Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute commentary, Geshe Pema Tsering opens with a pointed challenge: if we truly believed in enlightenment as our goal, we would never perform a negative action — the fact that we do reveals how little we actually trust the Dharma. He works through why altruistic motivation is so difficult to sustain, contrasting the vivid, believable pleasures of this life against the abstract ideal of Buddhahood. The commentary then covers a Guru Puja verse on precious human rebirth, the three motivations for practice (Buddhahood, personal liberation, or a good future life), and the certainty of death with its uncertain timing. A visualization of colored nectar descending from teacher and deity bridges into the closing reflection: as beings under karma, we have no real autonomy and risk rebirth in lower realms. Suited to practitioners already working through the Lamrim.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 SoP 2004 03 07.mp3
UUID: 25ebdb5f-9711-4d36-a8f2-78d144478929
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-03-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~4,010
So Geshe said you don’t have to we don’t have to do meditation this morning because you guys have already done it. So we don’t need to do a meditation first, but we do need to have the right motivation to listen to these teachings. Now this is a Mahāyāna teaching, a teaching of the altruistic vehicle. And therefore we should have an altruistic motivation to accord with the studying of an altruistically motivated text. So this means that we should think that we are studying this text or listening to teachings on this text in order to be able to establish all sentient beings in the state of the unsurpassable, completely free from sorrow, highest enlightenment, and so that we become Buddha in order to achieve this goal.
And so this means that we are working towards our own and others goals which are actually inseparable in that we are working towards enlightenment for our own benefit and to benefit others. So this is the kind of motivation that we should have in order to listen to these teachings on these texts properly. Okay. So this motivation however is, I guess, say very difficult a little bit, all right? Because we have to develop this motivation which goes against what we have habituated ourselves towards since beginningless time.
So this means that we have this natural tendency because of the way that we thought of ourselves constantly since time immemorial that everything that we do we do with the motivation of benefiting ourselves. So what we’re asking ourselves to do here is to completely turn that motivation around and this can be very difficult. So it means that if we don’t turn that attitude around, if we don’t stop the attitude that we have which seeks our own benefit solely, then we don’t have the right motivation for listening to the teaching. So what we need to do is work at developing the idea that we’re doing and listening to this or studying this in order to benefit all sentient beings and not just to benefit ourselves. The reason that it’s difficult for us to develop this motivation is because we don’t actually believe the Dharma teachings, the Buddhadharma properly or correctly or truly.
Now the reason that we don’t believe this is because if we did believe it, then everything we would be doing would be striving towards achieving enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. So we have this idea that we want to work towards enlightenment, that we want to become Buddhas, and we say this in prayers and we say this to ourselves, I want to become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. But if we actually believed that, if we actually perceived that and believed in it strongly enough, we wouldn’t ever perform a negative action because everything that we did would be based on the idea of doing it for the benefit of all sentient beings. There would be no self gratification involved in that action because we would be constantly working towards sentient beings as the benefit for the benefit of sentient beings. So what happens in reality then is that we can see the benefits, the happiness of saṃsāra.
We can see that if we do certain things then that will give us a limited sense of happiness we can see these things so we believe in them a lot easier they become a lot more easier to us so then we believe in them very strongly so that means that they’re the happiness and they’re the types joy that we work towards, not the long term goal of Buddhahood, which we find difficult to believe in. Okay, so this means that most of the time our motivation isn’t something that’s appropriate to the practice of Dharma or because of our motivation, a lot of things that we do don’t become Dharma or they don’t become Buddha’s practice. This is because they are focused on what we can get from this life, the happiness and the rewards that we can get in this life. By focusing on the happiness and the rewards that we can get in this life, we are actually limiting the results of any action that we can perform. Because if our focus is just on this life, then the results will be just in this life and they will be very minimal in their effect.
