Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The session opens with the story of Asaṇga’s twelve-year cave retreat — dripping water carving a hole in rock, a maggot-covered dog whose agony sparked great compassion, and Maitreya appearing where the dog had lain. In this 45-minute talk, Geshe Pema Tsering uses this to introduce the Ornament for Clear Realizations, dictated by Maitreya during one Tuśita morning (equivalent to twelve Earth years), before turning to the Seventy Topics. He explains that the Ornament is presented from the Middle Way autonomous school’s perspective, then walks through the three-attribute definition of the perfection of wisdom: its base (a Buddha’s continuum only), its entity (non-dual exalted wisdom), and what it negates (inherent existence). A closing Q&A covers how view and method are distributed across Maitreya’s five texts and how study of Buddhist philosophical schools lets readers identify each text’s orientation. Suited to students beginning this classical commentary series.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 ST 2003 01 30.mp3
UUID: 8aa899e8-a150-4b7f-9394-7c56eecb1ac2
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-01-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~3,048
The people of India are alive. So her two sons became the the great Buddhist scholars, Asaṇga, as we have mentioned, and the youngest son was actually Vasubandhu. Mhmm. Yeah. So Asaṇga grew up, obviously, surrounded by the the the teachings of the Buddha because his mother was an emanation of Tārā.
And then at a certain age, he went and became a monk in Nālānda, became an expert, one of the teachers in Nālānda. And then he went away and stayed in a retreat for twelve years, praying to meet Maitreya in order to take teachings from Maitreya and trying to trying to generate enough faith and devotion in his heart that that he would be able to see Maitreya. But he meditated twelve years, and he still didn’t meet Maitreya. Okay. Okay.
So he was he was meditating in a cave for twelve years, and he was getting a bit frustrated and a bit bored. And he was like, this is really hard. I’m not not bored. A bit frustrated. And he was thinking, this is really hard, and I and I can’t do it.
You know? I can’t and I’m not gonna be able to do it. And then he actually looked over, and it was raining outside, and there was a hole in one part of his cave, and the water was dripping in through the cave and hitting a rock. And it had been hitting the rock so long while he had been there that it actually created some kind of a little hole. And he thought if water can do that to a rock, then I can achieve Buddhahood.
So he was, like, encouraged to keep going. So so when he was coming down from his cave after meditating for twelve years, he saw a female dog lying on the side of the road, and the female dog was covered all over its stomach in different places by the maggots, like the insects that eat flesh, and they were they were eating away at this this dog, and she was obviously in a lot of pain. And when he saw her face and how much pain that the dog was in, the great compassion arose in Asaṇga, and he tried he was overwhelmed by this feeling of being of wanting help in some way. So he he was overwhelmed by compassion for the dog, and then he started thinking about the and the maggots as well because the maggots were driven by this this this this self grasping and their pride and their need to eat, and they had to eat something else’s flesh. If they didn’t eat something else’s flesh, they were gonna die.
And he didn’t particularly want the maggots to die because that would be, like, not a very compassionate thing to do. So what he actually did was chop some of his leg off and put that down next to the dog. And then he he was thinking that if he actually transferred the maggots over to the to the flesh, then they were gonna die as well because he’d have to squish them to do it. So the idea he came up with was to put his tongue out at at and stick it onto the onto the maggots, then they’d stick to his tongue, then he could transfer them to the to the the piece of flesh that he put beside it. And he went down with his his tongue open and to to pick up the maggots and his eyes closed because he was still thought it was a bit gross and went, at this.
And then nothing happened. He didn’t there there no maggots came onto his tongue, he couldn’t quite understand what was happening. So he opened his eyes up, and there in front of him was the the was the Maitreya, the Buddha, all shining and glowing like a a god. So so when Asaṇga saw Maitreya, he naturally said, so where have you been? I’ve been trying to meditate on meeting you for twelve years, and you didn’t show up.
You know, where have you been? And he said, I’ve been there the whole time. And he actually said to him, you know, you spat on me. And he said, what? And he said, I was sitting there in front of you, but because of the power of your karma and delusions, you couldn’t actually see me.
But then he showed him, like, the the the spit and said, this is where he spat on me. And he went, oh, and then because he said he didn’t realize that he said he didn’t realize that Maitreya was sitting next to him, so he just went, and then landed on Maitreya. And Maitreya just went, look. See? You spat on me.
I was there. And and so he said it wasn’t up until you had this realization of great compassion come about in your mind stream when you saw the dog that you cleared away enough negativities in order to see me. So this is how you see me. So Maitreya then said to Asaṇga, if you take me into town on your back, no one’s gonna be able to see me because nobody else has clear enough karma to be able to to see me. And he said, I don’t believe you.
