Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The bulk of this 45-minute session by Geshe Pema Tsering is devoted to motivation — why the attitude you bring to studying the Lamrim determines whether listening is a Dharma action at all. He traces the three scopes in order: seeking a better rebirth (the lowest), renunciation arising from seeing that gods’ and humans’ happiness is unstable and fleeting by nature, and bodhicitta, which emerges when one recognises that all beings equally want freedom from suffering and vastly outnumber oneself. A sustained passage counters the self-defeating thought “I can’t develop bodhicitta” — Bodhisattvas became Bodhisattvas through the same mind-training being described here. The session closes with brief orientation to the Lamrim’s structure: the ordinary path with its three scopes, followed by the vajrayana.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 SoP 2004 02 08.mp3
UUID: 233651ef-0e85-47d3-ade6-fe2d19e0ec61
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-02-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.8 minutes
Words: ~4,411
Okay. First of all, it may have been obvious last week that I didn’t quite know where the stages of the path was in the Lamrim in the Guru Puja and said the wrong place and yada yada. Well, I made another mistake because I said that this was a this was a commentary, this book, and it’s called union of bliss and emptiness. It’s a commentary to this section. But there’s a commentary to this section in the back part of the book, and the front part of the book is like a full on description of the Guru Puja, which is the highest yoga tantra practice.
So if you were just trying to figure out about the graduated path and all of a sudden started reading that, then it’d be very confusing. So Geshe la said, if you wanna read it, just read the back stages, which is called the reviewing the entire stages of the path instead of reading the whole book. Okay? Alright. So I think that was all my mistakes covered.
So today we’re going to be going through the Lamrim section or the stages of the path section in the Guru Puja. But before we start doing that, then we have to make sure that we have a good motivation for listening to the teachings and for contemplating the teachings. So if we’re going to listen to the teachings on Guru Puja, especially its stages of the path prayer, then we have to develop a motivation that accords with this teaching. So if we don’t have the right motivation, then the object that we’re focusing on may be a virtuous object, be a Dharma object but the motivation with which we come to it isn’t Dharma so therefore the action that we’re doing won’t be a spiritual action, won’t be a Buddhist action, it would be a worldly action. So we have to make sure we have the right motivation for looking at or listening to this text.
So the best motivation that we can develop is the motivation of bodhicitta, the enlightened mind, the mind seeking to become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. So we should be thinking that studying this text will be a cause for all sentient beings to experience happiness and the causes of happiness through our striving to complete the path and becoming a Buddha. So what we’re focusing on may be a Mahāyāna or an altruistic mode altruistically motivated text. But if we’re not focusing on that text with an altruistic motivation, the motivation of bodhicitta, then it doesn’t become an altruistically motivated action, sorry, or it doesn’t become a Mahāyāna action. What we need to do is develop the Mahāyāna motivation to accord with the text that we’re studying.
Now, if we’re not focusing on that and we’re focusing on ourselves alone, we’re not thinking about all sentient beings, we’re just thinking about ourselves, then we can develop individual liberation as our motivation. Liberation for ourselves alone without focusing on all sentient beings is said to be a Hīnayāna or a personal liberation motivation. Now, there’s different types of personal liberation motivation. The lowest of which is that we seek to be liberated from experiencing the sufferings of the lower realms in our next rebirth or in the next life that we come into. So we can seek to be liberated from the sufferings of animals and so forth.
This kind of motivation is the motivation of someone who has thought too much about what they’re actually focusing on. So if you don’t think too much about it, then you can just come to the conclusion that you don’t want to experience the sufferings of the lower realms and you are happy with experiencing the limited satisfaction of the upper realms of gods or humans. But in actual fact, if we investigate it further, then we find out that the happiness of gods and humans isn’t real happiness. It isn’t fully qualified happiness. It isn’t happiness that stays very long.
