Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A student’s question — “isn’t that literally suicide?” — produces one of the sharpest moments in this 44-minute talk by Geshe Pema Tsering on the Seventy Topics. The exchange arises from his analysis of the three types of suffering and the five aggregates as the basis of all-pervasive suffering: the point, he clarifies, is not to destroy the result but to uproot the cause — karma and delusion, and ultimately the grasping at true existence that meditation on emptiness is designed to dissolve. He grounds each step in the four noble truths before connecting the analysis to bodhicitta and the Mahāyāna aspiration. The second half moves to the Seventy Topics text itself, working systematically through the three doors of liberation, the nine super-mundane concentration paths, the four paths of abandonment, and the ten perfections. Suited to practitioners already familiar with Lamrim and Madhyamaka vocabulary.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 ST8 2003 08 28.mp3
UUID: 3ca17805-6036-4c2a-a8d1-bbd9b1cc6365
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-08-28
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.8 minutes
Words: ~3,701
I actually didn’t get quite quite. Sorry. And do you wanna? So that took a bit longer than usual. Okay.
But in the lamrim the small lamrim by Lama Tsongkhapa, he says that if you don’t think on the shortcomings of the of the truth of suffering, then you will not develop the mind seeking towards liberation. And if you don’t think on the truth of the origin origination of suffering, the truth of the origination of suffering, then you will not you will not cut through the cause of saṃsāra. So what this means is that saṃsāra’s nature or the nature of the first truth, the truth of suffering, is that it has no qualities, and it is completely saturated with shortcomings. And if you keep thinking on that, if you think on that again and again, then you’ll come to understand that there is nothing in saṃsāra to work towards, and you’ll instead develop a renunciation from saṃsāra and start working towards liberation. Likewise, if you think again and again on the origination of suffering and how this cause of self grasping makes us suffer in all these different ways, if you think on that many times, then you will develop the ability to cut through the root of saṃsāra, which is this grasping at true existence.
If you don’t think about it, however, then you won’t be able to cut through this grasping it to existence, which is the root of saṃsāra. So so if we wanna understand the first noble truth, the truth of suffering, we don’t actually have to think very far away. We don’t have to send our thoughts very far away because the truth of suffering actually exists in our in our being, in our body, in our in our aggregates. Within the the five aggregates, the aggregate of of of form, aggregate of feeling, the aggregate of discrimination, compounded aspects, excuse me, consciousness, we have all the different suffering can exist. So we know from our experience that there is suffering in these five aggregates, so we don’t have to do any complicated processing in order to understand this.
So the reason that this is suffering, that our our aggregates are the truth of suffering, is because they come about as a result of karma and delusions or karma and and negative emotions. The as as as a result of these things, they can’t be anything but the truth of suffering. If we’ve if we’ve done good things, if we’ve created positive contaminated karma in the past, then we end up with a body as a as a human or a god at the moment. And as a human, we create all different types of karma. We create contaminated positive karma, contaminated negative karma, neutral karma, all of these things we’re constantly creating.
So as a result of that, we have different kinds of experience. We experience the levels of different intensities of suffering as a result of our multitude of different types of karma that we have accumulated. So as humans, as people who have achieved a human existence, and we have these different types of karma that we’ve accumulated and are experiencing results of. Those who were born in the lower realms, they actually go to the lower realms because their throwing karma was a negative type of throwing karma, and that has sent them to the lower realms. And most of the things that they will experience in the lower realms will be the result of negative things they’ve done in the past, negative contaminated karma, and hence, they will experience samsaric existence in negative fashion or in a in a the suffering in the type of suffering, the suffering of suffering.
If we achieve rebirth as a human, then our suffering is much less, our outright suffering is much less than the suffering of the lower realms. As a human, we have the experience of some aspects of of happiness and and pleasure. If we were to be reborn as a god, we would experience more happiness and pleasure and less of the suffering even than as a human. So we don’t even though we may consider some of the experiences in the god and the human realm as being happiness, as pleasure, then they’re not stable. We cannot rely on them.
