Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute commentary on the Seventy Topics, Geshe Pema Tsering reaches a candid turning point when both teacher and translator admit they cannot remember all twenty secondary afflictive emotions and agree to return to them properly the following week. The session opens with four types of achievement on the Mahāyāna path, then moves through the Four Truths: the definition of the truth of suffering (impermanence, misery, emptiness, selflessness), karma’s divisions under the truth of origin (virtuous, non-virtuous, neutral; throwing and conditioning karma), and the six root afflictive emotions. A Q&A uses 2003 anti-war protests to untangle shame from embarrassment, examines whether thoughts accumulate karma, and closes with a practical note on reciting mantra before sleep to condition the mind overnight.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 ST3 2003 03 20.mp3
UUID: 665e0764-36da-404c-a705-292eb9b6903b
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-03-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~2,507
Okay, so when it says achieving, what an achieving is actually a Mahāyāna path. Now within the Mahāyāna path, there’s four different types of achievings. They are the armor armor like achieving, running like achieving, accumulation-like achieving, and completely engaging achieving. Now, I just made up those translations, so if anyone hears any better, please tell me. Okay, they actually come later on in the seventy topics but if you wanted to know what type of achievements there are then that’s these four is how they’re divided Sorry?
Yeah. Armor like, running. Running, are you sure? Yes. Okay.
Accumulation and direct engaging, perhaps. They should be somewhere further in the text, but yeah. And yeah. Okay. So we’re not going to go too far into the Division of Four at the moment because their definitions and how we’re supposed to engage in them actually comes later on in the text.
It’s in it’s they are part of the seventy topics. And this one. So the second one, precepts which instruct on the objects of observation, the four truths, only precepts which instruct on the truth of suffering, the truth of origin, the truth of the path and the truth of cessation. I was like, no. I do not know the definition of the truth of suffering.
It’s like, don’t know that. Okay. The definition of the truth of suffering is any description or understanding of impermanence, misery, emptiness, selflessness. Anything that can be included within this is the definition of truth of suffering. So, therefore, anything that carries along with it, the implications about impermanence, misery, emptiness and selflessness is included within the definition of the truth of suffering.
Okay, so we have to understand that there’s a difference between the divisions of the truth of suffering and suffering itself. What the Buddhist community actually said was suffering exists, so his saying suffering exists is the truth of suffering. Suffering itself is divided into three being the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and the suffering or all-pervasive suffering, but that’s a little bit different to the truth of suffering, which was the teachings on the existence of suffering. On this one? And and things related to Okay, so any Dharma that includes within it cause, origin, condition or strong arising comes that includes within that is known as the definition of the truth of origin The truth of origin actually has two parts: karma and delusions.
You can say that there’s the truth of the origin of karma and the truth of origin is delusions. So you’ve probably heard a lot. He just said there’s many teachings on the truth of suffering and the truth of origin, so you’ve probably heard a lot on these two topics. So there’s many many different divisions of karma with regards to it being part of the truth of origin so for example we can divide it into karma that has been accumulated that hasn’t been accumulated that which is positive that which is negative that which is neutral that which is unmoving that which is their throwing karma that which is the karma of conditions There are many different divisions of this. One of the main ones is the division of karma into virtuous karma, non virtuous karma and neutral karma.
So, yeah, and then other ones are the karma that has been accumulated but is not accumulated, karma that’s been accumulated but it is not generated. There is throwing karma, there is conditioning karma, there many different divisions. So the truth of origin referring to afflictive emotions is divided into the six root afflictive emotions and the twenty secondary afflictive emotions. So the six major afflictive emotions are desire, attachment sorry, yeah, desire and attachment, aversion, ignorance and wrong views, pride, and doubt, and afflictive emotions. Okay. So the twenty minor negative emotions are anger or belligerence, belligerence, deceit, obscuration — it’s like an obscuration or something weird, some weird word.
Hang on. Covering something up. Yeah? Yeah. No.
No. No. It’s like fuzzy fuzzing things up, so it’s not what it seems. Oh, yeah. Obscuration.