If, on the other hand, the idea is that we’re doing something in order to achieve complete enlightenment for the benefit of all beings, this means that our motivation becomes very vast and the results of that action also become very vast. What this means then is too if we are doing something really with the motivation that is to benefit all sentient beings and to attain enlightenment, then this life ceases to become very important. He said that we should be able to give away our body without a second thought or give away this lifetime without a second thought because we are not actually focusing on this lifetime, are focusing on Buddhahood. So this means that if we are focusing on this then the results will be very, very expansive and they won’t only just affect our long term goal of achieving Buddhahood, they will also benefit in the next lifetimes and in this lifetime. We should have the idea that we are able to give away our body or give away this lifetime in order to benefit all sentient beings.
That doesn’t mean that we necessarily have to do it. It just has to be everything we do is to benefit all beings and to achieve enlightenment, not limited by just focusing on this life. So therefore then we should try and develop this motivation. We should develop this motivation that in order for all sentient beings to be truly happy, to be completely free from suffering, then all sentient beings need to attain complete enlightenment. Because it’s only as a fully enlightened Buddha that they are able to experience happiness free from any limitations of any kind.
Therefore, in order for me to be able to help them attain this state, then I myself first of all have to become a Buddha. Because only as a Buddha can I truly help beings to achieve the goal of Buddhahood? So therefore in order to help all sentient beings be free from suffering and attain the unsurpassable state of Buddhahood, any action I do may be a cause for me to attain Buddhahood. Therefore may listening or reflecting on this text be a cause for me to attain Buddhahood and likewise trying to put into practice the actions described in the text, may that be a cause. Also any meditations and practices that I do, may all of that be a cause for me to attain Buddhahood in order to lead all sentient beings to that state.
Therefore to go back to the commentary on the reviewing the stages of the path from the Guru Puja, the text says that having thought on this, what it’s referring to when it says having thought on this is the teachings the section of the teachings that were reflections on having a precious human rebirth having attained all the causes and conditions to be able to practice Dharma correctly and it says that while we have this precious human rebirth then that can act as a cause for us to attain complete enlightenment and if we are unable to attain complete enlightenment it can at least act as a cause for us to attain personal liberation. And if we’re unable to attain that, then this human rebirth can act as a cause for us to attain a good human rebirth in the next lifetime that will enable us to practice Dharma properly and be able to implement it properly. So this means that in order to attain the essence or extract the essence from this lifetime, then we need to practice the Dharma with one of these three motivations in mind. Okay. Now what it means when it says to extract the essence from this lifetime is to turn this lifetime into a cause for us to achieve one of these three things: to achieve Buddhahood, to achieve personal liberation, or to achieve a precious human rebirth in our next lifetime.
This is what we mean by extracting the essence from this life. Now the way to extract the essence from this lifetime, first of all, what we need is not to be separated or not to be apart from the teacher which is inseparable from Buddha, which explains to us the teachings. Because if we don’t have the explanation we can’t put them into effect. Now then we should think that having been given these teachings which are said to be the supreme vehicle the personal instructions from the teacher if we take the essence from the personal instructions from the teacher who has delivered to us the supreme vehicle, then we should think that in this lifetime we have the ability to become fairly quickly a completely realized Buddha based on these teachings, and we should try and develop that thought very strongly in our minds. So this means that we need to develop this idea and we need to put these actions into practice.
And then it says, when do we need to put these actions into practice? Well, because this lifetime that we have managed to achieve is very short, need to put these things into practice now. This lifetime, this existence that we have achieved now doesn’t abide forever and there’s one thing that we can be certain about is death. And not only can we be certain about death coming, but we can also be certain that when death comes that there’s nothing that we can do in order to stop it. So if we have the external and internal conditions for death to come about, then we can’t find any way to get out of that.
We can’t pay our way out of it. We can’t force our way out of it, we can’t get doctors to stop us from dying. At some stage we have to die. So the other thing that we need to know about death is that it’s not certain how long we will experience this lifetime. It doesn’t it’s not certain how long we will will live.
We could actually be dying quite quickly because in every moment there is a constant process of change. So when the conditions come up for us to or the causes for us to die come up, then we have to die. There’s nothing that we can do to stop that. What we need to remember is then that we may think, okay, I may have a hundred years, but we can’t guarantee that we’re going to have even a hundred years. Even if at the other end of a hundred, we reach the end of a hundred years of living, at some stage we still have to die.
