Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Twelve named varieties of dedication on the path of meditation — from the merit of valid cognition and compassion through the small, middling, and great dedication spanning the bodhisattva grounds — anchor this 45-minute commentary as Geshe Pema Tsering advances through the Seventy Topics. He explains why meditators absorbed in equipoise cannot simultaneously dedicate, and how Buddhas, who never split into equipoise and subsequent awareness, are exempt from that constraint. Turning to rejoicing on the path of meditation, he presses the practical case: these aren’t just descriptions of remote bodhisattva minds — we can practice rejoicing and dedication now, and must eventually realize such states ourselves to achieve enlightenment. A Q&A closes with a vivid illustration of the suffering of change: if we truly grasped it, avoiding meat would feel as automatic as avoiding fire. For students already familiar with Mahāyāna path-stages.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 ST6 2003 06 26.mp3
UUID: cf2fee53-e568-4bb1-86c4-c7bd7a0894fc
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-06-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~2,638
Alright. Now I’ve got that sorted out. Okay. Now the next one, the third one, is from a little bit of a different perspective. The path of meditation of dedication named the characteristic of non-perversity.
Non perversity could also be called pramāna or valid cognition. Now, this is referring to dedication of the practice or or the dedication of a valid cognizer. Instead of dedicating towards something, this is the dedication of something. So they’re dedicating the virtue from their valid cognition towards their goals. Okay.
So the path of meditation of dedication named devoid refers to the things that aren’t known. So it can work two ways. They can be finding out things that aren’t known and then dedicating the merit of finding those things out towards the final goal. Or it can be dedicating practice towards finding out the things that aren’t known.
So the fifth category of the path of meditation of dedication is the path of meditation dedication, named Recollection of the Nature of Buddha’s Merits. This is basically dedicating all the merits from rejoicing in the qualities of the Buddha and dedicating those merits towards achieving enlightenment. Number six is a path of meditation and dedication named along with skillful means. So this basically just means the their dedication of skillful means, the dedication towards skillful means. The dedication of skillful means is dedicating the great compassion that they have in their continuums, the merit from the great compassion in their continuums towards achieving enlightenment.
Okay. So the signless: it says the path of — number seven — the path of meditation of dedication. I’ve gotta stop saying that. Path of meditation of dedication named signless is the same the path of meditation of dedication possessing the aspect of non observation, because they are both referring to emptiness. The thing is that if someone is on the path of meditation and they’re in meditative equipoise concentrating on emptiness, they’re not actually doing any dedicating at that point because they’re in meditative equipoise.
Once they have finished meditation, then they can dedicate that meditation towards achieving enlightenment, or they can dedicate any of their actions towards achieving the understanding of emptiness that’s not in meditative equipoise like a Buddha has. Okay. Just to answer the confused look on Jo’s face, at the ground of a Buddha, or after having achieved enlightenment, there is no distinction between equipoise and subsequent wisdom. Means Buddhas do not have to be in meditative equipoise to understand emptiness, but understanding emptiness in every moment means that you don’t separate into meditative equipoise and subsequent wisdom as you do with other beings. You don’t separate their minds into those two different things.
Okay. So the next one, number eight, is the path of meditation of dedication named rejoiced in by the The Buddhas like rejoicing, and they especially like rejoicing in the deeds of those on the path of meditation, because those on the path of meditation are moving towards Buddhahood themselves. When the Buddhas see beings on the path of meditation dedicating their actions towards achieving enlightenment, then they become very happy and rejoice in that fact. So the next one, the path to meditation of dedication named not included in the three realms. Now this is when beings on the path of meditation dedicate their actions towards achieving Buddhahood or the three last grounds, which aren’t in any of the three realms, or when beings on the last three realms dedicate any of their actions.
So it works both ways. Dedicating something that’s already been achieved and dedicating towards achieving something. Last three grounds, the ground eight, nine and ten, aren’t included within either the desire realm, the form realm or the formless realm. Neither is the ground of a Buddha. Okay.
So the last three, numbers ten and eleven and twelve, of the divisions of the path of meditation or dedication are the path of meditation or dedication named small dedication, the path of meditation or dedication named middling dedication, and the path of meditation or dedication named great dedication. Okay. So the path of meditation, of named small dedication, be grounds two, three and four, the last moment of ground one, because that’s where the path of meditation starts. The middling dedication would be grounds five, six, and seven, and the path of meditation, the dedication named great dedication, is the final three, grounds eight, nine, and ten, which are their pure grounds. So then there’s a quote from the jewel ornament of clear realization that is taken to show where these divisions came from.
