Karma

Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.

About this talk. In this 52-minute Q&A on the twelve links, Kyabje Rinpoche clarifies what makes karmic actions powerful: the object (parent or teacher), the intensity of the deed, and the occasion—major Buddhist dates amplify results. He illustrates with a bodhisattva president ordering a plane shot down to save thousands, then walks through how the twelve links mature across lifetimes, distinguishes compositional factors as karmic imprints, and settles debates on impelling karma. The session pivots to guru yoga: relying on a qualified teacher is not supplementary but essential and nearly absent in Western practice. Rinpoche speaks candidly about why students fail to maintain long-term relationships with teachers, and why genuine progress requires sustained reliance across lifetimes. The tone is direct and unsentimental, grounded in decades of observation.

File metadata (for organising)

File: 12 Limbs D2Q&A – KR.mp3

UUID: b2c94f44-7b9f-4645-9929-409a23f5c9f6

Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche

Collection: Karma

Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide

Words: ~7,114

A moment’s explanation of the 12 limbs, but the screen, the projector, the interface between the screen and the projector are not cooperating. So we will have to do things in a simpler fashion like Buddha Śākyamūni did them. Then I don’t have a board to offer, but we have a very nice sound system. So, what questions do you have? Yes.

First and foremost about the topics covered today. Yes. Geshe-la mentioned that it needs to be a powerful cause. Like the action of killing a human being. But I’m a bit confused because I saw that every non virtuous activity, especially the karma is complete, can actually propel you into the lower realm.

So does it really need to be like a very powerful one? Or if you Sorry? The Yes, the Lamrim, yes, sorry. You really have to look in the section of Lamrim Chenmo. I think it’s the end of the first volume in the English translation on what makes karma powerful.

So karma can be powerful from the standpoint of the object. You take the deed of killing, for instance, a human being is a powerful object. Within human beings, those who have been particularly kind to us are more powerful objects, one’s parents. Those who have been very kind to us and for instance have taught us, like our teachers, are extraordinarily powerful objects. Then, from the standpoint of the object, the same deed would have a far greater karmic weight if the object is powerful.

However, power also or force, karmic force, can arise from the standpoint of how the deed is performed. So the object might be, let’s say, a weak object, let’s say a mouse. Then normally killing a mouse will not cause will not be a powerful impelling karma to cause immediately a rebirth in the lower realms. But if the way the deed is performed is particularly ferocious, I suppose. Let’s say if a mouse is the object of scientific experimentation in a lab, in a heartless way, and the mouse suffers greatly, repeatedly, and the researcher not only has no concern for the sufferings of the mouse, but actually even delights in the sufferings of the mouse, then this deed can become an impelling karma.

It’s a powerful deed. Likewise, deeds performed on certain days become powerful. Certain days which commemorate major events in the life of the Buddha, such as for instance Vesak, let us say, it’s a powerful deed. There are traditional amplifications, these are said to be amplified a 100,000 times, a million times, then those are just figurative, right? There’s no real meaning to that except to say that the deed is powerful on that day because the deed commemorates something very important.

Does that answer your question? Do you have other questions? Please. This was relating to the question I had for Geshe-la yesterday regarding an aria being and the existence of previously accumulated impelling karma, so they can no longer accumulate impelling karma, but about the existence of previously accumulated impelling karma. And Geshe-la responded that there was a difference of opinion on that and that Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen said that that previously accumulated impelling karma would be also extinguished.

Would that be because of the absence of any afflictions in the mind stream of an area being that that previously accumulated impelling karma could no longer be triggered by an affliction into maturation? So are afflictions absent or not in the mind of an aria being? Yes, why? Which ones? Why, which ones, how?

You give one answer, you get three questions. Okay so bodhisattvas No, ārya beings. Sorry, which ones? Okay, so which afflictions are you saying? So you said afflictions are present in the mind of an Ārya being.

Yes. Why? Which ones? How? Okay, so the ignorance that grasps at a self is no longer present, but there are other afflictions in their minds that would be not impelling karma but just Affliction is not karma.

