Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute commentary, Geshe Pema Tsering uses a vivid analogy to anchor the session: just as passengers don’t fly under their own power but travel with the plane, loving kindness, compassion, and altruistic intention will hitch a ride when practitioners focus on Tonglen — giving and taking mounted on the breath. From there he explains the qualities of a Buddha’s body, speech, and mind as the logical argument for why Buddhahood, not lesser goals, is worth pursuing. He then walks through the Bodhisattva vow ceremony in practical detail — the need for a qualified teacher, the distinction between common and uncommon refuge, and the revelation that the short prayer recited at the start of every class is itself the heart of the aspirational bodhicitta vow. He closes with four practices for keeping those vows alive: building aspiration, reciting the prayer six times daily, never mentally abandoning sentient beings, and continuously accumulating merit and wisdom. Suitable for practitioners already familiar with the seven-point cause-and-effect meditation and Tonglen.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 SoP 2004 11 14.mp3
UUID: 7a19a9d0-685f-4850-86d9-d81911261fdc
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-11-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.6 minutes
Words: ~3,528
Okay. So please develop the right motivation for listening to the teachings. The best motivation that we can have for listening to the teachings is the motivation of bodhicitta. So if we develop the idea that we are listening to the teachings in order to be of benefit to all sentient beings, in order to be of the most benefit we can for all sentient beings, that is to lead them to the state of a Buddha. The section we’re actually going through today is about bodhicitta.
If we want to develop bodhicitta we need to know what bodhicitta is. It’s a particularly particularly good that we have this motivation today because it accords with what we are looking at So that we can learn about bodhicitta in order to be able to develop bodhicitta, in order to become a Buddha, in order to lead all other beings to that state. Okay, now we found where we were. We’ve been through the mind training practices to develop loving kindness and compassion towards other beings, the exchange of self and others. And then we talked a little last week about the development of special insight or the altruistic motivation.
So this means that developing this idea as we go through the text, developing the idea that if we really want to benefit these beings that have shown us great kindness and that we are indebted to, then we need to do something about it ourselves. And When it starts talking about bodhicitta, says the only real thing that can help them is if we become Buddhists. Any other work that we try and do for them is going to be in a very limited capacity. So if we really want to help them, then we need to become Buddhists. Now, then, in this section that we’re just up to now, it describes why we need to become Buddhas.
What it specifically is about a Buddha’s body, speech and mind that is so able to benefit, beings. And the first then is the benefits of the Buddha’s body. Now the first thing that we need to discuss then is the positive qualities of a Buddha’s body. Now a Buddha’s body isn’t the same as our body because it has what’s called a clear it’s clear of all negativities and it’s clear of all things that could cause suffering in it. The body of a Buddha, because it is a result of pure karma, has no suffering in it and so it acts as a source of happiness for not only the Buddhas themselves but for anyone who has anything to do with them.
Just by being around a Buddha we experience a sense of happiness because of their physical equilibrium and their positive influence on us. The second set of good qualities of a Buddha are the Buddha’s qualities of speech. Now, without effort, a Buddha is able to discuss, has the sixty limbs of perfect speech. It means that in every moment when they are speaking they are able to deliver exactly what the person who is listening to them needs to hear in order to progress to Buddhahood. They are able to show the Dharma perfectly in every moment in any way that is applicable or is appropriate.
Now the qualities of a Buddha’s mind is that Buddhas are said to know all. That is they are said to know all relative phenomena and all ultimate phenomena. So they everything that is to be known about the view and everything that is to be known about that which we can interact with and they see these things directly. So this means that because they hold all sentient beings as being like their only child and have great compassion towards them and are acting in every moment in order to benefit all sentient beings. This motivation in combination with these good qualities means that they are beings best able to benefit all beings, all other beings and lead them to a state beyond sorrow.
With their body they cause beings to be happy and just being in their presence creates happiness for beings and also enables their body is so blissful that it enables them to not have to be distracted by any problems with the body. Also their speech is so perfect and has all these good qualities in it and it can deliver the essential dharma at exactly the right moment to all beings and to everybody listening to it. Their mind has ability to know also it knows exactly what to say and exactly what to do. Lots of times when we talk about things we’re saying it’s like this but we don’t have a direct experience of it. But Buddhas have a direct experience of everything so everything they say comes from a position of knowing completely.
