International Festivals
2025 Summer Festival
15. Week 2 - Teaching 12

15. Week 2 - Teaching 12

2025.08.05

Gen-la Dekyong

When Geshe-la was teaching the benefits of practising Advice From Atisha’s Heart, he said:

Always keep Advice From Atisha’s Heart as your daily practice. It enables us to easily make progress in renunciation, bodhichitta, correct view of emptiness. So we can accomplish enlightenment without difficulty. We will be able to maintain a peaceful mind all the time so we will be happy all the time. We will be able to reduce our problems of anger, attachment, and ignorance - our real enemies - and be kind to others. Our human nature and good qualities will improve. Always respecting others and avoiding harming living beings. Always maintaining a good heart. We will naturally become a bodhisattva - a holy compassionate being who is the object of everyone’s love and respect.

This is what our world really needs.

If we love others, they will love us. If we respect others, they will respect us. This will naturally make for a happy life. All our enemies will disappear. All our problems will disappear. Our nature will cause enemies to disappear.

Everyone is thinking, “I am important, others are not. My happiness is important, others’ is not. My suffering and problems are important, others’ are not.” The Kadampa point of view is the opposite.

When Geshe-la taught this in Portugal he said:

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if such precious subjects were taught in universities?

Conclusion: The way to solve our problems is to improve our mind.

Everybody needs a simple practice like this - Advice from Atisha’s heart.

This morning I’d like to share when Geshe-la actually mentioned some of these verses in his oral teachings.

Distracting enjoyments have no essence; therefore sincerely practise giving.

This has 2 parts.

Several pieces of this advice are from an ordination ceremony in 2001.

Atisha said distracting enjoyments have no essence. Distracting enjoyments, worldly enjoyments don’t give any good results. Eventually they are deceptive. Because we are distracted, unless we are a Dharma practitioner who is used to concentrating on Dharma objects, a normal ordinary person whenever we are distracted, the object is an object of attachment or anger. Because we are distracted by, for example, objects of attachment, automatically our inner peace, mental peace, disappears. It is therefore very difficult to make progress in our Dharma practice. Although we practise Dharma for a long time, we practise Dharma with strong distractions. How do we solve this problem? We should reduce our strong distractions.

What’s the method for reducing strong distractions? Moral discipline. We need to be guarding our mind with conscientiousness, mindfulness, and alertness. This is how we solve our problem of Dharma not being able to function deeply to change our mind.

The method is sincerely practising moral discipline.

We know that concentration depends on moral discipline. And wisdom depends on concentration. These 3 are dependently related. So if we want TA, we must improve our MD.

MD is in reality a very simple practice. Practically we abandon certain things that are harmful. Objects that interfere with our inner peace. Any kind of inappropriate action - we abandon. Beneficial actions - we practise. This special practice is the practice of MD.

And this is what we do with the rest of our life. As best we can. This is a huuuuge project, and it requires a lot of attention, mindfulness.

The practice of MD is the best method to overcome gross distractions. With reduced gross distractions then our Dharma practice works. By reducing gross distractions and focusing on virtuous objects, through this in meditation concentration will develop.

Always ask the question, “What is my mind doing now?” If you leave your mind naturally, it’s up to no good. We don’t understand that distraction is our real enemy. It’s going to stop us becoming an actual bodhisattva.

Through this meditation and concentration we will develop special wisdom called superior seeing. In the Sutras Buddha said, “From moral discipline develops concentration. From concentration develops wisdom.” This means from moral discipline practice we will develop the concentration of tranquil abiding. From the experience of the concentration of TA we will experience superior seeing. From the wisdom of superior seeing we will develop the direct wisdom that realises emptiness directly.

All pain is coming from the mind of self-grasping. And the mind realising emptiness and self-grasping are opposites. So if we have the wisdom realising emptiness directly there is no physical pain, no suffering.

So your experience of moral discipline is a realisation, like Dharma jewels, your inner protection that protects you from suffering and problems. Keep this knowledge in your heart.

The 2nd part of the verse is, “therefore sincerely practise giving.” Sincerely means ‘without laziness.’ VGKG taught this to me in a Skype conversation, and I’d like to share it with you. It was when I had an opportunity to ask him about Advice from Atisha’s Heart.

Atisha’s Advice encourages the practice of giving. Distracting enjoyments or worldly enjoyments have no essence. Therefore, give to others. This seems to imply material help.

Most people, when they hear giving, expect this to mean material giving. Our practice of giving as Kadampas is much more profound.

