Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Khensur Rinpoche walks the audience through all ten unskillful actions in this 105-minute Precious Garland session, then puts a question to the group: are these actions genuinely harmful — to others, and more puzzlingly, to oneself? He opens by contrasting vast motivation (acting for all beings) with the limited aim of personal happiness, then defines three categories of karma: positive, negative, and neutral. He covers each unskillful action in sequence — three physical (killing, stealing, sexual misconduct), four verbal (lying, divisive speech, hurtful words, idle chatter), three mental (covetousness, harmful intention, wrong view) — before an extended Q&A probes edge cases: accidentally stepping on insects, correcting a child while growing angry, lying out of compassion. He closes with homework: reflect before next session on whether these actions harm both self and others.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 PG 1990 10 09.mp3
UUID: 3b83fc83-c044-4db5-8b4c-4638de901dc2
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Collection: Precious Garland 1990-1991 (Khensur Rinpoche)
Date: 1990-10-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 105.1 minutes
Words: ~4,093
Cultivating our motivation. So the quality of the results of our virtuous actions depends upon our motivation. So, out of limited motivation arises limited activity resulting in limited effects. But out of vast motivation arises vast activities resulting in vast effects. There are two types of motivation in the quality of the degree of its vastness and limited quality.
The first is that one can think about only one’s happiness and the elimination of only one’s own suffering, and such a motivation is extremely limited. And as was mentioned, out of limited actions, limited motivation arises limited actions resulting in limited effects. But if we were, on the other hand, to extend our motivation, to eliminate the suffering of all sentient beings and to bring happiness to all sentient beings, this would be an extremely vast motivation and result in vast activities bringing about a vast effect. So, we’re seeking to bring about very vast ends, very vast results, and therefore, it’s necessary that it be, as a preliminary, it have a very vast motivation that we have to develop such a type of motivation. I’m just one person, but other sentient beings are numberless, Out of that, we can begin to develop a vastness in the quality of our motivation and thinking in this way.
Therefore, in order to eliminate the suffering of all sentient beings and to bring them happiness? In order to bring that about, what do I have to do? I have to eliminate all my various faults, and bring to consummation all my excellent qualities. We should consider that necessity in bringing about this end. And in order to eliminate all my various faults and bring to consummation all my acts and qualities, then I must listen to the teachings on the great vehicle, and I must put them into practice.
And therefore, developing such a vast motivation for, of the awakening heart to listen to this present teaching where you will spend the next five minutes cultivating such a motivation. In our previous teaching we discussed the qualities of high status. That is the status of rebirth as a human being or a celestial being. And so, first, there the three qualities. That is the type of embodiment, the being himself, that type of life.
And then there were the possessions of that, unique to that type of life, and the companion. And now we’re going to discuss the high status in terms of its cause. There are, first, with respect to the causes of high status, there are first the ten skillful actions, and then subsequently there are explained six practices, so a total of sixteen causes for the attainment of high status. In the, as the text follows, it the explains both skillful actions and unskillful actions together. Quoting from the text, the Ornament for Clear Realization by Maitreya, in which he discusses the fact that there are many objects of knowledge, that is to say knowables or phenomena in general.
But if we were to condense these, we could condense them into three. What are these three? They are first, the skillful, the unskillful, and the third, the unspecified. So by skillful actions, we mean healthy activities, positive activities, good activities, very good. I don’t I don’t know how to translate.
The opposite of that, that is to say unskillful actions are those unhealthy activities, negative activities no good. On the other hand, there is this third class of phenomena, which is neither, neither positive nor negative, but are neutral not good nor not bad, And these are referred to as unspecified. So, there’s these three types of actions: positive, negative, and neutral. And, you know, in what way are these posited as being each of them? A positive action is posited as such because it has a positive result.
That is to say, a desirable result. The type of result that we wish. Therefore, those types of actions which bring about the results that we wish, we call positive actions or healthy actions. Then on the other hand, the negative activities, these are referred to as being unskillful actions, the not good actions. And why, how, in what way are they positives as being unskillful?
Because in in dependence upon such types of action, there arises an undesirable result. The types of results which we don’t like, that is to say, there arises suffering in dependence upon such types of actions. Therefore, we turn those types of actions which give undesirable results unskillful actions. Then there’s the third type of activity, which are termed unspecified activities, which are the neutral types of good or bad actions. And why is that?
Because they give a result which is neither positive nor negative. It’s neither a desirable or an undesirable result. It is a neutral result. There arises out of such types of actions neither happiness nor suffering, and he said their power of these such types of actions are very insignificant. So, negative activities or unskillful actions are the same.
