Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of humans as “dogs without tails” — Sakya Pandita’s comparison of people who deploy intelligence and eloquent speech just to secure food, comfort, and status — anchors this 87-minute session from Geshe Pema Tsering’s commentary on Nāgārjuna’s Letter to a Friend. Opening with verse 88 on guarding against even a hair’s breadth of non-virtue, Geshe-la works through the ten non-virtuous actions of body, speech, and mind, illustrating how people sincerely believe harmful deeds benefit them while remaining blind to their karmic results — both the ripening result of lower-realm rebirth and the habituating result of deepening the same tendencies. He then contemplates the specific sufferings of the animal realm — slaughter, captivity, forced labor — explaining why beings born there are trapped in a vicious cycle, incapable of distinguishing virtue from non-virtue. He closes by naming two types of ignorance as the root to dispel, and a Q&A addresses the relationship between fear and anger and the complexity of karmic exhaustion at death.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 2010 03 14 geshe Pema Tsering – Sunday 14th march 2010letter to friend.mp3
UUID: 1b247189-5c2f-4b59-a31e-ff8ef31fa319
Teacher: Geshe Pema Tsering
Collection: z Letter to Friend – mulitple years (Geshe Pema Tsering)
Date: 2010-03-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 87.0 minutes
Words: ~6,293
Activities, then our actions will turn out to be good paths, will turn out to produce good results. Bearing this in mind, then we produce now this motivation that for the sake of enlightenment, to be able to establish all sentient beings in the precious state of enlightenment. And I myself am going to study these Dharma teachings. And in this way, we produce the right motivation and good motivation. Then at the beginning, we’re going to exercise So then at the beginning, in order to exercise this production of the right motivation, then we’re going to go through the preliminary prayers the refuge, the bodhicitta, the seven-limb prayer, the mandala offering, and so on.
And then we start with the teaching itself. Okay. May all beings abide in equanimity, freedom of attachment for friends and hatred for enemies. So we proceed from where we stopped last year, and we were investigating different types of suffering, of sufferings. And have investigated some of these different types of suffering.
We are going to approach the next verse, which is making reference to the need to abandon the causes of some of those sufferings. Verse number eighty eight, for those who have the book. And it reads, the seeds of these evil the seeds of these fruits of evil deeds are sinful acts of body, speech, and mind. Work hard, and muster all your skill to never stray a hair’s breadth into sin. So again, Geshe-la just explained it before, we have been talking about these various types of suffering, the sufferings of the hell realms, the preta realms, the animal realms, human sufferings, all types of suffering.
And what are the sources, the causes of all these types of suffering are all the various actions of body, speech, mind that we engage in. So and and this is why we have to work hard to not engage in any negativity through any of the three doors of body, speech and So again, it is by guarding, by protecting, by guarding the actions of the three doors of body, speech, and mind, that we can avoid experiencing the sufferings in the future. So that’s why the text is making reference. Again, Nāgārjuna here is speaking to the king, and telling the king to not to stray, not even a hair’s breadth from the righteous path into sin. So that’s how important it is, that’s how we have to endeavor in our practice.
English is going through the the commentary. The comment the commentary to that verse, which again is then saying that the the the all these the results of non virtuous actions, the results of negative deeds are the sufferings of the hell realms and so on. So these are the seeds, the causes that produce all these the sufferings of the hell realms and so forth. So and this very the very seeds and the very cause that bring about these results of negative deeds are our own actions and solely only our own actions of body, speech, and mind. So, again, the text make reference to the king, so speaking, so you, king, you know, you have to protect your conduct.
You have to behave in such a way and protect your conduct in such a way of body, speech, and mind that you don’t stray from the path of righteous actions. Not even, you know, a hearer’s breadth away from that path. And again, so the text is making reference to the the non virtues of body, speech, and mind. And the non virtues of body are three, killing, stealing, sexual misconduct. And we have the four non virtues of speech and the three non virtues of mind.
