Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The practical question anchoring this 45-minute Stages of the Path commentary by Geshe Pema Tsering is: what does “exchanging self for others” actually mean? You cannot become another person, but you can exchange what you cherish — self-cherishing for cherishing others. He builds to this from an opening analysis of impermanence: drawing on a Lam Rim Chenmo verse, he argues that genuinely remembering death, morning and night, redirects the mind from worldly preoccupation to Dharma practice. He then works through two consecutive Lam Rim prayer verses — verse 91 on self-cherishing as the root cause of unsought suffering, and verse 92 on cherishing mother beings as the gateway to infinite virtue — drawing on Nāgārjuna’s Ratnāvali and the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation. A visualization of nectar-light purifying all beings’ self-cherishing closes the main instruction. Suited to practitioners with some Lamrim background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 SoP 2004 06 20.mp3
UUID: 102d3e06-6577-4aec-ba9b-251cb6587d06
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-06-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~3,707
Okay. In the three principal aspects of the path, Je Tsongkhapa’s Lam Rim Chenmo says, This life with leisure and endowment, which is difficult to find, is brief. By familiarising the mind with this, we stop the allure of this life. And what this is talking about is this precious human rebirth that we’ve been able to achieve, although it’s very difficult to find, is not going to last that long so what we need to do is familiarise ourselves with this idea that means thinking about it at night and day continually reminding ourselves that this lifetime that we’re experiencing now isn’t going to last forever and we have to start thinking about what’s going to happen after we die and if we’re able to do this if we’re able to continually focus or keep reminding ourselves that this is only a brief life time and we’re going to die at the end of it, then that means that we stop being so attracted to the things that we usually focus on in this lifetime the worldly things, the things of this life lose their allure if we realise that this life is impermanent, that we are going to die in the end.
By focusing on this sense of impermanence, we’re able to cut through our attachment to the objects and things of this lifetime. So if we’re able to do this if we’re able to remember that this lifetime is brief and that it is not permanent then that means that we practice Dharma more if we’re not focused on this lifetime then we’re we’re focused on at least the next lifetime, then we’re practicing Dharma. If we aren’t focused on the next lifetime, if we don’t remember death, then we don’t tend to practice Dharma. We tend to do what we normally do, which is to focus on how to make ourselves happy in this lifetime and get caught up in ideas about this lifetime and don’t end up practicing Dharma. So what we do at the moment is the first thing we think when we wake up in the morning is, okay, what do I have to do today?
We think, what is it that I need to get done? And so that in that way, the first our first thought is focusing on this lifetime. It’s the first thing we focus on. And then before we go to bed we may even tend to think, Okay, what is it that I have to do tomorrow? What do I have to plan to do tomorrow?
And we may lie there planning for the next day. And so in this way if we keep thinking, What have I got to do today? What have I got do tomorrow? Then and focus on this lifetime, then our life’s finished, and we haven’t made use of it. So if we focus on death, if we’re able to remember death and the fact that this life is impermanent, and then we’ll start to see that this life doesn’t actually have any true purpose or true goal if we focus just on this life that there’s no point to that if we try to remember death then we’ll remember that although the things that we’re playing in this lifetime don’t have any special purpose and if we start focusing on that then on death then we’ll start focusing on what will happen after death and we’ll start thinking about what we should be doing in order to make what happens after death good so in this way then we start focusing on dharma.
So if we think about it then everything that we do that’s focused on this lifetime everything we do that’s focused on making ourselves happy in this lifetime all the things that we try and possess aren’t going to benefit us when we die at all if they’re focused on this lifetime then they’re contained to this lifetime and we can’t carry them over into our future lifetimes the only thing that can actually help us at the time of death is the practice of Dharma that’s the only thing that can actually benefit us in our future lifetimes and if we think about it if we compare how much working for this lifetime and working for future lifetimes will benefit us in this lifetime although we’re given great opportunities in this lifetime is only at most about a hundred years long And if we count that compared to all our future lifetimes, that’s nothing. If we have a future lifetime and a future lifetime and so on, then that comes out all the way up until we achieve liberation or until we achieve Buddhahood. Then we have to be trying to figure out how to make that situation positive.
