Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Working through a Lojong verse said to encompass all practices of the path to enlightenment, Geshe Pema Tsering spends this 104-minute session on the first of four major themes: parting from clinging to this life. He explains the eighteen leisures and opportunities that make a human rebirth precious, then turns to death and impermanence — using the image of a perpetually growing beard to illustrate why waiting for the perfect moment to practice is always self-defeating. The session then covers karma’s four characteristics, anchored by the story of a poor couple whose humble food offering to the Buddha plants the seed of a future liberation and the analogy of a great tree from a small seed. A wide-ranging Q&A closes the session, covering purification practice, why the wealthy often behave badly, the relationship between emptiness and dependent arising, and a continuity-of-moments argument for establishing past lives.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2010 10 03 oct rewtreat.mp3
UUID: bc6ebfec-2000-4063-b365-e19f556a7930
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: z Unallocated multiple years (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2010-10-03
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 104.6 minutes
Words: ~8,301
With also good motivation and with intention of establishing complete enlightenment in order to be able to benefit all sentient beings without exception. And I myself must attain enlightenment. And in order to do that, I’m going to study the teachings on my training. And in this way, will give rise to proper motivation. And then we’ll start with the preliminary prayers.
And if grasping arises, it is not the view. So we’ve seen the verse, Geshe-la brushed through the meaning of the first couple of lines of the verse, but we still have to go through the actual body of the commentary on those four lines of verse. That’s what we’re going to do today. So the commentary that follows straight from those four lines of verse is stating the first sentence. These lines encompass all the practices of the perfection vehicle.
So all the practices of the perfection vehicle that lead to the attainment of high rebirths all the way to enlightenment itself, they are included in the meaning of those four lines of verse, Lojong. So the meaning of this line is given to us in four parts in the commentary. So first, parting from clinging to this life and directing your mind to Dharma practice. Secondly, parting from clinging to cyclic existence and ensuring success in Dharma practice. Thirdly, parting from clinging to self interest and eliminating obstacles of the path.
And lastly, parting from clinging to the four extremes and ensuring the dawning of delusions as wisdom. So again, I was just briefly brushing through the meaning of those topics. So again, parting from clinging to this life and directing your mind to Dharma practice. So again, in order to actually practice Dharma or engaging in genuine spiritual practice, we need to part from clinging to this life. And then our actions will be actual spiritual practices.
Then parting from clinging to cyclic existence and ensuring success in Dharma practice. So again, parting from clinging to the entirety of cyclic existence, and actually reaping the fruits of genuine happiness, is the result of Dharma practice, parting from clinging to self interest and eliminating obstacles of the path. So again, getting rid of self interest or self-cherishing and developing the mind that cherishes others and thus getting rid of delusions that obscure the attainment of enlightenment. And lastly, parting from clinging to the four extremes, the four extreme views, the view of self, other, both self and other, and of causelessness. So ensuring, getting rid of these four extremes, so realizing the right view, and then ensuring that the dawning delusions is wisdom.
So just realizing the right view, and getting rid of the delusions. So, as for the first one of those topics, Parting from Clinging to this Life and Directing your Mind to Dharma practice, that has three parts again. So the preliminary, which is a meditation on the difficulty of finding the human existence of leisure and opportunity. The main practice, which is meditation on death and impermanence. And the complementary path, which is meditation on actions and the results.
So again, in parting from clinging to this life, the way that we do that is by engaging in these three different meditations and these teachings and practices. And the first one, the preliminary meditation, is recognizing the preciousness of this human rebirth, which Geshe-la is then explaining. So again, without recognizing the preciousness of this very rare and hard to obtain and very fragile human rebirth, then we won’t be able to practice Dharma properly. So it is a necessity that we recognize the preciousness and the rarity of this human rebirth which is endowed with the eighteen leisures and opportunities, which allows us to then practice Dharma properly. And again Geshe-la is acknowledging how difficult this one meditation is in and of itself because this is again one of those things that we do not usually think about.
So we do not stop to think about how hard it is to attain a human rebirth and specifically this kind of human rebirth that we have, which is a very special and privileged human rebirth. So we never stop to contemplate such things as these, and therefore it is hard to actually develop this understanding because we have no familiarity with this at all. So we have now attained this precious and rare human rebirth, which is endowed with the eight leisures, the eighteen leisures and opportunities. And it is important that we do not waste this lifetime because if we do not utilize it properly, then again there is no guarantee that we will attain another lifetime with all these favorable conditions as we have it right now. And we might as well be born in one of the lower realms as a hell being, a hungry ghost, an animal.