It’s a temporary type of happiness that is actually by its nature suffering, but we view as happiness. So, this motivation of seeking for a good rebirth is what’s called the lowest motivation, the least beneficial motivation. A little bit higher than this is what’s called the middling motivation for listening to teachings. Now this is a motivation that we seek to attain personal liberation from suffering as our goal from studying or meditating on teachings. So this is a little bit more thought through than the previous motivation because this motivation comes from understanding that the happiness of gods and humans isn’t true happiness.
So for example, if we look at a human rebirth, a human rebirth isn’t something that’s stable. It’s not something that lasts forever. At max, we’ve got eighty to one hundred years. We don’t have much more than we can’t have hope for much more than that. And even as a human, we are constantly experiencing different of suffering, including aging and the suffering of birth and so on.
So we can see that a human rebirth isn’t as positive as we may have thought. Now, the rebirth of a god is similar. They may live longer than we do. They may live a long time and experience great happiness while they’re alive. But at the end of that lifetime, they’ve completely exhausted all of their stores of merit, all of their good karma, and they’ve got to experience the negative results of their negative karma, so they’re definitely going to go to a lower rebirth than the God realm, and they’re going to experience intense suffering there.
So it’s not completely a way out of suffering. It’s just a temporary stop on suffering on most suffering. So in this way, we can see that the happiness of gods and humans is said to be faulty or not perfect. It’s said to have as its base something that’s not stable and something that can’t ultimately help us. So that we can see that as a human we have to experience suffering and as a God we have to experience suffering and so therefore this happiness, the so called happiness of the God and human realms isn’t something that we can actually rely on, isn’t something that is in a way ultimate happiness.
So we need to develop an understanding of this, but that’s not something that we tend to do. We tend to instead focus on this how to achieve the happiness of this life and we focus on trying to get a human happiness, happiness in as a human being. Most of the things that we focus on, most of the goals that we set for ourselves are to achieve happiness as a human in a human form and if this is not what we’re doing and we’re focusing on achieving a God rebirth of some kind or another then there’s a similar process happening. By focusing on receiving a God rebirth, a rebirth in the God realms or in the bliss realms then we are focusing all our energies on our next lifetime but with a limited motivation. So that means we will have a limited result.
In the same way that as much as we work to try and be happy as a human, it will never be stable, it will never be ultimate happiness. If we’re concentrating on achieving a next life as a god, then that won’t be ultimate or stable either. At some stage, the merit that we’ve accumulated that caused us to experience the happiness of a god realm will end and then we’ll have to experience suffering again. So what’s happening here is that we have mistaken because of our mistaken mind because that we grasp at things as being inherently existent and therefore have self clinging, clinging at ourselves, self-cherishing, then we are creating negative karma or doing negative things that will cause us to wander in saṃsāra. So we have this idea, I need to be happy, therefore I need these types of happiness.
By that thought, by the power of that thought, we then strive to achieve happiness in as a human happiness in a God realm and in doing so create a whole group or a whole stack of negative karma or negative dispositions in our mind that will cause us to keep wandering in saṃsāra. And wandering in saṃsāra is what we have been doing since beginningless time. So we have very, very strong habits towards this idea of holding onto ourself as being inherently existence, cherishing ourselves. And from that thought, because of that thought, then creating negative actions, which will cause us to keep wandering in This means that we need to focus or we need to do analytical meditation. We need to analyze the situation and see that there is actually see actually that the sufferings of the happiness of gods and humans isn’t actually happiness, but it is by its nature suffering.
Suffering. And the way that we come to that conclusion is by analyzing the situation over and over again by doing analytical meditation on the so called happiness of gods and humans until we see the faults more and more and more and we see our mind begins to see in a stronger and stronger way that there is nothing to saṃsāra apart from suffering that the so called happinesses of the gods in human realms, so called happiness of saṃsāra aren’t actually but forms of suffering. And once we’ve established that they’re forms of suffering Oh, thank you. And once we’ve established that there’s forms of suffering, then we will our mind will seek to get away from that type of suffering. We’ll develop a mind that’s striving for liberation from that kind of suffering because what we need to do is to establish a situation where we have experienced stable true happiness and not happiness that is fleeting and by its nature suffering as the happiness of saṃsāra is.
