Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with Śāntideva’s image of even the weakest being in saṃsāra becoming “a child of the Sugatas” the moment bodhicitta arises, Geshe Pema Tsering uses this 45-minute session to examine why that moment is so difficult to reach. He traces the obstacle to self-cherishing and our ingrained habit of chasing samsaric comfort — which he identifies not as happiness but as “the suffering of change” — and insists renunciation means viewing saṃsāra like a burning building one simply runs out of, not a place one gradually negotiates leaving. He connects renunciation and bodhicitta as sequential steps and encourages students that every bodhicitta prayer plants grooves in the mind, accumulating cause across lifetimes even when full realization feels remote. The second half returns to the Seventy Topics commentary, defining the “uninterrupted peak application” — the final bodhisattva yoga that directly produces omniscience with no intervening moment — and introduces the perverse conceptions to be abandoned at this stage of the path. Suited to practitioners already grounded in Mahāyāna path-structure terminology.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 ST10 2003 10 15.mp3
UUID: 4ba633ae-8a6c-4b8c-9e81-c9bb0feb732a
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-10-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~3,930
Okay, in the Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, Śāntideva said: The moment an awakening mind arises in those weak ones in the jail of cyclic existence, they will be named a child of the Sugatas and will be revered by both humans and gods of the world. Now, what this is referring to is the fact that if somebody doesn’t have bodhicitta in their mind stream then they look up to those who do have bodhicitta in their mind stream as something to be revered. It means that after the first moment of developing bodhicitta, from the second moment onwards, gods and humans will both refer to that being as being a child of the Buddha, which is another way of saying a bodhisattva. So, they will look to those beings with objects of reverence because they possess something that we ordinary beings don’t have, and that is the mind of bodhicitta. So this is one of the reasons that we need to train in bodhicitta because we need to become an object of veneration and not so much an object someone who venerates others.
I mean, yeah, the opposite of that. And not just an object who venerates others. It doesn’t work that way. So this is what we need to do, but actually doing it is very, very difficult. You may wonder why there are so many different methods described for developing bodhicitta.
The reason this is because it’s very difficult for us to try and develop this mind, for us to develop this mind of bodhicitta. The reason it’s very difficult for us to develop this mind of bodhicitta is because we have self-cherishing. The mind of self-cherishing negates all our efforts to think properly about others, to focus on others, and focusing on others is what we need to do. Working for the benefit of others is what we need to do in order to develop bodhicitta. So, this mind that’s cherishing ourselves that comes about through grasping at our inherent existence.
The mind that’s cherishing ourselves that comes about through grasping at our own inherent existence is the problem that we need to deal with. Otherwise, we can’t think or focus on others. We can’t give our body away. If we can’t at least give our bodies away in order to care for others, then how are we going to develop the mind working towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings? So the main reason that we can’t view things in this way, the main reason that we can’t think of others and, for example, give ourselves up, give our bodies up in order to give others is because we spend so much time focusing on this body, trying to make ourselves comfortable, to make us not experience any suffering.
So, we have this habit of trying to make ourselves comfortable, trying to avoid suffering ourselves and trying to experience happiness ourselves. We have this so ingrained that we don’t tend to think of others. We don’t tend to think of the sufferings of others, we don’t tend to think of trying to make others happy. If if we do do this, we don’t do it with as much frequency. If we watch what we think about, then most of the time we’re thinking about how to make ourselves happy, how to stop ourselves from experiencing suffering.
We’re not thinking about how to make others happy and how to make others stop experiencing suffering. Therefore, we can’t even establish that all sentient beings are experiencing the same experiences as us and that they want to be happy and they don’t want to experience suffering. We have trouble reminding ourselves of this fact and instead we get caught up in whether in how to make ourselves happy and how not to experience suffering ourselves. But the problem we have with this is that we don’t actually even know what happiness is. It would be okay if we were actually working towards our own happiness but we’re not working towards our own happiness.
We’re working towards something that we think is happiness but isn’t actually happiness. It’s a type of suffering, the suffering of change. So we spend all our time trying to attain something, thinking it’s happiness when it actually isn’t happiness. If we’re trying to attain ultimate happiness then that would be fine, but we’re trying to attain another form of suffering in actual fact. We just don’t see it that way.
So we try and cultivate all these things. We’re trying to experience happiness. And all the things that we try and cultivate, all the time that we try and cultivate happiness in Samsāra whether through virtuous or non virtuous means, we’re actually creating throwing karma to be reborn in Samsāra. So if we create positive virtuous karma, this if if our if our motivation isn’t to achieve enlightenment or get out of saṃsāra, this virtuous karma is actually still throwing karma. It’s still karma that will send us into saṃsāra.
