Death and Rebirth — 2015-05-09

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

About this talk. In this 61-minute talk, professor Jeff Hopkins explores how Buddhist teachings on karma and ethics can be verified through cases of reincollected past lives and hypnotic regression. He begins by contextualizing Buddhist ethics within Indian philosophical traditions, explaining karma not as a system of divine punishment but as an impersonal mechanism operating across lifetimes. Hopkins then analyzes motivation in depth, distinguishing between acknowledged and actual motivation, using the example of charity donations to show how surface altruism often masks egotistical aims. He walks through the framework of contrived versus spontaneous motivations, explaining how meditation progressively transforms habitual patterns into genuine renunciation. He then examines the ten non-virtuous deeds in detail, unpacking the four components necessary for a deed to bear full karmic fruit: base, perception, motivation (subdivided into initial and final affliction), and performance. He concludes with a rigorous analysis of abortion as an example of a complete deed of killing, and briefly considers suicide bombers and collective war karma, signaling that case studies would follow after a break.

File metadata (for organising)

File: 2015-05-09 – KR.mp3

UUID: b599e99a-80cd-439a-9a19-e6194c60e92c

Teacher: Jeff Hopkins

Collection: Death and Rebirth

Date: 2015-05-09

Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide

Words: ~8,341

Then it’s a great pleasure to see so many well known faces here and a couple of new faces. And I hope you all came for the conference and not for the new screen. If you came for the new screen, you must agree with me. It’s really nice. So this topic of the 10 non virtues is a topic which has been covered many times at TBI, most recently by Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen.

But if you remember when Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen was here a year and a half ago, he covered it in great detail when he presented, His Holiness’s Opening the Eye of New Awareness. Then my goal this year is to try to see what among the Buddhist teachings can be verified based on cases of recollected reincarnation, children who remember previous lives, and hypnotic regression. To do this, we have to cover a little bit again the issue of the 10 non virtues, and I’d like to set it in a much broader context. So the 10 non virtues are basically the foundation of Buddhist ethics. What precisely is Buddhist ethics?

Buddhist ethics belongs to a family of ethics, Indian ethical systems, which is very different from Western ethics. And I’d like to talk a little bit about Indian ethics as a backdrop for Buddhist ethics. And this, as those of you who’ve been to India may recognize, is the Ganges by Varanasi with one of the numerous ghats, one of the numerous graveyards by the Ganges. Indian ethics overwhelmingly belong to a family of ethics known as consequentialism, which is a very sophisticated term which basically means that the consequences of an action basically define the ethical import of that action. But not the consequences over one human life, the consequences over numerous lives.

Now this is the common denominator of all Indian ethical traditions with the exception of materialism. There is an Indian materialist school. So obviously, is very different from Western consequentialism. Some of you may know that one of the most famous Western consequentialist philosophers is Peter Singer, an Australian. Then the consequences of consequentialism when it is reduced to one life are quite terrifying.

It is quite obvious that this cannot found a serious ethical system. You all have heard of Singer’s very controversial positions regarding the euthanasia of deeply deficient children. This is a direct consequence of consequentialism or utilitarianism that’s reduced to one life. So all Indian traditions of ethics are consequentialist. The main difference is that some accept the existence of an ātman or a soul and some do not.

The Hindu and Jain consequentialist traditions accept the existence of an ātman or a soul. We say in Buddhism a self which is permanent one and unitary. Buddhism is also consequentialist, but it does not accept the existence of a soul. And therefore, in Hinduism, which accepts not only the existence of a soul but a god, karma, in other words, deeds and their consequences over multiple lives, are administered and can be abrogated by God. This is a Hindu understanding of karma.

You find something very similar in the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah. This is not at all the Buddhist position. In Buddhism, there is no God and there is no inherently existing self. So karma is not in Buddhism a retributive mechanism, a system of rewards and punishment. Instead, it is a mere mechanism which it behooves us to try to understand.

And it is indispensable to understand this mechanism to improve one’s own situation over a long period of time, which means more than one life. As Buddhists, we take for granted the idea that the mental continuum passes from body to body, sometimes in human bodies, sometimes in animal bodies, sometimes in rebirths as gods. Now, all of our focus as a society is to improve our situation within this life. And we consider people who save for their retirement, who don’t behave foolishly using drugs or alcohol, as very sensible people because they’re focusing on the end of this life. From a Buddhist standpoint, this is a very, very narrow mindset.

The end of this life is just the end of this life, but it leads to the beginning of future lives, which are beginningless. So instead of preparing just for retirement at the end of this life, we should be preparing for the long future. This is only possible if we understand the rules which govern karma. Just as if you want to retire in the future, let’s say at 65 or 70, you have to understand the principles ruling savings, let’s say in this country, the creation of a superannuation, whether it’s to your interest or not to do this. And you must invest wisely.

