Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A Guru Puja verse asking that all beings’ karmic debts and sufferings ripen upon us right now frames this 45-minute session in which Geshe Pema Tsering gives step-by-step instruction on Tonglen, the meditation of giving and taking. He explains why exchanging self-cherishing for cherishing others is called the “essence of the essence” of mind training, and why that verse is recited three times. For beginners, he advises starting by mentally breathing in one’s own future suffering — today’s, tomorrow’s, the death process — before widening gradually to one’s mother, then loved ones, then all beings filling the sky. The visualization is precise: white light leaves the right nostril carrying happiness and virtue; dark, chunky light enters the left, dissolving a ball of self-cherishing at the heart. Suited to practitioners already working through the Lamrim sequence.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 SoP 2004 08 09.mp3
UUID: a9889a77-10ae-4274-83cb-15bf05fb860c
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-08-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~3,761
So we need to start off by developing the right motivation. If we have the right motivation, then whatever we do becomes much more beneficial, becomes enormously beneficial. So the right motivation that we need to develop is an idea of attaining enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. We should think that we’re listening to these teachings and developing understanding of this text in order to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. The section we’ve arrived at in the text is actually the exchange of self and others’, the process of giving and taking, where we start focusing on others.
This is one of the ways we can develop bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment. By learning about this, we can develop the mind of enlightenment, and we can actually become Buddhas. So we should think that this is our motivation. By understanding this teaching, by understanding this explanation, we can practice exchange of self and others and develop bodhicitta and become a Buddha. So whatever we do that’s positive, if we do that positive action with the motivation of attaining enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings, then that action becomes an intensely powerful positive action.
It can it comes as a cause for us to attain enlightenment. So we need to develop this one motivation for listening to these teachings today. And this one motivation that we should have is the motivation of bodhicitta. We don’t want to have it mixed in with different ideas about how this will be beneficial to us in the short term or even in the next life. We need to be focused solely on attaining enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.
We then try and have this idea, this is the reason I’m listening to this teaching. I’m listening to this teaching in order to develop an understanding of the practice of exchange of self and others, which will enable me to not be focused on self and be able to focus on others and see others as a reason to become enlightened for their sake. So I have to become enlightened in order to benefit them. So so So we listen to these teachings, self-understanding in order to be able to meditate on them. We listen to the teachings this morning because there isn’t that much time, and you probably didn’t meditate this morning. Right.
So we’re up to the section in the reviewing the stages of the path from the Guru Puja. which is talking about the exchange of self and others. When it’s talking about the exchange of self and others, we should try and remember that this process of exchanging a cherishing self for cherishing others others is said to be the essence of the essence, or the heart of the mind training practices, of developing the greater way in our mind stream, that is the altruistic motivation to achieve enlightenment. It’s not only the essence, but it is also the main point. We really need to develop this kind of thought in our mind stream.
This prayer that we just finished off going through last week, says: And thus, O venerable, compassionate gurus, we seek your blessings that all karmic debts, obstacles and sufferings of mother beings may, without exception, ripen upon us right now, that we may give our happiness and virtue to others, and therefore invest all beings in bliss. What this is talking about is this process of exchanging self and others. It’s a very difficult thing for us to do. What we imagine happening is that we are seeking blessings from the teacher that great compassion is able to be generated in our mind stream. Within the context of the Guru Puja three times in order to request blessings for this to develop three times.
The reason that it’s said three times is because it’s particularly difficult, mainly, but also because there is a tradition from small hermitages in Tibet, whenever they came to this section of the Guru Puja, they would say this prayer three times, so we have inherited this tradition. So, it started off in these small hermitages. But these days, whenever people get to the ninety fifth verse of the Guru Puja, then they say it three times. So this practice of Tonglen, of giving and taking, is incredibly powerful, incredibly beneficial, and it’s not something that’s impossible for ordinary beings to do. Because of this, now then we should really try and put a lot of effort into doing it, into giving away and mentally giving away our happiness and taking on others’ suffering.
