Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Geshe Pema Tsering opens this 45-minute commentary by making a familiar Tibetan image concrete for Western students: the wish-fulfilling gem that symbolises precious human rebirth is explained as heaps of diamonds or gold — and then shown to surpass even those. The session covers the Precious Human Rebirth section of the Guru Puja’s Lamrim review. He begins with motivation: studying with bodhicitta, the wish to benefit all beings, produces vastly greater results than studying for personal gain. Moving into Lama Tsongkhapa’s verse, he explains that this life is rare, as brief as lightning, and hollow if spent chasing samsaric pleasures with no true substance. He outlines three aspirational aims — Buddhahood, personal liberation, or at least a good future rebirth — and closes by invoking Milarepa’s single-lifetime enlightenment alongside the grain-on-a-needle image for how unlikely this chance is to recur.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 SoP 2004 02 22.mp3
UUID: e6df5b6e-597a-42e1-ad42-ccf8ed0febc3
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-02-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~4,208
Okay. So we’re going to be going through the reviewing the stages of the path section of the Guru Puja today. But before we do that, we need to develop the right motivation for listening to these teachings, contemplating on these teachings. Now, a teaching doesn’t become Mahāyāna or altruistic in intention by the actual teaching itself. It becomes altruistic in intention by the motivation with which we study or by with which we listen to teachings on it and try and apply it to our life.
So although we can say that this teaching, the reviewing the stages of the path from the Guru Puja is by its nature Mahāyāna teaching, an altruistic teaching. Our practice of it doesn’t become altruistic just by looking at it. We have to develop the motivation of altruism in our minds in order to make our understanding of it altruistic, in order to make this practice altruistic. Now this teaching is not only Mahāyāna teaching it’s also a tantra teaching so from amongst sūtra and tantra teachings it’s a tantra teaching and then from amongst the types of tantra teaching this is a teaching that’s referred to the practice of focusing on the guru or the lama. Now, in this way it’s very special.
However, from amongst the teachings of practicing on the focusing on the teacher, there’s ones that are said to be peculiar or unique to that practice and there’s ones that are said to be common to other practices. This is the common stage of the focus of the Guru Yoga or focusing on the teacher. So this means that it is by essence rather than being specific to the Tantra tradition it’s a Mahāyāna teaching or a teaching in order to lead us to altruism. Now in order for us to be able to practice this with a sense of having a Mahāyāna motivation then we need to develop this idea of bodhicitta. Now what bodhicitta is if we ask what that is then it’s the thought that we want to help all beings without exception.
We want to establish all beings in a place beyond sorrow. So we should have this idea that we’re listening to this text, listening to this teachings in order to develop that thought in our mind that we’re trying to take all sentient beings beyond sorrow and by developing that thought that that will lead us to become a Buddha. So that should be our motivation. So if we listen to these teachings with the idea that we’re doing so to benefit all beings and the motivation that we’re listening to it with is very vast and the results of that motivation will in turn be very vast. Even if we are listening to the teachings we develop a sense of doubt about the way that we think things truly exist or if we develop a some kind of very small understanding and that will become a very vast result based on the motivation of thinking about it for sentient beings.
If on the other hand we are doing it with the motivation to benefit only ourselves then that ends up with only a very small result because we’re only one person and one person compared to countless beings is doesn’t balance doesn’t add up. Even if we are doing this with the motivation to benefit ourselves if it’s to benefit ourselves truly by achieving liberation or liberation from experiencing suffering in lower realms, then that’s a better benefit than thinking in some way this will benefit me in this lifetime. If we think that this will benefit us in this lifetime, then the results from this kind of motivation and anything we do with that kind of motivation will be very small. So we have to think about the best profit that we can get from studying these teachings, how it’s going benefit us the most, what kind of what we can get out of doing this teaching, listening to these teachings. And if we come to it with the idea that it’s just for ourselves in the short term then what we get out of it is going to be very small if we come to it with the attitude then of okay I’m doing this I’m listening to these teachings I’m developing myself in order to be a benefit to all beings without exception and take them completely beyond any sense of or any feeling of suffering and so that becomes a very vast a very profound motivation for us to have because it’s a very profound motivation and our mind is focusing on something very profound that means the results of any action done with that motivation will be profound and we shouldn’t worry about the little things that we may have been focusing on in thinking this will benefit me in this lifetime or this will make me more peaceful or so on Because if we have as our motivation this complete view, then the little things that we were focusing on come along with that.
