Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. What separates a practitioner of “sharp faculties” from one of “dull faculties”? In this 25-minute live Q&A, Geshe Pema Tsering answers that question — and two others — from students studying the Seventy Topics. He opens by clarifying how desire-realm beings can realise the path of seeing: once calm abiding is attained, a practitioner gains higher-realm minds and can no longer be classified as a purely desire-realm being. The second exchange defines sharp faculties (relying on reason to investigate teachings independently) versus dull faculties (relying on faith), with Geshe Pema showing the two are mutually dependent rather than opposed. The session closes with a practical method for handling anxiety: trace the cause, act where possible, accept what cannot be changed, and recall that conditioned experience cannot last.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 ST7 2003 08 07.mp3
UUID: 0e6bf1e3-d23e-428f-b523-7f1fe1d2e7ef
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-08-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 25.3 minutes
Words: ~1,843
This is also being realised, and that’s with regards to the desire realm and the higher realm as well. So it’s all about emptiness. That’s the starting point. That’s you don’t need to — incorrect because you’re not abandoning the Yeah. Probably should have said inherent existence of that that’s what I was saying before.
I probably should say inherent and that’s what I meant by in inheritance, but I should have probably said inherent existence of yeah. Sorry. I was getting I was I was trying to align my neck, and I was having a bit of a headache. Hang on a sec. Yeah.
Which one of you? You guys come because Joe’s been going like this. Okay. Then hang on. Does Rob, does yours come from tonight?
Yes. It’s a continuation of that. Okay. Then you go. How how can human beings desire realm beings Uh-huh.
Forbearance and subsequent knowledge — how do they come about? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It’s not technically well, it’s not completely correct to say that people on the path of seeing desire realm beings.
Once you have attained calm abiding, then you have higher realm minds. You have the the minds of the form and the formless realm. So, beings on the path of seeing can be anywhere. They can be in Dewa Chen.
Yeah? How do you say Dewa Chen? Great bliss land. Yeah? They can they can be there.
They can be in the form or formless realms. They can have emanations in all different places. They can have all these things going on. So they even though they may be a a being of they their body, they may have a physical body, in the desire realm, then they’re they’re not technically a completely desire realm being. If you have bodhicitta, if you have calm abiding, you have, this understanding of emptiness, then you’re not just a desire realm being.
You have minds from all the different realms. So therefore, you can, develop an understanding of the emptiness of all the different all the different realms — the desire realms and the form and formless. Yeah. It’s okay? Yeah.
Okay. So funny. It’s going like this. Last night Mhmm. A person of sharp faculties.
Yeah. She meditates on emptiness before meditating on bodhicitta. Because they can’t develop bodhicitta. They don’t yeah. Yeah.
So I would like to know, is there a specific definition for a person with sharp attitude? Because it seems like a relative term. Yeah. Yeah. Any person could be sharp compared with some people without compared with others.
So is there a specific definition for a person with sharp? Yeah. Okay. Okay. So the difference is a being who relies mainly on intellect and reason to establish understanding is a being of sharp faculties and a being who relies on faith in the teachings and what’s being said is a being of dull faculties so if someone says I am going to investigate that myself to understand it, then they’re being of sharp faculties.
If they’re relying on what someone said, because they have belief, then they’re being of dull faculties. He said that you can watch and see how your mind works tonight. So the being with being with dull faculties, right, is also can also be people with incredible qualities because they just accept that they need to work for the the the welfare of others, whereas a being with sharp faculties would be someone that would say, I might work for the benefit of others, but I wanna find out that there’s a purpose for it first. Yeah. So so what saying one is not necessarily that one is is better than the other.
But the being with sharp faculties sees the reason looks for the reason why bodhicitta is necessary as opposed to accepting in our faith and then trying to generate it. Yes. Sorry. He wants to know how exactly you’re gonna realize it without relying on a teacher to explain it to you. Okay.
So he he literally said, who’s going to who’s going to give you the reasons? Like, the word is you’re only on reason. The sharp with sharp faculties are relying on reason. But who’s gonna give you the reasons if you don’t have a teacher or a text in everything explaining it to you? So you need to rely on someone to explain the reasoning to you.
Yeah. But I’m saying, if you don’t have faith in you know, if you don’t have that sort of aspect of faith Mhmm. In a teacher Mhmm. Then how are you going to be able Is it that it works both ways. Like, if you could use reasoning to see the truth in what a teacher was saying, yeah, and and then, with what a text was saying, you’d have faith in that teacher because what they said was true.
