Death and Rebirth — 2015-03-14

Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. In this 95-minute talk, Jeff Hopkins presents an empirical investigation of karmic mechanisms through spontaneous past-life recollections in children and hypnotically-regressed cases. He distinguishes between evidence for reincarnation (verified cases studied by Ian Stevenson) and evidence for karma itself, which requires tracking patterns across multiple lives. Hopkins then analyzes the detailed case of Wayne, an American educator, whose hypnotic regressions reveal a medieval crusader life marked by extraordinary violence—murder, rape, and suicide by drowning—followed by an eighteenth-century criminal wanderer, a brief female rebirth, and fragmentary lives as violated children and abuse victims, culminating in his twentieth-century incarnation with specific pathologies that mirror the karmic causes: genital trauma, drowning phobia, pedophilic tendencies, and violent impulses. Hopkins shows how causally concordant effects emerge—the methods of killing in early lives reappear as the manner of suffering in later ones—and how habituation to violence perpetuates across centuries. He closes with two of Stevenson’s verified cases demonstrating the power of last wishes and repeated pledges to shape rebirth, and emphasizes that understanding karma is essential both for spiritual practice and for managing the hardening conditions of secular, materialistic societies.

File metadata (for organising)

File: 2015-03-14 – KR.mp3

UUID: d633947d-34d5-4391-b12d-ad287f667daf

Teacher: Jeff Hopkins

Collection: Death and Rebirth

Date: 2015-03-14

Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide

Words: ~12,355

So basically what we’re going to attempt to do now is an empirical verification of karmic mechanisms. And here it’s important to distinguish between two different topics. The first is the existence or non existence of past lives and the second is karma and causality. They are different. The existence or non existence of past lives can really be satisfactorily grounded in spontaneous cases of past life recollection, typically in children.

These are young children, the recollections normally start around ages two to four, and they cease when the child reaches ages seven to nine. Many of these cases which were studied by Professor Stevenson and his colleagues, Mrs. Pasricha, and so forth, are verified cases. In other words, the child had memories. He could not have obtained, if you wish, by normal means.

And these memories were independently verified. Stevenson collected some 2,500 such cases. Of these 2,500 cases, eight ninety and some are verified. Of these eight ninety verified cases, some 60 cases at present are considered best cases. In other words cases for which there is no other explanation really which makes any sense but reincarnation.

So these spontaneous cases are very strong way of establishing the existence of past and future lives. But when we are talking about karma, are talking of something else. We are talking of the relationship between a deed in a past life and a result in a future life and what that relationship is. It’s very difficult to study these with spontaneous cases because typically a child who remembers a past life remembers just that one past life. Then you do not have enough data to look back over several past lives and see a pattern of behavior.

And therefore, one is obliged to turn to a second category of cases, cases which are voluntarily induced through hypnosis, known as hypnotic regression. These cases are far more glamorous, many of them have ended up in books, in books in their own right, published about such cases. These cases are much more fragile. For that reason, I will present them as they used to say in Rome, with a grain of salt. The cases I have chosen, especially the first case is a strong case, I think you will see why.

So these are two of the main proponents of hypnotic regression. Doctor Morris Netherton, I presented several of his cases at TBI over the years, the case of Anna was one of the most famous ones. And Roger Woolger, who was a Jungian psychotherapist, British, who stumbled, if you wish, on past life memories when trying to help patients suffering from deep rooted mental disorders. What are the pros and the cons of hypnotic regression?

These have to be well understood. The pros are the large number of past lives we collected. 10, sometimes more. The patterns are much more obvious precisely because of the numbers. Sometimes, unfortunately rarely, they can be corroborated by internal evidence.

This is quite rare. The cons or the disadvantages, the biggest one is that they are unverified in most cases. And this is wide open to cryptomnesia, in other words secret memories where you learn something, let’s say forty years ago, you forgot it, you forgot you learnt it and it pops up during hypnosis. Fantasy or hypnotic suggestion and then one very big problem with hypnotic regression is that most of the therapists who practice it are not interested in karmic mechanisms, don’t even subscribe to their existence necessarily. They use hypnotic regression for therapeutic purposes, to deal with psychological issues a person has in this life, which is quite legitimate but is not at all our goal.

And therefore it is irrelevant for them whether the memory is true or not. What matters is that remembering or bringing this to light leads to healing. Now it’s far from obvious from a Buddhist standpoint that remembering a past life has any therapeutic effect. And then I really wanted to quote, I was going to quote him Doctor Martin Orne, his true name is Doctor.

Martin Orne, Professor of Psychiatry. He said, I always feel like I’m the Grinch who says there’s no Christmas, no Santa Claus. The people who promote these things, in other words, hypnotic recollection of past lives, are not malevolent but they want very badly to believe. This is the biggest problem with this material. People come with a very strong bias.

Unfortunately, many of us in this room probably have a strong bias towards believing in past lives and we’re just looking for evidence to bolster it. This does not lead to solid corroboration of the material. So, if this is a case, how to proceed? Well, Stevenson famously said that in his experience he had never encountered one single case of hypnotically regressed patient who was truly healed by hypnotic regression. And for this reason he did not believe nor subscribe to the practice of hypnotic regression.

It’s a damning indictment from someone who is highly competent in his field. I think perhaps it is a bit too extreme and has to be understood in the context of Stevenson’s own position where as Director of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, then the Division of Personality Studies, Stevenson was trying to study cases of the reincarnation type in a medical scientific context and feared anything which would leave him open to attacks of bias or even promoting a non scientific procedure. I must say that many cases of hypnotic regression in my opinion are fantasies. There are groups of cases however, the case we will be talking about now, the cases which have been collected by Bloxham who was a Welsh hypnotherapist, which I shall be talking about later this year, which are very strong. Very strong because in some of the Bloxham’s cases, the patient or the subject has access to information it is impossible to have access to in any other means.

Famous case, I talked about it, TBI was one of Bloxham’s patients, this perfectly ordinary man who recollected a life as, a sailor, in the British fleet during the embargo imposed on the French ports in the Napoleonic Wars from eighteen o five to 1815. Then the tape recording, I read the transcript of the tape recording, tape recording is quite extraordinary. This man is using the language of the period, he has naval terminology of the period. He actually uses terms which are not in the dictionaries. Then Bloxham had to submit or submitted the tape to the British Navy for assessment and it ended up in the possession of Prince Philip, who has retained the tape.

The tape was assessed by naval specialists and they said the terminology used is indeed the terminology of the British fleet of the early nineteenth century. It is basically not documented in works available to the general public even frankly at university level. The case is extraordinarily interesting. So it is these cases I’ll be talking about later this year. The case I would like to cover with you at present is one case which Roger Woolger dealt with.

It’s his most interesting case in my opinion. It’s a case of an American, educator and body worker called Wayne. Then I have basically used the material of Wayne’s recollections of previous lives under hypnosis and structured it, it is completely unstructured in Woolger, who obviously is only interested in the therapeutic aspect, and try to see if there are karmic mechanisms which can be discerned or not. And the pattern which comes out in every single one of Wayne’s recollected lives is this one sentence. They just want to hurt me but they’ll pay for it.