We won’t have any opportunity to practice Dharma then. So, when we talk about the eighteen leisures and opportunities, or the eighteen freedoms and opportunities, we’re talking about freedoms, or the eight leisures, which are freedom. They are freedom from unfavorable states, unfavorable conditions. So if you are are born not in any of these eight particular conditions, which Geshe-la Wa will explain, then you have this freedom from these eight unfavorable conditions, unfavorable towards the Dharma practice. So this eight unfree states of existence pertain for the four states of which are a non human birth.
So that is to say birth as a hell being, or as a hungry ghost, or as an animal, or as a long lived god. So those are the four unfavorable states that pertains to non humans. And then we have four unfavorable states that pertain to humans, that is being born in a border land, barbaric land, that is as opposed to a central land where the teachings are present. So being born in a place where the teachings are not present. Being born in a time when a Buddha has not taught.
Being born Being born without one’s complete sense faculties. So we’re born with incomplete sense faculties, imperfect sense faculties. That hinder the learning of the teachings and the practice of the teachings. And then, and finally being born with wrong views. So, again, if one is born in any of these four non human kinds of birth, one will be lacking in freedom to practice Dharma.
So again, if one is born as a hell being, the hell realms, one will have no opportunity to practice Dharma there. As a hungry ghost as well, as an animal as well, one cannot practice Dharma. And as a long lived God, again, one has no opportunity to practice Dharma. Then in the four unfree states pertaining to humans, again, if one is born in a barbaric land, again, one has no opportunity to practice Dharma. Barbaric land as in a land, a country where there is no Dharma practice, there is no such teachings.
If one is born with incomplete faculties, and again when we say incomplete faculties, we’re talking specifically about conditions that hinder the learning and the practice of Dharma. So if one is born with incomplete faculties that hinder both the learning and the practice of Dharma, then again, one has no opportunity to practice Dharma. Again, if one is born I’m missing one. So if one is born with wrong views, again, one has no belief in Dharma or in the Sangha and so on. So again, one has no opportunity to practice Dharma then.
And again if one is born, lastly, in a time in which a Buddha has not come and has not taught, then again one has no way to learn the Dharma and practice the Dharma as well. So because we were not born right now, we were not born in any of these conditions or settings, then we are free of these unfavorable states. So we do have these eight freedoms, these eight leisures. So our human rebirth, this human rebirth of ours, is endowed with these eight freedoms. And then we have the ten opportunities.
So the ten opportunities are opportunities in relationship to oneself and opportunities in relation to others. So those are with regards to oneself. First, we were born as humans. So as human beings, we have the opportunity to we have a balance between pleasure and suffering that allows us to gain insight into the nature of cyclic existence and practice Dharma and learn and practice and so on. So we were born as humans.
We were born in a central land, that is a where we have access to the teachings and we can learn and we can practice. And there is the presence of Sangha, the Sangha communities around with monks and nuns and so on. So we were born in a central land. We were born with complete faculties, so our faculties are intact and we have no condition that hinder the learning and the practice of Dharma. We were born with faith in the teachings.
So we are inclined towards the teachings. We have faith in the teachings. We have faith in the Dharma, the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha, in the actions and the results, in past and previous lives, and so on. So we have this condition. And then lastly, I forgot again.
And then we have not performed any of the five heinous deeds, and the ones that are And the other five deeds which are next to those heinous deeds. So they are deeds so bad that they would hinder one’s practice. So again, these five heinous deeds are such things as killing one’s mother, killing one’s father, killing an arhat, drawing blood from a Buddha, and and and things like that. So we have not done any such actions, so we are free of that. Also, we do not have any wrong views in that we, you know, we do accept the Buddha, Dharma, and the and the results, and so on.
So we have faith in the teachings and so on. So we have all these five opportunities that pertain to oneself.. And then those opportunities are pertaining to others. So first, we are living in an age in which a Buddha has come. Not only that, that Buddha has imparted the Dharma.
And not only that, but that Dharma still extant, so it is still available. And thirdly, we do have access to the Dharma. We do have places where we can go and practice the Dharma, so those places are available to us. And we do have people who support our Dharma practice. We do have conditions in people who support our Dharma practice.
