Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using a headache as his opening example, Geshe Pema Tsering shows how everyday discomfort can become a mind-training opportunity. In this 14-minute session from the 2004 Stages of the Path series, he draws a key distinction: we may not be able to remove suffering, but we can stop suffering from the suffering by reframing pain as a chance to purify karma and bear hardship on behalf of others. The chili analogy follows — mental tolerance is built gradually, and a well-trained mind eventually finds bland what once felt unbearable. He closes by addressing practitioners anxious about the practice itself, noting that stress is a manifestation of self-cherishing and can be drawn directly into the same contemplation. Suited to those already familiar with Lamrim mind training.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 SoP 2004 08 01.mp3
UUID: a437de7c-3261-450a-a690-24fd88ab2a12
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-08-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 13.6 minutes
Words: ~1,187
All sorts of circumstances, and it’s something that’s very good to familiarise your mind with. For example, if you’re experiencing illness like a headache that you need to go to the hospital for, you can think, I’m experiencing this headache because of the negative karma that I’ve accumulated accumulated in the past. May the suffering of all sentient beings that is similar to this ripen on me in the form of headache. So so I think so so may this headache be take away the suffering of all sentient beings. So we can’t get rid of the experience of suffering, but we can think of different ways of dealing with it.
If we have a headache, and instead of thinking, Oh, this is a headache. It’s a bad thing. I’m experiencing this. Instead of thinking, Oh, is a headache, how terrible, we can think, Great, I ve got a headache. By having a headache, I can purify negative karma and not only that, but use it as a way to take on the suffering of all other sentient beings.
So we can’t stop ourselves necessarily experiencing suffering, but we can stop ourselves suffering from the suffering. Because if we have a if see all things that we do as a way to help others, then even that kind of suffering is something to be happy about. And that’s helpful. So you can you may have a headache that you can’t get rid of, and You can think, I can’t get rid of the headache, but I can get rid of the suffering that I’m associating with the headache. I can stop the headache hurting me.
That bit doesn’t work as well. It makes thinking like this, thinking I’m suffering, this is horrible, I’m suffering makes everything bigger. Makes the suffering bigger. Yep? It’s true.
And this is why this meditation needs to be done in a very thorough way in terms of your in the way you think about it. And the the way of reminding yourself that it can be the way of reminding yourself of this is to think that, alright, I may not be able to take the the suffering of beings on now, but I wanna get to the stage where I can. Right? So since so Bodhisattvas first, although we may not be able to take on the suffering of sentient beings, we’ll put themselves through anything in order to help sentient beings. So it’s developing the strength, the mental strength, our mental strength in order to do that.
So even if we don’t think I can take on beings’ sufferings, we can think I can suffer in order to help beings. So for example, if Bodhisattvas will go into hell hell states to help beings there without even worrying about that being happy in doing that. So if even if we’re thinking I can’t take on literally take on the sufferings of others, we think we can think I can suffer in order to help others. Does that answer? It’s a matter of developing a very strong mind and thinking about what we’re able to do.
What? Yeah. It’s really difficult for us to think in this way, and this is why this whole process of training the mind in taking on suffering, because we’re training ourselves to do that happily. So, he said, Yes, that’s the whole point of this process, is to develop strength of mind, and not just in order to help other people’s suffering, but also for our own well-being. If we’re able to take on other suffering, the idea of taking on other suffering doesn t worry us because we ve habituated ourselves to it, then any kind of suffering that we experience we can do so happily. It s developing our ability to experience suffering happily.
For example, if we can’t handle chili in our food, In the beginning, you put a little bit of chili in it say, Oh, that hurts. I don’t want to eat it. But if you start off with a little bit of chili and then keep adding a bit more and a bit more a bit more and a bit more, you can cope with more and more and and more. This is the whole process of somehow being able to habituate yourself to dealing with suffering. Eventually, it’s the same with chili, it’s bland if there’s none there.
Right? If you have nothing to work with, if there’s no suffering that you can’t transform, if you’re not working for others, taking on suffering for yourself instead of theirs, it’s bland the same way as eventually if you are so habituated to chili, if there’s no chili in there, the food doesn’t taste very good. He said he doesn’t think that you probably think. And Geshe-la says he has problem eating food with chili. Yeah.
Because he doesn’t he doesn’t And he thinks that is like would be a chill a chili expert, for example. Same like a chilli expert. Yeah. But depending on your habit.
Yeah. You say most Australians don’t eat as much chili as people from, like, Asia. In China and India, they like eat whole chilies. Yes. Making yourself stressed?
Okay. The first thing is to remind ourselves that if we start getting worried about taking on other sufferings, yeah, that until we’re able to do it, we’re that this is just a process of strengthening the mind. We can’t technically take on other stuff. The second thing is to breathe that in as well, to take on that stress, our own stress, and to pretend that that’s coming into us as well. Because the only thing that could ever make us stress is self grasping, self-cherishing.
That’s what stress is. So taking on and thinking that what we’re doing, this process that we’re doing is actually harming the thing that causes us stress, which is our self-cherishing. Yeah. Upset. So, yeah, this the whole concept of getting stressed or getting worried about this practice is a manifestation of self-cherishing.
So this is part of the reason we can’t experience suffering. If we can think of our sorry, our stress as being the same as for all other beings and think of compassion for all other beings who are experiencing this, we can also use that as part of the practice. Is that okay? So, this is a practice that is very difficult, especially for people who don’t have any experience in that kind of thing before. So, it’s something that we really need to keep looking at and keep using reasoning to keep doing.
Like Geshe-la said, it’s difficult. It’s difficult for us to give away half a plate of nice food. It’s difficult for us to deal with a headache. So the whole process is something that’s difficult and something we need to do slowly. But if we are able to do it, what it enables us to do is develop strength of mind so that our problems actually become less.
Little things don’t worry us as much. Is that all okay? Yeah.