Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A prison analogy opens this 18-minute commentary by Khensur Rinpoche: just as crime severity determines sentence length, the degree of skillfulness of our actions determines the quality and duration of future rebirths. Rinpoche maps out the full karma-and-results framework — minor, middling, and great skillful actions producing rebirth in the desire, form, and formless realms; their unskillful counterparts producing the three lower rebirths. He then draws the practical conclusion: Dharma practice simply means cultivating skillful actions and abandoning unskillful ones, because we want happiness and not suffering. Closing with Tsongkhapa’s text on the Three Principal Aspects, he explains why attachment to future-life appearances — body, prosperity, companions, environment — is unjustified: all arise under karma and afflictive emotions and are, without exception, in the nature of suffering.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 29 3PA 1993 09 21.mp3
UUID: 6d0bd783-f071-42b2-9f11-95043f0ef379
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: 3 Principal Aspects of the Path (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1993-09-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 18.5 minutes
Words: ~1,021
An analogy would be those who are in prison, that they have that their length of stay sentence within the prison corresponds to the degree of severity of the negative activity due to which they were sentenced to prison. The illegal activities in which they were involved. There are those who have committed misdemeanors, who have committed minor types of felonies, those who have committed major types of felonies. Proportionately they will be sentenced for corresponding length of time and have to endure the difficulties of prison for a correspondingly long time with respect to the degree of severity of their illegal activities. And the same is true of these our unskillful actions acting as causes to the degree of there’s the negativity of the cause.
There will we will experience a resultant severity of suffering as a result. And the same holds true in terms of our skillful actions that they too have varying strength, which brings about a proportionate and varying strength of result. Skillfulnesses are in terms of minor skillful actions, middling, and great skillful actions. And these bring about a proportionate result in terms degree of happiness, the quality of the place in which we are reborn, and the length of time that we spend in such types of rebirth. The result of minor skillful actions is the rebirth as a human being.
Rebirth in a fortunate realm, a happy migration. The result of middling skillful action is rebirth as a form or formless as a form god. A a god or a celestial being of the form realm. And result the result of the greatest skillful action is being born as a celestial being or a god of the formless realm. And these beings have extreme bliss for a very long lifetime.
And so there is the result in terms of the place degree of happiness and the length of time spent. So all of the six types of migrations arise from the degree of skillfulness of the actions and the varying levels of both skillful actions and unskillful actions in terms of skillful actions minor, middling, and great leading to rebirths in the fortunate rebirth in the desire realm, the form realm, and formless realms. And in terms of unskillful actions, minor, middling, and great leading as causes for taking a rebirth in hell, hungry ghost, and animal realm. So all of these variables are determined to the degree of strength of the negativity or positivity of the skillfulness of the action. And the variables such as the type of embodiment, the prosperity, the environment, the length of life, the degree of suffering or happiness are all determined by the quality of the cause, that is, skillful action, unskillful action.
So when considered well, there are there we arise we come to the point where we see two possibilities in terms of positive and negative. And considering this, we are led to begin to cease the creation of negative actions on the one hand, begin to practice positive actions on the other. And why is this? Simply because we want to be happy and we don’t want to suffer. The cause of happiness is skillful actions.
Therefore, we should seek to accumulate skillful actions. And on the other hand, not wanting to suffer, understanding that the cause of suffering is unskillful actions, then we should seek to cease creating unskillful actions. So we are our way of proceeding is in terms of what we should practice and what we should avoid. So this is really the work of Dharma. This is what we mean by Dharma practice.
That understanding that we don’t want to suffer, that the cause of suffering is unskillful actions beginning as much as possible to cease creating those causes, unskillful actions. Understanding that we want happiness, understanding that the cause of happiness is skillful actions as much as we can, accumulating skillful actions. This constitutes practice of Dharma abandonment and cultivation. So it is by means of the two methods of one, contemplating karma as actions and results, coming to understand that it is necessary to abandon unskillful actions and to practice skillful actions, and secondly, understanding the suffering nature of cyclic existence. As these two as means whereby, as it says, as Tsongkhapa says in the text, if you think again and again about these and their inevitable effects and the sufferings of cyclic existence, the emphasis on the appearance of future lives will be reversed.
It is by these two means by which we will be able to cease attachment for appearances of future lives. We don’t have a craving for the results of our unskillful actions. We don’t like the results of our unskillful actions because they are suffering. But so what is it that we have in terms of craving for in the future lives? It is a craving for happy results.
What is it that we will have attachment for in terms of our future lives? We will have a craving for our body, prosperity, environments, companions, livelihoods. But in fact, our attachment toward such future appearances is unjustified. Why is that? If we consider the type of embodiment which we by embodiment we don’t mean a body in general, but an embodiment which is taken under the influence of karma and afflictive emotions.
That type of embodiment is in the nature of suffering. And all types of possessions which are assumed under their influence is in the nature of suffering. Environment is in the nature of suffering. Our companions are in the fact in the nature of suffering. There’s no redeeming quality about any of these.
They are all in the nature of suffering. Why are all these things in the nature of suffering, all of what we described in terms of embodiment, environment, companions, livelihood that these are assumed under the influence of karma and afflictive emotions. And though the karma is in fact skillful karma, skillful actions, it is accompanied by afflictive emotions. And these causes are such that they can only bring about a result which is the nature of suffering.