Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 15-minute Lamrim session, Geshe Pema Tsering highlights an easily missed prerequisite for calm abiding: the ten virtuous actions of body, speech, and mind are not separate from meditation — they are its foundation. Attachment and non-virtue make settling the mind impossible. A student’s question about concentrating single-pointedly on covetousness prompts a sharp clarification: stable focus on a negative object is not śamatha, because a negative mind cannot yield positive results. Geshe Pema Tsering then describes śamatha itself — a subtle, form-realm quality of mind rather than ordinary desire-realm consciousness, likened to a flame steady in still air versus one flickering in wind — and walks through the progression from breath-counting toward a fixed mental image such as the Buddha. He closes with a brief explanation of dedication.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 SoP 1994 03 21.mp3
UUID: 17c14ffc-ec87-43b0-9fc8-cfb5c45d4be6
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 1994-03-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 15.1 minutes
Words: ~993
Calm abiding. For example, if you’re practising the ten virtuous actions, then you’ll have a lot of attachment in your mind. If you’re doing the ten non virtuous actions, it develops a lot of attachment. If you have a lot of attachment, you can’t develop calm abiding. So in order to develop calm abiding, you need to be practicing the ten virtuous actions.
So in order for us to practice the ten virtuous actions, then we need to have gotten rid of attachment. And so we need to work on the attachment of body, the attachment of mind, the attachment of the attachments of speech. And so and if we haven’t controlled those, then there’s no way that we can calm our mind enough in order to develop calm abiding or śamatha. So, no, you also need to to meditate in order to develop calm abiding or śamatha meditation. But when you’re doing that, when meditation, in fact, is also very ethical, Because when you’re in a doing a meditation, first of all, have to control your body so that your body’s in a in a focused place.
You can’t have you can’t be performing negative actions of of body and actually be meditating. And you can’t be saying all different sorts of things and actually be meditating. So you have to have control over your, body and your speech in order to be meditating. And then the actual process of meditating, this acts as a base ethics of body and and speech act as a base for then developing a single point of concentration. And if you have single point of concentration, you’re not performing any negative actions of mind either.
So in actual fact, med meditation is getting rid of negative actions as well. So the the So when we talk about ethics, we usually talk about abandoning the ten nonvirtuous actions. So we have the three nonvirtuous actions of body, the four nonvirtuous actions of speech, and the three non virtuous actions of mind. If you are performing any of those actions, you don’t have calm abiding. There’s no way that you can develop calm abiding while performing any of those actions.
I say, what about if you can So what about if you can concentrate single pointed single pointedly on covetousness? Because and then, well, it would be easier, but no, it’s not calm abiding. It’s a negative mind, so there’s no way it can have positive results. Easier. Is the question finished?
Okay. Okay. So what calm abiding or what śamatha is is a very subtle form of mind that isn’t said to be of the desire realm. So it isn’t of the gross forms of mind that we usually experience in our normal existence. It’s a very concentrated, very subtle, stable mind or thought or concentration that is said to be by its nature of the form realm, the different realm of existence.
So the way that we develop this state of mind is by constantly focusing our attention on an object. Now if we watch the way that our mind works at the moment, if we try and focus on an object, say for example the statue of a Buddha, then we aren’t able to concentrate on that object for very long. Our mind wavers hither and thither like a flame in the wind. It can’t stay in a stable stable concentrated state. So what calm abiding is is, that ability to stay in a concentrated subtle state subtle meditative state for as long as we want to.
So we start off with a mind that flickers hither and thither and can’t concentrate, and we develop our concentrative abilities until we’re eventually able to focus on any object we wish, for as long as we wish, and we’re without any distraction. And the time that we should start trying to develop this ability is now whenever we have the opportunity. If you can meditate. So even breathing meditation is a form of Shamatha meditation. Because in breathing meditation, we’re focusing on the breath.
We’re not being distracted by anything else. So breathing meditation is a way for us to develop concentration. And eventually, after focusing on the breath that’s coming out and in, we’re able to focus on single pointedly on one thing that isn’t moving and in that way develop our understanding or our concentration concentrated ability. So anything, either as that preferably something virtuous, for example, an image of the Buddha, Śākyamūni or Tārā or a teacher or whatever, but it should be something that we are focusing on in the mind because calm abiding meditation isn’t something that is a development of a eye consciousness. It’s something that’s a development of a mental consciousness.
Please? Okay. Yeah. We could so if but you start off with the by starting off with the focusing on the breath, and you should be able to develop the ability to focus on the breath for as many counts as you want. Yeah.
So this starts as like an external focus. And then after developing that ability, if you would draw the mind inwards and you’re focusing on an internal focus, then you’re developing you’re developing your concentration on a single pointed object, whereas the breath is moving as well. So it acts as a stable base for developing subtler focus.
Yes. He said, so now we do dedication. So in the same way as when we started off, we had the right motivation for doing it. At the end of doing something, then we try and develop we try and dedicate it properly.
So the point of these prayers is that we’re saying, may this be a cause for for for myself and all beings to attain enlightenment. Maybe this be a cause for for myself to attain enlightenment to benefit all sentient beings. So we dedicate as well as developing the right motivation at the beginning.