So when Wayne came to see Roger Woolger, this was the background basically he gave. It is as you can see a fairly heavy background. His father was an alcoholic who left when he was very young, very distant relationship with his mother. He experienced a particularly painful circumcision. His father died when he was 13 years old.

He had, Woolger comments, extraordinary development of the upper body, the shoulder, the chest, the arms, you know, which did not seem commensurate with his profession as an educator. He was a homosexual with strong pedophile tendencies, sadomasochistic fantasies, a phobia of drowning and he worked with disturbed adolescents. Then obviously you have to keep in mind in cases like this that people who go to a psychiatrist tend to be people with problems. There is a preselection which occurs and this preselection has a big impact on cases of hypnotic regression. The case that people who undergo hypnotic regression in a psychiatric context are more troubled than the ordinary person on the street.

So troubled they can no longer really function in an efficient way and they are searching for answers. Then I was hesitant about presenting this case because it is a heavy case indeed but, it really illustrates very well the karmic results of what we call non-virtuous karma and, perhaps it will help you to see how this operates and how it is germane for us. So the recollected lives of Wayne are numerous but the most important one is actually very ancient. It’s a medieval life in Italy and the Near East. Wayne was not able to locate the events.

You will see that internal evidence enables us to narrow things down considerably. Internal evidence I think he probably did not have access to. This is a memory of his birth in that life. And I have put in orange the key factors, I’d like you to try to keep them in mind, we will draw them together at the end of our analysis of his case. I’m being born, there’s these big women all around me.

His mother dies in childbirth. They don’t care, no one cares. They could kill me if they wanted to. The mother dies in childbirth, the crusader is raised as a loveless orphan treated almost as a slave by his father. He has a sister who is kind to him, he kills his own father at the age of 14 by setting fire to the house he is sleeping in.

And this first recollected life is marked by extraordinary levels of violence, we will find as a pattern throughout the recollected lives. I am a knight in armor, Italian it seems. I’m mounted on a horse with helmet, boot, spear and I have a tunic with a white cross on it. I am some kind of leader of this band of soldiers. It’s hot, dusty, rocky terrain, Mediterranean or Near Eastern.

And this is a key point in this recollection which enables a tentative identification. Most depictions of crusaders depict them with a red cross on the tunic. It’s exceptionally rare to see in the media just what Wayne would have been exposed to, in other words, a depiction of a crusader with a white cross on a black background. Actually, this was the logo, if you wish, of a specific order which came to be known much later as the Order of the Knights of Malta. The early Order of the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, the Knights of the Hospital, all wore a white cross on a black background and this order was recognized officially by the Pope in 11/13 and was founded interestingly enough by Italian merchants.

The order ceased all of its activities after the siege of Acre in Palestine in 1291, where the Muslims took the upper hand and the order had to relocate first in Rhodes, then in Cyprus and eventually in Malta. So we have a bracket for this life because precisely of the garb worn of between 1113 and 1291. And it is a vestment someone exposed to media images of the crusaders would not be familiar with. So this is what makes this life very interesting. There is some internal evidence, you know, which corroborates it.

Then I must apologize for the sections which come up, they are extremely brutal. You are welcome not to read if you do not want to read them. But there is a pattern here, a karmic pattern which I would like to unfold. Wayne now recollects being on the edge of a village and killing the mother of a 12 year old child, impaling her on his spear. Then after killing her with great savagery, he seizes the boy and kidnaps the boy.

Now you will find all the patterns in this recollection reenacting themselves life after life in the recollected lives of Wayne until they manifest at a physical level. He then takes the boy with him to a castle and his words regarding women are quite striking. You will find again that you have a karmic pattern here. Women are simply for us to get here they are to be disposed of, a deep rooted misogyny which leads him to rape the child and then kill him. This leads to his suicide.

I’m somewhere by the ocean, I’ve left my men over in a village, I realize that my life has reached the point where all I can do is kill. I am so full of anger that I don’t know how to stop it, I want to die. I take my dagger and walk into the sea, I plunge it into my own belly. He dies of a combination of stabbing and drowning swallowing salt water. So this first life is extraordinarily savage, even by the standards of the period.

And there is a very big gap in Wayne’s recollected lives, a gap of almost six centuries. We will talk about that later. The second recollected life is an eighteenth century male life. There is little internal evidence to corroborate this life but you will see there is a harmony in the pattern of lives. First the memory of the birth in that life.

I’m a baby, I’m in a kind of crib but I’m out in the rain. There’s a beautifully dressed woman, she doesn’t care, she resents me, I’m very frightened, very alone. If you recollect the birth in the recollected crusader life, you can see the similarities. It’s a birth in a state of fear, of loneliness and of abandonment by the maternal figure. In the crusader life, she died in childbirth.

In this life she is indifferent. Then in this eighteenth century life, look at the timing. Now I’m 13, the age he killed his father in the crusader life. This older man is coming after me, he’s powerfully built, he’s a blacksmith, he say I stole his money, He is whipping me with his cat o’ nine tails. I am so sad inside I am worth nothing and then the leitmotif which comes up in every life, they just want to hurt me but they will pay for it.

I should point out that this is the technique Roger Netherton uses to regress cases which I find very interesting. Woolger uses hypnosis, as in this case. Netherton identifies key speech patterns, expressions and then uses them as a mantra. He has a person recite them to see what associations arise. These associations are linked with that speech pattern and in his opinion with events in that life.

Then in the eighteenth century life, his father died when he was very young. He ran away from the family estate and he becomes a violent criminal wanderer. In other words, an eighteenth century form of a twelfth century crusader because this is basically what the crusaders were. They were wandering noblemen with an official mission to liberate the holy lands but in practice if you read certainly the Muslim accounts and even the Christian accounts of the Crusades, these were just gigantic bloodbaths. And then in Wayne’s recollected eighteenth century life, this arises.

I’m seeing this well dressed woman into a carriage. It seems to be the eighteenth century. I’m dressed as a gentleman but as you can see the behavior is not gentlemanly at all. I can’t have her. I hate her.

I want to kill her. This leads him to a dalliance with a chambermaid whom he stabs and kills. We have once again the murder of a woman as in the first recollected life. In the state of complete indifference. Then he takes revenge on the father of the woman he was courting, whom he sees as a main obstacle to, his designs.

I’m in the streets, it’s cobbled, I’m following this man home, he doesn’t suspect because I’m well dressed. I’m not afraid of anyone, I’m a big man. It’s a father of the woman I want so much. He thinks I’m uncouth. I’ve caught up with him, I’ve got his neck in my hands, I’m very strong, his bones crunch.

I drop him, grind his face with my boot. I feel absolute contempt for him. They won’t do anything to me because I’m too strong. They’re all afraid. You see this alternates life after life between powerlessness, resentment, fear, the development of strength and violence inflicted to others.

