Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The kidney-donation thought experiment opens this 12-minute session: the same act of giving an organ can be pure generosity, a bid for social approval, or a simple financial transaction — what varies is motivation, not the deed. Geshe Pema Tsering then sharpens a distinction that had caused confusion in a previous class: practicing patience means not reacting to hostility, but that is incomplete without compassion. Recognizing that the person who harms you is driven by destructive emotions — not by free choice — generates genuine compassion, and once that compassion is present, harsh words lose their power to cause suffering. He closes by inviting listeners to ask honestly whether feeling upset is actually helping them. Suited to students in the early stages of Lamrim study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 SoP 2004 10 17.mp3
UUID: 6cb9bd7a-6f14-4e0f-8d19-41b42d61c972
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-10-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 12.3 minutes
Words: ~837
So, technically, the action is the same, that it really depends on what the motivation for the action is. So if someone’s in a situation where they’re, okay, that person needs a kidney, so if they don’t have a kidney, they’re going to die. I have a spare kidney. Here, have mine. Then that’s an action of generosity.
It’s not an action of a bodhisattva because it’s not being done in order to become a Buddha to liberate all sentient beings, but it’s a very positive action. But people can perform an action like that with the wrong motivation, and it becomes a negative as opposed to a positive. So if someone says, I’m going to give away my kidney because everyone will think I’m tops, And I think, you know, you’re one person, and, you know, that’s a negative action. And if someone’s giving away their kidney to get money, that’s definitely a negative action. So it it depends on why someone’s doing it and not just the action itself.
They can and the last thing was there can be many reasons why people do what looks like a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it’s not enough just to be a patient because that’s that’s why I was getting confused in I confused for Geshe la.
The word for for for for for practicing forbearance for yourself and being patient with others is the same. So I’m going, you know, no. It’s not it’s not it’s not one thing. It’s the other, but they’re the same in Tibetan, so I got poor man confused. Anyway, that was sorted out.
And he said it’s not enough just to practice patience. Alright? You also need to practice compassion. Now, if you’re practicing patience, that’s not looking at why they got angry at you, alright, and why they’re treating you badly. You’re saying, I’m not going to react to them, and that’s like practicing patience.
But you also need to try and understand why they behave like that. Now people don’t behave negatively towards people without having afflicted ways of thinking, destructive emotions. So it’s not them that’s the problem, it’s the destructive emotions. And so if you focus on the idea that they are under the sway of destructive emotions, then you would develop compassion for them. Right?
So in in that case, you’re not just, practicing patience. You’re not just, dealing with their their negative actions towards you. You also have compassion for them because of the way that they’re acting. And if you have compassion for someone, then you’re not gonna experience their words as suffering for you because you won’t see any reason for the words. Yeah?
So if you can start practicing compassion towards them because they’re under sway of of of, these negative emotions and compassion towards yourself for experiencing that suffering, then you can get a clearer idea of what’s going on. And then based on that, you can look at it and try and see how why you’re reacting like, why you’re feeling this suffering, and how if it’s benefiting you. Is it making you happy to feel upset about these things? Is it helping you in any way? And if getting upset or getting, feeling sad and because of them saying this isn’t helping you, then if you keep reminding yourself this isn’t helping me, then that’s one way of stopping it.
Yeah. Could the other thing is because it presents itself as being a help. I’ll get sad. I’ll get upset. That will make me feel better, but it doesn’t.
I said you all look deep and tall, but no one’s saying anything. So maybe that’s Oh, yeah. Are you right, Anuwa? Yeah. I should just go straight on instead of Anuwa.
That’s nice. Oh, no. It’s me again. Okay. Because I feel like a one man band.
Alright. Now let me get this straight. They’re doing we’re doing morning prayers in the morning prayers again, the page after the page we were on last time, which makes it page twenty six. And the way we do it is dedication prayers one and two, long life prayer for his holiness Dalai Lama. And then so I don’t make a complete mess of it, which I did last time, perhaps we can say Lama Zopa’s long life prayer in English because I tried to sing it last time, and I it sounded terrible because I don’t know the tune.
Alright. In Tibetan, or you can say it in English because I can’t sing it. The Dal yeah. And that’s kind of, but I don’t know if it’s appropriate either. Yeah.
Okay. Sorry. I think it’s so we will get there. It’s just a matter of, you know, learning to be flexible while we get things into practice. Okay.
Long life thing. So maybe we can follow him next week because he always says don’t follow him because he’s tone deaf. Right? But next week, maybe we can follow him.