If you do, you will be able to retire in comfort. If you don’t, you will have to work until your death. So this is something we all understand and as a result of this, educated, sensible people prepare for their retirement. Once one understands that this life is not the end of things, it’s really the beginning, it makes a lot of sense to take the long view. That does not mean to completely abandon this life, but this means to put this life in its context.

It’s something very small. In my case, I have twenty to thirty years left. This life is basically pretty much over. To focus on those twenty to thirty years instead of focusing on the tens of thousands, maybe millions of years in front of me is foolish, is really foolish. So during those twenty or thirty years, for some of you it’s a lot more than that, for some of you perhaps less, it makes sense to try to prepare for the distant future.

I can say, certainly for myself, that my predecessor in a previous life was a very good person because I was reborn in this life with excellent conditions. This I don’t owe to any effort from my side. I owe it to the karma accumulated by someone in a previous life whose memories I no longer have. And this was obviously, you know, someone who was generous because I was born in a wealthy family, who studied because I did well in school, and someone who loved and respected his parents because my parents were very kind to me. Pretty much everything I’ve been able to do in my life, I’ve been able to do thanks to my parents.

So if I look back at the work of that person in his previous life, and obviously in this life, I am on the receiving end of this kindness, I want to be as kind to whoever is coming in my future life. Do the same thing for him or her. And all of us should look at it this way. All of us in in this temple, we basically have very good conditions. It could be a lot worse than this.

Mean, being born in the first world, in Australia, with an education, all of us have basically fully functional senses, good minds, good health. If you just follow the news, you can see how bad it could be. So His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, If we’re going to be egotistical, we should be intelligently egotistical. The beginning of our spiritual practice is egotistical. It’s true.

It’s for our own sake. But if we’re going to be egotistical, we should not focus on the very short term in this life. We should be intelligently egotistical and focus on the very long term. In other words, accumulate merit for future lives and try not to accumulate non virtue because it will ripen. Then to do this we have to understand what merit is, how we accumulate it and what non virtue is, how to avoid accumulating it and if we accumulate it, how to purify it.

This is the long view. As Buddhists and Buddhism really begins with this, Buddhism begins when we start looking beyond this life. This life is basically spoken for. From the Buddhist standpoint, the critical element in karma is motivation. And in this context, would like to mention the, it seems, historical account of the life of Lhalung Pelgyi Dorje, who was, it seems, a Tibetan monk, an abbot for that matter, of Samya monastery, during the rule of king Langdarma in the eighth century who tried to eradicate Buddhism from Tibet.

Langdarma was a Bön practitioner, a shamanistic practitioner, and he persecuted Buddhism on a very wide scale. This led to the new extinction of Buddhism in Tibet. Now this monk, Lhalung Pelgyi Dorje, realizing the damage the king was doing, set out to assassinate the king. And the accounts say that he put on lay clothes, which were black, rode a black horse, which is actually a white horse covered in soot, and rode to the palace before shooting the king with an arrow. It seems actually historically what happened is that he was performing a cham dance in front of the king in which he had bowed an arrow and shot the king in the chest.

After doing this, he fled. Now the deed is a deed of murder. The motivation is the motivation to prevent the destruction of the teachings and the return to shamanism and to basically human sacrifice. So the motivation is an extremely powerful virtuous motivation. While we cannot say that the deed in its totality is virtuous, we can say that with such a powerful virtuous motivation there will be beneficial effects.

There will also be harmful effects, the deed of murder has been committed. But the motivation in this case, which is really the motivation of the bodhisattva, which overrides his own personal interest for the interest of the nation and the spread of the teachings, that is a very powerful motivation. So for this reason, since motivation is so central in Buddhism, we have to try to understand what motivation is. And I have already felt motivation is like an onion. We have multiple layers.

We have a superficial motivation. But do we actually know what our true motivation is? And if not, how do we find what our true motivation is before we engage in a deed? Because for the deed to be virtuous, that motivation must be virtuous. If we delude ourselves and we think we have a virtuous motivation, it’s really a non virtuous motivation, the karmic effects of the deed will be harmful.

So this is my own analysis but it fits with what my teachers have taught. I think motivation can be divided into two: acknowledged motivation, which is our public motivation, which I think for all of us is overwhelmingly good. Even criminals somehow seem to perform crime for good reasons. And the actual motivation.

Now ideally these two would be one and the same. In other words, our actual motivation is also what we say to others is our motivation for our performing an action. And in addition, our acknowledged motivation can be public or private. Public is what we acknowledge in public, let’s say, if we are someone of importance to the newspapers. Private is what we will say to our friends and family.

Now it’s been my personal experience that actual motivation is overwhelmingly opaque to the subject. People don’t really or are not really aware or maybe do not wish to acknowledge why they truly do certain things. In other words, we lie to ourselves. Now from a Buddhist standpoint, even though acknowledged motivation, as we said in public, is overwhelmingly altruistic, the actual motivation is exclusively egotistical in an ordinary being. Ordinary beings such as ourselves are not able to act non egotistically.

