Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The moment emptiness is first realized directly marks a key dividing line in this 45-minute session by Geshe Pema Tsering: before that point, a practitioner’s collection of wisdom is not yet truly vast, whatever their merit. Working through a Mahāyāna path framework, he completes the nine divisions of achieving through engagement — the six perfections, four immeasurables, insight into emptiness, and omniscience — then opens the seventeen divisions of achieving through collections: great compassion, calm abiding, special insight, skill in means, retentions, the ten bodhisattva grounds, and antidotes, each defined with its precise boundaries on the path. He also explains the three spheres (giver, gift, recipient) as a model for emptiness in action, and distinguishes contaminated from non-contaminated meditative concentration and ordinary wisdom from exalted wisdom. For students already working through a systematic Mahāyāna path text.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 ST5 2003 06 05.mp3
UUID: 8aecaa91-bafe-4457-9995-bea322b8b9ca
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-06-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~2,728
Mind to focus on emptiness, that means their understanding of emptiness will be incredibly subtle, because it’s gone a long way from their first meditations on it, which were in the desire realm, which is incredibly gross level of mind. So the next one, the six perfections such as generosity is going through generosity, ethics, joyous effort, patience, meditation and wisdom. And these perfections are practiced from the great stage of the supreme doctrinal stage of the path of preparation through to the end of the continuum of a sentient being. So that’s when these practices are engaged in. Alright.
Okay, so the next one is the path of seeing, meditation, no more learning and the special path. This special path refers to the tenth ground of the path of meditation, the tenth of the ten Bodhisattva grounds, which is on the path of meditation. Four immeasurables such as love: love refers to loving kindness when it is used towards all beings without exception, and that’s where the immeasurable bit comes in. The other three are compassion, when compassion is exercised towards all sentient beings, equanimity, and the other one is sympathetic joy. So it’s rejoicing in terms of rejoicing in the fact that they don’t suffer.
Right? So when they talk about love, the concept of loving kindness, the concept there is the wish that all sentient beings be happy with compassion is the is that all sentient beings be free from suffering. The equanimity is that all sentient beings I forgot. And the liking is the happiness that all sentient beings will be free from suffering. Okay, so the equanimous immeasurable is that there’s no liking one person more than another.
The feeling is spread to all sentient beings. The next one, possessing non observability. Non observability is a synonym for emptiness, so it’s possessing insight into emptiness or non-observability could be — sorry, maybe that’s the way I’ve got it — non-observability could be a synonym for perceiving emptiness. So possessing the perception of emptiness. Yeah?
This refers to the three higher paths, the path of seeing, the path of meditation, the path of no more learning, because it’s only on these paths that emptiness is perceived directly. The complete purity of the three spheres is the practice that engages in there’s a practice that understands that these three spheres are empty of inherent existence and doesn’t grasp at them as being inherently existent. The three spheres, there’s different ways of looking at that. Well, the first way is the subject that I think that doesn’t work because that’s duality. Okay.
So for example, he gave the example of if someone’s giving something, right, the three spheres would be the giver, the gift, and the recipient. And then yeah. So the giver, the gift, and the recipient or action. No. That’s giving.
It’s subject object and something else, but I’m not sure what. Yeah. But they’re all entities. Okay. Yeah.
So give yeah. Give a recipient and gift, and expand that out for now, and we’ll try and come up with a word later. Okay. So that’s one way of explaining the three spheres is the the the The giver the gift of the recipient, Okay. Yeah.
So that’s one way of doing it with this yeah, thingy, the one that we were talking about before. There’s another way of describing it is to say the cause, the actual thing and the result. So, for example, if we’re looking at that in a very basic way, we could say that our parents are our cause, we’re the actual thing, and our children would be the result. So anything that acts in that kind of pattern, that’s another way of looking at the three spheres. This one?
I think for the other one, you could say subject, object, and recipient, because recipient doesn’t always have to be the receiving of a gift. It can be the person that any action is coming towards. Okay. The objects of intent are the great heroic mind, the great abandonments, and the great realizations in the continuum of Buddha. Okay.
We Okay, so these three, the great heroic mind, the great abandonment and the great realization we talked about last week, I think, think. That was included within let me see. Object of intent. Object of Object intent. Of And then a while ago, we also talked about those six perfections, so we’ve gone through that already.
That’s the number. Okay. So the the last of the divisions of achieving through engagement is the very exalted knower of all aspects, and that’s basically omniscience or the mind of a Buddha. Okay. So that was the nine divisions of achieving through engagement.
