Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using a paycheck as an everyday illustration of karma visible in ordinary life, Geshe Pema Tsering works through the Buddhist mechanics of action and result in this 43-minute session. He opens by tracing how self-grasping generates attachment, which generates karma, which binds us in saṃsāra, then identifies two antidotes: realising selflessness and cultivating bodhicitta. To reach bodhicitta, he distinguishes three types of compassion and explains that great compassion first requires equanimity — the recognition, grounded in past-life reasoning, that every being has at some point been our closest friend. He then covers karma’s structure: three types (virtuous, non-virtuous, neutral) and four aspects determining strength (base, intention, action, dedication), illustrated with contrasting examples of deity meditation and killing a sheep. The session closes on karmic timing across this life, the next, and future lifetimes, with the observation that every action simultaneously exhausts one karma and plants another.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 DB K 2003 11 04.mp3
UUID: a714b3ee-a792-42ba-aea2-0fdb3654d742
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: DB Karma (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-11-04
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 43.3 minutes
Words: ~3,619
So first of all, we have this idea of ourselves, of I, and from this we develop attachment to ourselves. Then, we have this idea of my things, Then, we develop attachment to objects. Through our attachment, we create karma. Through our karma, we are engaged in Samsāra. In order to cut Samsāra, we need to get rid of this grasping at I and realize the nature of selflessness.
So, what this refers to is the fact that once we’ve developed this idea of self, once we’ve developed this idea of I, then we grasp at that and see others as being separate from that not only do we grasp at this sense of I but then we then develop this idea of I want this I to be happy and I don’t want this I to experience suffering so in order for this I to experience happiness, we end up grasping at objects that we think will make us happy and we develop an aversion to situations which we will find difficult. So, through this process, we then develop karma, negative karma which keeps us in Samsāra. So, in order for us to get out of Samsāra, we need these two things: we need to cut through the root that is holding us in Samsāra, and we need to develop the qualities of bodhicitta in order to get out of it. The causes of bodhicitta is compassion. When we talk about compassion, talk about three different types of compassion.
The compassion needed that we use in conjunction with getting rid of the grasping itself is what’s called the phenomenaless compassion. The three different types of compassion are: the compassion that seeks sentient beings to be free of suffering, but is specifically related to particularly a certain sentient being suffering, so it’s just a common form of compassion. Then, there’s also what’s called the phenomenaless compassion. This is a compassion that’s conjoined with the insight into selflessness. So, these beings have an understanding of selflessness and by understanding selflessness of phenomena and person in this way then their understanding of compassion isn’t particularly clinging to a person wishing them to be free of suffering. The next type of compassion is focusless or objectless compassion..
Objectless compassion is compassion combined with the understanding of emptiness. There is these three different ones and the one that’s referred to in this instance is the phenomenaless compassion that is compassion combined with the understanding of selflessness. I’m sorry. I made a mistake. In this quote, it’s actually talking about the ordinary type of compassion because we do avail this ordinary type of compassion in conjunction with this development of the understanding of the self of selflessness.
Once we develop selflessness, then we develop the phenomenaless compassion and the compassion without focus. At this stage, what we are trying to develop is compassion as a cause to bodhicitta and its qualities and this concept of selflessness. This type of compassion that we need to develop at the moment is something that we already have to a certain extent in our mind stream, and it’s something that we need to keep generating. In conjunction with this, we need to get rid of the grasping itself, because it’s grasping itself that leads to the concepts of pride and desires anger and the negative emotions so if we develop these two things in conjunction we try and develop our compassion and develop our understanding of selflessness together then the next two types of compassion the phenomenal less compassion and the focusless compassion will come about through that type of practice. Okay.
So, this is the type of compassion that we’ve got at the moment, this idea that other beings we don’t want other beings to suffer. But in order for us to progress in our understanding of compassion we then need to focus on trying to develop phenomenon this understanding of compassion without a focus of phenomena, so the understanding of compassion conjoined with the understanding of no-self now in order to do this, we need to develop great compassion. What great compassion is described as is compassion that wishes all sentient beings without exception to be free from suffering. That is all sentient beings. We can’t say it’s alright to think of a hundred or two hundred or three hundred sentient beings being free from suffering.