My own explanation is: To give cherishing love. Give Dharma. Give protection. Give protection from mara of delusion, ignorance. Or from lower rebirth. Or from samsaric rebirth, with pure motivation. All this is giving. In our NKT books our explanation of giving is superior to other books. It is explained clearly for example in Modern Buddhism. The practice of giving is cherishing others. Give love.

Expecting nothing in return.

Learn to cherish others. Give protection, protecting living beings from taking lower rebirth, samsaric rebirth, from dangers, helping them. We give Dharma. Preventing discouragement, disappointment, fear.

This explanation of giving is more beneficial. This is entering the bodhisattva’s way of life. Material giving can be done by non-Buddhists. It can be done by wealthy people. It can even be done by governments. (At this point Geshe-la laughed.)

NKT books are superior to other books. I am not proud. Because the explanations come from JT and not from me. So practical these teachings from Lama Tsongkhapa. They are based on his teachings. So like this you can practise the perfection of giving.

Conclusion: I must give love to all living beings.

It’s like a promise. I must give love to all living beings. Then we meditate on that determination. It’s a Kadampa heart. Whatever we’re doing, wherever we are, we give love. Non-deceptive wisdom. So we meditate on this conclusion. Geshe-la taught during the teachings on MODWA, when we meditate, we have a mind that is meditating that has found an authentic determination , “I must give love”. Then we merge the mind that is meditating with the object, the determination to give love. We merge them. Then our whole mind becomes that determination, “I must give love.” Then hold it, hold it, hold it. This is a special method to reduce distractions. There’s no mind left. We need to stop all this distraction, our mind wandering, by merging our entire mind with the determinations we make in Lamrim practice.

Now I’m going to give a little bit of instruction on retreat, because it was part of this conversation.

What is the main subject?

And I said, “Atisha’s Advice”. This is the advice he gave.

Retreat is meditation programme. We need to create the meditations from Atisha’s Advice. Atisha’s Advice includes renunciation. Also it includes the practice of the 6 perfections - giving, moral discipline, etc. In each teaching you can finally make a conclusion and then you can meditate on that conclusion. Atisha’s Advice encourages the practice of giving. So the conclusion is, “I must give love to all living beings.” Then, on moral discipline, conclusion: “Until I attain liberation, I will keep moral discipline purely and sincerely.” Also you can make conclusions on the perfection of wisdom, the perfection of concentration. Make the object of meditation - it can be part of the mind - compassion, cherishing love, renunciation, bodhichitta. We generate this mind and then hold. Or the object of meditation can be emptiness, or a determination, and concentrate on the object.

Always keep pure moral discipline for it leads to beauty in this life and happiness hereafter.

In the same teaching in 2001, VGKG said:

Why do we need to keep pure moral discipline? Because it leads to beauty in this life - it makes yourself beautiful, in this life, and happy in this life and in your future lives. It makes yourself beautiful because the practice of moral discipline is cleaning yourself.

Because cleaning your physical body is not enough. What does it mean to clean yourself? It means making your mind pure, and therefore your actions pure.

You become a beautiful person. A beautiful face is not good enough. We need to be beautiful on the inside. If on the inside everything is negative like poison, dirty, being physically beautiful / attractive will not bring good results. Moral discipline makes your mind pure, your actions pure, and you will become a pure being. So temporarily MD makes yourself pure. Then there’s no basis to experience problems and suffering. It reduces our strong distractions. Then we will experience mental peace. In this way we will be happy all the time. With the basis of the practice of MD it is very easy to benefit others. It is very easy to teach others. Our mindfulness, our memory, our mind, is very clear, strong, and stable. Many good qualities we practically experience. It’s not just imagination. Understand through your own experience. Perhaps until now you didn’t try. Please try. If you try to put this into practice you will understand through your own experience.

Since hatred is rife in these impure times, don the armour of patience, free from anger.

We’re not going to receive any more instructions on patience, we’ve received many already.

You remain in samsara through the power of laziness; therefore ignite the fire of the effort of application.

Laziness is a mind / deluded mental factor that is happy with other enjoyments and ignores Dharma. It’s a disinclination to practice. We all know this mind well. That’s why we remain in samsara. If we believe that worldly enjoyments make us happy, we have not understood what real happiness is.

VGKG has explained in NESTH and HTTYL that happiness is the part of the mind that experiences inner peace. The peace we get from worldly enjoyments is deceptive - the itch appears to reduce - but it’s just changing suffering. Real inner peace comes from the inner wisdom of Lamrim. That is real happiness. It doesn’t mean that we don’t engage in worldly enjoyments. It’s just that we know that they will never make us really happy. And they prove that all of the time.

