Right. So we’ll just start with a little meditation. So So as before, we will just watch the breath. And so here what we’re doing is just the contact of the breath. And this we can do either on the inside of the nose or at the chest, stomach wherever it’s easy to follow the breath.
One thing is that breath is said to be like the door of the unconscious. So following the breath helps us to settle the mind, relax the mind. So here we’re just following the breath, contact of the breath. So we breathe in, breathe out. And what we’re also doing is just relaxing the mind.
Actually, during the day a lot of tension builds up in the mind, a lot of tension builds up in the body. And often we don’t notice this. Actually, relaxing takes a lot of work. That’s why physical exercise is very good, because physical exercise helps us to relax the body. And when the body is relaxed, then the mind also tends to relax.
So here, following the breath, just focusing on the breath, is similar to exercising the body. It’s just watching the breath, watching the mind as it settles. We’re not just watching the breath when we do this, we’re also watching our thinking and letting go of our thinking. Just following our thoughts, being attached to the objects of our thoughts, is quite a lot it takes a lot of work, it takes up a lot of energy. So what we’re doing is we’re putting down that process, we’re just putting it aside for the time being.
Giving the mind a break, Giving it a rest. Just barely following the contact of the breath. Everything else we’re letting go of. Oh, we can just end the meditation there. Relax for a little while.
Right, so we’ve been talking about karma. Tonight I thought I’d use the whiteboard and draw up a wheel, looks a bit like a clock with the numbers in the slightly wrong place. This also you find it’s the same wheel you find actually, there’s a thangka at the back of the room there. With a it looks like a large being, which is like the Lord of Death, holding a wheel. You see the wheel there?
It’s the same wheel here. So, what in a sense this is, is the wheel of life that progresses in a clockwise direction. So we’re using this to help explain karma a little bit. karma is the second, number two on the list up there, called the formation.
And preceding it we have ignorance and then after ignorance we have formation, then consciousness, name and form, the six bases: contact, feeling, craving, grasping, existence, birth, aging and death, twelve. So this wheel describes the nature of life and death as conceived within Buddhism. Now whether this is actually the way it exists or not, there’s something that needs to be examined by us. In fact, this is a diagram of rebirth and how karma plays a role in the whole process of rebirth. But, in a way, what comes first, the number one is ignorance.
So it’s ignorance that actually is the first part, the instigator of the wheel, the instigator of this process. Now, the clockwise process is the process of becoming, of entering, of entering each moment of existence for us at present. And this process of entering existence or in Sanskrit it’s called Pravrti engagement engaging in life, engaging in our life moment by moment. Like the unfolding of our life moment by moment is this process, this forward process from one to twelve. From a Buddhist point of view, it’s an unsatisfactory process because it leads eventually to aging and death, number twelve, which is a problem.
So because it leads to aging and death, the whole process is regarded as being not very advantageous to us, not very useful to us. The glue of the whole process in a way is six oh no, sorry, eight and nine craving and grasping and they’re basically attachment. And we talked a little bit about attachment previously. So craving and grasping are like forms of attachment. And the others like before craving and grasping we have feeling, before feeling contact, six bases and so forth.
These are stages in a being’s development, normal development, you know, birth right through to death. Has anyone seen this before? No. But I I find attachment a word that I find very hard to understand as an Right. Is hard.
It’s hard for anyone to understand. Although it’s very pervasive for us. What attachment is, how it’s defined, for us it’s a type of conception. It’s a conceptual mental awareness which tends to look at the positive attributes of an object. It looks at an object and only apprehends the positive attributes of it or the attractive attributes of it.
So that’s what attachment is. So you don’t relate it to people? Well, people can be an object of attachment, right? But the attachment itself what is attachment? It’s a type of mental awareness that we have, right?
Internal awareness, mental awareness, not sensory but it occurs all the time. Like an example of attachment. What’s an attachment that we have? You know, whether it is undermining our well-being, undermining our comfort as a being. Now attachment is very difficult for us to see, but probably we can agree that attachment we do have a lot of attachments we’re attached to different objects and what’s happening with the attachment is the attachment is only focusing on the attractive.
You know, like even when we look around, know, we see different things, colors, oh I like that green, I like the blue. Even just when we’re focusing on something with our eye awareness, at the same time we have a mental conception of the object and that it’s the mental conception which can arise in the nature of attachment. Attachment can arise to that object of the senses. And that attachment, from a Buddhist point of view, is regarded as negative. It’s regarded as problematic.
It’s not going to produce happiness for us. So for that reason actually it’s difficult for us to be happy because of the, you know, the great number of attachments that we have. We do! Well, it’s the attachment we don’t get bored with, the object we do. We cultivate attachment as if it’s some wonderful, I don’t know, birthright of ours to have attachment.
And we think it’s the fault of the object. We think initially the object is really attractive but then later we look at it a bit more closely, it’s not so attractive and our attachment moves to something else. We don’t see the fault as being in the attachment, we see it as being in the object. But it’s not so much the object, it’s the attachment that’s the problem. Because the attachment is simply looking at what’s attractive.
And what that tends to lead to is its opposite: aversion. Because if the attachment is only allowing what’s attractive in an object, It’s only holding, apprehending, seizing on what’s attractive. It’s not allowing the, you know, the negative to come about. Negative or the appreciation of the negative qualities of that thing. So attachment will continue, continue, until we do actually see the negative or at least one negative aspect of that object and then the attachment disappears and we have probably its opposite aversion which is only looking at the negative.
