Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Whether offering yourself to a lion in the jungle counts as enlightened action prompts one of the livelier exchanges in this 68-minute Mind Training session with Geshe Pema Tsering. The main focus is the out-breath of Tonglen: visualizing oneself as a wish-fulfilling gem sending all merit and conditions to beings developing toward Buddhahood. Geshe Pema addresses the worry that making life too easy for others might stop them seeking liberation, then describes the sign of true Tonglen realization — a spontaneous, uncontrived wish to go to hell in place of other beings. He traces this teaching to Serlingpa, who kept it secret fearing it would drive people away from the Dharma. The Q&A closes with forgiveness, impermanence of personality, and the Tibetan Buddhist distinction between basic feelings and afflictive mental states.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 2005 08 07 MT.mp3
UUID: 00cd653e-2f97-4db4-a307-6227a5ae58b2
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Mind Training (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-08-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 68.0 minutes
Words: ~6,325
Okay. Okay. So please take a moment to look at your motivation and try and develop the idea that you are listening to this teaching on training the mind in order to develop understanding of it. And by developing understanding of it, be able to put mind training into practice that would that will lead you to thinking of others, focusing on making others happy, and therefore act as an inspiration to develop bodhicitta and attain enlightenment. Okay.
Okay. Okay. So we were what we’re up to is the out breath of Tonglen meditation. Okay? So last week, we dealt with how you what you’re breathing in.
So we’re working with this idea of giving and taking and you mount that on the breath. So the first thing is that you are breathing in or you see yourself breathing in the suffering of other beings and the causes of that suffering. There are afflicted states of mind that lead them to experience suffering. So imagine yourself breathing in all that and that it’s is eating away at yourself cherishing. And then, we’re up Now we’re up to the bit where we’re breathing out.
Alright? Focusing on what we’re sending out to beings. So the idea of what Sorry. The What we should be focusing on sending out then in this meditation is described by the quote from the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life which says, in order to achieve the purpose of sentient beings, turn your body into a wish fulfilling gem. So what this means is you visualize that your being becomes a jewel that can fulfill the wishes of all sentient beings.
So, you don’t have to think of it as a jewel, like a strange shape, but you think this body is a jewel that can fulfill the wishes of all sentient beings. And then, you think then that you imagine all being as many beings as you can, and that you imagine that coming from you, because you’ve turned yourself into wish fulfilling gem, that, all of the things that they need, all of the, the tools, all of the conducive states to, meditation, developing their minds, are coming from you. You’re giving them to them. You’re giving away all of the positive merit that you’ve accumulated, all of your potential to other beings in order for them to develop. Right?
So, you’re imagining that they get things like a all of the food and all of the environment that they need in order to be able to meditate, order to be able to develop themselves. All of the wealth that they need in order to do to to put this into practice so no one’s hungry or unable to focus on their meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings or develop their meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings. You imagine that their environment is a pleasant one so they’re not getting harmed by their environment and they can develop themselves. You imagine that they all have teachers that can can instruct them in how to meditate and how to develop themselves that they can rely on properly. So and that you imagine that by keeping on giving these things to to all these beings that so that your positive potential is you’re it away to them so they can develop, then they are able to develop bodhicitta and become Buddhists.
So you visualize this idea of you’re taking away their suffering and you’re giving them all of the things they need to become truly happy and that is to become Buddhist. That’s a visualization that you’re doing with the breath. So sometimes, this can be a bit a trick or a blockage that can come up in this meditation is that you think, you know, if I make everything easy for people, no one’s going to want to help. If I make everything really nice for them, they’re not going to think, Oh, I’m suffering. I want to get out of here.
They’re just going to think, Oh, this is nice. And you may think that you’re giving all these people stuff, and they’re just they’re going to be too content and not try and get out of Samsāra. Alright? So what you have to the antidote to sinking like that, alright, the antidote to stop yourself sinking, If I just give them a little bit of suffering, it might help, is to remind ourselves that the pleasures that we get in Samsāra aren’t happiness. So you’re not trying to give them Samsāra happiness.