Afflictions. Is not karma. So this is something which Kesharat brought up. It is said that afflictions still exist in the mind of an ārya being. So to put it in terms which are accessible, when are the afflictions abandoned in the mind of an ārya being?

At which level? Eighth ground. Yes. So the mind of an ārya bodhisattva, afflictions are abandoned on the eighth ground, which means that from the path of seeing to the eighth ground afflictions are not abandoned. Then that would theoretically mean that there could be afflictions in the mind of an ārya being, and Geshe-la brought this up a couple weeks ago saying, well, basically, what sort of afflictions would be present?

And he you remember he asked you, that’s why I permit myself to ask you, because otherwise there’s no point if we never progress. So what do you think might be present? If someone who has had direct realization of emptiness, it might be a Śrāvaka, Prateka Buddha, or Bodhisattva ariya being. Right? And if afflictions are present, how could they be present?

So an example was given, and Geshe-la said that that example basically was given by one of our older students. That example came close to fitting the situation he was talking about. So what is it? Yes, exactly. Very good.

Very good. Very good. In other words, an ārya being, let’s say an ārya bodhisattva, to help living beings might have to commit a deed which, let’s say, the short term was non virtuous. Let’s take a a contemporary example. Let us assume that an Ārya Bodhisattva was, let us assume, president of The United States.

Then you smile, actually Bodhisattvas typically gravitate towards powerful positions Because the goals of bodhisattvas are to help others. You help others when you have power. As opposed to people like ourselves who are little people who can’t even help ourselves. So our bodhisattva makes prayers for wealth, for power, for influence, for beauty, because this gives us a means to change society. It is people like His Holiness the Dalai Lama who change society.

It’s people like Mahatma Gandhi, like Luther King, Martin Luther King who change society. It’s not the cleric at the colds who changes society. So Bodhisattvas gravitate to these positions. So let us take an Ārya Bodhisattva who has become president of The United States, and there is a repeat of the September 11 which is planned. The terrorist attack, let us say, on the World Trade Center doesn’t exist anymore, but another major commercial center.

And that Ārya Bodhisattva has obviously at his disposal the military of The United States, and has to decide between shooting this plane down, which is going to impact this trade center or not. Our bodhisattva vows oblige one to act at these moments. There’s an obligation to act for the sake of others even if oneself incurs non virtue. Then, such a bodhisattva motivated by great compassion, would probably order the shooting down of one plane, which is loaded with civilian passengers to save, let’s say, 5,000. Such a deed is a non virtuous deed.

It is not possible to give such an order without momentary anger. A moment of anger or irritation. The underlying motivation is compassion. Then in such a case, there would be an affliction in the mind of the ārya bodhisattva. But it’s the superficial motivation.

Does that make sense? Bodhisattvas are fearsome beings, you know, because a bodhisattva takes a long view on things. Then you find bodhisattvas in history when you look very carefully among the great kings, among the great monarchs. Why they did what they did, we do not know. We don’t have access to their mind.

You can only look at the results. And if you look at the results, and let’s say a civilization down the line has progressed, and this progress is due to one person, and this one person all along had an intent to help the community at large, then you may start to wonder whether you might be dealing with a Bodhisattva. For instance, is said his son as a Dalai Lama, in one of his previous lives, was the dharma king of Tibet, Sonsen Gampo. Sonsen Gampo was a rather fearsome character, but he is considered by Tibetans to be a bodhisattva. He turned a warrior race into a race of monks.

And if you look at the Lojong results, it is really remarkable. So does that answer then Jill your question, does that begin to answer it? Yes, so I then, would follow my question would then be, so how is it that that previously accumulated impelling karma is considered to have been extinguished? Basically, the reason there is a debate between Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen, the monastic textbook also of Sera Je and Pänchen Sonam Drakpa is largely because there’s no way to determine what is happening. So whether impelling karma is present or not in the mind of previously accumulated impelling karma, is present or not in the mind stream of an ārya being, it is non manifest and inoperative.

