Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “What happens when someone falsely accuses you of theft?” is the vivid test case Geshe Pema Tsering uses in this 45-minute session to locate the grasping-self we must dismantle. He opens with a Pänchen Lama verse on dedicating merit for others rather than oneself, using a prime minister analogy to show why acting for all beings generates far more merit. The commentary examines three types of consciousness toward self: those who see self as merely labeled, those with a spontaneous sense of I (like a wave from the ocean), and those who hold that things truly exist from their own side. Only the third must be abandoned; the second is needed for conventional reality. Practitioners are then guided to split attention — one part engaged in the arising self-grasping, one part quietly observing it.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 SoP 2002 10 22.mp3
UUID: 84f832f3-e47f-401a-bb5e-4ee857fcd2c8
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Selflessness of Person (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-10-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~3,678
Okay, so yesterday I said a quote from the Pänchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen in his Kālacakra aspirational prayer. And in this he says, the collections of all my merit from the three times, May they not be directed towards the stain of my own benefit, because I don’t need it. But instead, may they benefit all beings of the three realms without exception, and may I achieve Buddhahood for their benefit or for their purpose. May they be dedicated to me achieving Buddhahood for their benefit. So in this case, when he’s talking about I, he’s talking about himself, Pänchen Palden Yeshe.
And the three times is the past, the present and the future. And this is every little the collection of the merit of every little good thing that he’s done. And the beings of the three realms, it can either be the form, the formless realm and the desire realm, or the subterranean realm, the terrestrial realm and the extraterrestrial realm. Yeah. So it’s either those those two type of divisions.
So basically, it’s all beings may he achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all those beings. So the main point of this quote is part where he says, Not for my own benefit, which is basically like a stain, but for the benefit of others. Because they talk about two different types of bodhicitta. There’s a bodhicitta that is engaged bodhicitta, and there’s bodhicitta that is aspirational. So the idea of doing everything for the benefit of others comes under the idea of aspirational bodhicitta, and once it’s actually come to fruition, then it’s engaged bodhicitta.
So we have to think in this way, we can’t be thinking that I want to achieve Buddhahood, I want to use the collection of my merits to achieve Buddhahood for our own sakes. We have to be thinking, I want to use the collection of my merit to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of every other individual being. If we use it for our self, then it becomes something that needs to be abandoned. This idea of doing something for yourself is a thought that needs to be abandoned. But if it’s for all for the benefit of all other beings, it becomes a reason to achieve enlightenment.
So, if we’re thinking that we’re going to do something that’s of benefit for ourselves, we’re going to do something virtuous for the benefit of ourselves, then this becomes something that is only the tiniest bit of merit, it only creates the tiniest bit of merit. But if we abandon this idea of doing things for our own benefit and take on the concept of doing things for the benefit of all beings, then anything that we do becomes a cause for enormous benefit. This can even extend to, if we’re thinking, if we’re perpetually thinking about others benefit and not our own, we even may give up our bodies or experience any kind of suffering for the benefit of all beings. We may even go to these kind of extremes if we have this thought in our mind. So, if we are doing things for our own benefit then it becomes, even if we are talking in worldly terms, it becomes something that isn’t that great a thing to do.
For example, if we are working just for our own benefit, we are working so we personally can get something from the effort that we are putting in, then we are the only people that benefit from that, so that makes it a small reaping. If we’re talking about people who have big jobs to do, like for example, a prime minister or president, everything that they do affects so many more people that therefore it becomes more powerful and it is more potent and it has a greater influence on a bigger amount of people. Therefore, we need to be thinking about it in this way. If we do something that’s just for ourselves, even in worldly terms, it doesn’t affect that much, but if we’re doing something that’s for the benefit of all beings, it becomes even in worldly terms, it becomes something that’s of great importance. So if we’re doing something just for our own benefit, it’s really difficult for us to create any sort of big stacks of merit.