So we tend to go from one extreme to the other. I think we’re aware of this our emotions are often like that. We go from one extreme, you know, completely liking it, to the opposite of completely hating something whether it’s a person, a thing, ourselves, external objects and so on. Attachment is really just so pervasive for us and we have little defense against it because we don’t understand the faults of attachment. And if we don’t understand the faults of something then we’re continuously susceptible to it.
You know, we’re like a punch drunk fighter, you know, we’re up and we think we can somehow survive and win against attachment. But difficult. Attachment has faults. How do we recognize the faults of attachment? Well one thing about attachment is we can examine whether it’s true or not.
You know, is attachment valid? Is it a valid assessment of the object? Is everyone aware of attachments that we have? You know, are we able to look internally and say oh that’s an attachment? We can.
Okay, now we take an attachment. Is it valid or or not? Meaning is it a correct assessment of its object? This is harder because we’re so used to just following our attachments that we think, oh yeah, that object is really attractive. Right?
We tend to think we see another person, like a male or a female, we look and we think, oh, she’s, you know, she’s beautiful or he’s handsome. Oh my word, you know, what a hunk or, you know, what a beautiful woman, you know. And we stick in, you know, we sneak a glance as they go by. Now that attachment is just only looking at the positive. Ah, the physical form, oh, the youth, Oh, what nice lines they have.
Oh, the color of their hair. Now they got nice tasting clothes. It’s all good. It’s all good. From the top to the bottom, from the east to the west to the back to the front.
It’s all good. Oh, it’s so attractive, you know, we follow it around with our own. Ah! And we say that, I saw this beautiful man on the street or this beautiful woman on the street today. We’re probably thinking, you know, completely out of our class, but my word, they look nice.
The attachment is there, that’s the attachment. Now that attachment is only reflecting all good, all positive, right? Is that a correct assessment? No, it isn’t, is it? Does that person have faults?
Do they have any faults? Right, so we know the person’s got faults. So unless they’re an awakened being like a Buddha, but probably not a Buddha. Okay, so So when we’re caught up and we’re captivated by this vision that’s passing us by, now we should reflect: is that attachment to the, you know, the form a valid assessment? You should question: is there any fault in that person?
Any physical fault? Any mental fault? Any non physical non mental fault there. Is there? Of course there is.
Well, the attachment is not allowing it. See, that’s attachment is like living in a dream. It’s like, you know, just: Oh, it’s all good. Oh, it’s all good. Oh, it’s all good.
Looking in the mirror: Oh, it’s all good. And so on. We’re attached to ourselves. John, would you say it’s an exaggeration? It’s a complete exaggeration.
It’s complete overestimation. The attachment is only looking at the positive. Yeah. Oh, of course. Yeah.
Oh, well the dislike has come in. Now when a dislike comes in an aversion even in a subtle sense, you know, that process we’ve gone we’re starting down that line. No, that’s right. Right. Where’s the fault?
Basically, the object doesn’t, you know, it’s still whatever it was, coffee or whatever, another person. Here we have to be able to identify the fault to protect us. That is if we seek protection from attachment. Maybe we don’t, maybe we think that, okay, you know, attachment is the price we pay for living in this world and, you know, I don’t oh well, it’s problematic, but I still want to be attached. Okay, and so on.
That shows an attachment to attachment itself. Right? Because when even the thought that oh maybe the attachment is going to be taken away from me and I feel I’m beginning to feel a sense of loss about it all, it shows just how attached I am to attachment. That’s why it’s wonderful that we cultivate detachment to things. In fact, we should be detached from everything.
But in our current state, we’re the opposite, we’re just about attached to everything. Yep. Oh well, we should try and put it to one side. We check to see if there’s any faults in it. What is going to harm attachment is when we see the fault.
Now what we’re susceptible with attachment is waking up to the fact that the object has faults and when that happens it creates that disappointment that you mentioned. Well, in a sense it’s not perfect. Yeah. It’s up to the person, you know, if it fits and if it’s useful for a particular person then fine. But Does it have faults?
Well, in a sense it depends on how you look at it, it depends on your understanding of what the dharma is. The deeper levels of dharma actually are beyond are beyond fault. They’re permanent. Something that’s permanent is really There is a value judgment involved, definitely. And the value judgment that’s being made initially is through the attachment itself.
And that attachment only focusing, only apprehending the positive attributes of something as we see them. Oh yeah, here when we talk about finding a fault in something we go on a deeper level than just the speed that it’s doing. Here we start to look at its impermanence and the fact that it is well and what can one say? Contaminated. From a Buddhist point of view it’s regarded as being contaminated.
Why is it contaminated? Because it’s a type of object that naturally lends itself to the generation of attachment in ordinary beings. And in a broad sense it’s the truth of suffering and so on. And there are many levels of fault that one is looking at here. But in general, with attachment, it’s the attachment itself that will create problems for an individual.
So being attached to that object is going to be a problem. Not using the object and engaging with it and so on, buying it and so on, all those things, it’s the attachment to it. Because the attachment, again, is a wrong evaluation of the object in the very beginning. Same with people: if we have attachment to others, then it brings in its wake emotional problems being attached. And why?
Because attachment itself will inevitably lead to aversion. There is no way through attachment that we can avoid generating aversion for other beings. And both the attachment and the aversion are unstable types of mind. And why are they unstable? Because they’re not a valid assessment of the person, neither.
