Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A verse from the King of Absorption Sūtra — “Moon and stars may fall to earth, mountains and valleys may crumble, but you, O Buddha, speak nothing false” — opens this 30-minute session from Geshe Pema Tsering’s Essence of Refined Gold series. He explains why even celestial deities inhabiting stars and mountains remain under cause and effect, establishing the Buddha’s authority on karma. Two more quotes from the same sūtra lead into teachings on abandoning negative actions and cultivating appreciation for virtue. The session then covers the ten non-virtuous actions of body, speech, and mind, how they are classified as great, middling, or small by the presence of intention and rejoicing, and the three types of karmic result: ripening, appropriate, and controlling. A Q&A rounds out the session, addressing how thought itself constitutes karma, practicing patience with difficult neighbours, and the paired cultivation of emptiness and bodhicitta as antidotes to self-grasping.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 16 2004 03 23 RG.mp3
UUID: 63e718ca-3d00-459b-9b2d-9cce3dfbbb8f
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Essence of Refined Gold (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2004-03-23
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 29.7 minutes
Words: ~2,147
Of the of karma, of cause and effect, then we need to rely on the Buddha’s word in order to develop an understanding of it. Because we can’t perceive it logically ourselves, we need to rely on the Buddha’s word in order to understand it. So to help develop that understanding, then there is a quote from what’s called the King of Absorption Sūtra, which is one of the Buddha’s like sermons. And in that, someone says about the Buddha, Moon and stars may fall to earth, mountains and valleys may crumble, and even the sky may disappear, but you, O Buddha, speak nothing false. Now what this is referring to, apparently, is that in the Buddha’s cosmological system, the moon and the stars and the mountains and the valleys are all set to be the abodes of gods, of different types of deities.
So we may look at the moon and see a rock, yeah, or all sorts of things, and we see it as being like a similar physical construct to Earth. But in cosmology, it said that the moon exists the way it does because the moon is also a place where deities live. Right? So although we may not be able to perceive them because of our obscured mind, it’s said to be deities that live on stars and moons and so forth, and in mountains and in valleys. Now so what this is meaning then is when moon and stars may fall to earth, mountains and valleys may crumble.
It’s not only that these physical places may crumble, but the beings that inhabit these and have the nature of these, like, so they have the nature of the moon or have the nature of the stars in terms of being deities, they as well are under the law of cause and effect. They as well need to die. They have come into being based on karma and therefore they have to pass away because the conditions that may have not brought the sorry, the conditions that brought them into existence also act as a cause for them to pass away. So what this is saying that even though all of these things may happen, everything that’s conditioned has to come apart or has to disintegrate, that the Buddha or the nature of Buddhahood is beyond that, is beyond the law of cause and effect. It’s therefore able to speak from a place of authority and hence, it says, but you, O Buddha, speak nothing false.
So bearing this in mind, then there’s another quote from the Buddha himself where he said, from evil comes suffering. Therefore, day and night, one should think and rethink about how to escape misery forever. And so from evil comes suffering, or from negative actions comes suffering. What this means is that anything that’s described as being a cause for suffering, we need to be able to recognise that and or at all times in day and night to remind ourselves of the consequences of performing negative actions how that is going to bring about suffering and through reminding ourselves or thinking on this day and night then we create we stop creating the causes for experiencing that suffering and strive to create the causes for experiencing liberation from suffering. So these last two quotes both came from the King of Absorption Sūtra, and this next one does as well in which the Buddha says, The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness, constantly meditate upon how to ripen the fruits that can grow therefrom.
The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness. And now what this is talking about is the causes for goodness, what is going to bring about happiness within us. And where this comes about is that if we have an appreciation for performing positive actions, if we have an appreciation for performing virtuous actions, that will be because we understand their results. We understand how what they bring about. And so through understanding their results, we understand how powerful the actions are.
So once we’ve understood this, once we’ve understood that all positive things, positive results come about because of all positive actions, all virtuous actions create happiness, Once we’ve understood this, then we will seek to we will want to do only positive actions. And then the second part says that constantly meditate upon how to ripen the fruits that can grow therefrom. So this refers to the fact that once we understand this, once we understand how it is that we will bring about happiness, then we would want to meditate or focus on that, cultivate that idea constantly and cease to do anything that’s going to create suffering for us. Although this is very difficult for us at the moment to perceive this, in order to do this we have to become a bit like Milarepa who developed such a firm conviction in this and did nothing but perform positive actions that they then experience the results of? Of course.
So this is this implies that or in general, we should get rid of all negative actions, abandon all negative actions. But in specifically or in more specifically, it is talking about what are called the ten non virtuous actions of body, speech, mind. So there’s said to be three negative actions of body, four negative actions of speech and three negative actions of mind. And these ten non virtuous actions are also divided into what are called great non virtues, middling non virtues and small non virtues. Now the way that they are divided into these big, small big, middle, and small types of non virtues is by the the force of the action.
