Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The verse’s promise — “through the practice of the five forces, the quintessence of the entire Dharma” — gives Geshe Pema Tsering his subject for this 45-minute Lamrim commentary. He begins with the force of intention: self-cherishing, the habit of treating oneself as inherently and supremely real, has driven every action across countless lifetimes, and the antidote is a firm commitment to the two bodhicittas. He then covers habit (repeated familiarization with Lamrim’s three levels of practitioners), white seeds (channeling even small virtuous acts toward developing bodhicitta), purification (actively opposing self-cherishing whenever it arises), and prayer (dedicating all virtue toward enlightenment). He closes by mapping the five onto any single action — intention at the start, the middle three during, aspiration at the end — and reassures that mind training, however hard at first, becomes easier with practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 SoP 2004 09 12.mp3
UUID: e7d83056-1dd7-4b92-a897-015cf9fa7e2a
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-09-12
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~4,401
So we need to we we we came here in order to practice our Dharma in one way or another. But whether we actually practice Dharma or not doesn’t depend on what we do. It depends on what our motivation for doing this thing is. So we can go through a religious ceremony. We can go through any of these things.
And we can go through studying Buddhist texts. And none of these things actually become a Dharma practice. None of these things become very beneficial until our motivation is in accordance with what we’re studying. So the motivation that we need to develop is in order to benefit sentient beings, to the greatest extent, by becoming a Buddha, to reach our own personal nirvana or to attain a positive rebirth in the next lifetime. So if we don’t take the opportunity of developing the right if we don’t take the opportunity of studying Dharma or looking at these texts to develop the right motivation, then it’s it’s a great waste.
And we’ve wasted the opportunity that we could have had to practice Dharma properly. So please listen with the motivation that you’re doing so in order to attain the state of the Buddha, which is the most excellent and experience the most excellent happiness. And not only that, but through achieving that yourselves, that you’re able to lead all other sentient beings into that state where they can also experience the most excellent happiness that can be developed. So the stage we’re up to is the second half of verse ninety seven from this reviewing the stages of path prayer in the Guru Puja. These last two lines say, through the practice of the five forces, the quintessence, probably not pronouncing that properly, of the entire Dharma, I attune myself, or ourselves, solely with the bliss of the mind.
So these two lines actually refer to what are called mainly what are called the five forces. Now the five forces apply to both the time of our death and during our lives. But in description of these five forces that is about to be given, the practice of the five forces of death is subsumed. So what this basically means is if you practice the five forces during your lifetime, then you will naturally apply the five forces at the time of death. Now these are five forces or these five powers, are the the power of intention, the power of habit, and the power of the white seeds, the power of regret or purification, the power of prayer.
So the first framework from within these that we’re dealing with is the power of intention. Now, this means that if we do everything with the right intention, then that sets us up for practising the dharma in our lifetimes and being able to establish a good rebirth after we’ve died. So the kind of intention, the kind of focus that we need for practising the power or the force of intention says that from now until I become enlightened, and especially from now until I die, but at the very least for today and tomorrow, Now I will try and not be separated from the two bodhicittas. I will try and do everything that I can, recognising the enemy of self grasping, trying not to forget that this is the real problem for a minute or for for a second, and then try and keep my mind focused on the two bodhicittas. Try not be to be separated from those.
So all of the things that I do will be included within this practice of the two bodhicittas. So thinking in this way, being motivated in in this way is what’s called the power or the force of intention. So what this is referring to is, first of all, we need to recognize what has been propelling us, like what has been guiding us or or projecting us up until now. So what has been the driving force for it has been the intention behind all actions up until now. So we’ve had many, many, many lifetimes.
We’ve experienced so many rebirths in so many different states that it’s impossible for the mind to comprehend At this stage. And even if we think about it, it’s said that we’ve had lifetimes living as a in bliss realms as deities oh, sorry, as gods. And in in these realms as gods, you’re supposed to live sorry. A god realm day is supposed to be a hundred years. And and if we think about it in this way, from this perspective, if we had many lifetimes like this, and then a hundred years, in the scope of all of the different lives we have had wouldn’t have the same weight as a minute.
And it would only have the same weight as a second. So this hundred years that we may get to live for isn’t that important. But for all of this time, all of this time that we’ve existed, existed, what we’ve been doing is being is we’ve acted because of self-cherishing. Everything we’ve done has been about ourselves, and that’s created this situation where we’re reborn and reborn and reborn and again and again in Samsāra.
And even if we forget about all of these past lives and all of these different experiences we’ve had and how all of those have been implemented or the intention behind them has been self-cherishing or self grasping. Even if we look at this lifetime. In this lifetime, we have a precious human rebirth. We have these amazing conditions to practise dharma. We have knowledge of the dharma.