They’re mutually inclusive synonyms. In terms of negative activities, as we’ve mentioned, unskillful actions, the Buddha taught on these very extensively. Buddha, Vasubandhu says that if we were to condense all of these various types of negative activities, we could condense them in the ten unskillful actions. And likewise, with respect to skillful actions. If we were to roughly condense them, we could classify them into ten skillful actions.
So, these are the unskillful and skillful actions that we’re usually talking about. In terms of the unskillful actions, are three physical, four verbal, and three mental. And the same is true of skillful actions. So we can understand the opposite of these unskillful actions, that is to say, skillful actions if we explain the unskillful ones. So, today I’m going to explain roughly the ten unskillful actions.
So, I’m going to be explaining these actions in terms of Vasubandhu’s Treasury of Knowledge, the Abhidharmakośa. So, the first of the three unskillful physical actions is to take life, that is killing. So, this first unskillful action: killing. And so, first, it’s necessary that we have an intention. And it has to, we have to have the intention to take the life of a being other than ourselves.
In this classification, it has to be someone other than yourself. It’s not, in the case of suicide, it’s not, we’re not discussing that here. But a being other than yourself, first the intention to take their life, and then actually ending their life. That is, it’s taking their life force, cutting their life force. And the second unskillful physical action is that of stealing, or more literally taking that which is not given.
And this would refer to an article which is not one’s own one cannot steal one’s own possessions but something which is owned by another and something which is not given. If it’s given, then there’s no stealing. That which is not given, that which is not given. And this is done either by force or knowingly by stealth. The third unskillful physical action is that of sexual misconduct.
And this is the type of relationship between a husband and wife. The sexual relationship between husband and wife is not, is not, is not sexual misconduct. It is when there is a, an understood responsible relationship between a husband and wife, and the, but the husband has a relationship with someone other than his wife, or the wife has relationships with someone other than her husband in this mutually understood responsible relationship, this would be sexual misconduct. Additionally, other types of extremely negative sexual misconduct would be having sexual relationships with one’s parents, with a close relative, or one’s child. Since these all involve physical activities, they are referred to as unskillful physical actions.
So, the first, there are four unskillful verbal actions. And the first of these is lying. And this involves though one knows what is the case, one in order to confuse or, or trick or to obscure Another says that which is not is, says that which is not is, that which has not been seen has been seen, or that which has been seen has not been seen, or that which is not is. And when the other person believes, Ah, this is the case, then this constitutes lying. For example, if you did something and you say I didn’t do it or if you didn’t do it, you say I did do it.
When that person understands that and believes what you have said that that you have tricked him, then this would be lying. The second unskillful verbal action is divisive speech. And this would be speaking in such a way to two individuals who had a harmonious relationship, such as a couple, a husband and wife, a boyfriend and girlfriend and a friend, a parent and child, that is the two people who have a liking for one another and have a compatible, harmony relationship with the motivation to drive them apart, to divide them from one another. One goes up to the first person and says, Oh, you know what that other person said about you? They said this bad thing about you and this and this.
And then you go up to the second person, you know what that first person said to you? They said this bad thing about you and this and this, bringing about a dislike between these two in order to drive them apart. Or, or even in the case where two people are having some problem and to create a further distance between them driving, driving them further apart. This, speaking in this way, is divisive speech. The third unskillful verbal action is that of hurtful words.
And this is speaking, speaking words such that when the other person understands them, it brings pain to their mind. It causes them to suffer in some way. It, it, it, don’t like what they’re hearing with the intention that these words harm. When they’re upon hearing them, there is some unhappiness, hurt, pain in their mind. These are hurtful words.
Then the fourth unskillful verbal action is idle chatter. And this would be a type of talk which is motivated by either attachment or hatred in which the time is wasted in putting down others or inflating others in the way you speak about them. So, are the four unskillful verbal actions. Those of lying, divisive speech, hurtful speech, and idle chatter. And then there are the three unskillful mental actions.
And the first of these is covetousness. And this is one self does not have a particular article and seeing it in possession of another person thinks, Oh, wow, that’s, that’s really fantastic. I wish I had that. And developing a tremendous desire to have that for yourself. This is covetousness.
The second unskillful mental action is that of harmful intention, and this is the intention to harm another. One thinks about how, what a lousy person this other fellow is, or person is, and thinking again and again, how can I get back at him? How can I hurt this person? And with this harmful intention. And the third, the third unskillful mental action is that a perverted view or wrong view, perverted view.
