Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Starting with a verse from Tsongkhapa’s Three Principles of the Path on the rarity of human rebirth, Geshe Pema Tsering uses this 45-minute session to work through two questions: what makes an action genuinely Dharmic rather than worldly (motivation, not the act itself), and why orient toward future lives when we doubt they exist. His answer — that aiming at Buddhahood brings all lesser goods along as a package — leads into the Lamrim sequence for developing bodhicitta. Using Śāntideva’s image of beings blinded by ignorance like people with cataracts stumbling near cliffs, he walks through equalizing self and others, recognizing all beings as past mothers, recalling their kindness, and building step by step toward great compassion. Suited to practitioners already following a Lamrim curriculum.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 SoP 2004 05 23.mp3
UUID: e522ce6e-aab1-4584-842b-ac02db5d55ad
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-05-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~3,787
As it says in the Three Principles of the Path, which is a prayer written by Tsongkhapa, it says, This life with leisure and endowment, which is difficult to find is brief. By familiarizing the mind with this, we stop the allure of this life. And if we frequently contemplate that cause and results are non deceptive and the sufferings of saṃsāra, we stop the allure of future life. So this is referring to the fact that this human rebirth that we have achieved is said to be very difficult to find. And a human rebirth has the opportunity to practice Dharma and the endowments with which to practice Dharma is said to be very difficult to find and very brief.
So, what we need to do is to think again and again on this fact, on how difficult it is to find and how easy it is to lose, how at some stage we are going to have to die, and by doing this, we stop focusing on this life. Stop being caught into this life. So, in actual fact, something becomes dharma or not, whether it becomes a religious action or not depends on whether it s focused on this life or if it s focused on the next life, at least. So, in actual fact, if we are focusing on this life and we re thinking how will this benefit me in this life, the action that we’re doing isn’t a religious action, isn’t a Buddhist action, isn’t a Dharma action. So, we need to at least be thinking how is this going to benefit us in the next life?
How is it to benefit me? What sort of conditions is it going to create for the next life in order for whatever it is that we re doing to be a Dharma action, to be a Buddhist action? If we don t have that idea, if we re thinking about this life, it what we call a worldly action. It s an action that s done with a worldly perspective. So, at least, if we want to be one of these three different types of beings that comprise the path in three parts, the graduated path, then we need to have this motivation that whatever it is we re doing, we doing for the next life.
So something becomes a Dharma action or is a worldly action dependent on our motivation, not necessarily the necessarily the action that we’re performing. This one. This? So given this, given the fact that we may be thinking sorry, given the fact that anything that we do that is Dharma has to be focused on the next lifetime, anytime that we do a Buddhist action, it should be focused on the next lifetime. We may come to the conclusion that there’s no point.
What’s the point? Why are bothering with any of this? Because we may think, well, we can’t see the next life. We’re not sure that it’s gonna happen. We have like a doubt about whether we’re gonna go on after death.
And so through our doubts about whether we go on after death, we may think, well it makes much more sense to focus on this life to make myself happy in this life because I don even know if anything s gonna happen after I die, right? So we may have this sense of pointlessness about it. We can’t tell what’s gonna happen after death. We have doubts about it. We don’t know if we have doubts about whether we can achieve liberation or not.
We have doubts about becoming a Buddha, whether that’s possible. And given all these doubts, it may make a lot more sense to us to just focus on this life, to just try and make ourselves happy in this life, because that’s something we know about. That’s something that we can see. But, because we’re focusing on the next life, doesn’t mean that we are giving up, doesn’t mean that we are not going to get any benefits in this life, right? If we focus on what we re going to achieve in the next life, we re still going to do positive things that are going to give us positive rewards in this life.
And if we re focusing on achieving liberation, then we re going to get positive rewards in the next life as well as in this life as well as the goal of liberation. If we focus on developing or becoming a Buddha, then we get the benefits of working towards Buddhahood, but within that we get the benefits of achieving liberation for ourselves. We get the benefits of having a positive rebirth in our next lives, and we also get the benefit of having positive things happen to us now because of cause and effect. Whatever we do that’s positive, we get positive results from whether it s in this life, next life through liberation or Buddhahood. But the thing is if we focus on Buddhahood, the rest of them come along in the package and if we focus on this life, then we don get anything but this life.
