Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 7-minute closing reflection, Geshe Pema Tsering addresses a student’s question about whether Buddhahood is genuinely achievable in a single lifetime. He opens with a candid exchange with his own teacher, who laughed at the suggestion before explaining that beginningless lifetimes of accumulated negative karma mean the path demands sustained purification and merit-building — yet remains truly possible. To make the point vivid, Geshe Pema Tsering recounts Milarepa’s life: a man who began as a murderer, turned completely toward practice out of desperation, and achieved Buddhahood in one lifetime. The real obstacle preventing ordinary practitioners from following that example, he concludes, is self-cherishing — placing oneself above others — rooted in grasping at an inherent self.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 SoP 2004 07 25.mp3
UUID: db1cfa8a-ac92-450f-987b-0402c4ca1dee
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-07-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 7.0 minutes
Words: ~524
Enlightened in this life and he laughed. He said, oh, you’re not going to be enlightened in this lifetime. And I said, oh, we’re not? And he said, well, you know, great accumulation.
Like, where is it? And so I thought, prove me wrong, I’ve been wearing out the cushions but I don’t feel like I’m getting that far. So I like, So Geshe la said, alright, this is the way it is. Since beginningless time up until now, you’ve basically been doing negative things. Alright?
Now, in order for you to become a Buddha, you need to overcome all of those negative things. Yeah? You’re able to do that through purification. You’re able to accumulate merit through doing positive actions. Yeah?
But, you have to work until you have gotten rid of all of those negative things and accumulated all the positive things that you need to do to become a Buddha. So it takes a while. So now he wants to know if you can think you can achieve Buddhahood in this lifetime. He said, but it is possible. Okay.
So Geshe la said, but don’t think that it’s not possible because it’s definitely possible, so don’t think yourself it’s not possible. For example, look at Jetsün Milarepa because he was like a fairly ordinary guy like us. And then his mother’s family did something terrible to his mother and his his family, and he ended up killing heaps of people who became a murderer. Alright? And then so he had not only was he like us, but he also had a lot to to to regret.
And so because of this, because he was in this extreme situation, decided to dedicate his life completely to doing positive actions and working towards Buddhahood. And then, through this, he started practicing with a Nyingma teacher and developed merit through doing those practices. And eventually, through because he just had completely given up on anything because he had seen how wretched his life had been and then he started doing all his practices and that led him to have enough karma to meet his root teacher which was Marpa and then gave him the instructions that took him all the way to Buddhahood so he managed to turn his life around in one lifetime the thing that stops us from behaving like Milarepa however is our self-cherishing and that’s what this was talking about today considering ourselves to be more important than others. And seeing our lives and our situations to be more important than others. The basis of that which is grasping onto the inherent I.
So that’s what would stop us becoming like that. In one lifetime. But he said if you keep — if you can get rid of that and work on it — then it could be in one lifetime, you could become a Buddha. He said that he thinks you’ve been hearing about a lot. Yeah.
Yeah. But time’s up. But if anyone really has a question. So if not yeah. Oh, okay.
Talking about questions, does anyone have a pen? India, can I borrow your pen?