Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The four black dharmas — actions that are always negative regardless of motivation — open this 45-minute session from Geshe Pema Tsering’s Stages of the Path series. He explains why lying to one’s teacher, discouraging others from virtue, disparaging bodhisattvas, and using influence to deceive can never be justified: unlike most negative acts, these four always harm the very objects — teachers, sentient beings — through which enlightenment is reached. The talk then turns to bodhicitta as the unique cause of Buddhahood, and traces the gap between occasional thoughts resembling bodhicitta and the spontaneous, ever-present motivation of an actual bodhisattva. Geshe Tsering closes by laying out what it means to take the engaged bodhisattva vows, drawing on Atisha, Ārya Asaṇga, and the Collection of Jewels Sūtra.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 18 SoP 2004 11 14.mp3
UUID: 6bf9897f-9fc3-490b-a2ab-897bb578346c
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-11-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.3 minutes
Words: ~3,461
I’m like, Kessler, is your mic on? I can’t hear you. And mine wasn’t on. Okay. Please develop the right motivation for listening to the teachings.
So the best motivation that we can have for listening to the teachings is that by listening to these teachings, we will develop the wisdom with regarding what we’re listening to, and then through that wisdom Come on, that wisdom, we will be able to practice the path of a bodhisattva and become a a Buddha, and as Buddhas, be able to benefit as the most beings in the best possible way. So please have that as your motivation for listening. So, we’re going through the things, the way that you commit to the engaged aspect of the Bodhisattva Vow. So the Bodhisattva Vow has two parts. There is this wishing or aspiration part of bodhisattva, that is the wish to become a bodhisattva, and then there’s the part where we engage in the activities of a bodhisattva.
Okay. So, there’s these two sections. There’s the aspiration or the wish to become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. Then there’s the actually engaging in the activities of a Bodhisattva that will bring about Buddhahood. From within the first section, then you make a vow, or you commit to aspiration, to keeping this aspiration in both this life and in future lives.
So last week we dealt with, or we went through the way we deal with it in this life, or the way we aspire to become a Buddha in this life, and now we’re up to the section where we are looking at making aspirations to keep on the bodhisattva path, to stay working as a bodhisattva towards Buddhahood in the next life and the lives following that as well. So it says in future lives, in order not to be separated from bodhicitta, from the aspiration of bodhicitta, then we need to refrain from, or to abandon, performing what are called the four black dharmas, or the four negative dharmas, and we need to get rid of them from our mind streams. Okay, so by abandoning these four negative actions, we then are practicing four positive actions. So the actual stopping from doing the negative is a positive in itself. So the first of these four negative actions, the destructive actions that we need to abandon is lying or deceiving our teachers or abbots.
So the people that teach us the Dharma, then if we lie to them or deceive them in any way, or try and deceive them in any way, then this is the first of the four negative actions that we need to try abandon. And the the second one, which I’ve forgotten already, it’s the last time. Sorry. So the second one is to discourage people from practicing positive actions, and try and encourage them to practice negative actions. So if someone’s doing something positive, it means encouraging them, saying that’s a really good thing that you’re doing something positive and trying to help them to do it.
The negative, that would be the positive aspect of this. The negative aspect would be to try and discourage them by saying, oh, what’s the point of praying, and what’s the point of meditating? It’s more fun to just sit around and have fun, just enjoy yourself, don’t worry about that stuff. Alright, so this is the second negative action we need to try and refrain from. The third negative action that we need to try and refrain from is saying bad things about Bodhisattvas.
It’s saying, disparaging them, spreading rumors about them, that kind of thing is the third one. And the fourth thing is using a position of influence to confuse or hide things from sentient beings. So there’s these two terms. One means to pretend that you’ve got something that you don’t, and the other one is to pretend you don’t have something that you do. So that would be to pretend you have a positive quality that you don’t, and to pretend you don’t have a fault that you do.
