Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of sun and moon opens this 42-minute session: Geshe Pema Tsering uses it to explain bodhicitta’s dual function — like sunlight it dissolves self-grasping and reveals emptiness; like moonlight it cools the torments of suffering. He then diagnoses why bodhicitta is so elusive: practitioners have not genuinely felt saṃsāra’s weight, so renunciation stays shallow and the wish to free all beings never takes root. He identifies a seed of bodhicitta already present in every being — the wish for happiness — and traces how contrived aspiration becomes uncontrived through sustained study and meditation. The session then turns to Seventy Topics material: Bodhisattvas who have attained signs of irreversibility, their classification across three paths, the pure-grounds yoga of perceiving all phenomena as empty of true existence, and the bodhisattva’s own pure land (Akanishtha) as the fruit of eons of accumulated virtue and prayer.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 ST9 2003 09 18.mp3
UUID: 3e1b872d-b425-4f6d-b9cb-7bdc19a60249
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-09-18
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.6 minutes
Words: ~3,153
bodhicitta, which is like the sun and the moon. Therefore, practice for eons in order to attain it. Yes. Now what this means is if we want to do Mahāyāna practice, if we want to do a practice of the greater vehicle, we absolutely definitely need bodhicitta because it defines the Mahāyāna vehicle. If there’s no bodhicitta, there is no Mahāyāna vehicle.
What bodhicitta does then is it works in two different ways. The metaphor here is used that it like the sun and the moon, in that it clears away things. Like the sun and the moon, it clears away ignorance. How it clears away ignorance is: if we have developed bodhicitta, then our focus has changed from being on ourselves to focusing on others. By changing that process and focusing on others as opposed to focusing on ourselves, then we are able to get rid of self grasping.
By getting rid of self grasping, we understand emptiness, and hence our ignorance or our stupor has been wiped away. That’s what the first type of wiping away does. The second type of wiping away that it does, which is like the moon, in that the moon’s effects are cooling and lighting, is that it gets rid of suffering. The way it gets rid of suffering is that we stop thinking ourselves, we start thinking of others, we start working towards enlightenment. By achieving enlightenment, we get rid of our suffering.
So in this way, bodhicitta has these two aspects: is like the sun and the moon, in that like the sun it clears away ignorance, and like the moon it acts as a guide or it highlights. The moon is said to be cooling for some reason, So like the moon, it cools the torments of suffering. Right. Now, because it’s so special, then we need to work or we need to practice for eons in order to be able to generate it. But it is special enough to to make us want to work for eons in order to generate it.
It’s just not easy. That’s all. It’s difficult, but it is possible to generate bodhicitta. So we have to keep working at it. We figure out ways to do it, we have to keep striving to do it.
When we have developed bodhicitta, doing all this positive and doing all this positive is easy, doing something negative is very difficult. It’s the opposite of what it is for us at the moment. For us, doing something positive is difficult, and doing something negative is our normal state. If we focus really hard and we’re able to meditate on bodhicitta for a few minutes, we can train our mind to do like this. But it s very difficult for us to actually stay like this all the time.
S impossible for us to stay like this all the time. Now, the reason that it s difficult or impossible for us to stay like this all the time is because we haven’t seen the fault of saṃsāra properly. We haven’t seen the problem with the way that we are existing. Hence, we don’t develop renunciation from our situation, and from that we don’t seek to help all beings. Therefore, it’s really difficult for us to develop bodhicitta, something that it’s not something that comes naturally to us and is very difficult.
But that doesn mean that we can t do it. We can tell from our own experiences that if we look at the way that we focus on bodhicitta now and compare it to the way we focused on bodhicitta or understood bodhicitta or paid attention to bodhicitta ten, fifteen years ago, or even twenty years ago, then we can see a difference. We know that we ve improved. We know that our focus has improved. We understand more about it.
We spend more time studying texts through that study, through meditation, through our practices, we can see an improvement. And because we can see an improvement, if we look at it this way, we see an improvement. Then we know that if we put in the effort, if we became like Milarepa and went and meditated full on in the mountains and put in that effort, we know that we can get there. We can see from our own experience that it has improved, so we know that if we put in more effort, that we would actually get there. The thing, however, that stops us putting in that effort, the thing that stops us from focusing completely on this task, is that we don’t understand the suffering of saṃsāra. We don’t understand our situation properly.
We don’t think saṃsāra is that bad. Then we don’t develop renunciation. Because we don’t develop renunciation, we can’t develop bodhicitta. So in actual fact, bodhicitta and everything that comes after it is dependent on bodhicitta and everything that comes after renunciation and everything are dependent on our understanding of suffering. We need to be able to understand suffering in order to develop these other understandings.
So it s not as if suffering isn as important as the others, it s the main thing we should be focusing on. So we may not have this developed bodhicitta like the bodhicitta in our mind stream. But even in the mind stream as ordinary beings, even in our mind streams, there is the seed of that mind of bodhicitta. The seed of that mind of bodhicitta is the idea that we have that we want to be happy. Now this desiring to be happy is something that’s in all beings.