Compared to this lifetime, our future lifetimes are much more important and much longer. So because of this, we need to try and make our motivation for doing anything that it becomes a cause for Buddhahood because that’s the thing that’s going to benefit us most in all our future life times. Focusing on this life doesn’t help us, focusing on Dharma does help us. And the best way that we can focus on Dharma is to develop the right motivation in that we are seeking to achieve Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. So that means that whatever we do, whether we’re listening to a teaching, listening to a discussion about a text, we’re teaching, whether we’re thinking about Dharma, whether we’re meditating, whether we’re doing some kind of practice personally, then we should try and make our motivation for doing that, that it becomes a cause for us to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.
If we are able to do that, then that’s the ultimate benefit that we can get out of that moment. That’s the most that we can take from that moment. So not only does it become a dharma action, not only does it become a religious action, also becomes a mahayana action, an altruistic action as well. So if we make every our motivation for doing something an altruistic motivation, then that becomes an altruistic action, therefore we get the most out of that moment. So we need to develop a good motivation before we do any of these things, and at the end we need to dedicate that action towards achieving enlightenment.
If we have the right motivation for doing something and we dedicate it properly, then that action not only becomes dharma but can become a cause for us to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. And even if either enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings or if our motivation to achieve personal liberation it can become a cause for us to achieve personal liberation or a positive rebirth and if we focus on Buddhahood all three of those so if we have the thought of doing something and then dedicate it at the end then it becomes a cause for us to ultimately attain Buddhahood if that’s our motivation. thinking that I’m going to listen to this teaching on the graduated path so I can try and develop an understanding of the graduated path and therefore put the graduated path in practice and meditate on it and therefore act as a cause for me to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings and we should meditate or think about that thought for a few minutes. [unclear]
Yeah. Yeah. This one. Okay. So we are going through the description of verse number ninety one, which says: This chronic disease of cherishing ourselves is the cause giving rise to our unsought suffering.
Perceiving this, we seek your blessings to blame, begrudge, and destroy the monstrous demon of selfishness. Right? So this is from the Lam Rim prayer. Okay. So then the text says, once we’ve understood this, then we see that all sentient beings are responsible for our immediate and ultimate goals or immediate and ultimate benefit depend on sentient beings they’re given to us by sentient beings.
In this way, then, we should see them as being like a wish fulfilling jewel that grants us all our wishes, and also to be like our teachers, our teachers and the deities that we meditate on. We should see them as being incredibly worthy of veneration and respect because of what they are able to give us. And then it’s like what Nāgārjuna said. So I just it didn’t it doesn’t say words. Okay.
So it’s from the Nāgārjuna’s quote from the Ratnāvali, the Jewel Rosary, I guess, or Jewel Rosary, where it says, beings, sentient beings, are like a wish fulfilling jewel or they’re like some kind of vase that you put everything, that you get from the wish fulfilling jewel in. Apparently there’s something about that in the mandala when you’re making an offering you say like this precious thing and that precious thing and there’s a vase that gives all precious things come into it. There’s this other idea that sentient beings are like this as well something very precious with lots of gold and silver and yada yada in it. Then they’re also said to be like the teacher and the deity in terms of what they can give us. So if we understand this we understand this through looking at what the Buddha says about this through the quotes that the Buddha has saying how precious sentient beings are to us and then we think about it based on our own logic as well if we analyse the situation then we can see that sentient beings have given us so much if we think about this in this way and then we should think that all sentient beings are actually close to us that no sentient beings are actually our enemy because they’ve all given all these things that all of the happiness that we get comes from sentient beings.