They’re not a stable type of happiness. They’re not true happiness, as was explained by the Buddha who said that the saṃsāra, these aggregates that we have, are actually the truth of suffering. But we don’t understand that because we think that the happiness that we have in saṃsāra, the happiness of the human or the god realms, is actually stable happiness. We count that as being stable and happiness that we can rely on. And because we don’t understand that that happiness isn’t stable and is in fact the suffering of change or pervasive suffering, then we don’t understand what it is that we have to try and alleviate.
So out of these three different types of suffering, the suffering of suffering, the the suffering of change and or pervasive suffering, The one that we seem most interested in and spend most and pay much most attention to is the suffering of change. Now, the reason that we do this is because we perceive the suffering of change to actually be happiness. And in order to attain this happiness, we accumulate heaps of different types of karma. We accumulate a lot of positive karma in order to get something. We accumulate a lot of negative karma because we’re desiring and grasping after things, and sometimes even neutral karma.
So we’re all these different types of karma in our desire for some kind of happiness. So because we’re chasing after this suffering or change, we’re creating situations where we’re going to experience more types of suffering, and we’re not actually working towards true happiness. So in a similar way, we spend a lot of time in chasing after this suffering of suffering of change and trying to experience the suffering of change because we it to be happiness. At the same time, we spend a lot of energy trying to avoid the suffering of suffering, and we accumulate a lot of different types of karma in in order to to avoid the suffering of suffering. So so the third different type the third type of suffering is what’s called all pervasive suffering.
The way that we explain all pervasive suffering is to say that all pervasive suffering is the five aggregates, the five aggregates that constitute or make our being up. They they are synonymous with all pervasive suffering. The reason that they synonymous with all pervasive suffering is that they are the reason that we experience pervasive suffering or we experience all different types of suffering. They’re all based on the five aggregates. We have these five aggregates because of karma and delusion.
By the force of karma and delusion, we go from life to life to life to life. Now, the the karma and delusion sends us from life to life to life without us having any say in the matter, so we don’t have any independence or any autonomy with respect to karma and delusion. We have to go where the karma and the delusion send us or deal with the situations they create for us. So that means that karma and delusion are the base or the the reason for us to experience all the different types of suffering. If we look to the past, then, since beginningless time up to now, every suffering that we’ve experienced has been because of this attachment or of this taking five aggregates because of our karma and delusion.
So the five aggregates that we accrue by way of karma and delusion are the reason that we’ve experienced all types of suffering in the past. That’s that’s the base from which the suffering has come. If we look at sorry. The five aggregates that we have also are responsible for the negative situations we’re going to experience in the future, the five aggregates are the things saying, Come on, bring it on, in terms of suffering. They’re they’re they’re the the things that act as the the catalyst for that because of the karma and delusion that is inherent in them, then we have this experience in the future.
And if we look at all the suffering that we have now at any at any given moment, the base for that suffering is the five aggregates. Hence, the five aggregates are said to be synonymous with all pervasive suffering. So so we think that this five aggregates that we have, we think that they actually are our friends, that they’re going to benefit us, that there’s something that can help us out. But in actual fact, they’re not. They’re something that harms us.
So for example, if we think about if we take, for example, the a the form aggregate and we think about the the way that we consider our body to be, we spend a lot of time and put in a lot of effort, just trying to make our body feel good. We think, well, I don’t wanna stay anywhere that’s really hot. I don’t wanna stay anywhere that’s really cold. I wanna eat really, really nice food. I want to sit in a nice place.
I need to get enough sleep. You know, we spend a lot of time trying to look after this form aggregate, because because we think that it’s a benefit to us. We think that this this aggregate is actually helping us. But in actual fact, if we can’t get rid of this aggregate, if we can’t get rid of the truth of suffering, which is inherent in that aggregate, we can’t achieve liberation. So grasping at this aggregate is actually doing us more harm than good.
Grasping at this aggregate is stopping us from achieving liberation. So what we need to do is to get rid of the aggregate of form, the contaminated aggregate of form. We need to completely get rid of that to destroy it completely so we don’t experience any suffering based on that. And I said to Geshe, isn’t that literally suicide? And he said, no.
If you commit suicide, then you’re just gonna get another form aggregate, and it’s not gonna be as nice a form aggregate. I mean, you’re gonna experience suffering that form aggregate. Getting rid of the result isn’t what you need to do. What you need to do is to get rid of the cause. The cause for us to experience the truth of suffering is not the aggregate itself, which is the result.
