Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Using the cat at Buddha House as a vivid entry point — reborn as an animal through negative throwing karma yet waited on like royalty through positive general karma — Geshe Pema Tsering works through a detailed karma taxonomy in this 44-minute Introduction to Buddhism session. He distinguishes throwing from general karma, karma ripening in this life versus hundreds of lives ahead, and karma merely contemplated versus both thought and enacted, illustrated by mentally rehearsing killing a sheep but stopping short. He then moves to the six root afflictive emotions: desire is shown to arise from the labelling mind rather than from objects, while anger — though it presents itself as a protector — erodes accumulated merit, with patience and compassion offered as antidotes. The talk closes with an introduction to pride and its three forms. Suited to newcomers following the course.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 ItB 2003 03 17.mp3
UUID: eb9260f2-b66f-4221-a518-73f83d9287af
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: IB Introduction to Buddhism (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-03-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.8 minutes
Words: ~3,469
Okay, so last week we’re still on the second of the Four Noble Truths that being the truth of the origin of suffering. Truth of the origin of suffering is that it comes from karma and delusions. We’re still talking about karma and we’re in the process of talking about the different types of karma that people can accumulate and how we can accumulate this really strong type of negative or positive karma that acts as a catalyst for us to take rebirth in the three lower realms or the three higher realms. Okay, so we’re talking about these different types of karma, and there’s, so we have this throwing karma which acts as like a really strong karma that works from one life and throws you into the next and then you can have a more general type of karma that that can once it’s accumulated connect to see whether you’re going to have positive conditions in the next life or negative conditions in the next life. So for example someone that has positive general karma and negative throwing karma would take rebirth as something that they have in Tibetan and Indian cosmology that’s known as a naga which Geshe said is a half human half animal half snake type creature that can talk and speak and think and relate to people but it’s still within the animal realm.
So because it has the negative karma, negative karma, negative throwing karma means that they’re taking rebirth as an animal but because that is positive karma the situation within the animal realm is positive because they can talk and think. Another example would be the cat that lives at Buddha House, who’s not actually in here tonight. Have the negative, or cats in Australia in general, he said, because they have the negative karma of coming back as an animal, but they have the positive karma of having servants, he said. They get good food, they get somewhere nice to stay and they have a nice environment to live in and everything to look after them. So, for an example of someone who has both positive throwing karma and positive general karma that would be someone that was born as a god or human that doesn’t have very negative thought patterns in their head they haven’t they don’t have they don’t kill people a lot they don’t have the tendency towards stealing or anything like that in their in their thought stream so they have a positive outlook and positive conditions and they’re in a positive realm.
Okay, so there’s another division of karma that it’s divided into three, that being karma that ripens in this life, karma that ripens in the next life, and karma that ripens way in the future up to a hundred lives ahead or more. Okay, so this first one is the one that we experience most of, a karma that will be experienced in this lifetime. That means that we do something today, we experience the results of it tomorrow. That’s the thing that most of our experiences are based on So then, next one, the second one, karma, that we accumulate in this life and that we will experience in the next life is something that its action isn’t an immediate reaction to the action and therefore the result can be experienced in the next life. The third type is a type of karma that even though we may accumulate it in this life, we won’t experience its results in the next life or the life after that or even hundreds of lives after that.
So these are called the three different lives of karma. There’s a karma that has a lifespan of this life, a karma that has a lifespan of this life and the next life, and a karma that has a lifespan of hundreds of lifetimes. Okay, so the next division that we can have of karma is that karma can be divided into positive, negative, and immovable karma. First one, first of all, all three of these are dependent on the motivation behind whatever action is performed, so therefore if the action is positive, if the motivation is positive, then the action is positive, and then after the action is completed, if it’s rejoicing and positive, then this becomes a very strong positive karma. Each one of these three is then again divided into three that is the motivation the actual act and the result.
If you want to have something that’s incredibly positive you have to have a virtuous motivation, virtuous action and a virtuous rejoicing in the action afterwards Okay, so there’s yet another way that karma can be divided. It can be divided into karma that is put that is actually done or practiced there’s karma that is accumulated and karma that is both accumulated and practiced. So the difference is the first one karma that is practiced is something that’s actually done. The second one karma that is accumulated is a karma that’s thought about, and the third one, the one that takes into account both, is when you’ve thought about something and then done it, then that becomes karma that is accumulated and practiced. So, for example, with the second one that Geshe-la mentioned, the one that’s like accumulated karma that’s not put into action, that would be if we thought about doing something and thought we were going to do it yeah I’m going to do that and then we stopped ourselves and didn’t actually do it we still actually accumulated karma for that but we haven’t accumulated the full karma because we haven’t put it into action so it comes into the category of the second one which is karma that’s accumulated but not practiced Okay.