All of the qualities that we can develop also come from sentient beings. So because of this and because of all of their kindness, then we should be thinking about the the good things they’ve done for us and not try and conceive of any of them as being an enemy. Okay. So as it says in the first verse of the Eight Verses of Thought Transformation by Langri Thangpa, being determined to accomplish the highest welfare for all beings who excel the wish fulfilling gem, I shall constantly hold in hold them dear. So, in this case, Langri Thangpa is saying that because all sentient beings are more precious than a wish fulfilling gem because they can give us they can actually give us all of the good things that we need then because of this kindness, then he’s determined to he’s determined to work for their benefit to establish them in happiness.
Yeah. Okay. So therefore, because of because of this situation, because of because of what the Langri Thangpa and Nāgārjuna were saying, then we can perceive how kind mother sentient beings have been to us, or our kind mothers, as it says. Then they have shown us this great kindness, so in response to that great kindness then we really should be considering their lives to be more important than our own or to hold their happiness more dear than our lives and we are able to develop this idea we may not have this idea at the moment we may consider ourselves to be much more important than others at the moment but in the same way that Langri Thangpa and Nāgārjuna developed this idea of holding others to be dearer than themselves we’re also able to develop this idea and because we’re able to develop this idea then in this text we ask for blessings from the teacher inseparable from the deity to be able to develop this understanding so this leads us on to the next verse number ninety two which says the mind that cherishes all mother beings and would secure them in bliss is the gateway leading to infinite virtue seeing this we seek your blessings to cherish these beings more than our lives even if they should rise up as our enemy So we should be trying to be thinking about how we wanna develop this idea.
So Geshe-la thinks that this particular powerful verse because it talks about transforming our minds from cherishing self to cherishing others so the mind that cherishes all mother beings and would secure them in bliss now the mind cherishing of mother sentient beings is the idea that we are working for others instead of ourselves. When it says, and we secure them in bliss, this isn’t just talking about giving them a bit of money or a bit food or showing them a good time. It’s talking about leading them all the way to Buddhahood, because securing them in bliss or securing them in happiness the only way to do that truly is to show them how to completely get rid of all of their suffering and to completely develop happiness. The only way to completely get rid of suffering and completely develop happiness is by them to become a Buddha. So, this is what it means when it says, and we secure them in bliss’ it’s not talking about any old kind of happiness but true completely fulfilled happiness and then the next bit says ‘is the gateway leading to infinite virtue’ so what this refers to is the fact that all of the positive qualities that we can develop all come about in dependence on sentient beings.
Our positive qualities all come about through our actions towards sentient beings and the results of those actions. Therefore, we need to look at sentient beings as being the cause for any kind of happiness that we may experience. Then it says, Seeing this, we seek your blessings to cherish these beings more than our lives, even if they should rise up as our enemies. Now when it says even if they should rise up as our enemies it’s talking about the fact that sometimes it appears to us that these sentient beings that have shown us great kindness are in fact our enemies or are trying to harm us and this is saying this and even though that we may perceive them like this this isn’t necessarily the case because even then we have the opportunity to develop virtue in dependence on these beings or because of these beings so even if every single being in the world decided to turn against us, if every single being in the world became our enemy, then we’re asking to have the mind sufficiently trained that it would be able to still view all of these beings being our mothers who have shown us great kindness so we’re trying to train our minds this much that’s kind of the measure of how much we need to train our minds and so and then also through doing this we will see sentient beings as being more important than ourselves, more important than the way that we really clutch onto our life as being very important and the most important thing.
Through developing this mind training we’ll see other beings as more important than ourselves. And then the last second last line in English says, Seeing this, we seek your blessings to cherish these beings. We are asking for blessings from the deity that we’re meditating on in this prayer to bless us to be able to perceive in this way or bless us to develop this understanding. So then do we imagine that nectar is coming out of the deity that we’re imagining in front of us and nectar of different colored lights the five-colored lights comes out of the deity as in a lot in the form of light and enters into our continuum like it cleanses our mind stream and then goes out and cleanses the mind streams of all other sentient beings so everybody every being is able to develop this understanding and they’re able to get rid of whatever could be obscuring this understanding which in this instance is self-cherishing. So we imagine that these lights come out and go into mind streams of all beings and get rid of all of their self-cherishing, and therefore everybody has developed this realization of cherishing others.