We have access to food, shelter, and so on. We have people who help us practice or help us to learn, and so on. So this then, briefly speaking, this is what the meditation on precious human rebirth is. The next one, is the main practice, is the meditation on death and impermanence. So now we have attained this very rare and hard to obtain precious human rebirth, which is endowed with all the eighteen freedoms and opportunities.
Right? Now having attained it, this human rebirth is very fragile and very short lived. We do not live more than a hundred years or so. So we do not have any time to waste. So we have to make the most of the same rebirth, and we have to make the most of it right now.
And then so it’s very important to realize the death and impermanence of this life. So this life is changing constantly, moment to moment. And without realizing this reality of death and impermanence, then we do not practice Dharma properly. Our Dharma practice is severely compromised. Because having no awareness of one’s impending death, then we keep on postponing.
We keep on procrastinating. Basically, that’s what we do. We procrastinate. So we think I’m not going to die today, I’m not going to die this week, I’m not going to die this month. So I don’t need to practice right now.
I don’t need to hurry. I don’t need to do you know, I don’t need to to think about it. And I will do it later. I will do another day and so on and so on. So, again, Geshe-la was denoting how how live our lives.
Do not ever stop to think about our impeding death or the possibility that we might die really at any moment. All that we do all the time is thinking about obtaining some form of happiness or pleasure. And that’s So we spend our whole lives, our entire lives, only pursuing happiness and pleasure. And we never stop to think about preparing or accumulating causes and conditions that will lead to happiness in future lives. So we never stop to do anything or to think, even think about anything or doing anything with regards to future lives.
We are only thinking about our immediate gratification, so to speak. And we always postpone and procrastinate the arrangements for the future lives to later, to next month, next year, and so on. So again, we live our lives this way because we have no awareness of impermanence and death. And that’s one of them. This is a very, very serious matter.
It’s very hard to develop this awareness of our impermanence and our impending death. And without this awareness, we will not practice Dharma properly. So this is a very serious matter. And again, all that it takes, because it’s not a complicated matter, and it’s not a mystical matter. It’s something that all that it takes is us really thinking about it.
And we think about it just a little bit and we start to understand it already. So we can see, for example, in the case of our own lives, in our own personal lives, we see how when we were born we were just this tiny little thing that fit in the hands of our mothers. And then through the years, the years went by we grew up and now we are not little babies anymore. We are fully grown up adults. And that happens because we have changed constantly from moment to moment.
Every moment of our lives we were changing. And this is the result. This is where we are at right now. So this is our impermanence. This is our not staying the same.
This is our the fact that we are going to constantly we keep on constantly changing. And then at the most, we are going to live a hundred years or maybe a little more, but we are bound to die. And the fact is that most people die way before they are a hundred years old. We have no control over the time of our death. What is controlling the time of determining the time of our death are the very innumerable causes and conditions that produce produce this life, of which we have no control whatsoever.
And this life is very fragile, there’s no guarantee, there’s no telling exactly when we are going to die. And then Geshe-la is then saying, death comes, how do you say, death comes by surprise. We have no way, there’s no way of telling when we are going to die. If Geshe were to ask us or someone, when are you going to die? There’s no way of telling.
There’s no way you can say I’m going to die this day or that day or this year and so on. It’s impossible. Death comes by surprise. It sneaks upon us and catches us by surprise, and is approaching us every moment that passes because every single moment we are changing, and we are getting closer to death. And again, this is for the sake of being able to practice Dharma.
That is, these meditations and these teachings, these realizations are for the sake of helping us part from clinging to this life. Because we do not have, basically we do not have any time left knowing that we are going to die for sure and not knowing exactly when we are going to die, know that we can die literally at any moment, then we have no time to waste. We have to give up clinging to this life, and start practicing for the sake of future lives. That is practicing real Dharma practice, real spiritual practice. And that’s what it takes.
This realization is what it takes to do that. And then, so again Geshe-la is just noting, and so we have to practice now, and we do not need to stress over it. All we need to do is practice to the best of our present capability and availability. We do not need to get worried or stressed over it. We do what we can do, but we make sure that we do that.
Slowly we progress and we become more able and more capable and our practice progresses with it. Now we cannot, what we cannot do is wait until tomorrow, wait until the next month, wait until the next year when I have everything that I have, when I have saved this money, or when I have done these things, or wait until I retire, because that doesn’t work. There’s no telling when we’re gonna die. There’s no guarantee that we’re gonna leave until then. And it’s like waiting to start practicing Dharma after I have shaved all my beard, That’s the analogy Geshe-la was giving, after I have finished shaving all my beard.