And he said, Well, come on, let’s go. And he put him on his back and they went into town. And when they got into town, not a single person could see him. And Maitreya was saying, Can you see the person on my back? And he said, What?
And then nobody saw him because nobody had done the practice or the had had the the accumulation of merit the same way that Asaṇga had, so nobody could experience Maitreya’s presence except for one old lady. And she could only see the the dog. And she said to Asaṇga, why are you walking around with a dog with maggots on your shoulder? Mhmm. So she was the only person who had enough merit and had cleared away enough obscurations to be able to experience the presence of Maitreya.
So then Maitreya said to Asaṇga that he would teach him all these texts that he needed to know, but he couldn’t do it here on Earth. He had to take him up to his his home his home, which was Tuśita heaven or the Tuśita Pure Realm. He had to lead him back up there in order to be able to teach him. So then Asaṇga and Maitreya led Asaṇga back to the Tuśita Pure Land. So they were they stayed up in Tuśita for a morning in the god in the god realms.
And in that one morning, he taught him the Sublime Continuum, the Ornament to the Sutras, the Ornament for Clear Realizations, the Ornament of Dharma, or however it’s translated. And that was all in one morning in about three or four hours. And when they came back to Earth, twelve years had gone past in the time that took for a morning to go past in the god realm. So also in this time that Asaṇga was in this pure realm, he actually achieved the level of a, what do you say, ārya, exalted being. He was on the third the third ground of the path of meditation.
So the idea was that because he was a a bodhisattva and a exalted being on the third level of the path of meditation that he would actually be able to teach these texts that Maitreya had taught him in Tuśita. He’d be able to teach them on earth. And the main one out of these five texts is actually the ornament for clear realizations. And these seventy topics that we’re going to start studying is actually the overview or the explanation of this the ornament for clear realizations that was taught by Maitreya. So this text, the ornament for clear realizations, is actually taught by Maitreya from the point of view of the Madhyamaka, the middle way autonomous school, not from the point of view of the Prāsaṇgika school or the Consequentialist school.
Thank you. For other consequential school, it was taught from the point of view of the autonomous school. The reason he of doing this was that it was that it was clearer if it was taught from this school. A couple of the other texts, some people say they were taught from the point of view of the autonomous, some people say they were taught from the point of view of the consequentialist school. Okay, so from amongst the five texts, there’s some that were taught from the point of view of the mind only school, then we have some including sublime continuum that were taught from the point of view of the consequentialist school and then there’s some that were taught from the point of view like the ornament of clear realizations of the Middle Way autonomous school.
They say in history books and things like that, in the historic writings, Asaṇga was a champion for both the autonomous Middle Way school and the mind only school, and that Nāgārjuna was the hero or the founder of the no, not the founder, the propagator of the consequentialist school. But this doesn’t actually follow through considering that these texts that Asaṇga brought back from Maitreya actually have texts based from all the different types of view. Okay, so the seventy topics. When I talk about the seventy topics, it says in the first part that the seventy topics is an explanation of the eight categories and seventy topics of the ornament of clear realizations, and it’s presented in a clear manner. These seventy topics are actually split up through the eight categories that make up the eight chapters of the Ornament for Clear Realizations.
So in each of the different chapters there is a certain amount of topics that are covered. So the first thing that you have to establish when you’re studying the seventy topics is the concept that wisdom realizing emptiness or the perfection of wisdom, and exalted knower of aspects and the result of the perfection of wisdom, they’re all mutually inclusive. You need to have to you need to be able to understand that before you start studying the text. So the definition of the perfection of wisdom is a fully developed or a finished exalted wisdom qualified by the three attributes. What we’re talking about here is only a Buddha.
By, the first one is the base, and the base for an exalted knower of aspects and the base for a perfection of wisdom is only the continuum of a Buddha superior. Until we become a Buddha superior, we can’t have an exalted knower of aspects and we haven’t perfected wisdom. So while we’re still sentient beings, this doesn’t apply to us. It only applies to Buddhas and people who have perfected perfected wisdom. Buddhas who are people of perfected wisdom.
So the next aspect that defines a perfection of wisdom is is what we call its entity or its substance, the thing that it’s made up of, and it’s made up of an exalted wisdom knower that understands that things are not dual. And the reason that this is so is because they understand that things do not exist from their own side because they understand emptiness. Okay. So the the third aspect that makes up the that’s referred to in the definition of the perfection of wisdom is it’s what it’s free from. Free from the thing which is to be negated.
The thing which is to be negated is that things are truly existent. Because it understands all phenomena and understands that all phenomena are free from inherent existence, then it also understands that they are empty of inherent existence and like an illusion. Because it understands this, this becomes the third aspect of the perfection of wisdom. Are you getting it? Good.