They’re both going to an extreme. The attachment is only looking at the positive, the aversion is only looking at the negative. So both are wrong because the person has both positive and negative qualities. So we can’t rely on attachment nor aversion. And that’s why something like love and compassion are far more useful approaches or ways of considering others because they don’t suffer the fault of going to an extreme.
Right? The good thing about love is that it’s just looking at the same being and it’s just wishing that being to be happy. No matter how many faults they have. Right? They just so the love for another being we’re just a wish for them to be happy.
It’s nothing more, it’s not a mystery, it’s not a love is very useful then and love is a you know, just the aspiration may that other being be happy. It’s a stable, correct assessment of the other being. And compassion is just looking at another being and wishing they’d be free of suffering. So both love and compassion are very useful. And they’re not an invalid assessment.
They’re not an invalid assessment because they’re not just focused on the positive, they’re not just focused on the negative. Love and compassion both can tolerate the positive and negative qualities of another being and they won’t. The love of a mother, when a mother is looking at a child, can endure the bad qualities of the child. Can’t it? Of course it can.
And it’s not whereas the attachment can’t. Now we tend to have both attachment and love arising, you know, throughout the day and so forth. Or, you know, they both can arise. And love mixed with attachment, you know, is not a good thing. Anything mixed with attachment is not a good thing.
But again, actually going right back to the beginning, what we have to do here is understand attachment and then really look carefully to see if it is something that we need or not, whether it’s something that validly assesses its object. Because until we see the fault of attachment there’s no way that we will even generate a doubt about it. At present we have no doubt about attachment. When attachment arises, it just carries us away. We look at something and we like it, ah, the attachment is there.
We’re already carried away by it. Already means the attachment is at work that attachment itself is like a poison. So that’s where it comes up in the wheel of life here is craving and grasping. Attachment, because it’s an invalid assessment of its object and because it leads to such emotional turmoil downstream and we’re all aware of what attachment can do and how it can disturb our well-being. How it continues.
We have to remember objects of attachment of the past, we don’t have to remember them and their current, you know, we’re unhappy. So attachment is something that we have to be mindful of, check up on: am I attached in the present or am I detached? Am I attached to this object? Check, am I attached? What’s the measure of being attached if I were attached?
Can I be free? If that object in a sense the measure of attachment is give that object up without any regret in the present then it’s a sign we’re not really attached to it. So in a sense we should have that awareness with everything. No sense in being attached to anything that we can’t hang on to anyway. And there’s nothing in this world that we can retain, it’s all going to go.
Including our body. The thing that probably we’re most attached to is our current physical body. And if anything we should be attached to is that because it’s the basis upon which our emotions survive and continue to exist. So we should should have a close look at attachment. Okay.
So what we’re doing here is looking at karma in general. Now attachment is part of the progress, part of the process of understanding karma. The whole universe from a Buddhist perspective is held together with attachment and the fact that we continue to exist life after life is due to attachment. It’s due to being attached to existing, to continuing to exist. Okay, it must sound a bit alarming that loving I can be about it.
Right, good. No, actually to have a good basis in this life and to be able to continue in our next life is of utmost importance to each of us, to be able to continue And the work, the hard work we put into this life, into training our mind, becoming detached and so on, that if we can pick up this training in our future life, excellent! This is really enlightened self interest. Oh, we’re attached to existing, to and that’s what leads us into rebirth. That’s the glue that holds together our continued taking of life after life after life.
We’re attached to the I, yes. We’re attached to the I existing, continuing to exist. That’s why death often, you know, generates fear in us, because we fear that we’re going to stop existing. We will, you know, come to a non existent end or into some state of oblivion where that’s it, there’s nothing more. So all of this is indicative of attachment and attachment is something that we we do need to overcome.
Okay, so we’re looking at karma and karma is the second in this wheel And karma itself is supported by ignorance. And it’s ignorance that allows karma to be generated, allows attachment to arise. If we really understood the way things actually existed we wouldn’t become attached to them. If we really understood the way things existed we wouldn’t generate actions that lead to or we would, for a start, generate negative actions. So, okay, let’s look a little bit more closely at these the issue of the twelve links and just to have a look at the second one the first and the second.
Okay, so ignorance there, what the ignorance that is meant as the first is the ignorance that lies deep and unseen within us and it’s just the ignorance of the way things actually exist the way I exist, the way others exist, the way the external environment exists. Because we don’t know how things exist we become attached to them. And then that attachment changes to aversion and so on. If we understood on a deep level how things exist then it’s not possible to develop attachment. Also, it’s not possible then that we would engage in the second link of formation which is engaging in positive and negative action in relation to something especially engaging in negative action towards other objects.
So we should have a get some idea of the ignorance that we have. What is ignorance? Ignorance is like darkness, murkiness. It said for an enlightened being everything enlightened is probably a very good word because it’s as if everything is bathed in light and not within darkness. Everything is revealed to an enlightened mind.
The nature of other objects, the nature of the mind itself, external world, the internal world, all is understood, it’s clear. Now, at present for us it’s not clear. We look inside to try and work out the fundamental issues that concern us and we sort of can’t see very clearly, we can’t see very sharply what our situation is. Why do I feel this? Why did that happen to me?
And so on. All of these things we don’t understand. What is the causation there? What is the line of actions that led up to that? What is my line of thinking that led up to this?
How did that arise? Who is this other person? Who am I? What becomes of me? Where am I heading to in future?