And these are the non-virtues that are being referred to. These are the non-virtues that we have to guard against. In in with regards to virtues and non virtues, virtuous actions and non virtuous actions, what are they? Very briefly, virtues make reference to something that is good, and non virtues make reference to something that is bad. And we made this distinction on the basis that, some, some actions will produce, happy results.
Those are good actions, the virtuous actions. And some will produce painful results, suffering results, and then we call them bad actions or non virtuous actions. And from engaging in negative actions, what will follow is only suffering. No happiness will follow from that and vice versa. And Geshe-la was explaining, but we have been engaging such negative actions.
Since time immemorial, we have been confused about such actions, such distinctions of virtuous and non virtuous actions since time immemorial. By believing, again, since time immemorial, have been living life after life, believing that some actions non virtuous actions, we we believe that they are good to us. And then we we went on to actually endeavor the best we can to practice them. So for for the sake of illustration, I wasn’t saying we have we have lived our lives, for example, believing that killing is good to us. And we have killed and and with with the sincere thought in our hearts, in our minds that, okay, this is good for me.
This is benefiting me. I’m profiting somehow. And and completely ignoring the results that will follow from that, rebirth in the hell realms and so on, the great sufferings that follow from that. Ignoring that, ignoring those results, being completely oblivious to what are the results of such actions, we went on believing that they are good, and we went on to practice them, to engage in them as much as we could. And that’s how we have been living life after life.
We kill other people, we murder, we go to war, we kill many other people, and we do all that. All those actions are done with the sincere belief that they are good, that we are going to benefit, that we’re going to profit somehow by performing such actions. We really believe that. But regardless of our belief, those actions do not produce any happy results. Not even in the short term, not even in this very life.
It hasn’t solved any problems. It hasn’t dispelled any unhappiness. Those actions, killing, wars, and so on, they haven’t made any difference in terms of the better of our happiness, of our state of mind and so on. In which I was just giving you illustration of some countries, maybe China for example, again has waged war after war and in the short span, in the short term, you don’t see any improvement in the happiness of people involved in this process. So it doesn’t really provide any happiness.
And Geshe-la is explaining again from a bit more detail. And when we engage in such an act, for example, the act of killing, again, regardless of our belief that that actually might actually benefit us, regardless of that, the negative results are only negative. The results are only painful. So we have differing results. We have different types of results as actions produce.
I was making reference to two different types of results. So for that, we have the ripening result, which is that by killing, we are born in the hell realms. We are born in these very painful places. These places will produce to us or give us a lot of pain. So the hell realms.
And then we have, on top of all that, we have the result that is concomitant or is concordant with the cause, which actually means that in a future life, we will have a tendency to kill again. We will have a liking for killing. It’s like we have this habit of killing that we carry through one life to the next. So in the end, we generate this vicious circle, this downward spiral of suffering. We kill, we experience this great suffering in the hell realms, and we are habituated to killing more and more.
We continue to kill after life after life more and more, and our situation only worsens in this process. And then again the same goes for the other actions. Again, for the next one, for example, for stealing or robbing, that is taking what is not given. Again, the same applies. We might engage in such an action with the again, with the sincere belief that we are going to be profiting, that we are going to be benefiting from it.
But if we really stop to have an honest look at it and look deeply into it, we will see that there is no profit, no benefit coming out of it. There’s only harm. Again, we might still, we might see, we might obtain some some wealth, some money of of some measure. But, you know, there is in the not long run, the very short run, again, there is the danger that we are going to be arrested and put into jail, put into prison. We are going to be prosecuted.
We have everybody’s going to know that we are robbers and and and whatnot. Everybody then is going to dislike us. And we we all know how the story goes. We cannot get a job, we cannot get friends, nobody trusts us. So there is no good coming out of it, not even in the short term.
Briefly speaking, what those non virtuous actions are, they are actions that hurt others, that harm others. Generally speaking, these are non virtuous actions. Whatever action hurts others or harm others in any way is a non virtuous action. And not only that, again, these actions are, as we can see in the illustration that were given or the actions that were mentioned, they do not harm only others. They harm oneself.