In second life it is becoming fairly obvious. I would like you to recollect the way in which a crusader killed the mother of this 12 year old child. First impaling her on his spear and then genital mutilation. Member of the local gentry challenges him to a duel in the woods but instead has a whole band of men from the village lying ambush for him at the appointed place. This mob justice, he is apprehended and he is killed by a stake being driven through his stomach.

The exact correlate of an ance, six centuries later. And his legs, he is quartered alive. Finally, he is stabbed at the chest. His dying words are hateful and vengeful. I’ll get even, I’ll hurt more people.

The dying thought obviously precipitates or will precipitate a very harsh rebirth. We will talk a bit later, today of the impact of dying wishes on rebirth. So you can already see with two lives a pattern beginning to unfold. Then we have a life which is a hiatus, a female rebirth. Significant because this is clearly a case where in the cycle of lives the person is, sexually ambiguous.

There’s very clear female rebirth. In France. One gets a sense that the eighteenth century previous rebirth might have been in France as well. Strikingly enough, in this recollected rebirth, Wayne recollects being a young French aristocrat, he dies after a miscarriage of puerperal fever. Miscarriage obviously affects the womb and the genitalia.

The miscarriages were frequent at period but you will see when we look at the final pattern of the recollected lives, it is striking how it unfolds. Then we have some fragmentary lives. I was not going to include them and then I decided to because even though there’s one or two memories, they are very striking. And these lives are undated. So I have tentatively dated them but it does not affect the unfolding of the pattern.

The first is a memory of a peasant child who was raped then blinded and murdered by his own father. The second is of a child molested by a group of older women. The third is of death under torture as a native American in which he is castrated. And the fourth which we can place around nineteen thirty nine to forty four is death after being beaten up in a Nazi concentration camp as a young Polish teenager. You start to get a sense of the karmic pattern unfolding here over eight hundred years.

Now let us look at the twentieth century life of Wayne, Woolger’s patient. And I had already presented this before but I think it will acquire a lot more weight for you now. The father was a gambler, poor relationship with the mother, painful circumcision, the father dies at 13, the same age at which he killed his own father when he was a young Italian crusader. The same age at which the eighteenth century child lost his father. Tall with extremely heavy muscular development which corresponds to a warrior persona in a previous life.

Homosexual, this is a pattern present certainly in the first life. Sadomasochistic fantasies we could imagine where they came from. A phobia of drowning which corresponds to the mode of death in the first life as a crusader. And then working with disturbed adolescents and Wayne himself recognized it was a means of getting access to young people. Now he claims he never abused this.

We have no means of knowing. So what is the hypothetical timeline of these lives? We have three chronologically successive lives, followed by a fourth one, and four fragmentary lives. One life as a crusader between 11/13 and December with a six hundred year gap to the next recollected life as a criminal vagrant. Then one life as a French aristocrat, a woman.

One tragically short life as a child and probably a very short life as a molested infant. A life as a native American who died under torture. A life as a Polish teenager beaten to death. And finally this poor troubled man who comes for help. Now what is the karmic pattern?

Let us try to see the, if you wish, the warp here in this tapestry of lives which follows each other and it is very clear that there is a pattern in this case. The first pattern is that of the absent or dead mother in lives one, two and five. In life one in the middle ages a mother dies in childbirth. In life two, in the eighteenth century, she’s indifferent. In life five, he has a poor relationship with his mother.

Then we do not know for the other lives. I would assume the relationship was not good, but we have no way of saying. The second pattern which unfolds is the twin pattern of a violent father and parricide, murder of the father. In the first life he kills his father at 14. In the second life he is flogged by a father figure at age 13.

In life 4.1 he is murdered by his own father. In life five his own father dies when he is 13. Very clear pattern unfolding. Then the pattern of the violent wanderer is very clear between lives one and two. We do not know enough for the other lives to say anything.

In life one, he is a crusader. In life two, he is a criminal wanderer, basically a con man, abusing of the confidence of others. Misogyny is a very clear pattern in three lives, maybe more. In life one, he’s both homosexual and pedophile. In life two, extreme misogyny.

In life five, homosexual and pedophile. Life five, excuse me. And you remember these quotes from life one, women are simply here to be used, they are to be disposed of. Life two, I can’t have her, I hate her, I want to kill her. Now this pattern of misogyny must be put in connection with the absent mother figure which is also a clear pattern in the reconnected lives.

Then the rather dark pattern of genital mutilation, the rape of the young boy in the first life, genital mutilation of the mother. In life three as a French aristocrat she dies in childbirth. In life 4.3 as a native American he is castrated. I did not include life 4.1 in which the peasant child is raped. In life five as Wayne in the twentieth century, he experienced an extremely painful circumcision as an adult.

And you can see trauma to the thoracic and abdominal area. In life one he eviscerates a young boy to kill him. In life two, he stabs a chambermaid and then striking enough, he himself is eviscerated. He is impaled by having a stake driven through his stomach and stabbed to death. And the son of the peasant father, we do not know how he was murdered.

I wonder whether it was stabbing as well. So you’re starting to get a sense of the karmic patterns unfolding in this life. And I hope perhaps more of an understanding of people with that situation. It is this sort of understanding which can lead to compassion. So let us try to make a synthesis.

First regarding family and lifespan, and here without talking yet of karma, I have put in red what I consider causes and in green effects. These are the lives considered. Life one, two, 34.140.240.3 and five and their tentative dates. His gender, male, male, female, male, male, male, male. And the features as far as family and lifespan was concerned.

So in life one and two, you have an absent or dead mother. Strikingly in life one, you have parricide, which karmically from a Buddhist standpoint would be an extremely heavy deed. The object is heavy, one’s own father. You will note in life two the following human rebirth what looks like an effect of parricide. Then you also have the same effect in life five.

An alcoholic father who abandons home when the child is 13 years old. I didn’t include them but you have traumatic relationships with the father in life four-one in which he rapes the child. It may or may not be part of the same pattern. Here you have what is or what would be from the Buddhist standpoint the karmic cause. Here you have the effects.

We have no non-human rebirths. With lower rebirth because we don’t have access to them. I will talk about that in a couple of minutes. I think basically, most probably if we look at the timeline, we are looking here probably at a long, expanse of non human rebirth in the lower realms of some six hundred years. But I have no way of proving this.

Then the second synthetic chart is very interesting for us. Violence in the mode of death. Look at the causes here in life one, how he kills. He eviscerates, he stabs, he mutilates genitalia, and he inflicts homosexual rape. In the eighteenth century as well he stabs.

Now look at the results. In the second life in the eighteenth century, he is himself impaled and stabbed. In the third life in the eighteenth century as a woman he dies in childbirth, in other words from genital trauma. In lives four-one and four-two he is raped. He is a recipient of what he inflicted on this child.