We understand what we need to do and we understand what we shouldn’t do. But still, still get our actions are still propelled by self-cherishing, by self grasping. So this is what the real the thing that is our intention, our propelling force at the moment So the this self-cherishing, this self grasping mind that we have isn’t something that we see as an enemy, as if hang on. Here’s a whole list of an enemy or a thief or a a an opponent or a bandit. It’s not someone that we see in a negative light at all.
This this self-cherishing is something that or this holding on to self as being an important, inherently existent thing is something that we actually cherish. It’s something that we consider very important. So when we talk about holding onto self as being an inherently existent thing, this is the mind of self grasping. And what this means is that we’ve taken something that is actually a collection of all different conditions, causes and conditions that have come together and decided that that’s a really inherently existent self powered autonomous thing and therefore that is the most important thing that exists in the world is ourselves. We this actually, this collection of causes and conditions that have come together, we think, Okay, that’s a real inherent thing.
Therefore, I need to look after this. I’m going to do everything myself because I take myself to be really, truly self powered, autonomously existent. So we think this is the most important thing, and we do everything from that perspective. If we watch the way we think, then we’ll notice that we almost don’t have a break in this kind of thought. We don’t almost don’t have a moment where we’re not thinking about ourselves as an inherently existent thing.
This is the sort of I. I do this, I do that, I need this, I don’t need that. This sort of I is something that’s continuously going in our heads, the concept of ourself as being this inherently existent autonomous thing. So this is what has propelled us from this is what our intention has been up until now, but what we need to do is to change that intention. And this intention of self, this focusing on self, isn’t something that’s only confined to a few people.
All beings have this idea, whether they’re incredibly important, very powerful beings, or they have a very small body and so forth. All beings have this idea of self. So what our ten natural tendency is is to have to have every moment of our lives, every moment of our thoughts concentrated on self, and then concentrated on how to get the best out of a situation for ourselves. And this is what has propelled us through. This idea of self, this strong grasping onto the sense of self, is what has propelled us from lifetime to lifetime to lifetime to lifetime in Samsāra.
And then now what we need to do oh, sorry. We don’t have to train our minds to cherish ourselves. We don’t have to train our minds to consider ourselves to be an inherently existent thing. So when we talk about self-cherishing, again, what we’re talking about is a mind that holds the self to be an inherent autonomous individual. So this mind is something that we don’t have to think about.
It’s something that happens naturally. What we do need to train our mind in is the antidote to this. As I said, we need to train our mind or we need to meditate or focus our minds on the two bodhicittas, the absolute bodhicitta and relative bodhicitta. If we’re able to turn all our practices, turn everything we do, into the practice of these two bodhicittas, then this becomes a way for us to become enlightened. Now, these two bodhicittas, there’s the relative bodhicitta, the thought of reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.
This becomes an antidote to self-cherishing. And their ultimate bodhicitta, the understanding of emptiness, becomes an antidote to self grasping. So within the practice of these two bodhicittas, we have the antidote to everything that causes us to be reborn in saṃsāra and not to become Buddhas. So what we need to do then is to focus on this, to use this as our motivation to try and be propelled by this karma, by this focus, as opposed to what our usual habit is, which is to be propelled or to the to propel by and have the intention to do everything for the self-cherishing mind, the self grasping mind. So if we can’t do this from now until we become enlightened, then we should try and do it for this lifetime.
And if that’s difficult as well, we should try and do it for a day or for an hour or so, just for a start. So the the next power is the four the power of or the force of habit or the power of the force of habituation. No. That’s the wrong word. Habit or familiarization.
Now what this basically means is that, from the point of view of this reviewing the stages of the path, that we should familiarise ourselves whenever we have the opportunity with the understandings and the the understanding and the path set forward in the core instructions of the graduated path of the three types of beings that was put forward by Lama Atisha and Tsongkhapa. Now, what this means is that the lamrim, the graduated path, we should try and familiarise ourselves with that as much as we possibly can. So this means, from the point of view of those with the lowest motivation, that we focus on refuge. We focus on taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, trying to put into practice the teachings of the Buddha, which is the Dharma, and looking to the Sangha for help. Then we need to, in this middle stage, develop the idea of working towards liberation.
Not working to create saṃsāra, but working to create nirvana and to get out of saṃsāra. And in the final stages then to develop the mind of bodhicitta and work towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, not just ourselves. So this is, like, the core instructions of the graduated path, and this is what we need to focus on. And if we’re able to focus on this again and again, then this understanding, our understanding will become clearer and subtler, and we will develop in terms of being able to put these things into practice more and more in our day to day existence. So the the main part of this instruction, the main part of this familiarization is to develop belief.