So if someone says to us, can you guarantee that you will be alive tomorrow? Then the honest answer to that is no, we can’t guarantee that we will be alive tomorrow. Something may happen that causes us to die. And then when we die, what will cause us to go on to next lifetimes is the mind that we die with, the thoughts that we die with. So therefore through the thoughts that we die with, then we will be projected into the next life and then we will experience that lifetime and eventually die in that lifetime.
And then from that lifetime, will be projected into the next based on the thoughts that we have at the time of death. And this happens all the way up until when we become Buddhas because it’s only when we have transcended or gotten out of saṃsāra that we are able to stop this process of going from lifetime to lifetime depending on what thoughts we are and based on causes and conditions. And so the other problem is that we don’t seem to have enough time to do practice. We keep having this idea that we’re very busy and that we need to do many different things so we don’t have enough time to do anything that is like Buddhist Dharma. And then even when we do manage to do it we have doubts, have problems, we have different thoughts that come into our head so the actual time that we need to that we actually get to do something that’s truly positive is very small so we need to put in a lot of effort in order to make the most of what we’ve got.
And the other thing to remember is that in general in world there is no certainty about death or when death is going to happen. We can’t say when anybody is going to die or how long anyone is going to live. It’s very difficult to say for certain how that is going to happen. The other thing is that there are many causes of death and very few causes of life that we need to contend within life. Even within our body there are many causes for us to die.
It doesn’t take much. If we got there’s some people that die from very small illnesses or there can be some small thing that goes right wrong with our body that causes us to die. So then the only thing that will actually be that will actually benefit us at the time that we’re going to die, the only thing that can actually help us is the actions, the positive actions or the Dharma practice that we have done in that lifetime or in the lifetimes up to that point. So this means that we need to focus on those in order to be benefited at the time of our death. And then we should think then because of this, that what we need to do is to have an understanding that the Okay.
So therefore, we should have this idea that in order for us to be able to understand the fragility of life and how we need to practice Dharma in this lifetime that we have, then we think that because of this that by requesting or asking taking advice from the teacher which is inseparable from the deity and practicing with the yoga or the familiarization practice of focusing on that then we will be able to take the essence from the teacher’s instructions. Now the essence from the teacher’s instructions is said to be the graduated path that develops these different understandings in us. So in this way then we should imagine that because there are so many things that could be come up as obstacles for us to be able to stop us from being able to develop an understanding of this concept of the precious human rebirth and how we need to put into practice and that we need to stop those things that could stop us from developing this understanding then we imagine that through this practice of Guru Yoga, through focusing on the teaching being inseparable from the meditational deity, then we think that may we get blessings from this object of meditation and may those blessings cause us to be able to extract the essence or take the true meaning from these teachings of the precious human rebirth May we be blessed to develop an understanding of that.
So we should have this idea of may there be benefits coming from this meditation that will help me to develop the understanding of precious human rebirth. Okay. So when we are thinking about being able to get the blessings from the teacher in order to be able to develop this understanding then we get to the next verse in the reviewing the stages of the path from the Guru Puja where it says realizing how this body of liberties and endowments is found but once is difficult to obtain and is easily lost We seek your blessings to partake of its essence, make it worthwhile and not be distracted by the meaningless affairs of this life. So having developed that idea of being having the blessings, then we then think on this verse. So then in accordance with the Guru Puja practice, then we imagine that from the body of the teacher which is inseparable from the deity so imagine that the deity and the teacher are the same thing and from there this body comes down amrita or nectar which is in the form of what of the five colors which are white yellow green blue and red and this comes down and comes into our continuum into our mental continuum and then it also pervades the or diffuses through the mental continuums of all sentient beings.
And having done so, what it is doing is we imagine that it is purifying them of all obscurations or all obstacles to developing an understanding of this and it is developing the ability in them to be able to understand how precious this life is and how much they need to put it into practice in order to take the most of it. And so this is like a visualization that we undertake that is is said to help to develop this understanding. And so therefore, we move on to the next section, which then we’re in. So this is in order to develop understanding of how to focus on developing motivation for the next lifetime. In order to develop this understanding then we first of all focus in a similar way that from emptiness in front of us there is the teacher with the meditation or deity.