You’re not handing out contaminated happiness that’s going trap them in saṃsāra more. What you’re actually giving to the beings that you’re focusing on is the conditions, is the ability to to develop themselves to become Buddhas. So this this practice of or giving and taking meditation is done in order to develop bodhicitta, the mind seeking enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. So you start this meditation, like we said last week, by, focusing on the ideas of compassion and love and kindness. And so you focus on the idea that all beings want to be happy, they don’t want to experience suffering, so you want them to have happiness and be free from suffering.
This is the the focus for the beginning part of the meditation. And then you By focusing By going on to meditate or going on to visualize or imagine this process by which you’re giving away all of the all that you have that’s good, all all that you have that can be of benefit to other beings and and through doing so, enabling enabling them to develop their potential to develop this mind of enlightenment, mind for them to seek for Buddhahood. Therefore, you go through this process of them all becoming enlightened through that, so that they will actually be totally happy. Yeah? And then you imagine all of their suffering coming into you, that you’re taking on all of their suffering.
That it’s all coming, it’s dissolving into you. Now, what this visualization technique does is to transform or turn around the instinctual ideal or the instinct that we have to put ourselves before others and to ourselves before others and to think about only our own happiness. So that’s what we do instinctually. And what we were what we’re trying to do is to turn that around. So we’re focusing on others instead of thinking about ourselves first.
And so this is what this meditation works on. It turns around our instinctual way of looking at things and we focus on developing happiness for others and taking on suffering for ourselves which is the opposite to what we usually do. We usually try very hard to avoid suffering for ourselves, even at the expense of others. So that’s what we’re trying to transform. Now, if we keep doing this, it strengthens our ability to focus on others.
It strengthens our ability to cope with suffering, and that strengthens our mind in the process. So once we have the ability to cope with suffering, focus on others, our mind becomes strong. And the results of this practice then are the the true results of this practice are there’s some the we develop the the ability to work solely for the benefit of others. So in the beginning, we may not be able do that but by keeping on doing it, we developed the idea of working for in order to help other beings and being having that this thing of joyous effort in that. So at the end of it, it means developing the mind of enlightenment.
The idea of working towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. That’s the end result of this meditation practice where we start focusing on turning around our instinctual idea to help ourselves and start thinking of helping others. Okay. And another way that you can tell a way that you can tell that you’re developing very strong results from this practice is that if you get if you have this strong idea and it says without a sense of having to. Right?
So there’s a it’s not a pretentious thing or not a contrived thing that you’re not putting it on for other people. So there’s this one word that says you behave in a good way because you have peer pressure to behave in a good way. And it says not that kind of spontaneous thought, but it’s a thought that comes from deep within inside you. If you have the idea from deep within inside you that your mother sentient beings, people who have been your mother are about to be reborn in hell, and you’re very happy to change spots with them. Alright?
So without any fear and without any hesitation and without any sense of having to do that because that’s the right thing. Alright? If you have this spontaneous thought, I’d rather I I’m I’d be much happier to go to hell for these beings and have them go there themselves. Yeah? Then that’s supposed to be That uncontrived thought is the the sign that you’ve attained realization in Tonglen practice.
Yeah? And so the Dalai Lama keeps saying that Westerners think this is gonna happen instantly. So I said to Geshe-la Geshe-la, you better tell them that this takes a long time, or can you tell us how long it’ll take? Otherwise, people will think they should do it in a week. And And Geshe-la said, it depends on what you’ve done in your previous lifetimes.
Maybe it will take a week. And he said, probably not it won’t take a week, but if people have a really strong predisposition to this practice and they’ve practiced it in many lifetimes, they can practice this meditation for a day and instantly have this reaction. But if we haven’t done this many times in previous lifetimes, it could take years before we develop this result. So it’s very disparate the time frame. You can’t say, well, one person will do it.
Everyone will take three months to develop this realization or this understanding. So it can take a long time and you have to keep working on it or it could happen very quickly. So the idea is that you develop the strength, the lack of shame. So it’s done spontaneously without thinking I’m shamed into doing it. And this and it happens spontaneous.