And the point is the beard is constantly growing every moment, so I have to keep on shaving my beard and I’ll never have time to practice. So that’s the analogy that Geshe was giving. So we cannot wait for that. Okay. So we have attained this precious human rebirth, right?
Which is endowed with all the eighteen freedoms and opportunities. Now we have understood the fragility and the transitoriness of this human rebirth. So we will die, and we can die at any moment. It doesn’t stop there. So we have to also understand how very hard it is, how very rare it is to attain a human rebirth as this one.
So we are more likely to be born as a non human in future lives than we are to be born as a human. It’s very hard to attain a human rebirth with all these eighteen freedoms and opportunities as we have right now. So I guess it’s just going back to the headings. So the preliminary is the meditation on the difficulty of finding the human existence of leisure and opportunity. The main practice is the meditation on death and impermanence.
And the complementary practice is meditation on karma and its fruits, that is actions and the results. So with regards to this topic of actions and the results, again, it’s a very subtle topic, very interesting as well. And Geshe-la is, again, just brushing through right now, because then we’ll have the main text to help us later. But Geshe-la is saying there’s four main characteristics to actions, right? To karma.
So first, karma is certain, or actions are certain. Second, actions proliferate. They do not decrease over time, they increase over time. Thirdly, that have not been accumulated, actions that have not been practiced, will not experience the fruits of actions that have not been practiced, and we will experience the fruits of actions that have been practiced. Now, with regards to the first one of those characteristics, karma is certain or actions are certain.
That is, from one perspective, once we have practiced the action, we are certain to experience the result. It doesn’t matter how much time it passes, it could be thousands of years, we will experience the result. That is certain. If you practice an action, you will experience the result. But from another perspective, we can say if one has practiced a virtuous action, then one will certainly experience a happy result, and nothing other than a happy result.
If one has practiced a virtuous action, what one experiences is happiness only, one doesn’t experience suffering as a result of that virtuous action. One doesn’t have a neutral experience as a result of that virtuous action. And in the same vein, if one practices a non virtuous action, then again, what one is bound to experience is pain and suffering. One does not experience happiness as a result of having practiced a non virtuous action. Or one does not experience a neutral experience as a result of having practiced a non virtuous action.
So karma is certain in these ways. And then the second characteristic of actions or karma is that it proliferates, it increases. So that meaning that even if one were to practice a small negativity, the results of that small action will be great. So, you know, even a small negativity can bring the great sufferings of the hell realms and so on. And on the same vein, again, even a small virtue can bring about great accumulations of merit.
So that’s what it means. So actions increase, actions proliferate. So even small actions, they do bring about great results. Okay. And Geshe-la is, again, giving the illustration.
There’s a story that says that there was a couple, right, a very poor couple. They were very destitute And yet they made an offering to the Buddha. So of the couple, the woman made a food offering to the Buddha. Very poor quality, know, just rice and dal or something like that. So they were very poor.
So it was just a very humble offering. And yet, as a result of that offering, so the Buddha was telling her, because the Buddha can’t foresee all those things, so the Buddha was telling her, that’s very good. As a result of having made this offering, you are going to attain the state of a solitary realizer, a Pratyekabuddha in a future life. Okay. Okay.
Okay. Okay. Okay. And then during that, in that occasion, when the Buddha was telling that to the man’s wife, the man himself, he had doubtful thoughts. He thought, know, the Buddha is lying.
He’s telling the truth. The Buddha could see that. He could see his thinking. And he said, look, I’m not lying. You look at this, Geshe-la was given the name of a tree in Tibetan, which I do not know even in Sanskrit what the name is.
But Geshe-la was explaining, you look at that tree over there. So there was, in that area where this was happening, there was this huge tree in which thousands of people could live under. Right? So that’s how big the tree was. So you just look at that that tree over there.
That tree came about as a result of a small seed. So small actions such as this one can produce such vast results as the one I’m telling to your wife. And then, so again the whole point being that actions do increase, so karma does increase. And how do we translate that into practice? The meaning of that to our daily existence is that we should pay attention to even the smallest virtues when we should practice even small virtuous deeds.
We shouldn’t waste them. And also we should pay attention to small non-virtues and we should always avert them and avoid practicing even small negativities, because they will bring about great results as well. So again, the whole point being that we should pay importance to every action we perform. We should pay attention to every action we perform. And every action is the same in this regard.