And, virtuous karma is going to make us be reborn in saṃsāra, then it’s obvious that un virtuous karma or non virtuous karma is also going to make us be reborn in saṃsāra. So what we need to establish is we need to establish what happiness is because we don’t understand what happiness is apart from enlightened the the mind seeking for enlightenment, apart from bodhicitta and the mind seeking liberation. We aren’t searching there is no true happiness. We keep trying to find happiness, but there is no happiness apart from that. So, what we consider to be happiness, what we grasp as being happiness is actually causes for us to experience suffering, actually causes for us to be reborn in Samsāra.
So, we actually want to experience happiness, we have to establish, we have to recognize what happiness is and be able to differentiate it from what’s going to cause us suffering. We need to be able to figure this out. In other words, otherwise, we’re not doing anything but creating the causes for us to be reborn in Samsāra. We’re not doing anything but creating the causes for us to experience suffering. And so what we once what we need to do is we need to develop this understanding true happiness.
So true happiness comes about in the form of liberation and it comes about in the form of the the of of complete enlightenment, which is developed through the mind of the bodhicitta, the mind seeking to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. What we need to do then is we need to turn our mind away from the so called happinesses of saṃsāra that actually aren’t happiness and aren’t going to help us in any way and turn our mind towards the happiness of liberation this happiness of liberation which will actually grant us true happiness and once we’ve understood this once we’ve generated this idea of turning away from saṃsāra and working towards liberation then after some work, after some familiarization and meditation, will be able to establish the mind of bodhicitta. What we need to do in this case is once we recognize our own suffering and once we recognize there is no true happiness in saṃsāra for ourselves, then we need to recognize that just like us, all other beings can’t find happiness in saṃsāra, and just like us, all other beings want to be happy and don’t want to experience suffering. So by training in this way, we will then be able to develop bodhicitta.
Through this, through the mind of liberation and through the mind of enlightenment, we will be able to experience true happiness. So what happens then is that it’s very difficult. What this sets up is a pattern which makes it very difficult for us to establish any of these things, to try and develop bodhicitta, try and develop renunciation or the mind that understands emptiness. It’s very difficult for us to try and develop these understandings because what happens is we are so accustomed to trying to make ourselves happy and trying to search for saṃsāra happiness that when we actually apply ourselves to trying to develop any of these three things and we encounter obstacles of some kind, we encounter it’s hard, so we suffer from doing it, then we think, oh, no, I’m not very much into suffering. I I have to I have to turn away from doing that.
I’m I’m gonna get rid of that because I wanna be happy, and I was doing it to be happy. And so we we throw the ideas to the side and go back to trying to to get saṃsāra temporary happiness. What we’re really Yeah. So what we need to do is to get rid of completely completely the idea of being happy. The idea of having a of having a comfortable existence.
The idea of making ourselves happy in Samsāra. Because until we get rid of that idea, we can’t develop renunciation. Until we completely give up any idea of finding saṃsāra happiness, we can’t develop renunciation. And if we can’t develop renunciation, there’s no way we can develop bodhicitta. So every time we have this idea of I want to be happy, I want to be comfortable, we have to try and stop it because it’s not going to it’s not going to help us ultimately in any way because what we’re actually asking for is I want the suffering of change.
Want the suffering of change. Okay. I don’t have it. Can I have that for a second? Because I’m not translating prayer on the spot.
Yeah. So we sit there and we say we say the prayer goes, is like, I go for refuge until I’m enlightened in the Buddha, the Dharma. I had the wrong prayer because they start off the same. Where are they all then? Are they here?
It own. Sitting there saying, may the supreme jewel of the of Buddha Chita that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminished but increased more and more as long as I don’t have to suffer. Yeah? So we so we have this idea that, you know, as it may this all happen as long as I don’t have to experience any suffering, as long as I don’t have to give up any of my samsaric happiness. Yeah?
And just by thinking those things, we’re stopping the mind of renunciation. Just by thinking, I don’t wanna suffer. I don’t wanna do anything. I don’t wanna experience any samsaric unhappiness. We’re stopping the mind of renunciation because we’ve we’ve limited the idea.
Developing this mind of bodhisattva is very difficult for us. It’s very difficult for us to give to have this idea of giving up our our our worldly happiness or our happiness in order to achieve this end. So developing the mind of renunciation isn’t just thinking, yeah, I’ll give up isn’t even just thinking, yeah, I’ll give up some of my happiness in order to achieve enlightenment or I don’t mind if I don’t have as much as I want in order to achieve enlightenment. It’s the mind that views saṃsāra happiness as poison. It’s the mind that views any kind of saṃsāra happiness as an obstacle to achieving the goal.
