Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering wraps up the seven-point cause-and-effect path to bodhicitta with Kamalaśīla’s test for genuine great compassion: the ability to view every sentient being exactly as a mother views her only child. He then introduces the second method, exchange of self and others, tracing its lineage from the sutras of Buddha Śākyamūni through Śāntideva to Atisha — who spent twelve years studying with the Indonesian teacher Serlingpa — and on to Geshe Chekawa, who organised the material into the Seven Points of Mind Training. Geshe Pema Tsering outlines all seven points, from the four preliminary contemplations (precious human life, impermanence, karma, and the faults of saṃsāra) through to the practice slogans and practical advice, and closes with a discussion of why this text — following Śāntideva, Atisha, and Tsongkhapa — teaches relative bodhicitta before the understanding of emptiness.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 SoP 2004 05 30.mp3
UUID: 7fa9df8e-a4a4-4f61-a487-f3032467a9ac
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-05-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~3,119
Alright. So in the Clear Ornament of Realization, it defines bodhicitta as the mind seeking to achieve perfect enlightenment or completed enlightenment in order to benefit all other sentient beings. So, there are two different parts to this definition. We have the idea of achieving enlightenment and achieving completed enlightenment and we also have the idea of doing it for what purpose, for the purpose of benefiting all sentient beings. So we have a motivation in there and we also have an instance of something.
So someone who is working towards that, working towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings is said to have this mind of enlightenment. So that’s the kind of motivation that we need whenever we listen to teachings and everything is this idea of working towards complete enlightenment in order to benefit all sentient beings. And so we have this idea of working for the benefit of all sentient beings, but it’s not just any any old benefit that we’re working towards. It’s not like we’re trying to give them some kind of ordinary benefit or work on their behalf so they get some ordinary outcome. The type of benefit that we’re searching for in order to be able to benefit beings is that they are established in Buddhahood, established in a state completely beyond sorrow, with all understanding.
Idea of reaching enlightenment ourselves so we can lead all sentient beings into that state is the type of motivation that we need to develop in order to listen to or study Mahāyāna teachings or altruistic vehicle teachings. So, we sometimes have this idea of doing something for the benefit of others, for the benefit of one person, for the benefit of another person, or one person for a long time, or a lot of people for an instant. But this mind of bodhicitta is something that’s incredibly vast. It’s much broader than any of these thoughts that we may have. The idea of bodhicitta is something that encompasses all beings at all times.
And not just all beings at all times, but it s an idea that seeks to lead all these beings through all these different stages or all these different times to the perfected enlightenment. So in this way it s a very vast mind. It’s a very expansive idea. We need to try and expand on the limited concepts we have of benefiting others and have this much more expansive understanding of benefiting others in order to develop bodhicitta. So what we need to do is to develop some kind of an idea of this, some kind of an understanding understanding of this vastness of this mind.
And then if we meditate on it again and again, or familiarize ourselves with it again and again, our understanding of this, the vastness of this idea or the expansiveness of that motivation will become more subtle and more subtle. Eventually, the understanding will go from one that s very contrived to one that s uncontrived and completely natural and our understanding develops in this way. We start off with a contrived idea, and we end up with a spontaneous wish. So this means that whatever Buddhist practice or whatever Dharma practice that we seek to do, then we need to develop this motivation. We need to develop the idea that we’re doing it in order to attain the highest enlightenment and in order to establish all other sentient beings in that state or take them all the way to this highest enlightenment.
So, before we listen to teachings on this text, before we contemplate this text, and before we do any other type of practice, then we need to develop actually any other type of anything else that we do, not just practice, then we need to develop that motivation. So, we’re doing this text, we’re going through this text order to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. And Geshe la thinks because it’s Sunday morning that you’ve all meditated, he just wants you to develop that motivation to listen to the text. So, we had just finished going through verse number eighty nine from the actual prayer in the Guru Puja, which it says, having considered how all these pitiful beings have been our mother and have raised us in kindness again and again, we seek your blessings to develop unaffected compassion like that of a loving mother for her precious child. So the idea behind this is that we visualize that we are getting blessings from the teacher that we imagine in front of us, the teacher inseparable from the deity.
The blessings enable us to develop this understanding, to develop this insight that all beings have been our mothers and we have this affection for them like a mother would for their only child. We want to help them to be free from suffering, and so we ask for not only ourselves but for all sentient beings to develop this idea, to develop this understanding. We imagine that through the blessings of the teachers that we see as being like nectar, that understanding actually comes about. We develop the understanding ourselves and so do all other sentient beings. And so, it also explains a measure for whether we’ve been able to develop this understanding or not.