We have to think of all sentient beings without exception. So, before we develop that mind, before we develop that understanding, what we really need to focus on is equanimity. So if we develop equanimity, then have this idea of all sentient beings being without exclusion, without excluding any of them, and developing compassion for all sentient beings without exclusion, then we have developed great compassion. So what we need to develop in terms of equanimity, which will enable us to develop great compassion, is this understanding that all sentient beings are close to us. We we usually go around with the idea that some sentient beings are close to to us and others are our enemies, others are out to do us harm.
We develop this idea very easily. But if we actually investigate, then we understand that there is no difference between the beings that we consider to be close to us, the beings we consider to be neutral, and the beings that we consider to be our enemies. It doesn’t take much for us to decide that someone’s our enemy or to decide that they are our our friend. We base this on a very little understanding. I’m sorry.
A very little experiences, small experiences. We then develop this a fly just flew into my mouth. Don’t drown it. No. It’s already dead, I think.
Trouble teachers. Oh, man. Anyway, it wasn’t like a full on fly. It was just a little black thing. Anyway, so, yeah, there’s these three type different types of being.
And and we think that if someone does us a little favor that they’re a friend, and if they do us a little harm that they’re our enemy, but this isn’t actually the case. We we developed this idea based on very little things. And in actual fact, all sentient beings without exception have shown us great kindness. So we should develop a sense of equanimity where we hold all sentient beings as being close to us, as being our as being friendly towards us. So then if we the the the way that we bring about this understanding that all sentient beings are close to us, that all sentient beings have shown us kindness and being have been our friends in some way or another is by thinking about past lives.
If there are limitless past lives and there are limitless sentient beings, then that means that at some stage all sentient beings have been our mother and have been or have been very, very close to us. So this means that the people that we consider to be our enemies in this life haven’t always been our enemies. People that we consider to be close in this life haven’t always been close to us, and the people that are neutral to us in this life haven’t always been neutral to us. Those we consider our friends have been our enemies and vice versa. So, with this understanding, then we focus on the fact that at some stage, all sentient beings have shown us great kindness.
All sentient beings have have have helped us, and therefore, we should have have kindness or feel kindness towards all sentient beings. So this is the way it is. All sentient beings have shown us great kindness in some states. They’ve been both our friend, our enemy, and our stranger at different at different times. We don’t understand this properly.
It’s difficult for us to understand this in an exact way if we don’t do a lot of analysis, a lot of analytical meditation based on that, so we need to do that. Another way that we can develop equanimity or we can think about equanimity is we may not understand that all beings have been our friend, enemy or stranger have shown us great kindness in other lives, but we can certainly understand that all sentient beings don’t want to suffer and wish to be happy. So in this way, we can see that they’re all equal. We can see all sentient beings are equal in the fact that they don’t want to suffer. They don’t want to suffer and they want to be want to be happy.
All sentient beings are also equal in the fact that they don’t know how to be happy and they keep striving towards suffering. Think that by focusing or developing samsaric happiness, they’re developing happiness. They don’t understand that in order to develop true happiness, they have to develop the mind searching for liberation. So they are trying to develop happiness and actually developing the cause for suffering, and they don’t understand how to develop happiness at all. If they understood how to develop happiness, they wouldn’t be chasing after samsaric happiness.
They’d be chasing after liberation. In this way, we understand that all sentient beings are in this situation, and that’s how we develop good equanimity. Based on this, think, Okay, how do we get to how do we make the situation come about where all sentient beings are creating the causes for happiness, that is they’re creating virtuous causes and they’re not creating the causes for suffering, they’re not doing anything unvirtuous. How do we develop or how do we ripen the idea of striving for liberation in their mind streams? So in this way, then, we should think, okay, in order for all sentient beings to experience true happiness that is beyond sorrow, that doesn’t experience that doesn’t disintegrate or isn’t impermanent, therefore it turns back into sorrow.