Where will I be in a hundred years? Where was I a hundred years ago? All of these things are examples of ignorance. Ignorance is impermanent. Right?
Ignorance is impermanent, isn’t it? What is ignorance? It’s a type of mental conception that just doesn’t know. It’s impermanent. It’s impermanent, therefore it’s a result of something.
And since it’s impermanent it can be overcome. All the ignorance that we have and we have a vast amount of ignorance. Luckily, the ignorance doesn’t have a physical shape, otherwise we wouldn’t be big enough to carry it all around with us. Our ignorance of the external world is so vast. Our ignorance of others is so vast.
But it exists on a mental level, so it’s not big, it’s not huge. Now this ignorance can be overcome because it’s impermanent. The darkness, the unknowing that we experience is impermanent. Therefore, if something is impermanent it has a cause, something has a cause, the cause can be identified, we can identify it and then we can do something about it. That ignorance can be eliminated.
The ignorance are probably countless in number, there are different types of ignorance, but the ignorance that is meant here is the ignorance of the way, the ultimate way things exist. That particular type of ignorance is really at the very root of our emotional problems. And that is the ignorance here. Now, depending on that ignorance which simply doesn’t understand the ultimate nature of objects, ultimate reality of the things around us including ourselves acts as a basis, as like a ground for action, for us to engage in action. So supported by ignorance, we engage in action and that’s the second one, the formation.
Right. So that’s karma. The second, the formation is karma. And what is karma? karma is the intention to act.
Right. So we come all the way back again to karma. So I think everyone fully understands karma by now. True? You’re probably getting sick and tired of me talking about karma.
We’ll move on to something a bit more interesting. Yeah, we’ve had enough. Too much of a good thing is too much. Anyway, we have to persevere a little bit longer with the karma side here. So what is karma?
karma is our intention to act in the present moment. Why is it important to us? Why is this topic of how we act in the present important? Because it’s our actions that lead to our experience, actions lead to how we feel. Our feelings arise in dependence on our actions.
Now what we want is just positive feeling. True? Or we just want positive mental feelings. Correct? Positive mental feeling comes from positive action.
True? This is very hard for us to see this, but this is the topic. What we basically want is positive feeling and as we mentioned last time, of all the positive feelings we want, we want the best positive feeling, right? We want the type of positive feeling that just well, transcendent. We want the best that transcends the world.
That is pure, absolutely undefiled, uncontaminated by the world, something that is completely satisfying. So that type of feeling is probably the very core of our aspiration as a being. No matter where I go I’m trying to find that feeling, that elusive feeling that is just absolutely pure. Now what that is, is enlightenment. Sorry.
Yep. We want to be happy. True. Why haven’t we achieved that state? Have we come across that happiness yet that we’re looking for?
What? Or have we actually grasped it yet? Have we actually experienced it yet? Some doubt doubt about whether we have, which indicates that maybe we haven’t yet. That sort of happiness is really how liberation itself is defined.
When one is liberated from the tyranny of happiness that changes, that is not permanent, that’s not pure and so forth. When we are free of that, that freedom itself is liberation. Now, what we’re looking at here is the karmic process and it’s really from the karmic process that positive feeling arises, positive or negative feeling arises. And we, you know, we’re quite familiar with negative feeling and it’s one it’s probably, you know, the largest problem we have to deal with. Physical negative feeling, mental negative feeling.
Physical negative feeling is easier to bear in general. I mean, we break a leg, we break an arm, so on. It’s painful but we can endure. Negative mental feeling is harder for us to endure. It’s difficult.
Negative mental feeling. And it can be very intense like, you know, people sometimes experience depression or strong negative mental feeling. This also is coming from karma. From Buddha’s perspective it’s coming from karma. Coming from past action.
We need to purify that. Just the law of cause and effect manifesting within our mental continuum. The feeling that we experience is really coming from our past actions. As one Zen monk once said, ‘Like dust in a dusty room, what arises in the heart settles in the heart. So like dust in a dusty room whatever we stir up just that again settles in the heart.
So in other words the feelings that settle, the experience is coming from the heart itself and it’s coming from the heart, the ignorant heart that engages in spiteful and negative actions towards others and then wonders why negative mental feeling arises. In fact, we really need to develop an attitude of rejoicing when we experience negative mental feeling. When we experience negative mental feeling: Oh, that is good for me. That’s my medicine. Because that’s my past negative action committed in relation to some poor person and I shouldn’t have done it.
You know, it’s just like the idea of the person that draws the bow and fires the arrow and the arrow ends up landing on the person that fired it. So good. That negative mental feeling when we experience it, it’s like our medicine. And at that point, you know, we can say, Ah, I should learn from this. That negative feeling didn’t come from anywhere else but myself.
I created it. Now it’s come home. So what should I do? In future I will not commit a negative action. So all we have to do.
I grit my teeth and I that’s it. I don’t want this sort of negative feeling to manifest for me. So, okay, we make the strong resolution not to commit a negative action in future. Oh, that’s a bitter type of satisfaction. But if you ask them are they really happy, you know, committing an action an act of vengeance, They might say they’re satisfied but actually whether that brings them happiness is another issue.
Something like vengeance, is it possible to generate happiness? They may say that, oh, well, you know, that, you know, I gave him what he deserved and I’m here. Exactly. But is it actually making the person who’s doing it happy? It’s a I agree.
