Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Geshe Pema Tsering opens this 45-minute session with a practical question: what actually makes an action Buddhist practice? His answer — motivation, not the action itself — drives the first half, mapping three levels of aspiration from seeking a good rebirth through personal liberation up to full bodhicitta aimed at Buddhahood for all beings. A rice-farming analogy makes the point concrete: aiming for Buddhahood automatically brings the lesser goals along, the way a rice grain comes with stalk and roots. He then turns to the Lamrim aspirational prayer within the Guru Puja, exploring reliance on one’s teacher through two overlapping metaphors — the lama as seed from which good qualities sprout, and as field in which faith yields those qualities. A repeated primary-school analogy grounds the stakes, and Geshe-la warns that cultivating negative thoughts toward a teacher one has already committed to carries greater karmic weight than the five heinous acts. Suited to practitioners already engaged in Lamrim study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 SoP 2004 02 01.mp3
UUID: 45465a80-3dbb-4c6e-a5ed-372d59fd6489
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-02-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~4,145
Okay. Before we start the going to the teachings, then it’s really important for us to set a really good motivation. Now the root Am I up? Yeah. So the reason that it’s good for us to set motivation, it’s important for us to set a good motivation, is that from the point of view of Buddhism, whether something becomes Buddhist practice or not, whether it becomes beneficial or not, doesn’t depend on the action so much as it depends on the motivation.
If we are listening to or teaching the Dharma, the Buddhist teachings, with good motivation, it’s a Dharma practice. It’s a Buddhist practice. If we’re not doing it with a good motivation, no matter what it is that we’re doing, it’s not a Buddhist practice. It’s not a Dharma practice. Okay.
So the best, the most powerful motivation that we can have for doing a Dharma practice, for listening to the Dharma or doing anything to do with Buddhist practice, is to have the motivation to achieve the completely purified, that is purified of all faults, and and imbued with all qualities state of a Buddha. Now, the reason that we want to achieve this state is because all of us don’t want to suffer and we all want to be happy. So this is the motivation that we have for wanting to become a Buddha, because as a Buddha there is no suffering. But our motivation for achieving this state doesn’t just involve ourselves and our own benefit, but the benefit of all beings, all beings that are able to experience suffering and want to experience happiness. So we have this by this motivation, we are able to complete to we’re able to achieve the completely realized state of a Buddha.
Now that’s the essence or that’s the short version of what the motivation is, the highest motivation that we could develop to listen to teachings is. Motivation, however, developing this motivation is difficult. It’s difficult for us to turn our attention away from ourselves, which we hold so dearly, and focus on all beings, all other beings, and not focus just on ourselves. Now, this motivation of focusing on all other beings is the best motivation we can develop. But because it’s so difficult, it’s also explained that if we are able to develop the motivation to free ourselves from suffering for our own selves to achieve liberation or nirvana just for our own benefit, then this mind, this motivation is also beneficial.
It’s not the best motivation we can develop, but it is very beneficial also. This motivation is called the the medium level motivation. Difficult for us, so the least motivation that we can have for doing an action, which will still make that action practicing Buddhist Dharma, is that we have the motivation that we achieve a good rebirth in our next life, that is as a God or a human. So if we do any Dharma practice or we do any Buddhist ceremonies or any listening to Dharma meditation, etc, if we do any of those things with the motivation that this is in order for us we’re doing this in order for us to attain a good rebirth in our next life, then that also becomes Buddhist practice or becomes Dharma practice. However, it’s Dharma practice with the lowest motivation.
It’s still Dharma practice, but it’s got the lowest motivation. So if we aren’t able to develop the other two motivations, then we should try and develop at least this motivation to listen to the teachings. If we don’t have one of these motivations, and we’re doing whatever it is that we’re doing in order to get benefit for this life, like to not have something negative happen to us, to not experience illness, to get rid of any situations that we don’t particularly like, if we do anything with that motivation, then that’s not going to give us very much benefit because the motivation is limited. The motivation is limited by our concept of what will benefit us in this lifetime. So by doing something with that motivation, we will get a slight benefit, but it’s a bit of a waste of the opportunity and the benefits won’t be as extensive or as helpful as they would be with the other motivations.
And the other thing is that this isn’t counted as Buddhist practice. Practice. Anything that we do that’s motivated on this lifetime isn’t counted as Buddhist practice. So anything that we do that’s motivated by having a good outcome in this lifetime, is motivated by bringing benefits to us in this lifetime. That will still benefit us, but in a very limited way.
