Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Prompted by a student’s confusion over a passage labeled “interpretive,” Geshe Pema Tsering uses these 17 minutes to clarify Buddhism’s distinction between definitive and provisional teachings. The Heart Sūtra’s paradoxical lines — “no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue” — anchor the explanation: it is a definitive sūtra because it orients the mind toward emptiness, the ultimate nature of reality, rather than the conventional. Provisional teachings like “smoke comes from fire” are factually correct but cannot by themselves liberate, since they may reinforce our habitual grasping at truly existent things. Geshe Pema Tsering also explains why the Buddha seemed to contradict himself across forty-five years of teaching, and how later scholars devised this framework to show underlying consistency. A brief student exchange closes on whether all conventional truths carry equal validity.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2008 03 27 Lam Rim 2008.mp3
UUID: fd761169-5276-4a8f-a993-647024d5c9ad
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: z Unallocated multiple years (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2008-03-27
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 17.2 minutes
Words: ~2,182
A text, a whole text on this very subject, definitive interpretive. But I didn’t want you to go away. I know, you know, we just have a few minutes, but I think it was Adam, mentioned, you know, I I just very roughly, I just like to mention what what this means. And so because I don’t want you to get to go away with a misunderstanding. You may not understand, but I don’t want you to go away with a misunderstanding.
And that what we mean when we said that I think he referred to a particular passage in a book, you know, someone who here in this passage from the White Lotus Sūtra or something like that. And Geshe-la said, Well, that’s an interpretive sūtra. And to say interpretive sūtra doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Yeah? So we have to understand.
Yeah, I just don’t you I don’t want you to go away with that misunderstanding. Misunderstanding. The you know, what what essentially are the is the the intent of the Buddhist teachings? They’re they are a means to achieve liberation. The all the teachings are designed in some way, either directly or indirectly, to lead us to wisdom, the wisdom, understanding, emptiness.
This is what this is what it comes down to, yeah, to find to be able to remove ignorance and achieve liberation, ultimately Buddhahood. So that all the various teachings are methods for helping us to gain wisdom. Okay. Those teachings which orientate our mind toward the ultimate. What is the ultimate?
That is emptiness. The ultimate nature of reality. Those teachings which orientate our mind toward that ultimate nature of reality we call definitive. And the example that was given is in our little booklet, in our booklet when we recite the Heart Sūtra. So the Heart Sūtra is not these words on the page, but the Buddha spoke the Heart Sūtra.
And his words, that sound was that’s a scriptural teaching, isn’t it? And he says strange things if you really read the sūtra. He says, There is no form, no feeling, no discrimination, no compositional factors, no consciousness, no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no visual. That’s pretty weird. What do you mean there’s no tongue?
You know, what’s this? What do you this and what’s the what’s the Buddhist often, some kind of strange trip. So this for you know, we’re going to have to fill in some background. But the highest, the final thought of the Buddha is included within a philosophic system called the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, or in Sanskrit, Mādhyamika. That’s kind of the Buddha taught you know, as I’ve mentioned a number of times, he taught for forty five years, many hours each day.
He taught to many different levels of abilities and capacities and interests and tendencies. So he taught one thing here, another thing here. And sometimes they would appear superficially to be contradictory. Yeah. So those this teaching, where it says there is no form, no feeling, discrimination, no compositional factor, that’s a definitive sūtra according to Prāsaṇgika.
Why is it a definitive sūtra? Because it orientates our mind toward the ultimate, towards liberation. Because what it’s saying is, it’s not saying, it’s not to be taken literally. It’s saying, it’s not saying that there is no eye, no ear, no nose. It’s saying, ultimately, there’s no eye.
Ultimately, there’s no ear. Ultimately, there’s no nose, there’s no tongue. Ultimately. So it is trying to orientate our mind toward understanding of emptiness. Now, is another type of teaching which we call which use the term interpretive.
Another translation which might you know, I’m kind of tending toward is called provisional. We can use either word, provisional or interpretive. Now, the statement, you know, smoke comes from fire. Let’s say the Buddha said, Oh, smoke comes from fire. So he’s giving a teaching.
Somebody asks, Where does smoke come from? And the Buddha says, Oh, smoke comes from fire. He’s giving a teaching. Now, that is a correct statement, isn’t But it is talking about the conventional and not the ultimate. It may serve to reinforce our instinctive habit of conceiving true existence.
We may think, from truly existent smoke comes truly existent fire. The other way around. From truly existent fire comes truly existent smoke. So therefore, even though it’s correct, it’s a correct statement, it may reinforce our instinctive grasping at true existence, our ignorance, of ultimate.
It helps us understand the conventional, the variety of phenomena around our things. Everything but emptiness is conventional. But emptiness is the ultimate. So the statement that smoke comes from fire tells us something about the conventional, but it may take us off the course of understanding the ultimate. We may it may reinforce our misconception that from ultimate fire comes ultimate smoke.
Therefore, the Buddha said, Only take this provisionally. Don’t hang on to it. As if in dependence upon provisional teachings, you cannot achieve enlightenment. You can only achieve enlightenment by realizing ultimate emptiness. There’s no other way.
No matter how many conventional phenomena you may understand, you may understand all the workings, the mechanism, the universe thoroughly, completely, but it will not liberate you. Only the understanding of the Ultimate will liberate you. Therefore, it is only the teachings on the Ultimate which are definitive. These are the ones that the teachings which are going to that your mind should be always orientating toward. The rest of the teachings are true, are correct, but they’re only provisional.
