Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with Je Tsongkhapa’s verse on precious human rebirth and the reversal of worldly attachment, Geshe Pema Tsering uses this 45-minute session to establish four foundations — precious human rebirth, impermanence, karma, and the shortcomings of saṃsāra — as the required groundwork before any practice qualifies as genuinely Mahāyāna. He then continues a thread on Tonglen (giving and taking), tracing the technique to Geshe Chekawa’s Seven Points of Mind Training and explaining how to expand it outward from oneself, mounted on the in- and out-breath. The session’s sharpest turn is on taking negative experiences onto the path: all suffering, he argues, arises from self-grasping rather than external causes, and this recognition converts obstacles into opportunities to purify karma and deepen bodhicitta. A lively Q&A closes with a memorable exchange about whether a policeman stopping a thief creates good or bad karma depending entirely on the officer’s motivation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 SoP 2004 08 15.mp3
UUID: 703324f3-81bc-4234-a6fb-0343261ef586
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-08-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~3,559
So in the three principal aspects of the path, Je Tsongkhapa said, leisure and fortune are difficult to find, and life has no duration. Through familiarity with this, emphasis on the appearances of this life are reversed. What this is referring to is that leisure and fortune are difficult to find and talk is talking about this life that we’ve managed to achieve, the precious human rebirth that we are now experiencing with leisure and opportunity. This experience that we have now is very difficult to find. We can lose it easily and we really need to take advantage of it.
When it says that life has no duration, this is in order to remind us of impermanence. However, even though we may be experiencing a positive rebirth at the moment, that this won’t last forever. So what we need to do is, therefore, familiarize ourselves with these ideas, with the concept of leisure, with the concept of a precious human rebirth, with the concept of impermanence and also to think about how through karma, through the cause and effect process, anything positive that we do brings positive results and anything negative we do brings negative results. So if we think about these three things then turn away from our mind turns away from the things of this life, the worldly things that we could consider important but in the face of these truths that cease to be as important now if we focus on these things again and again what we do becomes a Dharma practice becomes something with the right motivation that is at least a motivation of focusing on a good rebirth in our next life. So the next verse then goes on to say, if you think again and again about deeds and their inevitable effects and the sufferings of cyclic existence, the emphasis on the appearances of future lives will be reversed.
In the previous verse, we were talking about stopping our attachment to the things of dislike. In this verse, we were thinking about stopping attachment to the things of future lives. If we’re thinking again and again about karma, about the process of cause and effect, how positive thoughts positive deeds bring positive results and negative deeds bring negative results. And then we bring in we also think about how this leads to this continuing birth and rebirth of cyclic existence and how we don’t want to be caught up in this process, then we’ll develop a mind searching for liberation. So by focusing on our precious human rebirth, how life has no duration or impermanence, we turn away from this lifetime and through focusing on inevitability of cause and effect and suffering of cyclic existence, we develop renunciation from future lifetimes and from saṃsāra.
And after thinking in this way, then we need to extend our vision out to other beings because in the same way that we don’t want to be tricked by the things we may consider important in this life or experience rebirth again and again in saṃsāra, experiencing different kinds of suffering, then other sentient beings are exactly the same also. They don’t want to experience suffering. They want to experience happiness. So we need to develop the mind of bodhicitta towards all sentient beings and not just focus on ourselves. The mind of bodhicitta being that we want to attain enlightenment in order to be a benefit all sentient beings.
So none of us wanna experience suffering, and all of us wanna experience happiness. And this is the premise or the basis of bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment, the idea of working towards personal enlightenment in order to achieve in order to lead all other sentient beings to that state. But in order for us to develop this understanding properly, before we can start thinking of all other sentient beings, we need to understand our own situation. And these four different thoughts, that is the idea of a precious human rebirth, the idea of impermanence, the idea of karma, cause and effect, and the idea of the shortcomings of saṃsāra. These four things act as a basis for any practice that we may do that we may call Mahāyāna.
So if we have these four ideas, if we understand them and we think on them again and again, we understand our own situation, and then we can extend that out to others then we can make our motivation, the Mahāyāna motivation if we haven’t developed these ideas first then what we’re doing has no solid foundation, has no solid base so if we have those four ideas if we focus on these four things and then think and this is the same for all sentient beings must achieve Buddhahood in order to help all of them then what we do becomes a Mahāyāna practice, becomes an altruistically inspired practice. So try and go over these four ideas in your head very briefly, and then think because of these four situations or these four characteristics of my existence and the existence of all other beings, that’s why I’m going to listen to this teaching on Tonglen, on giving and taking. And that’s why I’m going to try and understand this practice and put it into effect. And may my listening to this description of Tonglen be a cause for me to understand it, able to practice it, and therefore become a Buddha.
