Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A passing remark — “ultimately we don’t have to do anything because we don’t exist” — offered with deadpan humor captures the tone of this 38-minute session from Geshe Pema Tsering’s commentary on the Ornament for Clear Realisations. The class works through the final characteristics of Bodhisattva meditation objects: baseless (bases vanish under investigation), non-going (no findable entity in motion), no production, and not observing thusness — realizing the emptiness of emptiness itself. A live debate then unpacks whether the realization of selflessness on the path of seeing qualifies as an “isolating yoga,” with the resolution hinging on a distinction between complete freedom from afflictions and perceiving their lack of inherent existence. The session closes on “signlessness” as one of the three doors to liberation. Suited to students already working through this text.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 OCR 2005 02 03.mp3
UUID: 3f22b27c-0030-40f2-9a9a-04d65d838eb0
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Ornament for Clear Realisations (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-02-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 37.8 minutes
Words: ~2,345
We can’t say that they have many ideas. They only have very limited capacity for ideas. humans, on the other hand, have many different ideas about things, and a dog may have a response to something. They may like something, they may dislike something, they may feel something is comfortable, they may not feel that other things are comfortable, but they’re not going to have as many ideas about things. So, in this way I can’t even remember what we were talking about now.
In this way Which one were we doing? All right. Term. Yes. Got it.
Yeah. So in this way yes. That’s what it was. In this way, dogs don’t have many things. That’s where we get back to where I had the problem with.
They don’t have many things that we could define as ideas that would be able to be observed in this application.. Mhmm. So these ideas appear to dogs, they do not have the ability to achieve them in the same way that impermanence appears to us, we don’t have the ability to achieve it. Or we have the ability to achieve impermanence because we die, but we don’t have the ability to realize it. Achieve the realization of So they so they have the ability to recognize some concepts or some it’s not concepts, some ideas.
Ideas being unconceptual, Anyway, they don’t have the ability to recognize as many as us. Okay. So the ones that they have, the people becoming Buddhas would understand. Okay. This Sorry.
Now the next thing Geshe-la said was in relation to classes. The more literal translation would be: the entity which does not accord with all that is worldly. So accords with nothing that that is worldly, or it doesn’t accord with anything that is worldly. What this is referring to is that even though the objects that are terminologically, the ideas of humans, way that we perceive just humans, the way that we perceive things is recognized by Buddhas in their meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and therefore in their practices or sorry, Bodhisattvas by Bodhisattvas in their practices that lead them to Buddhahood and are recognized as not being inherently existent. This recognition of this phenomena, this relative phenomena, is does not mean that they become caught up in worldly activity.
Alright? So they recognize relative truth. They recognize this relative reality, but they don’t get caught up in it. K? Their their perception those other things said, their perception of the emptiness of the relative objects and their understanding that they are only merely labeled, yeah, means that they don’t become worldly in their perception of being of relative reality.
So the next one is without impediment now. Without impediment or obstruction, that’s the word that’s usually translated as obstruction, tokma. Without obstruction, it means that there’s for example, we can have obstruction to our physical being when we bump into things and we touch things and we can’t put our hands through through form. And we can have obstruction to our vision when form comes in the way of our vision. So we can’t see through walls and we can’t walk through walls and so on.
Right? So this means that their perception of emptiness and their meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings are not obstructed by any delusions. They’re not obstructed by any form or any negative circumstances. Okay. The next one is called baseless.
Now what this refers to is the base on which we label things. Alright? Now in general, we can say that bases exist. The bases on which we put labels exist, but when we go looking for these bases, they disappear. Without bases appear when they are not searched, like an object that we may label as something appears when it’s not investigated.
When we investigate it, it disappears. So this is what this baseless refers to, the lack of existence of the things that we label, the basis for our labels when we investigate them. So the the nonentity ness of the entity of the base is this application. The entity of nongoing. So the reason that this is the entity of non-going, the entity of not not progressing, is that in general, there is something progressing.