Yeah. I said it. Just didn’t sound like a real word. And, yeah, obscuration, embarrassment, shame. Okay.
So so Is the twenty the twenty secondary negative emotions or afflictions, are they in any of the stuff we’ve got? Because there’s, like, always really complicated psychological words that I don’t during the textbook with my Or does anyone remember all twenty of them? Because I’m getting there in Tibetan, but in English, it’s like, okay. So I think they’re in liberation. I I was actually so we were popping them out at home before I came tonight and thought, oh, we won’t need them.
Okay. So there’s one that’s the Okay, so there’s one the motivation for desire? It is one of them that is a motivation for anger? So so amongst them we’re getting the description of a few of them and I’m sorry that this is a bit difficult to remember because for any one of them So, yeah, so the one that’s used is written as belligerence. This belligerence is usually the motivation for anger.
It’s usually translated as belligerence, and its definition could be that it is the motivation for anger. The wish to harm others is another one of those and that usually acts as a cause or a motivation for anger Okay, so there’s another one that is trickery in order to get something that you don’t have to make out that a situation isn’t what it seems to be in order to get what you don’t have. There’s two that can basically be translated as deceit, but they’re different in that one is deceit when you show that you pretend you don’t have something that you do in order to get it, and there’s another that’s deceit in that you show you do have something that you don’t in order to get something else that you want. Something that’s sometimes translated as self-inflation, and it’s being puffed up. It’s the thing that goes before pride.
Conceit, yeah. A harmful mind, that which wants to harm others is another one. Okay. So then we’ve so there’s twenty of them, right? Anyway, there’s other ones that is like, there’s one that’s the lack of embarrassment, that means not doing things because not having your own sense of what’s right and wrong so you don’t do things and then there’s lack of shame which means not doing not having a sense of what other people deem right and wrong so not stopping yourself from doing things because of what others deem right and wrong.
There’s another one which is not having effort in doing Attachment to that which is not beneficial. This one. And and having no faith is another? Oh, this one. Oh, so Geshe la’s having trouble remembering the twenty.
I’m definitely having trouble remembering the twenty, especially in English. Okay. Okay. So that’s about time. And which is he said it was good.
Because then he can go off and find out what they are, and I can go off and find out what they are, and next week we can come back and pretend to be all professional. Neither of us remember what they are properly at the moment, so we didn’t realize they were coming up. So we can go away, find out what they are, come back and tell you. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, there’s lots of different places where there’s list. I just I I swear, I typed it out before I came here because I thought I’d need it on the weekend and thought, we’re not doing that tonight. I won’t take it. And I’ve got a list at home. Kangaroo Island on the weekend, so I wrote out a whole list and thought I’ll take them so I won’t get stuck and we’ll remember them all.
But I won’t need them tonight. Come Yeah. So you say what time are we going? Eight o’clock. Now if anyone has any questions.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Did you guys want to write them down or just belligerence, which is the one that is a precursor to anger, right? Resentment, concealment and spite, jealousy.
Yeah. I was just thinking that I can leave it for you guys to write it down. Geshe la said forget about it. We will go through them properly next week and describe them properly, and then you’ll have a better understanding. But you wanna know about anger?
Yeah. Okay. Because it was belligerence that was the Yeah. I know. But you also said, the wish to harm.
Uh-huh. Okay, so yeah, the definition of anger is the wish to harm others. This comes exactly before that, so it becomes a direct cause for anger, but it is the same thing in terms of the intention. So it comes just before anger, but anger is the wish to harm others. It’s the cause of anger.
Okay. So it’s the it’s the origin of anger. It’s it’s like the the root cause and the origin of anger. So therefore, it has to have the same type as anger. Yes.
And Yeah. Yeah. Don’t ask me what that’s got to do with Australians because I didn’t figure that bit out. The other question Yep. If if not having shame was not doing what I was expecting, what if somebody expects you to go on war to war and kill and you and you don’t have to do that?
Uh-huh. Is that having no shame? Uh-huh. I’m just trying to find no shame. No.