So if we can quickly meditate on this process in your head for a few minutes, that would be good. So last week, we were going through the description of the or we went through the description of the practice of of giving and taking meditation as which related to verse ninety five from this prayer at the back of the Guru Puja This process of giving and taking meditation that was described in the text we are going through is a brief description of this practice There are many other texts that go into much more detail about the giving and taking practice There’s also different ways that you can do the giving and taking practice that are described by different teachers in different commentaries and they relate even to the idea of of giving and making our offerings to teachers and to the Buddha. So even with respect to making offerings to the Buddha, there are practices that you can do that involve Tonglen and even with respect to praying for the long life of your teacher you can do this in the form of a Tonglen practice as well and there’s different texts that go into a description of these practices So Vipakshana mara says in this text that he’s not going to go into it in detail here.
Last week, we the the description of the Tonglen practice or giving and taking was taken from this text. This text, a source, says that it is the Seven Points of Mind Training by Geshe Chekawa. In the Seven Points of Mind Training by Geshe Chekawa, he his notes said, to train in train expansively in giving and taking and start this process by giving and taking with yourself. Mount both of these on the breath. Train extensively in giving and taking refers to the expanding of the practice from one person to many and when it says start this practice by yourself that describes the idea of taking on your own suffering that you’re going to experience in the afternoon.
If you’re doing a practice in the morning take on the suffering you may experience in the afternoon as the beginning of your giving and taking practice so forth to the rest of your life and then expand it out to other people. To mount both of these on the breath means to follow the Tonglen practice, the giving and taking practice, based on the in breath and out breath. So this is the way that it’s described in the Seven Points of Mind Training by Geshe Chekawa, and this is what the Pänchen Lama in this text uses as a basis for his description. So the next section of the mind training text this mind training text the seven points of seven points of mind training coincides with the next verse from this graduated path prayer and it talks about the process of carrying negative experiences or suffering onto the path, of turning it into the path. Okay.
So in the the process of doing this practice of taking negative experiences into the path turning negative experiences into the path starts off in this context and in the context of this prayer as it comes from Guru Puja in the same way as all the other practices that are contained within this prayer by imagining that we are developing this understanding in the presence of our teacher who is inseparable from the deity we’re visualizing before us. Now, the particular thought process that we’re going through in this instance is based upon the idea that because of our grasping for things of this lifetime and because of our grasping at true sense of self, we have done negative actions. It says the ten non virtuous actions in order to obtain objects and obtain situations that we think are going to make us happy. Now we have done this and we continue to do this because of the habits that we have have developed in ourselves. Through the process of trying to acquire things, trying to make ourselves happy by getting material and worldly things material or, yeah, worldly things, then it appears to us that all of the beings of saṃsāra may be trying to harm us because they’re trying to take our worldly things away from us.
So if we didn’t have these afflictive emotions, these negative causes that we keep creating, then there’s no way that any of these beings could actually harm us. But because we are attached to things and because we want things then it appears to us that they are and not only that but if we actually try to practice purely or we try to practice Dharma properly then because of the negative afflictions in the minds of other beings, then they will try and stop us in one way or another, especially not only just other humans, but also other beings are said to be the nagas and the deities from the dark side. We’ll we’ll try and stop us from developing an understanding of the dharma purely so in general this happens when beings start to try to develop this understanding because it goes against their perceptions then they don’t want other people to think differently to them so they can create obstacles for people who are trying to practice properly so this happens when anyone is trying to practice any kind of Dharma but especially happens when beings are trying to practice the altruistic vehicle of the Mahāyāna because that presents more obstacles to those who I’ve got more my pages back to front.
That would present more obstacles to those who who would seek to have everyone stay confused. Yes. I was getting there. And it was just like, it’s somewhere, and it’s like, No. Confused.
Alright. Got it. So because of this situation, because of our wish to go against the tide of everybody else’s neurosis, then we need to be able to deal with obstacles that are going to come into our mind or into our experience in a very positive way Now, because this taking obstacles into the path practice enables us to do this, then it is said the that to attain realisations, to complete the path, develop perfections without practicing in this way is incredibly difficult. What taking negative experiences into the path enables us to do is turn things that could be a negative situation or a negative condition like a something that’s going to stop us from doing something positive into something that actually helps us practice. So obstacles become our friends.
Things that hurt us become an inspiration for us to be able to create more positive karma, for us to do more positive things. In this way, we can actually look at obstacles we can look at negative situations we can look at suffering that we may experience in the same way that we would look at our spiritual friend or our teacher in that they enable us to develop understandings in our mind stream or to develop understandings so if we think in this way then any experience any negative experience we have is actually a positive experience actually becomes an opportunity for us to develop enlightenment and it becomes our friend these negative experiences become our friends if we’re able to do this then we can actually if we are to do it properly, we can everything that happens to us becomes a cause for us to develop becomes a cause for us to work towards Buddhahood. And through doing this, we’re able to practice the path properly. So in this way, taking negative experiences into the path is said to be very important. So there’s two different ways that we can do this.
It’s said to be in terms of changing the way we think and changing the way that we behave. And the first thing we’re going to deal with is changing the way we think. Now the main way that we need to change the way we think is to is be is through developing bodhicitta. If we are developing bodhicitta, then all of these negative experiences become the path. And we can also turn things into the path by focusing on the emptiness, by focusing on the view, and focusing on the view.