What we need to get rid of is the reason that these things come into existence. The reason these come into existence is because of karma and delusion. It’s the second noble truth, the truth of the origin of suffering. So if we want to get rid of the result, we don’t start with the result, we start with the cause. And we have to look at the reasoning that’s established there, because that is the only way that we can actually cut through the cause for us to experience suffering, the cause of pervasive suffering, and that’s this karma and delusion.
So this is why where this is why Lama Tsongkhapa says in his quote that if we want to that sorry. That if we don’t think again and again on the origin of suffering, then we won’t be able to cut Samsāra cut the root of Samsāra. Because if we don’t understand what it is that’s actually causing us to experience these different types of suffering and causing us to, to take the five aggregates on as a base from which to experience all these types of suffering, then we can’t actually achieve liberation. So we need to look at what the cause for our suffering is. Now, cause of suffering is said to be karma and delusion.
And from amongst these two, delusion is the thing that causes us to create negative karma. So delusion is is is the is the the root, of the causes of suffering. So we need to look at what that delusion is, and that delusion is grasping at inherent self, grasping at true existence. And that is the thing that we actually need to get rid of. Hello.
We need to get rid of this thing that is stopping us from experiencing true, stable happiness. The thing that’s stopping us from experiencing true, stable happiness is our grasping at true existence. The way that we get rid of true existence, the grasping at true existence, is by meditating on emptiness. By meditating on emptiness, we come to the stage where we realize emptiness. When we realize emptiness, we don’t grasp the true existence.
Once we’ve realized emptiness, then the imprints the imprints established as that establish true existence also begin to fade away, and they fade away more and more and more until the they they’re completely gone. And at that stage, when the imprints of true existence are completely gone, we achieve liberation. And when we achieve liberation, that’s when we achieve stable, reliable happiness. So the problem with that is that it’s not enough for us us to just achieve liberation. We are beings of higher vehicle or the Mahāyāna vehicle, or we like to say that we’re the beings of the Mahāyāna vehicle.
So in order to fulfill that definition, then we need to work towards complete Buddhahood, not just towards liberation for self. We need to work towards the final outcome, not just the temporary outcome. In order to do that, then we need to develop we need to develop bodhicitta. In order to develop bodhicitta, then we have to develop the mind wishing to separate all beings from suffering. So bodhicitta, what it is that we need to develop in order to develop bodhicitta.
We’ve been thinking a lot about the faults of the five aggregates, how the five aggregates, it it cause us a lot of suffering, and how grasping at the five aggregates, how thinking that the five aggregates truly exist and considering them to be very important, how many faults this way of thinking has and how much suffering this causes. And just like we have this grasping at the true existence of the five aggregates and think about the the we think about the suffering that that causes us, just like we do that, then all sentient beings also have, this problem. All sentient beings grasping at the true existence of the five aggregates experience all these different kinds of sufferings. So they are the same as us. They do not want to experience any type of suffering, and they want to experience all different of happiness.
So because they’re just the same as us, then we need to work towards something for their benefit as well as our own benefit. So this mind working towards all sentient beings’ benefit, achieving the highest goal, in order to be a benefit to sentient beings, that mind is bodhicitta. And that’s the thing that we should meditate on for a few minutes. Geshe says, we don’t need the bell. We can just use your stomach going.
Because it’s making weird noises. Okay. So where we were up to in the seventy topics was thirty-four aspects that are an exalted knower of aspects similar to those existing in bodhisattvas. Now, what this is talking about is different aspects to a Buddha’s mind stream. We’re talking about Buddha’s here only because Buddha’s is the only omniscient, you know, or or all knowing being.
So this is referring to Buddhas only. Why it says similar to those existing in bodhisattva’s mind streams is that bodhisattvas have these different types of minds. But because the Buddhas have all different types of minds, or they have all different they know all different types of minds, then these understandings, although they exist in the in Bodhisattvas’ minds, also exist in Buddha’s minds. So there’s thirty four different aspects of these that are divided into six different categories. So the first three of these thirty four aspects are what’s called the three paths of antidotes, which are in the continuum of Buddhas’ paths.
They’re also called the three aspects of the three doors of liberation. This one? This one. Yeah. Yeah.