And finally in life four-three and five as an Indian he is castrated and in the fifth life as Wayne he experiences extremely painful circumcision, a form of sexual mutilation. Do you see the pattern unfolding? Notice we have not yet talked about karma. Then the sexual inclination is it would be more interesting if we had more data, let’s put it this way. So what this case shows is in a verified or partially verified case, The pattern of brutality and savagery, which was present in the first life, leads through habituation to a pattern of brutality and savagery in future lives and also leads to karmic results which are related to the way these deeds were performed, what we would know as causally concordant effects.

We therefore have clear instances of causally concordant effects throughout Wayne’s recollected past lives. Then an analysis of the effects of maturation, we are hampered by the fact that non human rebirths, as I mentioned two years ago, are very difficult to recollect. Probably largely because the memories are not really meaningful for us. We have no, let’s say if we were to take a rebirth as an animal, the few cases I have found in Stevenson’s archives, the person recollects being shot or they recollect being stung by gnats and having blinkers. This is the sum total of recollections over one life.

There’s very, very little conceptual activity. If there are hell life realms, then probably the level of suffering is so great that the recollections would just be repressed. So after covering Wayne’s case and I think this is an example of how you would engage in karmic analysis of a case, I would like to present two of Stevenson’s cases to show you how, causally concordant effects can manifest and how habituation can manifest To give you an idea of karmic mechanisms, the first case I would like to present is a Lebanese case, the case of Suzanne Ganem, which is an example both of the maturation effect of karma and of the last wish form of habituation. This is a picture of Suzanne Ganem, think she was approximately age two. The first thing she ever did when she was two years old was to pick up a telephone at her home in Lebanon and say in the telephone, Leila.

This was someone, there was no one in her family called Leila. Then, the family was open. It’s a Druze family. They were open to the idea of reincarnation and they investigated the case. So the background of Suzanne Ganem is the following.

She was born in 1972 in the Druze community. During pregnancy her mother dreamt she met a woman who said I am going to come to you when she was around 40. Her first words, my apologies, was a year and a half were Hello Leila. And as she grew older, this is characteristic of Stevenson’s case, she said her name was not Susan, her name was Hanan and she recollected the names or remembered the names of 13 relatives, parents and brothers from a previous life. So two parents and 11 brothers.

Finally, she demonstrated fierce attachment and jealousy towards Hanan’s husband Faruk. When he was identified she would call him three times a day, which was very awkward as he had remarried in the meantime. Now this previously recollected life was identified. The young lady called Hanan Mansour born again in the Druze community in the 1930s, Her husband name was indeed Faruk. Her first child was called Leila and she was diagnosed quite young with a heart condition and had to go to The US for heart surgery.

Her daughter Leila was unable to go. Then the last thing Hanan did before surgery, before anesthesia, was to try to phone Leila but she could not get through. She died during the surgery from complications. Now if we look at the pictures of Hanan Mansour, the previously recollected rebirth, and of the young woman who recollected that life, I think you’ll agree with me the similarities are rather striking. Even considering the difference, you know, of what some forty years in the way people dressed and combed their hair and so forth.

It’s completely unrelated family. And Stevenson interviewed the young child and he asked her how old she was when she stopped telephoning Faruk every day. To his great surprise, she said she didn’t stop, she still called him. And it seems his, new wife had to put up with a lot because she got telephone calls, or he got telephone calls from the previous wife several times a week, sometimes several times a day. This is habituation being extended into a future life.

Now, what is the maturation effect in the case of Hanan Mansour? Probably the last thoughts were kind thoughts towards her children. And these last thoughts were what impelled a human rebirth as Suzanne Ganem. The last wish was to talk with her daughter Leila. The first words in the next life were Hello Leila.

It’s one of the cases which demonstrates the most clearly the importance of the state of mind in the death process. Whatever else you have done in your life, at least make sure your death is peaceful. If you have a peaceful death, you can escape in the next life much of the non virtues you have accumulated. If you have a difficult death, whatever virtues you have accumulated in the next life may not be of benefit. And then I would like to remind you, before going into the next case, of the distinction between projecting and completing karma, which we talked about.

Projecting karma is karma which projects an entire rebirth. Completing karma is karma which gives rise to experiences within that rebirth. And to illustrate this, would like to present my last case, then we will have a nice period for questions and answers. The case which was studied by Stevenson, in an Eskimo community in Canada, an Indian community. And it illustrates the power of a repeated wish, which is why one must be very careful of what one says and especially what one thinks repeatedly.

The case of Bruce Peck, a very striking case of completing karma, in other words karma which affects the details of this life through the power of a repeated wish. So Bruce Peck was an Indian, a Haida Indian of British Columbia, born in 1949. And he was born with two thirds of his right forearm and right arm missing. As you can see clearly in the picture Stevenson included in Reincarnation and Biology. He had no memories of a previous life at all, but a marked phobia of water and eventually wanted to become a fisherman.

These are small communities and everyone in the community considered him to be the reincarnation of his grandfather Richard Peck, who had repeatedly and in public wished to be reborn without a right hand. Richard Peck, the grandfather was born in 1894 and worked all his life as a fisherman in extremely harsh conditions. Over and again he said, he would come back with only one hand so that he would not have to work so hard. And then he would make the gesture of chopping his hand off. He died at age 55 of a heart attack while fishing and fell in the water, fell overboard, the body was recovered.

So these are the witnesses who all heard Richard Peck’s statement that he wished to be reborn without a right hand. The large number of witnesses, close witnesses as well as co workers. And what is striking in this case is that statistically the odds of being born with this type of deformation are very low. They are one in twenty-two thousand. So the odds of being reborn with two thirds of the right forearm missing and of being related to someone who repeatedly throughout his life said that he wanted his right arm to be missing in the next life are infinitesimal?

I would say zero. Moreover, if we look at the mode of death of Richard Peck, we can see that after having a heart attack he fell overboard and probably started to drown and we can see that Bruce Peck suffered from aquaphobia, a marked phobia of water. So I mentioned many times the TBI that phobias in this life which are unexplained by events in childhood generally are connected to the mode of death in the previous life. Someone who died, let’s say, from a snake bite, we have a phobia of snakes. Someone who died in a fire, we have a phobia of fire.

Someone who drowned to death would have a phobia of water. We saw the same thing in the case of Wayne. If you remember, Wayne after suiciding as a crusader in the first life drowned to death and he had a marked phobia of water eight hundred years later in his rebirth as Wayne in the twentieth century. So the cases of Suzanne Ganem and Bruce Peck start to give us a sense of the danger of wishes, promises and pledges. A wish, a promise and a pledge at the time of death has very strong chances of manifesting in the next life.

Manifest it will, but it has strong chances of manifesting in the next life. And even if it is not made at the time of death, repeated wishes, repeated pledges, powerful commitments are karmically potent. Well, this begins to give us a sense of how karma operates. And I hope with a case of Wayne, you got a sense of how non virtue, karmic non-virtue in one life can lead to suffering in a future life and how the suffering is related to the karmic cause which gives rise to it. Then in my next talk I will enter into much greater detail in karmic mechanism.