We have to do things for the benefit of all beings or as many beings as we can comprehend. And this is in the same way whereas if we’re even in daily work, if we’re just working for a small cause, then only a small cause can come about because of that. Mhmm. And so you have to guess this is you have to like people. If you like people, then you’re working for the benefit of of all the people that you like.
And if you don’t like people and you’re working for yourself, then it’s only the you that’s being involved in this in in the whole process and it only has limited benefit. So the more people that you like, the more people that you wanna work for, and therefore, the more benefit you’re going to be. So therefore, if we’re thinking, okay, I’m working for the benefit of all sentient beings, and this becomes a cause for great merit and it becomes a big thing. But whereas if we’re thinking I’m doing this for myself and I don’t don’t worry about the rest of the beings, then it becomes very strong. It becomes like there’s only a little bit of merit and a little bit of purpose behind it.
Apart from that, it really doesn’t amount to that. So if we meditate now for five or so minutes on and how much benefit we can be to all beings and how we wanna benefit all beings, then this becomes a big purpose even in these five minutes. So then, therefore, if we wanna achieve, if we’re focusing on achieving Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, then this is what bodhicitta is. This is the mind that we have to be trying to generate and focusing on it. So if we can just focus on that.
So in order to develop a bodhicitta, need to develop great compassion. In order to develop great compassion, need to have some sort of renunciation. Geshe-la says he has talked about this sort of thing a lot of times before, so if you can try and remember some of that and concentrate on that. So, we have to think, okay, I’m suffering in the way that I’m suffering, is the same way that all beings are suffering and I want all beings to be free from this suffering. So in order to be free from that suffering I have to achieve Buddhahood.
So I try and achieve Buddhahood for their benefit and in this way you should focus Okay, so there’s two different types of selflessnesses. There’s the selflessness of the person and the selflessness of object. And we’re in the selflessness of the person at this stage. And within the selflessness of persons, the outline for this text says that the thing that we need to do is pursue the absorption resembling space and the first thing we need to do in order to achieve that is to understand what is to be refuted, what the actual object is that we are trying to see, its emptiness. And that was the section we’re we’re in last week.
Okay. So we have three different types of people. There’s the people that have an understanding well there’s three different ways the three different people each have a different understanding of the way things exist. The first type of person understands that things exist by being merely labeled or they exist by convention. The second type of person, which is someone who hasn’t really studied or doesn’t think that much about tenets or anything, They don’t it doesn’t worry to them either way whether things exist or truly exist or don’t truly exist.
And the third type of person, which is what Geshe-la says from the Cittamātra School down in terms of the tenets, they say that things truly exist from their own side. Okay, so these first type of people, say, okay, there’s the aggregates, there’s form and feeling and consciousness and all these collection of what’s literally heaps, like different heaps of things. So, on top of these different heaps of consciousness and form and everything, I’m going stick a label which is me or I. That’s the first type of self grasping. It’s seeing that there’s a collection of different heaps and then sticking a label on that that is I.
That’s the first type of person or first type of way of grasping at I that we’re talking about. So this kind of grasping itself has this idea that, okay, there’s consciousness, there’s form, there’s feeling, there’s consciousness, all of these, on top of the collection of those, I’m going to stick a label of I and this is what this is all that I is, It is merely labeled. So, is this label on top of this collection and if we can see things in that way, then that’s the first type of grasping at eye. So these people have some understanding, or this people that this consciousness incorporates some understanding of emptiness. It has a mind it has a thought that understands what emptiness is.
It understands that apart from this label that I’m sticking on this collection of thought and body and all these things, there is nothing that is truly established from the side of the object that is is facing backwards at me. I’m labeling it, but there’s nothing coming from its side that’s establishing itself. So, these people understand that the self is merely labeled. They understand that there is nothing truly existent in self. And because of this, the way that they grasp our self is refined and incorporates understanding of emptiness.