It’s the mind that sees saṃsāra as being like a house on fire. So, for example, if Buddha’s house was on fire, we wouldn’t be sitting here thinking, well, I don’t know whether I wanna leave because of the things here. We just get out of here as soon as possible. So the mind of renunciation is similar. It is so determined to leave its saṃsāra, to get out of saṃsāra that it is not thinking about the things in saṃsāra, it’s not concentrating on those.
So once we’ve divided we’ve established or developed an uncontrived mind in this way, that’s when we’ve established or developed renunciation. So once we’ve established this fact, once we’ve turned away completely all the happiness in Sansara, or all that we view as happiness, and we view it as being like a burning building we’re about to run out of, once we’ve developed that uncontrived mind in ourselves, then we have to start thinking that, okay, I’m not alone here. All sentient beings are also suffering like this, and all sentient beings do not want to suffer and want to experience happiness. So I need to attain Buddhahood in order to be able to take them to that place. So we need to go that one step further in order to develop bodhicitta.
So in this way, then we can see that developing renunciation and developing bodhicitta are hard. So this is why in this in this introduction to the guide to the bodhisattvas way of life, that Śāntideva says that those who have developed bodhicitta because they’ve done something so difficult, because they’ve done something so profound from the point of view of those who don’t have it, because they’ve worked so hard to develop it. That’s why they’re revered by both humans and gods, worldly gods, especially worldly gods, because they are consumed with their pursuit of happiness and they’re so immersed in the pleasures of saṃsāra that it’s almost impossible for them to try and develop this mind of bodhicitta, develop the mind of renunciation followed by the mind of bodhicitta. So the gods, of course, will have to revere anyone who has developed bodhicitta. And because and the reason they have to do this is because it’s such a difficult thing to do.
So it’s very, very difficult thing to do. And we may have difficulty doing it, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t not try. And we should also remember that every time we think about this prayer that made the supreme jewel of the bodhicitta that has not arisen or rise and grow, every time we say that, we are planting the imprints, we are making the, like, the tracks in our mind, if you like, for bodhicitta to come along on. It’s making the grooves there to make it happen. So by doing this, every time we do that, we’re acclimatizing our mind or customizing our mind towards bodhicitta.
And so Eventually, we will have it, and every time we do that, we are moving closer towards developing bodhicitta. Geshe la says if you’re like him, you may have trouble doing it in his lifetime, but you shouldn’t think that that means it’s not worth trying. Every time you meditate on bodhicitta, every time you think of bodhicitta, every time you say the prayer bodhicitta, you are establishing the pattern to develop it. If it doesn’t happen in this lifetime, it will happen at some stage because of this practice. Just because it’s difficult to develop bodhicitta, just because it’s something that’s so precious and difficult to do, doesn’t mean that we should give up, that we should think that we can’t do it.
We can do it. We have the ability to do it. Should think that the Buddhas did the same thing. They kept meditating on bodhicitta until they had it because they used to be exactly the same as us. So in the same way that they develop bodhicitta, we can develop bodhicitta.
We just have to do it as much as we can. We have to think about it. And every time we think about it, we should think, well, I thought about bodhicitta. I established the pattern of bodhicitta in my mind, and that will act as a cause for me to develop it. So it works in the same way that I — as Geshe la explained — it works with anything that we do.
When we first started, it’s difficult. When we first started, it’s difficult for us to train our mind towards that. But if we keep training our minds towards bodhicitta, then it becomes easier and easier, and our understanding becomes subtler and subtler. So we just keep doing it until eventually we’ve established it firmly. It’s not just bodhicitta that this happens with, it’s everything that it happens with.
There are so many things that we do when we first do them, it’s difficult. We keep doing them, it becomes easier and easier. It’s the same with bodhicitta or the development of bodhicitta. And if we investigate, then we can see that when we first started hearing about bodhicitta, when we first started hearing about it in this lifetime, it was something very strange and weird to us, and we had a lot of trouble trying to develop the idea in our head when we tried to meditate. Meditate.
But now, if we compare ourselves now to what we were then, then we can see that it’s a little bit easier now. We can see that when we hear the word bodhicitta, we think, oh, bodhicitta. And we can focus on it, and it’s become easier for us to acclimatize ourselves to that idea. So that’s going to continue happening. So then we should be thinking well, then we should think or meditate on this idea.
