Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 39-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering works through the final slogans of the Seven Points of Mind Training — a practical ethics of daily behavior for those cultivating bodhicitta. Each slogan gets a frank, colloquial gloss: don’t be sporadic; don’t talk about others’ faults (since you can’t read minds and might be judging a bodhisattva); don’t blend kind acts with self-cherishing or they become “poisoned”; don’t hold grudges — your own self-cherishing, not the other person, is the real culprit; don’t grow arrogant about being someone who practices mind training. The session then opens the twenty-two pieces of advice, starting with the surprisingly hard challenge of eating for others rather than your stomach. A lively Q&A closes the session, using soccer rivalry as a live test case for equanimity toward all players.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 SoP 2004 10 24.mp3
UUID: 9d2f244b-048c-4007-ab30-2c114cfddedd
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-10-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 39.3 minutes
Words: ~3,840
So please listen with the motivation that by listening to these teachings, you will develop understanding of the mind training practices. By the mind training practices, then you’ll be able to develop the mind of bodhicitta, which is the main cause for reaching enlightenment. So if we want to establish all sentient beings in a state of freedom, so if we want all sentient beings to be able to be free from saṃsāra, then the best way to bring this about is for ourselves to become Buddhas and be able to show them that path. So in order to bring this about, we need to develop the mind of bodhicitta, the mind wishing to achieve that state and then engage in the practices associated with achieving that state. So we’re going through the stage about training the mind in developing bodhicitta.
We’re going through the seven points of training the mind in bodhicitta. We’re up to the sixth one, which is the use of slogans in developing an understanding of bodhicitta. With relation to this section, there are eighteen different slogans that we can try and remember to train the mind with. And the training the mind we’re talking about here is training the mind in the development of compassion, loving kindness and bodhicitta. So the first one is not to abandon or not to contradict the precepts or the responsibilities of mind training.
So what this means is that if you have taken on the path of practicing mind training, of trying to develop a compassionate bodhicitta, then you don’t do things that will contradict that practice, and you try not to do things that would lead you away from training in this way. So if you’re going to train do mind training, you do it all the time. It’s not like you sometimes do it and then do other things that would harm that practice. So the next one which goes along with this is the slogan, don’t be sporadic. And what this sporadic.
Sporadic. And you I was saying a thing, that’s wrong. Now I’m gonna say it wrong again. Don’t be sporadic. Yes?
Sporadic. Sporadic. Guess I was like, it’s English. You should know. Anyway, don’t behave like that.
This is a practice that you need to do continually. If you do it sometimes and don’t do it at other times, then that’s not going to help you. So it’s something that you need to do all the time and you need to apply instantly. If you come into situations where you could apply mind training and you don’t, then this harms the practice of mind training. And don’t be partial is the next slogan.
Now this means if we’re training to develop, if we’re training to develop love and kindness and compassion, we’re doing this towards all sentient beings and not towards just the ones we like. So it means don’t think of some beings as being more worthy of compassion than others. It means focusing on all beings. Okay. I’m trying to make a slogan out of three sentences, and I was going, Gayla, which one is the slogan?
And it goes, the whole thing. Am I right? So this the slogan is, if you’re practicing the mind training, don’t do anything with your body, speech, your mind. It contradicts the practice of the mind training. That means if you are focusing on others, if you’re trying to develop a mind where you cherish others instead of cherishing self, don’t behave in ways that that you benefit from and that harm others.
Okay. So the next thing is don’t talk about others’ faults, the next slogan. Now because of our deluded ways of looking at things and because we have obscurations and we see things from our own perspective, which is a perspective that governed by negative ways of thinking, this means that we see faults in others. We see faults in even in teachers and Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and so on like that. So if we’re going to see faults in them, then we’ll find faults anyway.
So this doesn’t mean that we should think that we’re not going to see faults. We can’t develop a pure view from nothing. So we can recognize that we see these faults, but we have to understand that perhaps these faults come about because we are projecting our neurotic ways of looking at things onto other people’s behavior. So because we see the faults, it doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily there. So the best thing to do is to shut up about them and not talk about them.