It will work in a similar manner to if we go to work and we work hard, then we get benefit from that, but they only help us in a limited capacity. So, in a similar way, if we are practicing or trying to do Buddhist things with a motivation that that will help us in this life, the outcome will be limited as well. And in actual fact, anything that’s done with that motivation isn’t considered Dharma, isn’t considered Buddhist Dharma or Buddhist practice. So we should work hard at trying to develop one of the other three motivations, that is to at least have the motivation of having a good rebirth. Okay.
So we should try and develop the best motivation that we can in order to do something that becomes a Buddhist practice. Motivation that we’re talking about here is something that’s unique to the Buddhist doctrine. This idea of focusing what we’re doing on one of these three different motivations is a unique aspect of the Buddhist doctrine. One of the best motivation out of these three, the best motivation that we can develop is the motivation to achieve Buddhahood. Because if we’re developing the motivation to achieve Buddhahood, then the other things come along with that.
It’s a similar thing to if we want to grow rice with where our aim is to grow rice. Yeah? But in the process of growing rice, we also get leaves and a stalk and and roots and so on. And we’re actually after the little seed of the rice that we can use as food. It’s a similar thing.
So if we want to develop if we develop, sorry, the motivation to achieve Buddhahood, then achieving individual liberation or nirvana and achieving a better human rebirth, these things come along with that motivation. We get liberation for ourselves. We get a good rebirth, but they’re like this isn’t a direct translation, but they’re like fringe benefits. The the most the thing that we’re trying to get in long term is Buddhahood and the other things come along with that. So if we only work at liberation, then we get a good human or God rebirth in the future but we can’t achieve Buddhahood.
So it works in a it has diminishing returns in this way. So if we aim for Buddhahood, everything else comes along, and that’s the best motivation. So that means if we do whatever it is, whether it’s listening to Buddhist Dharma, whether it’s teaching Buddhist Dharma, whether it’s trying to practice Buddhist Dharma, if we do this with the motivation that we’re doing it in order to achieve Buddhahood for the benefit of all beings, then that will be the outcome of that action. If we keep doing these actions and accumulating our good karma or merit in this way, then the outcome of those actions will be that we will achieve Buddhahood. If we only have the motivation of doing it to achieve individual liberation, then the outcome of those actions will be that we achieve individual liberation.
If we have the motivation that we’re doing whatever it is that we’re doing in order to achieve a good rebirth as a god or a human, then that will be the outcome of those actions. But if we do something only with the motivation that it is for this life, that’s to benefit this life, then the outcome the the results of that action are are very limited. They’re very limited in their scope and in how much they can benefit us. So we should try and develop the motivation that we are going to listen to the explanation of the graduated path teachings from the Guru Puja with the motivation that this is in order for us to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all beings. So have you guys got a good motivation?
Motivation is basically just what we’re thinking, what the reason we’re doing something is, what we’re we’re thinking about. So we don’t have to think that it’s something we can’t do. We can have this idea, I’m doing this in order for all sentient beings to achieve, to be free from suffering, and for me to become a Buddha in order to achieve that. So we can have that idea when we’re listening to a teaching, whether we’re meditating by ourselves at home. It’s not something that’s very difficult for us to achieve.
We just have to think about it and think, I’m doing this for this reason. It’s the way we think. That’s what motivation entails. It’s like, no. We haven’t even started.
Alright. What can we do? He says very big text. I only thought I carry what I needed, but I carried the wrong bit. So the bit of this commentary that we’re concentrating on is the graduated path prayer that comes at the end of this puja, the Guru Puja, the puja that focuses on qualities of the teacher or the qualities of the Lama.
So, this prayer is an aspirational prayer that is dedicating the good karma that’s being collected during the puja, during the ceremony, is dedicating that towards the person who’s done the ceremony in all beings, the stages of the path that’s followed in order for people to become Buddhist. So in the beginning, it starts off with making making a gesture of humility and respect towards the teachers who have shown the path. So it’s saying that to prostrate, we prostrate to the teachers who show the path that takes us from suffering into happiness. Mhmm. Now the reason that that we’re prostrating to these to these beings, showing humility towards these beings is because they’re the embodiment of great love or or great compassion.
Because of this great love and great compassion, then they’re able to show the path that we need to follow in terms of Sūtra and Tantra. So in this process, there’s two different aspects to this process. The teachings that are expounded to us by the teachers, the Gurus or the Lamas, are supposed to be expanding the path that enables us to progress from our state at the moment towards Buddhahood. We’re asking for their blessings. We’re asking for them to benefit us.