This this idea is that in order for to to to take all sentient beings to Buddhahood, in order for all sentient beings to become Buddhas, and as Buddhas, for them to be completely free of negativities and and suffering and to experience all types of happiness or true happiness, In order for that to happen, may I myself become a Buddha so I can lead them to that state. And so that mind, focusing on that mind is what bodhicitta is. So we should meditate. Now we should meditate on that for a few minutes. Oh, but we don’t in doing that, don’t have to give our bodies away just yet.
Eventually, we have to try and have the idea to give our bodies away, but we don’t have to do that quite yet. Eight topics of peak application. From amongst those eight topics, we’re up to the quick review of I think we started it but didn’t finish the uninterrupted peak application. And then we’re up to the perverse conceptions to be abandoned indicated here. Yeah.
So it’s a number seven and eight, basically. I do remember. I don’t not that I remember anyway. Okay. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. You’re just getting ahead of yourself. Okay. This is gonna be tricky. No.
It’s just that I can’t yeah. What if you bring another chair right up behind? I’m yes. I’m not doing very well with the don’t let everybody know what’s going on mind training thing, am I? Yeah.
You know what else is gonna make things more difficult? I’ve got specific instructions not to do anything sideways. Well, put that in front. Okay. Because it’s making more trouble.
Okay. Now the definition of an uninterrupted peak application is a bodhisattva’s final yoga conjoined with a wisdom highly transformed from the Mahāyāna path of accumulation cultivates a compendium of the three exalted knowers and acts to directly produce the exalted knower of all aspects, which is its result. What this means is, from the beginning, Bodhisattva is final yoga. The reason it says final yoga is that it means the end of the continuum of a sentient being, hence final yoga. Conjoined with wisdom highly transformed.
What wisdom highly transformed means anything above that on the path. Right? So anything above the Mahāyāna path of accumulation is what it’s talking about. Then that cultivates a compendium of the three exalted knowers. The three exalted knowers being the knower of paths, knower of bases, and the knower of all aspects, the knower of all aspects.
Now from within those, we had a hundred and seventy three different aspects that we’ve been going through that they focus on, that these three knowers focus on in their practice. So it’s a compendium or a combination coming together of all of those different practices and it acts as the main cause or the moment preceding the knower of all aspects, or it acts as the moment preceding the omniscience of Buddha. So its direct result is the knower of all aspects, the omniscience or the ground of a Buddha. You’ll notice in the Jampa Gyatso translation that he says, The final Bodhisattva yoga, collectively meditating on the three pristine awarenesses of the three exalted knowers and qualified by the wisdom surpassing the Great Vehicle accumulation path. That’s all pretty much the same.
At the end it says, which directly generates omniscience as its result, which is missing from the other translation. The reason that it says directly generates omniscience as its result is that there is nothing in between this yoga or in between this application and the development of omniscience. In general we can say that all of these different minds that we’ve talked about, all of the different practices that we’ve talked about, the practices of Bodhisattvas, all of them have the omniscient mind or have knower of all aspects as their result. So, you can say the knower of all aspects is the result for all of them. But this is the only one that you can say, it is the exalted knower of all aspects, which is its direct result. Okay.
So the the the actual title actually says it all, uninterrupted peak application. What we mean by uninterrupted, when they say uninterrupted in all occasions, it means that there is nothing separating this action from its result. So any time you have something being uninterrupted, it means there is nothing in between. Tibetan literally means can be interpreted to mean uninterrupted or you could say no space in between. It can be interpreted both ways.
So there’s no space in between this and this result, which is omniscient knower or the knower of all aspects. Peak application in this instance is referring to the ultimate peak is the knower of all aspects. The ultimate peak is the development of the Buddha mind. So therefore, you could say it’s the yoga or the practice or the application which is not separated from or which has nothing in between it and the development of omniscience or it and the development of the knower of all aspects. And so the next bit is that it says that it and the end of the continuum of a sentient being mutually inclusive.
And this is for obvious reasons, because if something is connected to the development of omniscience without any breaking between, then it has to be the end of a continuum of sentient being. Okay. The next thing that it talks about is the things that need to be abandoned in the process of these peak applications. It talks about peak applications that are related to the different paths and, finally, the end of the continuum. In all of these peak applications, in all of the peaks along the path, there are certain things that need to be abandoned.
The way that they say it is certain things that need to be established as abandonments. This is talking about all of the ones that are abandoned on all the peaks or the peak of the end of the continuum. Yes, and its definition is that which is included in some type of manifest or seed of the conception indicated here with regard to the unsuitability of the two truths to be of a single entity.