They harm everyone involved in the process. So such actions are then the non virtuous actions. So, again, because of all that, then Nāgārjuna was telling the king, you know, you you you cannot stray from the path of righteous action, not even by a hearer’s breath. It’s important that maintain good conduct, benevolent conduct. And then we are given to conclude this part of the text.
We are given a quote from Gyalse Togme’s thirty-seven practices of Bodhisattvas. Even though I don’t remember a better translation, I’ll you a literal translation here. So these unbearable, these sufferings which are extremely hard to bear, the sufferings the lower realms of existence, are the results of negative actions or negative activities. So because of that, at the cost of one’s own life, the bodhisattva it is the practice of bodhisattvas that at the cost of the bodhisattva’s own life, he or she will not ever engage in any negative deeds whatsoever. In practice, what does that translate?
What all this translates into? It translates into avoiding the non-virtuous actions. So that’s that’s the practice that is involved in this in this teaching. So avoid the ten non-virtuous actions. But in order to be able to avoid the ten non-virtuous actions, we have to be able to know what they are.
We don’t even what they are. We don’t even we don’t we cannot even recognize them when they when they come about, when they are happening, when they come about, when we are engaging in them. And not only that, even if we are able to recognize them somehow, we do not fully grasp, we do not fully understand the fact that they are harmful to us. And then this is a part of the text that I didn’t translate, But it’s on the second line of the verse, Gyalse Togme is saying that these unbearable sufferings of the lower realms are said by the Buddha to be sourced, to be caused by these negative deeds So again, it is a teaching of the Buddha and that’s where Geshe-la was telling us that we have to rely on the teaching of the Buddha in this matter to be able to understand cause and effect.
So we the the part of the text that we were approaching now is a major division of of the topic of sufferings. We have done the general sufferings of cyclic existence, and now we are doing the specific sufferings of each of the six realms of saṃsāra. So we have done already hell realms. And now we are approaching, I believe also we have done the hungry ghost realms. So and now we are approaching the animal realm, the suffering contemplating the sufferings of the animal realms.
And this topic has two major divisions to it. So one is a general contemplation, and the other one is the specific contemplation or contemplating the specific sufferings of that realm of existence. So, Geshe is going through the verse that refers to the first one of those topics, the general contemplation, right? Which says, animals, there’s multifold distress. There’s slaughter, tied up, beaten, and the rest.
For those denied the that brings peace, there is agony as one devours another. And then, so I guess just going for the commentary against the verse, which is pretty straightforward. And again, just saying that this having been born, even if one were to be born as an animal, having talked about all those suffering. So even if we were to be born as an animal, the suffering that we are going to experience is going to be atrocious also. Again, we are going to be slaughtered.
We are going to be skinned alive. We’re going to be hum and tied up and bound and restricted and imprisoned in case and whatnot. We are going to experience all sorts of being we’re gonna be completely destitute of the peace. There is the fruit of virtue. Geshe-la was explaining because animals due to their stupidity do not know what actions to practice virtuous actions and what actions to abandon.
They do not know the distinction between virtues and non virtues. So not only their birth is, again, a result of non virtuous actions, but once born as an animal, they are completely unable to distinguish. And so they go on to kill each other, to eat each other, and so on, to engage in all sorts of other negativities and producing more negativities. And then it’s been noting all these sufferings of the animals, they are things that we can all see for ourselves. So Geshe is then saying, we see animals being slaughtered.
We can see animals being killed. We see them hurting each other, fighting each other and killing each other and whatnot. We see them being forced to work hard. We have seen all that. We see them being beaten and mistreated and whatnot.
And there’s nobody who would look at that state of affairs and think that that is a good state of affairs. One might be inclined to think maybe that a particular dog or a particular cat in a very fortunate circumstance might look happy. We might actually be inclined to think that, but really they are not. In the animal realm there is a lot of suffering, there’s a lot of torment, and if you look at it, anyone can see. And if the worst thing about animals is that they are really stupid.