Blessings means benefiting us in such a way that we’re able to follow this path, that we’re able to develop the understandings of this path in our own mind stream. So there’s two different aspects to following this path. There’s two different aspects to being able to progress along this path in this manner. The first aspect is that we need to be able to rely on the teachings that the teacher tells us, rely on what the teacher says in order to know what we have to do. And the second part is that we need to be able to train our minds in accordance with what has been told to us or what is being taught to us.
Okay. So the the reason that we need to focus on the teacher and see to meditate on the qualities of the teacher and see them as being separate from the deities or whatever it is that we’re meditating on. The reason is that if our teacher is teaching us the correct unmistaken path to take us from our experience now to the Buddhahood, then by relying on that path, by relying on what they say, by following what they say, then we will quickly become a Buddha. We will quickly achieve the state of a Buddha. So this is the ultimate benefit of listening to the teachings and implementing the teachings.
The temporary benefit of this is that if we have a good sense of refuge in the Three Jewels, if we have a good of faith in the Lama, then things can’t harm us at the moment. If we have that strong sense of faith and and and devotion, then things can’t harm us in the temporary in temporary way either. Okay. So the the that’s the qualities or the good things that can happen to us by following the the path that the the teacher has expounded and by having faith and relying on the teacher’s teacher’s words and what they say. Now there’s negative aspects if we don’t do that.
That isn’t the the this isn’t talking about the negative aspects that come about if we haven’t developed faith in a teacher or teachings and then say negative things about them or think negative things or develop or cultivate negative thoughts. But if we at first have taken on seen someone as a teacher, committed ourselves through the path, developed faith in the teachings, and then afterwards we start cultivating negative thoughts. We start having cultivating negative thoughts, going around saying negative things about teachers, things that we have faith in, then the power of that action, force of that action means that we will end up circling in the lower realms. There are five heinous actions, five negative actions that we can do and actually just being disrespectful to the teachers people that we’ve already developed faith in being disrespectful to them is said to be a more negative action or a greater negative action than any of these five heinous acts. And also, we’re supposed to meet obstacles and have bad things happen to us in this lifetime also.
Okay. This is a similar situation to if if we’re in primary school and we have a a really, really good teacher, not an average teacher, but a really, really good teacher that’s really working solely for our benefit. And this teacher tells us to do certain things through a sense of loving kindness and compassion for us. And if we listen to what the teacher tells us and they instruct us really well, then our qualities are gonna get greater and greater and we’re gonna develop more and more as a person and come out of that school situation having improved on ourselves and having qualities that we can take out into whatever we do. If on the other hand, we have a really good teacher that shows us great kindness, act from compassion towards us and wanting us to improve as as beings, and we are disrespectful to this teacher, whatever they tell us to do, we do exactly the opposite.
We go around whinging about them saying that they’re not very helpful, that they they’re mean to us, that they’re making us do things we don’t want to, etcetera, etcetera, then not only are we not going to get any benefit from what they are seeking to teach us, but we’re also going to come out of there having established negative habits and disrespect towards people who are trying to help us, all these negative habits that will then not stand us in good stead for the rest of our life. So it’s similar situation to that if we are in primary school and come across a very good teacher? So what we need to do then in terms of developing this idea of the Lama is if we focus on the faith the teacher has, the ethics the teacher has, the meditative concentration the teacher has, the wisdom the teacher has, and we imagine or focus on those again and again. And then on top of that, if we study the Buddha’s teachings and in the teachings the Buddha describes qualities of the teachers that we can’t actually conceive of at the moment because of all the negative thoughts that we have in our minds, if we keep concentrating on those again and again, then our faith will become stronger and we will be able to develop the qualities that we’re seeing in others, in ourselves.
By focusing on the positive qualities of the teacher, then we develop more positive qualities. We see more positive qualities than the ones we are able to see now, and we are able to develop more positive qualities in ourselves. Mhmm. So in brief, what we need to do is to think that, okay, the teacher is is a fully qualified or fully developed Buddha who has come in the form of a human to help poor us who are in a pretty bad state to be able to develop the qualities that we need in order to to extinguish suffering and experience happiness. So if we think like this again and again, then any of the the thoughts that we have we may have that are projecting faults onto the teacher that may be coming from our side, we will get rid of those.