Then it cannot impel a rebirth. Then it’s sort of a moot point. Jetsün Chökyi Gyaltsen says it has been destroyed. Pänchen Sonam Drakpa asserts it exists, but is non manifested, non operative. It’s a point for debate.

You know? It cannot impel a non virtuous rebirth. It cannot impel a rebirth for an aria being, and an aria being accumulates no longer any new impelling karma. Do you have other questions? How important is it to have strong aspirational prayers to be reborn in a certain place.

Geshe-la mentioned today about you know, say Australia is a peaceful place, may I be reborn in a good family. If one is attempting to have, you know to die or to cultivate a bodhicitta motivation, obviously you know that’s just to have definite emergence is something to aspire to. So it seems as if for us or for myself to try to pinpoint where I’d want to be reborn. That’s a practice of a great being. But to wish to be reborn within saṃsāra, you know the disadvantages of that are, you know, it’s very uncertain.

And so there’s a fear of being reborn in saṃsāra. So just not quite sure what’s realistic. Well, the end of your question contradicts all the beginning. Right? So do you think you will attain liberation in this life?

So it’s a given you will be reborn in saṃsāra. It’s automatic. Right? There’s no doubt. Does anyone in this room think they will attain liberation in this life?

So it’s a given everyone in this room is gonna be reborn in saṃsāra. Right? Why are we having this debate? Instead, in keeping with Nāgārjuna’s stance in Ratnāvali, we progress from life to life. So we need it’ll take us a very very long time to attain either liberation or full enlightenment.

It’s not going to happen in this life. It’s not going to happen in five, ten or 15 lives. Then the goal has to be, as Nāgārjuna explains, life after life to be able to keep on some type of path. And that is possible if we have good rebirths as a human being in a country with reasonably decent conditions. Then it doesn’t have to be Australia, but a western country or maybe in the future Asian countries will have superior conditions to western countries, it’s hard to say.

Then without those conditions, we will not be able to practice. Like I see for instance here, the change in the circumstances of the students since 2008. There’s been a very sharp decline in the capacity of our students to practice, as opposed to the pre-GFC environment. And that is just basically a small financial downturn in a developed country. So what happens if we are born with real hardship?

So the first step is realistically to pray for a human rebirth life after life. That’s a realistic goal. A human rebirth with leisure and endowment, in other words a possibility to practice, And to do that we need to gain the conditions for such a rebirth. So what are the conditions for a precious human rebirth? To abandon the 10 non virtues and to practice the 10 virtues.

The core condition is ethics. Ethics. In addition to ethics, there are cooperative conditions. Rinpoche taught this in 2009 at TBI.. So I remember, I hope you do.

Yes. So what does generosity create? Well, obviously yes, but the conditions in that next life as a human being. Yes. If you want to have wealth, in other words, if you want to have the material conditions which provide for leisure, you need to practice generosity.

For those of you who are on the dole, I don’t know how to put it politely in Australia, you know what not having wealth means. You have no leisure. And what is forbearance a condition for? Attractiveness. Yes, attractiveness.

Why is attractiveness important? So people like you. Yes, if people like you, I mean it’s well established that your life is a lot easier. Right? And actually, forbearance is also a condition for mental peace.

So generosity is a root — excuse me. Ethics is a root condition, and then we need, in addition to just being reborn as a human being with two arms and two legs, the practice of generosity and forbearance, and we need stainless prayers, which means prayers which link this accumulation of merit with the result. It amounts to a dedication. So if we do this on a daily base, every day, we practice ethics and ethics means to abandon at least one non virtue. It is said that in the age of degeneration we live in, those who have kept one vow purely within the category of, let’s say, you have lay vows, if you keep one vow purely, not to kill, let us say, the karma created will allow one to be reborn as a student of Buddha Maitreya, when Maitreya comes.

Then a human rebirth for sure. And then to answer Chris’ question, to continue answering Chris’ question, life after life, one then has a human rebirth. And if one has practiced continually in this life, in the next life, whatever attainments we have in this life will be present, they will be carried on. Let us say, let us imagine that you had generated, you’d been able to generate a strong motivation of the being of the small scope, which is a big thing. I don’t think right now anyone in this room has it.