And then having focused on this, then we visualize this and we then go through an analytical process about what happens to us in the next life and so forth. Now what we then think about is that okay we’ve established that this life is very difficult to find and easily lost but then what actually happens to us after we die? Well after we die then we are thrown into our next life and not through our own choice or not through our own independent wishes but through the forces of our positive and negative karma. And because we haven’t had much chance to develop very positive karma because all of our thoughts are contaminated with doubt or self grasping then this means that if it was just up to the force of our individual negative and positive karma and that was all we had to rely on that the only place that we could be reborn would be in the lower realm. So the fact is that if we had had a choice in the matter then we would choose to be reborn not even in a human realm but in a god realm where there is nothing but pleasure and happiness.
So if we could choose exactly what we were going to experience in the next life it would be nothing but bliss. We wouldn’t choose to experience any kind of suffering. So this shows us then that we don’t actually have any choice in it because we have to experience suffering and if it was up to us we wouldn’t experience suffering. Even though we may think that this is difficult to understand without thinking about it if we think about it then we can understand that we don’t actually have choice in the matter We can see that we experience our suffering, and that experience of suffering is against our wishes. So we have this idea that we’re independent because we don’t think about it.
Think that we have autonomy over it and that we make decisions about what happens to us. If we think about it enough, we realize that this isn’t the case. We have this thing saying, I’m an independent person. I have power over myself. And we keep having this idea, so we think about our independence and our rights and so forth.
But they’re actually only about worldly things and they don’t actually take into account any personal or spiritual internal happiness that may or may not happen. If we think about it from this perspective, then we don’t actually have any independence. As long as we are under the influence of karma and delusions then we are not going to experience any independence. As an ordinary being, someone who gets thrown into lifetimes because of their negative karma and their delusive minds and then we can’t actually experience any kind of independence or happiness or true happiness. The only way to be able to do that is if we are out of the sway of karma or out of the sway of saṃsāra.
As a samsaric being we have no independence, we have no autonomy, we are constantly under the sway of our previous negative actions and our delusive minds. So in this way then we can see that the idea of ourselves being autonomous units or being independent units is actually a fallacy. And the other thing is if we think about it then if we did have a choice in the matter we wouldn’t experience any suffering or on a more personal level if we think about ourselves if we did have a choice in the matter we wouldn’t have to work. We would just get lots of money given to us and experience like be happy and contented all the time and not have to do anything about achieving that state. If it was up to us, that’s what would happen.
But we can see quite clearly that that isn’t what happens. So this means that by the force of the negative actions that we’ve done, then we have no choice but to go on and experience the sufferings of the lower realms. And there’s many different types of sufferings as described in the lower realms. There are said to be sufferings of extreme heat and cold, of thirst and hunger, of constantly fighting. There are all these different types of suffering and there is said to be nothing but this intense suffering that you are thrust into the middle of and can’t bear to experience.
And this is the way that the Buddha described it. Now when we re talking about the sufferings of the hell states and the hungry ghost states where they experience intense hot and cold or extreme sufferings of craving, we have trouble understanding them. Just think, Okay, the Buddha said they’re there. Can’t see them, but he said they’re there. Maybe that then we can think about it in that way.
But it’s difficult for us to comprehend those types of suffering. But if we focus on the animal realms, that’s something that we can experience or we can see firsthand. We can see the sufferings of the animal realm in our day to day life. We can see how being born in different animal states means that beings are constantly striving for survival or for food and they don’t have a chance to rest and they’re experiencing constant types of suffering. We can appreciate that from our own experience.
The other thing is that once born in the lower states, it’s very difficult to find anything to give you protection from the sufferings of the lower states and there’s no concept of any kind of protection or refuge that you can find down there it’s very difficult But in this state, can develop an idea from fear of those lower states looking for something to protect us or to give us refuge from those experiences. But once we’re there, then it’s difficult. It’s impossible to find that kind of protection. Okay. So, therefore, do we have to find something that’s a suitable place