We will analyze what are known as the 10 Non Virtuous Deeds and their specific karmic consequences and see if we can find cases which corroborate the Buddhist teachings on this matter. So I have covered what I wanted to cover with you this time and I wanted to finish with a very beautiful quote from the Dharmapada, Udānavarga in Tibetan. Just as the shadows of birds who dwell in the sky move along with them, beings are followed by what right and what wrong they have done. If you take the case of Wayne, is very striking. You have a karmic chain extending over eight centuries and the full unfolding of the chain is still going on now.

As we said, the predispositions which must have been sown much before the recollected life as a crusader lead to sexual tendencies, to psychological tendencies, to behavioral tendencies which will lead to other behavior in the future. This is the unfolding of karma. And this is why the Buddhists consider the chains of karma to be like the chains which fetter us in a jail. Something which is to be understood so that it can be escaped from. Then if we are unable to escape from karma, at least we have to make it work for us.

And this is only possible if we understand how it operates. So the road forwards for all of us, I would suggest to you, now that there’s a lot of material of hypnotically regressed cases, a lot of spontaneous recollections of previous lives, is to take this material and to try to see if there is a relationship with not just the Buddhist, because these are shared Indian teachings, the Buddhist, Hindu and Jain teachings on karma. And whether the Buddhist, Hindu and Jain teachings on karma are true or not. You can see that if the material I presented today is true, then we do have to change the way we live. And if it is not true, then we can do what we want, can’t we?

As Somerset Maugham said, you know, the great British short story writer, my philosophy is to do what I want with due regards to the police. This is the philosophy of a true materialist. So the big question is really are these teachings on karma true or not? That is something every one of us alone must decide. Thank you very much and at present if you have questions I’ll be happy to take them.

Okay. I have a question about the dedication of merit. If karma can only ripen on ourselves, why would there be the practice of dedicating merit? For our own benefit. For our own benefit.

The dedication of merit benefits us. If merit was something you could give to another person, then the Buddhists have dedicated their merit to our well-being for thousands of years. We would be much better off than we are. Prayers for others exist mainly for our own benefit. When we pray for the welfare of another person, we benefit greatly.

Then, as I mentioned, if the other person is karmically very close to us, there may be a little bit of benefit. But it in no way can eliminate the karma of the other person accrues. Then there is some debate about Bardo beings. If you look certainly at Abhidharma, once a person has died and entered the Bardo, karmically it is over. Then it is possible to modulate the conditions of the next rebirth.

There’s a lot of debate about this. By modulate the conditions it’s basically modulate the completing karma. So if someone is to experience a rebirth in the lower realms, it is very difficult to prevent such a rebirth. But it is possible for this rebirth to be a lower realm rebirth with better conditions. If the prayers, the dedications are made by someone karmically very close to the person.

Basically, since it is largely inefficacious, the approach of the great Kadampa Geshe was to take karma as one’s protector and not to focus on prayers, on protector deities and so forth. Does that answer your question? You know, given how difficult it is from a Buddhist perspective to take a human rebirth, it seems remarkable that chap Wayne ever had as many human rebirths as he did in terms of not staying in the lower realms. I wonder if you can speculate on that. With pleasure.

I must apologize. PowerPoint has a mind of its own, you know. Sometimes I feel I’m the servant of the computer. Are you quite sure there were that many human rebirths? This is a time span of eight hundred years and you have three, six, eight lives.

Of the eight lives, only three lives were relatively long. It’s difficult to say the crusader probably died young. Criminal vagrant seems to have died young. The French aristocratic lady died in childbirth. These died as children.

The native American rebirth probably died young. The Polish teenager died as a teenager. Wayne, we do not know his lifespan. So these are eight human lives, most of which are short over eight hundred years with six hundred years between the first and the second human life with no memory at all, which is generally an indication of a lower rebirth. So I would assume that because of the conditions of his death at the end of life one, if you remember, Someone else is a servant of that telephone.

Because of the conditions at the end of life one, you have a state of complete despair and anger followed by suicide. One is entitled to assume that from a Buddhist standpoint at least, this would lead directly to a lower rebirth. The combination of anger, despair, and suicide, you know, would lead to the maturation of non virtuous karma. All of us all of us have virtue and non virtue. The problem is because we don’t understand how karma matures, the virtue and non virtue mature in a random fashion, we have no control.

Then the key is to gain some type of control over the process. To do this it’s important to understand the process of maturation of karma. We have an infinite amount of virtuous and non virtuous karma, overwhelmingly non virtuous. What leads to the maturation of karma is the afflictions, in other words, the negative emotions. Now, you have two ways to handle this one.

You can either try to purify all your non-virtuous karma, which is a gigantic task, or you can try to prevent the afflictions from arising. If you prevent them from arising, however much non-virtuous karma you have, it will not mature. The afflictions are like the water which leads to the maturation of the seed. So you take the arhats for instance. The arhats have not purified all their non virtuous karma by any means.

They have gigantic amounts of non virtuous karma like us, But they have eliminated the afflictions. Because they have eliminated the afflictions, they can no longer experience suffering as a result of karma. So you could do a Vajrasattva retreat to try to purify your non virtuous karmic imprints, but it makes much more sense to learn to control your mind and to try to control the afflictions. Because if you do that, it doesn’t matter how many karmic time bombs are planted in the continuum, they will not explode, which is what counts basically. To give you the case of this German engineer I mentioned, it was strong desire which activated the karmic imprint which led him to jail basically.

Do you have other questions? When I looked at that timeline of the different lives, it occurred to me that the eighteenth century noblewoman may have the karma for him to experience that may have ripened because of his great desire for women in the past. Because I’ve heard it said that the last throwing result of the desire for women, if you’re a man, is to actually be born as a woman. Yes. Yes.

So that’s I think what is the case. But it is also highly probable and I didn’t want to talk about it because it’s complicated. We’ll talk about it during the symposium that we have different, groups of 12 links involved here. And this rebirth and this is quite characteristic when you have a different chain of 12 links manifesting is quite different from the ones before. There’s no description of violence or anger.

There’s certainly no violence from this lady’s side. Then this is probably a group of set of twelve links to some virtue accumulated probably long before the Crusader life or perhaps in the gap we know nothing about. Then these lives and that’s what we see when we analyze a pattern, life one, life two, life 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, four point four and five are linked. Probably you have several groups of 12 links in these lives which are all connected and this life, life three, is connected to a different group of 12 links altogether. Because here you have clear patterns as you remember.

Patterns of parricide, absent mother, violence, genital mutilation, phobia of water, and so forth. Do you have other questions? Scientists like Dean Radin have studied distant mental influence and they talk about studies where they’ve looked at prayer and effect on heart attack cases or even in more controlled circumstances such as people in secure rooms and effect on their health. Can you comment on that, how it relates to the view on harm and death? Yes, those studies are well known and they are very debated because in many cases the scientists who engage in these studies are found to have close connections with Baptist ministers in The United States or evangelical ministers, then there is a hesitance to address these studies.