And guess the letter you said, so shut up and don’t talk about them. So this is this is something that we should be really careful about because it can be dangerous to our to the way that our mind works and dangerous to our creation of negative karma because we don’t really know what’s going on in other people’s heads. We can’t read their minds, so we don’t know why they’re why what is motivating them. So we can’t tell if they’re doing something in order to help us or in order to harm us. And so if we’re going to start bad mouthing them and saying that they’re doing bad things, we don’t even know that they may in fact be a bodhisattva or a Buddha who has come into into saṃsāra or is manifesting in this way in order to help us understand something.
So if we can’t read other people’s minds, we should be very careful about judging them. So there’s another way of explaining this is even if we see faults and not to concentrate on them or not to focus on them. Because the thing is, if we start concentrating on faults, we’re going to see more and more and more faults. And if we start concentrating on qualities, then we’re going to see more and more positive qualities than others. So whatever we attune ourselves to, that’s the thing that we notice the most.
And so if we start focusing, trying to find the good in people, then we’re going to start noticing and interacting more with the good in people. The next slogan is rely on the antidote to the strongest affliction. Now what this means is that whichever is the most powerful negative emotion or destructive emotion that we experience, then we should try and focus on its antidote. So we should go after the one that we see the most of in our mind stream. So this means if we’re constantly experiencing desire, then we should try and apply the antidotes to desire all the time.
If we’re constantly experiencing hatred, then we should try and apply the antidotes to hatred every time that we experience this. So even though it says focus on the greatest negative the greatest destructive emotion, the the the greatest affliction, it doesn’t mean that we don’t we don’t acknowledge the others. What it means is that whatever is happening in our mind at that time, then that’s what we should focus on. The next the next slogan is to abandon all hope of result. No.
To abandon to abandon all hope. Now what this is talking about is that to abandon the hope of somehow making ourselves more respected, more famous, more powerful by practicing mind training. The idea of mind training isn’t about self. It’s about focusing on others. So if we’re doing mind training with the idea that by becoming kinder people, we’re going to be more liked.
By becoming kinder By focusing on others more, we’re going to become famous for our deeds. Then this is deviating the mind training. Mind training is about focusing on others. So we should give up all hope of what we’re going to get out of this practice. The next, the next slogan is to not make not mix our positive actions with poison.
And now what this is talking about is that we shouldn’t have a motivation of self-cherishing or grasping at inherent existence when we perform mind training. So this means that if we’re doing mind training, we should have an understanding that the objects that we’re in training with, the self and the others that we are the self we are the self-cherishing that we are trying to negate or trying to lessen the strength of and the others that we are focusing on are not inherently existent. They don’t exist from their own side. And the other thing is that we shouldn’t do this training from a point of view of how what we’re going to get out of it or self-cherishing. So if we perform mind training with either of these two ideas, with the idea of things being inherently existent or with the idea of what we get out of it, so that it’s self-cherishing, then it doesn’t become a cause for the of bodhicitta.
It becomes the actions become poisoned. So we need to be careful about what which motivation we’re training we’re doing mind training with. The next thing to the next slogan is don’t hold grudges. Now this means don’t hold grudges against people that have hurt us. Now if we’re practicing mind training, then we don’t think of other people as being responsible for any harm that’s come to us anyway.
If we want to find out where the harm comes from or where the suffering that we’ve experienced comes from, it always comes about through karma and negative karma that we have accumulated because of our self-cherishing. So the real culprit for any actions that are done towards us that we may perceive harm us is our self-cherishing. So if we want to hold a grudge against anything, it has to be our own self-cherishing. We don’t think of other people as being the source of our suffering. Okay.
Okay. You’re gonna have to forgive the colloquial interpretation of this, but it’s early on a Sunday morning for me. The next one basically is don’t don’t suck up to people. It’s the the the Tibetan expression is a the it’s like, don’t pucker your lips up. And it means, like, literally.
So it means, like, don’t suck. I don’t have this idea of, oh, I’m gonna be really nice to them and pamper them at the moment so they give me something in the future. Don’t practice flattery. And don’t think that you will that by being kind to people, that in the future, you will get something back. So the idea is to be kind because of because of the virtues of kindness, but not because so you get something back in the future.