Okay. So what this means in short is that all sentient beings I mean, sorry, all Buddhas have completely gotten rid of all negativity, faults. They’ve completely gotten rid of all types of faults and they have accumulated all positive qualities or all types of qualities. In this way, they are said to be completely perfect Buddha. And it is only completely perfect Buddhas that are able to totally totally satisfy the the requirements of their own goals and the goals of others.
So it’s only fully perfected Buddhas that are able to lead other beings all the way to Buddhahood and have finished perfecting their own or finished achieving their own goals perfectly. Okay. So, because this is the only way to totally benefit all sentient beings, because this is the only way that we can know exactly what sentient beings need and because in order for us to lead other sentient beings into a state of Buddhahood, we need to have first gotten there ourselves. Then it is the only goal that we should be working towards. Any other goal that we could be working towards won’t be able to benefit sentient beings in the same way as working towards Buddhahood.
Given this and given how kind all sentient beings have been to us, given the debt we owe them because of this kindness, and given the suffering that they are experiencing, then we should think in order to benefit them we will quickly, quickly work towards becoming Buddhas, achieving the state of Buddhahood and therefore be able to, as Buddhas, work solely for their benefit in the best possible ways. This is the description of why we should be working towards Buddhahood. Now the actual practice links up with the reviewing of the stages of the Path Prayer and the Guru Yoga then is that we should imagine our teacher inseparable from the deity in front of us and ask for their blessings that we develop the understanding of this which is described in verse ninety nine of reviewing the stages of the path where it says: In order to rescue all beings from the vast seas of existence, we seek your blessings to become adept in bodhicitta through a pure selfless wish and by love and compassion conjoined with the special technique of mounting giving and taking upon the breath. Okay. So this verse, Geshe la’s given us a much more kind of colloquial rendering than the translator.
Says that through a pure selfless wish and by love and compassion conjoined with the special technique of mounting, giving and taking upon the breath. Now mounting giving and taking on the breath is Tonglen, is what we were talking about before. The idea of sending out happiness to other beings when we experience it or when we’re meditating and taking in their suffering and having that dissolve into ourselves. So this is the idea of giving and taking, mounting giving and taking upon the breath. Now, Geshe-la said that when we practice that an airplane can take a lot of passengers overseas, that loving kindness, compassion and the altruistic motivation will hitch a ride with our Tonglen practice.
He said they’ll come along for the ride in the same way as the people aren’t individually flying overseas, the aeroplane is, but the people come with it. If we focus on Tonglen practice, we focus on giving and taking then compassion, loving kindness, altruistic intention will come along with them. They’ll come along. In order to bring this about, in order to develop a selfless wish, then we are asking for blessings because there are so many beings experiencing suffering that we need to get them out of saṃsāra. So then if we are actually doing the practice of the Guru Puja, after we have said this verse, when we are meditating on this verse, then we imagine that from the deity inseparable from the teacher that we are visualizing in front of us from the body that we are imagining That five different colored light nectars flow down to us and they purify our continuum and the continuum of all other sentient beings.
So this means that we visualize it through this process then all obstacles to perceiving this pure selfless bodhicitta are obliterated and they develop this realization. The next step after spending a lot of time working on the seven point cause and effect process to develop love and kindness sorry to develop bodhicitta in combination with the exchange of self and others then when this experience becomes really strong and when it becomes really potent then the thought that will keep coming up in our head is what’s called aspirational bodhicitta so there’s two different types of bodhicitta the aspiration to achieve enlightenment and engaged bodhicitta which is actually performing actions to get to that state. So if we keep meditating and if we keep thinking on the seven point cause and effect thoughts that lead to the development of bodhicitta in combination with exchange of self and others through practices like Tonglen giving and taking and so on then what eventually happens is that we get this very strong thought, this very strong uncontrived thought that we wish to work towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings. Okay. So what happens then is that the next thing to do then is to be part of a ceremony in which you take engaged bodhicitta vows or do the vows of a Bodhisattva, specifically in this case the vows of aspirational bodhicitta.
