Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 16-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering unpacks the word “paramita” — not “perfection” but “that which has gone to the other side” of saṃsāra — before turning to the first of the six transcendences: generosity. A lollipop anchors the graduated training: you begin by giving what costs you nothing, then work through progressively harder objects until practitioners can eventually give their bodies without regret. He explains the correct motivation — giving as a cause for Buddhahood rather than mere temporary relief — and the key prerequisite that there must be a recipient willing to receive. Geshe-la then broadens the concept to non-physical generosity: time, knowledge, dedicating virtue, and setting a bodhisattva motivation at the start of any practice. Conversational in tone, with student questions shaping the discussion throughout.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 SoP 2005 02 20.mp3
UUID: 6f55a726-46c0-44e5-ba26-39ed6c283138
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-02-20
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 15.9 minutes
Words: ~1,381
If you perfect, if you finish the practice of the perfection and end up Buddha, right, then obviously your ethics and your everything else is going to be perfect as well So this word means to that which has gone to the other side. That which has gone paramita, that which has gone to the other side. So if you talk about going to the other side of saṃsāra, you could say nirvana is a paramita. nirvana is a paramita. Liberation is a paramita because it is that which has gone to the other side of saṃsāra.
Buddhahood is a paramita It is that which has gone to the other side of what are called the two obscurations. The obscurations of negative emotions and the obscurations to knowledge. Right? So these things are all that’s gone to the other side. Right?
So it’s not literally six perfections. They’re called six perfections because it’s easier to say than the six that which have gone to the other side is I don’t know how to translate it the six sometimes I’ve seen it translated as six transcendences So can you come up with something better? Tell me. Yes. You got something better?
Like giving your body away? Okay. He said that this is the practice of giving. First of all, you start by giving things away that you aren’t going to develop regret for, like, say, a loli. If you give someone a loli, you’re not thinking how is you’re not going it’s not that taxing on you.
You’re not as likely to develop miserliness or regret for having given it. So the practice of generosity is to start by giving things that you can give easily and then you work up to being able to give more and more and more things away and your miserliness decreases. So the stages that you go through are the practice of generosity. It starts off small and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger until eventually beings are even able to give away their bodies without thinking about it, without regretting it. So I said, so does that mean the the stages are first of you start with a lolly and you end up giving your body away?
And guess what I said, right, it it starts it said anything that’s easy. Alright? So you start with something that’s easy, and then you gradually get through things that are more difficult, develop your ability to give away more difficult things. Yeah. Okay.
So Geshe said you don’t give with either of those necessarily either of those motivations. You give with the idea that giving is a way to attain Buddhahood. Alright? And as a Buddha, you can really help beings. Because by giving the material objects, you’re not really totally helping them.
You’re temporarily helping them. Or giving them knowledge, you’re only temporarily helping them. Right? So the idea is, what if you give, may this be a cause for me to attain Buddhahood. Right?
May this giving be a cause for me to attain Buddhahood. So the idea is to focus on generosity. Right? And I said, so, but there’s some people that actually seem to really need things and others that don’t really need things. And he said, that’s a distinction that you really can’t make.
You don’t know who really needs things and who doesn’t really need things. If someone isn’t there to receive things from you, then you have no one to give to alright these aren’t just physical things either it’s mental things as well if there is a if they’re not there, then there’s no way they can take from you alright so you can’t give so the prerequisites for generosity to take place is that there’s there is someone to receive or some someone to receive the the generosity. It’s not whether they need it, whether you can tell whether they need it or not. Now, yeah, so Geshe-la said that if we were trying to give something to John Howard or George Bush, right, they’re not here so we can’t give to them. We can’t practice generosity with them if they aren’t either going to receive he said they’re not going to take it from us.
They’re not going to be able to receive it because they have lots more than we do. Alright? So if there’s no one to receive, there’s no you can’t practice generosity. Alright? But if there is someone to receive, you can.
Geshe said that there he says he can’t think of any instance. He said that I said they don’t have anyone to give to, he said, of course, I have someone to give to. They have all sentient beings to give to. So they would be practicing, saying anything that I do may this be of benefit to sentient beings. That’s practicing generosity.
Every time that they would take something they offer to all sentient beings. They don’t have to be in the cave. So to give away to to be to be thinking of sharing your stores of virtue or your stores of positive actions with others, they don’t need to be there. So you so every time that we practice do any kind of practice, you usually finish it with a dedication. And that dedication is generosity.
And also, when you develop your motivation, your motivation is to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. It’s not to attain enlightenment for the benefit of yourself. And so that’s generosity. That that’s practice of generosity. When you’re giving to others, when you’re doing something for others, that’s generosity.
Generosity isn’t just giving physical things. It’s like giving of your time, your body, your your physical things, as well as your virtue, your knowledge, all of those things are generosity. It doesn’t necessarily just mean physical things. Okay, so so we said for example if because we’re talking about you said that might contradict what was beforehand right so having this idea of someone needing something or there being something that you can give to yeah so I said so guess the so if you had a very rich person and you’re gonna give the money, right, would that be a valid form of generosity? And he said, they’re probably not likely to take it from you because they may be affronted that that you would think that they need that money and it may be insulting to them, so you would think that’s not a valid form of generosity because they don’t want it, and I said yeah, but maybe they’re like this is how I got rich, thanks for the dollar! and he said yeah well in that case it’s a valid form of generosity, yeah, so because if there’s a recipient, if there’s someone who’s going to take what you have to give, yeah then that is a form of generosity I said but then what about if you’re trying to comfort someone who’s very rich but very sad and he said that’s also generosity so you look at what is appropriate to give in certain instances instances and whether and if there is an appropriate recipient then you can give in that instance.
Okay. So he said we can’t know from like exactly what they can need. Right? But if we think about it, then we are working on the premise that all sentient beings wanna be happy and don’t wanna experience suffering. So if we can do anything to alleviate their suffering, alright, then we should try and do that in that form of generosity.
So anything that we can give to alleviate suffering, then that would be a form of generosity. Alright. Okay, so we don’t know exactly what people want but we can have a general idea and they may even ask us for it. I said if they ask for something then that’s always a good sign. That is awesome.
So then He’s saying Geshe said that doesn’t mean he’s not saying if someone comes up to you and says, I need I need your brand new car that you have to give it to them. Yeah. He said because many people may come up and say that. Okay.