Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 4-minute Q&A excerpt, Geshe Pema Tsering addresses two precise questions about karma and moral responsibility. First, he works through a doctor-and-patient scenario: if a helper’s motivation and action are virtuous, the result in their mind-stream is virtuous regardless of outcome — the patient’s death belongs to the patient’s own karma and delusions, not to the helper. He then takes up age and culpability, contrasting a child of eight who harms another with an adult doing the same: because the adult consciously chooses what they already recognise as wrong, their motivation is stronger and the negative karma proportionally heavier. Suited to newcomers exploring Buddhist ethics for the first time.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 ItB 2003 03 17.mp3
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: IB Introduction to Buddhism (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2003-03-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~400
Help I want to be of assistance I want to help is positive the actual action is positive because you’re being of assistance but them dying is not the result of those those two things them dying is cause of their karma delusions the cause of their own karma and delusions the result of those actions isn’t them dying the result of those actions is something in the helper’s mind stream and not the outcome of the situation which is the help ease, karma and delusion that caused it. Even in that circumstance, it’s still virtuous because if the core if the the thought, the motivation for doing something is a virtuous motivation and the action is virtuous, then it becomes a virtuous action. If they didn’t weren’t doing something from a point of view of a negative mind stream then it becomes it becomes positive even though they didn’t know and they made a mistake right and whatever happens to the patient is actually the patient’s karma and not the doctor’s. So does that mean say for example if a child a child loses another child from a virtual Mhmm. At, say, the age of eight.
Mhmm. But an adult moves at the age of eighteen, twenty eight, thirty eight, whatever. Mhmm. But they have a a conscious mind that it’s it’s the wrong thing. Yeah.
Somebody Sure. Is it different? Accumulated from the eight year old from the previous life. Is it expected that the child operating, say, murdering another child Uh-huh. When an adult murdering Yeah.
No. It is it is worse if they if for the adults to do something knowing that with the difference between right and wrong because they it relies on their motivation. So if their motivation is I know that this is wrong, but I’m still gonna do it anyway, then that becomes a stronger motivation. Yeah. Questions, please?
Please. Yeah. Yeah.