This is followed in the text by a quote from the Abhisamayālamkāra, and then it establishes the boundaries of the achieving through engagement, which are from the heat level through to the Mahāyāna path the Mahāyāna path to the end of the continuum. So we’re working through now the four different engagements. I mean, sorry, four different achievements. The first achieving that we did, I don’t remember. The first achieving that we did was achieving through armor, and we just finished achieving through engagement, and we still got to go achieving through collections, and then definitely issuing Achievement.
Okay, the definition of achieving through collections is: A Bodhisattva’s yoga that yields great enlightenment as its result and surpasses the middling stage of supreme mundane quality of the Mahāyāna path of preparation and below by way of being conjoined with the two vast collections. Now, a Bodhisattva’s yoga is a Mahāyāna path, alright? Then if we go down to the end because it works backwards into it, and I have try and remember everything you said. The the two the two collections or the two vast collections is the collection of merit the collection of merit and the collection of wisdom. What it means by vast is that it’s he wants to know if you understand.
Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Okay. So the the these two these two collections become vast, and this is direct quote, when they become very big. So when they when when there is a lot of of merit and a lot of wisdom, then these two combined is is happens this, combined, this concept of vast merit and vast wisdom happens from the the great section of the supreme mundane level of the path preparation onwards. In other words, the moment before emptiness is realized directly, the moment from that moment onwards. This practice and this understanding acts as a cause for the result, which is the achievement of enlightenment or the mind of a Buddha.
So the reason Okay, so the reason that it goes from this last moment of the path of preparation through is because at this last moment of the path of preparation, the being is about to understand emptiness directly. So, the grasping at true existence is being directly damaged at this stage. Once these beings have realized emptiness directly, then their understanding of wisdom, their wisdom collection or their collection of wisdom becomes vast. Up until that stage, may have a vast collection of bodhicitta, they may have true bodhicitta and therefore a vast merit, but their collection of wisdom isn’t vast. Once they’ve understood emptiness directly, their collection of wisdom is vast.
Therefore, that’s why they talk about it being from that level up. Okay, so there’s seventeen different divisions Achieving Through Collections. The first of which is Great Compassion, the last of which is Antidotes. We don’t have to go through the middle ones because we’ll go through them slowly. He’ll go through them in order.
I said, You don’t want to say them all? He went, No, no. We’ll go through them one by one. Okay. So the first one is great compassion.
Achievement Achieving through collections of great compassion. No. Achieving through collections which is great compassion. Okay. Okay, so the great compassion in the mind of an ordinary being up until the the middling stage of the supreme mundane quality of the path of preparation is not achieving through collections and great compassion in the mind of a Buddha is not is also not achieving through collections but from the great level of the supreme mundane quality of the path of preparation through to the final moment in the continuum of a sentient being is achieving through collections.
And in a like manner, generosity, ethics, tolerance, joyous effort, concentration and wisdom that is in the mind stream of these beings from the last stage of the path preparation through to the last stage of the continuum as sentient being. When these things are in their mind streams, are called achieving through collections with regards to generosity, ethics, etc. So when beings up until the last moment of the path of preparation practice the six perfections, they see that it isn’t achieving through collections which is the six perfections which is achieving through collections and when Buddha’s practice when Buddha’s have the six perfections it’s not achieving through collections which are the six perfections so it’s only these people that are bracketed by these two things, the last moment of the path of preparation, path of seeing, the path of meditation, that actually have this achieving through collections which are the six perfections. Okay, so likewise for these people that we distinguished before, if they have calm abiding in their mind stream is also achieving through collections which is calm abiding and as well as special insight. This point, special insights in their mind stream is achieving through collections, which is special insight.
The path of union is the union of calm abiding and special insight because when calm abiding and special insight are in a being’s continuum, they help each other out. So skill in means is when beings with this capacity understand the best thing to do in any situation because of their understanding of reality, that’s called skill in means, which is achieving through collections. Exalted wisdom is wisdom understanding emptiness. So, the wisdom understanding emptiness that is achieving through collections is included within this. If we are talking about bodhicitta, then that doesn’t come into exalted wisdom in this case.
So, merit is bodhicitta in the continuum of the minds of these beings. Anything that isn’t merit or exalted wisdom in the minds of these beings is then another type of path and there are many different types of paths that aren’t within exalted wisdom or merit, and they’re included within the division of paths. Alright. The next one, retentions, is that when something goes into these people’s mind streams, it it doesn’t leave. They don’t forget anything.