In LMDJ:

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“If we do not apply ourself to our spiritual practice, no one can grant us liberation from suffering. Not our spiritual friends, nor our spiritual guide, nor even all the Buddhas. If we do not apply energy and effort to our spiritual practices, all the hopes we have for happiness will be in vain. If you have effort you have all Dharmas. If you have laziness you have nothing.”

Since this human life is wasted by indulging in distractions, now is the time to practise concentration.

We received a lovely teaching on this last week from VGKG’s teachings in 1997. It’s related to Shantideva’s GTTBWOL, where the main subject of the 8th chapter is TA. But Shantideva spends nearly the entire chapter explaining how to stop distractions. The reason for this is because if we stop distractions TA will arise naturally.

In that chapter he presents many disadvantages of samsara’s enjoyments. He helps us to recognise how distractions harm us and obstruct us. And many methods for overcoming them. Shantideva realised that if we’re not distracted TA will arise naturally. Instead of explained how to train in TA, he mainly explains extensively how to eliminate distractions. As Kadampa practitioners we should try gradually to integrate our Lamrim practice into our daily activities, so that watching TV, being on the internet, talking, cooking, walking, relaxing, become Lamrim practice, through how we are discriminating engaging in that activity. Even if we’re engaging in worldly enjoyments this will not be a distraction because we transform the object of our distraction into a Lamrim practice. For such a practitioner there is no longer any basis for being distracted. Whatever appears will teach us Lamrim. For Kadampas who are able to integrate or mix their daily activities with their Lamrim practice they will have no distraction. This is because all objects of distraction are transformed into Lamrim practice.

This instruction is related to the verse in the prayer Lord of all Lineages: “All my appearances in dreams teach me that all my appearances when awake do not exist. Thus for me all my dream appearances are the supreme instruction of my Guru.” If we appear ourselves as suffering, we can think, “This appearance of suffering reminds me that all the sufferings of my future lives will be much worse. Therefore I must train in renunciation.” Or, if we appear other living beings as suffering, we can think, “This appearance of others’ suffering reminds me that all my kind mothers are experiencing suffering without end. I must become a Buddha so that I can liberate all living beings from their suffering.” The appearance of others’ suffering causes bodhichitta to appear in our heart. Or the appearance of anything reminds us that there are no things out there and we train in the wisdom realising emptiness. Geshe-la’s expression, “This appearance reminds me” helps us train in emptiness. Just those words are leading us to the realisations of concentration and wisdom realising emptiness. Thinking that everything is an aspect of Lamrim is an emptiness teaching.

Every Dharma realisation is related to wisdom. Through Lamrim wisdom everything changes. We see everything differently because we have Lamrim wisdom. Everything becomes meaningful. Wisdom is virtuous intelligence that understands meaningful objects. Such as past and future lives, karma, and emptiness. They are all hidden. They are called meaningful because when we understand them they give meaning to our life and all our countless future lives. Therefore meaningful activity is conjoined with Lamrim wisdom.

In reality every Dharma realisation is wisdom. Renunciation is part of wisdom, bodhichitta is part of wisdom, every realisation is part of wisdom. In the POW Sutras in the section on the 6 perfections, Buddha said, “You need wisdom before practising the perfection of giving, moral discipline, patience, etc.” It’s wisdom that understands that the practice of giving is important. Without an intention to practice giving, we won’t practice giving. The intention to practice giving comes from wisdom. Without this wisdom we follow ignorance. Wisdom is pushing us. Everything is wisdom. Wisdom is the life of all our practices. Without wisdom, nothing. We won’t practise patience if we don’t understand the benefits - this is ignorance. If we accept anything happily with wisdom, this is patience. Our Kadampa teachings are scientific.
The practitioners of the Old Kadampa Tradition appeared to emphasise the practice of Kadam Lamrim of Sutra more than the practice of Tantra.

But we need to understand that these verses can be interpreted from the point of view of Sutra or the point of view of Tantra. For example, we can practise concentration according to the Lamrim of Sutra, or the Lamrim of the SOTP of Tantra. E.g. engaging in generation stage practice as the object of TA. We can use generation and completion stage practice to train in concentration according to HYT, and we can use completion stage practice to train in wisdom according to HYT - training in meaning clear light and gaining the illusory body - completely pure body.

In 1994, in the teachings on KWOL, VGKG said:

For HYT practitioners when they are meditating on self-generation practice, they integrate this into the Lamrim practice of bodhichitta, TA, or refuge. For the skilful practitioner, self-generation practice is the practice of bodhichitta, refuge, TA. It is the best bodhichitta practice, because the practitioner wants to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all living beings. We imagine we have already become an enlightened being. We have fulfilled our bodhichitta wish. This is enhancing our mind of bodhichitta. There is no self-generation stage practice separate from bodhichitta practice, refuge practice, TA practice. And the Tantric practices of completion stage can be integrated into the Lamrim practice of superior seeing, wisdom practice. There is not one single activity that cannot be integrated into Lamrim. From this we can see that Lamrim is the condensation of all Buddha’s teachings.