But if we look for the entity of the thing progressing, there is no entity to the thing progressing. So because there is no entity to the thing progressing, we say that there is an entity of no progressing. Okay. It is strange because what we’re doing is we’re talking about the ways that bodhisattvas meditate, the things that they can meditate on, the different approaches they have to developing their perfect realizations, yeah? And so sometimes they meditate on things that are there.
Sometimes they meditate on emptiness of things. Meditate on objects and the lack of objects, the entities and the lack of entities, or the entitylessness of entities, all different sorts of things they meditate on. So it it it doesn’t come across as being very strange. So the next one is no production or no generation. So this is a similar thing.
In general, there is production, there is production, is abiding, and there is cessation, or there is disintegration. This is generally or relatively, but ultimately there is no generation, there is no abiding, and there is no cessation. Since there is a relative generation abiding and disintegration, To talk about the entity of production means to refer to the ultimate truth of no production, to see the lack of generation, the lack of see that although generation abiding and disintegration exist, they don’t exist ultimately. Okay. So the last one is not observing thusness.
Now thusness means emptiness. So the application that doesn’t perceive or doesn’t observe emptiness is the application that realizes the emptiness of emptiness. So perceiving the lack of ultimate existence of emptiness is also something that bodhisattvas need to meditate on. Okay. So the first argument is that it says that where do I start?
The knower or the realization selflessness of a being in a being’s continuum who is a bodhisattva on the path of seeing, yeah, is they this this realization is necessarily a yoga, yeah, an isolating yoga of a Bodhisattva because it is something that isolates or gets rid of afflictions and sorry. Just ignore what I just said. I’ll try and say I’m trying to remember the date. Well, because they disassembled this. This is necessarily this because it is this.
Okay. The It is. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay.
So the knower that realizes selflessness in the continuum of a being who is a bodhisattva on the path of seeing, is necessarily a bodhisattva’s continuum Continuum that gets rid of afflictions and the signs of afflictions etc. Because it has been designated as one of the sixteen isolating yogas of a bodhisattva, which get rid of afflictive emotions, etc, by the definition of its entity. Because it is one of these entities, it is necessarily defined as an isolating Yoga of a Bodhisattva. Then the next the guy that’s fighting that’s the position. That’s the syllogism.
Someone says this. Right? Then the guy who wrote the book says, I agree. Right? No.
No. Hang on. And then they go on to say, so if you agree that, then is he consequentialist? No. Right?
Then it says, take this for example. Then you take this for example. Okay. So the guy’s arguing and says, you take your example. This is necessarily not applicable.
It is necessarily not a yoga that is isolated from afflictive emotions, like the signs and the afflicted emotions and all them, because Bodhisattvas’ continuums have negative emotions in them. They are not completely liberated. Alright? So this is the consequence that doesn’t work. Alright?
And this guy says, wait a minute. Okay? Uh-huh. The answer is that does not pervade. Okay?
Yeah. Yeah. It doesn’t pervade. So it can’t and can’t pervade because it can’t it can’t be a pervasion because Bodhisattvas have afflictive states of mind in their continuum. Right?
Mhmm. Okay. So the reply is this argument doesn’t work because when it says isolated from afflictive emotions, it’s talking about being isolated from the causes of afflictive no. When it says isolated from that which isolates from afflictive emotions, it’s not talking about being separated completely from afflictive emotions. It’s talking about the mind that isolates from afflictive emotions, and the mind that isolates from afflictive emotions is the realization of the lack of inherent existence.
So you can posit these things as that that which is isolated from afflictive emotions because it is isolating from afflictive emotions by its nature. Alright? But so it’s not saying that it is it’s saying you’re reading it wrong. It’s not saying it is isolated from afflictive emotions. It’s that which isolates afflictive emotions.
That’s what the debate is. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. You’re able to say it because even though the afflictive I got the right last bit wrong.
You’re able to say it. It wasn’t that which isolates. It is just completely forget that. It is isolated from afflictive emotions in the continuum. Right?
