Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 16-minute Q&A session, Geshe Pema Tsering opens by correcting a student’s assumption: exchanging self for others is not a “middle way” practice but a complete reversal — self-focus creates saṃsāra, other-focus creates Buddhahood. He explains why the transformation is so hard: self-cherishing is the most deeply ingrained habit we carry across countless lifetimes, and even he, trained since childhood, has to work at it every day. A student’s guilt over accidentally hurting someone becomes a teaching on encouragement — all unenlightened beings act selfishly, and even a moment of regret is genuine progress worth valuing. The session ends with a Greek Orthodox practitioner asking what drew him to Buddhism; Geshe-la answers by pointing to suffering and the wish for happiness as universal human experiences. Accessible to newcomers encountering mind-training ideas for the first time.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 SoP 2004 09 05.mp3
UUID: 554686ed-932e-4c95-9e4e-6addfd4f20dd
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-09-05
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 16.1 minutes
Words: ~1,510
Okay. There was just a lot in that question, so I had to get it make sure you got all the answer. Now first of all, guess what, it isn’t a middle way. It is not a middle way. The middle way concept refers to indulgences, and it refers to philosophy, but not to this.
This isn’t a middle way practice. It’s complete opposite. And we’re at the moment, we are self-cherishing, selfish people, and we’re trying to focus on others completely. You focus on yourself, you create saṃsāra. If you focus on others, you become a Buddha.
And he said, So it’s not a middle way practice. It’s a practice that’s a complete transformation of the way we think. So there’s nothing middle way about it, he said. It’s a complete transformation. And, the thing is that but it’s not something that is done in an instant, and it’s not something that’s done easily.
It’s something that we need to keep working at and working at and working at. And we need to understand why we’re doing it, and we need to do it very slowly. Alright? He said that there’s, like, if we understand, if we go over it and go over it and go over it again and again, and we understand that by focusing on ourselves, we create suffering. By focusing on others, we create happiness.
By working for others, we create happiness. By working for ourselves, by focusing on ourselves, we create suffering. And we develop that understanding more and more and more, then this practice becomes easier and easier and easier. Yeah. So it’s like a, it’s it’s something that we need to work at a lot.
We need to develop the reasoning for a lot, remind ourselves of it, and slowly develop our potential to do. So we start off with something small and develop our potential to do this practice. Start off by thinking about someone else for a minute and then focus and develop that. And then the thing is, he said, it’s got nothing to do with being a Westerner or being in this world or whatever as well because, he said, Geshe-la said, I’ve been trained since I was a kid to do this, and I still do it. He said that if like him, you study this in order to teach it, you think, Wow, that’s great.
And then when he actually tries to apply it to his mind, it’s very difficult. And he’s trying very hard to not just be someone who’s saying it and not actually trying to live with what he says, but he says it’s something he has to work at all the time because his natural tendency is just to think of himself. He doesn’t want to be someone who’s just saying something and not trying to incorporate it, but trying to incorporate it, even though he can see the benefit of it, is very difficult. And he has to work at it all the time. Because at the moment because what we’re trying to deal with, what we’re trying to break is a thoroughly ingrained habit stronger than any other habits that we have, which is to be selfish.
In every lifetime that we’ve been through, we’ve been constantly thinking of ourselves as why we were born in Samsāra. So actually, to get to break that habit is incredibly difficult, and it takes a lot of work. Goodness you were you were sure you were selfish. Uh-huh. Okay.
You’re not sure you’re selfish? No. Yeah. You did something. Yeah.
Or some before. Right? Sure. Sure. Yeah.
Yeah. And you were living by by day. Yeah. And you heard some people that you love. Yeah.
But without knowing without wanting to You wanted to accidentally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That’s telling me that you’re thinking of yourself. Right. But you didn’t okay. Yeah. Sure.
Sure. Sure. How did you work out? And I went right. Yeah.
So so Gesel said it’s it’s not something that we should be get feel bad about. It’s not something that we should be sad about. Alright? Because in actual fact, we have been so habituated towards thinking of ourselves since for so long that to even have a moment of regret is an amazing thing. Yeah?
Even to think I should think of others is an amazing thing. It’s something that’s very positive. And it’s not just, you or one person that is like this that focuses on themselves. All beings who aren’t enlightened focus on themselves. All beings.
So everybody does it. It’s not just your fault. Everybody has these situations. And it’s through us all being focused on ourselves that we create suffering for each other. Yeah.
All of us. Yeah? So I said that to even have a moment of regret is a very positive thing. Yeah? And to and the reason that we do negative things is because we don’t understand.
So what we need to do is to try and develop understanding so we don’t do negative things. Yeah? So this isn’t just us. This is all beings who haven’t developed this realisation. So these these things that we’re talking about today are very powerful, they’re the way to become a Buddha, but they’re also very difficult.
They’re they’re something that we need to work at a lot. They’re something that we need to put in a lot of effort to do because we’re breaking these habits. So, the the way to look at situations like that is to think, well, if I don’t know any better, this is what I’m going to do. What I need to do is to develop my understanding so I can know better. Yeah.
Yeah. He said that it’s like a we sometimes I have this idea that just because they’re hearing it, it makes it easy, but they’re very difficult things to do. And it’s like something that takes a lot of work and a lot of So he said that, like, the people that can do this practice properly, right, have developed all these realisations. So they’ve completely gotten rid of self-cherishing. They’re constantly focusing on others.
So that means they’re always happy. They have no experience of suffering like we do because there’s no one that they think should suffer. They don’t think, I am suffering. They’ve also realised that everything is interdependently related, that things don’t solidly exist. They don’t relate to things as being something that’s hurting them or someone that’s hurting.
Once you have this realisation of the lack of inherent existence and once you have a focus totally on others, then this practice is easy. That’s the one that will be the people that can do this practice properly, and they can use it to become Buddhas. When we’re trying to do it in the process, it’s like we’re developing towards that. So it’s not something that we should think it’s easy. But however much we think about this, however much we’re able to develop this understanding, then our understanding becomes subtler and subtler, and we do develop more happiness in whatever we do.
It’s not from one to the other. It’s a process. The other thing is we’re developing habits. At the moment, we have a habit towards self. If we do this all the time, we think on this all the time, but we’re developing a habit to think of others.
That’s the way we become Buddhas. No? I got So if anyone has any more questions, Geshe-la hasn’t finished his tea. I said, if you finish tea, because Oh, have you fin is there any more questions? Don’t worry.
I was twelve years old. Yeah. When I was fascinated by Buddhism. Mhmm. I was in Greece.
Greek Greek Orthodox. I saw the movie and Buddhist life. Yeah. And I live my life, you know, many years more than that. Sure.
Sure. But and now here I am. Yeah. How you know, like it. How does can you explain that?
Greece. He’s been watching Greece on the television. Yeah. Said, I’ve I’ve been watching your home there for a long time, Mhmm. Said that the the he thinks that this may be because the experience of suffering is something that’s universal, and the experience of something that will is wanting beings wanting to be happy is universal.
So it’s not as if there’s, people in one country don’t experience it, and people in Buddhist countries do. It’s something that all beings can relate to. So if someone’s explaining that or someone you see something that relates to that, and it shows a way to experience happiness and not to experience suffering, and not and not you do this and you do that, then that’s everyone’s gonna relate to that. If there’s a if there’s a way that’s put forward that says, this is how you stop experiencing suffering. This is how you experience happiness.
It’s a universal thing. Thank you. K. Yeah. Sorry?
Someone everyone. That’s it.