So this spontaneous wish, I’d rather I’m I’m gonna try and get myself into hell instead of those people going there because they’re like my mothers. So once you ‘ve developed that state of mind, it then says to go on. So, you practice Tonglen until you develop that state of mind. And then it says to go on to the next part of the meditation. And that is to include the idea in your meditation after after meditating on compassion and loving kindness, that you are definitely giving all that you have and all that you can have to other sentient beings in order for them to develop.
So you’re not just taking on their suffering, but then you go on to develop the idea of giving them all your happiness, of working constantly in order to be of benefit to them. So you think of giving away all of and it says here this word. Okay. So it says to give away all of your virtue or all of your constructive potential. So said that what this means is what because yeah.
I don’t think we have a word for it in English, so I keep saying virtue and it sounds weird. So what we’re basically talking about is every time you do Guess or said, every time you do something positive, that creates a positive potential. Alright? So you’ve done something positive, it means that’s gonna lead to a happy result or a pleasant result. So having done something positive in your mental continuum, there is the potential for happiness.
Yeah. The as a reason for happiness. Yeah? Or a potential for happiness. So what then you’re visualizing is that all of the things that you’ve done that are positive, that you are giving the potential that they hold, including doing everything with the idea of attaining enlightenment.
Alright? You’re giving them away to other beings. Alright? And based on your positive actions, they’re going to experience happiness. They’re going to attain results and develop themselves and become Buddhist.
That’s that’s the the idea of the visualization when you’re breathing out, when you’re sending out. And so the result at the end of that is that you have this idea by practicing this a lot, you have the idea that you will do anything, whatever it takes to make all other sentient beings happy. And you’re not just thinking of one sentient being or a few sentient beings or a couple of people you like. You’re trying to develop the idea of it being without the idea of all beings without excluding any. Yeah?
And you’re thinking, I’ll do whatever it takes, I’ll give whatever it takes in order for them to be happy, to be truly free from suffering. So so the so the first thing, this idea that I’ll go to hell for to to stop other people people going to hell and being happy about it, is the result of the taking on of suffering. Right? And this idea, I’ll do whatever it takes to make others happy, is the result of the the giving part of this meditation. Alright?
So that’s when you’re the the end results of practicing this meditation. So basically, that’s another way of talking about bodhicitta. Yeah? And bodhicitta has these two aspects that if you’re happy to take on suffering for others, that’s one part of the mind of enlightenment. And if you’re also happy to do whatever it takes, to give whatever it takes to lead them to lead others out of suffering, then that’s the other part of bodhicitta as well.
And that sounds really hard, he says. Yeah. Alright. Now it sounds very dramatic, and it sounds very hard, and it’s not something that we necessarily hear and go, yeah. That’s what I wanna do.
So This is why when Serlingpa, who was the Indonesian teacher who came, who developed this idea of practice from based on the Buddha’s teachings, didn’t tell anyone. Alright? He only told a very few people because he said, if I don’t keep this secret, it’s gonna get lost. People are just gonna go, you’ve got to be joking. And then that kept going for ages and it was only in much later that it was actually people were willing to listen to it in public because those teachings were considered to be so dramatic that people thought that they would turn people away from the Dharma.
But if you said to someone, the idea of bodhicitta is to take on other suffering and to give them happiness that they go, don’t want anything to do with this, and they walk away from Buddhism. Yeah? So so they’re not supposed to be teachings easy to do and easy to listen to. So Serlingpa came out with this quote. He said, if we don’t keep it quiet, no one will listen.
And then what he meant about that was that if you did if you went around telling everybody, they’d close their ears to it because it was such a difficult thing to try and bring about. Mhmm. Think he’s a. So I guess he said he thinks that given that’s the case, and if you’re anything like him, sometimes when you listen to mind train teachings, you think you’ve got to be joking. And then all we could think, oh, that sounds nice, like a noble thing to do, but me? Give me a break..
