Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Geshe Pema Tsering opens this 36-minute commentary with a wry aside — if U.S. generals had clairvoyance, they wouldn’t need a war to find weapons of mass destruction — before turning to the technical heart of the session: the sixteen moments of the Mahāyāna path of seeing. He maps eight moments of forbearance and eight moments of knowledge onto the four noble truths, each operating first in the desire realm and then in the higher realms, and explains what gets abandoned at each moment: grasping at permanence, at inherent suffering, at true existence, and at self. He then distinguishes precepts that describe the path from the lived experience of practice, ending with a striking image — an Ārya being so transformed that they would gladly give their flesh to anyone who needed it. Suited to students with some background in Mahāyāna scholastic philosophy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 ST4 2003 05 08.mp3
UUID: 59a2f529-160f-49b7-9228-fd3a6920fc4c
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-05-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 35.8 minutes
Words: ~1,967
And if they had clairvoyance, they wouldn’t have had to start the war in the first place because they could have just gone over and said, okay. The nuclear weapons of mass destruction are there and there, and then they would have been right about finding Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and no war would have had to happen. He said, now, see, they don’t have clairvoyance. They can’t find anything, And and and would have known exactly where everything was and everything that was going on, but now they just they can’t find anything. He said it’s difficult if you don’t have clairvoyance.
Everything just gets hard. Okay. So the next one is precepts which instruct on the path of seeing. So this is the path of seeing that is within the five paths. In Tibetan.
And it’s the Mahāyāna path of seeing. So on the path of seeing there is an uninterrupted path, a path of release. There is then the subsequent wisdom, subsequent exalted wisdom and something that’s known as the wisdom, the meditative wisdom that is neither the path of seeing nor the path of release. So the uninterrupted path. I made a mistake sorry okay so the it’s a meditative path that is neither the path of no interruption or the path of release right that’s the fourth one.
So there’s four. Yeah. And three of these are meditative wisdom, and the post meditative wisdom is is obviously not a meditative wisdom. This one? Okay, so on the uninterrupted path, there are eight moments what’s called forbearance and then on the path of release there are eight moments of wisdom.
I don’t actually have the translation in front of me but the word is something like eight moments of of wisdom. There’s these together are called the the sixteen moments of the path of seeing. Okay. So Okay, so amongst these sixteen moments in these two parts there is, for starters, on the uninterrupted path each of the four truths has a moment of — I’m really sorry. I can’t remember what the usual translation is for it.
But it has a moment which is called Okay. So there is like a really good word, but I don’t know it. But it literally means the nominal forbearance and then the inferential forbearance. So for every one of the four truths, this works in terms of the desire realms and then the higher realms. So the the the phenomenal forbearance relates to the desire realms and the inferential forbearance relates to the higher realms.
That is the form and formless realm. Oh, yeah. This one. So this makes up on the uninterrupted path, this makes up to eight moments. Each of the four noble I keep saying noble.
Each of the four truths has these two different these two different moments to it. So that works sorry, I can’t find it. So that works with all of the four different truths. There is the abandonment of the things to be abandoned with relation to the desire realms, and then subsequently to that, the things to be abandoned with their relation to the to the higher realms. Okay.
I think I just had a moment of remembrance. But I’m really sorry. Yeah. Because I didn’t know this was coming. I would have prepared better.
Okay so on uninterrupted path right they are called forbearance yeah so and then on the path of release it’s called the eight moments of knowledge so you have forbearance and then you have knowledge right so on the path of release is the eight moments of knowledge these again are the two different aspects of each of the four truths so you have the desire aspect of the truth of suffering and then the higher realms aspect of the truth of suffering, the desire realm aspect of the truth of the origin of suffering and then the higher realms aspect of the truth of the origin of suffering and so on through the path the truth of the path and the truth of cessation. So these sixteen moments are when the sixteen things to be abandoned on the path of seeing are actually abandoned. So this is within the uninterrupted path and the path of release on the path of seeing. There are actually two different types of things to be abandoned. The things to be abandoned on the path of seeing and those to be abandoned on the path of meditation.
Now the difference is that they’re abandoned on different paths but the entirety of the things to be abandoned on the path of seeing are actually done within these sixteen moments on the uninterrupted path and the path of release and they relate to the four truths, the things to be abandoned in relation to those and that is also they are ordered in terms of whether they are related to the desire realms or related to the higher realms. So what’s happening here is then, for example, in the first moment of the path of seeing of the uninterrupted path when the aspects of that are to be abandoned with relation to the first truth, the truth of suffering are abandoned. That means that things like there is the truth the suffering is abandoned. Therefore, is abandoned. So the sense of self is abandoned.