Now this belief isn’t just the idea that they that what they said makes sense or what they instructed is how I want to live my life. It’s if we really believe something, then we don’t do anything to contradict that. So what we need to do is to develop our beliefs, to develop our understanding. We have this idea, we believe, but it’s difficult for us to believe in something we don’t know about. So a general idea of belief is not good enough.
We need to develop our understanding so our beliefs become stronger and stronger and more stable and more stable. If our beliefs become stronger and more stable and clearer, then we’re less likely to do something that contradicts that belief system, those teachings that are put forward. So we need to develop our beliefs, put our beliefs into practice and study these things so our understanding of them becomes clearer and our beliefs become more stable. And if we do this again and again and again, we’ve familiarised ourselves with this so thoroughly. Developed the habit of behaving in this way so thoroughly that then this is when it becomes the power of habit or the power of familiarization.
Okay. So the the next one is the power of the white seeds. And what this is referring to is that the seeds that create the the seeds are like the causes, so the causes for that which is going to be pure and beneficial. So we’re trying to create the causes for true happiness, for enlightenment. And the main thing that this practice relates to, or this power or this force relates to, is the development of bodhicitta.
So the prayer is that where bodhicitta has not developed, may it develop, and where it has developed, may it improve and grow. So whatever we do, whatever practices we do, then we should try and have this as the motivation. May this be a cause for bodhicitta to grow. As we probably haven’t developed bodhicitta in our mind streams at the moment, then the idea for us is that may bodhicitta develop in our mind stream out of these two, out of the two, may bodhicitta arise and where it hasn’t arisen, may it grow. We’re actually trying to focus on making it arise or developing it in the first place.
So the white seed is doing a positive action. And the results of that white seed is the development of bodhicitta, the white result or the pure result from a pure seed. So if we do virtuous things with the motivation of developing bodhicitta, then they become causes for us to develop bodhicitta. Okay. So the the reason that the the it says that it focuses on this idea of white seeds because we’re trying to develop, even very small causes, for us to develop, Buddhahood.
So if we do something with a positive motivation, even if it’s very small, then it can grow into something very big. At the moment, almost everything that we do is motivated by self-cherishing, by self grasping, thinking of ourselves as an inherently existent thing that is the most important thing in our world. So we think in this way we’re creating black seeds to experience negativity in the future. So we want to get a few white seeds within that darkness in order to develop towards Buddhahood. So the two things that we engage in that may lead us towards Buddhahood is accumulating merit and getting rid of negativity.
If we can have our motivation for doing these things, something to do with bodhicitta, then we’re creating the causes to experience Buddhahood as opposed to creating the causes to experiencing saṃsāra, what we usually do. So the tricky thing with us is even even if we do something that we consider virtuous, something that we consider is like a Dharma practice or a meditation or what or whatever it is we do, a lot of the time we do this with this idea of self. We think if I meditate, I’m gonna be happy. If I, you know, if I do this practice, I’m going to feel all happy and blissy. If I do this, people will think I’m a good person or I’ll feel better about myself.
Any of these motivations that we have for doing it are selfish, are generated by self-cherishing, are generated by self grasping. We need to get away from that. We need to focus on others. If we’re doing something in order to benefit others, then that isn’t a cause for saṃsāra. It isn’t a cause for being reborn and reborn again and again and again.
So what we need to do is to get the idea of working for others selflessly in our practices, even just for moments, because this is what the idea of white seeds is about. So if we again remember the two bodhicittas, if we remember this, to work towards enlightenment for the benefit of all other sentient beings and eschewing any personal happiness that we may gain in temporary situation, then that means we’re applying the antidote to self-cherishing. And if we focus on ultimate bodhicitta and recognise ourselves as autonomous individual things is actually an illusion, is actually a mistake, then we’re applying the ultimate bodhicitta. So the next thing is the the power of cleansing or the power of blocking. Okay.
So whichever way you wanna translate this word, it has the implications of getting rid of an enemy, defeating an enemy, whether it’s you wanna say purifying that enemy or beating them up. It’s up to you. So because it’s got both implications in Tibetan. So the basically, the thing that that is our enemy is the state of mind that is the opposite or the opponent of bodhicitta. And the thing the mind or the way of thinking that is an opponent of bodhicitta from the perspective of working towards enlightenment is self-cherishing.
And self-cherishing is the thing that we need to obliterate. self-cherishing is the thing that stops us from being able to develop towards becoming Buddhas. So every time that it comes up, this idea of self-cherishing, then we need to squish it. self-cherishing is something that we actually experience most of the time. So this is a very difficult undertaking and something that we need to keep working at.