That’s what they talk about when they say retentions. And the the the grounds is the ten grounds is the ten grounds of the the ten grounds of the bodhisattvas. Antidotes. There are many different types of antidotes. Some you could say that impermanence is the antidote for thinking things are permanent.
There’s also the antidote, the main antidote that’s referred to though usually is the antidote for self grasping which is perceiving emptiness directly. So anytime where this wisdom comes out of perceiving emptiness directly, it’s also to be considered achieving through collections which are antidotes. Excuse me. Yes. And then it’s followed by a quote from the Abhisamayālamkāra explaining how achieving through collections work, which is: great compassion, the six such as generosity, calm abiding along with special insight, those paths of union, those skilled in means, exalted wisdom, merit, paths, retentions, the ten grounds and antidotes are to be known as the order of the achievings through collections.
The boundary of this is from the greater section of the supreme mundane quality of the path of preparation through to the continuum at the end of a sentient being. Sorry. The moment before the end of the continuum of a sentient being. Did you guys understand? He says it’s hard understanding this stuff.
Yeah. He doesn’t think there’s a reason, he thinks that’s just why they’re enumerated. Yeah. If someone was on that, like the last one we haven’t got to yet, definitely issuing achievement only exists on the three pure grounds which are grounds eight, nine and ten. If someone was on one of those grounds, they could be doing all of the four different achievements together, but up until those grounds, they can’t do all the four achievements together because the boundaries for the different achievings are different.
But if someone was on one of those grounds, they could do all four achievements together. So, goes by where the boundaries go to. So, for example, someone on the path of accumulation wouldn’t be able to practice them all, but then someone on the path of seeing would be able to practice more. And then someone on the three pure grounds at the end, they can practice all of them. If the being is about to become a Buddha, they can do them all at once.
Otherwise, they will be doing them one second after another. Yeah. One second. I have to find how you say that. Okay.
Alright. Okay. We talked about earlier tonight there was eight different levels, four different levels in the Form Realm, four different levels in the Formless Realm and there was minds associated with each of these different levels and they represented different subtleties, different levels of subtlety of mind. The first four from the Form Realm are what’s talked about here. The reason that they are said to be not exclusive to Buddhists is because non Buddhists can achieve these states of mind and these different states of subtle concentration in meditative equipoise, but the difference between the two is if someone has refuge in their continuum and they are achieving these meditative states, then they are Buddhist with these meditative states.
If they have no refuge in their continuum, then they are not a Buddhist. They are non-Buddhist who is achieving these meditative states. That’s why they are considered to be not unique. They basically come about when someone has achieved calm abiding. There’s there’s close they’re sometimes translated as close placements.
The the different levels of subtlety of mind that are achieved once someone has achieved calm abiding. The difference between contaminated and non contaminated is that these are forms of meditative concentration. If the person during the meditative concentration has realized emptiness directly, then their concentration is not contaminated. Anyone who hasn’t realized emptiness directly, whether they are Buddhist or non-Buddhist, then their meditative equipoise is contaminated. Part of the reason that they say this is because it’s possible to lose that ability, those concentration abilities if you die, but not if you’ve achieved a direct realization of emptiness.
And that you’ve got to be careful because there’s a lot of different ways that this concept of contaminated and non contaminated is used. So that’s what contaminated and non contaminated means in this instance, but there’s many different ways that it can be used. They’re called common because both Buddhists and non Buddhists have them. Okay, so what’s translated here as wisdom is a mental factor that has the ability to differentiate the thing that the main mind is accompanying is on. Yeah?
Exalted wisdom is a synonym of a path. So it’s a main mind and it’s only achieved through the in the same way that paths are achieved. So, that accompanies a path is also exalted wisdom but wisdom doesn’t necessarily have to accompany a path and therefore is not always exalted wisdom. Any time that you use discrimination to understand something, for example, we can have wisdom that understands or knowledge that understands That’s wisdom, yeah? Exalted wisdom is something that is a path.
So any mind that is considered a path, that is mind that comes about after the achievement of of renunciation, that’s the lowest level that you can enter a path on the hearer’s vehicle. Yeah? Then any mind after that is considered an exalted wisdom. Yeah. But yeah.
And he also and but discriminate like, this wisdom is basically like discrimination, being able to discriminate between one thing and another. Oh, yeah. Is that okay, everybody? Yeah. Please.
Yeah. What’s it? [inaudible]