Then the last, the boundary of the path of meditation, dedication, boundary exists from the first ground through to the end of the continuum. Now, the next one is the path of meditation and rejoicing. We just did the path of meditation of dedication, and we’re talking about how the beings dedicated their actions towards something or dedicated certain actions that they’ve done. Now the path of meditation of rejoicing comes about after the path of meditation of dedication, not only doing something, but rejoicing in what they’ve done. Right.
Okay. So the path of meditation of rejoicing definition is a conceptual Mahāyāna, subsequent clear realizer apprehending term and meaning generalities as suitable to be mixed that cultivates joy in either one’s own or another or others roots of virtue. Now we can take from apprehending term and mean apprehending to suitable to be mixed. So apprehending term and meaning suitable to be mixed as a synonym for a conception. So we’re dealing with a conceptual so that’s it’s conceptual conception.
Right? And Mahāyāna subsequently realized there is a Mahāyāna path of meditation. And it’s a conceptual mind that is cultivating joy in either one’s own or other’s roots of virtues. Now on the path of meditation, there isn’t any negative conceptions anymore. The because the afflicted afflicted conceptions or the kleshas that we have up until the path of meditation that are manifest, they no longer come about on the path of meditation.
So any conceptions that beings on the path of meditation may have are always what’s called pure. They’re always free of of negative results. So we’re talking here about pure concept concepts of rejoicing in the minds of beings on the path of meditation. Okay. So here, there is two divisions of the path of meditation of rejoicing.
The path of meditation of rejoicing that cultivates joy in one’s own roots of virtue and one that cultivates joy in others’ roots of virtues. And apart from this division, in this instance, there isn’t any subsequent divisions. Okay. So the boundaries of the past meditation of rejoicing, that it exists from the first ground through to the end of the continuum of the sentient being. Okay.
So even though it says from the first ground, it’s talking about the last moment of the first ground, is on the path of meditation. Because most of the ones that we’re talking about here are almost hang on. There is seven of the eleven topics of knowledge of paths refer to the path of meditation. Now the reason that so many of these refer to the path of meditation and not to other paths is that we went through other paths previously. One of the paths was the path of preparation made a separate section in the first group, the knowable aspects.
When we were talking about the teachings, there’s a fair bit of detail on the path of seeing. That’s why there is more focus meditation in this stage. The reason that the path of meditation is sometimes called the subsequent clear realiser is that everything that is realized on the path of meditation has already been the instant the initial realization has already taken part place beforehand. So you get realization of Dharma on the the path of preparation. You get clear insight into emptiness on the path of seeing and so forth.
So in the path of meditation of rejoicing, it’s only referring to the path of rejoicing that that cultivates during one’s own roots and and in the roots of others. In the part the path of meditation of dedication, it was talking about dedicating for one’s own purpose, the purpose of others, and for both. Just because it’s only enumerated as two in this instance doesn’t mean that all three shouldn’t be rejoiced in. Likewise, just as we’re only talking about the path of meditation of rejoicing, that doesn’t mean that beings on the path of seeing and other paths don’t rejoice. So and and top of that, it means the way that we can practice this is by rejoicing in in what we understand the beings on the path of meditation to have achieved.
So so the reason that that that we study this, the reason that it was taught, is not just, so the bodhisattvas, not just to study bodhisattvas’ minds, but also so we can do like it’s described they’re doing. So, for example, we can we can rejoice in what they’re able to achieve. We can dedicate what we’re able to have achieved or and dedicate rejoicing in their attainments. And so it’s it’s talking about bodhisattva’s minds, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t do any of these practices. Okay.
So the purpose of of of studying things like this isn’t just so that we can learn them and then forget about them the idea is that we can learn them and then try and put them into practice some of them we can’t put into practice so we should think I will try and achieve that at a later stage or work towards achieving that but if there’s things that we can put into practice then we should try and do that Okay. So so studying the seventy topics works on all these different levels. We can try and behave like bodhisattvas by doing rejoicing and trying to to trying to act like them, if you like. We can also we also have to remember that it’s not just about studying and forgetting them we have to try and understand that in order for us to become Buddhas we have to realize these type of minds so if someone asks the question do we need to know this do we need to know these things then yes we do need to know them we may not be bodhisattvas yet but if we’ve done the study when we do become bodhisattvas then we will have some kind of understanding of what the minds are we need to practice in order to achieve enlightenment so we need to know these things in order achieve enlightenment.