So we don’t have to worry about those. Okay, so then we go to the text after developing that motivation. We go to the text and the text continues with a quote from Okay, from Lama Tsongkhapa. And the quote says that this base of leisure or this body of leisure is more precious than a wish fulfilling gem. Now, what we mean by this body of leisure is this body that we have achieved, this human rebirth that we’ve achieved, by means of that then we have the ability or the time or the leisure to practice religion or practice Dharma, practice learn it, put it into practice and try and develop understandings based on that.
So that’s what it means by having the leisure. It means the time, the ability to study, contemplate and meditate on any of the different parts of the Buddha whether it’s the individual liberation vehicle or the altruistic vehicle or the in indeed the tantra vehicle. We have the ability to practice any of these things. So in this way, we say the ability sorry and the time to practice any of these things. So that’s why we say to a body with leisure.
So this body with leisure and endowments like this body which has time to do this, to focus on this rebirth that we’ve achieved is said to be more precious than our wish fulfilling jewel. Now wish fulfilling jewel isn’t something that we’re that frequent, what do you call it, we’re not that familiar with in our culture. We don’t have this idea of a wish fulfilling jewel very much. So wish fulfilling jewel is said to be a jewel that can make anyone’s wishes come true that comes from Indian mythology that they believe that there was this jewel that you could find and as soon as you made a wish to it then that would make that wish come true. Now it’s difficult for us to think about that because we don’t have that concept in our culture of a wish fulfilling jewel.
So perhaps we should think of it as something that we view as like wish fulfilling jewels like if we had heaps of diamonds and we could use those diamonds in any way we wanted to get happiness for ourselves or if we had lots of gold or some kind of other kind of precious objects that we can use in any way we wanted to get whatever it was we wanted through selling them or through investing what we get from them or using them for power or whatever so if we can think about it like that something that is very precious that we ourselves hold to be very precious and that we can get happiness from one way or another, then this body that we have, this rebirth that we have taken has more potential than anything that we could find from any of those kind of material, other material things. Now, the reason that it’s said to be this body, this existence that we have now is said to be more precious than any of these wish fulfilling jewel or any of the wealth or any of the jewels or wealth that we may have in this lifetime is it because any of the things that we have in this lifetime that can help us to get things we want.
So whether it’s house or cars or happiness of one form or another or less material happiness is of one form or another they only exist for this lifetime and in fact at the time of death they may cease to help us and may harm us more than they help us because we may because of attachment towards them be thinking negative things when we die. So anything that we can get in this lifetime is not going to be as helpful to us as something that’s going to help us in all lifetimes to come that’s going to show us true happiness that doesn’t change so that’s why it’s said to be more precious than a wish fulfilling gem or more precious than any physical things that we any wealth that we may have or any happiness that we may have in this lifetime. And this precious human rebirth is said then to be it says in quote from Lama Tsongkhapa that we have achieved this existence this one time now or this one time now now what this means is that lots of times we’re in other existences and we don’t realize how precious the human rebirth, the precious human rebirth like the one we’ve got now is.
We don’t think about how precious it is if we’re like born in a bliss state or if we’re born in a situation where we are too ignorant to be able to understand it then we don’t know what we’re missing. And also there’s many people that are born as humans that don’t realize the potential of the human rebirth so whilst we have it this time, whilst we’ve achieved it, we’ve got all the causes and conditions together then we need to recognize how important it is as well. So that’s why it says, you know, we have found it this one time. The next line that says that it is even though it’s difficult to find, even though we had to create the right conditions, which are difficult to do in order to achieve this birth, it’s also easily lost and is said to be like a flash of lightning in the sky now what this means is that we have found this existence or we find ourselves in this existence through having done virtuous actions and so forth it’s not something that lasts forever it’s not something that lasts very long at all and that’s why it says that there’s a danger of it being easily lost.
Now it may seem like a long time to us a hundred years and may seem like at the most we can live for about a hundred years that may seem like a very long time to us but if we compare one hundred years to the concept of us wandering in Samsāra taking rebirth after rebirth after rebirth in Samsāra for countless eons, then a hundred years isn’t very long. If you compare it to this exceedingly long amount of times, it’s not much at all. And so we should recognize that that we don’t have that much time to try and make the best of the situation of this rebirth that we have. Because in essence, it’s like a flash of lightning in the sky that it comes and it’s gone straight away. Okay, so the next pith that says, thinking on this, we will abandon all attachments or all worldly things and realize that they are like the of barley or wheat without any essence and work night and day to take the essence out of the true essence out of this lifetime.
