Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Opening with the question of which object we should actually meditate on, Geshe Pema Tsering argues in this 33-minute talk that bodhicitta — the wish to achieve enlightenment for all beings — is the most powerful focus for placement meditation, generating concentration, merit, and compassion simultaneously. He then works backwards through the prerequisites: stable bodhicitta requires renunciation, which requires genuinely understanding the three types of suffering — manifest pain, the “suffering of change” (what we mistake for happiness), and pervasive suffering. A story about a wealthy person illustrates why samsaric pleasures are unreliable and only liberation offers stable happiness. A Q&A covers whether breath work counts as meditation (preparation only), how to handle persistent suffering through karma, why bodhisattvas experience pain joyfully, and how to uproot fear by abandoning its causes rather than the emotion itself.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 HtM 2003 06 03.mp3
UUID: a59c7d9c-398e-450a-8cda-edeeb79fa6de
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: z DB How to meditate (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-06-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 33.3 minutes
Words: ~2,782
When we can. The only thing is that, we should be careful on what we, focus our meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings. So for example, if we’re just focusing on a rock or a flower or, a piece of wood, then even though that may develop our concentration it’s not gonna help us too much in the long run because it may help us to be able to concentrate better in this lifetime but it’s not something that will carry over into any other lives But if we substitute the rock or the flower or wood or whatever for a image of the Buddha or an image of Ganesha or something similar something we consider similarly holy then that will act as a positive imprint on our mind and by actually practicing this meditation by trying to concentrate on this image or idea then we are actually creating a lot of good karma in the process. So, the good karma will be able to be something that we can take with us into next lives even if we can’t necessarily take the levels of concentration we develop. But out of all the things that we can But out of all the things that we can concentrate on in terms of doing placement meditation, the thing that will benefit our minds the most is concentrating on bodhicitta or concentrating on this one thought getting this one thought into our head and then not letting our mind waiver from that thought.
That thought is that we need to quickly achieve enlightenment in order to be of the best benefit to all sentient beings. Now, concentrating on this thought works in a lot of different ways to benefit our mind streams. It works in terms of concentration because we’re concentrating on one object. It also works in terms of creating enormous amounts of good karma or merit in our mind streams. It also works in terms of focusing us onto that idea or ideal and and it also works in terms of generating compassion in our hearts towards other sentient beings so because of all these other aspects that it has to it as opposed to just being an object we’re focusing on then this becomes an incredibly important and powerful thing for us to meditate on.
But in order for us to be able to start doing this placement meditation on bodhicitta then before we do that we need to do a fair bit of what’s called analytical meditation beforehand because we can’t just come up with the idea of bodhicitta in our mind from nowhere. We have to start by thinking about suffering and how we don’t want to suffer anymore and try and develop some sense of renunciation in our mind. So before we develop bodhicitta, we need to be thinking about renunciation. Before we develop renunciation, we have to have a concept of refuge in our mind. Before we understand refuge, then we have to understand the causes and the cause for taking refuge and what taking refuge actually does in that we take refuge because we’re suffering and we need something to take refuge in that will actually show us a way not to suffer.
So, this is the cause for why we take refuge and we also need to have faith in what we are taking refuge in. We need to understand the positive qualities of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and develop faith and have faith in them in order to take refuge properly. So we work backwards from bodhicitta back to the understanding of that we’re suffering and we don’t want to suffer and we work backwards through these different stages. So in order to do placement meditation on in order to do Shamantha meditation on bodhicitta, to precede that we need to do a lot of analytical meditation. We need to analyze our situation.
We need to analyze the situation of other beings and to understand what is the real situation with ourselves and other beings first. It’s the same if we tried, for example, to do placement meditation on emptiness. In order to do placement meditation on emptiness, we need to understand emptiness and in order to have realized or understood emptiness directly, then we need to have done a preceding that, we need to have done a lot of analytical meditation on emptiness to understand it properly in terms of it as a generalized image and then directly. Before that, we need to have created a lot of auspicious circumstances and a lot of good karma stores in order to have the merit to be able to see emptiness properly. We may say, okay, we want to do this placement meditation on emptiness but placement meditation on emptiness is the end of a long process.