How would punching your parking warden come up? How would that come up with the parking situation? Well, if you had the if you had the intention to harm the traffic or the parking warden, but you had a negative intention, right? A negative intention meaning you want to harm him, you know, you’re going to hit him in the jaw. You had a negative intention, and you commit the act and you’re satisfied by the act, then you’ve sown a negative karmic seed and that will remain there for a long time, potentially, you know, for many lifetimes.
And at some point in the distant future when the conditions again reassemble, maybe that parking warden himself then is could be anyone, you know, in a future scenario they’ll come up and smash us in the jaw and then we’ll be wondering: what? Why did they do that? Where did that come from? And we’ll get angry and so on. That happens to us in this life.
Things occur we don’t understand. And yet, the idea of punching some guy in the face is a typical male. It is. Very much so. Why should that necessarily be a calming thing?
Because that’s that’s something in that in being male that just operates. It’s not, you know Well, the thing is the thing is for each of us here in the past we’ve been male roughly fifty percent of the time and female roughly fifty percent of the time. So, society as it is, all the prejudices and so forth are roughly of equal responsibility for everyone. So how a male acts in society is the general, you know, the what can I say? The culture as it is, is the responsibility of really everyone that exists.
Oh, well, that’s liberated actually. That’s not necessarily a good form of liberation. Okay, so we’re looking at karma here and this relationship between karma and feeling and just recognizing that our well-being is very much related to our feelings. And what we’re looking at with karma is where the feelings are coming from, and our feelings are coming from our past actions our intentional actions in the past. Right.
So I thought I’d look a little bit more at some of the different classifications of karma. Now, karma itself occurs on a mental level, but we also classify physical and verbal actions as karma as well. You know, like, the intention starts on a mental level but then it’s expressed generally on a physical or a verbal level, isn’t it? So that and in general, from a Buddhist perspective, we take three physical actions and four verbal actions as being pretty much illustrating the range of karma that we’re ordinarily involved with. So for instance, on a physical level, karma manifests or the mental intention manifests as like three different types of negative act, like taking life, killing.
So, know, karma manifests as killing or it manifests as stealing or it manifests as sexual misconduct. So that type of negative karma there is with a negative intention engaging in those actions like killing something, stealing from someone, engaging in sexual misconduct. Sexual misconduct there really means harming someone through one’s sexual activity. For instance, if one has an affair with someone who’s married, then actually it can be quite harmful to others. So for that reason one should try and one needs to be careful because if one engages in such an intentional action it will come back again in future.
So what one is trying to do in the present is untangle gradually begin the process of untangling the emotions. The emotions are so tangled because of our actions and the unseen actions of many past lives. So what we need to do in the present is to begin the process of untangling them, not to keep everything tangled. So for this reason we try and avoid negative action on a physical level such as killing. So not to kill is a very good thing.
Not to kill animals, not to kill human beings, of course, not to kill animals or as much as possible, to kill insects, things like that. Because the act of killing is said to be a natural non virtue. There’s no way that killing can ever be a virtuous thing, in other words. It’s always very negative because it’s the worst thing you can do to another being is to kill them. You take away what’s most precious thing we’re attached to is our physical body.
You know, it’s essential to us. And the same for other beings, other humans, other animals. Animals when we look at them, the most the one thing they’re attached to is their own physical being. If we take their life from them, it creates great suffering for that thing. So not good, it harms the other being.
So it’s good to avoid, because that harm how it affects us it doesn’t appear to affect us. We kill an insect, we kill an animal It doesn’t appear to affect us at all. What happens though is that the intention connected with the act of killing is recorded in our mental awareness. It stains the mental awareness, it lays down a seed within the mental awareness. Of course.
Yes. Can you do that now? Yes. Well, there’s two things going on. Okay, now, often we’re in a situation where we may not be able to avoid that.
The vet recommends it, you have to do this, if you don’t do this, I’ll report you, or We may not have a choice. And we love the animal, that the animal’s got cancer, it’s got this, it’s got that. The vet says, I’m going to put the animal down. And we have to agree to that. The act of killing is negative.
There’s no way that becomes positive. But there is also love involved. The love for the animal is positive. So it’s a mixture of things that’s going on. There’s negative karma and positive karma.
You do. And that’s why, you know, if it comes up later, the regret of having to put the animal down. So on. All of this is there. We don’t regret the love for the animal.
That’s fine. What we have what can be an issue is that we had to harm the animal. And that’s just our responsibility as the pet owner. We take that on as our responsibility. And we understand that that may come back, that karmic seed is laid down.
It’s there now and that can harm me at some point in the future. So what we need to do is try and what? Completely purify that. So as much as possible we should. Also the killing will tend to bring about harmful effects for us in future in the form of sickness, a shortened life and so on.
So all the you know what our killing of another animal or another human achieves that’s a similar or somewhat similar result will tend to occur to us in future such as sickness and such as being killed. Oh that’s possible. Exactly! It’s a difficult area because the karma that is causing the illness in the animal may not be completed if we kill it sooner rather than later. And that karma that still remains may activate, may also survive into its next life.
It may even influence its rebirth as well. So there are other downstream possibilities that exist there. Yes, is. Because we can’t the argument for euthanasia is that it’s putting the person out of their misery, but there’s no guarantee that we’re doing that. Killing the person doesn’t, from a Buddhist perspective, doesn’t stop their mind.