They are really, really stupid. And they are completely unable to accomplish any causes of real genuine happiness, of liberation and enlightenment. They are perfectly unable to do so. And what’s more, because they lack the ability to discern between good actions and bad actions versus nonversus, they go on to engage in so many negativities during their lifetimes. And they go on to experience so they in their lives, they not only experience a lot of fear, a lot of pain and suffering and whatnot, they go on to create more and more causes in their lifetime to experience more in the future, to be born again as animals, to again engage in more negativities and so on, another vicious circle.
So on the other hand, one perspective they are perfectly unable to create any causes of real happiness. On the other hand, they are perfectly capable of accomplishing non virtuous deeds. And you can think of any of the ten non virtuous deeds, and you can see an animal doing that. You can see an animal, the physical non virtuous, the first three. You can see an animal killing, stealing, engaging sexual misconduct, and so on.
And they’re perfectly capable of engaging in all those negative deeds. So they are unable to create the cause of happiness, of liberation, enlightenment, and they are able to engage in the cause of more suffering. And that is really the sad state of affairs of life as an animal, that the animal life, or rebirth as an animal. And again, all that suffering that they experience, whatever suffering there is, again, is the result of non virtuous actions. So again, they’re experiencing that as result of negative actions that have been performed beforehand.
So all of this is making reference to the sufferings of animals. And Geshe was then making reference to the fact again that these are animals, This is the situation of animals. Now we were born as humans, so we have this human life. We are able to create, to perform the causes of happiness, the little happiness, temporal happiness, and ultimate happiness. Able to do so.
And also, we are able to create much greater negativities than animals do. Because animals are stupid. They don’t know what they are doing. So they don’t stop to think about the actions that they are going to perform, to whom they are going to perform, and so on. So they don’t think about the object, the quality of the object, who it is and what it is and what not, the quality of the action, and the conclusion of the action, and so on.
We think about all these things. Because we think of every step of the process, our actions are much more powerful, both for good and for worse. If our actions are virtuous actions, they’re much more powerful virtuous actions. If they are negative actions, are much more powerful. Negative actions will bring much worse results.
So we have to be really careful with that. And Geshe-la was saying regarding the careless conduct of most humans, that we are like dogs without a tail. Because we say in Tibet, they would say the dog, you know, it wags its tail to get what it wants, to get some pet, some food, little petty and little food and whatnot. We use all these very sophisticated and highly evolved resources that we have. We use brain, our thoughts, our speech, and all that to get just the same thing that dogs want.
So we are like dogs without tails. In the end, we are no better than dogs in most of our endeavors. So I guess I guess he didn’t remember the verse that he wrote. He remembered this verse from and again, I’m going to endeavor to translate literally, so it’s not going to sound as poetic as Michel was saying. But the idea is that whatever there is food, water, pleasures, there you find a lot of people.
And even if they are incited to, they will not go they will not thread the path of the necessary virtuous conduct. Even though they need for whatever they need, even if you incite them and you encourage them, they won’t go in the direction of virtuous actions. humans are going go on to use all those skills of eloquent speech, and they go on smiling and pleasing and whatnot, and just to get food, water, and all these things. So in the end, living life like that, these humans are no better than dogs, and they are like dogs without tails. So again, and is explaining that when Sakya Pandita is saying that those people are like dogs, or how to say, dogs without tails.
It’s not saying that they are literally dogs. I mean, they are humans. Okay? So they’re definitely humans, there’s a difference there. But because most humans, they’re only endeavoring to, again, to get food or drink or shelter or accumulate wealth and fame and success and whatnot.
And though and those things are much greater. I mean, the king here in this case, in this instance, has much greater wealth than any dog could have accomplished. So yes, there’s a difference there, but that wealth is not going to accomplish any happiness in the future. That wealth in and of itself, the accomplishment accumulation of the world in and of itself is no guarantee of any happiness in the future. And it’s going to last only for the duration of that lifetime, that one lifetime, and that is at best, you know, a hundred years or so.