Yeah. And then, and you would have faith in the text. And in fact, that’s the way it mostly happens. You look at something and see what the teacher is saying is true, and then you develop faith in them. So you can’t have faith without or belief without reasoning, and you can’t have reasoning if you don’t have belief because if you have the reasoning, you’ll see that that there’s a reason to have belief.
I’m glad it made sense to someone. Didn’t make sense to I told you all this. Oh. So he said it’s it comes down to being, for example, as simple as if you So if you understand the reasoning being purported by a teacher, then you will see that their qualities and how amazing their qualities are and develop faith in them if you can apply the reasoning. And it’s as simple as if we see someone with a lot of money, and we think I need money.
I’m going to go and ask that person for help, and then we see the qualities of their money, or the qualities of their power in order to get us out of a situation. It’s not we have to develop faith in them having money because we can see they’ve got money. Yeah? So it’s the same as if we see a teacher’s reasoning is sound, then we have faith in their qualities really easily because it’s so it’s it’s very obvious. And it’s the same as if we need money from someone, go to someone who has money.
Mhmm. We don’t you don’t that is not a No. He said it’s just whichever one comes first. Like, so he said from his side, he would be someone with dull faculties because he didn’t believe he didn’t know what anything was going on because he got first got taught these things when he didn’t understand anything, and he just took them on on faith and then later saw that them to be true. Whereas most Westerners, they don’t accept things just because someone tells them things.
They keep going and looking, especially Buddhism. They they go and look and check it all out, and if it makes sense, then they have faith in it. So Some days, I feel that old and some days, I can’t. Joking. Joking.
And then. So you wanna know how to stop being anxious, or you wanna know what’s the karmic cause of being anxious? The cause of anxiety attacks. Okay. Okay.
Okay. So in terms of karma, the reason that someone would have anxiety is because they’ve done something negative in the past, and they have to experience the results of that. The the other point, with the with the karmic description of why it comes about is that because it comes by causes and conditions, does it means it won’t last forever. So therefore, those things have to fade away as well. In terms of an antidote, the antidote to worry or anxiety is to do like a mind training to think about it.
Every time that there is a feeling of anxiety or worry, then to try and figure out what the cause of that anxiety or worry is, what is the thing that triggered that anxiety or worry, then look at that situation and say okay what can I do about that situation is there anything that I can do to stop that situation and if there isn’t anything to do to be able to stop it then to bear it because it’s a result of past karma? Right? So if if you continually look into the causes as opposed to worrying about the situation, then you can you have something to work with. Right? So the then, the causes of the worry.
Yeah? Okay. So if there’s nothing you can do about it, have to bear with it and then remember that it’s not gonna last forever because it’s from causes and conditions. If there’s something that you can do about it, then do it, but don’t worry because there’s no point. And the thing that to keep remembering is there is that worrying doesn’t help that situation.
And there is no It doesn’t help the worry. The worry doesn’t help whatever it is that was making the anxiety come back. Yeah? The the cause for it. So it’s continually thinking about it every time that it happens.
And I’ve forgotten one thing. So so if you can do something, do it. If you can take on something, then take it on. If there’s some way you can stop it, if there’s something that you can do to make it softer for you, then do it. If not, then you have to bear with it and then try and remember that it’s not going to to last forever.
But anything that’s going to happen, try and be relaxed about it because it’s going to happen. Try and be happy about it because it’s going to happen, and worrying about it doesn’t help anything. He said I said so that they there’s this anxiety that comes about with no particular specific reason because it’s become a habit, because being anxious has become a habit, he should have said yeah. But even in those cases, if they stop and think, okay. Why am I anxious?
And they see there’s no reason for being anxious. They don’t have a reason. It’s just a habit. Then that will that that gives them the the the focus to work through it as well. So if there’s no reason and they stop and think, okay.
Why am I anxious? And they say, wait a minute. I’m not anxious for any particular reason, And then they can start working through just to understand they’re not or that to understand how not to become anxious. I said, do Tibetans suffer from free flowing anxiety? Free what was it?
Free-floating anxiety without a reason. And he said, yeah, probably, if they don’t know how to think properly. If they know how to think properly, then they wouldn’t. Yeah.