And since it’s the actual motivation which is the karmic motive, the beginning of the karmic process, this must be elucidated. So I think taking an example will make it clearer. Let us take the example of making an important donation for the Buddhist teachings, which happens frequently in Asia as a way of gaining merit. Let us analyze what the possible motivations can be. Now the public motivation overwhelmingly will be a statement that one wishes to attain the state of full enlightenment through practicing the perfection of generosity.

Whether this is truly the motivation or not is another issue altogether. The private motivation, I think for a fair number of students, is to accumulate merit to be rich in the future life. Then what is the actual motivation? The actual motivation may be the same as the acknowledged motivation, but it may be even lower than that. It may be to dispel financial problems in this life.

It may be, and this is frequent, to become well known as an important sponsor. It may be to gain status in the center of the monastic community. Now these three actual motivations here are non-Buddhist worldly motivations. So karmically, their result is basically ill renown. Much effort has gone into creating the causes for ill renown.

This motivation here to accumulate merit to be rich in a future life is a motivation of the being of the small scope. Its karmic result will indeed be a higher rebirth. The public motivation is, in other words, to attain full enlightenment for the sake of others, this is very rare. Apart from great beings, do not know anyone who has such a motivation in reality. Now the question is not what the acknowledged motivation is.

The question is what is the motivation which is the karmic motor. We have to identify it. If this motivation is a wrong motivation, we have to change it. So how do we bring the actual motivation out in the open? I could not resist the skeleton in the cupboard because that is what the actual motivation is.

The cupboard looks nice, you open it, and there’s a skeleton inside. And there are techniques to do this. The way to do it is to mentally eliminate whatever might give worldly gain. So you eliminate fame and prestige by thinking, I will, for instance, make the donation secretly. Nobody will know.

An anonymous donation. It’s surprising how difficult it is to make an anonymous donation for oneself. There’s an astonishing amount of psychological resistance, which is a clear sign the motivation is impure. Then in addition to prevent any praise, I will do it in such a way that people despise me. To eliminate financial rewards, I will do it for free.

And to eliminate any interest for one’s health, I will do it in such a way that it harms my health. Then, if we can generate this as a motivation, for sure it is not a mundane motivation. For sure. Such a motivation is a powerful karmic motor. Our goal, in other words, in Buddhist terms, is to avoid an impure motivation and instead to generate a pure motivation.

An impure motivation is a motivation contaminated by the eight worldly dharmas, which are precisely all this. Fame and prestige, social life, financial rewards, health. A pure motivation is a motivation which is not contaminated by the eight worldly dharmas and which focuses on future lives at the least. So how do we generate such a motivation? There are two ways of generating a motivation.

We have either contrived motivations or spontaneous motivations. Contrived motivations are produced motivation. They take effort to be generated, for instance, through meditation. Spontaneous motivations are innate motivations. In our case, all our virtuous motivations are probably contrived, with a couple exceptions.

All our spontaneous motivations are probably non virtuous. If we look at ourselves and we act spontaneously, we act for ourselves. We take care of number one. Very rarely, we may think of others, but whether we truly think of others, or it’s a modified form of egoism, is an open question. So if this is the case, how can we change our spontaneous motivation?

We have to start with a contrived motivation. And generating a contrived motivation is like a smith which is hammering a piece of iron into shape. It is best done in meditation and that is putting the iron in the fire until it is red hot and becomes malleable. In meditation, the mind becomes malleable. And then you change the shape of the iron with the hammer.

The hammer is analytical meditation. By forging the iron, you transform the motivation. So a contrived meditation, which is for instance a motivation we generate in the context of Lamrim, must be generated incrementally, in other words, step by step. And it must be generated through generating all the motivations leading up to it. You cannot jump steps.

So if you’re scaling steps leading to a temple up in the clouds and you jump steps, it is a given you will fall and hurt yourself. Each step leads to the next step. There is a sequence. The sequence is not random. The sequence is the meaning of the term Lam Rim.

Lam is the path, rim are the stages, rim are the steps we have to follow. Each meditation in the Lam Rim leads to an attainment, a change of the mind which is the step to the next meditation. So let us take a very simple case. The goal of the practice of the being of the small scope. Generating a contrived, in other words, artificial motivation for taking refuge.

This can only be done in a series of steps. Starting in our present state as ordinary beings and moving up towards being a being who has mentally generated the motivation of the small scope. The steps we must follow are meditating on a human rebirth of leisure and opportunity, and this leads to meditating on death and impermanence, not the other way around. Then after meditating on death and impermanence, once we gain an understanding of this, we realize we ourselves will die imminently and this leads me to reflecting on the possible sufferings of the lower realms. And this finally leads to a wish for refuge from the suffering of suffering.

Each of these steps is indispensable and their sequence is indispensable. So as you can see, to generate a contrived motivation, have to proceed incrementally step by step, meditation by meditation and we have to generate each of the motivations leading up to the motivation we wish to finally obtain. In other words, an actual contrived motivation can only be generated incrementally. It is long, it is tedious, but this is the only way to do it. Our goal, obviously, is not a contrived meditation.