What it does do is it stops this life, but the mind then continues through the death process into a new life. And that karma, if it’s still active, may continue to act on that being in future, it still may manifest, continue to manifest for that being. It’s uncertain. That animals have minds? The animals that you put down have minds?
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. That animal has been a human as many times as we’ve been human. Much worse than killing an animal. Well, animals do have a language, of course.
They have their own language of course, don’t they? You know like science is finding out just more and more how intricate and complex animal language is. They’re like us. There’s not that much difference between us and animals. But one of the things that a human a human does have greater mental capacity than an animal and a human the great thing for human is able to think beyond this one life.
We said that an animal generally are pretty much solely focused on this life. Whereas a human being can step back and think about the past before I lived, before I existed, after I existed. Because it’s only in that sphere that a spiritual practice even becomes a possibility. If we start thinking about our future beyond this life then that takes us beyond say the scope of an animal And it takes us to a level where a human can achieve what is truly noble, know, truly you know, beyond the mundane, beyond the ordinary, begin to tap into the really, you know, profound potential that they have. A human can do this.
An animal is much more difficult. Animals are basically when you watch animals, they’re basically worried about food, shelter, procreating. Looking after their young. I mean, they can do this perfectly well. And often when you look at them and you see just how caring they are, you know, the humans can learn from animals about how to look after their young and so on.
But in terms of philosophy, understanding religion, understanding life and death issues, Animals don’t have much to teach us. They can be a good friend, but, you know, when it comes down to the essential fundamental issues that we face, you know, It’s not on the table. It’s not a topic that they’re necessarily talking about. But, again, you know, from a Buddhist perspective, there are some animals that are capable of thinking on that level. So we have to be careful with animals.
They’re just like us in many ways. So we shouldn’t kill them. We should treat them with respect and be careful of them. Also with insects. Insects also from Buddhist perspective previously were human.
All of them. It’s just that they’re in that. karma has projecting karma has thrown them into that existence because of their past actions. So we have to be careful with insects as well because there’s a little past human running along as an ant in this life. That ant has feelings.
That ant has consciousness. That consciousness has the potential to attain enlightenment. That consciousness in them in the ant in future will manifest as human consciousness. We’ve all been ants in the past many times in other words. Oh, it’s just absolutely senseless and terrible.
Yes. And it’s all negative. The person that commits that, no matter what the cause they think, it’s just horrendous. It creates such suffering for the families, for the people that are murdered. All of that they create this karmic karmic seeds that they that they can well, they will experience in future.
And the stronger it is, the quicker they will experience it. And so that will bring vast amount of suffering for that person. Isn’t that that killing will bring nothing positive. So in a way, they’ve condemned themselves by that action. It’s just horrendous and all the other car bombings and suicide bombings and so on.
It’s the killing itself because it’s a negative action motivated motivated by the thought to harm another being can only bring unhappiness. Only bring a vast amount of unhappiness in future. There’s no way that that can bring a positive result. And it doesn’t it’s senseless because it doesn’t, you know, achieve their end, their aim. So so all violence and all killing is is quite similar.
It’s always negative. It never even no matter what the motivation is, if you’re killing out of compassion, you’re killing out of love, you’re killing out of hatred, it still brings a negative result. It doesn’t matter you might be deluded and you think it’s the most compassionate act to go out and kill a hundred people. The motivation of compassion doesn’t make any difference to the fact that it’s killing. And that’s negative.
It’s harming. It will bring a result similar to the cause. Harm for oneself. This it’s anyway, there’s much much said about this in the text. Yes.
The implication is, yes, that they have the karmic predisposition to be killed due to their past actions at that particular place and time. Just like for us, nothing happens to us unless we have the common propensity for it to happen. Cycle just continues. Just continues. So how does how does a person for a lifetime when we do something negative in our lives create that negative coming?
Sweet. How do we break that? We’ve got to get back we’re at formation there. So we’re talking about the formation of all manner of experience. What’s supporting it is ignorance.
We’ve got to get rid of the ignorance that is allowing, permitting that situation to continue. And that ignorance is even deeper than the intention, the course and the subtle intention of the action. At a much deeper level is ignorance. Well, overcoming ignorance is something that is going to take a long long time because we’re so habituated to it. Understanding breaking through and eliminating that ignorance only comes about through a lot of hard work.
It’s very deep, very deeply entrenched within a mind, mind’s stream. But we have to see it as a fault. We have to see that there is such a thing as ignorance. And there is a type of ignorance that is like the ground that supports our actions. And coming to that sort of realization is not easy.
It’s going to take a lot of checking, lot of introspection. Focusing on what what’s the root of the problem. There’s no easy means for doing It’s not, you know, as if we can snap our fingers and, you know, it’s it’s gone. Ignorance is gone. Ignorance is just so deep seated.
It’s something that from Buddhist point of view, we’ve had countless past lifetimes. Million, a billion, a hundred billion. And that ignorance has never been threatened. It’s continued from the beginningless past. Life after life after life after life to this life and still we don’t see the ignorance.
And the danger is that you know, we’re not going to see it. We’re not really going to begin to wake wake up to the fact that there isn’t it. You know, that sort of ignorance within us that can give rise to this sort of problem, afflictive emotion. And same with stealing also. You know, the fact that we lack resources and so forth in this life is an indication that we’ve taken what is not being given in past lives.