We need to keep trying to do, keep trying to purify this thought, keep trying to to work against this idea of self-cherishing. Because focusing on self is the reason that we don’t focus on others is the reason that we don’t become Buddhas. Because the the the thing is that we don’t tend to think of self-cherishing as being a problem. We think of self-cherishing as being the way that we look after ourselves, the way that we can get ahead in the world and so on. So if someone starts behaving in a way that they don’t act out of self-cherishing, then we think they’re a bit stupid.
Oh, look at that person. They’re not thinking about themselves. They’re not looking after themselves. They’re only focusing on others. How stupid of them?
We don’t tend to encourage thoughts in this way. We’re constantly considering ourselves to be the most important person around and focusing on what we need. So to get rid of that idea and to turn our minds away from that idea is very difficult. And we don’t even recognize it or encourage it when we see it in other people. We we tend to think that they’re a bit stupid if they behave like that, not looking after themselves.
Not looking out for themselves. Okay. So from a worldly point of view, the you know, from a worldly point of view, we consider it very good for someone to be incredibly healthy, to be able to get whatever they need to look after themselves. If someone has set themselves up in a situation where they have everything that they could need, then we, like, respect that.
We look at we look to that and say, wow, they’re doing really well. This is something that we aim for. This is something that we respect in others. So that’s from a worldly perspective. From a dharma perspective, this isn’t the best thing that can happen to people.
To have everything that they could want in a worldly manner isn’t something that’s necessarily going to help them. What will help them is to look after others, to work on ways to develop their ability to focus on others, not on ways to develop their ability to feel good. Now we all want to feel good. We all want to feel happy. It’s just that in order to become a a Buddha, we have to be able to give away our bodies.
And if we can’t give away our bodies, if we’re not attached to if if we’re not if we’re not removed from attachment enough to be able to give away our bodies, we can’t become Buddhist. So this is something we work towards. It’s not something that we start off with. We just slowly develop our ability to focus on others and not focus on ourselves. Now, something else that can happen when we start doing this is that when we start to focus on others, we can feel happier.
We’ll notice this sense of feeling happier and happier, and we can actually get attached to that as well. We can have this idea that I feel much better when I focus on others. When I do mind training, I feel much happier. And this is actually still working from a point of view of self-cherishing, working from a point of view of an inherently existent being that wants to be happier. So we need to recognize that it’s not about making ourselves happier.
Our mind training practice isn’t about making ourselves happier. It’s actually about working towards not even being attached to our bodies. Okay. So the last of the five powers or five forces is the force of power of prayer, of aspiration. Now the way that we we can use this power of of force is to dedicate everything that we are doing to developing bodhicitta.
So if we do any positive action or we purify any negative actions, if we then think, by the force of this, by the power of this, may I become a Buddha and benefit all sentient beings, then this is or may bodhicitta develop in my mind stream. And then this becomes a way to practice the force of prayer. So we do a lot of very virtuous things as well. We just need to be able to direct these virtuous things in their right direction so that they the force, the potential of those will ripen in the most the way that benefits us the most. So this means that in the beginning of any action that we do, we should try and use the first of these powers power of intention and power of projection, so that our positive action is directed in the right way.
And then the actions that we should do should be done with the sense of familiarization. We should do them a lot. They should be done with the idea of planting white seeds, thinking that anything we do, even if it’s little, becomes a potential for us to become a Buddha. And then they should also be this idea of purifying or stopping negativities is also something that we do in the middle or as part of our practice or part of our virtuous action. And then we should end things off with the power of aspiration that by this may we become or maybe we develop bodhicitta and may we become Buddhas.
So in the beginning, we have the power of intention, power of projection. In the middle, we have the power of habit, the power of the white seeds and the power of purification or stopping. And in the end, we have the power of dedication or motivation sorry, dedication or or prayer that what we’ve done become a cause for us to achieve enlightenment. So this process that we’re talking about here, this mind training process of changing our mind from being something that is entirely focused on self to being something that is entirely focused on others. It’s a very difficult process, but it’s something that gets easier and easier.
The more that we do it, the more that we’re habituated with it, the the more subtle and the more clear our understanding of this process becomes, the easier it is for us to do. And, in fact, when we develop bodhicitta, this uncontrived mind wishing to work for towards enlightenment for the benefit of others, focusing on working for others becomes incredibly easy. And then our understanding even from there gets subtler and subtler and more vast and more clear. But at the beginning, when our mind is all fogged in by self-cherishing, by thinking about the most important things, all of these things, It’s really hard. It’s really hard to get going.
And Angus just said, if you’re like him, and he just thinks sometimes, how the on earth am I gonna develop bodhicitta?’ It seems like something that’s a very long way away and very difficult. But it’s something that you need to work at, and it’s harder at the beginning than it is in the middle, and it’s harder in the middle than it is at the end. So in the beginning, when you start working at it, it may feel very difficult. But it makes sense that it’s going to get easier. So you just have to keep working at it so that it will develop.