In order for them to experience true happiness in terms of achieving complete Buddhahood, then this is the reason that I’m doing any virtuous action I’m doing. It’s in order for all sentient beings to attain Buddhahood. Okay. So it’s not good enough for us to just say we want all sentient beings to achieve Buddhahood because if they don’t have anyone to show them how to achieve Buddhahood, then that’s not going to be a very positive situation. So we have to think, in order for all sentient beings to achieve Buddhahood, what do I have to do?
If we think about what we have to do, we realize we need to achieve Buddhahood in order to establish them in that state beyond sorrow through the experience of Buddhahood. We should think that in order to lead all sentient beings to the state beyond sorrow, to complete enlightenment, I will achieve Buddhahood myself. I will do that in order to lead them there. This thought or that idea that we may that we develop is called bodhicitta. Okay.
So we’re talking about karma tonight. If we actually look at it, most of the Buddha’s teachings actually revolve around karma in one way or another. Most of the Buddha’s teachings are in order to show us how to experience happiness, And in order to experience happiness, we have to create good karma. So this idea that in doing some things creates happiness, doing other things creates suffering is the basis or it pervades most of the Buddha’s teachings. So when we talk about karma, we talk about different types of karma.
We talk about virtuous karma or karma that leads to happiness, non virtuous karma, karma that leads to suffering, and neutral karma. We usually talk about these three. All of these three different types of karma have four aspects to them. They have a base, an intention, an action and a final or a dedication or a final aspect. Now, usually we say that all karma comes from a thought.
It all starts from the thought.. Then we actually do actions of body or speech. Anyway, all our actions come from a thought that we have. If we don’t have a thought first, we don’t have any actions of body or speech, and we don’t have following actions of mind. All of these come from a thought. When we do any action, whether it’s positive or negative, we have this idea of base.
That is something that is the base for the action. We have the intention. We have the actual action and then the result. For example, if we’re doing something virtuous, if we want to recite a text well, if we want to prostrate well, if we want to meditate well, then we need and we start we have a base whether it’s the prostration, whether it’s the text we’re reading, whatever it is, and then the thought to to do it with a good motivation, the actual action, and then the dedication at the end. For example, if we were doing meditation on a deity or on a teacher, then the base for that action would be the meditation on the deity or the teacher or the practice that we were focusing on.
That would be the base for the meditation. The intention that we would try to develop in that instance is the intention of bodhicitta. The action would be actually conjoining that idea with our mind. That is, it would be actually bringing that idea into being by actually doing the meditation. The the the dedication, well, there’s many different types of dedication.
We could dedicate this to enlightenment for all sentient beings, whatever whatever meditation we’re doing. We could dedicate it towards achieving liberation. We could dedicate it towards achieving a good rebirth, or we could even dedicate it to to things in in this life, to things that we can achieve in this life. So there’s many different ways we can dedicate it. It’s the same when we do a nonvirtuous action.
For example, killing a sheep. Killing a sheep is a nonvirtuous action. When we kill a sheep, the base for the non virtuous action is the sheep itself. The intention would be the idea that we were going to kill a sheep for some personal gain of some way. The action would be the actual killing of the sheep, and the results or the the dedication would be thinking, great now, I’ve killed the sheep.
I’ve got something to eat. It’s gonna be taste really nice.. I’ve got all this meat. So if we do something like that in a negative way, if we have a negative base, we have a negative intention, we have a negative action, and then we rejoice or we have a negative end to that action, then that becomes a very, very strong negative action. If we don’t have all of the four aspects of creating karma, then it’s not as strong.
But if we have all four, so if we go through the process in that way, that means that our negative action has been really strong. If we don’t have all four and we just have three or two, then that means that there’s a different intensity to the action. A lot of the things we do actually do include all four. A lot of the things the actions that we do, if we watch them, they will include all four. We will have a base.
