Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Why does caring for yourself cause suffering? In this 42-minute talk, Geshe Pema Tsering opens with a counterintuitive argument: self-cherishing, which we assume protects us, is the very engine of samsaric suffering, and since beginningless time it has gotten us nowhere. He explains that replacing it with genuine concern for others feels impossible at first — like a child laboriously tracing letters — but grows natural through repetition, ultimately describing the mind of a Bodhisattva. He then turns to motivation, laying out refuge and bodhicitta as the two foundations that transform any activity into Dharma practice. The second half surveys three meditation types — analytical, placement, and graduated — with close attention to placement meditation and its wide range of possible objects. The session closes with a candid assessment of calm abiding: Geshe Pema Tsering admits he doubts he can achieve it in this lifetime, given the six months of uninterrupted solitary retreat it typically requires.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 HtM 2003 06 03.mp3
UUID: a1d5273a-92cc-4fb2-b0c1-34a805a1c1b0
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: z DB How to meditate (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-06-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 42.7 minutes
Words: ~3,938
Experience all these different sufferings. Acts self-cherishing is the cause for us to circle in saṃsāra and it’s the cause for us to experience more suffering. What happens usually with us is that we don’t actually think of cherishing ourselves as being a negative thing. We think that by cherishing ourselves we’re helping ourselves. That it’s something that is encouraging to our mind stream and helps us to look after ourselves.
We think that this is the reason that we experience happiness when in fact it’s quite the opposite and this cherishing ourselves is the reason that we experience suffering at all. So you have to excuse me for a second. So, this cherishing ourselves, this self-cherishing that we have in our mind stream is actually an incredibly negative thought. It’s something that doesn’t help us very much and quite the opposite, it gives us a lot of suffering, it’s where all our suffering comes from. But the problem is getting rid of self-cherishing is incredibly difficult and to get rid of self-cherishing we actually have to become an Arhat which is someone who has completed one of the paths in Buddhism, someone who has completely destroyed their afflictive emotions.
So even on top of that, the Mahāyāna path consists of completely giving up not only self-cherishing but thinking of ourselves, doing things for our own benefit and to concentrate completely on doing something for someone, for other people, for all other beings benefit. Geshe-la says he thinks it’s a very difficult thing to do. It’s something that’s incredibly difficult to generate in your mind. This idea that we’re not doing anything for ourselves and everything for other beings. So just because it’s difficult though doesn’t mean we should give up on the idea altogether because when we think about it, we really don’t have a choice.
We’ve been here since beginningless time and since beginningless time or time memorial we have been relying on our our self grasping and trying to make ourselves feel better because we consider ourselves to be important and it hasn’t gotten us very far all we’ve experienced is suffering in one form or another. So if we don’t start generating this idea of getting rid of ourselves grasping and obliterating it from our mind stream then we’re gonna spend another time memorial like we spend for time without end in Samsāra experiencing these sufferings if we don’t generate the idea of getting rid of our self grasping and in fact get rid of our grasping itself completely So now we know what the problem is. We know that the cause of our suffering is our self-cherishing, is grasping ourselves and not thinking of others then we should try and apply the antidote to our suffering which is to think of others in place of thinking of ourselves and because we know this can be the antidote to all our suffering it’s something we need to work at really hard. It’s something that we need to train our minds in. It’s something we need to turn our minds away from the way they work at the moment and get them to start thinking of others.
So when we start meditating on this, when we start customizing our mind, accustoming our mind to this idea of thinking of others and not thinking of self, at the beginning, it’s a very difficult thing for us to do. We the first time we try and meditate on this, we can find it incredibly difficult. So, the thing is if we do it once, it’s difficult. If we do it twice, it becomes a little bit easy and the more that we do it, more we become familiar with this idea of thinking of others and not thinking of ourselves. So, therefore, this meditation process is a process of familiarization where our mind becomes more used to the idea of thinking of others and stops so much grasping itself.