So the second type of consciousness or the second of person with a consciousness that we’re talking about here is the people that don’t have an understanding of emptiness, don’t have any understanding of emptiness and therefore when they interact with an object, what they see is that the object they don’t say well this is truly established or this is not truly established, they just think it is. Yeah? And that it kind of comes about and it’s there and they can see it. It raises up itself or something, they don’t have a solid thought that is truly established. So, there’s this word that’s lhan skyes that I was having trouble trying to translate, but Geshe-la says it’s like a wave coming out of the ocean, the concept that they have of the self, it just is there, it just comes and they don’t think, oh, that wave is truly existent or that wave isn’t truly existent, it just is there, and they don’t think about it too much.
It just comes about. So, it’s like this sort of consciousness that we have if we haven’t realized emptiness, well, have an understanding of emptiness even, it’s just like, Oh, I’m here. You’re not thinking, oh, I’m truly existent, but you just think, oh, I’m here. And it just comes about and it comes about, but it’s not something that needs a lot that has has had a lot of analysis. So, it’s not something that’s thought of as being really truly existent, it’s not something thought of as being not truly existent.
It’s just something that is any old how. So the third type of consciousness is the one that’s promoted by people who hold tenets of the Cittamātra school or the Mind Only school and down, that is that things truly exist from their own side. So when they see things they go, Oh, that truly exists from its own side. And there’s this consciousness, a thought through consciousness that things truly exist because that’s what they accept in their belief system. So you get that there’s these three different types of consciousness or people that have this consciousness.
There’s the type that’s that thinks that things are not truly established or they’re not established by their nature and they’re merely labeled. There’s the type that doesn’t hasn’t analyzed it at all, so it could be truly established, it could not be really established, but it’s just there. And then there’s the third type that is because of of because of their tenets or their philosophy, they accept that things are truly established from their own side. So, the third one, from amongst these three, the third one, which was the idea that things are truly established from their own side, this is a mistaken consciousness and something that we need to apply logic to to get rid of. It’s something that needs to be abandoned as a concept.
So this idea that I am me and I exist naturally that rhymes. Sorry. I am I am me and I exist exist I naturally I can’t say that. Okay, I am me, me, me, me, I, I, I, and I exist, I truly exist, and I exist by my nature. And this is something that we need to get rid of, it’s something that we can experience in our our mind streams as well.
So this concept of the I exist naturally, that that I exist from from my own side or truly, that that concept is what we have to destroy if we want to understand emptiness. And by by destroying it is how we understand emptiness. By getting rid of it is how we understand emptiness. When we’re talking about the second type of consciousness or the second type of person, it says person but it’s actually more like a consciousness, What we’re talking about is something that is we naturally are thinking, we naturally have this idea of I in my mind, in our minds, but it’s not something that is solidified by a philosophical system. It’s just something that comes about naturally or spontaneously in our mind streams.
And by the vent of this that energy or the by that’s by that’s power, then we get this idea of like, oh, I have eaten and I am sitting, these sort of things. Once we have that idea in our head, then this is the this is like the second out of those three that I was talking about. This is the that we said. The second one, which is the idea of it coming about naturally but not based on a philosophical system, and this is where we get the idea of I have eaten. So, our mind is naturally happy or content with this idea of self that comes about without any analysis or any, stringent, analytical process in our mind.
This and this is what we, usually think of it by ourselves when we go, I’m, I’m walking, I’m going to work, I have to go and do this, I have to do that, whatever we have to do, we get this idea of I, but it’s not something that is solidified and it’s something that our mind seems quite content with. So this this concept of I is actually okay in a lot of ways because we do have this idea that we’re going places, there is someone doing something, there is someone going for a walk and there is like a there’s an actor and an action and so these actually exist. So we don’t want to get rid of them completely because they are in existence and we experience them. So this idea that they are there is is actually okay, actually acceptable. So this idea, this I am walking, the I in the statement I am walking is is something that we actually need and has to be accessible because we have to have some way of describing things that happen and the people that are doing them but what we’re talking about we have to understand with this concept of someone doing something and the action that they’re doing is that these are actually they’re actually a label or a convention or a term for what is happening.