All beings have that desire, have that yearning and spend most of their time working towards that end, working towards being happy. The difference is we don’t understand what it is that we have to work towards, but we have this seed. We have the start of that understanding. In order for a seed to grow however, it needs fertilizer and water. And this fertilizer and water come in the form of meditation and practice.
So if we start with that seed and meditate and practice, we will eventually develop bodhicitta, Our understanding of enlightenment, our understanding of the final goal, our understanding of what we really need to work towards if we want to be happy, we’ll become more refined and more refined and subtler and subtler, and eventually we will develop this. And quite apart from that, we also have this vague idea in our heads. We have the contrived bodhicitta. We have this idea that we want to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. We think about that occasionally. If we think and we focus on it, it will become stronger and stronger.
And if we keep thinking about, pondering on, studying ways to improve it, meditating on it, then eventually this thought will become bodhicitta itself. It will become the wish to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, the uncontrived wish to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. We have the seeds of that. We have the seeds of it in ourselves because by making a commitment, by trying to do things, we don’t only want to achieve happiness for ourselves we started to think about others so we have the beginning of that there if we want to achieve it however we have to put in the effort we have to put in the practice and we have to try and make that idea more subtle, more subtle and more clear in our practice. And eventually it will become uncontrived bodhicitta.
What bodhicitta is then, is the coming together of two different types of mind. On the one hand, we have this mind that seeks to achieve enlightenment. On the other hand, we have this mind that seeks to establish all sentient beings in a state beyond sorrow, or to establish all sentient beings in their greatest happiness. When those two different types of minds come together, then in an uncontrived manner, that’s bodhicitta. And we actually have those thoughts in mind stream.
We have this idea of achieving enlightenment. We have the idea of trying to help all sentient beings. And we need to bring those together and we need to make them more subtle to make them closer to a direct perception as opposed to an idea. So we need to make them subtle and subtle. And if we keep meditating on them and we keep focusing on them, they will become subtler and subtler and eventually become bodhicitta, become uncontrived bodhicitta.
So this focusing on familiarizing ourselves with these two different minds together, the mind or the focus on trying to establish all beings in a state beyond sorrow and the other one of achieving Buddhahood. These two different thoughts when they come together is meditation. And we think about that, then that’s meditation on bodhicitta. So that’s what we need to do now is to meditate on those two thoughts together for a few minutes. Get it.
Where are you off, teacher? That wasn’t me. That was. Sorry. I’m trying to get Geshe-la to speak with a central accent.
One we were up to is called bodhisattva Sangha, who has attained a sign of irreversibility. Now, this is referring to is when Bodhisattvas reach a certain stage of their development or a certain stage along different paths, they won t turn back. It s a certain thing that they are going to achieve enlightenment and complete enlightenment. Therefore, there is no falling back into the lower parts or lower stages. And at this stage they develop signs of this.
And this is actually referring though to the bodhisattvas themselves. It doesn’t refer to the signs and it doesn’t refer to the minds. It’s talking about the being. Okay. The definition of a bodhisattva sanga who has attained a sign of irreversibility is a bodhisattva, so it’s a being, who has attained any of the forty four signs, away from adherence to forms and so forth as truly existent.
Forms and so forth is all phenomena, right? So they’re adhering to forms and so forth as truly existent means grasping at forms and so forth as being truly existent, seeing them, perceiving them as being truly existent, happens to us effortlessly, effortlessly, effortlessly. I’ve got it. It’s right. Yes.
This happens to us in that way. And when the mind turns away from that, has renounced that, and forth, and they develop these forty four signs of bodhisattva who has attained signs of irreversibility. Now, forty four signs are gone through one by one in the outline of the fourth chapter that which we are supposed to be doing next year. So it goes through every one of the forty four signs and explains what they are and why they come about. So there’s three different types of these bodhisattva sangha who have attained a sign of irreversibility.
There’s those on the path of preparation, those on the path of seeing, and those on the path of meditation. Okay. There’s actually also an individual definition for the three different types of sign that we’re talking about here. So we’re talking about signs, beings that exhibit signs on the path of preparation, on the path of seeing, and the path of meditation. So for each of those individual paths, or the signs exhibited on each of those individual paths, there is a definition.
Now, for example, on the path of preparation, the definition is okay, where do I start from? Okay. A unique or exalted, yeah. This is the definition of the sign, okay? An exalted terminology or sign of speech or body that is a definition or a characteristic of one who has achieved irreversibility towards the complete or none hang on.
The complete don’t remember. The complete highest complete highest enlightenment and is a person on the path of seeing a Bodhisattva who has all of these qualities in their continuum. Did you guys get that? Yeah, kind of. That’s nice.