From a talk on Mahamudra in 2003:

We should know the real meaning of Tantra and follow that meaning, then our practice will be correct.

In the chapter on Tantra in Modern Buddhism, Geshe-la says, “Practising Sutra is the basic foundation for practising Tantra. And practising Tantra is the quick method for fulfilling the goal of Sutra.”

Otherwise it’s very possible that us human beings will misuse Buddha’s HYT teachings for worldly enjoyments and so forth. This will cause pure Dharma to disappear. Previously in Tibet such things happened. During the reign of King Yeshe Ö, many false teachers came from India and gave HYT teachings. They named this Buddha’s Highest Yoga Tantra, mainly emphasising 2 things - ritual practice that was sexual activity, and wrathful actions to destroy enemies. The Tibetan people believed these teachings, developed great interest of course, and these teachings and practices spread to many areas. King Yeshe Ö was so deeply worried that pure Buddhadharma would soon disappear. He wished with all his heart to renew pure Buddhadharma. His method was to invite Atisha from India to Tibet to renew pure Dharma, because false Dharma students were causing pure Dharma to disappear. King Yeshe Ö gave his life to invite Atisha. He did this because he realised Dharma was so important for people, and without it people’s lives are empty.

Geshe-la has said, “I will happily give my life” - and if we check, he has given his entire life to renew and establish pure Kadam Dharma in a new presentation that is acceptable to modern society.

King Jangchub Ö fulfilled King Yeshe Ö’s wish and invited Atisha, who gave clear teachings on the meaning of Tantra. Through his teachings and peaceful advice, people gradually improved their understanding of the meaning of Tantra. And then they changed, their spiritual way of life changed. He spread Kadam Dharma throughout Tibet, and now it is here. We should also be trying to understand and practise the real meaning of Sutra and Tantra, we practise the union of Sutra and Tantra following Lama Tsongkhapa’s instructions.

This is a story about Atisha and Dromtonpa from Summer Festival 1995:

We have experienced samsara, the cycle of birth, ageing, sickness, death from beginningless time until now. By gaining Lamrim realisations we can stop samsara and thus achieve permanent freedom from sickness, ageing, death, and rebirth. Those with sharp minds may find contradictions between this and the example of great teachers of Atisha and JT. For instance, Atisha gained complete realisations of Lamrim. We can understand from his life, especially from Dromtonpa’s biography, that Atisha was often sick. Atisha came from Tibet from India, which had a very different climate, as well as very different food and other conditions. So he was often ill. Sometimes, seriously ill. The contradiction is our thought - how can an enlightened being get sick? Surely this contradicts saying those with Lamrim realisations attain permanent freedom from sickness? To ordinary people and to beginners it may seem like a contradiction. But not to practitioners like Dromtonpa. In reality Atisha had achieved permanent cessation from sickness. by attaining Lamrim realisations Atisha had achieved a new body called the vajra body or the illusory body. So in reality Atisha had achieved permanent liberation from sickness - by attaining Lamrim realisations Atisha had achieved a new body called the vajra body or the illusory body. This was Atisha’s own body. This body never ages, never becomes sick, and never dies. When people saw Atisha being sick, they were seeing his old body being sick, not his actual body. His old body came from the bodies of his ordinary parents. It was therefore part of his parents’ bodies, not his own. This ordinary body of course became ill. But this not mean Atisha became ill. Those thinking Atisha was ill were incorrect because it was not Atisha himself who was ill. Dromtonpa’s perception was correct - he realised Atisha had realised the illusory body - completely free from sickness and death. It was his old gross body that came from his ordinary parents that was ill. Atisha kept his old body which experienced so many difficulties, illness, and eventually death because it was the only way in which Atisha could communicate directly with ordinary beings, since ordinary beings were unable to see his actual body, the illusory body. He kept his old body like a house in which his actual body lived. From an ordinary way of seeing it looked like Atisha was ill, but from Dromtonpa’s way of seeing, it wasn’t Atisha who was ill, but his old body. Even the body of Buddha Shakyamuni died and decayed because it came from ordinary parents. Atisha’s actual body was free from sickness, ageing, and death because he had achieved Lamrim realisations. If we want permanent freedom from sickness we must also achieve Lamrim realisations. Lamrim realisations therefore is the supreme medicine that cures outer and inner diseases. It is the supreme Dharma Jewel that protects us directly from the sufferings of samsara in general and human sufferings in particular.

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