So every action has this potential of producing much greater results than the action the original action was. So it doesn’t matter if it is a virtuous action, non virtuous action, or a neutral action. They all have the same capacity, the same potential to produce great results. So we should pay attention to all our actions, to all our activities. Even such small things as insulting someone or saying something derogatory about someone, which sounds like we do understand there is a negativity, there is a harmful thing to do, but we think it’s small thing.
You know, I don’t have to worry about it. And yet, yes, we do, because even that can bring about great results, great sufferings in the future, or or being disrespectful with a representation of the Buddhas or a holy deity or sorts. Again, you know, we don’t give much importance to it, but and yet we have to be careful because that also can bring about great results. Or being disrespectful with the scriptures, or, you know, those things which impart knowledge to us, which help us in the path to enlightenment. So again, you know, we have to be careful with these things.
They seem little, they seem unimportant, and yet they can bring about very great results. And then, when it comes to actions, the main negativities that we have to guard against are the ten non virtuous deeds, the ten non virtuous actions. These are the main actions that we have to avoid. So the three non virtues of body, the three non virtues of speech, and the three non virtues of thought. So again, views, covetousness, and harmful intent, they are the three of thought.
Killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct, or adultery, so they are the three of body. And lying, devised speech, harsh speech, idle talk or gossiping. Again, are the four non virtues of speech. So these are the main non virtuous actions that we have to avoid at all costs. And the avoidance of these non virtuous actions are virtues themselves.
And also with regards to all these actions, we have various degrees in terms of strength or intensity of those actions. Amongst the ten non virtuous themselves, we have non virtuous actions which are more grave than others. So for example, killing a human being is much more serious than gossiping. So there are these differences. Even though they are all non-virtues, are all really bad, okay?
But there are differences. One can still draw these distinctions. And even amongst the single actions themselves, so if we about killing alone, an action has four parts to it. So we have to identify the motivation, the intention of, for example, killing, in the act of killing. We have to have object, we have to have identified an object of killing.
We have to have performed the action of killing, and we have to have concluded, we have to have killed. So an action is gonna have more or less power if it has more or less of these steps present. So if one has killed by accident without intending to kill, that’s an incomplete action. If one has attempted to kill, one has had the motivation, one has identified the object of killing, one has performed the action, but one has not succeeded, then again, that’s an incomplete action of killing. So that is, it will bring about, relatively speaking, it will bring about a lesser result than a complete act of killing.
Even though they are all really you don’t want any of that anyway. And so in English license, for act of killing a human being is possibly the worst act of those ten non virtuous actions. So if that action is complete, that is the worst of all. So if you have all these four steps. Now, if one, just the thought, if one just have the intention, or the motivation of killing a human being, so just a thought, you know, I should kill him.
Even if one has not actually killed, or so one does not have the conclusion and the action itself, but one has identified the object and one has the motivation, that is killing. That is the non virtues of killing. It’s incomplete. Yes, it is incomplete, but that is two of the steps steps of the non virtue of killing. So that is a great negativity.
So again, only by identifying the object of killing and having the intent of killing, one has already two of the steps that make up an action. So one has, that is, you know, a performance of the act of killing. So that is a great negativity. If on top of that one were then to engage in actions that would lead to the killing, like poisoning or shooting or stabbing or whatever, and if one were then to succeed in that endeavor, then one would have the complete act of killing. And that is the main negativity.
So again, when one has endeavored in the activities that will lead to that death, that killing, and one has killed, and one has then concluded, one has then looked at one’s endeavor, and so, okay, I have killed, and one rejoices, and that is good. That is the conclusion of it. So then one has all the complete action, and that is, again, is the worst negativity that one can perform, the killing of a human being, a complete killing of a human being. And so everything in between the moment that we have identified the object of our killing, and we developed the intention, okay, I should kill him, all the way to the conclusion. Then when we say, okay, I have killed and that’s great, I have managed to kill that person.
And everything in between that, all the thoughts, and all the words, and all the actions that we are engaging in order to accomplish this endeavor, everything is an act of killing. So we have this huge amount of actions. Now the workings of actions and the results, Geshe-la is noting, the mechanics of it, and how much one needs to do, and what we’ll experience as a result of that, and only the very subtle workings of action and results, only a fully enlightened Buddha can understand, can see and understand. We have no way of understanding it. So we have to rely on on on the Buddhas.
So every thought we have is an action. Every word we speak is an action. Every physical action that we perform is an action. So when we’re talking about karma, we’re talking about actions, that’s something which is very complex. It’s not easy as well.