The motivation is so the results are limited. So it makes sense to have the most broad motivation that we can, the most expansive and all inclusive motivation that we can, so that everything else will come along with it. And the other thing is that we have to make the most out of the Dharma practice that we do because there isn’t that much of it. Within a day, we probably do at most about an hour of Dharma practice, so we might as well make the most of that. We may as well have the best motivation for that.
So if we have the idea that this Dharma practice that we’re doing is in order for us to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, then along with that comes creating the causes for our individual liberation, creating the causes for a good rebirth, and having a happy life in this life. So we have to have a really expansive mind. We have to think not to leave out even one being. We have to have this idea, I’m going to achieve complete enlightenment in order that I can establish or can lead all sentient beings without exception, without leaving one out to a state completely beyond sorrow. And in order to do that, I need to know what I’m doing.
So in order to know what I’m doing, I’m listening to the teachings on the graduated path. May my listening to the teachings on the graduated path be a cause for me to become enlightened for the sake of all sentient beings, to show all sentient beings how to stop suffering. And we should meditate or contemplate that thought for a few minutes. So we were talking about the different ways that you can develop bodhicitta and how there is, in general, two main ways of describing this process. One of them is through the seven point cause and effect process and the other one is through the exchange of self and others.
In general, when these are explained in text, they are explained one after the other. But the way that Pänchen Lama has described them in this text is to blend the two. In any case, the beginning of these processes is what’s called the equalizing of others, self and others. So, this means that we need to realize that self and others are equal in wanting to be happy and not wanting to experience suffering, and others are equal in having been both our friends, enemies, strangers. There was one more thing that I forgot and I have to ask about.
And, sorry, they’re equal in being wanting to be happy and not wanting to experience suffering, but they’re also sentient beings are also equal in not knowing how to create the causes for happiness and, in fact, doing most of the things that they do to create the causes for suffering without knowing what they’re doing. Okay. So we need to develop this sense of equanimity towards all beings because, as it says in a text by Śāntideva that he wrote called the Bodhicaryāvatāra, which says it’s something like a collection of all instructions on awakening. In this Śāntideva, the Indian pundit said, All sentient beings are bound by their ignorance in the experience of afflictive emotions through afflictive emotions. They’re constantly walking towards cliffs of suffering or walking towards cliffs that they could fall off that leads to suffering.
Are all these situations that are constantly coming up for them that they may experience different types of suffering because of the way that they’re bound by their destructive emotions. Some of these people we see as our friends, some of them we see as our enemies, some of them we see as people that we have affection for, and some of them we as people we have aversion towards. Through all of this, we create different categories to put people into, and this acts as a base for us to experience suffering. So it acts as a cause for us to experience suffering. So what we need to do is to recognize that all beings, all what are called transmigratory beings, that is beings that go from one existence to another, sentient beings, experience suffering in the same way.
Sorry about that. The cat’s getting used to sitting on Geshe la’s lap, so he’s like. Just gotta bring everything out. Alright. We need to develop this equanimity when we look at all sentient beings, as is explained in this quote from Śāntideva that all sentient beings are the same in being confused by their destructive emotions so that they can’t see properly and bound by that, and they keep walking up to cliffs that they don’t realize are there.
There is a danger that they fall from these cliffs and end up in lower realms. That’s like a metaphor. Now, this is the way that we need to think about it. We need to see that even though we have a sense of some beings being close to us and some beings being not close to us, in actual fact they’re all the same in that they are all in danger of experiencing these different kinds of suffering. They’re all the same in that they don’t realize necessarily what they’re doing.
Through their own ignorance. It says that until saṃsāra is empty, there are going to be beings who don’t know what’s going on, that don’t have the right perspective on reality, who are confused about the way that reality is. If we think about it, then all these beings are the same in that they’re all ignorant in the way that they behave, and because of their ignorance, that’s why they do negative things. We have to look at the cause for why they’re doing this, which is the ignorance. It says that these beings are like people with cataracts, their eyes are closed over with white, and then they can’t see properly.