After that, you know, all that life was, in the end, was wasted, not in in in that in that the king or whoever it is, did not accumulate causes of future happiness. You don’t accumulate the causes of future suffering, just like animals do. And that’s why these people, these kind of people who conduct themselves in this way, being likened to just dogs like dogs or animals in general. The practice of avoiding the non-virtuous actions is something that we are able to do. It’s something that we are able to practice.
And and this is what we need to endeavor to do. We need to engage in in in good moral, which is the abandonment, the avoidance of the unknown virtuous actions. And on on top of that, we need to say or or make, you know, heartfelt aspirational prayers, pure aspirational prayers. We need to attain future rebirths as humans. And these are the causes of such future rebirth as humans.
And regarding the practice of virtuous deeds nowadays in the time that we are living in, even if you keep only one virtuous precept, let’s say, even if you only guard against the act of killing alone, that that would suffice to as a cause for future rebirth as a human being. So there is there is an there there’s there’s no need to gain more than one non virtuous action. So the more you can guard, the more guarantee you have, of future rebirth as humans. And we need to accomplish those causes of future rebirth as humans. If we don’t, if we waste this opportunity, then again, we are no better than dogs.
And then we we go on to the next verse, which is making reference to the specific sufferings, contemplating the specific sufferings of animals. And the verse reads, some of them are killed just for their pearls, their wool or bones, their meat or skins and fur. Others, other helpless beasts are forced to work. They are kicked or struck with hands, with whips and goads. So again, all these, because I wasn’t saying, all these sufferings are things that we can all see for ourselves.
We can all see with our own eyes how animals are hurt, and they experience pain and suffering in all these various ways. And and the the core of it, of this reality is that they are completely helpless. They have absolutely no freedom, no control over their lives. They are in trapped in this situation. So, again, I was going through the commentary to that, which again is pretty straightforward.
So, again, some animals are killed for the sake of their pearls, some are for the sake of their skin or their fur or their wool or their meat and whatnot. And they are all they are all used, utilized by gods and humans. And these gods, again, guess I was making reference. The word gods is the same word for gods, deities, and and whatnot, but Geshe-la is making reference to the fact that these gods are being referred to are worldly gods or saṃsāra gods. So, again, they are utilized.
These animals are utilized in whatever they have, the the skin and fur and so on. And their and their label Oh, yeah. Is utilized by Meaning that they they have no they have no freedom whatsoever. They’re completely helpless. Helpless.
And and in this way, they suffer. They are beaten, you know, by hand. They are kicked. They are they are beaten by hand with whips, with goads, and whatnot. So you can see all these these sufferings, are all visible.
And by contemplating, by bearing in mind these sufferings that animals experience, then you ought to endeavor, we ought to endeavor. In this case, it’s making up for the game to the king. You ought to endeavor to avoid negative actions that will cause you to be born as such. One of the final instructions here in commentary is that you have to bear in mind, you have to remember these sufferings of the animals. And the reason we have to think about these sufferings is because we don’t want to experience these sufferings.
Because we ourselves don’t want to experience these sufferings, we have to remember that and we have to think about what are the causes that lead to these kinds of sufferings. And then in the able to avoid those causes. As we are right now, I was saying, we don’t really know, we don’t fully understand what these causes are. And we still produce or engage in activities which are the causes of such sufferings, of such rebirths. We have to really look into it.
And that’s why we have to remember these kinds of suffering, bear them in mind. We really have to think for ourselves and look into this situation. And we as I was saying, we we all go to to watch animals. We like to go and watch animals. We I know some performance or whatnot or in the zoo and whatnot.
But what it never occurs to us that we might be born as an animal, as the animals we are watching. If we are asked, do you think you you could be born as an animal? Our instinctive answer is that no. No. I’m not I’m not gonna be born as an animal.