I doubt so. Then in your next life as a child that is present, the moment you start thinking about these topics that arises automatically. And then once you come in contact with the teachings again, which is a given, it will happen because you have practiced regularly. If you start doing the meditations with a small scope, you will realize that this is something you already know. This is something you feel.

You do not need to train further in this way. You can pass to the path of the being of the middling scope. And then in that life, to attain, liberation is difficult, but it might take two, three, five, ten lives. But as you move towards liberation, you will eventually, if you have Mahāyāna seeds, realize that others are in the same situation as you, and you will turn from the path of a hearer or a solitary realizer to that of the the Mahāyāna, and then start progressing on the Mahāyāna. This is this seems like a long road, but this is what there is as opposed to fantasies.

So salvation by faith is a fantasy. This is what there is. And in this matter, I should have quoted Buddha Śākyamūni’s famous passage from sūtra this morning, I am my own master, I am my own teacher. Who else is there? We are very alone.

In this room, it is a given probably ten years from now, based on my experience at TBI, that maybe two to three of you will be left. Most students, they last five years here. Where you will have gone, I don’t know. Most of the students who were here in 02/2008, I don’t know what happened to them. They received many great initiations, great empowerments, they’re all gone.

All gone. Vajrayoginī, Yamāntaka, Guru, Puja, six yogas of Naropa, you know, gone gone gone. You know? Do they practice? Don’t they practice?

We don’t know. Right? So what that means is that there’s not a lot of time. And your priority has to be to stabilize your practice, so it lasts until the end of this life. You don’t have to become Buddhist, but if you become Buddhist, you want to stay Buddhist until the end of this life because at that point, you’ll reap your reward.

Right? There’ll be a salary if you wish. Then if you have been a Buddhist, then you dropped out, you went to something else. Then you came back. Then you dropped out again, you went to something else.

At the end of the day, it’s far from clear that you have anything left in the hand. Does that make sense? Like, all of you, all of us are worldly beings. Right? So you work for your retirement.

Right? You hope that when you retire, there’s something in the pension fund. Alright? So if you’ve been careful and there are unforeseen circumstances, there should be. And if you haven’t worked, then you have whatever the Australian government chooses to give you, which I think is not a lot, right?

Is it? Some of you live on that. So it’s a long answer to Chris’s question, but one of the basic problems we have with the presentation of the Lamrim and the West, is that because the totality of the path is presented, we don’t stop to ask ourselves where exactly am I on this presentation of the totality of the path. So we are not on the Mahāyāna. None of us in this room is on the Hīnayāna.

Because if we were on the Hīnayāna, we would have generated definite emergence. We are not path beings. We have not entered the path yet. Then the path of the being shared with the small scope precedes the path. Right?

Then very few, if any, in this room are on that, because that means to turn one’s back on this life. That means that this life is, as Geshe-la was explaining this morning, 10% of your focus, enough to have enough to eat and to drink, and the future lives of which are far more than this life, are 90% of our focus and we’re not there. Now, we have to identify where we are in the total presentation of the Lamrim to know what to practice. Because, let’s say, if we have not yet reached the path shared with the being of the small scope, then it is those practices leading up and included in the path shared with the being of the small scope, which will be of the greatest benefit for us. This is my private opinion about it, but it’s shared by most of my teachers, I believe.

So what that means is that to move up to the path shared with the being of the small scope, we must generate a profound conviction in reincarnation. Without that, there is no path shared with the being of the small scope. And that, I suggested to you many times over the last ten years, happens through studying Stevenson’s works. In Stevenson’s research, which demonstrates the existence of, or in my opinion demonstrates the existence of past and future lives. And then on top of that, we must generate a deep conviction in this existence and operativity of karma.

At that point, we can start meditating on the path shared with the being of the small scope. And those meditations, if you’ll forgive me the term, will bite. Or the reason our students do not stay is because everyone is meditating on things which are far too advanced for them. Everyone wants Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen and heaven knows what. And no one can benefit because no one is at that level.