Because it stands so hard. But it is possible. We have examples of it being possible, so we shouldn’t think that we can’t do it. We have inspirational beings who have done this, and we can see the results of their actions. We can If we read life stories of people like especially Milarepa who was renowned for his aestheticism, I was gonna say aestheticism, but that’s not right.
Aestheticism and his ability to take on suffering and give happiness to others. And because he had developed this ability so well, he became a Buddha very quickly. So his his becoming a Buddha came from this ability. So the the mind that we’re seeking to develop, the way of thinking that we’re seeking to develop through this practice is said to be It says, focused on all sentient beings without distraction or without what’s another word for it? Translation I heard of this word was play talk.
That doesn’t really work, does it? I mean, it means like No. No. No. It’s it’s more like and I’m sorry if my language is rough, but it’s more like crapping onto yourself.
Yeah? Just like speaking crap to yourself, thinking, Oh, I’m okay. You know, that kind of thing. And it’s all of this, you know, the kind of self talk that distracts you from what you’re doing and is all about you. Yeah.
So I guess it’s attachment talk. Right? So it’s like Delusion. Yeah. But it’s not the word for delusion.
It’s just it’s it’s this idea of so they’re usually yourself. Yeah. But but in a way that because most of our distractions are when we’re kidding ourselves. When we’re thinking, you know, I’m okay. You know?
Don’t worry about me. And we’re trying to to kid ourselves into thinking that we know better than that our ego knows better than what we should be doing and stuff like that. Right? That we can convince ourselves it’s okay to do what we shouldn’t be doing. Okay.
So when you have a thought without that. Right? So the idea of the the end of this meditation, there is no, I should be helping others, but I need to help myself more. Yeah. There’s none of that.
There’s none of this Let me finish. Oh. Okay. So I was just struggling with one word. Alright?
Anyway, so the the so so that goes, that kind of this that any of the talk that we we can we can can try and kid ourselves with. Yeah. Any of the rubbish that we tell ourselves is gone. Alright? After this meditation’s been completed, once you attained the results of this meditation.
And what you’re left with is that you view yourself as, it says here, a medicinal tree, but Geshe-la said, don’t It doesn’t have to be a medicinal tree because he doesn’t know how many people here go out and take bits of trees for medicine. Right? But any type of medicine, any type of medicine, the way that medicine works is it helps others, but it doesn’t necessarily consider itself. So you’re seeing yourself as being something that is of benefit to others. So something to relieve the sufferings of others, but you’re not necessarily thinking, I’m going to hurt myself.
Yeah? That’s not in there at all. You’re not thinking, I’m gonna do something for myself? Your whole existence is to benefit others. So in this way, you’re behaving like medicine.
Your existence is medicine. Yeah? Your existence is medicine for other beings. Mhmm. Alright.
So what we’re basically dealing with is developing the ability to abandon all happiness and sorrow. So we’re not seeing ourselves as particularly, we’re not inviting sorrow, and we’re not inviting happiness. We’re working for others. Yeah? It’s not about us.
And then, thinking that, you know, training our minds so that we are mentally focused on working for the benefit of others. And then once we’ve trained our minds so we’re focusing on working for others, then our mouth will follow. Right? What we say then will be to we’d only say things to help others. And then also, we could try and use our bodies to help others.
So, all of the things that we can do positively with our bodies, can think, okay, may this be a cause for others to be happy or and then we can think, oh, I can use my body to get food for others, to get drink for others, to get whatever they need. So we can provide services for others, physical services for others by using our body to create things for them, to give them food, to give them drink, provide for them, to give shelter to those who don’t have shelter. So all of these things so we can transform our body, speech, mind into being service to others. And in in doing this, we can think, may doing this alleviate or clear away the suffering of others. May thinking this alleviate the suffering of others.