Our goal is to be like the nightingale. Our goal is a spontaneous motivation. A spontaneous motivation is there naturally. When someone attacks our child, we have a spontaneous motivation to defend that child at any cost fueled by great anger. This is not something which is meditated upon, which is constructed.

It is a spontaneous delusion which arises in our mind. It arises spontaneously because of great habituation. Meditation is nothing else but habituation. Meditation is controlled, intentional habituation. So our goal is instead of being at the mercy of these uncontrolled, harmful motivations from the past, to start to generate powerful beneficial motivations.

When someone attacks our child, to spontaneously react by trying to reason with the attacker, by having compassion for the attacker. Your force is eventually unavoidable by using the minimum amount of force with sadness within one’s mind, not with delight at the prospect. So how do we generate this spontaneous motivation? It can only arise through Lojong habituation with a generation of contrived motivations. And this is the goal of all meditation.

So this is why Je Tsongkhapa says in his Three Principal Aspects of the Path, referring to the generation of renunciation. Hence, when through meditation, not even one instant of longing for the marvels of cyclic existence arises and day and night, the mind striving for liberation arises, then renunciation will have been well generated. In other words, when through meditation, in other words, through generating the contrived motivations, eventually, the spontaneous motivation of renunciation arises. It is there day and night without any effort. Then one will have generated renunciation.

This is our goal. So what are the differences between contrived and spontaneous motivations? Contrived motivations must be generated incrementally anew each time. When we meditate, must start from the beginning and move up. Spontaneous motivations do not need to be generated.

A bodhisattva spontaneously has bodhicitta. It is present within his mind stream. His deeds are infused by bodhicitta. Likewise for contrived motivation, if the motivation is not generated, the deed will not lead to the wishful consequences. It is not a matter of reciting at the beginning of the teachings, etc, to consider that one has generated the Mahāyāna refuge.

It has not happened. Therefore the deed of attending the teachings will not lead to virtuous results. That motivation must be generated and it’s a painstaking process. It takes time. On on the other hand, with a spontaneous motivation, if for instance one is a Śrāvaka or a Pratyeka Buddha, one has spontaneous renunciation.

Everything one does becomes a cause for liberation. Someone who is a bodhisattva, whatever deeds that person does become a cause for full enlightenment. Because the motivation is always present. And this is why Atisha says, in the same way as if the root is poisonous, so are the branches and leaves. If the root is medicinal, so are the branches and leaves.

Likewise, all deeds whatsoever performed motivated by desire, hatred, and delusion are exclusively non virtuous. So this leads us to a more careful analysis of the 10 non virtuous deeds, which are basically what we marinate in. There are far more non virtuous deeds as you can see from the picture than there are virtuous deeds here. At least there is one. What are the 10 non virtuous deeds?

Three of the deeds are physical deeds, four are verbal, and three are mental. We have killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct for physical non virtues. Lying, divisive speech, harsh words, and idle talk or gossip for verbal non virtues, covetousness, ill will and wrong views for mental non virtues. I assume most of you know these through attending the teachings. There are far more than 10 non virtues, as Vasubandhu says in Abhidharmakośa.

These are the 10 principal ones which are listed for this reason. And here we have to make a distinction before proceeding further between karma and karmic paths. Vasubandhu says in Abhidharmakośa of Vasubandhu three are paths, seven are in addition or karma. The seven which are both karma and paths are the three non-virtues of body and the four of speech. The mental non-virtues on the other hand are only karma.

They are not paths of karma. This is simply because they are intimately related with intention. They basically fuse with the mental factor of intention within the mind stream. Now in opposition to the 10 non virtuous deeds, we have the 10 virtuous deeds. The 10 virtuous deeds are restraint from the 10 non virtuous.

In other words, restraining from killing, restraining from stealing, restraining from sexual misconduct, etcetera. And here, it is important to understand the distinction between restraining from a deed, in other words not performing a deed, and abandoning a deed. The concept of abandonment is an extremely important concept in Buddhism, which is not well understood. Restraining means not performing a deed, not doing the deed. Abandonment is something totally different.

Just as when you abandon somebody, you never go back. When you abandon a non virtuous deed, this is something you never ever perform again. You have actually totally shut the door to that deed. So restraining from a non virtue, such as restraining from killing, is a powerful virtue. Let us say, if someone were to attack you with the intent to kill you and you had the capacity to strike back and kill that person, otherwise it’s meaningless.

But even though you have that capacity, you restrain from that, you refuse to engage in this. Without perhaps allowing the other person to outright kill you, which a bodhisattva might allow, you nonetheless try to harm the person as little as possible, you would have accumulated the virtuous deed of restraint from killing. Abandonment of killing is something much greater. Abandonment of killing means that you have basically pledged, never ever, whatever the circumstances, to kill. It is abandonments which lead to vows.