We will have an intention. We will have an action, and we will have a thought about a a dedicatory or completing an action. But a lot of times, is only two or three. A lot of times, there’s a there can only be a base, like a fly. Okay.
And so, yeah, a fly flying into your mouth. So and and then there’s other times where we actually have a base and an intention, but then we don’t actually go through the action. Sometimes we only have a the action and then afterwards, we don’t have an intention. We And different combinations we have.. And the less of the combination, less aspects we have of these four, the less strong and negative action is.
The more of those aspects we have, the stronger our action So this this this shows how strong an action that we have done is. And lots of times, if an action is very strong, that means its results will ripen quicker. But in actual fact, in order for results to ripen, we don’t just need the cause which we’ve established through this action we also need conditions to bring about the ripening of a cause. So that means that if we’ve done an action and the conditions are not there in order for that result to ripen then we won’t experience the results of that cause so this means that there’s all different ways that our the results of our actions can ripen oftentimes we talk about the division of karma into the karma that ripens in this life, the karma that ripens in the next life, and the karma that ripens in lifetimes to come. What this means is that sometimes our actions are so strong and the conditions are all there, so we’ll experience the results of our karma in this life.
Other times, there won’t be the conditions for that karma to ripen in this life, so we will experience the results of that karma in the next life. It even happens that the conditions for our karma to ripen won’t happen in this life or the next life, so they can happen in any any lifetime in the future. So this depends on the strength of the action and the conditions that are there in order to bring the action’s fruition into being. Okay. So if we wanna talk about the first type of karma, the karma that ripens in this life, the best example that we have of this is our paychecks.
Because we know that if we go for work for two weeks or a month that we get a paycheck at the end of it. So this is like a karma that ripens in this lifetime that we can see. We do the work, we get the money. It’s it’s a it’s a karma that ripens in this lifetime. It’s a very gross form of karma that even we can see, even we can appreciate.
So in this way that we can see that even we, without developing any true understandings, can actually see the workings of karma on a gross level. Okay. So this this money that we get at the end of the two weeks or a month, however, isn’t the end of our in the end of that story of that particular karma. So if in order to get that money, when we’ve been working towards that money, we’ve had a whole bunch of different motivations, some of which have been positive, some of which have been negative, and some of which have been neutral. So that means at the end of the week when we get our money, we may think that’s the end of the story, that we’ve done the work, we’ve got the money, and that’s over.
But it’s not the way it works. The experiences that we have or that we’ve got to look forward to that come about from the motivations that we developed in order to get that money, are in no way over. If we’ve if we’ve if we’ve thought about that money with a grasping mind thinking, I’ve got this money now. I’m I’m working towards this money. When I get this money, I’m gonna use it to experience some kind of samsaric happiness, then we will experience the results of that money, but it won’t necessarily be the samsaric happiness we’re talking about, although that would be part of it.
We will also experience the samsaric results of that grasping mind in the form of some kind of suffering. We may think that in a really gross way, we understand karma by thinking we do the work. We get the money. But that’s not that’s only one level of it.
Because of our grasping mind, our mind grasping at the money, there is this there is more repercussions from our working towards that money than we can understand at that time. Okay, so we may experience the results of that in this life, We may experience the results of that karma in the next life or many lifetimes to come. It’s not as gross an experience as we think it is, in that we think there we do an action and that there will be a very distinct result to that action. And it’s not always as gross as that because every time that we do something, we are experiencing the results of an action and creating the causes for an action in the future. So we’re in this constant a constant stream or in this constant process of experiencing the results of our karma and creating new causes for ourselves to experience the results of karma in the future.
So every time we do something, we get rid of one set of karma and we’re developing another set of karma. We we get we experience the results of one piece of karma and we’re setting up and we are creating a a new a new cause for another experience in the future, all in one action. So if we think about it in this way, it becomes very vast because there’s this constant it’s constant process we’re we’re going through. So