So we can train ourselves into being someone who can, through their body, speech and mind, work solely for the benefit of others. So if we have this idea that in order for all sentient beings no. Sorry. In relying on me, may all sentient beings be able to develop the results of the Paths or develop the results of meditation, and achieve true happiness, then this idea is also part of the meditation. We’re not just giving them all of the things they need, but we’re also may we may we be a cause for them to develop realizations that are going to stop them experiencing suffering.
He wants to know if this is going into your ears. Think that I could perhaps have translated that. Is it easy to listen to? It’s very hard to listen to someone telling you that all the suffering that you experience is your fault, and all the happiness that you experience is from other people. He thinks that’s very hard to listen to.
That doesn’t usually make people feel very happy. Yeah. He said, yeah. That’s because I’m selfish. I only think of myself.
Yes. This is gonna sound privileged. I don’t mean to speak to others. But There are no stupid questions. Okay.
You’ve seen this one. I’ve said it it’s from a movie called Heathers. The guy says there are no stupid questions. Yep. We’ve heard lots of we’ve heard the stories of people who feel so sorry for starving animals that they chop a bit off themselves and give it to the animal, and then they have it simply in life.
What it did. Yeah. If it is that easy. No. Seriously Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To just walk into the jungle and say Eat me. Yeah.
I mean, that would save us going through all this pain, you know, to, you know, work. Work eons, ten thousand eons to get enlightened. But if we did that, if I walked into the jungle and said, eat me, to be enlightened, enlightened, am I still doing it for my benefit? Pretending to be a lion. Oh, great.
I can see a lawsuit. Alright. Geshe-la said he said, if you can go into a forest and motivated by bodhicitta, do that, then he said, good luck to you. But he doesn’t think that it it would be very easy. Alright?
Because he said that it’s not a matter of just offering yourself because you’re looking for an easy way out. Alright? Buddha, when the Buddha performed that action, it was as if treating himself like he said in the text as a medicinal tree. His body was only to be a benefit to others and he did it with the intention of becoming a Buddha. So any action that’s not performed with that motivation, with that vast motivation, without that clear idea of selflessness isn’t gonna have the same results.
He said many people go around killing themselves, not the same thing. Yeah. He said that most of the time, unless you do something that is really clearly motivated by the idea of being the most benefit to others and attaining Buddhahood, then it’s suicide. Yeah. So it’s very he said it’s a very difficult thing to do, and killing yourself isn’t very helpful.
Alright? And stopping yourself. You need a miracle. No. But Geshe-la said that that’s what he said at the end. He said, if you’re doing it without the motivation of attaining liberation for the benefit of all sentient beings, without an understanding of selflessness, without an understanding of seeing it yourself as this tree that’s gonna help beings, it is killing yourself.
And he said, so if you have the ability to do this completely selflessly without any, idea of your own suffering, without thinking I’m doing this to get out of suffering, right, then it is not suicide. And he said, and that’s not good. So it’s not easy to do what he said. Do what he did. So if you have an understanding of bodhicitta and you have an understanding of emptiness, yeah, if you realize both of those things, then whatever you do is gonna be beneficial because you’re going to see things very clearly and know exactly what’s gonna be a benefit.
If you just do something without those motivations, then it’s very difficult. Without without those understanding, it’s very difficult to do something selflessly. Than going into the forest. But but he said the other thing is too, you don’t have to necessarily He said the problem is though we can think, well I’m never gonna get to the stage where I’m that self selfless and I’m not have that kind of understanding. And he said that’s a mistake.
We all have the ability to develop those levels of understanding, those levels of selflessness, those levels of doing everything for other people. So we shouldn’t tell ourselves we can’t do it because we we can do it, we just have to work hard to do it. It’s not something that happens easily but we do have the ability to do it. And he said, the other thing is, if we think, oh, it’s too hard, we should remind ourselves how much this helps us in the meantime. Alright?
So if you do these meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings, if you start focusing on others, if you stop think if you develop ways to deal with suffering, alright, by thinking I’m taking on the suffering of others or this is a means for purification, it makes you a lot happier, even in this lifetime. Even in this lifetime you can become someone who deals with situations better. Even in this lifetime you can be someone who’s more helpful. So it’s not something that we should just think, oh, it’s only the end results that count. We can also start to see very not instant, but very quick results from doing these meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings in our ability to cope with things, in our ability to help others.