So it’s not just a matter of studying them and then forgetting them. Okay. We finished. Oh, yeah. So does anyone have any questions?
Yeah. Yeah. The the the basis. You ask. Yeah.
Okay. They’re both emptiness, but they’re different in that saying something is, without definition and saying something has no, object of focus are different ways of describing emptiness. Because emptiness is so difficult to realize directly, there has to be different ways of meditating on it in order for us to understand it. So there are different ways of describing emptiness, which means they’re different terms. It could be characters.
He said it’s the same as saying that something isn’t by its characteristics. So saying something isn’t by its characteristics. Saying something is not truly existent. Saying something doesn’t exist from its own side and different ways of saying emptiness. Yeah, signless is the same as characterless.
Yeah. And I have a question that came up from the motivation. It’s not a matter of getting rid of that idea of running away from suffering. It’s not understanding what suffering is that’s our problem. If we understood Samsāra properly, we’d understand that all of Samsāra was suffering and we want to get out of it completely.
At the moment we only understand one aspect of Samsāra to be suffering, so we’re chasing after the other aspect. So it’s not a matter of changing the idea of trying to get away from suffering. It’s a matter of changing our idea of what suffering is. So we don’t understand the suffering of change properly, for example. If we understood the suffering of change properly, we wouldn’t get excited about eating really good food.
We necessarily happy about that. We wouldn’t not eat anything, but we wouldn’t be excited about eating good food. So, for example, with meat, for example, we know that meat isn’t necessarily a good thing to eat. Eating meat is a negativity. But because we don’t understand this properly, we don’t understand that it is a suffering of change, then we don’t stop it.
It’s not like we would die if we didn’t eat meat we’d still be able to survive and keep practising tomorrow. But because we don’t have this understanding of what the suffering of suffering is, then we keep doing these negative things that keep us in saṃsāra. Sorry. The suffering of changes, and we don’t we keep doing these things. Because we just don’t know.
If we understood, we wouldn’t eat meat. So because we don’t haven’t realized the suffering of suffering, we don’t I’m sorry, the suffering of change. We don’t understand that all experiences of what we think is happening is the suffering of change, then we do things like we keep eating we keep eating meat. If we totally understood that these experiences were the suffering of change, then it would be like if we saw fire. And we don’t necessarily go running and jumping into fire because we understand that it’s suffering if we do.
So it’d be the same with the suffering of change. We’d have exactly the same reaction to things that we see as being pleasurable now. We just we wouldn’t do it because we’d understand the suffering that it caused. So that’s probably the way it is. So what we perceive is the the suffering.
So is it the dharma that we hear in some. Okay. First of all, suffering is no. Samsāra is pervaded by suffering, but Samsāra is not pervaded by the feeling of suffering. That’s I think he’s just throwing debate stuff at me.
Now Okay. So he said, there is many different ways that we can listen to Dharma. There’s too many there’s too too many different ways. But in terms of, practicing Dharma, if we practice Dharma with the motivation of, to achieve liberation or to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, then it isn’t a cause for saṃsāra. Therefore, it’s not a cause for saṃsāra, and that’s how it’s defined.
If we are doing it in order to attain a good rebirth, it’s still a cause for saṃsāra, So therefore, it’s still saṃsāra. And so it’s the same if we are able to listen to Dharma with the motivation that may this may through this may receive liberation at least, then it’s not a cause for saṃsāra either. So it’s the same way either you listen or you speak or you practice. Whatever you do, it’s all the same. Depends on the motivation.
So so we really have to get our motivation strong. We we have to try and achieve bodhicitta or at least a mind wanting to do this wanting to achieve it or to try and generate the idea of getting out of saṃsāra. And if we achieve the idea of doing this in order to doing whatever we’re doing in order to achieve a human or god rebirth, then that will be a benefit to us, but it’s still a cause for saṃsāra. Yep. Through Logic?
The other means.