Because their ignorance acts like a cataract on their eyes, then they can’t see where they’re going, and they end up walking near the cliffs of the lower realms, the metaphor that’s used, so that they may fall down into suffering, into these intense experiences of suffering, without actually knowing what they’re doing. Because they are kind of blinded by their ignorance and they don’t understand the situation they’re in, then they’re always in danger of experiencing these intense forms of suffering. All beings are like that, without exception. They’re all like that, so they’re all constantly walking along a cliff that is like that they could fall off because they can’t see where they’re going properly because of their ignorance. This.
So in this way, all sentient beings are experiencing the same thing in that they don’t understand what they’re doing through their ignorance, and because they don’t understand what they’re doing, they’re in danger of experiencing intense types of suffering. If we think about it this way, then we understand that all beings have, in the past, been our friend, they have been our enemy, they have been a stranger to us. Through being a friend, enemy, and a stranger to us, there’s not one being that we don’t have a connection to. There’s not one being that we haven’t had some kind of interaction with in the past. Because all beings have a connection to us and because they’re all in this intense danger, then we have to have this sense of equanimity in these respects towards all beings, and we need to meditate on that again and again.
If we do meditate meditate on that again and again, then we’ll develop this sense of equanimity towards all sentient beings. We’ll have this idea that all sentient beings have shown us great kindness and all sentient beings are in this predicament. If we think about it this way, then it’s not correct or it’s not beneficial to differentiate between people, to think of some beings as being someone we’re close to and other beings as being someone we don’t particularly like. It’s not beneficial and it’s not appropriate to think in this way. There is not one single being in the different lifetimes we have that hasn’t helped us, that hasn’t benefited us in some way.
And, in fact, all beings have, at some stage, been our mothers and have shown us intense kindness through being our mothers. Therefore, then we have to mix together these two ideas: the idea that all beings are equal in not wanting to experience suffering and not knowing how, in being like blind people walking along the cliff, and that they have all been our mothers in the past and have shown us great kindness. So it’s like the Buddha said Buddha Śākyamūni said in a quote it’s a quote from one of his sutras where he said he always starts off by saying Bhikkhus, or monks. Oh, monks and nuns, it is. It doesn’t differentiate.
All sentient beings from the beginning up until now have many times, one hundred times perhaps, been close to you. They’ve even been your parents, so there’s none that haven’t been your parents in the past, either your mother or your father or both. This is the way that the Buddha explained the connection between us and all other beings. Okay, so that was a quote that was supposed to take into account when we were looking at the reasons why our beings are being our mothers. But in these texts, it never just says a quote and says to accept the quote.
There’s always a logical explanation as well. You have what’s called the quote and it says there’s a quote and then there’s logic. So that was the quote and then the logic comes in. It says that if we have existed in saṃsāra beyond the concept of time, then we have had countless rebirths. And if you’ve had countless rebirths, that means that you’ve had countless mothers.
If you’ve had countless mothers, then it stands to reason that, at some stage, every being has been related to us and has shown us great kindness. This is the logical reasoning where it says that all beings, our mothers, have shown us great kindness in our past life. We’re constantly taking rebirths. We’re constantly doing that through new mothers. If existed from rebirth to rebirth to rebirth rebirth to rebirth, and we will continue existing in rebirth until we become liberated, then that means that we have got countless numbers of mothers as well.
Okay. So if we first of all, we have to establish that all beings are the same in wanting to be happy, not wanting to be happy, having shown sorry. Not wanting suffer, having been our mother or being close to us in our previous life and not knowing how to go about doing this. So we established this idea of all sentient beings being our relationship to them and their situation through meditation. That’s like they’re contemplating on equanimity.
