Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 29-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering opens with a striking image: the Buddhas cannot simply “bust us out of prison” — liberation requires our own mind turned toward refuge. He explains why the Three Jewels are the only real protection from lower rebirths, and how teacher, Dharma friends, and practice each represent a seed of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha jewels. He then unpacks why beings in lower realms cannot be rescued by outside force — they lack the mind capable of requesting help — and reframes the Tibetan word for blessings, jinlab, as understanding rather than divine intervention. The session closes on an important distinction: we lack the autonomy to escape karma and rebirth at will, yet the precious human rebirth opens a small window of independence that should not be wasted.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 SoP 2004 03 07.mp3
UUID: 36b03ad9-1093-4880-8be3-70abf902a424
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-03-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 28.8 minutes
Words: ~1,928
Actually grant us protection from the experiences of the lower realms. And then it said that the only things that can grant us protection from the lower realms, what are called the Three Jewels, the Buddha jewel, the Dharma jewel, the Sangha jewel. The only things that can actually grant us protection from that experience of the sufferings that would come to us in the lower realms. So therefore, they’re the only place that we can go to refuge for from those suffering. So, means that it says from the bottom of our being, the very core, then we should develop this idea that is only teacher being a form of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, the Three Jewels, which can actually wherever we are whether we are born up or whether we are thrown down give us the ability to protect us from any of these types of suffering.
From the bottom of our hearts and then we should have this idea of going for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. So they’ve we can stop there. Let’s see. Oh, and Oh, yeah. And if you have questions.
Okay, because we’re visualizing the teacher as the Buddha, right? And then we shouldn’t have any doubts about the fact that there’s the Three Jewels are present in the Buddha. And because the Buddha themselves, the Buddha is the Buddha jewel, the qualities of the Buddha are the Dharma jewel. And because the Buddhas are not like us in the fact that they are realized beings, then they are said to be the Sangha jewel as well. They are the Ārya Sangha jewel, the supreme Sangha jewel as well.
So the him or herself represent all Three Jewels. So then we think about it in terms of So the other thing is that we imagine that the teacher, the qualities we develop and the people that help us along the path are like the seeds for the Three Jewels. So therefore the teacher who is propounding or explaining the Dharma, explaining the Buddha’s teachings acts as a seed for the development of the Buddha. It acts as like the representative or the seed of the development of the Buddha. Therefore we think of that as being the Buddha.
The qualities that we’re able to develop by putting the teachings into practice are the representative or the seed, there’s two different ways to look at it, of the Dharma jewel or the qualities. And the people that help us, our Dharma friends, people that help us to be able to practice are said to be the seed or the representative of sangha jewel. So in this way we think of the teacher as being having all those qualities in representative or seed form. Is it something external or something internal? Okay.
So now the object that we go for refuge to is the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. And because the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha at the moment are not present in our continuum then we are going to refuge towards an external object. But the actual object of us going to refuge, mind that thinks I’m going for refuge to an external object becomes like a representative or a seed for the Dharma jewel to come about. So therefore it becomes like a representative, that virtuous thought so we have become like a representative or seed for us to develop those qualities. Now eventually based on this idea of going for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha we actually become a Buddha, Dharma and Sangha in ourselves and at that stage then the refuge and the refuge are the same thing.
But up until that point because we don’t have the refuge objects within ourselves then we are going towards an external object and the thoughts that we develop in order towards going to that external object become like representations of the final thing that we will achieve. Do you understand? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
So he said, now is refuge clear? It’s not easy to understand. Okay. So there is no place where there is no Buddha. Right?
So and the other thing is that because the Buddha is pervaded by the compassion to help beings, Wherever there is someone requesting help there is Buddha. And the other thing is that the Buddhas don’t find it difficult to go into these existences because there’s nothing that they’re afraid of and they don’t experience suffering. But it’s difficult to get out of the lower realms even though there’s Buddhas there because you have to have the idea of requesting the Buddha for help in order to get help. It’s the mind that’s requesting the Buddha for help that becomes synonymous with blessing, right? Or becomes the same thing as blessing.