So by working on our minds in this way, by establishing that happiness in saṃsāra isn’t true happiness, then we would develop a mind striving for liberation. And when we have a mind that striving for liberation from suffering, a complete exhaustion of suffering, then that mind is said to be the motivation of the middle class of being. So the mind that’s a a a stream or a consciousness that is has understood the faults of saṃsāra and is striving towards a nirvana or liberation. This kind of mind, the stable form of this mind, is what’s called renunciation. So, if we’ve seen that Samsāra is actually completely faulty and that the so called happiness of saṃsāra isn’t actually happiness.
The happiness that we usually strive for isn’t actually happiness. And we need to develop true happiness, which is to liberate ourselves from suffering from the three poisons of desire, aversion, and ignorance, then we need to strive to get out of saṃsāra and to achieve liberation. When that mind is stable and is not fabricated, when it comes about naturally, then that is the mind of renunciation. So then once we’ve established this idea that there is all faults in saṃsāra and we have to get out of it and establish ourselves in a state beyond sorrow, then we have to look around and see that we are not the only beings the only beings in saṃsāra, the only beings suffering. And that there are countless sentient beings or countless other beings that because we’ve existed since beginningless time, that all of these beings at some stage or another have been our mother or father and have shown us a great kindness.
And not only have they been someone who has shown us great kindness and who we are indebted to, but in the same way that we don’t want to experience suffering and want to be free from suffering, they also don’t want to experience suffering and want to be free from suffering. So if we look at the situation, then we can see that, okay, if we’re looking for liberation for ourselves, we’re just one person and other beings are countless. Other beings the the number of other beings is impossible for us to to figure out. So it’s more important that we work for all other beings than just working for one being, being ourself. Therefore, we should be focusing on all other sentient beings and not just focusing on ourself.
And through this motivation that we can see that it’s more important for us to give even our bodies if necessary in order to help all sentient beings. And if we’re focusing on all other beings, all other sentient beings, then we can see the best way to help them is to establish them in a state beyond sorrow. So in order for us to do that, then we need to become fully enlightened Buddha who can show them how to do that. So then we develop the motivation of striving towards Buddhahood with our focus as all sentient beings, all other beings. And so this motivation is what’s called bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment.
And this motivation is the highest motivation from the three motivations. This is difficult thing for us to contemplate though, the thought that we want to give ourselves up even if it means our body for all sentient beings and focus on all sentient beings. All beings, other beings are more important than just ourselves, just one person. It’s very difficult for us to develop this idea because since beginningless time, since time immemorial until now, we’ve been mainly focusing on ourself. We’ve been mainly developing the idea of looking after ourself, of self-cherishing, of focusing on what’s best for us.
Now, this means that we’ve developed this as a habit through inputting the imprints of this kind of thought on our mind stream. We’ve developed this as a very, very strong habit to think of ourselves first, to think of what’s for our own benefit. We can see this because of this self grasping, cherishing ourselves, we are under the sway of what’s called negative emotions. Instantly, we think about different negative emotions without thinking about it, without having to nurture these, these emotions come up. They come about naturally and strongly, and we don’t have to work very hard at doing it.
So if we wanna turn away from these very ingrained habits of these negative emotions that we have in our mind stream that we’ve been cultivating since time immemorial and that we are so habituated with we don’t even notice that we’re there until we investigate them and see that they’re there. And then we need to do a lot of mind training. We need to train our mind very rigorously in order to get rid of that idea of ourselves being the most important of ourselves being, cherishing ourselves above all other beings. So we need to develop this understanding that this is actually negative emotions. And first of all, we need to investigate to see that this is the way things are.
