind stream. And in the process of this coming out of their mind stream, we imagine we visualize them becoming more more and more enlightened until well, when we keep doing this, eventually, we visualize them becoming a Buddha. Okay. Again. Mhmm.
Mhmm. So then we imagine all of this suffering, all of these causes for suffering, all these tendencies for towards creating the causes for suffering, and all of these veils of ignorance. We imagine them all coming towards us. We’re going to take all them on so all other beings can be free of any suffering and experience of this happiness. So, visualize them all coming towards us.
Now, we can do that in any way we want. One traditional way is to think of it as being black smoke that dissolves into us. But if we can just anything that we can visualize, that would signify this is fine. And also, sometimes they say for it to dissolve into your heart chakra, but you can also dissolve it you can just imagine yourself being bombarded by it as well from every angle and all seeping into you as well. The idea is that if you want to know what’s actually causing suffering, it’s your self-cherishing.
So what you imagine this all of these things doing is while they are seeping into you, they’re destroying yourself cherishing. So that you you don’t think of them as being the So the point is that they are attacking yourself cherishing and that all of these things taking on is attacking yourself cherishing. Whichever way you wanna do that, whichever works for you is fine. Yeah. Alright.
So then at the same time as that’s what we’re doing with where we’re imagining ourselves breathing that in. I think hang on a second. Okay. So it says that we should mount these two on the breath or we should have this idea of giving out and taking on the breath. But if we try and do that in the beginning of the meditation, it’s going to be awfully difficult.
Alright? We if we’re trying to imagine that we’re taking in all of these things, all these causes for suffering and all this suffering from so many beings, and we imagine it dissolving into ourselves, it’s very difficult to do that in one breath. And it’s very difficult to go through all that visualization in one breath. So the idea is that first of all, focus on taking in and then you focus on the next thing we’ll get to is giving out. Alright?
Giving out all of the positive things that you’ve accumulated, all the happiness that you’ve experienced, all of the things that you own, all of the good qualities that that you can recognize in yourself. So you give them to all the beings that were the cause for that. And so you you imagine yourself distributing them or or breathing them out to all of the beings who, have shown you kindness, who have acted as the cause for you to develop those good qualities or have engaged in activities that led you to having any of the possessions that you have. So imagine yourself breathing out to all of them, all the good qualities, of the things that you have. So this isn’t going to work if you’re doing it very quickly on your breath.
So first of all, you focus on taking the suffering and then you focus on giving happiness. And then the idea of mounting it on the breath is that it’s a in and out process. So, if after focusing on these for a while, you can get down to a very quick meditation of focusing on giving and taking on the breath, then that’s fine. But if you try and start off that way, it’s gonna be too quick for you to do it. What’s the date?
Thank you. May first of the ninth. Eighth. Oops. Because I was thinking that tomorrow is the eighth.
Right? Alright. Alright. If you have questions. Yes.
My question is regarding renunciation. Mhmm. Just, to meditate on renunciation, what is conducive or inducing to renunciation and what is not? Yeah. Renunciation.
Okay. Did everyone hear that? No. So when you’re meditating on renunciation, what is conducive to that meditation and what is not conducive to that meditation? Suffering helps.
So the actual idea of the Tibetan word that’s usually translated as renunciation is actually not focused on renouncing anything. It’s focused on what happens once you have renounced. Alright? So it means working towards, nirvana. Right?
So sometimes it’s translated as definite emergence or something equally unpoetic. Anyway, so therefore, you focused on something. So the main meditation for getting out of saṃsāra, for developing this idea of renunciation is actually to know how good nirvana is. Alright? So the main focus isn’t so much on what’s wrong with what you’ve got.
It’s what what’s gonna happen or what why it’s worth striving for nirvana. Yeah? What what’s what is nirvana? But while that’s the main focus for the meditation, the most conducive condition to developing that is wanting to get out of Samsāra. And this is what makes it so hard because are Samsāra is very sticky.
We’re very stuck in Samsāra. And to be able to be free of saṃsāra, we not only have to recognize manifest suffering as suffering, but also the happiness that we experience as an instance of suffering. We have to recognize the faults of saṃsāra. That’s why it’s so tricky because we think of all of the happiness that we have as being real happiness instead of thinking of it as being something that changes into suffering. The main focus for the meditation is actually why it’s a good idea to attain nirvana, but the best condition for developing that idea is recognizing the faults of saṃsāra.
So that’s why it’s hard. Uh-uh. So So, the the the most difficult part to developing this idea of renunciation or definite emergence is that it means recognizing the things that we hold onto as being happiness aren’t true happiness. It means recognizing that in Samsāra, there is no true happiness. There is only something that looks like happiness but changes very quickly.