So then the other thing is too, if we develop this this idea of working for others, of others being kind to us, then they all become close to us. So it also means that if we’re thinking of beings as being kind to us, then we’re much they don’t hurt us as much. Right? So, you know, it makes sense in Tibetan. I’m just trying to think of how to say it.
So if we have love for someone, if we have a if we hold someone as being very dear, alright, then then we don’t see them as being an enemy. It’s a it’s a opposite of that. And if we hold everyone as being dear and see no one as hurting us, then everyone becomes close to us. Yeah. I knew you were gonna put your hand up that one.
I think I think the spirit just came to my question. Can you please ask one? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Uh-huh. Okay.
Okay. So Geshe-la said the thing that he would think would be important to remember in this instance is that things change. Yeah? So just because someone did something bad in their past, they’re not necessarily going to do something bad in the future. Alright?
So this is why you should This is why it’s a good idea to forgive people if they ask for it. Because it it it doesn’t pervade or it’s not necessarily the case that someone who’s done something bad is gonna keep doing something bad. So if you forgive them, then that gives them the space to change. Alright? From from your perspective.
Yeah? Hang on. Hang on. I’m finished. Because he also said that what you have to look at the way that things have changed.
Yeah? It’s not just one situation in this way. Yeah? He said that the people that were really kind to you in this lifetime may have been your enemy in a past life. But just because you can’t remember that, you’ve managed to forgive them.
Yeah? So you So so for example, your parents in this life may have been your mortal enemy in a past life, but you’ve forgiven them. Yeah? Because you’re your parents now and you treat them with love and respect. Yeah?
And people that may have been, dear to you in the past have become undear to can become undear to you now. So it’s always changeable. It’s not like they’re a fixed entity that is bad. Right? People what they do is changing.
What people do is changing all the time. So if you think of them as being a fixed bad entity, yeah, then you’re going to see you’re not going to be able to forgive them. But if you recognize change, that everything changes, then you then that will develop the ability to forgive them. Yeah? Because you’re not focusing in on them as being one bad person, you’re focusing on them as being someone who’s constantly changing and whose relationship to you is constantly changing.
Yeah? So if you keep focusing on that for a while, he thinks then that will develop the ability to forgive. Okay. So the other thing that you need to look at is it’s not intelligent not to forgive people. Right?
Because it’s not as if necessarily it’s gonna make just them miserable. By you not forgiving them, you’re making yourself miserable too. Yeah? So it’s not helpful to anyone for you not to forgive, for you not to have patience in this instance and to like patience in the sense of truly forgiving. Yeah?
So, it’s not helping you and it’s not helping them. And even if you got to the stage where you had nothing to do with them even though they were your family, that wouldn’t make either of you happy anyway. Alright? So it doesn’t help anything to have a grudge. It doesn’t help anything to feel angry at them.
Alright? And he said that So you have to watch to see changes. You have to If you can perceive the changes in other people, then you’ll stop seeing them as one person who behaves in one way all the time. You’ll start to see there more more facets to that person than just the one you have been focusing on. And so And if you see them improving sometimes and getting worse sometimes, yeah, their behavior may get better and then get worse, then, the idea then is to think, they’re trying, but they have all these strong negative habits.
Yeah? So the poor things, they’re the ones who are suffering from that. If you if you take that on, then you’re making yourself suffer from that. Alright? But if you think the poor things, look what they’re doing to themselves.
Yeah? Then that’s then that gives you gives you an open space in your mind because you have compassion for them, and it stops you having any more tension from your side, any more conflict. Yeah. Okay. And so Geshe-la said the other thing to remember is that so if someone says to you, please forgive me.
Right? That if you can say, I have patience with you, or I can cope with what happened, and then you can let that go, then that doesn’t necessarily have to be you saying, you were right, I was wrong. You can say that this was a situation between two of us that didn’t work out very well. And in order for us to have a good relationship because we’re family, then it’s good for both of us to be patient. Said, it’s not a good question to ask a Buddhist monk.