Okay. So the actual way that we go about doing the Giving and Taking meditation in the context of Guru Puja as described in this section of the text, and it starts off by saying that in the same way the development of all of the other understandings in this Graduated Path prayer, we’re actually asking for blessings from the teacher inseparable from our meditational deity in order to develop this understanding. That’s the first focus for the meditation. After we’ve requested these blessings, we then imagine that we are surrounded by all sentient beings who have been our mothers in past lifetimes. All of these different sentient beings, we try and visualize them as clearly as we can in a vast circle around us.
Then, before we start actually doing the practice of giving and taking, we first of all think about the destitute state of all these beings, how they are experiencing intense suffering, different kinds of suffering in all the different existences that they could be in, all types of things that they don’t want to experience. Focusing on this suffering that they’re experiencing and don’t want to experience, we then develop a sense of compassion. This idea of compassion is that we don’t want them to be experiencing the suffering that they don’t want to be experiencing. So we think, We don’t want them to be experiencing the suffering they are experiencing. We want them to be experiencing the happiness that they are not experiencing.
By meditating on suffering that they are are experiencing and developing the idea of, making them free of suffering, then this idea then the, compassion and the loving kindness, that we feel towards these beings is gets stronger and stronger. So the the kind of compassion and the kind of love and kindness that we’re trying to develop towards these beings is the the kind of mind or kind of way of sinking that is it’s not alright for these beings to suffer like this. It’s not alright for them to not experience happiness the way they want to experience happiness. It’s not alright for them to be stuck in saṃsāra they don’t know a way out of saṃsāra. I have to do something in order to bring about these beings, in order to lead them to a state of Buddhahood, where they don’t have to experience suffering and they experience the final, the ultimate happiness of being a Buddha.
When it says love and kindness and compassion, this is what it’s talking about. Compassion is saying, I don’t want these beings to suffer at all. I want them to be led to the state of Buddhahood, and it’s not right that they are suffering. Then love and kindness, which says, I want them to experience all happiness. It’s not a right that they’re not experiencing all happiness, so I need to do something to lead them to the state of Buddhahood.
And so this is what we actually want to bring about. But, unfortunately, because of the habits, the strong habits that we’ve developed since the beginning of this time up until now, it’s very difficult for us to think of the idea of taking suffering away from sentient beings. It’s difficult for us to think about liberating them from suffering. But in order for us to do this, we have to be able to take other sentient beings’ suffering. What we need to do is to develop a mindset or an idea that we are strong enough to take on the suffering of others, we are strong enough to experience suffering for the sake of others.
This is the point of doing this taking and giving meditation. We’re habituated into looking after our own happiness and not thinking about the happiness of others. This is something that’s very strong in our self, that we are continually looking after our own happiness. When we start thinking about taking of others and giving away our happiness, what usually happens is great fear. We’re agitated or frightful of this experience.
We think this isn’t going to be something that we’re happy about. The process of giving and taking meditation strengthens our ability to be able to face suffering in order to benefit beings. So being so habituated into looking after ourselves and not thinking about others, the idea of taking on the suffering even mentally of all sentient beings and giving away happiness, even mentally, to all sentient beings is something that may cause incredible fear and anxiety in us, and it’s something that we may not be able to do at first. The mind training texts advise us to start this visualisation process or to start this imaginative process by taking on the suffering of our own self in the future, imagining ourselves taking on our own suffering from the future. If we can’t handle the idea of taking on other people’s suffering, we start with the idea of our future suffering, imagining that we’re experiencing it ripening right now.
Future suffering is something that we can’t get rid of anyway, so we might as well experience it now, is the is the idea behind this. So it strengthens our ability to take on suffering. So by what we’re doing when we’re doing this is imagining that, for example, if it’s in the morning, that we’re meditating, that we imagine the suffering of the rest of the day that we’re going to experience. We visualize that coming into our being, and we experience that. We’re taking on the suffering from the rest of the day.
Then we imagine that we’re taking on the suffering from tomorrow that we’re going to experience tomorrow. We’re breathing that into ourselves and imagine that it is ripening in us right now. Then we take on the suffering that we are going to experience for the rest of the month and then the rest of the year. Then we start focusing on the rest of this life time, especially the kind of suffering that we are going to experience when we die, when we go through the death process. We imagine that we are experiencing that now.