Don’t return harms is the next one. And don’t if someone harms you, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to re to to give that harm back to them. So the next one is don’t do anything harmful to people’s body or minds to others’ body or minds. There’s there’s different ways that we can hurt people. We can hurt them by disturbing their minds, and we can hurt them by harming them physically.
So to to refrain from doing any actions which may harm other others mentally or physically. Okay. Don’t blame others for things that you’ve done. So don’t say, I didn’t do what they did. This is the next one.
And so we do this a lot. We tend to go, it wasn’t me. It was them. I didn’t do it. So this is a the next one is don’t blame others for your faults.
Oh, this happens so much. You know? If we watch we do this all the time. And especially like in our society, so many times, you see people go, I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.
It was them. Not easy. If someone says, you this bad thing happened. No one goes, yes. It was me.
I take responsibility. They say they say, wasn’t me. It was them. They did it. It was someone else’s fault.
So if I’m practicing mind training, I have to go, Yes. I am totally responsible. I have to take responsibility for my actions. Imagine how different the society would be if people started practicing that. Okay.
So the next one of these the next slogan that we can train in. By the way, these slogans aren’t exactly the same as the root text of the Seven Points of Mind training. There seems to have been slogans that are coming from the author of this text as well. So there are more of them. Okay.
So the next slogan is don’t take things that are public property to be your own. So this would mean there’s many things that belong to a community or belong to a country or belong to a group of people. And as individuals, we sometimes are given responsibility for these objects or for these for the wealth of or the property of these communities or the organizations or the countries or whoever it is that we work for or being responsible for. And the tendency, if we’re in these situations, is to think that this is mine. I’m in charge of this.
This really belongs to me. It’s the same. Don’t do that. That’s very dangerous, and it’s a and it’s a selfish way of behaving. So if you are given responsibility for anything on behalf of a community, remember that it is only it is the communities.
It is the nations that you’re looking at property, and you are merely administrating it for them. Okay. So And the next the next slogan is don’t train don’t do mind training to harm or to protect yourself, from negative influence negative influences, like spirits and spirits and ghosts and harmful people. So it said that if by practicing the mind training now that you are by practicing mind training, by practicing compassion, that you become protected from, negative influences. But this shouldn’t be the motivation for practicing the mind training, because in actual fact, you are practicing mind training to develop bodhicitta.
You’re practicing mind training to help all beings, including those beings that may be going to harm you. And so to have the idea that I’m practicing this in order that I can get back at these people or that I can stop them, and it kind of negates the idea of working for their benefit. So the motivation for doing this practice is to develop bodhicitta, is to reach enlightenment. It’s not to stop people being able to hurt you or it’s not to to harm other people who may hurt you. Okay.
So the next one is don’t get arrogant and puffed up about being someone doing mind training. So there there’s these two different ways of looking at things. One’s called arrogance. So literally in literally in Tibetan, it there’s two syllables. The first one means I, and the second one means king or or I I I I ruler or whatever.
So it gives this idea of us being very important or more important than other people. Now these two different ways of looking at it, being arrogant and being puffed up, are almost the same in terms of the way that they manifest in our mind stream. This idea that being compassionate, I’m looking after others, I’m getting rid of self-cherishing, and therefore, I’m more important than others. I have more qualities than others and so on is an anathema to mind training. So it’s obvious that we should not develop this.
The other one, having a puffed up mind or a proud way of looking at our practice can come from two reasons. One is something similar to arrogance that we think are very important for doing this. But another way that we can become puffed up about our mind training practice is if we assume if we put if we think that what we’re doing inherently exists, if we think that it’s a solid thing that we’re doing that has an entity of itself and that we as ourselves have a our own entity who is doing something that is is truly existent. So this is another way that our mind can become puffed up when we’re doing these practices. So it is don’t don’t become arrogant or puffed up is the slogan.
Alright. So the last of the eighteen and so the last of the eighteen slogans is don’t take don’t get your happiness from other people’s misery. And that’s like with soccer. Yeah?
When your team I guess I’ll say when your team wins and the other don’t think, oh, I’m glad the other team lost. Alright? Don’t have feel happy about when someone you don’t like loses. And so he said, yeah. Exactly like soccer.