So this process where we are trying to train our minds is something that is incredibly difficult at the start but the more we do it, it becomes easier and easier. It’s the same as if we are trying to memorize texts. So at the beginning, if we’re trying to memorize a text, in one hour, we may be only try we may only be able to memorize a few words, but if we keep practicing memorizing and then after once we get really used to it, then if we start memorizing things in an hour we can almost memorize a whole set of the Tibetan texts that come in blocks, right? So we can memorize a whole block in an hour because we’re used to memorizing things so at the beginning only a few words and after we’ve started practicing it becomes whole blocks in an hour that we can memorize So, it becomes more subtle and more subtle, our understanding becomes more subtle and more subtle. Once we started training our mind towards thinking of others and not thinking of ourselves, then it becomes easier and easier and we are capable of doing it more and more and if we become a Bodhisattva, what happens in a Bodhisattva’s mind is that they’ve completely gotten rid of the idea of working for their own benefit and they solely work for the benefit of others.
So, when we have this in our mind stream, when we have this constant working for others and no longer thinking of self, then we become a Bodhisattva. So, it’s the same with anything, any qualities we want, any type of learning that we want to have. At the start it’s very difficult and then as we do it more and more and more the more we come accustomed to it the easier it gets so for example if we’re learning an alphabet if we’re learning ABCD the first time we think about writing ABCD incredibly difficult we have to watch our hands and slowly make the letters and then eventually we’re so used to it that we can be looking in another direction and someone will say spell something out for us and we can write it without even looking It’s the same thing when we when we’re trying to train our mind towards thinking of others. At the beginning, we have to concentrate really hard but if we keep doing it, then it’s something that will come about naturally in our mind stream. It will just come up to think of others, to work for others and this idea of striving for ourselves will just not arise as much.
So once we’ve got this idea in our head that we want to be a benefit to others then comes up the idea, okay, how do I be a benefit to others? What do I do in order to be of benefit to others? So after we establish this idea that we want to, the only thing that can come up in our mind is that in order for us to be of the greatest benefit to other beings, the only thing we can do is to fulfil our greatest potential. In other words, to become enlightened beings, to become a Buddha. So, once we have the idea we want to work for the benefit of others, then the next thing that will come up after that is the idea that we must attain Buddhahood as quickly as possible in order to be of the greatest benefit to all beings because in order to work for their benefit we need to be as we need to have as much knowledge as we possibly can and to have as much understanding as we possibly can to work for their benefit in the best possible way We actually spend a lot of our time working for things that give us benefit, that have qualities that can benefit us in the short term.
For example, we spend a lot of time working towards getting food to eat or getting things to drink that we need or getting a house to live in or resources. We spend a lot of our time and effort gathering things that can help us in the short term and it’s not that these things don’t help us in the short term because they do, they have these qualities in them that can help us in the short term, but they don’t help us ultimately, they don’t stop suffering completely so if we work so hard to get things that help us temporarily, then it makes sense that we work even harder to get something that’s going to help us in the long term, that’s going to help us forever This is the kind of thing that we should be thinking in our mind. If I work this hard to get money or clothes or food, then how hard should I be working in order to get eternal happiness and freedom from suffering? The other thing that we should be thinking about why we’re doing things. It’s not only that we should be working hard in order to achieve this lasting happiness but that we should have the right motivation for doing this.
So, for example, if we’re doing something then we should have the idea that we’re doing this in order to attain enlightenment so then we can be of the most benefit to all beings. If we can’t imagine that then imagining that we’re doing something in order to achieve personal liberation or personal nirvana is alright and if we can’t even manage that then the idea that we’re doing this in order to set up good situations for us in our future lives is also okay but the thing we should be striving for is that we’re doing this in order to benefit all beings in the best way possible by becoming a Buddha. Now, lots of times when we think about doing good things, we actually think, okay, I’m giving this person something in order to help them. This isn’t what we’re actually talking about. What we’re talking about is thinking, I’m doing this in order that I may attain that I may create merit in order to attain enlightenment, in order to be of the best benefit to all sentient beings.
So this takes the focus away from the action that we’re doing at that time to turning that action into a cause for us to achieve final enlightenment. A lot of time we focus on the actual act we’re doing. I’m helping this person, but this isn’t what we should be focusing on So, when talking about doing Dharma practice, this is especially important. We shouldn’t be thinking I’m doing Dharma practice or studying or coming to classes because it’s a good thing to do. We should be thinking I’m doing this in order to create merit, in order to achieve enlightenment so I can be of benefit to all sentient beings.
