Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using the image of a bow-and-arrow maker who is ultimately killed by his own arrow, Geshe Pema Tsering addresses a pointed dilemma: what should you do when someone consistently returns your sincere kindness with harm? In this 21-minute session from the Wheel of Sharp Weapons commentary, he traces such situations to a specific past-life cause — having gone against those who treated us well. He reinforces the point with a vivid contemporary illustration: a nation that manufactures and sells missiles is later struck by them. He then broadens the scope to suffering within families and communities, including his own Buddhist centre, showing each difficulty to be self-created rather than externally imposed. The session closes with an aspiration — directed toward the visualised guru-deity — to commit only to virtuous karma going forward.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 w of sw 2002 03 31.mp3
UUID: 8381e6f4-3e8c-4db7-9db9-549af089a42d
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Wheel of Sharp Weapons (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2002-03-31
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 21.4 minutes
Words: ~1,304
Moving to the next point which in such a situation when say whether you’re a student and teachers or whether you’re in the family, from your side you do like your best to help them and do every means to help them and benefit them. But then in return, if you are if you’re if you’re always receiving wrong like, I’m sorry, harm from them. If you happen to receive always harm from them, even if you give the best food, delicious food to them, but then they never give back, they give the worst back to you. If it if it happens like that So we we with our heart from from the depth of our heart, we wish them good. And and but then they react always negatively.
So so whatever good you do towards others, that you are getting as a reward. They they always going against you, like they are going against you. If that happens to you, if that kind of situation you face, then it’s also the result of past karmic actions. That in one of our previous life, we we have, what do you call, we we haven’t we we went against others advice. Whatever others have done good to us, but we went against them.
So it’s the result of that. So so in that kind of situation, like, even if you do good to others and if others behave badly towards you, you shouldn’t act badly towards them? So in our cases, what we do normally is we when we do something good towards others, we hoping good towards us to be done. Good good from others to to us too. But instead, if we receive bad from others, then we tend to forget that.
We tend to tell others to that person is not good because we did certain such good, but I was doing bad. So we tend to ignore those kind of bad people. So so even if that situation happens, we shouldn’t go like do sorry, react react badly towards them. We should always react in the with the motivation of benefiting them and and always do good towards them. And if you if you react badly, then again, that circle that circles back and in one’s next life that one experiences that type of result.
So as presenting things, we face different things. Something that sometimes things that we desire, we like, we face them. Sometimes things we don’t like, we face them. So we live like that, that if something good happens to one, then we are happy about it. And we say good things about whoever is giving the happiness to one.
And if something bad happens to one, we don’t like it, we are unhappy, and we blame others that this person does this and that. And that way, our attachment and hatred arises. So the good or the favorable condition that one experience is the result of our past actions. Again, our good actions. And unfavorable condition that one experience too is a result of our negative karma that we have committed in our past.
For example, like a blacksmith. So for example, somebody manufactured a bomb. And we have a manufactured bomb. And then later on, that bomb explodes. And if it kills the person himself, then who create the cause to be killed himself, the person who made or manufactured the bomb?
And for example, another way of putting it, if America manufactured a missile, a big bomb, and sold to India and made quite a lot of money. And if India later on sometime used the bomb and throws it into America and kill a lot of Americans, then what happened? So so Americans a lot of Americans died. And why? Because they create that bomb.
So similar to that, every circumstances that one facing, that whether it’s a favorable or whether it’s unfavorable conditions. It is not something coming from outside. Is one have created that. So so that one like the favorable conditions, and one don’t like the unfavorable conditions. So because of that now, from now on, I will always engage in creating the cause for favorable conditions.
So I will never engage in the act of creating the unfavorable conditions. So so then now we if we could think about the lower realms, the the three lower realms, the different state of suffering that they go through. And those sufferings that those beings go through in the lower realms is also created the causes are created by themselves. No one else made them to suffer. So it’s like you create a bow and arrow and shoot yourself.
It’s like like that. It’s nothing not that someone else have done it. So most of the beings of the lower realms, once they are born in their life, they have no chance for practicing virtue, good karma. They always create negative karmas and then that’s how they reborn again in the lower realms. There’s a history that explain in the commentary here, is relating to the subjects.
That there was a person who makes bow and arrow long time ago. And that time, there’s no guns and so on. So he was a professional professional in his job. So he used to make a lot of them and he was quite famous and he sold a lot to different countries and and suddenly one day there was a war between two countries and and then that person had to himself had to go and join the war. Then he went to the war and suddenly he got shot.
He looked and it was his own arrow that he made. So he got killed by the arrow that he himself had made. So similarly, when we experience different sufferings in different situations, there’s no one else to blame out there. This he did this and that, or she did this and that to me. There’s no one else out there to blame.
It is oneself alone is to blame for the for the experience of that suffering. So now again, making this request to the guru or deity that he had visualized in this space before, may I be able to perform always virtuous karma and never commit negative karmas. And may you bless me to be successful in that. And that way you request. Sorry.
That way you train your mind here. So going to the next point, again, like the problems among families such as that we face, the trouble and problem that we face among families, we also suffer that kind of sufferings. And that is again also a result of our past previous karma. Such as in one of our previous life, we have caused problem among our own families, such as your own kids or among your own daughters and so on. It creates some problems and separate them.
That is the cause for poor experience, this type of result at present. So a problem among families and the family, like a greater family, like for example, the committee here in Buddha House, different situation or problem that we face, all these different type of suffering that we face. And for example, in the community, we work very hard to bring success in center or among the families to become successful. But even though we go through a lot of hardships, not becoming successful, not getting together, and we experience that type of sufferings, is also because of, in our past life, we have committed creating disturbances among communities or among families and creating those karmas. So from now on, I won’t So from now on, all the time, I will not commit that type of actions.
So probably we’ll stop here for tonight. Ah, it seems.