Okay. Okay. I’m trying to see this is one way, I’m trying to figure out how they usually translate. And exalted is the way they usually say it. Right?
An exalted sign or terminology, of speech or body that acts as a sign or a characteristic of the irreversibility from achieving the highest complete enlightenment and exists on or in a being on the path of preparation who possesses these signs. Yeah. Okay, so it s exactly the same for the beings on the path of seeing and the beings on the path of preparation, I mean, and the path of meditation. You just substitute being on the path of seeing for being on the path of, sorry, being on the path of preparation for being on the path of seeing. Yeah?
And guess what is why he was talking a lot more than I’m going to do is that he just repeated them all. Right. All three. Alright. So that’s the definition of the signs.
So that’s followed by a quote from the from the ornament of clear realization, which shows how that it’s described in the ornament of clear realization. This is described there. Yes. And the boundary is from the heat level or the beginning of Mahāyāna Path of preparation, and it goes through to the end of the continuum. But it comes off a bit weird in It sounds a bit strange because it’s actually a person here and not a mind and every other one we’ve done is a mind.
So, the boundaries are that it is a person who has attained the heat level of Mahāyāna path of preparation through to a person who is at the end of their continuum. So what we’re talking about in point number eight, that is a being, is a person or a human or a god, yeah? But the definitions that we were given that were the signs of these beings, they are not talking about a being. They are talking about a quality of speech or body, a quality or a sign of speech or body of these beings. The other thing is that beings on the path of accumulation of the middling and the greater stages also have this irreversibility.
There’s no way that they can go back to becoming an ordinary being or lose their paths and it’s absolutely certain they will achieve the highest complete enlightenment. The thing is that they don develop signs of this until they have achieved the path of preparation. That s why this is only talking about this boundary is only from the path of preparation up to the end of the continuum. Okay. The next next one, application in the equality of existence and peace.
Now this definition says, a yoga of the pure grounds, which is grounds eight, nine and ten, that completely quells the opportunity for the generation of the manifest conception of true existence on the occasions of subsequent attainment due to being conjoined with the wisdom directly realizing existence and peace to be empty of true existence. Now if we work from the end backwards, directly realizing existence and peace. Existence and peace is referring to phenomena that are included within Samsāra that says that s existence. And the phenomena we include in nirvana and enlightenment, which is what s referred to here as peace. So we re talking about all phenomena from our experience up to the experiences of a Buddha.
So it is another way of saying all phenomena in saṃsāra and nirvana. All of these phenomena are seen or directly perceived to be free of inherent existence. And this is in stage of subsequent attainment, which means that it s not referring to meditative equipoise. Attainment. So on these pure grounds, this grasping at true existence doesn t have the opportunity to generate because it has been exhausted.
The potential to do that has been exhausted on these three pure grounds. The thing is, this is referring to post meditative wisdom. Usually when we talk about beings being able to perceive emptiness directly, it’s referring to their meditative equipoise. Only people who see emptiness directly who are not in meditative equipoise are Buddhas, but Bodhisattvas and Aryas also see things like an illusion, but this perception of seeing something as like an illusion is also called realizing emptiness. It’s just done in a different way to those of the Buddha.
Okay. So we’re not talking about the it sounds as if we’re talking about the that that they can directly perceive emptiness all the time when they’re not in a meditative equipoise. But that s not what it saying. It s saying that they have the wisdom understanding emptiness in their continuum at all times, even though they may not be directly perceiving emptiness at that stage. Because they have the wisdom understanding emptiness in their continuum, even though they may not be focusing on that in meditative equipoise, things appear to them as like an illusion.
So when it says here, The exalted wisdom of the three pure grounds directly realizing emptiness, it means that that’s in their continuum. It’s not what they’re doing at that moment. Does that make sense? Okay. Okay.
This one’s a bit weird. The next one is application in a pure land or application it should perhaps be application of a pure land. Now, the definition of application in a pure land is a yoga of the pure grounds that is a powerful potency in one s continuum. That means it s got lots of power. It has the ability to do lots of things.
It is being the root of virtue, of prayers, and so forth, which establishes a special land where oneself will become a Buddha. So what happens is, through the process of eons of virtuous action and through eons of continually praying to become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings, the results of these actions manifest as a place, a place in which the being, the bodhisattva, becomes a Buddha. So it is a pure Buddha ground or a Buddha land, which is manifested by the power of the bodhisattvas to establish a place in which they become Buddhas. It is called Akanishtha, usually called Akanishtha, it is a pure land called Akanishtha. This is the place where they become the Buddha.
It is a result of all their previous positive actions, which develops a very powerful ability to manifest an actual place. Yeah. And it’s their own land. Yeah? It’s their own place.
Yeah? So, Geshe-la said, if I was going to become a Buddha, that it would be called Ruth’s Buddha Land. So it’s it’s their own place. Yeah. I was just checking.
It’s a place. It’s not not a mind.