Who am I? Anyway, he said he said he said that if some if someone says to you, hey, Peter, and you go, yeah, that’s who you are. Right? And so so he said that sense of me that’s coming up, based on that, you you have developed this idea of other and you. Right?
So because you’ve developed the idea of me, yes, then you can develop the idea of forgiveness. So Geshe-la said, it’s you that’s developed the need for forgiveness, so it’s you that has to do the forgiving. So he said, if there was no sense of self coming from you, there would be nothing to forgive. He said, if there wasn’t you going, they did something bad. I I didn’t do something bad.
They did something bad. Then there then there wouldn’t be any any any tension there. Yeah? So he said then, because you did that, you have to take the responsibility for creating your thoughts. Right?
Hang on. Hang on. And say, okay. I made up the tension in your head. Yeah?
Yes. And it’s up to me to forgive. He gets to say he doesn’t think you hurt your mother. You stopped her being happy, and that’s different. Oh.
My mom’s crying. Okay? Hey. But hang on. You gotta let someone else have a go pee.
Okay. Okay. But but but you can come and talk together if you want, anytime. Alright. Yeah.
Well, as long as I’m here. Okay. As a way of an example Mhmm. I was having a discussion a few days ago Mhmm. And both of us had sick relatives.
Mhmm. And I was saying, I just can’t believe how much mental effort or draining Mhmm. Going on with my mother in hospital. Mhmm. And she was saying, well, for me, it’s emotional effort.
So I thought, well, I have to understand a bit about that, but I’m just wondering There’s no different word for emotion and mental in Tibetan. No. I wondered about it. So I don’t even know how to translate it. Well, they put all mind.
Yeah? So Exactly. Mhmm. That’s good. I’m just trying to think of yeah.
Okay. I’ll try and explain the concept of emotion to Geshe-la, but we’ll let’s see how we go. Alright. So this is the way that it’s separated in Tibetan or Buddhism. Yeah?
And it’s very difficult actually when we try and translate it into English because there’s not words for it. Alright? So we have to appropriate the closest ones and try and curtail the, tangents. Okay. So the first thing, most There’s a basic level that’s called feeling.
That’s translated as feelings. Yeah? There’s three of them. There’s not good, good, and neutral. That’s it.
Alright? And that is actually probably the closest thing we have to emotions in the in English. Yeah? I don’t feel good. I feel good.
I feel blah. I feel Yeah? There’s no feeling there. And then that of the things that we think of as emotions are considered states of mind. And they’re very specific states of mind that have specific antidotes.
Yeah? So for example, jealousy is the sense that I don’t like them having that. Yeah? Or I want that and they have it. Yeah?
And that has a specific antidote of being happy for people when they have things. Right? And then we may have like attachment. I want that. There’s a type of mind that goes I want.
Right? And then we go through, you know, the results of what that wanting leads to. So there’s very specific ideas about mind, about the minds are, you know, different states of mind. And then there’s this basic sense of not good, and neutral in the that’s the the more basic level of feel feeling. Yeah?
But there isn’t this sense that we’ll lump things that come up spontaneously into us calling them emotions, and intellectual processes into mental work. So some things that come up because we tend to think of emotions as things that come up spontaneously. Yeah. And there is in that sense. They’re all minds that we have deal with and they’re defined by their characteristic as in what they’re focused on as opposed to the way they arise.
And sorry, there was one more thing I had to say as a translator is that there is this word in Tibetan and Sanskrit, called klesha, that we have a lot of trouble translating. And so sometimes you translate it as destructive emotions or disturbances. Yeah? But it’s it literally means something that Because it means something that disturbs the mind.
And the etymology of the word emotion is something that disturbs the mind. Right? But that takes into account all states of mind, and all intellectual processes that aren’t helpful as well. So is there a word in intimate existence for the feeling that I have, or the love that I have? Mhmm.
Mhmm.