So for example, if we just have the motivation or the idea of doing something negative, then that’s said to be a small non-virtue. If we have the idea of doing something negative and then do it, but don’t and then regret it later, yeah, then that becomes a a middling negative action. If we do something, we have the idea to do something, then we do it and we’re really happy that we’ve done it, then that becomes a great negative action or a large negative action. And likewise, if we do something and then we don’t have the idea to do something, we do it unintentionally and then afterwards rejoice and it becomes middling. And if we do some we have the idea and then we don’t follow it through, and then we rejoice with someone else doing it, it becomes middling.
So any if you have two of the three, it’s middling. If you have one, it’s small. And if you have three, it’s great. So with these negative actions that we can perform that we perform, there’s a positive. There’s a small type, middle type, great type.
And they also have three different types of results that can come about through or or hang on. For every action for every action that we perform, there are three different types of results come about. So for every karmic thing that we do, every well, everything that we do, three different results can come about. And they’re said to be what’s called ripening results or fully matured results. Then we have appropriate results and then controlling results.
Now the ripening results, what that refers to is the fact that if we do have a negative action, for example killing, now killing is an action that results are to be born in a place of suffering. So if our life is marked mostly by killing then the results of that action is to be born into a realm of intense suffering. So the ripening results would be the rebirth into a realm of intense suffering. The appropriate results would be that through habituating ourselves to the action of killing, we will continue to like killing and to be it it it would be easy for us to to kill in that result in that next lifetime. The controlling results would be that we experience suffering.
Right? So there’s these three different types of results that come about from every action. So we can stop there, if anyone has questions. If you have questions, you can ask. I’m just looking for a pen.
There’s a surprise. It’s not as bad. Yes. Sorry about that. Yes.
Not fair. But it’s not fair if you have a thought. But if you dwell on your thought, you’re not. Yeah. But if you’ve changed your mind, do you have thoughts like that?
He’s just surprised us. Did you put salt in it? Yeah. He was just like, oh, there’s salt in it. It’s usually salt.
Okay. Of course. Okay. So as soon as you have a thought that’s negative, you’ve created negative karma. That is karma — it means it has created negative karma.
karma means action. Alright? So there’s not a case of doing something and then creating karma. karma is action. So if you have the thought, that thought is negative karma.
Right? Now the idea is for us to stop having negative thoughts. But first of all, we need to control the negative thoughts so we’re not acting out on all of our negative thoughts. If we’re all able to completely get rid of the causes for having negative thoughts, yeah, and therefore not have any negative thoughts, we’d all be Buddhas and there wouldn’t be a problem and we wouldn’t need to have teachings and so forth, right? So the idea is that you could start controlling what you do based on the negative thoughts, then you look at what’s creating the negative thoughts and eventually you get rid of all of the negative thoughts and all of the negative actions and speech that comes about part as a comes about as a result of the negative thoughts.
Does that make sense? So Geshe said you can move if you want, but it may be easier to practice patience. Because if you practice patience, then you’re looking at this person and saying, Okay, this person has got self grasping. They have anger. They have all these afflictive emotions.
They have all these neurotic thought patterns. Hence they’re behaving in such a way, the poor things. Look at their experience. Look at my experience. Therefore by practising patience with them, then creating positive causes and dissolving the situation.
So he said, if you wanna move, that’s fine, but you can try practicing patience. So so what’s happened is in the course of our existences, then we have done negative things that we experience the results of. And that’s what’s happening when we are being annoyed when our neighbors are doing something to annoy us. And we’ve done we’ve had many interactions with all these different people in all these different ways, so there’s many different experiences that come as a result of that. Right?
But in the same way, at some stage in the past, these people have helped us in some way because beings don’t exist in one unchanging manner. So they may have been our friend, they may have been someone that’s helped us, someone that’s harmed us. So what the real problem is isn’t the neighbour. The real problem is the neighbour’s neurosis or the neighbour’s ignorance. So what we need to look at in terms of what we all need to get rid of is the neurosis and the ignorance, not the person.
So through doing this, then we’re able to thinking this way, we’re able to practice patience more. Okay. So it’s very easy for this this idea of self-cherishing and self grasping inherent self is something that we are so habituated towards. It is constantly the idea is constantly generated in our mind, that self self grasping. Very difficult to get rid of that idea of self importance and self-cherishing.
It’s it’s something that comes about spontaneously for us. So in order for us to get rid of that idea, we have to do a lot of work. And when we’re doing development of bodhicitta, we’re focusing on other beings, but then this idea of self still keeps coming up. And so what’s the direct antidote to that idea of self then is the view of emptiness. So we need to look at the self, see that there is no self, inherent self there, and look at the ways to get rid of grasping that way.
So in this way, by meditating and focusing on both emptiness and bodhicitta, then we develop the antidotes for self grasping and the idea of working for others. So we do we focus on both. Yes. Is it okay? So we’re on page five.
It’s up to page five, the dedication.