Thank you, So the next characteristic of actions is that actions, if one has not performed the action, one will not experience the result. So again, whatever action it may be, if one has not performed that particular action, one will not experience the result of that particular action. There’s no way that that will happen. One will only experience the results of the actions that one has performed. One will not experience the results of actions that somebody else has performed.
And one will not experience the results of actions that oneself has not performed. And that’s how it works. There’s no other way around it. So Geshe-la is, again, just illustrating to us in the world as we have it today, we have many, very many rich people, right? And we have very many powerful people, ministers and presidents and politicians and whatnot, famous people and all that.
Now on the other hand, we have very many people who are not very rich, and they want to be rich, and they work hard their entire lives in order to be rich, and they never become rich. And that is because they have not performed the actions they have not accumulated the causes that will lead to that. Ourselves again, if we think just of ourselves, we want to attain liberation. We want to attain enlightenment. We want to attain unchanging, lasting happiness.
And yet, as hard as we work for it, we we don’t attain it. We don’t have it. We don’t have any of it. And that is because we have not performed the actions in the past that will lead to that. So we we go for refuge, and we pray to the Three Jewels, you know, may I may I become rich, may I become powerful, may I become famous.
And we pray, and we pray, and we pray. And it doesn’t matter how much you pray, if we have not performed the actions that will lead to that, that will not happen. And that’s what that’s what it what it means when we say about actions, about karma, that if one has not accumulated the karma, one will not experience the result. And then, on the other hand, what we have, the next characteristic of karma, is that if one has performed the action, then one will experience the result. So again, if one has accumulated the karma, one if the karma to be rich, then even without making any effort, one will become rich.
If one has accumulated the karma to become powerful or famous, without any effort, one will become powerful and famous as we see quite often. And such people such people who have accumulated such karma do not need to pray to the Buddhas or the Three Jewels. You know? May it become rich, may it become powerful, it become famous. So even without any prayers, those results do come because they have performed the actions.
So I guess he’s inviting you to ask questions. If every action produces a result, as opposed to what we were saying, whether the thought, the speech, or bodily action, is there any way of negating or making good? Most of us are not going to kill anyone or hurt anyone. Some of us may well speak angrily sometimes, and certainly all of us probably have angry thoughts which we then regret having, which produce karmic results. Is there any way negating that, or does that have to follow through to a bad karmic result?
Okay. Good. Okay, okay. No, there is, actually there is something that we can do about it. So we do not necessarily have to experience the results of negative actions.
If we can purify those actions, there is a way to purify and remedy that. And so we, the translation usually is, we translate it as confession. So we do a purification of confession, in which we acknowledge the negativity that we have performed with regret. So with a heart filled with regret, not guilt, but with regret, we acknowledge the negativity for what it is, as a negativity, as a harmful thing, as something that is going to bring about suffering results, so we acknowledge that. And then we make a resolve not to practice it again.
There are two other steps. So the first step is then going for refuge, generating bodhicitta, and the last step is then engaging in a virtuous action. But the two main things, the two main ingredients of purification are the regret, and the resolve to not engage in the action again. And if one one can do that, then what happens is, one does not get rid of the negativity itself, that imprint, that seed remains, and yet it loses the power to bear fruit. So that seed doesn’t sprout, one does not have to experience the results of the negativity.
And the same principle applies to virtuous actions. If you accidentally regret a virtuous action, and you decide not to practice it again, the same thing will happen. So you know the result of those actions. So the same principle, right? So again, Geshe-la is illustrating the course of action of this practice of purification.
So the first step, one goes for refuge and generates bodhicitta. And then the second step, which is the generation of regret, is one in which one recollects the negativities in question, and one generates the sense, the feeling of regret, so it has to be wholehearted. Someone has really to feel the regret. And then the next step is then one has to then make the resolve not to practice that action again. So one, and then one engages in a virtuous action, you know, makes offerings or prostrations or prayers or whatever.
In this manner, then one can stop those previous actions from bearing fruit, and because one has resolved not to practice those actions again, one will not practice those actions again, so there will be no more new negativities of that sort to bear more fruits in the future. So that’s how it works. So in order to get rid of those seeds or those seeds and imprints, one more needs to do is realize emptiness. And by meditating on emptiness, having realized emptiness, can eradicate even the seeds and the imprints. And then one attains liberation and enlightenment on that basis.
