Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using the image of a woman transfixed by a diamond in a shop window, Geshe Pema Tsering opens this 19-minute session from the 2004 Stages of the Path series with a direct look at how desire hijacks the mind. His central analogy compares our weak spiritual antidotes to Tibetan resistance against Chinese military power — desire wins because it is simply stronger, and inner independence requires building equivalent force. The practical remedy is concrete: when a craving arises, interrogate it — “What does this piece of rock actually have that can make me happy?” — and recognise that the appealing qualities are projected from our own side. Audience questions then range from soccer and arrogance to how a mindful practitioner might approach voting. Suited to practitioners already working through Lamrim.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 SoP 2004 10 24.mp3
UUID: c7e9add8-77af-4563-a2b9-ac268e526730
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-10-24
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 19.1 minutes
Words: ~1,350
Yeah. Yeah. How does desire cause a suffering? Yeah. And If this is your person, it’s your it’s like, for instance, for example, some women to see a diamond at the store.
They get sick. Get sick. Yeah. Yeah. How do you tell me?
Oh, yes. Okay. Okay. No. The problem is that we become like a a slave to our desires.
Right? So the desires are in charge. We’re not in charge. We don’t have any clarity of thought. We don’t have any power over what’s happening in that situation.
We’re completely under the sway of our desires. So the desire’s in charge. And this desire is an afflictive mind that we have, a destructive emotion that is our mind stream. So when we experience that, that’s in charge. We’re not in charge.
So if the desire gets what it wants, then we’re alright. We feel happy. If it doesn’t get what it wants, then we feel miserable. So basically, we’re not letting ourselves be in charge. We’re letting the desires rule us instead of trying to be in charge of the desires.
So if we are letting something else rule us, then we have no choice in whether we’re going to be happy or not. We’re not in charge of whether we’re happy or It’s the desire that’s in charge of whether we’re happy. So we have to be able to recognize that a desire doesn’t make us happy, yeah, and try and be in charge ourselves instead of being under the sway of our desires, being under the rule of our desires. But it’s hard. So this is like very difficult because our antidotes to desire aren’t as strong as our desire at the moment, so it’s something we need to keep working at.
Our antidotes to desire, our practice of antidotes desire aren’t as strong as our desires at the moment. So it means that the desires overpower us, and we become under this sway, and we become unhappy or happy depending on whether we get what we want. Right? And so we don’t have the strength to negate or fight with the desires properly because we need to develop that. And Geshe la says it’s a bit like Tibet.
Right? Now Tibet doesn’t have much power, and the Chinese have a lot of power, so the Chinese are in charge. Yeah? That’s all good. Yes.
Hang on. So it’s like the so our So our desire is a bit like Chinese power in Tibet. Yeah? They’re in charge because there’s more of it. Yes?
And the Tibetan power isn’t very much. So whatever they throw at the Chinese to get them to to go away, it doesn’t work. Alright? Because there’s more power behind the Chinese government than there is behind the Tibetans. Yeah?
So he said it’s so in order to get Tibetan independence, they need to make themselves more powerful than the Chinese government. Right? Yes. So in the same way that if we wanna get in charge of desires, we need to make our antidotes more powerful than the desires themselves, our understanding of what’s happening more powerful than the desire themselves. So in the same way we need Tibetan independence, we need independence for ourselves from our desires.
Okay. So in the same way, yeah, we need Tibetan independence. We need personal independence from our desires. So the best antidote to start off with in terms of desires is to be able to recognize them and understand that they are in charge here and so not react to them as instinctively as we usually do. So to recognize this is a desire, I don’t need to follow it.
So the idea then is to see the faults of desire and see where desire leads us, and so therefore to not give into it as instinctively as we usually do. So for example, someone is attached to this diamond that you’re talking about, so this idea comes up of I need or I have to have that diamond. And so then if you’re going to apply the antidotes to that situation, you would think, why? Why do I need this diamond? What is it about this piece of rock that can make my life happy?
You know, what what does it inherently have that can make me happy? And then if we look at that process, there is nothing there but a bit of rock, and all of the qualities that we put onto it are coming from our side. And are they making us happy? Are projecting those qualities onto that rock making us happy? No.
They’re making us unhappy. So what’s the point in engaging in this process? So if we think about desires when they come up in this way, then we’re able to disengage ourselves from our desires and get more independence for ourselves. Disengage. The yeah.
Like, the the the the word in Tibetan is to the mind grabs hold of objects, so to ungrab, disengage. Matthew. Matthew. Matthew. I can’t couldn’t see you.
You have to do a sideways hand. Oh, did you? I didn’t even see that. Cookie. He’s just waving, making sure.
Geshe-la is sorry to do this to you. Geshe-la says that perhaps your problem with soccer isn’t so much desire as arrogance? Because he I’m sorry for being picked on. Because he said that he thinks that you probably know more about soccer than almost everybody here and almost most people in Adelaide. So that he said that it would be difficult if you know that much about soccer not to have arrogance, so he thinks that And he said, so you may have He goes, yeah.
Yeah. So there’s a problem of having a team win, and then it also must be a problem of, I’m good. I am am I am am with other people and knowing you’re good. Go figure. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. But it’s kind of a backhanded compliment because it makes me think he’s good. Okay. Geshe la said you don’t necessarily need to focus on their faults.
You can focus on which one will be of the most benefit. So if you’re focusing on which one you think would be of the most benefit to the most people, then you would vote for them. It gets to say, yeah, because any of those things that we’re making a judgment on someone’s personality or what they appear to be like, we don’t know. We can’t read other people’s minds. So it is much more valid to look at what they’re going to do, what they have done and how what they’re going to do is going to benefit people and make a judgement on that as opposed to trying to understand someone when we can’t read their minds.
He doesn’t think that most people are practicing mind training when they vote. He said that that that most people are that most people aren’t practicing mind training when they vote. Right? They’re thinking about what’s in it for them. Yes.
What how much more money they can get from one person than another. They’re not necessarily thinking about the greater benefit. They’re thinking about what they’ll get from it. So they’re thinking about how much more money they’ll get, and then they’ll think, okay. By doing this and doing this, then they’ll get more money.
So therefore and they’ll feel they’ll be better off, so they’re focusing on themselves on themselves and their vote. So so he thinks that people liked what John Howard was doing and what he would continue with what he said he was going to do, so they voted for him. And they looked at what Mark Latham was going to do, and they didn’t like it, so they didn’t vote for him. He said even if you looked at a day in a one day in the life of Australia, you can see the enormous difference between what we have here and what they have in other countries and what that brings us.