The way that we know that we’ve developed this understanding is if we view all sentient beings as if they were our only child. Our mother views their only son or their only child. So, if our reaction to all sentient beings is the same way, then that means we ve actually developed great compassion the way that we need to. The reason that this is given as limit or it’s given as the test to see whether bodhicitta is developed or not is through the stages of meditation by Kamalaśīla where he describes the development of bodhicitta as whoever is able to view all sentient beings as being their only child and because of that will do anything that they can to deliver or to take them away from suffering and to establish them in a state of complete happiness. Whoever has developed that idea has completed or completely perfected great compassion or completely perfected the idea of working towards enlightenment for a sentient being.
Another way that this type of idea or this mind was described is by Je Tsongkhapa on the Kadampa. He said that if you think that all embodied beings or that is all sentient beings have at some stage been your mother and you completely understand this, then you will think about their great kindness and the suffering that they are now experiencing. You will think that you want to do anything that it takes in order to get those beings out of that situation of suffering. If this happens in a spontaneous way, without having to put any effort in to develop the idea or to develop that motivation, that means that you’ve developed a great compassion. You have great compassion So that was the process of developing bodhicitta through the seven point cause and effect meditations and or the seven point cause and effect process.
So that means we started off with the idea that acted as the base for this process that all sentient beings or all beings are equal in that they have all shown us great kindness and there isn’t really a big distinction between our friends, enemies and strangers. We start off with that as a base idea. After that, we develop the idea that all sentient beings have at some stage been our mothers and then as they have been our mothers, they have shown us great kindness. Because they have shown us great kindness, then we have to work to try and repay that kindness because it would be intense ingratitude not to. Therefore, because we want to repay that kindness, then we start to see all sentient beings as being someone who we owe great kindness to ourselves, this idea of finding all of them appealing, wishing to help all of them, not feeling a distance from any of them.
And then from that comes the idea of wishing that all these beings are free from suffering. And from after we have developed the idea of all beings being free from suffering, we then have the idea that we have to do it ourselves. We develop the idea of no one else is going to do it, I have to do it myself. I have to take on this responsibility myself. And from that idea then we develop this non conceptual spontaneously occurring motivation of bodhicitta which is the mind that thinks, I will achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings in order to establish them in that state.
So that s the first way to develop bodhicitta, through this, what s called the seven point cause and effect system. So that was the end of the seven point cause and effect way to develop a bodhicitta, and there’s another way to develop bodhicitta which is called the exchange of self and others. It’s also called the seven points of mind training. So you have seven point cause and effect and seven points of mind training. This is another way to develop the idea of working towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.
There can be very, very extensive commentaries on this idea of the exchange of self and others or Tonglen or the Seven Points of Mind Training. The author of this commentary is saying, I don’t have the space or the time to get into it in fine detail. But if he gives the essence of this training, if he gives the core of this training, then people will be able to put it into practice anyway. Okay, so these seven points of mind training, the way that it came into our knowledge or the way that it was passed down to us was actually Śāntideva talked about the exchange of self and others in this form of practice in his Bodhicaryāvatāra. He used this idea of exchange yourself and others from a lineage that was passed down through Maitreya and Asaṇga from the Buddha Śākyamūni and it s actually in a lot of Buddha Śākyamūni s sutras that he talks about this idea of if you think about yourself as others and do this exchange between the way others feel and you feel then you can develop bodhicitta.
So the original idea was actually in a lot of Buddha Śākyamūni s sutras but it was kind of edited by Śāntideva and put into a more compacted way. And then Atisha who was an Indian saint was looking at this text of Śāntideva trying to understand the process and he didn’t understand what he was supposed to do or how that was supposed to develop bodhicitta. So, in order to understand Śāntideva’s text, he actually went all the way to Indonesia to see a teacher called Serlingpa in order for Serlingpa to explain this practice to him. Then he stayed with Serlingpa for twelve years and practicing this mind training, this idea of exchanging self for others and in that time he was able to develop a bodhicitta. After he developed this, he continued on with his practices and actually went to Tibet and he went to teach the Tibetans and when he was there he passed along this idea of the exchange of self and others and the seven points of mind training to his student, Dromtönpa — it would upset some people if they heard it.
So, Dromtönpa passed on this teaching in secret to other Kadampa Geshes, who were these different teachers that were practicing in Tibet that were followers of Atisha. It got passed on eventually to a Geshe called Sharawa who then passed it on to another teacher called Geshe Chekawa. These are the Kadampa Geshes. Geshe Chekawa actually re edited or he developed his own way of presenting this process of exchange for others and he organized it into seven points. There were seven different parts to the practice and he was able to, based on these seven points, get the idea across clearly and he told it to his students at this stage, all of his students, not just to some of them, in a more open way.
