Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute commentary, Geshe Pema Tsering works through the final cluster of the twenty secondary afflictions, opening with a concrete illustration: shamelessness means harming a being — killing a goat, for instance — with no compassion for it and no internal sense of wrongdoing. He carefully distinguishes it from non-embarrassment (one ignores one’s own moral sense; the other ignores others’), then moves through lethargy, excitement, and faithlessness before giving a detailed account of laziness in three forms: the perpetual tomorrow-mind, action driven by karma or delusion, and enthusiasm that quietly dissolves over weeks. Non-conscientiousness, forgetfulness, non-introspection, and distraction follow. The Q&A addresses specific antidotes for each affliction, the Tibetan equation of impatience with anger, the scope of Tonglen practice, and why doubt about achieving enlightenment qualifies as a root delusion.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 ST3 2003 03 27.mp3
UUID: c30b4a2e-e66d-4eb1-9518-9483867cbc72
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-03-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.9 minutes
Words: ~2,451
The next one, shamelessness is, for example, if not having any respect to the thing that we’re doing. Okay. So if we don’t have any respect to the thing that we’re going to harm when we’re doing something or any respect from us to our if we don’t have any respect to the thing we’re going to harm we don’t have any sense of compassion for the thing we’re going to do harm towards and we don’t have any sense in ourselves that what we’re doing is wrong then that’s called the next one shamelessness. Now, shamelessness is for example, if we were going to kill a goat. Now, if we don’t have any idea of compassion for the goat and thinking that it’s wrong to harm, we don’t have any sense of what compassion is about and we don’t think it’s not very nice to harm beings and at the same time when we don’t actually have any respect to the goat itself we don’t have any respect to compassion as a concept and we don’t have any respect to the goat itself then that’s called shamelessness.
And the twelfth one, non embarrassment, is it’s the same as shamelessness except instead of not reacting to our own sense of what’s right and wrong. We don’t react to what others sense of what right and wrong is. If we don’t if someone else tells us it’s not very good to kill goats, then we don’t listen. We don’t have an appreciation for what they’ve said. That’s called non embarrassment.
So the only difference between non embarrassment and shamelessness is the point of reference for the lack of understanding of right and wrong. So the description that we just had of shamelessness and non-embarrassment. Sorry. Shamelessness and non embarrassment is actually from the point of view of the higher schools. The Vaibhāṣika school or particularist school have a different interpretation.
They say that if you don’t have any shame after the act if there’s no regret comes about then that is the shamelessness. I’ve got to get the other one. So so this sorry. There’s no sense of regret coming up after you could you’ve done an action with shamelessness and not recognizing something as being a negative action, not recognizing something as being something that goes against the laws of either vows or vows or good and the descriptions of what is negative and positive not recognizing that is non embarrassment they say. So the higher schools say what we say in the first place and then alternative description is by the Vaibhāṣika The next one lethargy is this sense of like fogginess in our mind.
It doesn’t necessarily refer to doing positive things. We don’t seem to have it. It’s just describing a situation where we don’t seem to have the energy to do positive things, negative things or even neutral things. Anything that we are about to do we just feel like going to sleep instead. Someone who goes to sleep easily.
That’s lethargy. Okay. The next one, excitement is when our mind gets agitated by desire or anger or something like that and doesn’t rest at all in in in it’s it doesn’t the mind doesn’t rest at all. It’s constantly chasing after desire or anger or something. Yeah.
Something along those lines and doesn’t have a time. It’s not stable and at peace. So excitement and belligerence are actually quite similar in that there is this idea of our mind going outwards. Our mind going outwards and not concentrating inwards and not being stable. But the difference being that belligerence is caused by something that agitates us and makes us tending towards anger and harmfulness and excitement usually comes about because of desire.
So faithlessness is when we don’t have any belief in the Three Jewels in karma, cause and effect. If we don’t have any belief in the paths, we don’t have any belief in the four noble truths, any of these things. If they don’t develop a stability in our mind. That doesn’t make sense in English. If their belief in them doesn’t develop a stability in our mind, if we’re not stable in our belief in them, then we call this faithlessness.
So the next one is often translated as laziness, but its description is that it’s not liking doing good things and really liking doing like bad things. So anything that you could be doing that would be creating merits or creating virtue. It’s not being very predisposed towards that, not being very interested, not being very enthusiastic. Anything that you can do that is following desire or anger or ignorance then it’s really into that and really enthusiastic about doing that. It’s those kind of minds.
There’s three different types of this kind of mind but they all have this quality of being enthusiastic about negative things and being less enthusiastic about positive things. So this one is very, very bad. Okay. So the first one is this idea that I have something the first of the three lazinesses is the idea that I have something else to do today. I’m really busy doing something else today but I’ll do something virtuous tomorrow and then the next day comes and it’s like well I actually haven’t finished my work so I’ll put it off until the next day and then the next day and maybe a year or two or five later.
So it’s this idea of being too busy doing other things and not having the time to do something virtuous or practice Dharma. So the second one is anything that we do that is done by the power of karma or delusions that isn’t done with a mind directed towards virtue. So anything done with belligerence, resentment, denial, etc., from the twenty secondary afflictions or the six root afflictions, then this is the second type of laziness. So anything that’s done for the benefit of this life, whether it’s working in a field, whether it’s working in a factory, anything that’s done with the motivation of getting something back in this life becomes this type of laziness.
The third type of laziness is when at the beginning we have real enthusiasm for something we take it on with great happiness and we keep working at it for at least three or four days or a few months even and then we slowly lose interest and then we do it less and less and at the end we just forget about it altogether. So if we actually look at it then almost everything we do is one of these three different types of laziness. Oh, yeah. Okay, the next one non conscientiousness or carelessness is when we don’t have a clear reason for abandoning something and don’t apply the antidotes to doing it. So therefore we don’t abandon it properly.