That means that within the category of how to change your mind there is two different ways you can do it. You can do it through the development of bodhicitta and the development of emptiness. And we need to do both of these, but they have two different descriptions. Now the first of these we’re dealing with then is the process by which we turn experiences of negative experiences, experiences of suffering into the development of bodhicitta. The first thing we need to look at when we are trying to do this is the fact that whatever experience of suffering that we may have or agitation that we may have, we can’t blame any of those on anybody else.
Anytime that we may think that person did this to me, I’m experiencing this because of that person or this situation or that or whatever it may be. We’re kidding ourselves. Any experiences that we have are our own fault. Now the reason that they’re our own fault is because of this is everything. Sorry.
This is everything. All the stuff all the the illness that we may experience, all of the ways that people may harm us in some way, all of the different setbacks that we may experience in this lifetime. So in our normal way of thinking, we turn around and say that is because of someone else, is because of this person or this situation. In actual fact, if we want to know who the real culprit for any of these experiences is, then we need to look to our self and our own self grasping. It is because of our previous negative actions, it’s because of our engraftment, our grasping onto, our grasping at an experience of a truly existent self and therefore trying to placate that self with accumulations of things that, we have created the negative karma to experience this.
There is nothing that exists without a cause, and all of the experiences of suffering, that we have now are because of the negative causes that we created in the past and another way that we can look at this is if we are experiencing a experience if we experience suffering now an acute sense of suffering or loss that this is actually a great opportunity for us to purify negative karma that we have accumulated in the past so we have created many many causes for different types of experiences suffering in the past that we may not that we don’t even remember and so if we experience suffering now then that gives us the opportunity to to get rid of that, purify that negative karma we accumulated in the past and it would be much worse if we were going to experience rebirth in the lower realms instead of experiencing suffering that we have now. So in this way, any suffering that we come into contact with, any suffering we experience, we should think or we can think that this is actually suffering we’re experiencing through the blessings, of the teacher, because they, it it is much better for us to experience negative results of our suffering now in a human rebirth, no matter what their suffering is, than to be, reborn in lower realms.
And by experiencing them now, we are eliminating the experience that we are eliminating the experience that they may have caused of being born in lower realm. So it also gives any experience of suffering may we may have also gives also gives us an excellent opportunity to practice the giving and taking meditation because anytime we’re experiencing suffering we can think may this suffering that I am experiencing now be a sorry, may the suffering that other beings may experience because of the negative karma they have created ripen on me right now is this suffering that I’m experiencing alright so if we’re able to do that when we’re experiencing some form of suffering then that means that we are benefiting ourselves in terms of not focusing on our own experience and if we’re not focusing on our own experience so much we’re thinking about how all other sentient beings also experience suffering or all other sentient beings have created the causes to experience suffering and are now experiencing them, then that means that we won’t be as caught up in our own experiences suffering, and we’re creating a positive situation out of a negative situation by practicing giving and taking in that situation.
So we can stop there if you have questions. But guess who thinks this is a bit tough for us to do? It’s it’s something that we need you know, it may be difficult for us because the way that our mind works is that we’re thinking, I don’t wanna experience suffering. I wanna experience happiness. I want everything to be good.
And so to actually be sitting there and not experiencing suffering and thinking, you know, bring it on, is like a is a is a is something that’s difficult for us to to actually develop. That idea is difficult for us to develop. But the idea of doing it is that because bodhicitta is such a precious thing, because bodhicitta changes the way that we view things so completely, that if we developed if we man manage through this process to develop bodhicitta, then it means that we don’t experience we experience suffering as happiness because we’ve completely gotten rid of the idea of our own working for our own happiness. And if you’re focused on others’ happiness, you’re always happy. If you’re always focused on others’ happiness, you’re always happy.
Yes? That’s what Geshe-la said. It wasn’t the nagas and the deities from the dark side. It was he said that every experience that we have comes about because of our karma and our delusions and our negative experiences, and and so any suffering you have. And I was like, oh, no.
It wasn’t suffering. I just got confused. He goes, oh, well, that’s just because you’re confused. I said, so it wasn’t. It was just me being confused.
Yeah. If you take away your grasping for possessions Uh-huh. In ways, does that mean that you just let somebody else come and take them away from you? Uh-huh. Yes.
If if you didn’t have any self grasping, if a thief came to steal your things, they wouldn’t actually be a thief because you give it away. So and then you could think, oh, wow. Is this thief coming to steal from me? It’s actually an opportunity for me to practice generosity. It depends on their motivation.
If they’re stopping someone stealing something because they think, this person is going to commit a negative act, I have the opportunity to stop them from committing a negative act, and the person who wants their car can keep their car, then the policeman has great opportunity to create positive karma. If on the other hand, they are doing this in order to get a promotion, to get more power, to get money off the person that, may have had their car stolen, then that’s a negative karma, and they have a great opportunity to create many different types of negative karma. And I said, so so if they’re going to be like an Indian asking for a backhander, then that could be a problem. And he goes, there are some Indian policemen that I’m sure are doing it for exactly the right reasons, Although some of them want money also, as well as doing it for the right reasons.