They’re to be interpreted. We’re not to rely upon them to achieve liberation. They’re only a tool, a stepping stone. In order to actually achieve liberation, we are to rely on the ultimate. So anyway, I just didn’t want you to go away with the thought that when we talk about interpretive or provisional teachings, that they’re mistaken.
They’re not mistaken. It’s just that they can reinforce our misconception of the ultimate nature of things. And therefore, we are to use them, but use them with a little bit of perspective. Don’t get caught up in them because they can’t liberate you completely. Only the teachings on the ultimate can.
I don’t know if that helped or just made more confusion. Yeah. So, this, this, this Heart Sūtra is a, is a definitive sūtra. It teaches the ultimate. When it says no eye, no ear, nose, tongue, no tongue, no body, no mind, it’s saying, it’s, you know, why?
You have to think about it. What is the Buddha talking about? He didn’t really kind of come, you know, kind of injure in your face. Well, did. Obviously, there’s a it can’t mean there’s no I literally.
He must be meaning something else. What does he mean? He means ultimately there’s no I. Ultimately there’s no ear. So that teaching is trying to make us understand the deeper nature of reality.
When I say that sprouts come from seeds, that’s just a teaching on the conventional. That’s a provisional teaching. It’s useful if you’re a farmer, for example. Good thing to know. But it’s not going to liberate you.
So that’s the difference. That which has orientated you toward liberation, the definitive teaching is the definitive. That which, though useful, but it’s correct, but it doesn’t, but might reinforce your misconception as to the deeper nature of reality, we call provisional. It’s not completely to be relied on in and of itself to achieve liberation. Okay?
Can I ask you something about this? Yeah. Because I think there’s another kind of confusion that There’s a lot of confusion. And that is that because we have we we divide things into ultimate and conventional. If if we give the conventional all the same value, there’s a potential misunderstanding there too because some conventions can be mistaken.
You know, like, some people might think the world is flat, others think it’s spherical. Yeah. One of those conventions is more valid than the other. So even within the convention, what we generally term conventional truths, there are some that are more valid than others. And so we still need to discriminate and not just lump them all in with the same value, isn’t it?
Yeah. That yeah. I think that’s correct. I mean, a conventional truth. These are terms these are difficult terms, aren’t they?
Yeah. Yeah. So I yeah. I I agree. I agree.
Are analogies definitive? Yeah, maybe next week I’ll give you a handout on the four. There are four tenet systems, four philosophic systems. The Buddha didn’t teach these systems, but these were later scholars and so forth. They studied the Buddhist teachings, they organized them into four different philosophic systems.
They’re thought to be like rungs on a ladder. To understand this final thought of the Buddha on the nature of reality, you have to understand the lower schools. And so there’s a graduation from lower schools to higher schools. The higher school is called the middle way school. The middle way school.
Okay? And there’s also a division in that, but we just say that the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, that’s the final thought. He didn’t have any thought further than that. This is it. Then, but so in the Heart Sūtra, because it’s main subject, which is explained, is emptiness, the ultimate, it is held to be a definitive sūtra, definitive teaching, because it mainly teaches the ultimate.
That which doesn’t mainly teach the ultimate. For example, know, smoke comes from fire. That’s provisional or interpretive. It doesn’t teach the ultimate. That’s the way they categorize it. What happens is, you know, it’s this is what it’s really a complicated you know, this is a it’s one of the last things that a Geshe will study is this particular subject definitive interpret why?
Because, you know, the Buddha as I I you know, I’ve said a number of times, the Buddha taught for forty five years, and he taught many different students. And one time he said this, and one time he said this. And they said, well, you know, it seems like you’re contradicting yourself. And so there was all these seemingly contradictory teachings of the Buddha. How are we going to harmonize all these teachings to show that there is an overall system which is consistent throughout, that to a particular level of individual he would teach this way, to a particular level this way, that you shouldn’t take that literally, because he was teaching that for this specific purpose to that person who it wouldn’t have benefited, so he had to teach it another way.
So how do you harmonize all these diversities of ways of teaching these subjects? And so was, so the later scholars, they systematized, they came up with a method of, looking at all, you could take any teaching and they’d say, Well, this is to be taken literally, this is not to be taken literally, but they had to have a reason, you know, which fit every case. They couldn’t just say, Well, that doesn’t I don’t agree with that so it must be interpretive. Right. So the way to harmonize all these teachings in some coherent system to show that in fact there was consistency in all that the Buddha taught even though at one time you know he taught at one time he taught one sūtra he taught that you should kill your mother and father well obviously you know are you to take that literally you know you get arrested I think So how do we take that?
And so you have to have some way of harmonizing all these diverse ways that the Buddha taught to all these people for forty five years, that they all are consistent in leading disciples to liberation. So that’s how this system of interpretive and definitive. Yeah. This this, you know, how how how to show that they’re all consistent, you know, throughout. And so this is the why this this what do you call what would you call method of way of looking at viewing the teachings came up why it was developed because people, you know, were questioning.
And if, yeah, but I just didn’t want you to go away thinking that just simply because a particular passage is said to be interpretive or provisional, that somehow it’s not correct. It is correct. It’s just a way of looking at it. What did he mean by killing your mother? Mine already did.
I can’t do that. He meant that you are to disturb, you are to get rid of common, afflictive emotions. Common, afflictive emotions are the parents which give rise to rebirth. So we don’t have much more to talk about. Does anybody have a pressing question that otherwise we’ll call it a night?
Yeah. Okay. So bring your homework in next week. Thank you. Good night.