Okay. So the way that we develop this faith as well is that we first of all, we have to think about the things that have that this teacher has done for us in the past, the way that they’ve helped us to improve our minds and to experience happiness. And then not only that, but the way that they’re going to be able to help us in the future because without relying on the teachings that we are to be given, without the instructions that the teachers give us, then there’s no way that we can develop realizations and understandings of and finally become a Buddha. So in this way, we can think about how incredibly kind the teacher is for showing us the path for helping us and being patient with us. So in this way, that that that kind of thinking, that kind of way of developing these thoughts accords with what the Buddha taught in his sutras, the Buddha’s teachings.
So if we think in this way, if we think about the kindness and the great compassion of the teachers of our teacher, then we will develop this intense respect and veneration for the teacher in our mind. And we can meditate on that and focus on that contemplating on that fact. This is a similar thing to if we if we focus on the way that if we had a really good teacher in school, how much that teacher helped us to develop as people and how much they gave us gifts in terms of knowing, in terms of our knowledge. So if we can if we can concentrate on a teacher that really helped us like that, then we can understand just how and just how how great this kindness is. So in accordance with what Lama Tsongkhapa explained, based on the ritual, based on the positive karma that was accumulated in the previous puja that was done.
Yeah? It’s it’s it’s just then explained that we should try and dedicate the merit or the good karma that has been accumulated doing that positive action toward being able to develop this unwavering faith in the teachings that will enable us to progress along the path. So this is seen in a similar way to when we’re planting a seed, and I missed something. So it should because the way that we should think about it is that the teacher is kind of like a seed. If we’re going to see about if we want to know how any good qualities come about in our mind stream, then all of them come from the teacher, because the teacher is the person that enables us to develop the good qualities.
So, the teacher is like the seed from which all of our good qualities come about. So we should think about it like this. This is an example or a metaphor that we can use to focus on how the qualities of the teacher affect us. So thanks. So the at the moment, it said that we don’t have the ability to be able to listen to what’s been said single pointedly and with great understanding.
We don’t have the ability to conceive of everything that we need to understand in order to progress along the path. We don’t have the ability to develop the correct meditation or minds at the moment because our mind isn’t very strong. It isn’t very powerful, it hasn’t been very developed. So at this stage, when we’re in this state, the most important thing for us to do is to rely on the teacher and the teachings because that’s the way that we get out of this state, that’s the way we develop this strong mind, that’s the way that our mind becomes stronger and stronger and more purified and more endowed with qualities until we finally become a Buddha. And so we don’t have that power at the moment, we don’t have the strength of that understanding, So what we need to do is to rely on the teacher and the teachings in order for our natural in order for our abilities to develop.
So in this way then we should see the teacher and the teachings as being like the seed that we plant in our our mind, and then that grows into that will grow in terms of our the way our qualities will grow. That will grow like our qualities will grow or other way around. Okay. Okay. Okay.
I know I got confused. They switched metaphors on me. Alright. Okay. So the lama is also like the field from which because it was a seed, then it was a field.
I go, what? And okay. So there is a first of all, the lama is the seed from which qualities come about. Alright? And then in the next period it says Lama is also like the field for as much faith as we put into the field into the to them then the qualities will come about from that.
It’s the same way as if we plant things in the in the field many plants and the different parts of the plants will come about. So if we have faith in the teacher then we’ll get many qualities from listening to the teachings and developing ourselves in accordance with instructions. And in the same way, if we have a seed, then the seed for All Our Qualities is like the teacher. Oh, this is because there’s two different metaphors. So, in one way, the teacher is like a field and the other it’s like a seed.
But we’re not just talking about anyone who calls themselves a teacher or any old Lama here. We’re only talking about our own person that we have faith in. So Geshe la says that from his point of view he would focus on the Dalai Lama in this way someone that he had great faith in, that he could focus on in this way and try and follow his instructions. Not just anyone else’s teacher or someone that you don’t have faith in, it has to be someone that is your teacher you see in this way, that you’ve developed great faith in or you have a great a feel for in this way. Not any teacher, just your teacher.
So it’s it’s it’s easier to it’s simpler to think about the metaphor of of the teachers that we have in school in terms of how this process works. So from a worldly point of view or from things that only benefit us in terms of material or non spiritual ways, however much qualities we have or however many qualities we have depend on the instructions that we’re given, depend on the way that we’re taught, whether it’s in school or by other teachers. So however much effort we put into our learning process, however much effort we put into to developing our qualities in a worldly manner, depending on how good our teacher is, then we can develop in that way. And it’s the same with a spiritual teacher like the Dalai Lama or someone like this because they are able to develop all these qualities in us. Are able to show us how to develop all these qualities in us, but not just for this lifetime, not just for the next lifetime, not even for any