I think in cases of prayers for another person, what we are dealing with from a Buddhist standpoint is really a form of telepathy. So I talked at TBI three years ago about telepathy and its Buddhist understanding. Telepathy is basically nothing terribly complicated. It’s a by product of concentration. So when you generate powerful concentration through meditation, telepathy becomes possible.

Once you have calm abiding, telepathy is basically almost automatic. Then when one prays very forcefully for the welfare of another person, in my opinion, there will be a subconscious transmission of these thoughts to the other person. These thoughts have benefit, especially when you’re dealing with, for instance, heart attacks which are closely related to the state of mind. Then whether you would be able for instance to affect physical phenomena in the life of a person’s repair, I think not. Then the Christian understanding that the efficacy of prayer for healing demonstrates the existence of a God is a logical fallacy.

It merely demonstrates a connection between the two parties which telepathy explains very well. You do not need to bring in the figure of an interceding God who basically intervenes for the person based on the prayers. It’s unnecessary. Fundamentally, prayers for the welfare of others are a good thing. What we must avoid is something we had at the period of TBI which was a semi magical approach to healing.

This is not something we do, so the Buddhist teachings are not for gaining healing from diseases in this life. Then if it worked, would be very nice, but basically it doesn’t work very well. The teachings are for transforming the mind and for affecting from the next life onwards. Then it is undeniable there is an impact on this life. But you will not be able to extend your lifespan by praying for a longer life however much you do so.

Does that answer your question? Ilya, I’m thinking about still thinking about how karma matures with regards to the afflictions. You’re saying that if we can control our afflictions that karma won’t ripen, but won’t keep increasing and perhaps some other conditions will come about? Not sure if I understand. Karma is best understood or the karmic imprints are best understood through the metaphor of the seed.

Now all of you have, it’s one of the nice things in South Australia, either have gardens or wish to have gardens from what I understand. When you plant a seed in the ground, that’s your karmic imprint, the ground is the mind. But that is not enough to get an apple tree, by far, isn’t it? You need a lot of conditions, the foremost condition is water, obviously. That’s the afflictions which cause the karmic seed to mature.

If you only put water with the ground we have in Blackwood, you still would not get an apple tree, right? So you have to put fertilizer and you have to I don’t know, you have to ask Mandy, she’s a great specialist. But you put all of these conditions and if all of the conditions are present, then that one seed which is very small gives rise to something which is huge, an apple tree. So for this reason, the seed is a very good metaphor for karma. If we look at the four characteristics, the general characteristics of karma, I think it will become much clearer.

Let us replace Karma here by apple tree seed and see what we can get. An apple tree seed is definite, yes, because you plant an apple tree seed you will never get a pear tree. If you do, please speak to Mandy. This is of great interest. Karma is definite, right?

Then karma is an increasing function of time. If you plant an apple tree seed and the conditions are there, twenty years later you have an apple tree and let’s say one century later you have an orchard with bushes of apples. One does not experience the results of karma not accumulated. This is obviously the dream of every gardener. You don’t plant the apple seed but you have the apple tree.

Then it doesn’t happen. Finally, karma is indestructible and seeds are not quite indestructible but basically as long as you treat them with a modicum of care, seeds which you have had a long time can still give rise to sprouts. The one exception is anger. Buddhist standpoint, it is taught that karmic imprints, virtuous karmic imprints can be destroyed completely by anger in the same way as a seed can be scorched by fire. You take an apple seed and you pass it over the gas fire long enough, the apple seed loses its potency to germinate.

A mind which experiences great anger destroys the virtuous karmic imprints. That is why these flashes of great anger are extremely dangerous. It’s one of the reasons, to answer your question Andy, for which we dedicate. Because when virtue is dedicated, then it is focused on a goal if you wish. It is said that the dedication must be strong.

We do not know how to dedicate. The dedication must be powerful. Then the seeds, if you wish, are like in a safe. There may be a fire, the fire of anger, they will not be destroyed. So it’s not reciting just I dedicate all the merits accrued to the full enlightenment of all being which is going to be effective.

We must generate within our mind a powerful motivation that this virtue we have accumulated is dedicated to whatever goal. You can dedicate virtues to mundane goals. Many people in Asia do this, in the West people do it as well. I make an offering to the Church and I pray to God to heal my child who suffers from, let us say, leukemia, then it amounts to the dedication of merit for a mundane goal. If the motivation and the dedication is powerful enough, sometimes it does work.

That is not prayer that is dedication. Because unlike prayer, what you have in your dedication is merit. You have an energy which can be released in the actualization of the result. Pure prayer is empty in and of itself of merits, just a motivation or wish. Does that answer the question a bit?

For us it’s really important to understand how this works. Most people come here because they are facing or have faced some difficulty in their life. And at a certain point, the standard responses our society gives simply don’t work. They don’t satisfy them. Our society basically is very rich on the material end of things and very poor in meaning and answers.

Then the people come because they’re trying to find a way out of the situation they’re in. The first thing the teachings can do is enable them to calm the mind. Much of the suffering we experience is mental. The mind is calm, the suffering is less. But then there’s much more than that.

Once a mind has settled down, then one can address the issue of the future and for that it is important to understand karma. Then one starts to live karmically, one accumulates virtuous karma. If one has committed non virtuous karma, one weakens it. Through this eventually one’s life turns towards the better. I have seen this with my own eyes.

I can vouch for the fact it works. Results of karma in this life and I just wondered about the sort of, I guess, empirical evidence for that because it’s one thing to look through past lives but it’s much more apparent when we look in this life. It’s difficult. But my father was a cancerologist and he handled, because he ran an experimental program, he only handled terminal cases. So people entered the program once they were terminal.

He said something to me, two things which struck me. The first he said was that if it was within his possibility, he never allowed one of his patients to die alone. And the second thing he said, which really struck me because he was not a religious man, was he said, I have never seen a good man have a bad death and I have never seen a bad man have a good death. This is someone who saw many people die, thousands of people die. Then I don’t know, I saw only a couple in my life.

But that would be a case of karmic maturation in this life. And then obviously major non virtuous deeds where there is amplification, we will talk about that next time and especially the following time, then there is maturation in one life. For instance, I have seen many cases of abortion where the mother suffered from cancer of the womb later on in life. Very striking. There was no damage to the womb during the abortion.

One I knew really well, she was basically one of my co students under Jeffrey Hopkins. She had an abortion when she was young. She was Jewish, didn’t believe in anything, you know. And then much later on in life she became Buddhist, a very fine scholar actually. And then she was diagnosed with a metastatic cancer of the womb.

She died of it actually. And, it obviously her case troubled her mind very much because she saw a clear correlation between the deed of abortion where one is basically one is killing a child. Because one is killing a powerless being to start with the deed is heavy. Then in her case I think it was late term abortion. Late term abortions are particularly cruel.