We are breathing that in. Then also the suffering that we’re going to experience in future lifetimes. So we imagine we’re this this this is coming in with our in breath. We’re breathing this suffering in as well. So after we’ve meditated, we’ve done this visualization or this imaginative process of taking suffering for our own selves for the rest of our lifetimes and the rest of this life and rest of other lifetimes.
We can then imagine that our mother of this lifetime is standing in front of us, someone who has given us a body, us food, given us shelter, that we generally have a natural feeling of affection towards and someone that we don’t want to experience suffering. We imagine them standing in front of us, and then we visualize ourselves taking on their suffering and giving away our happiness to them. Sorry. I’m getting a bit visualization Sorry, guys. It’s there’s too many nostrils involved.
I’m getting confused. Alright. So it was your mom’s nose, not yours. That’s why they’re getting confused. I was like, but that’s three nostrils again now.
We don’t have three nostrils. So but, anyway, The meditation process that you engage in, in order to give away the happiness and take on the suffering for your mother, who you focus on, first of all, is that, you imagine coming out of your Oh. Okay. So you imagine, leaving your right nostril as you breathe out, in the form of white light, all of the positive things that you have ever done, all of the happiness that you have ever experienced, all of the happiness that you could possibly experience in future. Not only that, all of the causes for the experience of happiness in the future, so all of the positive things you may do.
Also, because we are trying to establish our mother in true happiness, we imagine the causes for the development of bodhicitta and enlightenment and the experience of bodhicitta and enlightenment going out towards our mother from our right nostril, in the form of white light. As we breathe out all of these positive experiences and the causes for positive experiences, then this white light enters our mother through her left nostril. And as it does that, we imagine all of the causes for happiness coming about in our mother’s mind stream. So that means that our mother develops a bodhicitta. Our mother develops all of the realizations that she needs to, you know, become a Buddha and then experiences, experiences the great bliss of Buddhahood.
So and and we’re we’re happy. You while this process is on, keep a happy mind where it says meditate on happiness. You know? So, yeah, you’re happy or rejoicing in this process. Okay.
Then how so this is the process where we’re giving away happiness to our mother. When we’re doing the reverse, taking in suffering from our mother, then we imagine that with our in breath or in with our in breath comes all of the suffering that our mother will experience or has experienced, along with all of the causes of suffering, which are all the negative actions that she may have performed. These are taken away from her mind stream in the same way that hair falls away when you shave your head. So that it kind of falls down falls away from our mother. And as black light, it leaves our mother’s right nostril.
Yes. Because it was going into a left nostril. Right nostril. Right nostril. Black coming out of right nostril.
And and then it comes in to our left nostril. Alright? So we’re taking the black, the black, the black Okay. So this is where that can mean light. It’s like black light, but it means like junk.
Yeah. It’s not smoke. It’s just junk. Like yeah. Okay.
So it’s like it is light. He it is in the form of light because it s a meditation process, but it s chunky. Sometimes the translation they use is ta, so it s like thick, gunk, gunk, yeah, that kind of thing. So we’re taking the negative actions and the negative causes away from our mother in the form of this black smoke with gunky stuff, right? And that’s going into our left nostril, passes through our left nostril, and we imagine our self-cherishing as a ball at our heart.
Yes? And the gunky stuff goes down and starts, obliterating the self-cherishing, the the the ball at the heart. So in this way, the suffering from our mother is coming into our body, and what it’s doing is obliterating the self grasping idea that we have, this idea of self-cherishing that we have. It’s getting rid of that, so we visualize the smoke coming in or the black stuff coming in, the black light coming in and cleansing away the suffering, burning away our self-cherishing. The self-cherishing mind is this idea that I want to experience happiness I don’t care about other people, So this process of taking on others’ suffering is a way of getting rid of that mind, this mind that causes us so much suffering.
So then once we we we do this meditation until as long as we can, and then we visualize that our mothers have been completely cleared of all negative experiences. Have achieved that. They they have gotten rid of all, all causes for suffering and all all experiences suffering, and then our self-cherishing has been dissolved. And then we it says we med once we feel that that has happened, then we meditate happily, or we meditate on happiness. We just sit there being happy.