So I just got a bit confused. Okay, so, for example, if we had the thought that we wanted to kill a sheep, right and then we went through all the emotions in our head of how we’re going to kill the sheep the good things about killing the sheep how we’re going to use the sheep’s body after we killed it and then we for some reason we didn’t actually go through with killing the sheep we thought we said forget about it I don’t have time or we decided made a decision to stop killing sheep then that process would come down into the under the guise of the one where we’ve thoroughly accumulated the karma in terms of the thought but we haven’t accumulated it in terms of action. So there’s already accumulation there, but it’s not the full accumulation of the negative karma. So the other type, the type of karma that is practiced executed but not thought about. For example if we accidentally kill an insect because we tend to kill insects a lot without actually thinking about it.
In that case we get the karma of killing an insect but we don’t get the karma of thinking about killing the insect. So we have the first type of karma, the karma of practice or the karma of action but we don’t have the karma of thought or premeditation. So we have to concentrate and try and figure out what it is we’re actually doing when we’re doing things. Are we doing things because without meaning to do them and just accidentally doing things or are we doing things, are we thinking about things a lot and then not actually doing them because the idea is that by becoming more mindful that we’ll decrease the amount of negative things we do either consciously so yeah in terms of the things that we do in terms of accumulating things in our mind and the things we do in terms of accumulating things in our action and the things we do in terms of both mental accumulation and physical accumulation. The idea is if they are negative to decrease the amount of times that we are doing it.
So actually it doesn’t take a lot of effort to accumulate karma. Even if we’re just sitting down and relaxing, can be accumulating a lot of karma. We have to kind of keep watching our mind to see what we’re doing and then watching our actions to see what we’re doing with our actions. Cause we think that accumulating karma actually takes effort but because we’re doing it all the time we have to really be aware of what it is that we’re doing Okay, and there’s yet another way that we can divide karma. karma can divide it into a positive, negative and neither.
So, is, for example, if we decide our motivation is that we’re doing something for a positive reason and then we do it, then that becomes a positive karma. If we decide we’re doing something for a negative reason and then we do it, then it becomes a negative karma. And if we’re doing not much at all like sleeping, then that becomes a neutral or, neutral or neither good nor bad karma. It’s literally translated that which is not described in scripture. Okay, so there’s there is called virtuous karma, non virtuous karma, and karma that’s neutral, not described in scripture, or is also called indeterminate karma Okay.
So, that’s the end of Geshe-la’s explanation of karma. So, within the Four Noble Truths, we’re talking about the second one, which is the origin of suffering and within the origin of suffering, there was two divisions, that is karma and afflictive emotions and so that was like the end of the first division of the second division. Did you understand? Okay, so that was the end of the description of karma, and then we’re on to the way that negative emotions can act as a cause for suffering. Negative emotions are divided into six root negative emotions and twenty one closely related negative emotions.
Alright, so, okay, we have the six root delusions are attachment, anger or hatred, Okay, so we got them right. Attachment? Attachment, hatred, pride, ignorance, doubt caused by delusions, and wrong views. Okay. So in Tibetan Buddhist psychology or their explanation of mind, they divide things into a main mind and mental factors that accompany main minds.
Right? So main consciousnesses and mental factors that accompany it. The definition of attachment or desire is the wanting in one of these mental factors that are accompanying a main mind, wanting something that has been focused on by a main mind or main consciousness. So, for example, if you see something that’s like a main consciousness, and then you have a part of your mind that goes, I want that, then that is what the definition of desire is. So desire is very bad in this way.
Like, for example, if there’s four people that want the same thing, if we desire something really badly, then we’re not even going to take into consideration the other three people that want it. We will do anything to get rid of them in order to get what we desire, if our desire is strong enough. If for example, if we see a whole lot of cars and there’s one car in particular that we want, then we get so attached to that car that any of the other cars which would be perfectly fine aren’t going to do it. It has to be that car. Then we end up doing a whole bunch of disastrous things in order to get that car.
Then because we have such a strong desire to get this thing that we want, we will do untold things, untold bad things, untold negative things in order to get the thing that we desire. So it isn’t that the actual thing itself is that desirous. It’s that our mind is putting a desirous tag on the thing that we’re dealing with, so it becomes all about it’s actually all about our mind and not the object that we’re actually referring to. Then it can become very destructive to our mind because we want to do we will do anything in order to get the thing that we’ve just labeled as desirous. So all of these things that come about that we would do that are negative that we do in order to get that thing that we wanted, they were all coming about by the power of desire.