And the reason we say so is that because we don’t want to be born as an animal in the first place. So and just because of that, we say, no. I I I won’t be born as an animal. Just because we dislike the idea. But if we really stop to think about it, I mean, do we have the causes to be born as an animal or not?
Really, we have no reason to believe, to actually think that we are not going to be born as an What we have is actually a lot of evidence that we are quite likely to be born as an animal because of all the afflictions that we have in our minds, all the anger, all the attachment, all the lust, all the jealousy, all the ignorance that we have. All these afflictions we do have, and they are all causes of such this kind of rebirth. So really, the one thing that we are able to say correctly, yes, I am going to be born as an most likely. We couldn’t say within reason, we could not say. We could not assert, I’m not going to be born as an Geshe was in referring to himself.
If you ask me, as Geshe-la was saying, if you ask me, am I going to be born as an animal? I would think to I would I would say I would tell you no. My instinctive answer would say no because, you know, because I don’t like the idea. Because I dislike the idea, I say no. But if you really give if I were to give an honest look within my situation, because I was gonna say, you know, the right answer, the reasonable answer is to say yes, most likely.
And in endeavoring to avoid these kinds of suffering, these kinds of reverse in the future, all we have to do is really avoid the ten non-virtuous actions. And that’s what we have to do. This practice of avoiding, abandoning the ten non-virtuous actions is a practice that benefits all our spiritual aspirations. So our greater spiritual aspirations of enlightenment, our aspirations of liberation, and even our lesser spiritual aspirations of happy rebirth in the future. So it helps.
It benefits us in in every way. And then we have a two line verse at the end of this part of the text saying again that we we have to recollect, we have to keep in mind this, all this visible, all this suffering that we can see of this unfortunate, the sad rebirths that are the result of this extreme ignorance, of this obscuration suffering, this extreme obscuration suffering. We have to re how do you say? Recollect constantly recollect this sad state of affairs that is the result of this cloud of ignorance, this cloud of this this cloud of ignorance. English language is making reference to the one word here that is, translated as obscuration or making reference to ignorance.
So all these very many sufferings of ignorance, of darkness, of obscurations and so on. So again, these obscurations, these ignorances, are many, Geshe-la was saying. There are very many the causes of sufferings that come out of stupidity. And this word is making reference to which is ignorance. Then ignorance, generally speaking, we have two general types of ignorance.
One is ignorance of the suchness of the way things exist, of the reality of phenomena. And the other is ignorance with regards to actions and the results. So these two we have these two types of ignorance. And then and Geshe-la was saying, we do not like to be called ignorant. But the fact remains that we do not understand the reality of phenomena.
What is the reality of phenomena? And as such, we are ignorant of the reality phenomena. And again, the same applies with regards to actions, the results, cause and effect. We do not understand the workings of actions and the results of cause and effect. So as such, we are ignorant of that too.
So we have to endeavor to not come under this way of these two types of ignorance. So we have to engage in ways to eradicate this ignorance of actions in the results cause and effect. Learn about actions and the results. By the power of that ignorance, with regards to actions and the results, we engage in all sorts of negativities. So we have to engage in this.
We have endeavor to dispel that ignorance, and we do that by studying such things as the teachings on action, the results, the teachings on the morality, which is the abandonment of the ten non virtues, and so on. This is how we can dispel that evidence. And then by practicing in this manner, by avoiding non virtues in this manner, practicing virtues on the basis of the knowledge that we have gained, then we will be able to make it easier to eventually dispel the ignorance of the way of the reality of phenomenon, of the of phenomenon. Again, in all this process, it’s not an easy process, it’s a long term process, and it it asks for a long term commitment and a lot of effort. So it’s not an easy task, it’s not a small small task, but that’s what we have to do.