So through contemplating this verse and the explanation that went with it, and the previous verse and the explanation that went with it, then we’ve talked about what the downfalls or the problems are with cherishing self and what the benefits are of cherishing others and if we’re able to think about this again and again if we think about how beneficial it is and how positive it is to cherish others and how destructive it is to cherish ourselves then what we develop is a very strong sense of compassion and loving kindness towards sentient beings in this way and then through this this loving kindness and compassion we develop the wish of wanting to get all sentient beings out of saṃsāra out of the suffering that they’re experiencing in saṃsāra, to liberate them from their present situation. And so what we need to do in this instance is to practice exchanging self and others to develop on this idea of getting them all out of Samsāra. So when we think about the idea of exchanging self and others, we have to be realistic about this. There’s no point saying I’m going to exchange myself for others when we can’t.
We have to figure out what we can actually exchange self and others with, right? So we can’t turn ourselves into other people, and we can’t turn other people into us, and we can’t, become, like, ourselves around karmically or something like that. It’s not possible. So we need to look at the situation and go, Okay, what can we do and what can’t we do? And if we can’t do something, then there’s no point trying to do it because it’s not possible and you’re just wasting your time trying to do something that you can’t.
So we need to look at this situation realistically and say, Okay, what can I actually exchange with others? Yeah I can’t exchange myself with others because it’s not possible what can I exchange with others and the thing that we’re left being able to exchange with others is a is cherishing we can exchange our self-cherishing for other cherishing? We can’t turn ourselves into someone else, but we can start cherishing them. Okay. So this explanation, you do what you can and you don’t do what you can’t, is enough for people who believe anything they hear.
Explanation is that it says people that believe anything they’re told, people who don’t think about things. If someone tells them, If you do this, it’s beneficial, then they’ll just do it. There’s other people that just accept what they are told as opposed to people who need to investigate everything and sort everything out hence the mention to our friend Joe. Okay, so and then the next section says: But for those who have more intelligence and need to investigate everything then he’s going to present the reasons why we need to exchange self for others. So for some that’s enough, just being told that this is the way they go, Oh, I go for refuge.
That’s it. They don’t need to investigate. And there’s other people that need to investigate. There’s this Tibetan saying they say, Every time something happens they go, Oh, kyab su chi. It just means I go for refuge.
People who just do that, then that’s fine, they’re sorted. But then there’s another explanation for those who need to know why they’re doing this. Okay. So I was like I said three or four times. Okay, think time’s open enough.
Okay, so say that and then we’re finished. So for an example for these people that need to prove that this could actually happen, that we are actually able to develop this mind that cherishes others instead of cherishing ourselves said to be an example of it that’s said to prove it is said to be a similar situation to when we meet someone at first and we really don’t like them we consider them to be harmful to us to hurt us and to be our enemy or to be someone we completely dislike and then that person turns around and starts behaving nicely towards us they do things to help us out and if they keep doing things to help us out and we agree on something, if we have something in common, then the way that we view that person turns around. We may have started to see them as someone that was going to hurt us, that was harmful to us. Eventually, we see them as being someone who is friendly to us. We know this from our experience.
We have had experiences where someone’s been our enemy and they’ve become our friend. Because we have this experience of this, then we can see how that could relate to other beings as well that we can start by cherishing ourselves and then end up cherishing others the same way as we cannot like someone and then end up liking them in the end. So if we train our mind in this, it is possible. I always forget my pen. Any?
Thanks. Alright. Don’t try any. If you have questions, please ask them. Like, keep that pen back.
Let’s do it. Let’s prepare this for now. Hey, Joyce. Tell. Yeah.
He thinks that, oh, Geshe la knows me too well. He said, you’ll just leave it there and forget it. It’s just What’s the sign of having? Okay. So it could be similar to what we’re just talking about here.
You start off with this idea of not liking someone, and then you eventually like them. Right? So it could be a similar situation with that. Are you