We don’t even think about it. We don’t even think about our self-cherishing attitude. But if we investigate, then we will see. If we watch the way we think, then we will see that our mind naturally turns towards self-cherishing attitude and negative emotions of desire attachment and and ignorance. It does this in a very natural way, in a very a very habituated fashion.
So it takes a lot of work to get out of that way of thinking. Because of this ingrained habit that we have to cherish ourselves above all others and to think of ourselves alone above all others, then we need to do a lot of mind training in order to reverse this trend, in order to start thinking of other sentient beings and to stop focusing on ourself and grasping at ourself as an inherently existent thing that we need to cherish. And this mind training exercises come in different ways. We can either do the mind training exercises called the seven causes and the one result, or we can do the mind training exercise where we seek to exchange, mentally imagine exchanging self with others. So by training very vigorously and very consistently in these different ways of training the mind in the great path, then we develop a mind that seeks to work for the benefit of other sentient beings and not just our own benefit.
So by developing, by strongly developing this idea in our mind and training very long and hard in this manner, training our mind very long and hard in this manner, then we develop a mind that doesn’t focus on self and focuses on others. And when this mind becomes unfabricated and comes about spontaneously and naturally, we are constantly seeking to work for others and not ourselves, then that mind is constantly seeking to work for others and for their ultimate benefit being their liberation from sorrow. That mind is bodhicitta. This is what we need to train in. We need to train in this great motivation training altruism, training looking towards all beings instead of training to look at ourselves.
Because if we look at it, we’ve actually trained really hard and for very, very, very long time in satisfying ourselves. We’ve got that one down. Understand that we’re constantly working for our own benefit. And where has it got us? Nowhere.
We’ve just experienced suffering and suffering and suffering and suffering in many different forms, in many different situations, in many different ways since time immemorial until now we’ve experienced nothing but suffering. So that hasn’t helped us very much. So we have to look at something that’s going to help us and what’s going to help us is training our mind in focusing on others in understanding others. We don’t even in terms of if we look at the way our mind works in general, we don’t even appreciate the idea of someone working for others properly. If we the way we look at things is we’re thinking, okay, I need to establish myself in a way that I’m comfortable in this life that I have wealth, that I have a comfortable situation, that I have everything I need.
And if we see someone else who’s working for others constantly and haven’t looked after themselves at all, then we kind of think, what are they doing? Know? They don’t get that they have to look after themselves at all. They what are they doing? They’re just wasting their life and they have nothing to show for their life.
They haven’t stored anything to show for this lifetime. This is the way we think about things. We don’t even recognize these thoughts come up in our mind. We don’t even recognize true altruism if we see it. We keep thinking about that that person isn’t looking after themselves, that they haven’t figured out how to look after themselves properly yet.
The other thing that we think then is that, okay. I can’t do this. I’ve been habituated since beginningless time to be selfish, so I’m gonna continue to do this. And the whole thing of mind training, trying to work the mind towards thinking of others, that’s not something that’s for me in this life. That’s something that Bodhisattvas do.
I can’t do that. I’m trapped by my karma and I’m determined and I’m and I’m destined to be selfish. Alright? We have this thought come up, it’s not for me. I don’t I can’t do it.
Can’t I can’t under I can’t develop that understanding. I can’t be like a a Bodhisattva because it’s not going to happen. So we put ourselves down in this way. We convince ourselves that we can’t do it in this way and therefore we don’t have to do it. This way of thinking isn’t right because we have to look at the actual situation and to look at the fact that Bodhisattvas didn’t become Bodhisattvas inherently or from no cause.
They became Bodhisattvas because they worked at it, because they trained their minds, because they thought of others, they constantly put others before themselves. And so us thinking, can’t give my body away. I don’t have the courage to do that. I don’t have the mind that could do that means that I’m not a bodhisattva, therefore I can’t train. It doesn’t make sense because bodhisattvas constantly trained their minds and then became bodhisattvas.
