Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Geshe Pema Tsering opens this 18-minute discussion by clarifying a subtle point from the Sublime Continuum: the naturally abiding Buddha lineage is the emptiness of minds suitable to become a Buddha, while the developmental lineage refers to those minds and their transformable qualities; because the naturally abiding lineage is permanent, Buddha potential as a whole is permanent. He then addresses the rarity of practitioners who combine strong refuge with sustained purification, and how a teacher might recognise a student’s particular inclination and adapt instruction accordingly. The session closes with an extended digression on the Tibetan word rik — type, family, potential, caste — illustrated through cultural comparisons and a Tibetan retelling of a Chinese folk story about the origins of the Japanese people. Informal and conversational throughout, suited to students already working through this text.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 24 2005 09 01 (2) SC.mp3
UUID: 4920febd-d1c9-4e9f-93d8-500cd3b759c2
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Sublime Continuum (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-09-01
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 17.9 minutes
Words: ~1,517
Okay. I know. Yeah. Decides to take his off anyway too. Thanks.
Yeah. Okay. So Where it says the reality of a stained mind, the reality means the emptiness. Yeah. Yeah.
So the emptiness is of a stained mind, and the the stained mind, yeah, is the basis for the emptiness. So it’s basically the emptiness of a stained mind. And it’s this emptiness of a mind that is suitable the aspects of a mind or the minds that are suitable to be transformed into a Buddha. So that’s the things that you take up, not the things you chuck away. Yeah.
Yeah? I understand that. So what’s the difference between He said more. The naturally abiding no. The other one.
The developmental lineage is the minds, not the emptiness of those minds. So the emptiness of the minds isn’t the minds that are suitable to become a Buddha, to be transformed into a Buddha is naturally abiding lineage. The minds themselves developmental lineage, the qualities that are suitable to be transformed into a Buddha. But both of them are the Buddha lineage or the Buddha potential, and because the naturally abiding lineage is permanent, then that makes the Buddha lineage permanent. Yeah?
Yeah.. Uh-huh. Gotta go they cry all the time in India. Oh, here. Here.
Have you have you seen how about the the Dalai Lama? Have you seen people did they go, oh, and start crying? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So you said that these these signs are not things that just come about any old how.
You need to have a refuge in order to have these signs. So, without sustained and strong refuge, you don’t have these signs. So, if we’re trying to lead people to the place where they do develop those signs, then you teach them all sorts of things. But to actually have that strong sense of refuge and have a disposition in one way is is something that takes a long time to get to. Uh-huh.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So he said that there’s not many people that he thinks that do a lot of things that are purifying and and accumulating positive merit and have that very strong sense of refuge. He said that if if people do have a strong inclination towards one of these things, becomes quite obvious, and they have a quite a strong feel for it as well, and you can see it very clearly that they’re much more suited towards one practice or another. Okay.
Uh-huh. So Uh-uh. Uh-huh. So Geshe-la said if you notice someone, for example, started having a strong reaction to teachings on Hīnayāna, would start teaching them that, would start teaching them that and encourage them to study in that tradition, for example. But he’s because I said, do you do that?
Do you see try and see and train people in different ways? And he said, no. No. I just follow the text that they tell me to. And I said, but if you saw someone having a strong reaction, goes, okay.
Yeah. Then I would do it because it takes a lot to do that. But, mostly, I just do what I’m told. Oh, basically, it’s not an easy thing to to to activate Buddha nature.
I I knew you had a question because. There’s one word in Tibetan that’s translated sometimes as caste, sometimes as rik. No, it is rik, anyway. It’s sometimes translated as caste, sometimes as type, sometimes as did I say type, family, class, caste, potential, all sorts of things. I was wondering, is that the explanation of the nature or innate or imprint that we we always have when we are born. Yeah.
And, you know, that Like, from our families and stuff? Yeah. It’s just touch to to create an our nature or this position of Mhmm. Your habit and sort of thing. Mhmm.
You know, that, you know, we already have a native native things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh-huh. Mhmm. Yeah. But insomuch as the type of person that we are, yes.
I mean, oh, this so get the Geshe-la made, I just realized he made a pun. I was like, oh, yeah. And then I think, how the hell would I translate that? So this word that means type, you know, you’d say perhaps that so so if someone comes out and they’re really is is born and they’re really smart and their parents are really smart, you’d say something like it runs in the family. Yeah?
That’s that’s their family type. That’s what happens to people from their family. The thing is in Tibetan, if you if you say someone’s really smart, use this word, rik again. Again. So it was like So but it means that their type is smart, their type is intelligent.
Yeah? They’re they’re they’re if you to say someone’s intelligent, you say they have the type of being, like, cunning, but not necessarily in a bad way. So indefinitely, in that case, we all have a type, and we were going to be affected by our our background. Alright? So there’s another word, another way that they use this word, he also said, is like for your race.
Yeah. So when the the word for Tibetan for race is the person, the race of people, like the person’s race. Also, the word for the like being a human is the same. Your is to be human. So the type, your type.
In Japan they explain it through blood. Yeah. Yeah. He said, yeah. The well, guess I guess I said the the type of Japan, like, the the Japanese type comes from blood because your parents were Japanese, that’s how you ended up Japanese.
So that that comes through your blood. The fact that you’re Japanese. Yeah? Yeah. That comes through your blood.
But he says, isn’t isn’t there different types of Japanese people? I’ve seen different types of Japanese people. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. So Geshe-la says in Tibet, they have a story about how the, Chinese the China no.
Where are you from? Japan. The Japanese emperor came to be. In in Tibet, they have this story. Japan and and it doesn’t came to Tibet?
No. In Tibetan culture, they have a story about how the Japanese king came about. Right? Because through China. So the China’s that they got a story from the Chinese about how the Japanese emperor came about.
And the the and Uh-huh. So the Chinese told the Tibetans that years ago, they took five hundred women that were born in the year of the dragon and five hundred men that were born in the year of the tiger and sent them to Japan, expelled them to Japan because they were so difficult. And that’s where Japan Japanese came from. That’s what the Chinese said. And and and before that, there was no Japanese there.
Do do do you know how people born you have that in Japan too. Yeah? Like, from China, that people are born in different years? So you’re born in the year of the dragon or the year of the yeah. So five hundred women born in the year of the dragon, and five hundred men born in the year of the tiger.
Because their tiger is very difficult. They said No. They were diff the people themselves were difficult. Uh-uh. So he had this idea.
It was it sounds like genetics. He had this idea if you sent people from the the the they’re very strong people. People who were born in the year of the the dragon and the year of the tiger are supposed to be very strong. So he thought that he would send them to there, and then they could be a very strong strong race of people. But but China sent it.
China sent them there. The Chinese king keeps them out and sent them to Japan. Sounds very Chinese, doesn’t it? Yeah. I heard that.
He said I heard that anyway. Oh, Japan. Don’t worry. They say they started Tibet too. So therefore, you guys are all supposed to have lots of qualities.
Be very, very smart and so on. Yeah. Okay. Not really. They don’t talk about blood so much, but they do talk about family lineage.
They talk about the lineage of a family, and that they come from a good family, and they don’t come from such a good family. And the idea of which family you come from is very important. But they also think that it’s very good to be a if you’re a woman to be born in the year of the dragon, and for a man to be born in the year of a tiger. He’s strong. That makes makes you very strong and have a lot of qualities.
But if, you know, if a woman is strong, it’s it could be nasty. Geshe-la is not saying anything. He doesn’t dare. He said, I don’t agree. Oh, is it okay?
Yeah. Because I think needs to go to toilet.