It means is thinking on this it means that if we go over again and again the fact that this lifetime is difficult to find, easily lost and has great meaning or can have great benefit, then thinking on this, this means that we won’t get caught up in thinking about worldly things that may give us temporary happiness in this lifetime Because we will understand that anything that we are searching after that only makes us happy in this lifetime is actually by its nature suffering. It doesn’t cause us true happiness or stable happiness. So because of that, we should abandon it like it’s the husks of wheat that is there’s no substance in the husks of wheat or any grain there’s nothing we can use it for so because we realize that worldly happiness or samsaric happiness has no substance, has no way it can truly make us happy, then we should abandon it and work night and day to try and take the real essence of this life that is to make this life really meaningful by trying to achieve true happiness with it. So when it says that we should work night and day to take the essence from this life or to get the to get the true benefit from this lifetime, then what this is referring to is that we should use this lifetime to try and achieve either Buddhahood liberation or a good rebirth in our next lifetimes instead of wasting it on things that will make us happy in the short term in this lifetime but won’t benefit us in the long term.
So this means that at best we should try and create the causes to achieve Buddhahood that is to develop a bodhicitta or the mind of enlightenment. And the next best of that is that we should be working for our own liberation from our suffering or our own nirvana. And the least best or the least we should be focusing on is that we are working towards achieving good rebirth in our next life as a human or a God or in bliss state of being like a god so therefore that’s how we take the essence out of this lifetime if we just waste this lifetime chasing after things that will make us happy in the short time by the time we get to the end of the life then we haven’t really made the best of it because we focused on that lifetime and that lifetime’s over, and now we haven’t established anything for making us happy in the future after this life. Okay, so then, Lama Tsongkhapa says, I, the yogi, have practiced in this way, for all those who seek liberation should do the same thing or practice in the same way. Now what this means is that we should having thought on again and again this idea that this lifetime that we have now, this rebirth that we have at the moment is very precious and is difficult to achieve and easily lost and can have great meaning if we use it in the right way.
Then by thinking on this again and again we should cease chasing after things that will make us happy in the short term that is the happinesses of this lifetime that don’t last very long and we should discard them like the husks of wheat, the husk of grains because they have no essence. And if we really want to achieve happiness true happiness then we have to strive for our liberation and so this idea of focusing on how precious this human rebirth is what we need to do in order to achieve that and so when he says this is what I have done this and he says this is the way that I have practiced. If you want to achieve something like that, if you want to achieve liberation, then do the same thing. So this is encouraging us to practice in a similar way. The text then goes on to explain that developing this kind of understanding that this is the way that our lives are isn’t that difficult to understand but it’s much more difficult to actually apply it to ourselves so that we cease to think about the things of this lifetime and focus on true happiness or future lifetimes.
It says it may be easy enough for us to get our head around this to understand this but to actually apply it to ourselves takes a lot of effort we have to think about it again and again and again and to kind of make the imprints or put the ideas in our head again and again before it becomes easy for us to understand this as opposed to at the moment it’s easy for us to try and search after temporary happiness. Okay. So because this is difficult to because it’s difficult to get this idea into our head enough that we don’t get distracted by short term happiness of this lifetime that’s why Pänchen Losang Chökyi Gyaltsen, the first Pänchen Lama is saying in this text, reviewing the stages of the path that may the Gurus, may the teachers bless us to be able to develop this understanding. By relying on them may we be able to develop the understanding that this lifetime holds no real substance and that we can focus on trying to achieve liberation and true happiness. So it says like the people with intelligence realize that they need instruction and blessings in order to develop this understanding.
Therefore it says that we should pray to the teachers for to our teacher and see them as being inseparable from a meditational deity so a meditational Buddha deity then think that from they come from space that everything is in the essence of emptiness from the essence of emptiness we have this idea of the teacher being inseparable from the Yidam or the meditation or deity and then we make a prayer to this to the teachers inseparable from the deity which says from beginningless time or from the beginning up until now I have wandered in what are called the three realms of saṃsāra now what this means is that from beyond the concept of time so from before the concept of the any beyond any concept of time we’ve been in this existence of taking rebirth after rebirth after rebirth in these different states and that’s everything within what’s called the three realms of existence. Now the three realms of existence consists of what’s called the formless realm, the form realm and then the desire realm. That’s the three different realms. Now what this means is the formless realms are the highest levels of concentration that people can develop which are still in saṃsāra so it means that they have suppressed or negative emotions and have suppressed those negative emotions and don’t experience manifest suffering but still have the imprint or the tendency towards suffering.