So to use a position of influence to do that. Okay, so the reason that these are called the black or it’s black or negative karma, no, actions, sorry. The black or negative deeds or black or negative karma’s the same thing, but anyway, is because under no circumstances are these things positive. Now every other thing that we may consider to be a negative action can be motivated by a positive motivation. So there’s things that are usually motivated by a negative or a selfish motivation that in the when they become the the work the actions of a bodhisattva change their nature.
They stop being negative and start being positive, even things such as stealing or lying and so on. They can be used as skillful means to stop someone getting hurt or so on, but these four things are always negative. There’s no instance where you can have a It can be positive to lie to your teachers, lie to your abbots. There’s no instance where it can be positive to do that. There’s there’s no instance where it can be positive to manipulate sentient beings for your own ends.
There’s no instance where that can be positive. So this is why they’re called the four black or the four negative dharmas, because they’re never positive. All the other deeds that we talk about can become positive depending on what their motivation is, but these are never positive. Now the reason that they’re never positive is because of their object. Now that is the thing that they’re operating on towards.
So when we talk about lying to the teachers and abbots, you’re talking of the object that you’re lying towards or doing something negative towards is the people that are giving you Dharma. It can never be positive to lie towards them. Then it can never be positive to manipulate sentient beings from a position of Dharma because of the sentient beings are the objects by which we can attain enlightenment. If there was no sentient beings, would be my no bodhisattva. So this is why they are all considered to be negative because the objects the the the people who were doing these things towards always need to be respected.
Okay. So, this is why this is why, Atisha said in Okay. It is Atisha. Atisha said in the Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment, if you wish to enter into the door of the Mahāyāna, the practice of the Mahāyāna Dharma, then what you’re aiming to achieve is the pacification of the ignorance that causes suffering. You’re wishing to achieve clarity that wipes away the ignorance that causes suffering.
Now in this way the bodhicitta is like the sun and the moon in that it clears away this ignorance and if you need to work hard for a few eons to develop this, then that’s okay. So then it says that even if we need to work that hard for that long, then that’s what we need to do because it’s that important. So that’s not to say that it isn’t possible to develop it a lot quicker than that and it doesn’t mean to imply that we can’t do it because there are many many beings and many people who have achieved Buddhahood and many beings who have become Bodhisattvas and are following the path to Buddhahood, but it means that we need to put in a lot of effort in order to get there. So I just figured out that the word for thief and the word for spur sound exactly the same as I was going, you’re sticking people with a thief? No.
This bodhicitta acts as the mainstay for the practices of a Bodhisattva. In fact, without bodhicitta, you can’t practice the Bodhisattva’s way of life because you don’t have the impetus to do it. So, this, bodhicitta acts as a base that constantly pokes that makes hang on. How do I put it? That makes you perform positive deeds for the benefit of others without needing to be poked, right?
Without needing to be spurred along. It’s a constant motivating force for performing positive deeds that benefit others. So without then you don’t automatically perform the deeds of a Bodhisattva. Without this, it takes a lot of effort to try and do things that are positive for others. So this is why this, mind of, enlightenment, this bodhicitta is so important, because it changes the way that we look at things and makes us work towards enlightenment for the benefit of others as opposed to what we do usually, which is work for ourselves.
So there’s many things that can act as a cause for us to become a a Buddha. In order to be a Buddha, we need to have renunciation from Samsāra. In order to be a Buddha, we need to have an understanding of reality of Śūnyatā and realize or clear away the ignorance ignorance that grasps at things as being inherently existent. We need all these things, but the main cause for us to become a Buddha, what’s called the unique cause or the thing that we definitely wanna the thing that is the the peculiar cause for Buddhahood. It doesn’t cause anything else.
Alright? Without bodhicitta, we cannot become a Buddha. It is completely essential for us to becoming Buddhas. So because of this, then we really need to understand how important bodhicitta is, how essential bodhicitta is, and how much we should respect it, and then make prayer or put in effort, make prayers and put in effort that we are able to develop bodhicitta and that bodhicitta develops wherever it can, and then once it is developed, then it grows stronger and stronger. So The problem we face so far, the reason that we don’t have bodhicitta is because we haven’t put in enough effort.