A vow is an abandonment. Economically, an abandonment is much more powerful than just restraint. Restraint is just self control, but it does not mean that in the future you’ll restrain from every instance. An abandonment means you have shut the door to something. Now if this is the case for us ordinary beings like ourselves who want to improve or not in the future, what are the conditions necessary for karma to lead to fruition?

This understanding is not theoretical. The goal of this understanding is for us to make sure that our virtuous deeds are complete karmic deeds which will necessarily lead to fruition. And if we find ourselves in the situation where we might be engaging in non virtuous deeds, to make sure our non virtuous deeds are incomplete and weak. This is karmic engineering. It is something which we can engage in at our present level, whereas meditation and emptiness is far beyond us.

So a karma which is complete, if you wish, that was the metaphor I used here, is akin to an archer shooting an arrow and the arrow hitting the target. The deed is complete. It will lead to fruition. Once a karma is complete, it is very difficult to purify. Jetsün Tsongkhapa says in Lamrim Chenmo, It is not that confession is effective, it is that it all there is.

So once one has performed a non virtuous deed, it is not just a matter of reciting the Vajrasattva mantra or the Confession sūtra of the 35 Buddhas or confessing it to one’s teacher. That will weaken it, but whether it will make it ineffectual or not is another question. It is actually very difficult to make it ineffectual because the core for purification is deep repentance and remorse that is difficult to generate. So for a deed to be complete in a simplified presentation, four components must be present. The base, the motivation, the performance and the completion.

And the motivation in addition in our presentation is subdivided into three, perception, motivation, and affliction. Then I will analyze analyze these in detail with you. I did this some six or seven years ago at TBI and I had a a very critical reaction from some older students. So it led me to change very much the way I presented things here because it was felt at the period that this was a classic case of Buddhist scholasticism. Now this is a basic misunderstanding of what this presentation is all about.

These distinctions are there to be able to address our own deeds and to strengthen those which should be strengthened and to weaken those which should be weakened. Then the purification of these weak non virtuous deeds is much easier. If we allow a non virtuous deed to be complete and powerful, then it is very difficult to purify. This is why there’s an old Tibetan proverb which says, The sins of the wise are weak and the sins of the foolish are strong. Simply because the wise, they do perform sins, they understand the means to purify and the means to weaken the sin even before it is completed.

The foolish do not. Those who have not studied karmic mechanisms do not. Then they are at the receiving end of the karma they have accumulated. So here the basis is simply the object of the deed. In a case, for instance, of the non virtuous deed of killing, the basis is a living being.

It cannot be an object. It is pretty self evident. It is the motivation which is much more interesting for us. Now, Vasubandhu makes an extremely interesting distinction as far as the motivation is concerned between the initial motivation and the concluding or final motivation. You can see if you analyze this flowchart here that the initial motivation precedes the final motivation and leads to the performance of the deed.

According to Vasubandhu, for the 10 non virtuous deeds, any of the three mental poisons anger, desire or ignorance can be the initial motivation. In other words, you could engage, for instance, in sexual misconduct out of anger, let us say in the case of rape, or you could engage in divisive speech out of desire, or for that matter you could engage in covetousness out of anger as initial motivation. But the final motivation which immediately precedes the deed is necessarily anger for killing harsh words and ill will, desire for stealing sexual misconduct and covetousness, ignorance for wrong views, and any of the three poisons for lying, divisive speech, and harsh words. Well, that is a mistake, honestly. For lying, divisive speech, and gossip, my apologies.

You have to correct this here. So you can see that the final motivation is always cognate, closely cognate to the deed. If the deed is a deed infused with hostility, the final motivation has to be anger. The initial motivation may be desire. If the deed is infused with desire, the final motivation has to be desire even though the preliminary motivation may be something very different.

Finally, some of the deeds, lying, divisive speech and gossip, not harsh words, can be motivated by any of the three poisons. So this is something we should check our mind for. When we see that we are on the point of committing one of the 10 non virtuous deeds, we should check what is the initial motivation. The final motivation, let’s say if we’re going to commit a deed of stealing, the final motivation will be desire. But what is the initial motivation?

This, by the way, explains how bodhisattvas can engage in non virtuous deeds and accumulate merit, because the initial motivation is great compassion. So even though the final motivation, let us say, a bodhisattva were to steal money for the benefit of the poor, the initial motivation is great compassion. Then just before the deed of stealing, there will be a very slight motivation of desire linked to stealing. It is not that that does not have a karmic result, but it is overwhelmed by the weight of the great compassion which is the initial motivation. This is not our case, obviously.

Then I would like to address with you an example of a complete deed of killing and then give you cases of the reincarnation type and cases of persons regressed under hypnosis to show you how the karmic maturation of the 10 non virtues proceeds. But first, I’d like that we understand what is necessary for a karmic deed to be complete. In other words, to be weighty. Tibetans say that such a deed is stable. Such a deed in other words will definitely mature unless it is purified.

