Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 12-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering explains painful emotions through a deliberately ordinary example: attachment to a car. The core teaching is that desire and aversion both arise from one-sided perception — seeing only the good in what we want, only the bad in what we hate — and the remedy is deliberately examining the overlooked side. He then turns to anger itself, arguing that scrutinising it directly reveals it as destructive rather than useful. For sorrow, the antidote is counting genuine advantages, especially the opportunity afforded by human rebirth, alongside a practical test: if a problem can be fixed, fix it; if not, accept it. A brief Q&A closes the session, reframing inner conflict as two competing desires that require honest evaluation of which is more beneficial.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 16 SoP 2004 08 29.mp3
UUID: 3ab3b416-c743-4dbe-82d4-be86d6ce551c
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-08-29
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 12.0 minutes
Words: ~1,069
Okay. So the problem usually with the way that our mind, has painful emotions is that we either don’t like something completely or we like something completely. So it’s either desire and attachment or aversion and not liking it at all. Now, the reason that we experience these painfully is that the way we perceive things isn’t the same way that they are. Right?
So if we are really attached to something, we really like it, we really want to hold on to it, it’s because we’re looking at all the positive qualities that that thing has and none of the faults that they have. Right? And if we hate something, it’s because we’re only looking at the horrible qualities of it and not the positive qualities. And we never look at things in a balanced manner. So, for example, if we’re very attached to our car, alright, and we think, love my car, it’s, you know, it’s wonderful, it gives meaning to my life, whatever, it’s because we are looking at the positive qualities of the car.
We’re not looking at the negative qualities of the car. We’re focusing on what the car does for us, how happy we are with the car. We’re not focusing on how much money we have to pay for it and so on. So, the way that we deal with getting rid of neuroses from our mind is that every time we have a negative emotion, every time that we are attached, every time we we hate something, every time we’re lustful or obsessed with something, you apply the antidote to that. So, if you have strong desire, then you look at the faults of the object.
So, if you have strong desire for your car or attachment to your car, you look at the faults of the car. If you have aversion or hatred towards something, then you look at their qualities. So you every time you experience one of these negative emotions, you apply the antidote to that. You you look at it in a more balanced way. So it’s a progressive thing, one thing after another after another.
So to this. So you can either look at the object for which we are focusing or the mind or the way we’re thinking. And so, for example, when we feel angry, we can we don’t necessarily have to focus on the object and see positive things in the object. We can just look at anger itself. And the way that anger usually presents itself to us is our friend, something that helps us get things done.
But if we start looking at anger, then we can see how pointless and destructive anger is. Anger doesn’t help anyone or any situation. Anger hurts the people that we are feeling angry towards, and it hurts ourselves. Eventually, it can cause death. Anger, uncontrolled, can cause death to ourselves, to others, and it also makes us ill.
So if we focus on all the negative aspects of anger, then we’re not gonna wanna get angry. Okay. The the antidote that you probably apply to sorrow is to look at the positive things that you have. Alright? So and no matter how bad you think your situation is, it can’t be that bad, because for starters, you’re a human.
Alright? So, to achieve a human rebirth means that you have the ability to process things and to understand things and to develop meditative realizations to use this lifetime to become a Buddha or a realized being. So you have that ability, so you have a lot going for you. There’s nothing Anything that you may feel sad about is completely outweighed by the positive things that you have happening for you. The other thing is to remind yourself of what you have in the temporary.
That’s what you can do in the final outcome. You can become a Buddha. You can become a realized being. Temporarily, Geshe-la said, you have food. You have a place to stay.
You have all the basic necessities. And so in a lot of ways, very have a lot going for you even temporarily as well as per as as well as ultimately. So in the in the short term, things happen to us, though. We experience illness. We lose things we want.
We don’t get things we do want. Did I get it right? I hope I got it wrong the right way. And so these things happen to us, and what we need to do then in those situations is if we can do something about it, we should do it. Right?
There’s no point being sad about something when we can do something about it. If we can’t do something about it, then there’s really no point being sad about it anyway. And I just have to accept that that’s the situation. And in that case, we can think, well, why wouldn’t I be different to anyone else? This happens to everybody.
Everybody in Samsāra, everyone experiencing suffering has this situation, so you have to see that we’re not the only person in that situation, and there’s no point being sad about it. Doesn’t help. Yourself. Conflict. Conflict.
Conflict. Conflict. Conflict. So I don’t I don’t quite understand you. Like, you’ve got, like, a conflict in your mind between yourself and yourself in a way.
Okay? Yeah. Okay. Your principle. Yeah.
Yeah. That’s what Geshe actually just said. He said, yeah, hang on. You can’t have you gotta see what I said, so you’re arguing with yourself. And he goes, you can’t argue with yourself.
And I was like, well, that’s you you see you kinda have one part of you saying this and one part of you saying that. He goes, Okay, then you have two principles, two parts of you that arguing. Case it’s not you arguing yourself, that doesn’t make sense. You have two, he said, you have two unconcordant desires usually. Right?
So you either have what you know you should do and what you want to do, or some other two things that don’t accord with each other, don’t work together. So in that case, what you really need to do is to examine the situation and see which is going to be the most beneficial. Thank you. Yeah. Krishnamurti??
Beautiful. It’s okay? Is that is that okay? Please. Yeah.