Good. Oh, yeah. So we can stop there for then for tonight. And if anyone if anyone has any questions, then please say Yeah. Hang on.
This is you finding someone, Joe. Yeah. Oh, oh, So the the actual basis of the teachings is the perfection of wisdom sutras by the Buddha Śākyamūni. But because in the Buddha Śākyamūni’s teachings, he emphasized the view as opposed to the method, Then the teacher Maitreya through the what do you call him? Ārya.
Asaṇga taught these teachings to emphasize the method. Yeah. In the teachings In the teachings that Buddha gave on emptiness, the view was emphasized and the method was kind of hidden, implied. And then so what happened was Maitreya came along to emphasize the method aspect while his view is implied. Okay.
Yeah. It’s a it’s a wisdom text. The wisdom is actually implied, and the the method is emphasized, but it’s still with but because of that, it’s still a wisdom text. Back about three minutes. There were three things at work.
Mhmm. I missed the third one. Okay. Wisdom and knowledge of aspects. And the perfection of wisdom, the knower of all aspects, and the resultant truth no.
Sorry. It’s what’s it called? The resultant perfection of wisdom. They came to Tibet through translators in the original dissemination. Yeah.
So, yeah, definitely before the Gelugpas came around, but he thinks so in the in the first in the first transmission that they went to Tibet, and there was two two people who translated it, and one of them is unnamed, but we don’t know the name. It definitely before. Oh, okay. Yeah. I’m gonna run.
Yeah. He hasn’t actually read it. Right? He said a long time ago, many years ago, a long time ago. Yeah.
Okay. I got this. I got it. Yeah. He said most of the time in texts, they don’t in Tibetan texts, they don’t actually say what time it was.
They say he said they say it in Western texts, but they don’t say it in most of the Tibetan texts when when people live. He said these days, they they know which day it is, and you say, hey. I’m gonna go there on this day, and I was born on this day. But really in Tibet when he was growing up and back way back in the day, they just didn’t know any of that. He said, like, most of the dates in the Western calendar are fixed around when Jesus was born.
And so they have this idea that that if it was since there’s definitely when since Oh, okay. So they they they they know what the Tibetan years are for things, but they have trouble translating it into what the Western year was. So even if he said it was such and such fire dragon year, it wouldn’t mean that much to you. So Geshe-la says that their their years actually date from the time that the Kālacakra was first brought to Tibet or something. Apart from that, they don’t know that much.
He said it it comes about okay. This is to answer the question about why the time’s different. It depends, obviously, on karma. When you’re born in a place like the god realm, your life is a lot longer. So because the life’s a lot longer, it makes the days a lot longer.
And if you’re born in the human realm, it becomes shorter. And when you’re born in the hell realms, you’re actually dying again and again and again and again in a a quick procession, so everything becomes even shorter then. Right. It’s either ten or five. Some people say five.
Some people say ten. Geshe-la thinks maybe five, and they’re all different ones, he has to become an expert in all five of them. There’s, like, some of them are, like, dance, and some of them are text, and some of them are poetry. Okay. Maybe this one.
I can I’ll show you later. Yeah. The one just to the right of Buddha. Oh, the the. So yeah.
Yeah. I was on the wrong side. And the other side is Nāgārjuna. Oh. Yeah.
This is a. You had to You have to know that they mean the same thing. Okay. Yeah. He said if you read it, then you can understand that the way that he’s presenting things is from a point of view of a the autonomous school because it fits into their tenets.
Yes. So so if you’re reading it, then you can understand the the and you know tenets, and you know the different views. The sublime continuum is taught from the consequentialist school, and the mind only school is represented by the ornament to the sutras and the I can’t I don’t know how to say it in English, but it’s like the explanation of dharma as well. Yeah. He said he’s going back to your question about how do you know about the tenets.
He said that they knew all the different schools, Ārya Asaṇga and Maitreya, they knew all the different schools. So when they presented it, were really clear on which school that they were presenting it from. And people who are reading it, they can see because of their explanations and because of the things they’re presenting, they say, Oh, that accords with the mind only school or that accords with the autonomous school. But you have to study tenets first and really in-depth to be able to understand that. So he said, I mean, there’s four of them.
So you you can do it by a process of process of elimination. If they say this, then they’re not that. If they say that, then there’s not that. So there’s not five. There’s only four.
So by process of elimination or by what they’re like, they what they’re implying, then you can get which one of the schools they are. And if and if they don’t fit into any of those four schools, then they say that Buddha didn’t say them. They’re they’re they’re they’re like a spurious text or something like that.