So if we are just at the beginning, then the thing that we should try and meditate the most on is the concept of refuge, of having refuge in the Three Jewels and what this type of meditation entails is that first of all, we have to understand suffering and how we are suffering, then we have to develop faith that the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha have an antidote to suffering that they can show us an antidote to our suffering and then between the two of these the cause and the faith then we will understand refuge better and this should be the thing that we try and meditate on in the beginning But the the problem is that we don’t actually think about it enough. We don’t think about a situation as it stands now enough. We don’t analyze our situation to understand that it is actually different types of suffering that we are experiencing therefore we don’t develop a mind that seeks to get out of this cycle of suffering and to experience some kind of greater happiness than that. If we started thinking about it then we’d be looking for antidotes to our suffering. We’d be looking for something that could show us the way out of our suffering and this is the sort of the thought processes that we should be engaging in terms of doing analytical meditation that encourages going for refuge.
Okay, so we don’t go through these processes in our minds, we don’t understand that our situation at the moment isn’t as good as we think it is. We don’t understand that we’re constant suffering because of the karma and delusions in our mind. So, what we need to do is start analyzing this. We need to start thinking about how there isn’t just one type of suffering, there’s three different types of suffering. There’s not just the suffering like manifest suffering like we usually know as being suffering.
There’s also what’s called the suffering of change and or pervasive suffering. Now, what’s called the suffering of change is usually what we cling to as being happiness. We think, okay, I have this now, I’m happy, I haven’t had any suffering today, I’m fine, but this is actually another type of suffering and in our very existence there is this third type of suffering or pervasive suffering that pervades our very being. So because we don’t see things like that then we don’t understand our situation properly so we don’t develop a mind that wants to get out of it. The problem with pleasures that we have in saṃsāra is that or the pleasures that we have in everyday existence is that they’re not stable.
They’re not something that we can rely on. They they tend to disappear. Geshe-la says he’s heard of people who had were really wealthy one year and then lost everything the next and he says people walk around thinking well you know I’ve got money, I’m healthy, everything must be fine but then that doesn’t mean that they’re going to be healthy and wealthy tomorrow or that they’re going to be healthy and wealthy or if they’re going to be healthy and wealthy tomorrow it doesn’t mean that they’re going to be healthy and wealthy the next day. In the end they all have to die anyway so at some stage they’re not going be either healthy or wealthy. So so we we need to keep reminding ourselves of that, that if we want reliable happiness, the only way for us to have reliable happiness is to achieve liberation or to achieve enlightenment.
That’s the way that we can achieve real happiness. Anything else that we do is any other happiness that we achieve is qualified by being as part of saṃsāra temporary and fleeting and unreliable so therefore there’s no point striving after because it’s not going to last. Once we start thinking like this, then we start thinking I don’t want to be in Samsāra, I want to stop suffering and I want to experience nirvana or liberation. And this is a mind of renunciation. This mind turning away from Samsāra and turning towards liberation or nirvana is renunciation.
If we keep thinking about that, if we keep meditating on that, then we can develop this mind. So we also then have to remember that everybody is like this. We have to remember that even if we may see someone and we may think wow they’ve got a nice house, they’ve got a nice car, they’ve got lots of money, they’re good looking and they have all the things that could possibly make you happy. If we went up and asked them and said are you happy? Then they’re gonna say no.
Are you always happy? No. Do you experience sadness? Yes. Because even though we may think that they have all the things that make someone happy, they’re not experiencing true happiness.
Because they are all exactly the same as us. They want happiness and they don’t want to suffer but they are caught in saṃsāra so therefore they are suffering. Because things go from good to bad, they go from bad to good, they go from happy to sad and sad to happy and it’s very difficult for us to tell which way they’re going to go because this all comes about because of karma and the karma we’ve created in the past and the delusions we have now which will cause us to create karma for the future and we can’t tell which way karma is going to go so the only thing we can say is that it’s not going to be steady, it’s not going to stay the same way so then we have to understand that whether we become happy or not depends on how wide or how flexible or open our minds are so if we have an open mind, if our mind is able to withstand situations and understands what’s actually going on, then we’re going to experience happiness and if we have a mind that doesn’t understand that, then they’re going to experience suffering.