The misconception of emptiness is abandoned with relation to the six there’s sixteen aspects to the four noble truths, and each of each of those is is abandoned in these moments. So, yeah, impermanence misery or suffering. Impermanence, suffering, emptiness and selflessness. So conception of permanence is abandoned, which is related to the impermanence. So you abandon impermanence understand you abandon permanence, understand impermanence abandon misery or suffering and understand the lack of suffering abandon the concept of true establishment and embrace the concept of emptiness, abandon the concept of self, and embrace the concept of selflessness.
So likewise with the other truths, the understanding is achieved and the things that are to be abandoned with relation to that are abandoned. Okay. So so for example, if we’re talking about the moment where impermanence is understood, before this moment is comes into being, then the someone is the being is grasping a sense of a sense of permanence in some way or another. At the beginning of this moment, the roughest forms of permanence are obliterated, and at the end of it, a complete understanding of impermanence is achieved. So this all happens in one meditative session.
At the beginning of the meditative session, the grossest of the afflictive emotions is abandoned. And as the session progresses, then the more subtle of the afflictive emotions is gradually abandoned. So then after this process has been going through on the uninterrupted path and the path of release through all of the things to be abandoned the negative afflictive emotions to be abandoned and the realizations that come into place after the abandonment of the afflictive emotions after this process is complete then the subsequent wisdom is then realized and the post-meditative wisdom arises. That session is stopped. So at the beginning, there is the uninterrupted path, which has its eight moments and then there is the path of release which has its eight moments then once these afflictive emotions the things to be abandoned on the path of seeing are finished with then the subsequent wisdom arises then after this, the path of seeing person goes back into meditative equipoise and this is what’s referred to as the meditative wisdom which is neither the uninterrupted path or the path of release.
So when someone when this person is then in the this second meditative equipoise, which is sorry, third meditative equipoise, is neither the uninterrupted path or the path of release, when they’re in that meditation and then they start to abandon the abandonment of the path of meditation that is when they actually enter the path of meditation. The abandonments on the path meditation are very vast so once they start that process then they instantly become a being on the path of meditation and cease to be a being on the path of seeing. So if we can stop here. Oh, now I find it. Here’s the way.
Oh, it doesn’t have it on it anyway. Anyway, sorry. Yeah. And I’ve now found my map. So if if anyone Yeah.
Okay. So what precepts are is the reason Geshe said the reason he was making a distinction between the precepts or the instructions about these things and the things themselves is what the instructions do is put into a verbal form description of something but the actual experience because they’re an actual experience the paths are an actual experience that’s very separate from instructions and the verbal explanation that shows what these paths are so it’s very important to make a distinction between these two things now if someone understands these instructions these precepts right, gets a good understanding of them and then puts them into practice then one is able to become an omniscient knower of all aspects, right, so that there is it’s important to make a distinction between the words that describe these things and instruct on them than the actual thing itself, which is something that needs to be put into practice and experience. A precept is it an instruction. Yeah? Yeah.
This this isn’t what we’ve learned about is the past. Uh-huh. Or or is that the instruction? And, again, Okay. So this is supposed to be an instruction of where where you need to go in order to get to omniscience.
Right? So you need to know these things. You need to go through the precepts. You need to have the texts that explain these things. It’s a text that are an explanation of the teachings.
So it’s like a you need to understand texts you need to study and have an understanding of texts that are an explanation of the the path of seeing, for example. Right? And because I’m thinking that part of it So it’s saying it doesn’t just say yeah, well, does, yeah, precepts which instruct on achieving, right? So it’s instructions which instruct on achieving, right? So that’s what you should be focusing on.
And I guess I said he was giving a rough overview of what these instructions were, but in order to understand it properly you had to look at many other texts and have many teachings on it. Okay. So when you become an omniscient being, you know everything, not just about the path of seeing. But before you become an omniscient being, you need to understand the precepts on the path of seeing. Yeah.
If you become an Ārya or a superior being, then whatever you do will be easy. And it’s not just learning things to be able to help people. You’d be able to chop off your arm and give it to them if they if they need it. Yeah. If you have developed this, the path of seeing in your continuum, then if someone comes up to you and says, can I have some of your flesh?
Not only will you give it to them without thinking about it, but you really like it. You love giving your flesh away in order to to be able to help someone. Yeah. So there there there’s things more extreme even that you’ll be able to do than being able to study medicine. That’s it.
So if you can become an Ārya, then that’s an amazing thing to be able to do. And if you do that, then you can do anything. Yeah. Did you have a question? You called?
He said, I saw your hand.