The minds never change. It’s a constant consumption of spiritual traditions. So Chögyam Trungpa wrote some very nice pages about this. Then for us, the key therefore is that, Try to generate this conviction in the existence of past and future lives and generate a conviction in the existence of karma and then try to generate renunciation of this life. That is very difficult to have.

So none of us will suffer from depression, from mental diseases of any type once we have that. Once we have the renunciation of this life, the mind is at peace. Death is easy. Whatever happens is easy. The mind is focused on the future lives.

Lose all your money like so many of our students during the the GFC, no problem. They take your house away, no problem. Your kids turn bad. No problem. Right?

We don’t have that. And that is a prelude to generating definite emergence on the path shared with the being of the small scope. You cannot generate definite emergence without first having this, path shared with the being of the small scope. And without having trained the mind in definite emergence, one cannot generate bodhicitta. So it is not because we study the totality of the path that we can practice the totality of the path now.

Then since we don’t have the screen, which gives me a lot of freedom, the screens tie one up, you know, and I’m not bound to PowerPoint, I’d like to say a couple words about something which I think is sorely lacking and one of our very good students told me she was going to write something about it. So I thought I would bring it up as well. Then we return to the 12 limbs. The beginning, the middle, and the end of the path is relying on a good teacher. Then one first has to find a good teacher, which is not easy.

There are criteria for a good teacher in Maitreya’s Mahāyāna Sutralankara, 10 criteria, which can be reduced to three, basically the three trainings. And even in this day, the three trainings are rare. So it can be reduced to one which is compassion. Compassion. Then His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said in the Geluk tradition, since there is no shortage of monks, we should rely on a teacher who is a fully ordained bhikṣu, a monk.

This precludes a lot of problems. Then in other traditions, there may be a shortage of teachers who are ordained, then one may have no choice but to rely on a lay person. But in our tradition, there is no shortage of monks. So when one searches a teacher, one should should search out a monk, a monk who has studied. So in our case, at this center, we have a Lharampa Geshe.

It’s difficult to get a Lharampa Geshe. So to give you an idea, it’s twenty years of study at the monastery. Very few are produced, and the monasteries keep the good ones for themselves to train the next generation. So Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen was asked to come to TBI three times, and he refused the two first times because he saw no benefit. You all know how Khensur came to you from which he was treated, how badly he was treated in Australia.

Then you can understand why. Mean, Rinpoche said during one of the AGMs, and I was there, I translated, during the final years of my stay at Buddha House there were many tears, but of that I would not speak. So I have been involved in Buddhism thirty years. I never had to translate something like that. It’s a sad reflection on the older students of TBI in Buddha House.

That’s a reality everyone knows this at Sera G. Likewise, Geshe Pema Gyaltsen who taught here, Geshe Pema Tsering, sorry, had to return to Sera because his students would not take care of him. He died in poverty. It’s a reflection on the students here. This is someone some of you knew.

Right? Yesterday, I noticed that Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen did not have a teacup. No one in the room noticed. Why? Guru Yoga is not something you talk about in the abstract.

Right? So this personal relation with a teacher must be constructed. It comes from our side or it doesn’t come. It’s not a topic you study, it’s a topic you live. Then once that is constructed, once you have found a good teacher, once you have built that relation, the key is to do what the teacher says.

It is not an emotional relationship. The teacher is not your substitute father. He’s not the boyfriend you could never have. We see quite a few people like that. The teacher is a spiritual guide.

As he gets to know you and you get to know him, his understanding of your needs will improve and he will be able to custom-tailor the advice he gives you. And he will tell you where you are on the path and what to practice. Then if you have met such a teacher and if you have started to rely on him and you don’t practice what he he says, you have wasted your life. You have wasted your life, big time. Next time, you will not meet such a teacher.

