Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 14.6-minute talk, Geshe Pema Tsering draws a distinction many practitioners blur: there is a difference between fully purifying negativities — eliminating their imprints entirely, which requires realizing emptiness — and stopping their results from ripening, which is achievable now through sincere regret and Dharma practice. He invokes Milarepa with a rueful note that most of us tire after five minutes of meditation, then explains why uneliminated imprints still matter: they are obscurations to liberation and omniscience, illustrated by contrast with the boundless qualities of a Buddha. He closes with a mirror analogy for Dharma texts — they show what needs removing and what needs cultivating — and warns against studying to display knowledge rather than to change one’s own mind stream. Suited to practitioners already engaged in systematic Dharma study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 ST4 2003 05 29.mp3
UUID: 79fed370-f7a2-4c6b-8fd5-06c2ebf19cb1
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Seventy Topics (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-05-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 14.6 minutes
Words: ~1,121
So, yeah, we can’t completely get rid of them through to the imprints because we have to realize emptiness to do that, but we can get rid of them like this. And, also, if we use that as a reason, the fact that we can’t get rid of them completely, if we use that as a cause for an encouragement for us to keep studying and trying to achieve the realization of emptiness, then it becomes, like, a powerful a powerful practice for us to do as well. He said because like Milarepa, he did all these things, and then he completely purified them by doing practice. And he goes, but, unfortunately, we’re not quite like Milarepa because usually, we try and meditate for five minutes, ten minutes, we get really tired and don’t want to do it anymore. So if we have this idea that I’ve done all these horrendous things since beginningless time and and or we have some idea of what we’ve done and think that was horrendous.
I have, you know, intense regret for that, and I’m gonna not do it again, then we can purify. Oh, okay. So what they say when they say purifying negativities, what they mean is completely getting rid of negativities, their imprints, everything that’s associated with them. Right? That’s what they mean by purifying negativities.
We can’t do that until we realize emptiness. What we can do is stop ourselves experiencing the results of the negativities we’ve done by purifying them. We just stop ourselves from experience there’s yeah. So there’s one that’s called purifying. You can there’s a difference between purifying negativities and stopping negativities from ripening, the results of negativities from ripening.
And we can do the second, but we can’t do the first until we realize emptiness. So if we’re not going to experience the results, why does it matter that we’ve got I didn’t actually get the question out, but I’ll tell you what he said first anyway. So if we do something heinous in this life, for example, like killing someone. Right? And then we develop this intense regret and think in order to purify this so I don’t have to experience this suffering from this action in future lives or in this life, I’m going to dedicate myself to practicing Dharma and and in order to purify it and and working on it, then we can purify that and not experience the results of it.
We shouldn’t think that we can’t do that because that doesn’t give us an encouragement to practice Dharma. So we can purify things, but that that we need to understand the difference between that and wiping things out. Now I’m gonna ask you a question. The imprints from these negative actions are obscurations to liberation and obscurations to omniscience. So there are things that we have to get rid of.
Yeah. So for example, every hair on the body of a Buddha can be of immense benefit to hundreds of beings. And if we rip a hair out of our body, it doesn’t help many people. So the Buddha’s mind is able to experience all phenomena and understands all phenomena. It has no limits on what it can understand, and we can only see what’s in front of us most of the time.
He said, for all of them are really different to us. Because he’s Buddha, he’s not like us. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be Buddha. So they’re all the different aggregates that are really different, but he didn’t. Because Buddhists can see all phenomena and work for the benefit of all sentient beings, then all of their aggregates are focused on these things.
So that’s how they’re different from us. So one quality of the Buddha is is more powerful than all qualities of non Buddhas. So because the Buddhas have completely achieved all qualities and completely gotten rid of all negativities, then one hair on their body is working for the benefit of all sentient beings and is working for the benefit of all sentient beings and knows everything. So that’s where how they’re different from us. Yeah.
When practitioners who haven’t even realized renunciation So the thing to do is when you’re going through each of the topics then you should, for example, concentrate on knowers of paths, knowers of bases, complete aspects, these kind of things. And then think what are the different aspects of this? How do these minds work? How do these practices work when Bodhisattvas are doing them? What qualities do you have to develop in order to do these practices?
What aspects do they take on? What do they use as their focus? And be contemplating on these things and at the same time think, I need to know these things if I’m going to follow these paths. So he he said all texts are the same. All texts that you look at, then you you see all the the things that you need to abandon and the things that you need to put into practice.
He said all the all the texts, all the teachings of the Buddhas are like when you look into a mirror when you look into a mirror you see oh I need to pluck that hair out. I need to get rid of that little black bit. I need to get there’s something there that needs to be removed and then oh I need to put some red on here and some white on here and need to to enhance this bit. So that’s the same as reading a text. When you’re reading a text, it’s like a mirror.
You can see what it is that you need to get rid of and what it needs that you need to practice. Because he’s going back to this idea that the word in Tibetan for text is, like, pieces of example, like, things little bits of things you need to to understand. So it’s the same when you have a a mirror that when you’re looking in the mirror, you see different bits of your face that you need to work on and different things you need to to work on. It’s the same as same thing as with with the text. He he reckons, though, that the problem is a lot of time we have to keep checking our minds because when we’re studying texts, we’re not thinking how this can benefit my mind.
We’re thinking how can I — how will this be — no? How will I just say? How will this enable me to show forth knowledge? So we should be trying to think about how to get it into our mind streams.