Now, what you need in order to take these vows, what you need in order to participate in these ceremonies, is first of all a fully qualified Mahāyāna teacher and you need to request them to grant you the vows. So you need to find someone who actually has the vows themselves and maintains the vows and they can then pass them on to you. Before you actually take the vows themselves, the next thing you need to do is to make an offering to these teachers. First of all you’ve requested them, then you make an offering to them, then you take refuge. Now the refuge that you take in this instance isn’t the same as what’s called common or normal refuge.
In a common or normal refuge ceremony what we do is take refuge or look towards the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha for guidance. Thinking that only through the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha can we actually attain true happiness. So this is the normal process of a normal refuge ceremony. But when you actually take a refuge in combination with Bodhisattva vows, you take what’s called uncommon refuge. Now when you’re taking uncommon refuge, you’re not just thinking about your own benefit, you’re thinking about how what you’re doing will benefit all sentient beings.
So you’re going to refuge in order to benefit sentient beings. The objects you’re going to refuge for refuge to are still the Buddha, Dhamma and the Sangha, but in this case you’re seeking to attain the state of the Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings as opposed to in order to alleviate your own suffering. The motivation is different, the actual refuge is the same but the intention with which you are going to refuge is different. This is what’s called the uncommon refuge. After you’ve taken uncommon refuge, you then take the vows or make the promises of aspirational bodhicitta.
So The actual way that the ceremony is conducted is described this is the ceremony for taking aspirational Bodhisattva vows. The ceremony is described in detail in the Lamrim Chenmo, the great exposition on the stages of the path, I think it’s called in translation. So in here, Lama Tsongkhapa goes through in great detail to describe how you take the Bodhisattva vows and what you need to do. But most essential part of this vow ceremony is actually taking as a vow the prayer that we say at the beginning of teachings every time we come to teachings. So this is the prayer that says, Right?
So you recognize it? Yes. Okay. So when we say, that’s the Buddha. When we say, that’s the Dharma.
And when we say, tongue is and, and then we say, Cho, Ki, Cho, that actually means the, greatest of congregations or the greatest of assemblies, and it’s talking about the Sangha. And then it says, next line says, and that means until I reach enlightenment. So usually when we take refuge vows, we take them until our death, but when you take vows as part of the Bodhisattva ceremony, you take them until your attain enlightenment. So, refuge goes until the end of this life, and special refuge for Bodhisattva vows goes until enlightenment. Until we become enlightened, and is the person doing it.
That means me. And it says is the way of saying I go for refuge. So the next line we say is and that’s me again or whoever saying it. Chin sok means collect chin is a practice of generosity and sock is etcetera. So it’s talking about the practice of the other five, the five perfections so when we take the aspirational Bodhisattva vows what we’re actually doing is having aspiring towards practicing the six perfections so we can attain Buddhahood because the practice of the six perfections is how we attain Buddhahood.
So these next two lines actually refer to the aspirational bodhicitta vow. Daki tinsok ki pete that means anything that I do that’s positive has got to do with the six perfections. Sunnam ki is merit and then Rola Panchir in order to benefit all sentient beings and then it says Sangye again which is Buddha, Druppashok which means may I become one. So I just thought it’d be helpful to say it in Tibetan because every time we say it, we say it in Tibetan. So, in the bodhisattva ceremony, the main part of the ceremony is actually saying this prayer, three times.
But when you actually say it in the bodhisattva ceremony, Bodhisattva Vow ceremony, at the third time you’ve said it, you actually think of yourself as having taken on the aspirational Bodhisattva vows. And the reason that we say it at the beginning of teachings is to remind ourselves of these vows or to remind ourselves of the motivation with which you become a Buddha. So then once we have taken the bodhisattva, the aspirational bodhisattva vows, then there’s things that we need to do to stop these aspirational Bodhisattva vows from disintegrating or to stop us from losing these vows. We should think, okay, I’ve taken these vows now and I need to do everything I can in order not to lose them. So the first thing that we should do is to try and increase the sense of aspiration that we have when we do sorry, we should try and increase the sense of aspiration of Bodhisattva that we have.