If, on the other hand, a very very simple person who has not studied, who has little capacities, meet such a teacher and relies forcefully on him, such a person will go as far as it is possible for that person to go in a life. And I have seen many cases. My late teacher Geshe Rabten had one student, a marvelous Austrian lady, Ushi. Quite a very quiet person, and in those days we didn’t have Internet, travel was difficult. She would travel from the Eastern part of Austria next to the Czech border by car whenever Geshe Rabten taught.

You know, so it was close in those days to twenty four hour drives. There weren’t a lot of freeways and so forth. And Geshe Rabten always had her during the meals seated to his right as a sign of his esteem. She went very far on the path. Then I have known students of Khensur Rinpoche, who when I met them at the monastery, Rinpoche sent them to Sera Je. I was one of the founders of Sera Je.

I thought to myself, who is Rinpoche sending to us? People with tattoos everywhere, you know. I thought, well, what are they going to do here? Right? Without any particular education.

But these were students who had deep faith in Rinpoche. They weren’t academic types. They had led messy lives like most of us. But what Rinpoche said they did, and they have gone very far. So it’s that aspect of the path is very much in our hands at present.

And that is not covered this much here. I think you should jump on Geshe-la. Geshe-la does not cover it out of humility. I have stopped presenting this topic because I feel it is basically useless. I’m not sure as Australians you are able to build this relationship.

So the students I see here don’t respect their parents. Then there seems to be no particular respect for any type of secular teacher. They pay lip service to the spiritual teachers, but the moment there’s something real to do, it isn’t there. And I can say this after ten years. So from your side, please think carefully.

If you want to improve your lot and if you feel that there is place in your heart for Dharma, it begins and it ends with a spiritual teacher. Rinpoche taught Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen for more than twenty years. And Rinpoche said to me, is a good teacher. Rinpoche was not casual with his words. So if you want to rely on him, you can.

He’s a fully ordained monk. He’s a bhikṣu. He’s a Geshe. He was sent to Gyumey monastery. He was disciplinarian of Trijang Khangtsen.

You know? Better than him, we will never get here. But once you start down that path, you really have to make an effort to rely correctly. So it is better to start small and to move up than to talk big and never to deliver anything. Right?

So in Australia, that’s a pattern. Right? Speech has no weight. You talk big, but there’s nothing on the receiving end. Right?

Then it is better to do the opposite. The students we have seen at TBI who have done very well for themselves over the years are the ones who never talk. So I know a couple. They’re the quiet ones. But I’ve been seeing them here for ten years.

Bigger people say things, the less there is, you know, at the end. Right? So so that is the one thing I wanted to say to you today. I think it’s more important than anything else. If you want to go as far as is possible in this life, find a good teacher and rely blindly on him.

Then if you cannot do that, don’t get started. But if you start and you rely badly, you create the causes for not meeting a teacher in the future life, and that you don’t want to create. You know? Then you have any other questions? Can you go back to 12 links over two lives with the three first one accumulated in this life and then which one goes into the other one?

I don’t think I wrote it correctly. Over two or three lives? Two lives. So over two lives, you accumulate six links during the first life and the other six links at some point in the future, during the second life. So during the first life, you would accumulate the first six causal links, which are ignorance compositional factors in consciousness, the first three.

And then the eighth, ninth and tenth link at the end of that life. In other words, appropriation, excuse me, craving, appropriation and existence at the end of that life. And the way this would happen is that, let us say you would engage in a virtuous deed motivated by ignorance, let’s say right now, attending these teachings, that we deposited in either consciousness or the mind basis of all according to cittamatra, which accepts the mind basis of all. And at the end of this life, for instance, through thinking about how happy you were to have received these teachings, that would generate craving, appropriation, which would cause a maturation of this karmic imprints, and this would give rise to the it’s a karma, basically, of existence, the tenth limb. And this would precipitate a happy rebirth in the next life or a future life, in this case at the time of the death, it would probably be the next life.

And then the remaining six limbs would mature during that life. The remaining six limbs are name and form, the six sources, contact, sensation, birth, and aging and death. What I don’t understand is a certain name and form, it refers to the form being the embryo and the name the other four aggregates, Is that one of the Name and form? Well I read in the Wheel of Life that name and form, the form refers to the embryo and the name to the four other aggregates? So name and form refers to the form aggregate and name refers to the four mental aggregates.