So, it’s not the external conditions that create happiness or suffering, it’s what we’re doing with our mind that sets up whether we experience suffering or happiness. So, I forgot one thing at the end. So therefore, we should try and open our do practices that will open our mind and make our mind more flexible. So, we do whatever practice that we can whatever Dharma practice that we can whatever meditations and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings and teachings we can that will enable us to change our minds and not experience suffering Okay. He said, now have you finished?
And I said, yes. He goes, okay. So we stop. So if anyone has questions. Okay, so this is for the tape, right?
I have to say it again. So how is breath meditation analytical meditation and not placement meditation? He said that meditation on the breath isn’t actually meditation. It’s a preparation preliminary for meditation because our mind is so scattered that we need to get our mind focused and so by focusing on the breath before we do some other type of before we do some type of meditation is a good way to focus the mind but it’s not actually a meditation proper practice Yeah. So anytime that anyone is experiencing suffering, that suffering is the result of doing something negative in the past.
So, the way to deal with suffering that won’t go away, suffering that keeps going, is to think: Okay, this suffering is coming about because of some negative deed that was done in the past and therefore I will stop trying to do some negative deeds and hope that this will stop me experiencing the results of those future negative deeds in the future. So that’s the best way to deal with any experience of suffering manifest suffering yeah you’re usually at the back So, the question was, Bodhisattvas, when they come back and take rebirth to benefit beings, do they experience any type of suffering and if they have got to hang around until all beings are out of saṃsāra, they are going to have to take a lot of rebirths. Okay, so the answer to the first question is that if someone has developed bodhicitta in their mind stream and everything they do is for the benefit of others, alright, and they are not doing anything for their own benefit, then something that we would consider suffering, right, becomes to them they experience it in terms of feeling as suffering but because it’s coming about as something that’s gonna help other beings they are incredibly happy about it.
So, they don’t experience suffering in the same way we experience suffering. They are incredibly happy to be able to be of benefit because that’s all they’re they don’t have any sense of self-cherishing, they only have sense of helping others. Alright, so anytime that they do anything they think oh this could be a benefit to all sentient beings or could be a benefit to sentient beings and this gives them like great happiness. So no matter what happens, for example if they burn themselves, if we burn ourselves then we think oh this hurts but if they burn themselves they think oh that may have benefited something, I’m really happy about that. And the next question.
There’s no end to the birth that they will take in order to get sentient beings into the state of Buddhahood, get sentient beings to the state of Buddhahood because every time they take rebirth, they think I’m doing this for the benefit of all sentient beings so it just makes them incredibly happy. So they’re incredibly happy to be working for the benefit of sentient beings so there’s no sense of getting tired or not stopping doing it. They just spend all their time incredibly happy that they’re helping sentient beings and they’ll do it until all sentient beings are Buddhas. Yeah. How do you mean the suffering comes separately?
Well, you’re saying before about a lot of suffering. Yeah. And they have the feeling. It comes or do they come as one? Yeah.
Yeah. If yeah. Is yeah. Okay. So fear in itself is suffering because fear is a mind that causes discomfort to sentient beings, so therefore it is in itself suffering.
The same with worry. There are different types of fear and worry though, so we have to distinguish between those. You don’t abandon fear or abandon or get rid of, right, fear or get rid of worry. You get or stop the causes for these things to come about because fear and worry come about because of negative actions then you abandon the negative actions the fear and worry don’t come don’t come to you right so you don’t abandon the fear and worry you abandon the negative actions that cause It’s like a field, right? If you have poison, a poisonous seed, you plant the poisonous seed in the field, you get poison and plant.
If you plant a medicinal seed or the seed from medicinal plant, you get a medicinal plant. If you do good karma, you get good results, so you don’t experience negative emotions. If you do negative karma then you get negative results, so you do experience negative emotions. He said most of the time that we think that if we plant poison, we’ll get medicine. Then we get very surprised poisonous seed gives birth to a poisonous plant, we think, or generates a poisonous plant, we think, but I planted medicine.
I planted a medicinal plant seed. Is that have you finished? Are the questions finished?