Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The question driving this 40-minute Q&A is deceptively simple: which comes first — understanding emptiness or developing bodhicitta? Geshe Pema Tsering explains that the answer depends on the type of practitioner. Sharp-faculty beings investigate emptiness through reason first; once convinced it is possible to become a Buddha, they then cultivate bodhicitta. Dull-faculty beings — the majority — habituate themselves with bodhicitta until it becomes spontaneous, only later grasping why emptiness matters. The session then turns to a finer distinction: why any conceptual understanding of emptiness, even a correct one, is technically “mistaken” — and how that resolves on the path of seeing when direct, non-conceptual perception replaces inference. Mahāmudrā is briefly placed within this framework as a practice that follows, not precedes, both developments.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 SoP 2004 05 30.mp3
UUID: 8a355482-e1f2-4080-ba77-ec9dfe46c777
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-05-30
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 40.4 minutes
Words: ~1,323
Okay. So there’s a difference between these two different types of beings that we’re dealing with here. The beings of greater capacity or sharper faculty with these sharp minds, they understand perfectly well the reason why they need to achieve enlightenment, but they need to understand the means by which they can do it. So, they develop an understanding of emptiness before they develop bodhicitta because they understand the reasoning behind why they have to achieve enlightenment, but they don’t understand the means. They don’t understand how it is that they can bring that about.
So they focus on emptiness first so they can get a conviction in the fact that it is possible, that they can understand emptiness and they can become Buddhas, right? So that is the first type of being. And they are said to be very, very intelligent in the fact that they are able to perceive things. They don’t need to do as much processing in order to understand things, yeah? So that is the first type of being. The second type of being focuses, first of all, on the idea of working towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.
It’s only after that that they develop the idea or they develop the intention to understand emptiness. Because they don’t understand they need to understand emptiness until they want to become a Buddha. That makes sense. Alright? So one group of beings, one type of being needs to have the intention to achieve bodhicitta sorry, the intention to achieve Buddhahood before they want to work towards developing the understanding of emptiness. The other group have the idea of achieving enlightenment, but they need to know it’s possible.
And once they get conviction in it being possible by understanding emptiness, then they go on to develop bodhicitta. So there’s these two different groups of people and these two different approaches, and one of them focuses more on in terms of intelligence and understanding, and the other one focuses more in terms of method. Okay. So we can finish there. Thanks.
Okay. I can stop there and if anyone has questions. So he thinks that, Joe, you’re going have lots of questions because you’re being of sharp capacity and it’s difficult to understand. So he said now Jackie’s trying to Joe’s like, Joe’s got a sharp capacity. Have to show I do too.
Yes. Non-conceptual awareness? Yes. All concepts are mistaken, but they’re not wrong. There’s a difference between a mistaken concept and a wrong consciousness or a wrong idea. So when you’re on the path of preparation and the path of accumulation, you develop an understanding of emptiness, but your understanding of emptiness is a conceptual understanding of emptiness.
So, therefore, it’s a mistaken understanding of emptiness because it’s based on an idea as opposed to direct perception. Once you enter the path of seeing and you have a direct perception of emptiness, it ceases to be mistaken because it ceases be it ceases to have to rely on something else. So any conceptual understand of emptiness, even though emptiness is correct, any conceptual understanding of emptiness is still mistaken. What’s that? When you perceive emptiness directly on the path of seeing.
Yeah. Okay. Because anytime you perceive something directly, it isn’t mixed with a general idea we have of it. Okay? You perceive it directly.
It doesn’t have a it doesn’t go through any conceptual framing. Okay? It’s this is an idea of a general idea. Have all of our thoughts are mixed with a general idea of something. And when you perceive something directly, there s no mixture.
And when there s no mixture, then it s correct. While there s a mixture, s not clear enough to be correct. Yes. They wouldn’t necessarily develop the idea enough to come up with the fear. Okay?
So, a dull faculty person is someone who, if they don’t get it, stops persevering to try and understand it. They need to be have everything explained to them and they don’t investigate to find things for themselves. So they wouldn’t work at it hard enough to get that fear. So, the dull faculty people need to keep habituating themselves with something to develop the idea and their understanding becomes more subtle and more subtle and more subtle, and they develop the idea of bodhicitta first. They habituate themselves with it so much that it becomes spontaneous.
Sharp faculty people develop an understanding of emptiness first because they have the ability to investigate clearly. They can look into things to see whether it makes sense or not, and they can analyze situations in order to see whether the explanation of emptiness makes sense or not, and through that they develop a conceptualized understanding of emptiness. When they ve developed a conceptualized understanding of emptiness, it then makes sense them that they need to develop bodhicitta. And then they habituate themselves with bodhicitta. So they develop this conceptual understanding of emptiness and rely on their intellect more than their habits.
So, the main thing that we tend to focus on is dull faculty people’s path, because we explain all the ways to develop bodhicitta and tend to focus on the development of bodhicitta. Sorry because it s question time. I get to ask questions too. I said, Isn t it different if people are practicing Mahāmudrā and stuff like that as well? He said, Mahāmudrā is actually for those who have developed bodhicitta and have developed an understanding of emptiness.
It s After they have the basis of Mahāmudrā and of emptiness, it’s starting from the end point then. You have the development of emptiness, but in order to get to Buddhahood, need to realize the nature of the mind, so it’s starting from the understanding, developing the insight into emptiness and then working backwards from that. It s after all that. Because they work very hard to develop their understanding of emptiness through reason. And after they’ve developed their understanding of emptiness through reason, then development of bodhicitta after that is very easy.
So, it’s impossible for them to develop a direct realization of emptiness until they’ve developed a bodhicitta because it’s dependent on that motivation. So once they have developed the idea of emptiness, developing the idea of bodhicitta after that fairly easy because they understand why people are suffering and how they don’t necessarily need to be. And they also may understand that in order for them to develop this direct perception of emptiness, they need to do it with the motivation of bodhicitta. So, it makes it much easier for them to develop bodhicitta, but there is also the possibility of beings who realize emptiness and don’t develop bodhicitta and then enter the Hīnayāna path. Of not having any concept.
We have too many concepts. We don’t have any non conceptual mental perception. We don’t have any direct mental perception. Okay? When we perceive emptiness directly, then the mental concept of it’s not concept.
Mental mental concepts of things dissolve, and we have a non conceptual mental faculty. At the moment, we have a conceptual mental faculty. When we’re able to see them directly, we don’t have Uh-huh. Because we don’t have an idea. We don’t have mental direct perception, but we have physical sense direct perception because based on that idea of sense direct perception When you become a Buddha, you’ve got no conceptions left.
Therefore, you have no mistaken concepts left. Right? So if you don’t have a concept that’s mistaken, you’re a Buddha. You don’t have any concepts. You don’t have any mistaken mind.
Right? So you don’t get rid of them completely when you become when you perceive emptiness directly. You don’t have any concepts when you’re a meditative equipoise and when you go from the whole process is going from realizing emptiness to becoming a Buddha to get rid of your mistaken mind.