So because we need them in terms of the terminological understanding or our conceptual understanding conventional, sorry, understanding, then this kind kind of expression is acceptable. So, spontaneous concept of I that comes about, we actually need this in order to understand conventional reality because once we label something as being merely labeled, once we say this doesn’t exist from its own side, it’s merely labeled, it doesn’t make it a non existent. It still exists conventionally, so we have to have some kind of terminological or conventional way of understanding this. So the way we have this is this spontaneous understanding of convention that comes about in our mind which is still grasping at I but is not the same as saying that things truly exist from their own side. So, the way that these things happen is not that we can have one clear thought that’s thinking, oh, this is a merely labeled eye that’s going for a walk or this is an eye that is neither truly existing or not truly existing, but just is going for a walk or this is a truly labeled eye going for a walk, it doesn’t happen like this.
They all come together and it is not clear it’s not clear for us which one is which type of mind or which one is which type of thought that we are experiencing. So we so sometimes we can think that it’s a sometimes with we have we can have in one one in one mind stream the idea that something is autonomous, that it can exist from its own side, and that is also it the idea that it doesn’t really exist at the same time, but we need to be able to differentiate between these two different types of understanding. Because if we’re like us, we can’t make a differentiation between these two. We don’t have the hey. If we’re a normal human being then or being then we don’t have the the ability to tell which one which one is which because they’re really ingrained in our consciousness.
So, because it’s difficult for us to differentiate out this normal not necessarily truly existent I that is in our mind stream all the time, what can happen is that we can have situations that come about which we can isolate it by using. For example, if someone is praising us or berating us or we’re experiencing a really blissful moment or a really painful moment, in those situations then this idea of what we’re actually clinging to a self comes to the floor. And the example is that if someone says, you’re a thief, then you get this feeling of, I am I guess this is like, I am not a thief. I am not. And so this is when you can see the the the concept that that the a truly established I that we’re clinging to come to the fore.
It rises up out of our consciousness and and is is clearer for us then because it’s not usually clear for us. So, yeah, so if someone said to you, you’re a thief, and you have this, I am not. I did not do that. And you get this this it says extreme anger hatred here, but yeah, so the extreme hatred for them saying, I am not. You’re wrong.
I didn’t do this. But then then and we kind of, like, lose our mind a little bit because we can’t do anything to convince them that we’re not a thief because more nervous we get, the more we act like a thief. So from so at this stage, from it from the center of our heart, this thing like the wave we were talking about before comes up that’s like, this is not me, and the and and this I did not do this, and it’s like that idea of this thing arising and it’s like really gripping at this concept of self, that’s the thing that we have to get rid of. That’s the thing to be abandoned, that’s our idea of something being established naturally or established by its nature. So in the same way that if there’s two people walking along the road together then they can keep like one aspect of their concentration on the road and one aspect of their concentration on their friend.
In the same way when we get this feeling of I coming up, this really strong sense of I, then the way that we learn to analyze it is by getting having one little bit of our consciousness looking at this the grasping itself while the other part of consciousness is engaged in that actual grasping. So that we get this idea so if we’re doing this, then we get this idea come about that we’re looking for what is this self, this truly existent self that we’re trying to put our finger on or analyze. And sometimes we get the idea that maybe it’s in our body, but if we’re looking at this stage, it doesn’t come up that it’s in our body. And other times, we get the idea that it’s in our mind, but if we’re doing this process and we’ll notice that it’s not in our mind either, that it’s something separate from both our mind and our body. So if we start looking at it and we think, okay, is this self in my mind and it’s not in my mind?
And is this self in my body and it’s not in my body? So if it’s not in there, in either my mind or my body, where is it? It doesn’t look like it’s here.