So form would be the body, in other words, and name would be sensation, discrimination, compositional factors and consciousness. So that name and form basically refers to the instance following conception. So you’ll have existence and then you being, you go into the womb with name and form the sixth sense of the contact sensation and then the birth and the aging and death. That’s it. That’s a second life.

If the 12 limbs can only mature in two or three lives, or there’s a particular case known as maturing in countless lives, basically they don’t don’t mature. But in two lives, you have six limbs during the first life, the six causal limbs, and six limbs, six resulting limbs during the second life. In the first life you have three impelling limbs and three completing limbs, and during the second life you have the three remaining limbs, the six remaining limbs. Alternatively, if they mature during three lives, and these three lives can be separated as we said yesterday by a large number of lives, During the first life, you’ll have the first three limbs. Alright?

Then, at some point in the future, during the next life, thousands of years later, you will have the second group of causal limbs, which is the eighth, ninth and tenth limb, craving appropriation and existence. And during the final life of that cycle, you will have the remaining six limbs. Does this make sense? Yes. You have said this out in Asaṇga.

Asaṇga. So you’ve translated it as the projecting limbs, the first three is the projecting limbs, the next four as the projected limbs and then the next three as the manifestly actualizing limbs and the final two is the manifestly actualized limbs. I think that you described the first three as the impelling. My terminology shifts, it shouldn’t but it does. I know these in Tibetan.

Three is the at least the second, yep, the craving appropriating and existence as completing and Same thing. Same thing. Same thing. It’s in Tibetan. But how we translate them, I did this translation quite a few years ago, so I don’t remember exactly the terms I used.

Projecting, projected, manifestly actualizing, and manifestly actualized. It was a good translation. I don’t don’t think any of us is disputing that. It’s a good translation. You know?

Yeah. Okay. Do you understand the basics of how the 12 limbs operate? You understand the basic idea? Good.

Megan. I’m interested in hearing how you would distinguish between the compositional factors as one of the five aggregates and the second link of the 12? There’s a big difference, big big difference. Does anyone have any idea what the difference is? Jill actually.

So we would say compositional factors within the 12 limbs versus compositional factors within the five aggregates. You mentioned it at lunch, but I was interested in hearing your answer. Well, compositional factors between the 12 limbs refer to karmic imprints. Now, karmic imprints are not mind, nor mental factors. Then compositional factors within the five aggregates includes all the mental factors.

Actually, within mind and mental factors, the most important component is mental factors. Main within mind and mental factors, the most important component is mental factors. Main minds acquire their color, their flavor, if you wish, through mental factors. Ignorance is a mental factor, wisdom is a mental factor, compassion is a mental factor, bodhicitta is a mental factor, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So what infects the mind is mental factors.

Therefore, there’s a very big difference. Compositional factors within the 12 limbs, karmic imprints. Compositional factors within the five aggregates is all mental factors. Compassion is a mental factor, yes. A main mind would be, let us say, the conceptual consciousness, focused on whatever topic and compassion with the mental factor associated with that main mind.

Does that make sense? Yes, thank you. I’m sorry, I can see by your faces that I really put you on the spot when I spoke of Guru Yoga. And in a sense, your reaction is a good one. Because for us, where we stand at present, that is what counts.

That is what will or will not make our life meaningful. Then, if you can make a strong link with a teacher, and you are able to remain his student until you or him dies, then there is really very great hope for the future. And it is something Westerners can do. There’s no reason why not. Most of Geshe Rabten students were very steadfast.

So it’s something which is possible. And then life after life, you will be Buddhists. Most of us in this room are first life Buddhists. Right? Please.

So the question is related to both the spiritual teacher and the stainless prayers that we’re going to need at the time of death to create a, you know, impel us into a good future rebirth. So if we’re praying stainless prayers to be reunited with one spiritual teacher in the next life or another life and that spiritual teacher has had two reincarnations and we’re sort of visualizing well, okay, let’s say it’s Rinpoche. So I know Rinpoche as he is now. He’s gonna be reincarnated as a little boy that I don’t know. If I’m making Stainless Prayers to be reunited with Rinpoche and I’m visualizing the Rinpoche that I know and praying that I’m, is gonna work?