If you study the details, it’s astonishing that it can still be performed. Then the person who takes the decision is generally the mother, which has a close karmic relation with the child. You deal with a karmically heavy deed, then it is not surprising that such deed should mature in this life. Not always, by all means, but you do see it. Then I think you have to examine around yourselves.

I can see by your body posture that this is something which is uncomfortable for some of you to think that there might be consequences within one’s life. Look, examine. I know one thing I have always been very struck by is a connection between broken bodhisattva and tantric commitments in cancer. They’re very striking. I know many cases now of broken commitments with cancer within a couple of years and broken commitments and insanity.

It’s very striking. I knew one case in India of a nun, you know. She wanted me to translate for her. She had broken all her commitments, tantric commitments, and she wanted to receive new ones from Lopen Rinpoche and I refused. She was already becoming mentally disturbed, heavily mentally disturbed, and she wanted new commitments which she would not be able to keep, which would just add to the burden.

There was no meaning to this at all. No meaning at all. So you get a sense, I hope, with the examples I gave you about promises and pledges of how powerful karmically a promise or pledge can be. And this, for instance, you have minor promises and pledges, which are promises and pledges to one’s family members such as this one, which manifests basically within one life, doesn’t it? Then verbal promises and pledges which manifest after two lives.

So once we start thinking in these terms, we must reassess our physical behavior and the way we speak. Then this obviously leads to us turning inwards and reassessing our minds. This is the beginning of, I think, the path of all the great religions and when it comes to changing the mind, specifically Buddhism, Hinduism and Jain. There’s complete agreement in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jain regarding cyclic existence, karma and causality. There’s disagreement regarding the means to be liberated.

Everyone agrees we have to go to Paris. The question is do we go by plane, by boat or some people say by train. Does that help a bit? No, I think if you look at your own experience, if you talk to people who have lived, this is something you will see. You will see, you know.

I have a considerable life experience now, knew people who had very heavy lives in World War II, then I have not known one who had a good death, not one, even those who were very proud of what they did. I knew one, he was a Romanian fascist, far right, far, far right. He volunteered to fight with the Waffen SS in Russia, Leningrad. Then he was shot, recovered, was able to flee to America, eventually ended up working for the US government. They liked the fascists because there were no doubts what side they were on.

Death was very hard, brain cancer. He lived in the South Of France, he was just wandering in the vineyards lost. There had never been any remorse, I think. There is remorse which purifies. We have a lot of our students who focus only on this life and they want to be free of guilt because obviously nobody likes to feel guilty.

But guilt is a big thing. If you feel guilty for something bad you have done, the karma becomes uncertain. If the guilt is powerful enough, the karma uncertain means the karma may not mature. Then, obviously, a little bit of suffering now and no big suffering in the future is the way to go. So guilt and remorse for the non virtuous we have done is a big thing.

If one has behaved badly in the past, well that can’t be changed, that’s done. But once one understands karmic engineering, one can if one is lucky, one can eliminate it. This is difficult. But if one is not lucky, one can reduce it. If we reduce it, then there will be limited experience.

Probably in the case of Wayne, there was some type of guilt in that crusader. It’s that guilt which led to the suicide. Then that guilt is a redeeming feature of that life, Otherwise, it’s a very savage life. Do you have other questions? Because it’s the same people.

Right? Yes. I I was very struck in after the September 11 by the fact that president Bush, whose ancestor actually was a crusader, spontaneously started using the crusade rhetoric and Osama bin Laden did the same thing. Now these are the activation of karmic imprints, you see, on both sides. The savagery is on both sides, Then people don’t know what’s inside themselves.

Here it’s difficult because their lives are so comfortable. You’re not exposed. Don’t get the triggers. And when the triggers are there, it’s astonishing. It’s astonishing what comes out.

The person realizes that there are things hidden within themselves they did not have a clue about, for good or for bad. These karmic imprints you see so the key when you you understand that we have an infinite number of these negative karmic imprints is to limit the triggers. How do we do that? We control sensory input. So if we control sensory input, we reduce the risk that we’re going to activate something which is going to take our life in an unmanageable direction.

Then if we’re exposed to very high levels of sensory input, high levels of the afflictions, sensory input triggers the afflictions, something will be activated, we don’t know what. Like if you take the case of Osama Bin Laden, it’s very striking if we study his life. He was basically a remarkably pious, gentle and quiet child. If you look at the pictures of the young boy, remarkably pure face. Remarkably, you know.

Then the American invasion of Iraq, me, the American intervention in Iraq and the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabian soil, as you know, shocked all pious Muslims because The US were allowed on the base to drink alcohol. And Saudi Arabia is the garden of the holy sites. This probably, this is what he said, acted as a trigger, which led him to wish to fight the occupier. And what was activated is clearly karmic imprints which go back to a military commander, 800, 900 years old and a very successful one. And his counterpart, probably, because this is how karma unfolds, on the Western side ended up as president of The United States.

You say that Hussein I don’t say that. I cannot identify, you know. I doubt so. Saladin would not have engaged in these deeds. But there were many Muslim commanders.

Saladin did not kill prisoners. But what you see is you see a karmic pattern unfolding where you have a pair which have one relationship and this re manifests often centuries later. And that’s why we find some of the events happening now very puzzling. We don’t really understand, like Australians don’t understand why the young people are going to fight in Iraq. You know, it makes no sense until you have a broader picture.

Just in relation to limiting the triggers, I understand the goal of debate in Tibetan Buddhism is to bring about wrong views to counter them. Could the same be said for engaging in activities that would bring about certain afflictions so as to work with them? I understand it can be a very dangerous practice if you’re not well equipped to do so, Everything depends of the person. Overwhelmingly the answer is no, right? Overwhelmingly what will happen is that you will be subsumed by the afflictions and you will wake up one day and it will be over.

That’s what will happen. Then, very advanced meditators do put themselves in situations where the afflictions will arise, for instance to try to identify the self. But in our case it doesn’t apply. I have a good friend, know, he’s a western monk. Some people say that he has obtained calm abiding.

He spent much of his life meditating at Land of Medicine Buddha in California. We met in Dharmasala and we were talking and he had been in Iran during the Iranian revolution in nineteen seventy seven-seventy nine And it was interesting, he said that that was when he understood that he did not know what was in his own mind. He said they were all staying, a group of westerners, he was not ordained at the period, at the Hotel Olympia in Tehran. And everything was nice and fine until a rumor spread in the hotel that the revolutionary guards were coming to arrest all the Westerners in the hotel just as they had arrested the personnel of the US embassy. And he said it was very strange.

He himself initially was not afraid but there was a wind of panic from the others and he felt it within his mind and he became terrified. Then what this sort of experience shows is that we really do not know ourselves. Because we do not know ourselves, it is wise to assume that we are fragile and not to put ourselves in situations where we will break and then one has to try to basically reassemble things. We do not know our karmic imprints. And if you have a lot of life experience and I don’t refer to life experience in Australia, you have had guns pointed at you, that level of life experience, then you have a better sense of who you might be inside.