Okay. So the idea is that when this this desire arises that we’re supposed to say, well, know, that’s just desire, and that’s nothing but desire, and it’s just my mind being desire. So I’m not gonna pay that much attention to it because if we think in that way then we stop ourselves from doing all the negative things that we would have done in order to get about getting the object of our desire. So the thing is that we think okay if I just get that one thing then that will make me happy but it’s never the way that it happens after we’ve gotten that one thing then there’s something else that we want and we spend our whole time racing around trying to get the things that we desire and we actually become like a slave to our desires with no free will and it takes control of us and we don’t have any way of stopping it we can’t stop it easily once we’ve started following it So if we want to understand that this desire is actually only coming from our own mind and not from the object, we can take the argument that if the desire was actually coming from this the thing that we wanted as opposed to our own mind then everybody would want it and everybody doesn’t want the same thing so because everybody doesn’t want the same thing then this desire must be coming from the object instead of from our mind and the way that we have to work with our mind in order to stop being so desirous is to understand that these things aren’t actually going to cause us happiness that they are like they’re things within saṃsāra so therefore they’re things that are not perfect they’re they’re like have shortcomings therefore if we keep thinking in this way then we can stop our desirous attitude towards these samsaric objects Okay, so the next one is hatred and anger which are actually very similar.
Hatred is defined as the mind that wishes to do harm to other people or other things and hate and that was hatred yeah and anger is this sensation in our minds that we are so full of hate that we act out of control and we can we have this thought of killing or harming or maiming other people from this from really strong have these thoughts from really strong anger. So anger or hatred is like the most can be is the most destructive of the negative emotions. Anger and hatred are the things that erode our stores of merit that we have in our mind streams. They’re the things that destroy all the positivity that we have in our mind. Okay, see the problem with anger is it comes that we it comes about in our now we’ve got it sorted.
The problem with anger is that it comes about in our mind in terms of we think it’s it comes about in order to protect us, in order to to help us out, in order to make us feel happier so we we had this sense that it’s actually helping us because we were saying to ourselves well I’m not gonna get hurt I’m not gonna be in trouble I’m not gonna have any pain I’m going to like it’s got I’m gonna make myself alright and this this is what this sense of anger comes about it comes up as like a friend that’s there to help us to protect us and to make us feel better that’s the way that it presents itself But the thing is it actually doesn’t benefit us in any way. It eats away at all our positive things that we’ve accumulated in our mind. It eats away at our well-being and it destroys anything that we actually end up holding dear, so it doesn’t benefit us at all and it’s not our friend at all. So for example, if you get people that are fighting over a border, they will fight and they will kill each other over border and then at the end of it, nobody’s actually benefited from from what was going on and then you even get between husbands and wives and people that are close that they will fight and and create a lot of anger and hatred over possessions and in the end usually neither of them get anything and people even get so angry and so angry and so full of hatred that they kill each other and then nobody benefits from anything and if it’s this way in this life then we don’t even have to explain that it’s going to be the same way in future lives.
Mhmm. So, therefore, it’s, like, really it’s a really harmful emotion. And even sometimes when people are fighting what they do is they they end up destroying the things that they were fighting over in the first place so they were fighting over like objects in the house. If it’s a family argument and they’re throwing things at each other, then in the end, the things they were fighting over are destroyed. They’re not happy.
Their children are definitely not happy, so nobody’s actually won from the situation. So anger, though it started off being a way to help the individual people it hasn’t done anything but create destruction and nobody’s happy in the end So in that way, anger and hatred no good to anybody and they don’t help anyone and the antidote to anger and hatred, the main antidote to anger and hatred is So it’s very very difficult for us to get rid of anger. Most people have some sense of anger in them but if we want to dispel our anger and not be under the control of our anger, we need to apply antidotes to it and that is either to think about patience or to think about compassion and to try and bring these things into our mind stream to act as an antidote to anger and hatred. So whatever dealings we’re going to have with people whether it’s with our parents, whether it’s with our children, whether it’s with the people that we work with, whether it’s with our friends, at some stage they’re going to make us angry. They’re going to do something that’s going to frustrate or annoy us then what we have to understand is that this anger isn’t going to help us and it’s not going to help them so when we before we get angry then we have to try and think about patience and compassion for them or compassion for ourselves in order to dispel the anger So the idea is to think that when someone that we are having some kind of dealings with, we get angry at them or frustrated at them in some ways to try and understand that they are also underneath the power of karma and delusion so they’re going to do things that are going to be bad and they’re going to experience suffering and they’re going to experience happiness these things are going to come for them because they’re under the power of karma delusion in the same way that we are going to experience suffering and we are going to experience happiness because we also have created karma and we’re under the power of delusion.
The idea is to bear that. Word that Geshe was using can be translated as bear or be patient. Either way yeah to to bear or be patient with with whatever circumstances are right Okay. So the third one is pride, and pride is the thought like there is nobody else but me. Okay.
So there’s three different types of pride. The first type of pride is the thought that I really like me. The second type is the thought is is someone who has absolutely no qualities and thinks they’re fantastic. And the third if they they have no quality at something, they think they’re fantastic. The third one is they have a little quality.
A little they’re a little bit good at something, but they think that they’re just fantastic at it. Pride is actually something that’s really destructive. If we have a lot of pride in our system, then we won’t experience anything but suffering.