If we put in the effort, if we worked at it, we would have been Bodhisattvas by now, so we can tell by looking at our state at the moment that we haven’t put in this effort because if we had done it, we would be Bodhisattvas. It’s not as if we can’t do it. It’s not as if it’s something that is, our position makes us incapable of achieving. All of us can become bodhisattvas, all of us understand what bodhicitta is, If we put in effort, then we actually have a mind similar to bodhicitta for a few moments. We have this idea of working towards enlightenment for benefit of all sentient beings, of working for others and not focusing on ourselves, of trying to attain enlightenment as opposed to trying to make ourselves happy in short term temporary ways.
We have an understanding of this, and if we think about this a lot, it comes up in our head. We have thoughts that resemble bodhicitta. Now the only difference between the thoughts that we have that resemble bodhicitta and the actual bodhicitta itself is the spontaneity of them. If it was true bodhicitta, if it was truly the mind of enlightenment, it would be spontaneously present in all of our actions. It wouldn’t be something that we needed to work at.
It wouldn’t be something that we needed to concentrate on analytically in order for it to develop. It would just happen, so we already have a taste of it. We already have an understanding of it. All we need to do is to meditate on that understanding again and again and again until it becomes so familiar to us, it becomes so spontaneous to us that that is our motivating factor for everything we do, our motivating force for everything we do. So it’s not as if we can’t understand this, it’s not as if we don’t have an idea of what it is that we’re working towards.
We do, and what we do need to have faith in or understanding of though is that if we keep doing this, if we do motivating ourselves, if we do keep focusing on bodhicitta and our understanding of it becomes subtler and subtler until it becomes spontaneous and ever present in our mind stream, that after that stage, working for others becomes easy. Working for others becomes something that we do spontaneously, as spontaneously as we work for ourselves at the moment. As easy as it is to make ourselves try and do something to make ourselves happy at the moment, we’ll be working for others towards Buddhahood once we have bodhicitta. Is there any way to turn that down? It’s like, I can’t hear anything you’re saying.
Right, sorry about that. I was having trouble understanding which one here is there’s two words that very similar and I’m going, which one was that? And all I could hear was the air conditioner going. So if we can meditate on this for a long time, if we get to or for a sufficient amount of time that we actually feel, even if it’s manufactured, this idea of working towards Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings. We understand why we need to do it and we feel completely committed to that idea.
Then if we take them in that state of mind, with that understanding, we can take what are called the engaged vows of a Bodhisattva. If we don’t have that state of mind, we cannot take the engaged vows of a Bodhisattva, so in order to take the engaged vows of a Bodhisattva, that is the vows where you actually commit to working towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings as opposed to aspiring towards enlightenment for the benefit of sentient beings. You need to have that idea. You need to have this solid idea of why it is you’re doing it and what it is you’re doing. So if you have that state of mind, then even in a manufactured form, even in a state that isn’t going to last forever, that you’ve worked on developing, And then with that idea of the importance of working towards enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings and the desire and the aspiration to do that, then you’re able to take the engaged vows of the Bodhisattva.
So So once someone has, developed this state of mind where they realize the, importance of working towards enlightenment to be of benefit to all sentient beings. And then has, with the manufactured sense of bodhicitta, or a manufactured version of this idea, is then able to take the engaged vows of a Bodhisattva. What they need to do after taking those vows is keep up the advice or keep up the recommendations of these vows. So when you take the engaged vows of a Bodhisattva, there are different parts to it. There’s many different sections that you need to adhere to in order to maintain the vows, but the essence of the vows is to work for others’ benefit and not your own.
The essence of the vow is to not do anything that harms others in order to benefit for yourself and not do anything that benefits yourself that harms others, So you’re constantly putting others before yourself. The essence of the vow is to put others before all other sentient beings before yourself. Given the way that our minds work, this is very difficult. It’s something that takes a lot of effort and is very tricky for us to actually maintain these bows. Okay.