They developed bodhicitta through constantly training in mind training exercises to look at benefiting others as opposed to themselves. So we have to see that Bodhisattvas, and not only Bodhisattvas, but Buddhas in fact, were just like us. They were exactly like us. They had exactly the same mental obscurations. They had exactly the same self grasping as us.
The difference being that they trained. They trained in developing bodhicitta. They trained their minds to think of others instead of themselves. And through training themselves in this way, they managed to develop bodhicitta. And then based on having this mind of bodhicitta, based on having this naturally spontaneous mind that constantly worked for the benefit of others, they achieved Buddhahood.
So this is how they did it, by training and thinking of others. So we can’t say we can’t do it because we’re not a Bodhisattvas because Bodhisattvas used to not be Bodhisattvas. So, we should think in this way, in the same way that the Bodhisattvas and Buddhas of the past developed bodhicitta by training their minds in a great vehicle, by training their minds in altruism, In the same way that they did this, then us studying the graduated path from the Guru Puja is going to be a cause for us to develop that understanding. By listening to it, by going away and contemplating on it, and then meditating on these these understandings from this text, then we’re going to develop bodhicitta in the same way they did. And as a result of developing bodhicitta, we’re going to attain Buddhahood in the same way they did.
So may this be a cause for us to as to become a Buddha by by listening and understanding to the teachings. So we should think, okay, we’re about to do a little bit of looking at the text, which is the stages of the path of the from the Guru Puja, and may that cause, that positive action combined with what’s called the ocean of the good deeds of all of the five types of beings. That’s everything. Every good deed that’s ever been performed by Buddhas down to ordinary beings. May all of the ocean of all those good deeds be mixed with our good deed of listening to the teachings.
And by rejoicing in all of that, may we create a cause for us to quickly quickly attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings, and we should concentrate or meditate on that idea for a few minutes. I said, Gena, you’re supposed to teach for an hour and your motivation took fifty minutes. And he said and he said, motivation is very important. He said if you’re able to have a good motivation, then whatever you do becomes very meaningful. Okay.
So we’re going through the description of the reliance on the teacher, which is the first stage of the path of the the path towards enlightenment. And this deep because this teaching is based on the description of a practice, which is called the Guru Puja where you focus on the teacher, then at the end of going through the description of end of going through the description of how to rely on the teacher, then says that we should meditate on the fact that whatever it is we’re focusing on, whether it’s the refuge field from the Guru Puja, whether it’s Tārā, whether it’s Gendun Drub, whether it’s Atisha, whether it’s Śākyamūni Buddha, that light comes from this focus of our meditation into our body and by come this light which is like the blessings of the thing we’re focusing on coming into our body and that gets rid of all of the negative actions that we have done since beginningless time and we imagine or we are able to imagine that the thing that we are focused on is the same as the essence of all of the Buddha. So we’re able to see the thing that the meditation object we’re focusing on as the essence of all of the Buddhas and because we have purified all our negativities and our body becomes like the form of light because our body has by its nature suffering because of its coming to being based on negative causes and conditions.
So we have to we imagine that the light purifies all of our negativities, our body becomes like light, and we develop the understanding that the teacher is the base of the path, we don’t have any doubts or any confusion about that. Right. Now we had discussed last week the the process for establishing the teacher as the basis of the path and then we go on to once the second section of the teachings which is once we’ve established the teacher as the path then we need to train in what they say. So there’s two different sections then we’re up to the second section, training in the teachings as they have been delivered. Now there’s two different sections to training in the teachings.
The first one is the training in the teachings of the ordinary path or the common path, and then training in the teachings of the unique or extraordinary path which is the path of the vajrayana or the Tantra path. Now that comes at the end of the teachings. Now, in the first part is what’s called the ordinary or the Sūtra path. There is three different sections to this. There is a training in the motivation or training in the understandings of the lower person or the lower motivation, the training in the understandings of the medium person or medium motivation, and the training in the understandings or the training in the motivation of the greater person or the greater scope.