Well, Most naturally, that is the one you met. Right? There’s nothing more powerful than this strong faith in the spiritual teacher at the time of death. So when my mother died, she had a picture of His Holiness, and then I must apologize to His Holiness when I if I meet him again, she had my picture next to his holiness. She’s not good at all.

But she had great faith in his holiness, and she died looking at his picture, you know. Then there’s no worries to have, you know. Then, of us find Buddhist teachings a bit overwhelming, largely because they are presented as a presentation of the totality of the past, which we can’t practice now. But this relation with the spiritual teacher, that we can practice, you know. Then the teacher will feed us, if you’ll forgive me the term, like I feed my puppy Akalia, what she can eat.

Right? A little bit. When she’s hungry, you give more, but you don’t give everything to the puppy. Right? So that that is a function of the teacher.

I guess, Geshe Jampa Gyaltsen has done an extraordinary job to make very difficult teachings very easily accessible. So I know him from the old days at Sera. He was much harsher than now. Much harsher. He’s a very good scholar.

You know? So that that is what we have to try to create as best we can. No one is perfect. But if one makes a mistake with respect to the teacher, then one should go to the teacher, one should confess it, one should purify, and one should try to reestablish the relationship. Because of all the relationships in our lives, husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, children, I mean, all the crazy stuff people go after, that’s the one relationship which has really meaning.

The rest has no meaning. Your husband, you will lose, your children, will lose, they will fight, they will rebel against you, you will be disappointed in them. Your house, all that will go. Buddha Śākyamūni said a marvelous verse: The end of all accumulation is exhaustion. The end of elevation is the fall.

The end of meeting is separation. The end of life is death. This is where we are. If you value money, you value career, you value status, all that will be taken from you. If you are elevated, you will be brought to the ground in this life.

The end of meeting is separation. All your meetings, the relationships, the boyfriends, the girlfriends, children, all that the friendships will break up. And your very life will be taken from you, and all of us are in this situation. Then we need to plan beyond this life. In worldly terms, we consider someone who plans for retirement a good person, a thoughtful person, someone who’s got his head on their shoulders, the sort of man or woman would like to try to marry.

Right? Someone serious. But actually, the real planning is for beyond this life. In my case, I have maybe twenty years left, Then beyond this life, it’s thousands. Right?

So for those twenty years to sacrifice thousands is silly. Right? And then who can help us to plan for those thousands of years after this life? Someone who has realizations, a pure authentic teacher. Then really, I hope you won’t be shocked, there was well, you know that Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche catered to the hippie crowd in the seventies, so they were quite controversial.

And I never took them as teachers for that reason. But they brought very high, lamas to counsel this hippie crowd and they asked Serken Rinpoche — Serken Dorje Chang was his name, was a very very great Tantric practitioner in Kathmandu to come to teach a group of their students at Kopan monastery, which has just been created. Right? So you can imagine this crowd of flower boys and flower girls, you know, floating in the sky under the influence of heaven knows what, you know. And Serken Dorje Chang came in later.

He was a very hard, hard practitioner. You know, he looked at them. He’d be asked to give a teaching on Guru Yoga. And he said, I have only one thing to say to you. If your teacher says to eat shit, you eat shit.

And he stood up and he left. Then once you have built that relationship, this is the essence. Once you have chosen your teacher carefully, then your teacher says, you go and retreat, you go and retreat. You study, you study. You become ordained, you become ordained.

It’s okay not to be ordained, it’s okay not to be ordained. Because if you rely on the teacher in that way, the teacher sees further than us. Then read the life of Tilopa and the life of Naropa to give an idea of how to relate to the teacher. And if you choose to have a spiritual teacher, which is the way forwards for us, then rely purely. And if you can’t, don’t.

And that’s all I have to say today. Thank you very much.