A deed for which one of these four components is missing is an uncertain deed. This is a deed which may or may not mature. Obviously, you want your non virtuous deeds to be uncertain and you want your virtuous deeds to be certain. We will talk next time about karmic amplification, how to increase the weight of karma both to avoid performing from our side very powerful non virtuous deeds and to train in practicing very powerful virtuous deeds. Karma can be weighty in terms of motivation, in terms of the base, in terms of the object.

For instance, karma performed with respect to a monk is weighty by that very fact. Any deed performed with respect to Bodhisattva is even weightier by that fact. Deeds which are performed with respect to the monastic community and any community are impossible to purify. For instance, theft from the monastic community cannot be purified. For a very simple reason, because the monastic community is composed of members which change constantly.

So theft from the community means that you have stolen a little bit from every one of those persons. By the time you plan on purifying that deed, that community has changed. The same thing applies to theft from a state or government. So I would like to think that among us, there is nobody who receives, for instance, benefits he or she is not entitled to. There’s no case on welfare fraud.

If you commit welfare fraud, it is theft. It is theft which cannot be purified. You’re stealing from the community, in this case of all Australians. Then it is definite that you will experience the result of maturation. So communities are dangerous objects.

A dharma center such as this one is a dangerous object. It’s a weighty object karmically because it’s a Dharma center, and it’s a dangerous object because in addition, deeds performed, non virtuous deeds performed with respect to a community are basically impossible to purify. People attending the teachings change all the time. If you were to say something highly offensive during the teaching, all the students assembled, Then unless you had exactly the same students, let’s say six months from then when you regretted the deed and wanted to purify it, such a deed could not be purified. So you can see that when dealing with communities, one must be careful.

When dealing with large communities like a state, one must be even more careful. While it is true that if you commit welfare fraud, you steal almost nothing from each person, you steal from the 23,000,000 Australians who pay taxes. Then when you steal from a community which might be small, but which is composed of beings which have taken vows, the deed is heavier. I knew, for instance, one case, you know, an Israeli it’s eventually the Sera Je Monastery banned Israelis from the, guest houses. They were no longer allowed to stay at the monastery because behavior was so bad.

Who was bragging about the fact that when he had arrived at the monastery, that he had thought about stealing something from the monastery, but he had restrained, and somebody told him, why don’t you try? It’s a once in a lifetime experience. And he did. He did. You know?

Then, obviously, it’s out of ignorance, poor man. You know? But such a deed is almost impossible to purify. Most impossible to purify. So this we will talk about next time in detail.

Where one has to be careful. Like for myself, for instance, translating here and giving presentations, have to be very careful. An intentional mistake, a mistake in my translation which is allowed to pass without correction, is a lie to the community. It’s a heavy, heavy karma. But the virtuous karma is also greatly amplified.

But whenever karmic amplification is in the picture, those of you who are into stereo will understand immediately what I say. If you have a very, very high end stereo system, then obviously you want to protect your speakers. Everything depends on the linearity of your amplifier. So if you have very high end speakers, you want to be very careful with your amplification because amplification amplifies both the music and the noise. And you can blow your speakers.

Amplification occurs through the object, through vows, through the motivation. When one brings amplification into the karmic circuit, then one must be fully aware of what one does. One’s life can improve dramatically for the better or one’s life can collapse. For instance, pledges taken towards a spiritual teacher are perhaps among the heaviest verbal karmic deeds one can take. If one has committed, let’s say, Khensur Rinpoche when he was still with us to do something, and one breaks it, there’s probably nothing heavier karmically.

Then it is irrelevant whether a person believes in karma or not, it still operates. Such things end very badly. I have had direct experience of this. Have known many cases of many Westerners who have taken commitment commitments, major pledges to the spiritual teacher. And as Westerners do, they have changed their mind after two years, four years, ten years, drifted away, done something else.

And then the person’s life is generally generally improves for a while because they’re basically coasting on the accumulated merit, and then it crashes. I’ve seen this many times. I’ve seen western monastics close to insanity come to see Rinpoche, begging Rinpoche for purification, then I refuse to translate. Refuse to translate. They had broken all the commitments, you know.

You cannot get involved in that one, Because the person is just going break the whole lot again. When one has to deal with these situations for one’s own sake, one must be careful. It is really tragic if through Dharma practice one ends up in a lower realm. It is better not to do anything. As we said, the motivation can be subdivided between initial and final motivation and the final motivation is intimately linked to the nature of the deed.

Let us take now a complete deed of killing. In addition, this is a weighty deed of killing and it is a legal deed of killing in most western countries. There is a fundamental difference between legality and ethics. This the deed of abortion. Abortion is legal in many, if not most western countries.

This in particular is a late term abortion where the child is basically partially delivered from the mother’s womb. And then incision is made at the basis of the skull and the child’s brains are basically sucked out, killing the newborn child, the child which is to be born. Such a deed is extremely weighty. It’s extremely weighty because the decision is generally the mother’s and the relation between mother and child is a very close, very powerful one. It is weighty because one can only imagine the suffering the fetus must experience.