This is the thought we should generate before we start to do any practice. So we should try and generate this idea in our mind now. By doing this, may I quickly attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings who are suffering just as I am and so I can show them how not to suffer we should get this thought in our head and this thought is actually called bodhicitta and so we should try and focus on bodhicitta just for a few moments to set our motivation in the right place now. Yeah. Did you meditate well?
So the Buddha said that whether something is good or bad depends on the thought accompanying it. So, if you have a good thought, if your thought is pure and good, then it becomes a path, it becomes a realization in your mind stream. If your thought is negative, then it becomes a cause for suffering. Therefore, this thought, the thoughts that they’re talking about is like our motivation, reason for doing something. So we should always try and have a good and pure motivation for doing something.
This motivation is an incredibly important part of Dharma practice. When we’re doing Dharma practice, Geshe says he has to speak from a Buddhist point of view because he’s a Buddhist and from the Buddhist point of view, main or the root reason for motivation should be going for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. This should be the main motivation in doing any practice. Apart from that because he belongs to the Mahāyāna school or the greater vehicle school, the school that’s universal vehicle perhaps, they also subscribe to the idea that your motivation should be to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings that you can’t be doing something just for your own benefit it should also be for the benefit of all sentient beings so these two motivations together are the main motivating guides for the practice in Geshe-la’s School of Buddhism. We may not have as much experience about developing motivation when we are doing spiritual practice.
This may be something that’s quite new to us but we do spend a lot of time motivating ourselves in general especially for more worldly or physical things. For example, most of the time before we go to work, we talk ourselves, we motivate ourselves to go to work by the sound motivation that if we go to work we get money. Alright? So, this is our motivating factor for going to work. We think, okay, if I I go to work and I work hard, I’ll get money and so, this is like a sound motivation because it actually comes about if we work, we get money so, therefore, it’s something that’s fairly easy for us to see and a fairly reliable principle for us to rely on in terms of setting our motivation.
So on a grander or a wider scale than that, we could say that we all want to be happy and we don’t want to suffer. Now, from the Buddhist perspective, the way that we don’t suffer is by first of all going to refuge for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and the Sangha. So, by going for refuge that is how we seek to stop ourselves suffering and to practice doing actions that will cause us to experience happiness. So, whether we have this concept of refuge or not is a determining factor in whether we are doing a Buddhist practice or not. If there’s no refuge then whatever we do isn’t a Buddhist practice.
Okay, so this is the main principle, the main motivation that makes something anything that we do into a Buddhist practice. Any work or anything that we do, if we do it with the idea of setting our motivation for it as refuge, then that becomes a Buddhist practice. On top of that, if we’re trying to follow the Mahāyāna path or the universal vehicle, be part of the universal vehicle, then we should think that whatever we’re doing is also being done in order for us to achieve enlightenment to be of the greatest benefit to all sentient beings. That should be part of it and if we can’t get our heads around that, if we can’t manage that in our thoughts, then we should think that I’m doing this in order to attain my own liberation or my own freedom from suffering so that’s the next one if we just have the idea that by doing this I’m gonna help myself out in this life then that’s not a Dharma practice that’s not something that will help us in the long run it’s not something we consider a spiritual practice It’s not even something we can rely on because lots of times we say I’m gonna do this so it will help me out in this life and we don’t get helped out.
We don’t get the results. What we are working towards doesn’t come through so working for happiness in this life isn’t something we can even rely on. So to to go into a really big explanation of what refuge or what bodhicitta is would take a very long time. So that’s not the main focus here. We’re just giving a rough idea of what we should be motivating ourselves, what our motivation for doing any kind of practice is.
So if we just get the idea that those are the two main motivations for doing any kind of practice and that’s the most important thing tonight. So what the idea is, set this motivation and after we’ve got the motivation set, we move on to doing some kind of Dharma practice or some kind of religious practice. Religious practice comes in all different shapes and sizes all different methods. We can talk about prostration, can talk about giving, we can talk about turning any mundane activities we do into a Dharma practice but the main thing that we usually talk about when we’re talking about Dharma practice is a meditation, some forms of meditation. Now, even within that there’s many different types of meditation.