That doesn’t come into that doesn’t come underneath what could be called non-shame because the the idea of embarrassment doesn’t rely on what certain people think. It it relies on what’s right and wrong, what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate. So it doesn’t depend on what one person’s idea is. It depends on whether they are upholding the teaching. He said that at the moment, going to war is actually non embarrassment, right, or non-embarrassment because there’s all these people walking around saying don’t go to war, don’t go to war, don’t go to war, they’re not listening.
So at the moment that is the case of it. What they’re doing is actually it. Okay. Okay. Right.
No. I don’t know how oh, it got if everybody was saying go to war, then that would not be shame. Right? It would be it would be a non virtue, but it wouldn’t be it wouldn’t come under shame or embarrassment. Ment.
If someone if everyone was saying to someone, kill kill them, kill them, kill them, then it wouldn’t become shame or embarrassment, but it would still be a non virtue. So it is any if any old old person says it? It would definitely become non virtue, but it wouldn’t be in that category of non virtue. Okay. So what becomes I can’t figure out.
They’ve got embarrassment and shame, and they’ve got them around the wrong way from the looks of it. But, anyway, the the the embarrassment aspect comes about when usually when people are upholding the teachings and tell you that you’re doing something wrong and then you have an embarrassment about it. Right? But if they’re not upholding the teachings and they tell you that you’re doing something wrong, which is right, then it’s still what they’re doing is still non virtuous, but it doesn’t pull into that category. Okay.
So the other one, which they’ve got here is not a shame, is when it does you’re not you’re not listening to yourself. You have this idea that it may be wrong, but you’re not gonna listen to that and you just think, I I I don’t care if it’s right or wrong. I’m gonna do it. Yeah. So that one is relying on you, and the other one’s relying on other people.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Is it appropriate to think that precepts are vows? No. Oh, I can say that because that I mean, that’s not being rude to Geshe-la because it’s a translation thing.
No, it’s a translation thing. The precepts means it means teachings. Yeah. It’s the teachings of the Buddha. Yeah.
So the vows come as a case of ethics. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then this is yeah.
It’s the word of the Buddha. Tibetan, it’s and then is a it means mouth. So word. I think what they meant was the the first part is and that’s like a derivative of the word vow because vow literally in Tibetan is to bind. Right?
So they’ve taken it because it has a sense of binding that they’ve taken it to mean the same thing as vow, but it it could translate as a binding word. He says, now I’m gonna drink tea, and if anyone has questions, then they can ask. Yeah. Yeah. That your thoughts weren’t karma?
He said he said, no. No. This it’s it’s they’re both they’re both karma. The action and the thought that is accumulated before the they’re both karma. So they seemed a bit surprised that you saw.
So it’s not generated karma, but it is accumulated karma, he said. Yeah. He said every thought that you have is accumulating karma. Every thought that you have if you’re thinking angry thoughts is accumulating negative karma. He said we don’t actually have to watch television to get angry.
But most of the time, we we whatever we’re doing relies on it relies on either desire, ignorance, or or anger to come into affect our thoughts. Most of them are reliant on that. So it’s not just from watching telly that these things happen. Okay. So if you’re watching America and they’re really annoying you and and you’re having this, like, really sense of of, like, self grasping because you’re getting angry and self righteous at them, then you should watch soccer.
He said, but some people are so strange that even when they watch soccer, they get this sense of self grasping happening, they want one team to win and not the other. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He said, yeah.
If you do that, if you have this sort of Chenrezig mantra — you’re saying mantras, you’re saying mani, or another mantra before you go to sleep — all of your sleep becomes virtuous. He said no, it’s not virtuous when you do bad things in your dream, even if you’ve had a good thought before you go to sleep. But if you have good thoughts before you go to sleep, then then you’re you’re not very likely to do many negative things in your dream. But it’s it’s you’re not likely to, but it’s difficult because dreams actually rely on imprints. So depending on what imprints you have in your mind, then you’re gonna have different dreams.
And because of this, then it doesn’t necessarily