So this life, it’s harder for us to collect or accumulate money, accumulate wealth and so on, because we have taken the wealth of others in the past. Really the cause of wealth for us the root cause of wealth is giving, is generosity. It’s a result in a sense similar to the cause. So we should avoid taking what is not given in order that we have resources. And then our the problems that we have with our relationships is often through sexual misconduct in the past that we just you know instead of not harming others through our sexual activity we’ve done this and we’ve done that and we just you know we really haven’t been very mindful of our actions and so it’s hard for us in this life or it may be hard for us in this life you know to have a stable, lasting, caring relationship because of the way that we’ve acted in our past lives.
So for that reason it’s very good to avoid these three types of physical action. We’re either killing, stealing or sexual misconduct. It’s not that we’re trying, you know, we’re saying one shouldn’t be happy, you know. It’s just that these actions intentionally committing those actions leads to such emotional problems in this life, in our current life, having committed them in the past. So you know, it may appear to us that killing and stealing and sexual misconduct does bring a certain amount of happiness in this life to us.
We steal a bit here, we steal a bit there. No harm done. Hard to see the actual link between the act and what may eventually be the result of that. So this is true. In a sense we take take this a little bit on faith.
But anyway, as much as we can minimize that, probably good. You know, it’s hard to be what we need here is a good amount of enlightened self interest what we need is just to protect ourselves protect our happiness so that we’re not confronted by you know situations that are going to be difficult for us hard for us So that our future our next life you know it will be better than this life. For our next life to be better than this one means that we have to implement ethics in this life. So ethics here is not harming others. Simple definition of ethics not harming others.
Our happiness depends on not harming others. In Tibetan, the Buddha said, from ethics comes happiness, from generosity comes resources. It should be our slogan. From ethics comes happiness, from generosity comes resources. So be ethical, be generous, be ethical, generous as much as we can because that in its way, even if it doesn’t occur in this life, that will bring happiness.
Ethics will bring happiness. Why does ethics bring happiness? Because ethics means just not harming other beings. So when we don’t harm other beings it means that we’re not intentionally laying down karmic seeds that are going to bring negative feeling in their wake. Ethics is more in Oh, it is.
It absolutely it is. Ethics in a way is a yeah. True. Ethics is like a course understanding of the ultimate nature of reality. If we really understood how things existed, we would naturally practice ethics.
We’d quite naturally do so. But in our level when we when we don’t understand the ultimate nature of reality we have to artificially practice. We artificially align ourselves with the ultimate state of reality by imposing ethics on us in a sense, you could say. Ultimately, no. If you once you understand the ultimate nature of reality, then one becomes ethics.
One is like well, ethics really is talking about virtue. Understanding the ultimate nature of reality is the antidote to the first one, ignorance. When we understand the ultimate nature of reality that acts as the direct opponent of ignorance. And and so that that in itself, that is ultimate ethics. Ultimate reality.
Emptiness is ultimate ethics. Anyway, was hoping to get through a few more of these but we’re sort of lagging a little bit. How are doing anyway? Very well. You’re very patient.
Anyway, we should do okay. We’ll skip along a little bit. Now there’s three types of karma that we should be aware of. Projecting karma, establishing karma, completing karma. Now, number two is projecting karma.
Number ten is establishing karma. Those two are both are to do with karma. Now what happens? I should just describe this a little bit. What this is here is like a two life or a three life scenario.
This happens in the first life. We on the basis of ignorance, we engage in action, and we lay down karmic seeds in consciousness. Right? Ignorance, intentional action, lays down karmic seeds in consciousness. So right?
Now in the next life, name and form is really the consciousness that goes through the death process and then enters a new life. A new life starts in here, name and form. Name and form refers to the mind body of the little little embryo. Name and form. Then that develops the embryo develops into the six bases.
That’s the six sense bases of the little embryo. Then contact. Contact is when the embryo develops to the point where the sense base, like the eye, sense base, the ear, the nose, the tongue, are developing inside the womb. And contact is established between the object, the sense base, and the consciousness. The contact contact their means.
The object is contacted by consciousness. So the the embryonic being is getting is developing this stage where contact is possible. Consciousness contacting its object through the sense base. Feeling is when feeling arises due to that contact. So these are are looking like, you know, stages in the embryo or in the womb, stages of an embryo.
Stages of an embryo. Now then we have craving, grasping, existence. Craving and grasping are really types of attachment si, make the karmic seeds begin to manifest. And that existence there is the manifesting karma And then we have birth, aging, and death. Okay.
So this chart here represents either two lives or three lives. This process can occur in two lives. For instance, ignorance and formation occur in the in one in, say, this line. We through our ignorance, we engage in positive intention that lays down a karmic seed on the consciousness. And then in the same life, then also we that karmic seed may be awakened by attachment.
As we get towards the end of our life, our attachment, which is craving and grasping, begin to waken that seed up. Right? And that craving and grasping eventually waken the karmic seed. Now that So in other words, what we’re saying is those two are in the first life, these three here are at the end part of the first life, and then eleven and twelve appear in the second life, along with the other links that appear in the second life.
Sorry. That’s not very clear. Sorry. That’s the first line. In the first line, beginning part.
Say earlier. We through ignorance, we engage in intentional action that lays down a karmic seed on the consciousness. Then later in that life, as we approach death, through our attachment to existing, right, we awaken this karmic seed over here. There’s a karmic seed over here, later on consciousness. Now craving, our attachment for it to exist in future awakens this karmic seed.
Right? And then then we die in that line. Now that karmic seed will wait and will generate rebirth in the next life. That’s in the second life. Let’s go back to the first life.