We can’t just abandon doing negative things without thinking it through and having the direct antidotes to it. So for example, we have this idea that killing is bad. But if we just have a rough idea that killing is bad and don’t have a like haven’t consciously thought about why killing is bad and haven’t worked at applying the antidotes to killing, then our abandonment of killing doesn’t become something very stable. So we have to conscientiously work at abandoning negative things, go through the thought processes of why it’s negative and work at abandoning it. So when we don’t do that, that’s non-conscientiousness.
So the next one, forgetfulness, this could also be translated as mindfulness that forgets and when something when we are certain about forgetting something is when we don’t clearly remember the positive things so they become clouded over by our karma and delusions and then we forget the positive things that we were supposed to do and get caught up in our karma and delusions. Okay. The next one, non introspection, is when we don’t pay attention and we don’t investigate what we are doing with our three doors that is doors of body speech and mind. So it means when we don’t watch what we’re thinking, don’t watch what we’re saying and we don’t watch what we’re doing with our physical body and because we’re not aware of what we’re doing with these three doors or these three aspects of us, then we do negative things. Okay so the last one distraction is when we are trying to concentrate on one object and cannot keep focused on that one object cause our mind chases after all different types of things.
Every time our mind chases after something different and doesn’t focus on the object then that’s distraction. Excitement and distraction are almost the same thing. But excitement is most of the time when we are excited by something that we desire, something that has pleased us in some way. Distraction isn’t just a negative thing that we’re running after with our mind. If our mind starts running after wanting to do positive things or starts running after positive ideas in our mind like virtuous ideas or that even that is still considered distraction if we’re supposed to be concentrating on one thing.
Oh, and that’s the end. Okay. Has anyone got any questions? Yeah. Okay, so in that case you would be able to tell the difference because forgetfulness will be when your image of the object you were focusing on became foggy and you weren’t concentrating on it and it you began to forget about it.
Whereas distraction is when your mind jumps to something completely different. It is when you’re because of because of thinking about something else then your focus on the object becomes less clear. He said that the antidote to all of them is opposite of all of them. So for example, the antidote to faithlessness is faith. The antidote to shamelessness is shame.
The antidote to belligerence is no belligerence. So for example, the first one, belligerence, the opposite, the antidote to belligerence is non belligerence, and non belligerence is synonymous with patience. And then the second one, resentment or holding a grudge is just not holding a grudge. So if you think in this way about all of them, then you come to understand the antidote. These afflictive emotions are actually unique afflictive emotions to our mind usually when they happen and so therefore they have unique antidotes which are their opposites.
There’s other things that are called more common antidotes which are focusing on impermanence and emptiness and selflessness. These can act as an antidote to these but because the situations in our minds are very specific usually then they should have a very specific antidote to them. He said if you can do then that’s very good. But if halfway through you start getting tired and nearly fall asleep, then you should think that I have created a lot of these negative afflictive emotions in my mind in the past and was really bad and I hope it doesn’t happen in the future. When, impatience or impatience?
That’s not there. Patience. An antidote in the usually one feels justified. Yeah. Right.
Mhmm. Because of the stories that you tell yourself about the situation. Yep. You think it justified in being impatient. Mhmm.
So it’s very hard, you know, because you think you’re right Mhmm. To be impatient. So it’s very hard to apply it in that situation. He said that most of the time when we can’t bear situations for the reason that we can’t like we can’t we lose our patience for a situation we become impatient He said most of the time that’s because of laziness of one type or the other, or laziness should literally be translated as being attracted to that which is not helpful. So every time that we can’t bear with the situation it’s because of one of those three types of laziness or being attracted to something that’s not positive.
And he said anything that is not patience is anger. So if it’s not patience, it’s anger. They’re the opposite of each other. Actually, as a footnote, there’s no difference between saying impatient and anger in Tibetan. And I tried to say it because that’s anger.
There was someone, Chris and Natalie, but Natalie was first and then. Uh-huh. I don’t know, maybe you want to put it a different way. You said that Tonglen practice is about taking other people’s suffering and giving away your positivity and doesn’t think that there’s anything in it for thinking about the kindness of others. So yeah, he says taking on everybody else s suffering in bad situations and giving out all pleasant situations and all your happiness and all.
So he said that is Tonglen practice. Anything else isn’t? But just in general? Yeah. That’s like bodhichitta.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He said it’s really good that you feel like crying for them. That’s good.
Because it’s a really good sign that that there’s a this sense of that all these people have helped you in so many ways, and there’s there’s so much suffering that that this feeling of crying can come up. And then the idea is, okay. That just not to end it with the crying to be thinking, I want to help these beings. I will do anything that I can now, until I attain Buddhahood, in order to be a benefit to them. So it’s to take it on from there.
Very good. If we just go through doing any of these practices and there’s not something moving, there’s not something coming up that’s really powerful, there’s no point in doing them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I don’t have the translation of those three. I was like, you know, making it off in the top of my head. So that could have been part of the problem. He said the thought that I may not be able to achieve enlightenment actually comes under the six root delusions and one of them is doubt, afflicted doubt. Yeah.
So they don’t actually come at the same time, but they can go like one mind, then the next mind, one mind, then the next mind, one mind, the next So these twenty secondary afflictions are mental factors. They’re not main mind. So they come along with a main mind. And there’s usually five mental factors that come along with a main mind. But all five of those wouldn’t be different secondary afflictions.
Only one of them at a time could be a secondary affliction. But they could be coming very closely together. But they couldn’t happen in exactly the same moment.