It is weighty because of the way it is performed, which is really, if we think about it, hideous. I have known cases of Buddhist practitioners who became Buddhist after the fact, experienced abortions. When the abortion was performed intentionally, there were very heavy karmic consequences. A classic is cancer of the womb. One of Jeffrey Hopkins’ longtime Buddhist students had had an abortion when she was young.

She was Jewish. And then she became Buddhist, and she got the cancer of the womb, which is not present in her family at all, you know, and died of it, actually. And she was very distressed because obviously she was a very fine student. She had actually studied in detail the presentation of the lower realms in Buddhism and she understood quite well where this might come from. So this is a case where the karma matures in one lifetime simply because of the weight of the deed.

For instance, if we’ll talk about it later, at the time of the abortion, let’s say a late term abortion, one rejoices greatly after the abortion, thinking at last I am free, then this even amplifies more the karma. So in this case, what is the basis of killing? The basis of killing can be a living being, and here positions differ. For Jetsün Tsongkhapa, it is any living being. In other words, this includes oneself.

So for Je Tsongkhapa, the non virtue of killing includes suicide. Now according to Asaṇga, it has to involve another living being and therefore the non virtue of killing does not include suicide. This does not mean that for Asaṇga, suicide is not a non virtuous deed. It just means that it is not a non virtuous deed of killing because one is killing oneself. And the motivation must be a correct perception of the being, a general motivation to kill and an affliction, which can be as we said for initial afflictions, any affliction, desire, hatred or ignorance.

So if we analyze this a little bit further, what are the possible perceptions? Perception is either correct or incorrect. Correct perception is perception of a being which is living as living and of a being which is non living as not alive. If either of those is present, then the component of perception is complete. Incorrect perception would be perceiving, for instance, a being which is alive as dead.

For instance, under the influence of drugs, you might think that the fetus within yourself is not alive. Then an abortion performed under these situations would be an incomplete deed karmically. Or perceiving the bases a dead being to be alive, likewise someone using, for instance, hallucinogenics might imagine that the doorpost is an enemy, you know, threatening him. Then should he strike the doorpost with an axe, killing the doorpost, then obviously no karma would be accumulated except perhaps the karma of ill will. And the doorpost may have a different opinion on the topic, but I have never heard them express themselves.

And if I do, perhaps I need some help. Now motivation, the second component here, can be both in general and in specific motivation. General motivation is the decision to abort whatever the circumstances. The specific motivation is the decision to abort one specific fetus. If you have decided to abort whatever the circumstances are, perception is irrelevant.

Even if the perception is wrong, the deed will be karmically complete. If you have decided to abort this fetus and your perception of this fetus is wrong, for instance, you think that he or she is already dead, for instance, dead in utero, or he is alive, the deed will be incomplete. Finally, the affliction, and this refers to the initial affliction, can be desire, anger or ignorance. Desire, for instance, would be to abort thinking that you really don’t have the money to have a Out of greed, you sacrifice the life of another being. Anger would be something you hear quite frequently nowadays among feminists, which is that one does not want to be a slave to one’s body.

An anger basically towards the fetus overwhelms concern for another’s life. Ignorance, and you find this very frequently in the countries of the former Soviet Union, is the idea that the fetus is not alive in the womb. It is just, you know, an object, biological matter with no consciousness. This leads to huge rates of abortion in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Now the final motivation in abortion will always be anger.

Finally, performance varies greatly. Performance can occur for instance with a scalpel through abortifacient drugs. It could occur through paranormal powers, for that matter of prayer. If you were to pray for abortion and had an abortion after praying for it as a result of it, then this would qualify as a complete deed of killing. If you were to recite mantra to abort, which is done in India, it would qualify as a complete deed of killing.

Or if you were to order another to do it, asking a doctor to abort you is actually karmically heavier than doing it yourself. Because two persons are in the equation, both will experience maturation of the karma of killing and the doctor. In addition to this, the deed must be complete. In other words, the child or the infant, the fetus in this case must die as a result of the deed and critically must die before the killer dies. And this is one of the most difficult points to understand in the presentation of karma and causality.

If one dies before or at the same time as Vasubandhu says in Abhidharmakośa, there is no principal path of karma. In other words, if the murderer dies before or at the same time as the victim, the full karma of killing is not experienced by the murderer. For instance, if you imagine in a battle one soldier shooting another and then being shot immediately after and dying on the spot while the other soldier is still alive and dies a couple hours later. The first soldier will not have accumulated the complete karma of killing. He will have accumulated non virtuous karma related to killing, but he would have entered the Bardo at the time when the other soldier passes on.

So what is the path which leads to a complete deed of killing in the case of an abortion? If the abortion if the fetus is dead in utero, there is no path of killing. The fetus must be alive. Then as far as the intent is concerned, if it is to save the mother or by accident, there is no complete deed of killing. The intent to kill must be present.