Then, through another round of contemplations or a round of meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings, look at the logic that establishes that all sentient beings, at some stage or another, have been our parents through thinking about limitless births and limitless mothers and, therefore, limitless people that we have connections to. Once we’ve developed that idea, then we think about how kind mothers are to their children, how much their children owe to the parents, how much gratitude, how much respect that they have for the parents in terms of what’s been done for them. Through that, then there’s this idea of, Okay, if a child isn’t going to try and help their parents out, then who is? If a child isn’t going to try and correct the situation that their mother’s in, then who’s it going to be? Then, if all these beings have been our mother and all these beings are in this situation, then we really need to take on the responsibility of trying to find a way to make them happy and trying to stop the suffering that they may experience in the saṃsāra.
This means we start to develop the idea of becoming a Buddha to show them how to stop suffering in all these different ways. So we start off with this idea of equanimity. We start off with the idea that all beings are the same in wanting to be happy and having been shown us great kindness in the past. Then Through that, we think about how, at some stage, our beings have been our mothers. That’s what’s called remembering them as our mothers.
Then we think about the kindness that our mother has shown us or someone has shown us in this lifetime. Then we think about wanting to repay that kindness. Now through this process, through this meditational process, going from one contemplation to the next to the other, Then what comes from that is the wanting to repay that kindness, the need to try and figure out a way for them to be happy. This is the start of what’s called this love that finds all beings appealing or wants to help all beings. This love is said to be similar to the love of a mother for their only child or the love of a child for their mother in that way if their mother is looked after them constantly and thatis the person that they have the most devotion to.
So, it doesn’t necessarily have to be the mother that we focus on instances. People don’t have that particular feeling towards their mother because it’s a metaphor, it’s an example, it’s an analogy. If there’s someone else that has shown someone more kindness than their mothers, then that’s a right to focus on that person as well. It’s just an example of someone who has shown you great kindness, so it means that at some stage, everybody has shown you great kindness. It doesn’t have to be a mother it can be someone else that has done this for you.
So, if we then have this idea that all these beings are suffering, they don’t want to suffer, they have shown us great kindness in the past, and it’s our responsibility to try and pay them back then there’s this love that we have for these beings, the same as for a mother for their own child. So, this love then isn’t just focused on one person, extended out to all sentient beings. We have this idea of this intense love for all sentient beings. So once we’ve we have this feeling, we have this intense love for every sentient being, for every being that exists, we have this idea that we love them in the same way that a mother would love their only child. Then we have to think about their situation and we have to think about what they’re experiencing and contemplate on the suffering that all these beings are experiencing.
If we contemplate on the suffering that they’re experiencing, the different ways that they suffer and that in combination with the intense kindness that they showed us, And then we developed this idea of great compassion, which is that all sentient beings we wish all sentient beings to be free from suffering. Oh, yeah. Okay, so we don’t have this idea of great compassion in our mindstream at the moment. So what this text then goes on to do is to ask for this to develop, to pray that this develops. Text that we’re going through, the objective meditation is the deity inseparable from the self.
No. The deity inseparable from the self isseparable from the teacher. So, that this idea is developed in the mind stream. So it says, May I develop this? May I develop all these ideas from starting off with equanimity all the way up through being able to perceive all beings as our mothers, being able to seek to repay their kindness, then having this loving feeling towards all of them, and then developing great compassion.
Maybe we develop all of these ideas in our head. And this comes up to the verse from the main text where it 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 blessing to cherish these beings more than our lives even though they should rise up as our enemies. Sorry. I think I may have made made a mistake because it’s like, wait a minute.
That doesn’t say that. That says this, and I’m confused. Right. Well, well, well, well. It doesn’t yeah.
Okay. It’s either at verse ninety two or ninety four, but I can’t figure it out because it’s it doesn’t it’s got bits that aren’t in either. No. It is. It’s number ninety two.
Like it like it matters. It’s just. No. No. No.
We’re getting ahead of ourselves. That’s what’s going on. Because I thought that we’d thought we were up to number ninety two, but we weren’t. We’re up to number eighty nine. I just gotta back up a bit.
Is this a like, last week, we were saying we think we’re at ninety two. We think we’re at ninety three. Right? So then I was, like, looking on that page.