So if you’re not doing that then there’s no blessing or there’s no benefit. Therefore because the beings in the lower realms don’t have the ability to enact like to request benefit or to request blessing from the Buddha, then they don’t get it, even though the Buddha is there. Okay so the experience of the lower realms is one where it’s very very almost impossible to develop a virtuous mind yeah so The way to actually achieve a positive rebirth is to develop a virtuous mind and the easiest way to develop a virtuous mind is to have a sense of refuge. Like it said in the text there, we have a sense of refuge and we have a sense of faith in the Three Jewels or a jewel depending on the belief system then we have the ability to stop experiencing the results of negative karma and to continue to be reborn in positive places. The way that we develop that positive karma or that positive virtuous action is to first of all to have faith or like the Buddha, to like Buddhaness, yeah?
If that makes sense, not the Buddha but Buddha, yeah? To like Buddha, right? And from liking Buddha you develop faith in Buddha. So having faith in Buddha is a sense of refuge. And so through that sense then you don’t get born in the lower realms.
Now for beings who are already in the lower realms, it’s not like we can go, Hey, want to help you out and pull them out. We can’t do that. It’s not possible. The only way for beings to get out of that existence is for some positive karma from the previous existence to ripen. We can assist in that coming to being but we can’t actually pull them out of the situation that they’re in.
The only way to get people out of that situation is to actually explain the path to them because if they have their path explained to them then they’re able to put it into practice, they’re able to get out of experiencing suffering. This is why the Buddha explained the path. It’s not like we can go, we see someone in mud or in a situation and go, I’m going help you out and pull you out. It can’t work like that. You have to have the ability to show the path correctly before you can get them out of that situation.
Okay. So It’s not like busting people out of prison. Because if it was like busting people out of prison, the Buddhas would have got us out of here already. Yep. Okay.
So what blessings are is if we have faith in the Buddha then that is blessing. It’s like the same way of thinking of a blessing, right? Because by developing faith in the Buddha then we’re doing a positive action. By doing a positive action we’re developing our understanding. So faith and blessings are the same thing.
Okay, so when you’re saying, it says in the teachings please bless me to do this, please bless me to this, what he’s saying is please give me this understanding, please develop this understanding. Okay. So okay. So the reason in actual fact all positive actions or positive things are like blessings of the Buddha because if it wasn’t for the Buddha activity, then there would be no understanding of positivity and there would be no positive action. If there was an explanation of positivity there wouldn’t be positive actions so therefore all positive actions are the blessings of the Buddha.
You’re actually asking for blessings in Tibetan the expression is jinlab Yeah? And jin means to get rid of negativities, and lab means to create positivity. So it’s saying get rid of negativities, create positivity. And then we do this through understanding. So we have this idea of I do positive things and I have virtue.
And this is actually impossible because if we didn’t understand virtue or if we didn’t any virtuous action we do is dependent on the activity of the Buddha or the blessings of the Buddha. Yes? Yeah. Sure. What?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh-huh. Okay.
So just for the record, imprints of karma are not karma. Anyway, Okay. And now the whole idea Okay. So because we have no independence, yeah, or we don’t have true independence, then we have to find a way to get it or to get autonomy. So because we are under the influence of karma and delusions then we have to find a way to develop true autonomy or true independence from karma and delusions, right?
Now we do have a little bit of autonomy at the moment because we have developed very good conditions here. Have a human rebirth and we have the tendencies or the very good imprints towards practicing virtuous actions that’s why we’re actually doing these things at the moment. So this means we do have a little bit of autonomy in those actions because we’ve developed the right a good enough situation to develop a little bit of autonomy. We don’t the whole point of the teachings on the precious human rebirth is that we don’t waste that tiny little opportunity that we have to develop true autonomy instead of being brought back under the influence of karma and delusion instead of having the stronger influences of karma and delusion overtake us. We have to put in a lot of effort in order to exercise that small bit of autonomy.
So, So, you have a tiny little bit of independence ability to do. So because most actions that we do are under the causes of karma and delusion, anytime that we can break out of that and do a tiny little positive action, that means we have a tiny little bit of independence. Okay, so when it says we don’t have any autonomy, what it’s talking about is we don’t have any autonomy or independent ability to stop ourselves from being reborn into the next life to stop ourselves from experience suffering. It doesn’t mean that we have absolutely no autonomy because we do have the ability to practice Dharma in small ways. Yeah.
So because of that there we have a tiny bit of autonomy. But what it was referring to in the text was the ability to choose our next life or choose not to experience suffering. So, yeah, of course, any action that you the propensities towards positive things comes from actions that you’ve done in the past because if something didn’t come from actions done in the past, it’d be inherently existent. Yeah. So pervades everything.
I think so probably. Is that okay?