All of us have. So that mind that realizes emptiness is the antidote to every fault, fault, every shortcoming, everything. There’s a shortcoming, including the seeds and the imprints. Oh, okay. Geshe-la,.
You’re saying that people who tend to be rich or famous now as a result of the good karmic actions made in previous lives. Why is it that it seems that in so many cases the rich and powerful tend to be the most wicked? The most So yes, that is true. We see a lot of people who are wealthy or famous or powerful, and yes, there is a result of virtuous actions that they have performed in the past, in previous lives, and so on. And yet they are mean, self centered, arrogant and angry, you know, then they do all sorts of negativities all the time.
And, you know, and they will have to experience the result of that in the future. And there’s no escape from that. It just seems like it’s because you’ve had success in the past, you’ve done good things, you’ve become rich and wealthy, then that probably makes you more vulnerable to losing the Dharma. It just seems because everything seems so well, you get a good reverse, you’re in a good life, and you lose the motivation to practice. So, yes, those things do happen, but it’s not necessarily one as a result of the other.
So they have practiced virtuous actions in the past, and they do benefit from those actions in the present. And they are practicing negative actions in the present, and they will suffer the result of those actions in the future. That is very impersonal mechanics. That’s how works. And I just wanted to point you out, when we’re talking about precious human rebirth, one of the opportunities that we have and one of the freedoms that we have, free from lacking faith or belief in the dharma.
Dharma is also the understanding of actions and the results. And we do have faith in the dharma. We do have inclinations towards the dharma. And that’s how rare a precious human rebirth is. It is not a human rebirth is not as rare as a precious human rebirth.
So there’s a lot of rich people and famous people, people who have precious births, who have not who do not have a perfect human rebirth. So, you know, Geshe-la is picking up Saddam Hussein as an example, you know, who was very rich and very powerful. It was the president of his entire nation, and he did many bad things, many negativities, and we all know where it all ended. Yeah. Yes.
Is emptiness the same as dependent arising? So when we think of dependent arising, what we are talking about really is actions and results. Dependent arising is all about actions and results. And things are empty because they are interdependent arising because of actions and the results. Which is a lack of inherent existence, right? They’re all related.
Closely related. Related or different or the same? Are. They’re not the same thing, but they are two ways of looking at the same thing. Let’s put it that way.
So again, when we’re talking about the realization of emptiness, we’re talking about realizing two things. Realizing the lack of inherent existence, and realizing conventional existence. And conventional existence is very much dependent arising. Conventional existence equals dependent arising. Yes.
In order to realize conventional existence, we have to realize dependent arising. You want ask something, Helen? I was going to ask Geshe-la a question that’s a little bit away from what we’ve been talking about. It’s about reading sutras in the center. We don’t read a lot of the Buddhist sutras, or we haven’t in the past few years.
And I just like Geshe-la’s advice on that and the karmic result of reading sutras aloud in the Dharma center. So again, reading the sutras is a virtuous action. So the result of that is happiness. And so whoever is reading the sūtra, that person is going to, in the future, experience the results of such virtuous action. And what’s more, also, depending on the motivation in the mind of the people or the person who is reading the sūtra, that actually can bring about different results.
So if one is motivated towards this life, or future lives, or liberation, or enlightenment, so that actually becomes the cause different things. So, for example, if one is reading the sūtra with the motivation of attaining enlightenment, then that reading of the sūtra becomes one cause for the attainment of enlightenment. If one is reading the sūtra with the intention of attaining money, then that reading of the sūtra becomes a cause of just that. So it depends on one’s motivation. Look, it is just that if you perform a small action such as saying one insult, one insulting word to one person, and that person gets upset, that small action will bring about results in which in the future one will have to experience being insulted many times over.
And that’s all that there is to it. Just like a small seed producing, resulting in a big tree with great fruits and many fruits and all that. There’s no way to understand the fine workings of that. So a small seed gives result to big pine trees, and you know that we all see that. So actions are working the same way.
A small action bring about big results. Is that right? There’s no other way to go around. It’s not gonna get you can’t explain any other way than that. It’s just the nature of it.
That’s the nature of it. If you want to understand it fully, you have to attain enlightenment. So even a small negativity brings about, as a result, great sufferings. Even a small virtuous action brings about great happiness in the future. So it’s just like the tree.
You plant a seed of a tree and it grows with time. Just like the tree. How about we all have lunch? And we’ll talk about it after we do that. You want us to ask a question?