Usually, there’s three different types of meditation we talk about. The first one being analytical meditation where we compare and contrast ideas in our head to get a greater understanding of things and go through an analytical process. The second one is placement meditation where we focus single pointedly on one object and the third one is something like step by step meditations where we look at the entire path and focus on one section of the path and then move on to the next section of the path. So for example, if we started focusing on renunciation and the suffering of saṃsāra and then moved on to the idea of being suffering and therefore the need to develop bodhicitta, then this would be a graduated meditation which is another type of meditation. So when we’re doing meditation practice the first thing we need to do is to set our motivation and have a firm motivation in a positive direction before we do the practice but then to go straight from that into the actual guts or heart of our meditation practice is incredibly difficult so we have to do kind of mini preliminary practices in between our motivation setting and then the actual meditation practice.
The one that’s usually used in terms of preliminary practice for this is focusing on our breath. The reason we find difficult to go straight into the concentrations that we’re supposed to do is because our mind is running hither and thither and all over the place. So, we’re trying to concentrate our mind and the usual way for doing that is to start focusing on our breath going in and out and this brings our mind from all over the place into a concentrated position. For placement meditation, if we’re focusing on placement meditation, the idea is that we focus single pointedly on whatever it is that we’re focusing on. We don’t let our mind go away from whatever it is we’re focusing on.
This doesn’t just include letting our mind wander to our desires and our anger and things like that. It also includes not letting our mind wander towards virtuous things or neutral things. If we have a virtuous thought coming up in our mind, we also have to let that go and bring our concentration back to the things that we are concentrating on. This is the practice that’s involved in doing placement meditation. Okay.
So when we’re doing placement meditation, it’s a bit strange when we think about it as being a one type of meditation in that we can use as a focus for the single point of meditation so many different types of things. External objects, some of them are internal objects, some of them are actually the result of analytical meditations and some of them are even just the nature of our mind itself. So, for example, we can do placement meditation and focusing single pointedly on bodhicitta or we can do placement meditation focusing single pointedly on a statue or we can do placement meditation focusing single pointedly on emptiness. It’s strange in another way because we don’t actually have these minds in our mind stream most of the time, so we’re trying to manufacture them and then focus on them in without getting distracted and thinking about anything else. So we’re concentrating on one idea or one concept at a time without letting our mind wander onto any other concepts and this can be a strange thing for our mind to try and put into practice.
It is also because they’re in one group but these different types of meditation sorry, this type of meditation is one type of meditation but there is so it takes into account so many different extremes if you like because focusing on one object, an external object or focusing on the impermanence of an external object in that it change is changing moment by moment. So, you’re staring at one thing and thinking this is changing moment by moment. That kind of meditation is very different to generating the sort of bodhicitta in your mind and then not letting your mind stray from that thought. They’re different meditations when you look at it externally but because they all focus on one thing and don’t wander from that one thing they’re all called the same type of meditation which is placement meditation. That makes sense?
It’s one type of meditation but there’s many different ways of approaching that type of The problem with doing these meditations is that in order to do them properly we need something that’s called calm abiding. Now calm abiding or Shamatha, it’s called in Sanskrit, is being able to focus single pointedly on one object for as long as we want without having other thoughts come up in our head. The development of Calm Abiding or Shamatha meditation is incredibly difficult. Geshe-la said it might be pretty it could be difficult for us to develop it in this lifetime. He reckons it’s hard for him to develop it in this lifetime.
One of the reasons it’s hard to develop is because in order to do it, you need to do a lot of in order to develop this ability, you need to do a lot of preliminary practice, lot of preparatory meditations. That’s the first thing. Then you need to go and stay by yourself for at least six months and focus on one thing single, try and keep focusing on one thing single pointedly for at least six months. Sometimes it can take up to two or three years to develop this mind, but they say the least it takes is six months, right? So you need, first of all you need to be able to have time to do all the preliminary practices then you have to find some way to go and stay for six months when no one is going interrupt you and then if you need longer then you’re going to have to take longer so getting the opportunity to do all this may be difficult in this life time, he said.
So it’s difficult for us to achieve calm abiding in this life if we don’t have those conditions but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a benefit to try. That doesn’t mean that it’s not a benefit for us to try and do placement meditation.