So that’s how I ended up with this name, the Seven Points of Mind Training because it processed through all these teachers and when it was actually made public and put together in a text form, it came out as the Seven Points of Mind Training. And so the way that it was split into these seven sections is: first of all, the first point is what’s called relying on the preliminaries. That is developing the practices of the lower scope. Here we’re talking about looking at impermanence and death, looking at karma cause and effect, looking at the preciousness of a human rebirth and looking at the shortcomings of saṃsāra. These are four things to remember.
Said to be the first point of the practice and they act as the base for the rest of the practice and that’s the first point. Second point is what’s called the actual practice itself which is of the two different types of bodhicitta. That is absolute bodhicitta and relative bodhicitta. So that access the second point. The third point is what’s called transforming the hardship onto the path.
And now, in our lifetime, we come across many hardships. We have illness, we lose things that we own and so forth. And this describes a way to turn anything that s a hardship that comes our way into the practice of Dharma. That s the third point. The fourth point is transforming our whole life into practicing Dharma, that is when we are alive and when we are going to die.
That the fourth point. The fifth point is the mark or the test in how well your mind training is going, an assessment of the mind training. That is how well you ve developed these understandings. What point are we up to? The sixth point is called slogans of mind training.
So there are different expressions and different slogans that you can learn in order to remind you of mind training. And the seventh point is the advice that comes along with the mind training, an advice that you should remember in order to keep going with developing the idea of So just to go over again, the first point of this was the four bases for the development of bodhicitta, which are the four preliminary practices. These are again the difficulty of finding a precious human rebirth, death and impermanence, the law of cause and effect, and also the shortcomings of saṃsāra. These four practices or these four things to remember or to focus on are the practices associated with the middle and lower scopes. They’re very, very famous as a motivating force for us to practice Dharma and to keep us on track.
Geshe la said, Yes, I hate it when there’s puns that you can’t really translate, but the word for having explained it is very similar to the word for having developed it. And I thought he said, They ve developed it. And he said, No, they ve listened to it. And then it was like, It doesn t work anyway, forget it. Yeah.
Right. Now, the next section of this is development of it is called the actual practice, the development of the two bodhicittas. Now, these two bodhicittas are absolute bodhicitta and relative bodhicitta. Absolute bodhicitta is the understanding of emptiness and relative bodhicitta is the development of the idea of achieving enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. So, we have these two different aspects of bodhicitta.
There is the understanding of emptiness, the mind realizing emptiness and the development of this more relative idea of working towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. Now, within the seven points of mind training, the development of emptiness, the mind realizing emptiness is explained first. First of all, people would work on the idea of the true nature of all phenomena being emptiness and develop an idea of that. Then they go through the process of developing the mind wishing to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. Now, this way of putting things is described in different texts.
It’s explained in a text called the Ornament of the Middle Way, the Ornament of the Middle Way, which Geshe la thinks is written by Kamalaśīla but we’re not absolutely certain. Because I thought I said, I think it’s Shāntarakshita and he said, No, think it’s Kamalaśīla. I was like, Well, I go with your bet. I’m pretty sure that he’s more likely to be right than me. Yeah.
Was just explaining why you’re laughing. And so there is this way, there are these two traditions of explaining these things in different ways: explaining the idea of emptiness first and then of bodhicitta and then thereis this idea of explaining bodhicitta first and finishing off with the perfection of wisdom and therefore explaining emptiness lastly. Now, itis said to be that the idea of explaining emptiness first and then explaining relative bodhicitta second is to suit beings of dull capacity, right? Like dull witted people. Okay?
But it’s not dull witted like we think. Then, the other idea of explaining the relative bodhicitta first and then explaining ultimate bodhicitta later is that fits dull people and the idea of explaining emptiness first fits sharp capacity or sharp witted people is the way that it’s explained. So there’s these two different traditions of which way you explain things. Emptiness first in or relative bodhicitta. It depends on the tradition that itis explained in.
In this text, itis actually explained first the idea of developing relative bodhicitta and then after that explains the idea of developing absolute bodhicitta. So there’s these two different traditions in the tradition of explaining it in terms of the dull capacity beings were both explained in two different ways of explaining it were done by the Buddha, but they were taken up — the dull way of explaining it was taken up —. The way of explaining it to beings of dull capacity was taken up by Śāntideva and also Atisha and also Lama Tsongkhapa. And so the reason so many people explained the idea of relative bodhicitta first is because so many of us are dull witted.