Now these other links here are also in the second life. What happens to the karmic seed at death? Karmic seed at death is awakened. So it stops being a seed and it awakens as the projecting as the karma that projects or creates a new life. In a sense, this is the Buddhist version of creation.
Instead of being created by God, from a Buddhist perspective, one is created by one’s past actions in the sense of karmic action manifesting and then laying down a karmic seed in the mental continuum and that karmic seed then being awakened by attachment towards the end of the life and that karmic seed then ripening and then producing and rebirth. So Sorry. This is all quite complicated. Absolutely. The other possibility there is that you can have a three life scenario.
So I should just have this as well. Don’t worry, you won’t understand all of this at this time, but it’s just useful. That can occur in the first line. This here, instead of appearing in the first line, these three, eight, nine, and ten. And this one here, eleven and twelve, occurs in the third line.
And this one over here occurs in the third line. So it’s possible that the round of twelve is completed in two lives or three lives. So what that means is that at present we’re laying down all sorts of karmic seeds in our mental continuum because of our intentional action. Those karmic seeds may, be awakened over a two life period or a three life period. Can’t be completed in one life and it can’t be done in more than three.
So it’s either gotta be two or three. Everyone’s looking very per perplexed and wondering, what the hell am I gonna do with that? That’s alright. It is also possible, but it won’t be a projecting karma. This is we’re really talking here about projecting and establishing karma.
But if it does manifest in this life, it could be a type of completing karma. In other words, the karmic seeds that we have either have the potency to project us into a new life or they can generate an experience that we’re having in this life. So pretty much what we do experience, our feelings are coming from karma, in other words. And for for us at present, the karma that we’re experiencing is completing karma, meaning it’s karma that is completed by producing feeling in the present moment. All right.
Yes, go ahead. Yes. Yeah. It said that doing something positive, again it’s through the power of intention, with a positive motivation, positive intention, doing something positive like reciting prayers, you know, with a positive aspiration, can affect a person even when they passed away if that positive action is dedicated to their benefit. It can potentially change or assist or be of benefit to that being.
And the stronger and the greater the motivation the stronger the impact it can have. Even though the person has died and they’ve taken rebirth already. So very good to do anything positive and dedicated to them. Although they’ve already taken a rebirth. So even though we have a thought on dedicating this to Frank or whoever, Frank has actually stopped existing.
There is no Frank. They don’t have the same form any longer. Right? They’ve taken a rebirth. They’ve gone through the Bardo state.
And having emerged from the Bardo state, take their rebirth so they actually say if they’re reborn as a human their consciousness has entered the union of the egg and the sperm of the parents and the process of the embryonic development is occurring. Who they were in the past is gone. That being no longer exists. The I in their continuum continues but they don’t have the same physical appearance. Oh yeah, now their karma has manifested and generated a new rebirth for them.
Yep. And now they’re well, if they’re reborn human they’re gonna be in the womb for nine months. And so on. That’s why, you know, the thought from a Buddhist point of view, this thought that when a person dies that someone similar to that being continues to exist needs to be investigated. Because if that being takes rebirth, then there is no, you know, granddad just doesn’t continue.
Right? They take a rebirth. And the idea of, well, we’re all gonna meet up in heaven at some point. Well, actually the being has taken rebirth somewhere else. They’re no longer grandma or no longer my brother or sister.
They’re no longer that being has ceased to exist. The body was burnt. The continuum of the I is there. What about their mind which is supposed to be ongoing? Yep.
That continues. Well, mind then will be Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. This is what, you know, we need as much as possible to establish for ourselves that we carry with us the positive potential.
Yep. The mind’s the mind does continue. And the I imputed to that mind or the mind body continues. The mere I continues. This is a sort of a philosophic point.
There is a mere I. And the mere I is just the mere label I designated upon the mind body which we have. That’s all there is. Absolutely. Oh, he still is Fred, but that Fred is not truly existent.
That Fred is like an illusion. But Fred exists, but just on a merely illusory level. That’s all he any of us ever exist as, you know. More we investigate the nature of ourselves and others, we see that it’s we don’t exist in the way we appear to exist. That’s all.
Yeah. It’s useful exactly for other people if you otherwise, if you change his name every day, it’ll be confusing. Because yeah. That’s all. It’s like the Buddha.
The Buddha was referred to himself as I. You know? Because it’s a convenient label. Alright. Well, we should finish there actually.
Everyone’s been very patient. We’ve been dealing with a few obscure topics. Here the twelve-linked chart up here. Anyway, that’s enough philosophy, enough psychology philosophy and so forth. But it’s useful to have some idea of of this sort of a presentation.
But then again, it’s only really useful if we can bring it back to our where we are as individuals in the present. That yep. Oh, well, we should have a look. See that thangka at the back? Have a closer look at that.
I like this very much because I understand that. Right. It’s more symbolic over there. And in fact, you know, I really should have got a chart to hand out to everyone. Maybe we can organize that.
That would be wonderful. Because over there it’s put more in pictures, in picture form, in symbolic form. And if you know the symbols then it’s really, you know, it’s the same meaning but I just like those words. Oh, okay. Okay.
Well, maybe we can, I can get a chart available and maybe that could be printed up? It may just be me. Yep. Very good. It makes me feel it’s worthwhile to have done the chart up there.
But this is a very traditional presentation. Who knows, maybe in the West now we’ll come up with a modified version or something a bit better.