Once the intent to kill is present, the question is that of the afflictions which are still technically part of the intent. If it is out of compassion, again a complete deed of killing is not present. For instance, a doctor who performs an abortion to save the life of the mother is not performing a complete deed of killing because the motivation is to save the life of the mother. It is a deed which has karmic consequences. It is related to killing.

But as it is not a complete deed of killing, it will not necessarily mature. However, if it is performed with a final motivation of anger, then if on that basis the fetus is aborted and the fetus dies, which is always the case normally before the abortionist or the parent, a complete deed of killing has been performed. Such a deed will necessarily lead to a lower rebirth and such a deed is very difficult to purify. It is purifiable, but it’s not easy to purify complete karmas. I’d like to cover with you some of the incomplete deeds of killings to show you the complexity of the topic.

And then we will take a break, you know, and after this we will cover some real life cases. So an incomplete deed of killing is a bit like an acorn which has fallen on asphalt. It doesn’t ripen. It doesn’t give rise to an oak tree. Let us take the case of suicide bombers, of which there are tragically many now in The Middle East.

Overwhelmingly, these are incomplete deeds of killing. You have a basis which is a crowd of living beings. Normally, you have great amplification. An initial motivation, largely of ignorance, wrong views is ignorance. In this case, the basic misunderstanding of Islam.

And a final motivation of hatred. The performance which is activating the device. But the very nature of these devices is that they are carried by the person and therefore, since the shock wave propagates as if at a finite speed, let us say whatever, 10,000 meters per second, the person dies first. They are 10 sentient beings removed from the device. They are obliterated.

Everyone who is 10 meters away dies after. The suicide bomber therefore by definition engages in what amounts to an incomplete deed of killing with great magnification due to the crowd and the power of the affliction. Because obviously at the time of death, there is great hatred and great resolve. He does remain, however, an incomplete deed of killing, except for himself. If we accept Je Tsongkhapa’s position, then such a suicide would amount to killing oneself.

If we accept Asaṇga’s position, such a suicide is not a form of killing. In either case, the karmic consequences are very heavy, but it does not qualify as a complete deed of killing. Let us take another case which is one of the reasons for which I always find jingoistic patriotism very troubling. The case of the Australian troops at Gallipoli. This is, I think, the eighteenth battalion preparing to land at Gallipoli.

If we analyze the karma of soldiers who are in a battalion which is engaged in war, Vasubandhu has this to say about collective deeds of killing. When numerous men are gathered to kill either for war or hunting or plundering, who is guilty of murder if one of them kills? His analysis is very sharp. As they cooperate in the realization of the same effect, all are as guilty as the one who kills. In as much as the goal is common, all are guilty.

Just as the one of them who kills, since all encourage each other not verbally, because this often doesn’t happen, but by the mere fact of having gathered to kill. Therefore, if in an army battalion, let’s say, such as the eighteenth battalion, the eighteenth battalion in battle at Gallipoli kills, let us say, I do not know, 2,000 enemies. And one soldier lives until the end of the confrontation. That soldier has accumulated the karma of killing 2,000 persons because it is a collective karma accumulated collectively. Those who rejoice in this deed also accumulate a partial karma of killing, which is why military commemorations are generally speaking from a Buddhist standpoint an extremely bad idea.

It is one thing to commemorate such an event because perhaps of the moral rectitude and the friendship the soldiers show to each other. But the moment it veers into the military commemoration, the karma of killing is a karma we participate in. Then this is what I wanted to cover before the break and after the break we will address some case studies and I will try to show you how the karmas of the 10 non-virtues mature. It’s difficult to find solid cases, but I’ve done my best. I hope you’ll enjoy your cup of tea.

Key terms in this teaching

analytical meditation vicarabhavana (Skt); che gom (Tib)

Of the two main types of meditation, this is a meditation where the subject is examined using logical reasoning, as opposed to single-pointed concentration or fixed meditation where the mind focuses on one single object. LYWA

atman dag (Tib)

Self; as opposed to anatman (no-self), the Buddha’s explanation of selflessness in the Four Noble Truths Sutra. LYWA

bodhisattva jang chub sem pa (Tib)

One who possesses bodhicitta. LYWA

lamrim

The graduated path. A presentation of Shakyamuni Buddha’s teachings in a form suitable for the step-by-step training of a disciple. LYWA

lower realms ngen dro (Tib)

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

suffering of suffering duhkha-duhkhata (Skt); dug ngäl gyi dug ngäl (Tib)

Aka the suffering of pain; the commonly recognized suffering experiences of pain, discomfort and unhappiness. LYWA

three poisons dug sum (Tib)

Attachment, anger and ignorance. LYWA

three principal aspects of the path lamtso nam sum (Tib)

The three principal realizations of the lamrim path: renunciation, bodhicitta and the right view (of emptiness). Also the title of a short prayer composed by Lama Tsongkhapa that is commonly recited during prayer services. LYWA

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