So in order for us to do this, it means we have to be able to give up, the the happiness that we’ve, been striving for for so long. And that’s why it makes it so difficult because it means giving up at what we know is happiness in order to, achieve true happiness. So the you do it means developing idea this idea that saṃsāra is like very sweet poison. Yeah. And we we may really enjoy it when we’re eating it, but it causes death.
Yeah? So we need to develop that idea again and again and again that all these things that may seem so sweet for us are actually a cause for us to experience more suffering and be stuck in Samsāra. And once we have that idea once, that’s a good start. But in order for us to have developed true renunciation or this true urge to get out of Samsāra, it has to be an uncontrived spontaneous experience that we have constantly. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. And that’s why it’s so hard. He said, yes, that’s why it’s so hard because it means all of the things that we think we need, we don’t. Yep. Uh-huh.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Did that question make you tired? But you’re not breathing in.
You’re not breathing out energy. That’s what I’m trying to think of how to translate it. It’s got nothing to do with energy. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh-huh. Strengthening yourself. Yeah. Sure.
Okay. It’s not it’s not that what you’re saying doesn’t make sense. It’s that when I try and think of how to say it in Tibetan, it’s like, if I had to explain recycling, it’d take me three hours. I was just saying to Geshe-la, I start so many questions about with, in our culture, Okay. So said he agrees with you up to a certain point, but he said, we’re not actually to the point where we are recycling yet.
What this practice is is a mind training exercise to develop the ability to recycle. Yeah? So he said that it’s not like you can actually do that at this stage. Most of us can’t do that at this stage. We can’t take on other people’s suffering and give it back to them as happiness.
So what we’re actually doing in this instance is a meditational exercise or a mind training exercise where we visualize ourselves doing that so it develops the habit of doing that, and then we can actually start doing it more and more. Alright? So that’s the principle behind it, but, in order to put that in practice, we have to develop that attitude. We have to develop that ability. Sorry?
Dear. Yeah. Yeah. The only thing that I was having trouble translating, and it’s probably worth saying, because I asked Esther about it as well, is this idea of energy. Yeah?
So I said to him that he he came up with this idea of that you’d said something about taking on negative energy and giving out positive energy. And that’s not a concept that comes up in Buddhism at all. Right? This this idea of of an energy. So Geshe-la said this is purely mind.
Right? It’s it’s not any external energy happening. We’re just dealing with the mind. Yeah? We’re just dealing with training the mind so that the mind has this ability to do that.
So there’s no concept of because I was struggling to translate that actually and so I had to explain it. That there’s this idea of it’s just training the mind so the mind has the ability to do that. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Geshe-la said that they have this, he said that if he thinks about recycling in Tibet, it would be more like your rub one person’s rubbish is another person’s not rubbish.
So that if you chuck something out, someone’s more likely to pick it up and use it. So I have a Tibetan friend who said to me, when you’re a Tibetan, there’s no such thing as something you don’t need. So, yeah, because these these things, these afflicted states of mind, all of this stuff, they were like rubbish. They’re things we wanna get rid of. But in this instance, we’re taking them and using them because we’re by this idea of taking on other people’s suffering, we’re developing our ability to to help others.
We’re doing we’re engaging in mental exercise to train our mind. This word that they translate as mind training, I saw a more specific but probably a little more confusing translation of it which was developing cleansing attitudes. Yeah? Yes. Did sorry.
There’s a gentleman there that had a question on his disappear. It has your hand disappeared? Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
So where I mean, we believe as Christian Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Goes yeah. Say it happens after death? And I do think I do the things you said down my mind.
Uh-huh. So they’re going away for two months now. Uh-huh. Yep. What what so what you wanted to ask is where did where do people go after they die in Buddhism?
Alright. So, in some ways, it’s very similar what the what Buddhism says. It’s just that they don’t have necessarily this idea of a soul leaving the body as what they call the the merely labeled self. Right? So this the merely labeled I.
Right? So they don’t have this they don’t posit this idea of a permanent soul, but there is this sense of self that leaves the body. So in some ways, it’s exactly the same. When the when the mind or the the soul or the self come becomes separate from the body, it has to leave the body. Yeah.
Yeah? So then it goes and where it goes in Buddhism sorry. In the same Christianity, they have this idea of it leaving and going somewhere. The difference being no. In that guess to say in that process, in that part, there is absolutely nothing different.
There’s also nothing different in the fact that it’s not seen as being being form. It’s not seen as something that we can touch. The soul isn’t seen as something that we can touch or the sense of self isn’t seen as something that we can touch and it leaves. Yeah? And then, as when it’s become disconnected from the body, then this mind can just float wherever it wants to go.