So the three aspects of the three doors of liberation or just the three doors of liberation, because, yeah, that doesn’t matter. Anyway, basically, what they’re talking about is three different ways of explaining emptiness. So the first way that emptiness is explained that’s translated as merely emptiness, is the emptiness of an inherent entity. Entitylessness is the first way of defining emptiness. The next one is that there is an absence or a pacification or nonexistence of a valid cognition that establishes the cause for true existence.
The reason it’s called signlessness is because of this valid cognition. So there is no valid there’s nothing that can be validly established as the cause for true existence. The third aspect to this door of liberation is the nonexistence of the generation of a truly existent result, which is translated as wishlessness here. Okay. The next the next three of the three paths of manifestation, which is the liberation of the embodied looking at form, the liberation of the formless looking at form, and liberation of the beautiful which eliminates obstacles.
Okay. Now the three parts of man man manifestation, the way the Geshe was explaining it doesn’t quite fit with the translation, so you don’t have to bear with me for a few minutes. The the three parts of manifestation could be the paths that realize manifestation as opposed to true existence. So the first one, liberation of the embodied looking at form, seems to mean liberation of liberation that understands the selflessness of the form existence. Yeah?
And the next one, the liberation of formless looking at form is a is the liberation or the path, if you like, the realization of the lack of oh, sorry, of the the form the the hang on. The lack of true existence of the form the form imprints that exist in the formless realm, where the formless beings don’t think there is any form, but the Buddhas and the Aryas are able to see that there is this imprint of form there, and hence, they’re able to see that that that imprint of form is a manifest manifestation and not a truly existent thing. So it’s that understanding. The last one, the liberation of the beautiful, which eliminates obstacles. Now liberation of beautiful, liberation of the good, what it’s talking about is the getting rid of the two obscurations, the obscurations to emptiness sorry, obscurations to obstructions to omniscience and obstructions to liberation, when they are gotten rid of, then the lack of those obstructions is, something that’s considered beautiful or good, and it’s another type of liberation.
So the next one, the five parts that abide in happiness in the present life are the mind’s understanding the four formless absorptions. So that is the four different levels of the formless realm, the different minds of those realms. And then also the liberation of cessation, which is a synonym of true cessation, which is also a true path because it’s a true cessation. So the minds, though, the the the realization of these things are what’s called the five paths that abide in happiness in present life. Okay.
Alright. So so the next one is the nine super mundane paths, which are terminologically called super mundane paths because they’re not technically super mundane paths because they’re in the continuum of superior, and superiors don’t exist in their form and formless realms, but they have these minds in their mind stream. Hence, they’re terminologically called this, but they aren’t actually this. Right? Now, there’s nine different types of these.
The first four are the four different levels of concentration in the form realm. So in the form realm, you have the first level of concentration, the second level of concentration, the third level of concentration, and the fourth level of concentration. It’s the names of the different levels. And then you have the four in the Formless Realm. The four in the Formless Realm are called the concentration that’s like sky, the concentration that’s like mind, the concentration that’s nothing at all, and the the peak of saṃsāra concentration.
Those are the four of the formless realm. Then there’s also the absorption or the realization of emptiness, the cessation that comes that comes after the realization of emptiness. So the next bit talks about the four paths of abandonment. Now, it doesn’t give the actual pas, it gives a definition of what they are. It says: The four characteristics not associated with the thoroughly afflicted object, possessing included in the fortresses, the objects of the aspect of Dharma forbearances of the uninterrupted path.
Now, what that means is because it doesn’t mean much to me that the things that are realized to be empty in the sixteen moments of the path of seeing. Right? So we were talking about the path of seeing, the sixteen moments of the path of seeing. The first four of those, which is the Dharma forbearances of the uninterrupted path, during these moments, Ārya realizes or applies the antidote to true existence of the Four Noble Truths, and because of this, an understanding of the lack of inherent existence of the Four Noble Truths. And within the Four Noble Truths, we have all phenomena.
Right? So that understanding, that understanding of the lack of inherent existence of the four noble truths are these four paths of abandonment, a path for every noble truth. Okay. So the last thing is the ten paths of Buddhahood. It’s called the ten perfections.
The first six of the perfections are the usual six perfections and there is also generosity and effort, patience and so forth.