Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 14-minute session, Geshe Pema Tsering anchors a discussion of karma and killing in a striking example: the 2004 Asian tsunami. From a Buddhist perspective, he argues, the waves did not kill anyone — the coastal communities who sustained themselves by fishing had created the causes and conditions for their own deaths. This leads into a wider examination of how intention determines the weight of negative action, whether eating vegetables implicates us in harm just as much as eating meat, and why killing is equally wrong whether the victim is an enemy or a friend. He then applies the same karmic logic to Tibet’s loss of independence, placing responsibility with Tibetan actions rather than Chinese aggression. Suitable for practitioners working through Lamrim ethics.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 06 SoP 2005 03 13.mp3
UUID: 0061dfce-bf4e-44ae-b127-b13ac1aa474c
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: Stages of the Path (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2005-03-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 14.4 minutes
Words: ~1,106
That’s that’s all negative action. That’s all if if we don’t know we’re doing it, then it’s a small negative action. But but just by inhabiting a human body, we’re killing things. So there’s there’s all there’s a concept part of the cycle of cycle of saṃsāra that you’re stuck in a situation where you’re harming beings just very present. But the thing is the thing is that negative actions and positive actions, there’s big vast variety in the strength of them, in their the strength of their the the strength of the action and the strength of the result.
So if something’s done with no intention, yeah, and no negative thoughts, alright, then the results of that negative action are going to be very small. Alright? But if something’s done with a very strong negative intention, then the results of that negative action are very very strong. Alright? So it and it’s the same as we’re constantly experience we’re constantly doing negative things just by existing.
Very, very small negative things. We’re constantly experiencing very, very small amounts of suffering just by existing. And so this is like low level that happens all the time. But if we’re going to do something with a very strong negative intention to harm others and to hurt, then that’s going to obviously have much more powerful results. Eating meat is a negative thing because someone’s and then I’ll think, killed in order for us to eat meat.
So obviously it’s negative where where what we’re doing is involved in the harm of animals. But anything that we eat is involved in the harm of animals. Does that make sense? That sounds like a really bad construction. Involves harming animals.
Anything we eat involves harming animals, whether it’s vegetables or whether it’s meat. The whole process of getting food involves harming animals. Hanging out with old ladies. And I I get I get harassed by old Tibetan ladies every time I’m going home. So I’m going home to say, don’t eat fish.
So you guessed that, of course, that would make that that makes a difference how many animals you’re eating in one meal. I told him about the grandmothers harassing me, and he said, well, makes sense, doesn’t it? Why? People aren’t as big as cows. But from a cow’s point of view and a fish’s point of view, they’re both pretty important.
So if you’re a fish, then you’re not gonna wanna get killed and eaten. And if you’re a cow, you’re not gonna wanna get killed and eaten. So he doesn’t think that they’re from their perspective, because they both wanna be happy and they both don’t wanna be killed and eaten, that there would be any difference. But in terms of a human, a human isn’t considered to be the same as an animal because a human has more potential to help and a greater capacity to do certain things. So to kill a human is said to be much greater fault than to kill an animal because you’re killing potential.
Yes. There you Someone’s behind you. Okay. Yeah? Uh-huh.
Yep. To ourselves. Geshe-la says that he thinks that, of course, that’s the practice of Bodhisattvas. They’re less worried about themselves and more worried about others. They even get to the stage where they can give away their own body.
It’s very quick. Yes, Geshe-la said, yes, there really isn’t any distinction between killing someone who is perceived as being an enemy and killing someone who is perceived as being a friend. Killing is wrong. Killing hurts, harms beings. So the main point is that killing isn’t helpful.
Sorry, the main point is killing isn’t appropriate. It harms beings and all beings want to be healthy health all beings want to be happy and don’t want to die. Yeah. So the other thing is to remember that killing has repercussions. More you kill the more that you are setting up a situation to experience suffering, to experience shortening of life yourself.
And Geshe-la said recently there was a tsunami that wiped out all coastal villages all across across Asia and then many people keep saying the it was the waves that killed them yeah but from a Buddhist perspective waves aren’t a being Wave can’t kill anyone. All right. The only people that can kill people are the people that make the causes and conditions to die. All right. So external conditions don’t kill you.
You create the causes and conditions to die yourself. Yeah. And so the for him it seemed a bit it was really sad that he was thinking about the people that had maintained themselves by killing in the sea, by taking from the sea or ended up being killed by the sea. So he thought that that was like a really sad situation that they were born in the situation where they relied on the sea. Relied on killing sea creatures to live and then eventually the sea killed them.
But he said not just these people, the Tibetans are the same. Said that it’s not very nice not having your own country, it’s not very nice being a refugee, it’s not very nice not having somewhere that you can call home. And he said, but you know it’s not correct to say that it’s the Chinese fault. It’s not correct to say that Chinese came and took our country because it was the Tibetans responsibility. It was the Tibetans karma that led to them losing their country.
So it comes back to an individual. If you do negative things, you do kill, if you do it purposely, then you are going to experience the results of the negative actions you perform. So the trick is that well the problem is that in performing these actions, in performing killing and everything, shouldn’t just be thinking no, we don’t just have to think about the fact that that is going to harm another being but that also that it’s going to come back at us. Yeah, so whatever we do we have to experience results of it. So we shouldn’t kill because it harms others.
We shouldn’t kill because we’re going to end up experiencing suffering because of it in the future as well. Oh, he’s on there, He thinks so. Okay. So then we have page twenty six from the morning prayers. I was trying to guess that I feel like a one man band and someone should that maybe someone else can do that.
Okay. The person goes, no. No. No. You do it.
Alright. Okay.