So so Geshe-la then says, so we have to we have to endeavor in these two tasks of dispelling this ignorance. And one of the ways that we that we are going to be reminded to do so, to keep on doing the homework, is to remember the sad states of affairs affairs of animals, for example, the sad conditions that they live in. So and remembering that we’ll be sort of compelled to do the work that we have to do. And and we have to take advantage of the human rebirth that we have, not to let it go to waste, and then create a cause of happiness in the future and avoid the cause the cause of suffering in the future. And this one?
[unclear] Oh, yeah. That’s why why I. In case she wants to stop here and open for questions. What is the date today?
Fourteen. Fourteen. Very angry when we’re most frightened and you see it in families where we we don’t get what we want or get what we don’t want. And then we’re a little bit frightened of losing control. And then we start getting angry and cause a fight or argue.
And I I can see this on the bigger stage too. Happens at your house sometimes, happens in workplaces, happens in, you know, armies. So could Geshe talk a little bit more about fear and anger together? So Geshe-la is saying, yes, we can definitely see a relationship there. Geshe-la is explaining because fear is this feeling that is really sourced in ignorance, which is really sourced in the conception of an inherent existent self, in the thought of an inherent existent self.
And that’s why we have fear, because we think I exist truly. And so I need happiness, and I need to avoid hurt and pain. And that’s sort of the source of the feeling of fear. And then anger comes in, which is anger is something which usually comes about in an attempt to avoid suffering, in an attempt to avoid pain, to avoid hurt and so on, to avert pain and suffering and so on. So there’s definitely a relationship there in this sense.
And while I had great sympathy for her method, I also hoped very much that this these young dogs who had the good fortune to find their way into I I heard you. I heard you. But you are you asking if the dog’s death is setting the cause and conditions for them to kill in the future? Look, there is karma that is being exhausted at that occasion of their death by the leopard or they’re being killed by the leopard. So there is for example, we can we can we can definitely say that the propelling karma that has propelled them, that has also another way to translate the word, the thrown the throwing karma, the karma that has thrown them into their life as a dog.
We can say that that karma is terminated, is being exhausted. Now, now it is it is hard to say in detail what’s going on there. Hard. It’s impossible for us to say in detail what’s going on there. There will be karmas that have not been exhausted at that point.
There will be karmas that have been exhausted at that point. And there will be many other karmas that we just don’t have a clue. If that was for example, another way to say it is, if that was the time, the expiry date of that propelling karma, then that’s it. It’s over. If the expiry date of the karma was later on, then even the propelling karma won’t have been fully exhausted yet.
So it is just hard to say. But it is certainly the case that A negative karma is ripening. And if it has ripened, that cause is being exhausted. Is that Okay? So look, if I wasn’t saying yes, and that’s that’s a good thing that we endeavor to to prevent animals from being hurt or mistreated in any way.
That is a good thing to to do that involves, you know, a lot of benevolent a benevolent state of mind, a virtuous state of mind, and that is good. Now, really, ultimately speaking, we cannot stop animals from suffering altogether because that’s their condition. That’s just the reality. When we are doing, like you said, helping animals and treating them well and trying to stop them from being mistreated, hurt, and so on. That is really good, but that is, the most part, in sort of on a spiritual sense, on the long run, it is really benefiting us.
And it is because it is benefiting our mind, our heart. We are cultivating a very good mind, a very good heart, which is good. Nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. But we are not able as we are presently, as ordinary human beings that we are presently, are not able to completely terminate or cease them from experiencing suffering.
We’ll be able to do so when we attain full enlightenment. Because I believe in just a little drop in the ocean. That’s good. Yes. And that’s right.
That is right. Drop in the ocean. I won’t give up. That’s right. Geshe Geshe is saying, yes.
We endeavor to stop every instance of suffering. We endeavor to arrest every little instance of suffering. But that does not stop animals from being animals, and it is in the in that the nature of being animal is that they will suffer. If you’re born as animal, you will suffer. And and we can only stop that.
The only chance that we have of stopping that is being fully enlightened. So we have to work for that. Is that okay? No. Yeah.
I’m gonna watch it. No. Watch your ground. So we’ll do the dedication then?