Now the way that we do this is by reminding ourselves of what it is that we’re actually working towards and trying to build on that. It’s a good thing to take the vow, after that we need to keep building on our aspirational bodhicitta. So in order for us to remember the aspirational bodhicitta then we should say, especially this prayer, six times a day, three times in the morning and three times at night, or three times in the day, three times at night this will stop us from forgetting our Bodhisattva vow, our aspirational Bodhisattva vow because if we have to say a prayer twice a day, three times each, then we are less likely to forget it. So that’s two things that we need to work on. Need to work on increasing our Bodhisattva and we need to remember to say the prayer six times a day.
The third thing is that we need to not abandon sentient beings. Now what this means is that we can’t let them go from our mind, that we should constantly be thinking about sentient beings and we should try very hard never to have the thought that we don’t want to help sentient beings or that we don’t particularly want to help in terms of we don’t help them become a Buddha. We shouldn’t have this thought, I don’t want to help that person become a Buddha. We have to work hard not to let go of the idea of working for the benefit of all sentient beings. One.
The fourth one is that we should try to accumulate what are called the two collections. The two collections is a collection of merit and a collection of wisdom. We need to work hard to keep collecting wisdom, keep collecting merit because this is the two collections that we need to become a Buddha. So these are the four causes for us to keep developing bodhicitta and keep our aspirational bodhicitta vows in this lifetime. Okay.
So we can finish that for the day. So if you have any questions. Perfections? He doesn’t know. No.
He’s joking. Yeah. He said that he will go through them in detail because it comes next in the text. But yeah. He will go into them in more detail because that’s the next section of the text.
Roughly, the first of the six perfections is generosity. The second of the six perfections is ethics. The third of the six six perfections is effort, the fourth is patience, the fifth is meditation and the sixth is wisdom. So these called the six perfections or the six paramitas. What a paramitas or a perfect perfection is like the, you know, the kind of it’s it’s not a right fit.
Alright? The the word paramita or the Tibetan word actually means literally going to the other side. Alright? So it’s a a they they say perfection, but don’t know why. But it yeah.
So it means, like, completed. Alright? Now, so if we just practice generosity that’s not the perfection of generosity. If we just practice ethics that’s not the perfection of ethics. Why it has this idea of the Paramita or the perfection of these practices is because it’s combined with bodhicitta and it acts as a cause for us to become Buddhas and this is what the idea of going to the other side is about, the other side of Samsāra.
So if we give away things by or nirvana? Go the other side of Samsāra and Nava and nirvana. Alright? So beyond the duality of saṃsāra and nirvana. So if we, if we practice generosity, then we’re not necessarily practicing the perfection of generosity.
If we don’t have bodhicitta, like uncontrived this uncontrived, aspiration to attain enlightenment in our mind stream, then it’s very difficult for us to practice these six perfections, but it’s something that we need to work at. Thank you. Yeah. Yes. When you say offset the bow, that’s not just for this lifetime.
It’s for all lifetimes. Uh-huh. It’s probably a very dumb wisdom question. That’s okay. But you can think that when you take the vow.
You’re you’re able to conceive that of that idea when you take the vow. You know, it’s not about having to remember it in the next life. It’s about having the motivation, in that time when you’re taking the vows that you can, that you’re going to work towards becoming enlightened until you become a Buddha and for the benefit of all sentient beings. So Geshe la thinks that we must have at least done this kind of thing in a past life. Otherwise, he doesn’t think we would have ended here listening to Buddha’s teachings and having faith in the Buddha.
So if you do these things then it he said we must have most probably meditated on bodhicitta before, we’ve most probably meditated on Refuge before. That sets up a situation where we recognize it and have faith in it in the next lives and gives us more chance of having precious human rebirth. No questions? Okay. So, no.
You don’t need to be a a bodhisattva or someone who