And I said, I you the the we’re good at the things that we’re not supposed to do. Okay. So that was the eighteen slogans that we can train in terms of mind training. And is there now twenty-two different pieces of advice that we should try and remember when we’re practicing mind training? Okay.
So So the first of the pieces of advice for mind training is to do everything only for the benefit of others. This is said to be all yogas, including the yoga of eating. So all actions that is all yogas or all actions should be performed with the idea of benefiting others, including eating. Geshe said, that is so hard to do things all the time thinking of others. You don’t eat for others.
You eat for your stomach. And so it’s so to to actually turn the way you think around and not be thinking about your stomach but be thinking about others takes a lot of work. Oh, especially if you’re hungry, he said. If you’re really hungry to then think, oh, this isn’t about my stomach. This is about others.
It’s very difficult. A bit. So he said okay. So if we wanna make it a bit easier for ourselves, we can quickly think. If I’m gonna help beings, I’ve gotta be alright.
And if I’m not I’m hungry, I can’t help, so I gotta eat. Oh, Oh, it is. So that one’s not that hard. So the next piece of advice is to train in the in the in the mind that is a no, to train in the mind that in an equanimous way exceeds all qualities as coming from others and all things to be abandoned as coming from self. So this is the basis of the exchange of self and others.
That anything that we need to abandon is our own problem, and any qualities that we may have come from other beings. So this is the basis of the mind training to to to understand and to focus on this. The next piece of advice is that before we perform a virtuous action and after we perform a virtuous action, that we focus on bodhicitta. So that means that before we perform a virtuous action, then we should think or positive action, then we should think by the cause of this positive action, and may I be able to come to be able to become a Buddha and work towards the liberation of all sentient beings from suffering. So we should have that motivation, the motivation of bodhicitta before we perform any virtuous action.
And then after we’ve performed it, we should try and dedicate that positive action towards us achieving Buddhahood, towards all sentient beings being free from suffering. Okay. So the next one is whatever happens, whether it be good or bad, join it. That’s the best way to put it. And join it with mind training.
It’s got this expression that is to carry as a friend. Carry the mind training as a friend. So it means like to join whatever you do with the practice of mind training, whether you experience something happy or whether you experience something sad. Now when we experience something happy, that means that if we think may all sentient beings joining this experience of happiness. May we be able to give up this experience of happiness to benefit all sentient beings.
And when we experience suffering, we can think, may this suffering be a cause for all sentient beings to be free from suffering. So in this way, whatever we experience, whether it be happy or sad or painful or pleasant, we can use it as an opportunity to practice mind training. So we can stop there today. And if anyone has So, yeah, if you have any questions, please ask them. Ask them.
Yeah. Sorry? Can you be happy if you’re talking to him? He said it’s not very cool to be happy if if you’re thinking, It’s not very good. It’s not very good to be it’s not think about the other team as well.
So if you’re if you think, I’m really happy my soccer team won, and I don’t care what happens to the other team, and they’re not very happy. But he said, so if you’re being happy Be happy. Said if you can watch anything, he said, that’s fine, that’s fine. He said, but maybe be happy about the way they played. He said that so he said that if you’re watching soccer soccer and, instead of thinking, I want that team to win and I don’t want that team to I want that team to lose, think I want them to all play well.
And you can think, wow. They’re all playing really well. How great that they’re all playing really well and be happy about that. He said that that’s probably a that’s a so you can be happy about the game as opposed to someone winning and someone losing. No.
No. No. Hang on. I said but the whole point is to to to practice this equanimity. Right?
And so if it was easy to love everybody the same, we wouldn’t need to do this training. If you had this instant response that, I love all of the teams in the championship, yeah, then you wouldn’t need to do this training. It wouldn’t be difficult. Right? But the idea is to train to have that kind of enthusiastic response to everybody.
So he said the idea is to the idea is to use use watching He said the idea is that you can use watching soccer as an amazing opportunity to develop equanimity and try and have that same sense of feeling for everyone playing. And if you try and try and remember that the people on the other team that are playing your favorite team are also beings who wanna be happy, who want to win, who want to experience that kind of excitement as well. So to try and have a sense of equanimity towards who’s gonna win.