I said, I guess, so when you say So when you say when you say meditate on happiness or meditate on being happy about that, what do you mean you go they go, oh, that’s really good. So And what? There’s another way. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
That’s what meditating happily or means. So after we’ve done this meditation on our mother, then we start extending this, the focus for our meditation out to our father and other people that we are very close to and we have great affection for. So we imagine that there’s more people in front of us that we have great affection for, that we don’t want to experience suffering, and we do the same process of giving and taking with them. That is. And then after extending it out to the people we like, we try and ex in each session or in each in each moment, we try and extend the people we’re doing this practice with out and out and out and out and out until it gets to a greater mass of people.
And, eventually, the sky we imagine the sky completely filled with beings that we’re practicing this giving and taking meditation with. So after we’ve been training in this way, we’re doing this mind training in this way, eventually, we can get to the stage where we are meditating on the idea of giving away to all of these beings that are filling the space or filling the sky in front of us everything that we’ve ever held dear, including our bodies we’ve experienced in different lifetimes, any material things that we’ve ever made use of, all of the virtues that we’ve ever created in the three times. So that means past, the present, and the future. Any virtuous action that we ever do that’s gonna cause us to experience happiness. You imagine that we’re giving all of this away, to all these beings in the form of white light, that, pervades the sky and pervades pervades the beings which pervade the sky in front of us.
So and whereas we and while we’re giving out all of our happiness to sentient beings on the out-breath, we take in all of the suffering, all of the causes for suffering, which are obscurations and negative emotions from all beings, we imagine that that, from all the different times, that that comes into a black light or a black, yeah, chunky light that comes into that we take on into our our our being, that we take into our self-cherishing. And that by doing this, all of the sentient beings are are free from suffering, are free from the causes of suffering, these obscurations, and are liberated from saṃsāra and attain Buddhahood. So we imagine we visualize this happening, that these beings have become Buddha Buddhas, and all of their obscurations have come into us. Okay. Something else that we need to remember when we’re doing this practice is that although we maybe consider all of these things that we’re sending out, in the terms of, all of the riches of the world, all of the all of the things that we may have, all of our bodies and all of the things that we have, we want to keep giving to these beings.
If we’re sending out things that are instances of the truth of suffering. What that means is that all of the things that we grasp onto, all of the objects that we consider to make us happy, are actually created by karma cause and effect, and are therefore not going to make us happy, and are therefore examples of the truth of suffering, of the riches, all of the countries, all of the things that we have that we may want to give to these beings. First of all, we have to they’re not going to help them if they’re in the state they are. Right? So first of all, we imagine them to be transformed, whether it’s it’s all of the world, whether it’s a as we’re focusing on Australia or we’re focusing on other places and all of the good things in Australia.
First of we transform them into a pure realm. So what this means is that we we we recognize that they’ve come about we we transform them into something that’s come about through pure karma as opposed to contaminated karma. So that everything in the world is going to be something that’s going to create happiness for the people who are gonna receive it as opposed to suffering the way it does at the moment. Yeah? So at the moment, all of the things in in the world that we may consider good actually create suffering for people.
But if they come about by pure karma, then they don’t create suffering for people. So we imagine that the whole of the world is a pure place that’s only coming to being through pure karma, through pure actions. And therefore, it only creates joy, and it doesn’t create suffering. And then we give that way that away as well. Yeah.
Okay. So then, through the after this process, we’re then we’re thinking, oh, all of the sentient beings have gotten I have the ability through taking on the sufferings in others giving away happiness, liberate all sentient beings from suffering, to to show all sentient beings how to not experience suffering. If I can take on their suffering and give away happiness, then this is the way for me to become a Buddha and be able to show beings how to experience nothing but happiness. So we should be pretty happy about the fact that we’re able to do this. And then so the next thing is we sit there and it says, again, meditate happily or meditate on happiness or, as Geshe-la said earlier, think that’s really good.
Yeah. Yeah. So we can stop there, and if anyone has any questions. If no one’s gonna ask a question, I am.