So there’s many different ways to actually take the engaged the vows of engaged bodhicitta or the engaged vows of a bodhisattva and they’re described in many different places in Buddhist scriptures. Now, there’s one way that is in a text by Ārya Asaṇga. The text is called The Bodhisattva Levels and it’s got a chapter called the Vast chapter and in that he describes how to take the engaged vows of a Bodhisattva as does the Bodhicaryāvatāra and Geshe-la recites a verse very quickly from the Bodhicaryāvatāra that I don’t know how to translate so just try it’s in there. Sorry, I can’t translate on the spot. And then also there is a description of Mañjuśrī taking the engaged vows of a bodhisattva from Buddha Śākyamūni Śākyamūni in the Collection of Jewels Sūtra, and this way of taking the bodhisattva’s vows was then reiterated or again explained in Atisha’s Lamp on the Path to Enlightenment.
So he describes a process by which you take the engaged Bodhisattva vows, which is similar to the way that Mañjuśrī took them from Buddha Śākyamūni as explained in this Sūtra of the Heap of Jewels. What this shows is there’s also actually other descriptions. They call the Tibetans call India the land of the Aryas, the land of the the supreme beings, and it says that many different scholars from India described ways to take these vows, and there’s many ways that you can many different procedures that you can go through in order to take the engaged bodhisattva vows. But the thing to remember is that although there’s different procedures and although there’s different ceremonies, they all have the same meaning. Okay.
So the essence of all of these different descriptions of how to take the engaged Bodhisattva vows is that whatever the practices or the that you’re agreeing to, whatever the advice or trainings of a Bodhisattva are. So, if you take the engaged Bodhisattva vows, you’re agreeing to accept all of those trainings, to practice those, to practice in those ways in order to become a Buddha. So this means committing yourself to behaving in the same way as all of the Bodhisattvas of the past did, that were then able to go on and become Buddhas. So, you’re committing yourself to behave like that, and that you, your practices will become the deeds of Bodhisattvas in the future. So that is to say, in the same way that beings in the past have committed themselves to the Bodhisattva path and become become a Buddha, then as someone taking these vows, you’re committing yourself to practice in the same way in the future.
So then there is So there’s said to be bodhisattva practices related to the ten directions and the three times. As taking on these vows, you’re committing yourself to behave in all instances as a bodhisattva and that means to be putting into practice everything that needs, do as much as you can and do whatever needs to be done in order to benefit sentient beings of the three times and the ten directions. So all sentient beings have been your old moms in our past lives, and so in order for them to be taken as quickly as possible to the state of a Buddha, then you will do whatever it takes, in whichever place, and whichever time that it needs to be done, and you will not forsake this vow under any circumstances. So this is the commitments of the engaged Bodhisattva vow. In this way, we can see that it’s a huge commitment, it’s something that is very vast and very difficult to maintain, so it’s something that we can see how precious from looking at these vows, from looking at what bodhisattvas undertake, and we can understand the difficulties of the path to Buddhahood, but also the preciousness of the intention that leads people along this path.
That is the box. Yeah. Yeah. That is. Okay.
So if anyone has any questions. I ask. No. No. He said he no.
No. He said that they were coming in the text. See? We’ve only done this much, and we have this much to go. Alright?
And most of that is the six perfections. Okay. Sorry, I just remembered a joke. Okay, the six six perfections are generosity, ethics, patience, effort, meditation, and wisdom. And I just gotta tell you this joke because it’s funny.
We went to this Chinese monastery last week and there was a politician lady there, and she thought that the fifth perfection was mediation, not meditation. And she kept saying, oh, we need this fifth perfection in parliament all the time, and she didn’t understand why no one was laughing. We’re all just like, Anyway. Thank you. Is everybody else okay?
Yeah. He wants to know if you understood everything. There’s a tradition, and I have to say, okay. It was her last Tuesday. I said, it’s supposed to be a specific.
Said, it’s to But, anyway, the