You can say it’s isolated from afflictive emotions because afflictive emotions don’t inherently And because they perceive the lack of inherent existence, right, their afflictive they perceive the lack of inherent existence of their afflictive emotions. So it’s talking about being isolated from the perception of truly afflictive emotions. The only way you can have true afflictive emotions is if you perceive afflictive emotions as being true. But when you perceive their lack of inherent existence, you’re isolated from truly existent afflictive emotions. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And then he gestured and said, when you said, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Does that mean you understood? Okay. So that then the says, so there are these are the different types of characteristics. There are knowledge characteristics. There are there there is eighteen of them?
No, forty eight of them. There are specific characteristics, so there are sixteen of them. There are active or whatever activity characteristics, and there are eleven of them. And there are entity characteristics, and there are sixteen of them. This is the end of chapter.
The next chapter or next topic is topic six. Mahāyāna partial concordance with liberation, which is a synonym of the path of accumulation. So we’ll do that next week. Week. Good.
Yeah. I think it’s a different wording. I think it’s just it’s a different wording to it. But do you remember what chapter the signlessness would be? Because I can’t remember what the words are.
What were the entity characteristics the second one? Does it have a title on top of it? The four yeah. Geshe-la says the three doors to liberation. The three doors to liberation.
Yeah. Yeah. So Okay. So it’s a different word, Joe. The word that they’re translating let’s see.
I just scrolled. Okay. So the word that they’re translating as signs in this instance is the one that’s usually translated as signs. Alright? And the one that they’re translating is signlessness in the other one is the word that yeah.
It’s yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s the this word, which is. Valid cognition, the objects of valid cognition. Yeah.
A sign of valid cognition. So it’s a different word for sign. Yeah. Geshe-la said the reason that they’re saying signlessness. Which one was this because?
Right? Yeah. Okay. Is is this signlessness is it means that they because okay. The reason that they said signlessness is because Okay.
So a valid cognition comes about dependent on the sign. Right? And Geshe-la was saying? There is no cause. Yeah?
There’s no valid cognition of a cause for inherent existence. Right? So there’s no valid sign for inherent existence. So they can’t so there’s no valid cognition of a cause for inherent existence because there’s no sign of a cause for inherent existence. So what they’ve done in the English translation is skip a skip a a beat or it’s no.
Not skip a beat. Skip a step. Right? And instead of saying there is no valid cognition, they’re not calling it valid cognitionless. Well, how do say that?
Valid cognitionless. They’re calling it signlessness. Does that make sense? So it’s yeah. Instead of talking about the valid cognition that perceives a valid sign, they’re talking about the lack of the sign itself.
Translating it from the perspective of the subject, object as opposed to subject. Does that make sense? It’s not the same thing in Tibetan. Yeah? Uh-huh.
How is he not going? Okay. He said, it’s not saying there isn’t any old form of progression. It’s saying there is no ultimate progression. Alright?
So, ultimately, there is progression, nor relatively there is, because ultimately there is only is is empty. So even when we’re going we’re going somewhere, right, we don’t we’re not going somewhere the same way that we think we’re going. Yeah. So from the perspective of seeming reality, so what what we see, what we’ve seen, there is going; from the ultimate perspective of ultimate reality. Okay.
So from the perspective of ultimate truth or ultimately, there is no Buddhahood, there is no person going to Buddhahood, and there is no going because they’re not inherently existent. Okay. I said, so from the perspective I kept translating back into Tibetan, from the perspective of ultimate truth, he said, you cannot say perspective of ultimate truth, you can only say ultimately, right? So ultimately, we don’t have to do anything because we don’t exist. So ultimately, we don’t exist. Relatively, we do.
So relatively, we have to work towards Buddhahood. Ultimately, we don’t exist, so we don’t have to work towards Buddha. There is no working. Mhmm. Yeah.
Mhmm. Okay. Is this a let’s try and make Ruth’s job difficult today. I said, that’s strange. Isn’t he?
No. That’s normal. I think I just explained gravity. I’m not sure.