So when the same way that when we think of something, our mind goes there. Yeah? When when there’s no physical form that’s connected to the mind wherever it thinks it goes. Yeah? But then at some point after that, the habit of having a physical form comes into effect.
So because we have a habit of having a physical form, the mind or the sense of self that we have will start looking for a physical form because you’ll say, wait a minute, I have a body. I’m a physical being. Because it has this habit of being physical, it starts looking for a physical form. And then whichever physical form it takes in the next life time, it’s depending on what its habits are, what it’s it’s used to, what it’s attracted to. Yeah?
What it’s what it’s what it’s focused on. So there’s some beings that if they’re very, very fiery and angry, they’re attracted to heat, for example, and this can end up being reborn in in like a lower realm or something. And if someone’s attached to desire, then they can be attracted to physical form and end up in a human realm. So it depends on what their habits are, where they’re led in their next life. But it’s a similar process in that the person or the self or the thing that makes that person them leaves the body.
Yeah? And then it goes and it also goes to a separate place. It’s just that the process in Buddhism about where it goes is more determined by habits and karma, which is linked to habits than by any kind of judge being involved. So, the the two things happen. By he said, by the force of their positive things that they’ve done, they end up in a positive body.
Yeah? That’s the karma. Right? And by the force of their habit, that of trying to help others, then they continue to try and find a form that will help others. You keep coming out I mean, I’m not I’m being I don’t mean to sound mean.
It’s just all these expressions, and it’s like, I go, how do I say that? Yeah. But that’s not what he said. He said a higher self. Okay.
Okay. Okay. A Buddha, if you because I say, is this is the Buddha then a higher self? Mean, Geshe-la said, if you wanna think of it as a person without faults, and that’s what you mean by a higher self, then yes. But and not yeah.
In that way, is. So there’s a lot of lifetimes to be gone through, a lot of meditational practices, lot of different insights that need to be developed in order to get to that state. So there’s what’s called the five paths, which are different states of being that people develop through as they develop their realizations of compassion and emptiness. Is it gonna be quick? Yeah?
Okay. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. Sorry.
No. It the the the this I didn’t mean to laugh too much. This is Gesh, and I have arguments about this. It’s a it’s a Yeah. It’s a gradual path where you are getting rid of all the obscurations, things that are stopping you from being awake.
Alright? So they’re like obscurations or veils. Yeah. So you gradually get rid of those step by step by step. And getting rid of all your faults step by step by step.
So what happened? We have to keep working at it because when we start off, the afflictions that we need to get rid of or the veils that we need to get rid of are actually thicker than the or stronger in intensity than the light that has the ability to shine through them. Yeah? So we’re trying to get rid of veils too, but and the veils being like our attachment and our aversion and our our pride and anger and all afflicted states and ignorance. So we’re trying to get rid of those and we’re trying to develop the antidote, alright, to those veils, you know, or those ob obscurations.
So if we have if we’re trying to cut a path through a forest, this is a different not a mixed metaphor, a different metaphor. We’re trying to cut a path through the forest. First of all, the road’s gonna be very small and the trees are going to be very thick. Yeah? And then eventually, as we widen it and widen it, we can we can start to be able to see through it easier.
So it’s a gradual process where we’re developing our clarity and getting rid of our obscurations. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I have to it’s not that what you’re saying isn’t correct. It’s just that lots of things you’re saying that you’ve said today are very difficult to translate.
I can’t translate that. No. It’s a So I don’t know because it depend you know, the way that people relate to words is their own thing. Yeah? But we’re trying to I was I’m trying to get words from a very, very different language into English.
Yeah? And this word that I’m translating as ignorant is literally not knowing. Yeah? So that can cover everything. So I said that I said to the way I translated that to Geshe-la is that there’s some people that don’t know like a child doesn’t know, and there’s some people that choose not to know.
And Geshe-la said that both of those would be covered by what he would call as ignorant. Well, I’m translating as ignorance and his it’s called avidya in Sanskrit as well, but I don’t know if you’ve heard that. So there’s like a that comes up in things. So there’s this idea of just not knowing. Yeah?
And and Geshe-la said the way to think about it is really easy. It’s just that you just don’t see something. So if there’s a something covering a cup, it means you can’t see what’s in the cup. That’s ignorance. If there’s a fog and you can’t see in front of you, that’s ignorance.
Yeah. So this this process of fogginess or not seeing is ignorance. So that covers the whole scope of things. Mhmm. Okay.
Time’s up. Okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah. K.
So we’ll say some prayers of thanks and dedication. Turning to the teaching prayers tab, page twenty four. And then we’ll also go on to page twenty six, long life prayer for his holiness. Page twenty six.