But few people I think have had those experiences because then things come out very powerfully and then one knows, okay, this is who is hiding inside, right? But it’s not an experience you want to try to have. One thing and I will maybe close with that comment, one thing which struck me when I started translating some thirty two years ago now, was there was a big difference in the students we had. We had students from different horizons but we had a large number of students who were survivors of World War II. One in particular, I remember him to this day, was an older German gentleman Hans, not very well off and we didn’t have in those days the easy transport we have now.

It was available but expensive. Whenever Geshe Rabten taught, he would travel all the way from Central Germany to Switzerland just for the teaching. He was well in his sixties. He had a very simple life and I got to know him better once and I asked him about his background. He had been enlisted by force in the Wehrmacht, the German army, when he was a teenager at the end of the war.

He was captured by the Russians. He was interned in a Siberian camp and he escaped and walked, if you can imagine, from Central Russia to Germany. You can imagine what he must have experienced. It’s astonishing he survived. But the result of that very, very harsh experience in early life was that when he encountered the Buddhist teachings, his commitment was rock solid.

There was no wavering of any type and we had a group of students like that, not a lot, but they really were the bedrock on which Geshe Rabten’s monastery was built. So it’s a little bit what is lacking nowadays. Times have been very easy for a very long time. Then our students don’t have experience of how bad things can be, certainly our Western students. As a result, there are a lot of topics such as suffering which are basically meaningless.

They become meaningful when the person is at the end of his or her life facing cancer, Alzheimer’s, a heart condition, whatever. At that point it is generally too late to do anything, one is overwhelmed by the medical situation. So in that sense, suffering is not a bad thing. And as the times get harder in Australia and as all of you can see, are getting harder each year, Economically, they’re getting harder. Australia has a dysfunctional political system.

The geopolitical situation, it has deteriorated very sharply in the last fifteen years. All of us are going to deal with much harder lives. The high level of state support Australians enjoy is something broadly speaking of the past. And most Australians are indebted, heavily indebted, for a lifestyle they can’t afford. That is also something of the past.

We are moving into a world of increasing poverty. People who owe a lot of money are the new poor. So in this new world, there will be much more suffering, in my lifetime I think for sure, the lifetime of some of you definitely, then the teachings will become very meaningful. Then people will understand. Right now there are a lot of shields in shelters.

I returned to Switzerland over Christmas to see my mother and I was astonished at really the collapse in Switzerland. So if there’s a collapse in Switzerland, there’s not a lot left to say for the rest of Europe because it’s the country in Europe with the highest living standard. Because I was raised in the country, know a lot of people, I was really surprised at the level of mental and psychological misery. There was widespread poverty. You see beggars on the streets everywhere.

The crime rate had exploded last time I went to Switzerland two and a half years ago. Two and a half years ago, the crime rate crime rate in Geneva was up 38% for violent crimes in one year. That’s a lot. 40% in one year is a lot, you know. The police was completely overwhelmed.

This time when I went back there had been a big reaffirmation of law and order by the police which has become very heavy handed, brutal I think is the word you could use. And I was very surprised by the number of people I know who have had strokes, generally businessmen, you know, depression. Businesses are closing all over the place, it’s astonishing. Most of the businesses I know have now closed. The banks are in a crisis.

And I was telling one of the students here, the brother of an old friend of mine, we were neighbors, he was one of the biggest, banking families in Europe. I met him at the airport this time. He didn’t recognize me and I didn’t want to put him on the spot but he looked ravaged and he’s a much younger man than I am. Ravaged. So this condition in Europe is unfortunately going to spread and in societies like ours where all which people have is money, profoundly materialistic societies, then if there is not some type of inner construction, when this happens the person is destroyed, is literally destroyed.

So it’s one of the things we try to do here and it’s why Geshe-la encourages you to look inwards. Because at a certain point in life you cannot control what’s happening outside. Like when society as a whole is sinking, as is the case in Switzerland now, in January the Swiss franc which was pegged to the Euro was decoupled from the Euro because the Swiss Central Bank could no longer maintain the peg was too expensive. In I think it was three hours, the Swiss franc jumped 20% up versus a euro. This means a collapse of Switzerland’s export industries.

The factories now are closing. When this happens, on the outside you can’t do anything. Then you need mind training. If you have mind training, you lose all your money, then that’s the way it is. You lose your house, that’s the way it is.

You know how to counter that. You lose your health, that’s the way it is. But normally when big obstacles happen because of mind training, your health will not be affected too much. Because what I have seen is that so many times, because westerners don’t even know what mind training is, when their financial situation crashes and I think in Australia it’s going to happen on a very large scale because you live tragically above your means, tragically. When the financial situation crashes, the person psychologically crashes, the marriage crashes.

With the crash of the marriage, the person enters into a depression and we have seen such cases at the center, many cases. So all of you, all these teachings are available when we are able to do them because we are also part of this society. Then as I’ve said many times be a bit greedy, take what there is and take it for yourself. Don’t delude us yourselves. We cannot help others at present.

But by helping ourselves down the line, we become strong enough to help others. And then when the trouble comes, you will have the strength to be an anchor and then to start moving to help others. Like my mother does now in Switzerland. My mother is 94 years old, she has had several strokes and she teaches mind training to people who visit her. She does.

And it’s very powerful because it comes from a 94 old lady with white hair and blue eyes and an Anglo Saxon accent, right? And people say my goodness, you know, she’s been through all of this and the mind is at peace and this is something I want. This is the goal of what we do. Then thank you very much.

Key terms in this teaching

bodhisattva jang chub sem pa (Tib)

One who possesses bodhicitta. LYWA

completing karma drubje kyi lä (Tib)

Also called finishing karma, the karmic imprints that ripen to determine the type of experiences we have when we are reborn, as opposed to throwing karma that determines the actual rebirth. LYWA

cyclic existence samsara (Skt); khor wa (Tib)

The six realms of conditioned existence, three lower - hell, hungry ghost and animal - and three upper - human, demigod and god. LYWA

lower realms ngen dro (Tib)

The three realms of cyclic existence with the most suffering: the hell, hungry ghost and animal realms. LYWA

mantra ngag (Tib)

Literally, mind protection. Mantras are Sanskrit syllables usually recited in conjunction with the practice of a particular meditational deity and embody the qualities of that deity. LYWA

shamatha zhi nä (Tib)

Calm abiding; a state of concentration in which the mind is able to abide steadily, without effort and for as long as desired, on an object of meditation. There are nine stages in its development. LYWA

thought transformation lojong (Tib)

Also known as “mind training” or “mind transformation”. A powerful approach to the development of bodhicitta, in which the mind is trained to use all situations, both happy and unhappy, as a means to destroy self-cherishing and self-grasping. LYWA

Definitions adapted from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive glossary, as taught in the Gelug tradition.