Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering works through the final subdivisions of the path of meditation of dedication — twelve in total, ranging from the dedication of valid cognition and skillful means to the small, middling, and great dedications mapped onto the ten bodhisattva grounds — before introducing the path of meditation of rejoicing, its definition, and its two divisions. A practical thread runs throughout: these topics are not merely scholastic; practitioners can begin rejoicing in bodhisattvas’ attainments right now. The Q&A is particularly concrete, using meat-eating as an illustration of the suffering of change, clarifying why “signless” and “non-observation” are distinct descriptions of emptiness, and examining how motivation — not the action itself — determines whether Dharma practice becomes a cause for saṃsāra or liberation. Suited to practitioners already working through the Seventy Topics text.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 ST6 2003 06 26.mp3
UUID: 68af8a6c-77ae-46a9-9fe8-92e3d68300b3
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-06-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~2,609
Now I’ve got that sorted out. 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 pramāṇa, or valid cognition. This is referring to the dedication of the practice or the dedication of a valid cognition.
Instead of dedicating towards something, this is the dedication of something. 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.
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 category of the path of meditation or 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 of dedication named along with skillful means.
So this basically just means the dedication of skillful means, the dedication towards skillful means. Dedication of skillful means is dedicating the great compassion that they have 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 got to stop saying that. The path of meditation of dedication named signless is the same as number two, 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 are in meditative equipoise concentrating on emptiness, they are not actually doing any dedicating at that point because they are in meditative equipoise. Once they have finished that 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 Joe’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 Buddhist. 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 the 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 of 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. It’s dedicating something that’s already been achieved and dedicating towards achieving something. So the last three grounds, 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, eleven and twelve, of the divisions of the path of meditation dedication are the path of meditation of dedication named small dedication, path of meditation of dedication named middling dedication, and the path of meditation of dedication named great dedication. Okay. So path of meditation of dedication, named small dedication, would be grounds two, three and four, and 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 that that and is taken to show where these divisions came from. Then the last, the boundary of the path of meditation or dedication, its boundary exists from the first ground through to the end of the continuum. Now, the next one is the path of meditation of rejoicing. We just did the path of meditation of dedication, and we were talking about how being dedicated their actions towards something or dedicated certain actions that they had done. 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 realizer, apprehending term and meaning generalities as suitable to be mixed that cultivates joy in either one’s own or or other’s roots of virtue. Now, we can take from apprehending term and mean apprehending to suitable to be mixed. So apprehending term and meaning generalities is suitable to be mixed as a synonym for a conception.
So we’re dealing with a conceptual — so it is a conceptual conception. Right? Mahāyāna subsequent realizer is a 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 aren’t any negative conceptions anymore because the 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 the negative results. So we’re talking here about pure conceptions 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 and rejoicing that cultivates joy in one’s own roots of virtue and one that cultivates joy in others’ roots of virtues. Virtues. And apart from this division, in this instance, there isn’t any subsequent divisions. Okay. So the boundaries of the path of meditation of rejoicing are 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, which is on the path of meditation. Because — hang on — 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 teachings, there’s a fair bit of detail on the path of seeing. That’s why there is more focus on the path of meditation in this stage. Also the reason that the path of meditation is sometimes called the subsequent clear realizer is that everything that is realized on the path of meditation has already been the initial realization has already taken 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 path of rejoicing that cultivates joy in one’s own roots and in the roots of others. In the path of meditation of dedication, it was talking about dedicating for one’s own purpose, the purpose of others, and for both. And just because it’s only enumerated as two in this instance doesn’t mean that all three shouldn’t be rejoiced in. And 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 with 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 I’ll 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 act like them, if you like. We can also we also have to remember that it isn’t 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 these? 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 to 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. They they they basically just 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.
And 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 characterless. The other thing He said it’s the same as saying that something isn’t established by its characteristics. So saying something isn’t established by its characteristics, saying something is not truly existent, saying something doesn’t exist from its own side, and different ways of saying emptiness.
So, yeah, signless is the same as characterless. Yeah. 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 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 so we don’t understand the suffering of change properly is is for example, because if we understood the suffering of change properly, then we wouldn’t get excited about eating really good food. We wouldn’t we wouldn’t be 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 is a negativity. But because we don’t understand this properly, we don’t understand that it is 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 change 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. Yeah. 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 change. We don’t understand that all other 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 would 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. Oh, it’s alright. Is that fair?
So that’s probably the way it is. Okay. First of all, suffering is no. Samsāra is pervaded by suffering, but saṃsāra is not pervaded by the feeling of suffering. I think he’s just throwing debate stuff at me.
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 we achieve liberation at least, then it’s not a cause for saṃsāra either. So it’s the same way you either listen or you speak or you practice. Whatever you do, it’s all the same. Depends on the motivation.
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. I don’t — I see the like ourselves.