Just when we begin, we pray that we may all sentient beings to be speaking have happiness and the causes happiness, and may they be free from suffering, causes of suffering. We’ve learnt that our actions produce results other people’s actions will not produce results for us. So we pray that hoping that others will be free from suffering and free to have happiness. But in effect, we can’t actually make that happen. They have to make it happen themselves based on these prayers.
So is that the effect of our prayers in fact saying that we’re wishing those people would receive the dharma so they then can create the actions which will create happiness and lack of suffering for them. So the idea behind those particular prayers, the four immeasurables, is that the mind that wishes all beings to be happy and endowed with the cause of happiness, and be free from suffering and from the cause of suffering, and so on. Those states of mind are very powerful states of virtues, of virtue, and in which we create a lot of merit. That’s it. We’re training our minds.
It’s good for us. So those are very powerful, very powerful virtues that will help us to attain enlightenment quickly. And having attained enlightenment, then we’ll be able to help people for a long, long time. So if one has mind, a very powerful mind that is intent on benefiting others, then the virtue, the actions that follow from that mind are gonna be very powerful actions. If one has a lesser intensity or intent on benefiting others, then the virtues, the actions that follow from that will be less powerful.
If one’s intent is on benefiting oneself, then it will be the least powerful of all. One’s virtue will be the least powerful of all. I did have a question, but lunch is ready, so I’ll leave it for now. Could be a long answer. Find that one of I guess, for me, one of the biggest stumbling blocks is the fact that I cannot comprehend the nature of future lifetimes for this entity.
And so in generating these I can’t project myself to that understanding. I wonder if guess you can is there some sort of meditation in particular or something that he could help me with that block? So, first of all, that is not an easy thing to understand. And everybody has the same difficulty. And then secondly, in order to be able to understand future lives, the best way to go about it is to understand past lives.
So if you can understand the existence of previous lifetimes, then it will be very easy to understand the existence of future lifetimes. And one has and and the main reasoning that helps us establish the existence of past lives, of previous lives, is a reasoning that traces back from the present moment, and moment by moment, and day by day, all the way to the past. This present moment that I exist here now came in dependence upon the previous moment. The previous moment came in dependence upon the previous one. So this present day came in dependence upon last night.
Last night came in dependence upon yesterday, the day before, and so on. This year came in dependence on the previous year in a continuum of existence in this manner, and I can trace this continuum back, one moment coming in dependence on the previous one, all the way to when I was a newborn baby, and even before that when I was inside my mother’s womb, and even before then when I was just conceived, and before then when I was in the intermediate state between rebirth, birth into this life, and the death of the previous life, and then even going backwards to the moment of death in the previous life, and the moment of life, and then the previous life’s birth, and so on. And you have to trace it back in this manner, and eventually, following this line of reasoning, you’ll be able to establish and ascertain for yourself that past lives do exist. So what usually does happen when we follow this line of reasoning is that we conclude that I came from my father and my mother. I am a result of the and the sperm.
So, and the fact is, yes, that the body that we have right now came in dependence on the sperm and the ovum of our father and our mother. And yet, the I, the self, did not come in dependence on that. The I and the self came from the intermediate state between one life and the next. Okay, okay, okay. And Geshe-la is just noting that not every occasion of the meeting of an ovum and a sperm produces a baby because that is just to demonstrate that a self, a consciousness, has not entered that.
So if a consciousness comes from the intermediate state, then that meeting of the ovum and the sperm produces conception, the conception of a child. Consciousness that came from the Bardo,, from the intermediate state, had to come from a previous life. And you can go on progressively from all the way to the back. And then, and we have many different reasonings that help us to ascertain the existence of previous previous lives. So we have all these different experiences that come, that we do have in this life, that come independence.
It can only be explained by the accumulation of actions in previous lives. There’s no other way to explain it. And for example, when a newborn child is immediately drawn to the breast of the mother in order to suckle for milk, and without anybody having to say anything. And that is because that is a sign of a habitual habitual imprint that comes from previous lives. Is that all right?
So again, one can think in terms of the habitual patterns that we have, that are brought from past lives. And again, Geshe-la is just making sure that you understand that this is something that is not easy to understand. So your difficulty is absolutely natural, and is shared with everyone here in this room and everyone in the entire planet. Some people grow up with a belief that there is Which doesn’t mean that they understand it. So, and it takes a lot of study and a lot of reasoning and reflection on it in order to be able to start to ascertain it.
Alright? Lunch time? Good.