So that’s the highest level of saṃsāra and down to what’s called the Avichi hell or the most horrendous suffering that beings can experience in that state. Starting at the top there is a sense of complete freedom from manifest suffering which is in the formless realm and this is like a type of still considered type of deity and then the of formless realm so there’s no sense of form it’s only consciousness there then there’s a form realm where people immersed in meditation or concentration but they have form. And then there’s what’s called desire realm gods which is a state of extreme bliss. And then there’s everything from these kind of deity like experiences down to the the demigods which are beings with power but not as much bliss as the gods and then humans then animals then spirits then the hells and then down through the different levels of the hells or the different levels of these horrendous experiences. So we’ve been wandering between the highest levels of saṃsāra to the lowest levels of saṃsāra without a break.
So it says, it then goes on to say that especially we have been cycling or wandering in the lower realms of Samsāra. Now in the lower realms of Samsāra, that isn’t the existence of gods and humans, but the existence is below that like the less fortunate existences. In these lower realms we have been wandering mostly and in these realms we don’t have the time or the leisure or the opportunity to practice either Sūtra or Tantra in any meaningful way and we haven’t had the ability to come into contact with the teachings and practice Dharma or Buddhism in any meaningful way in those existences. So once we have this experience like we did now and thanks to the kindness of the teachers who showed us the path then we have the ability to know what is virtuous and what is non virtuous what we need to abandon and what we need to cultivate right we have the ability to understand that if it’s explained to us then we have the ability to comprehend this Not only that but we also have the ability and the time to be able to put Dharma into practice to be able to try and practice the path.
And this kind of existence with these two things is what we’ve managed to achieve now. Now if we use this existence then we are able to accomplish the Dharma or accomplish the path through practicing the path then it will be certain that we will achieve results because we have external conditions that are helpful to us and internal conditions that are helpful to us so through the combination of all of that then we should try and make the best of this situation we have at the moment. So then it said that this existence that we have at the moment can in the short term give us the ability to achieve the result of experiencing all of the excellent or all of the positive results we can possibly achieve in saṃsāra. That means like all of the happiness or enjoyment of gods and humans. We have the ability to achieve that through the base that we have at the moment as a human being with this exposure to practicing the path.
That’s like the temporary benefits that we can gain from it. The ultimate benefits that we can gain from having this body that we do at the moment having this existence we do at the moment is that we’re able to achieve a personal liberation and or complete omniscience which is the state of a Buddhahood of a Buddha sorry the state of Buddhahood or the state of a Buddha that we can achieve that based on the human rebirth that we have at the moment so this means that we need to take advantage of that On top of that, because we have exposure to what’s called the vajra or the quick path to enlightenment, that is a path of Tantra then in one lifetime in one body based on this path then we’re able to achieve the understanding of the three kayas and able to achieve the most intense outcome that is like achieving Buddhahood in one lifetime based on the practice of tantra. This is said to be much more powerful than any wish fulfilling gem. That is if we put in great effort and have the right circumstance to be able to achieve this. Like for example, Jetsün Milarepa, who achieved Buddhahood in one lifetime.
But if we don’t take the essence out of this lifetime, we don’t make it worth our time, if we don’t use it in the right way then it is very difficult for us to achieve a similar situation in the next lifetime. So if we just waste this lifetime chasing after temporary happiness then the chances of us achieving a similar type of existence in a future lifetime or in the next lifetime is very slim. So if we don’t, it gives these examples of what could happen, how difficult it would be to achieve a rebirth like this again if we don’t make the most of it and we just fritter it away after the pleasures of this lifetime. So it’s said to be as difficult as if we were to drop barley or some kind of small seed from some kind of grain on top of a needle for that barley to stick to the top of the needle. Or for as difficult as it would be for a pea, for us to drop a pea on a piece of glass and for the pea not to move, not to roll around because it’s like a round.
As soon as it hits glass, rolls around a glass, sorry, it rolls around. So for the pea to stay still on the glass or the grain to land on the top of a needle, it would be that difficult to see.