And this would be holding, holding very, coming to a firm decision and holding that decision very tightly, which is, which is an incorrect view. Coming to a definite, just decisive holding of a wrong view, such as the certain Chinese holding that the non existence of past and future lives, the karma results are not valid, that there are no the Three Jewels do not exist. That is, coming to a definite, firm view and holding to that very tightly would be a perverted view when it’s So, are the three unskillful mental actions, and that makes a total of ten unskillful actions. Those three physical, four verbal, and three mental. So, the Buddha taught these types of actions as, that these types of actions were negative activities.
They were unhealthy activities, and therefore they were unskillful actions. And why is that? Because these types of activities harm both oneself and others, and therefore are unskillful because bringing about negative results. So, I’ve, I’m always talking about this, aren’t I? This is, this is what the Buddha said that these types of activities harm both oneself and others.
So, in order to help create some doubts about this, what we’re talking about, I’m going to ask you some questions. I’m just asking to examine these ten skillful, unskillful actions and see whether they actually are negative in fact. And maybe some, maybe you think they aren’t negative and maybe you think they are negative. Maybe you think a few are and a few aren’t. So examine for yourself as to which or any of are negative.
So maybe we can stick to the question Rinpoche asked, but can maybe we can go into that later, about whether you think are these really negative or not? So, in all of these ten unskillful actions, there must be present the motivation of either attachment, hatred, or ignorance. In all of these, there is definitely one of these three present as a motivating force. So, in that case, the motivation would be ignorance. Yes?
Some some thrombo. So in this situation, there are two possibilities. The first would be that The first would be if you had a beneficial intention that was out of compassion and love, a sense of caring for the child, this would be a positive action. So if the motivation is that of caring which is a skillful action this precludes the possibility of the action being motivated by afflictive emotions such as anger, hatred, etc. So these two cannot exist simultaneously.
There a skillful state present, an unskillful state cannot be present or manifested. At the time when there is an unskillful state manifested, there cannot be a skillful state manifested. These have different potencies. It’s just like hot and cold being mutually exclusive. If the tea is hot it can be cold if it’s cold it can be hot.
While you’re correcting the child, you become angry. So you know there has been a change of motivation for your action. Initially it was beneficial because it was out of a sense of caring for the child. But in the course of correcting the child that caring quality deteriorated and was overpowered by anger. And so you now have though initially you had a positive motivation, you now have temporary arising of a negative motivation of anger.
And so this is a negative action. This would be hurtful speech. So, in case of anger, in the case of, for example, someone speaks badly to you, and you are not able to cultivate you’re not able to tolerate what they’re saying to you and there arises an actual mind which is is will not will no longer is not able to tolerate what is being said. The actual arising of a mind which is unable to tolerate what is being directed at you. This is anger.
But then having this anger has arisen, but the anger lessens in its force, and is not as powerful, and one considers as to So the anger has lessened and has faded away. But there is still in the continuum of a mental state in which one thinks, Well, should I hurt this? Should return this hurt or not? One is thinking to return the hurt. The anger has subsided, but as a flow on from that anger, there is the thought as to whether one should return the hurt.
This is rough. So, if one, knowing that you’re going to kill, had the attitude it doesn’t matter, then this would be negative, reckless regard. So if you were to, know, unthinkingly just drive, you’re probably going to kill. And so in this case, when there was no thought to kill, you’re just driving your car and you’re killing these insects, then you would perform the action, but you would not accumulate the action. You would perform the action, but you wouldn’t accumulate the action.
There’s these two possible ways these can be combined. One can perform an action, but not accumulate it. One cannot perform the action, but accumulate For example, you know, you think, well, I’m gonna kill that guy. I’m really gonna kill him. But you don’t.
So you would have accumulated the action, but you didn’t perform it. So we do this we do this quite often we accumulate positive actions just by thinking about the about doing them but quite often we don’t perform them on the other hand if just thinking about stealing something even if we don’t do it we’ve accumulated negative action. Though we didn’t do the activity, we still accumulate the action though we it’s not performed maybe So you know if when we go out we even walking what to say of driving that we step on insects we kill insects and but we that is we perform the action. We actually kill something. But because we didn’t have the intention to kill we do not accumulate the action.
We didn’t have any intention to kill. But still it’s negative. So it’s said that in the ancient times the monks would not wear shoes. And when they went about they would recite a mantra and blow it on the sole of their foot. And if they stepped on an insect, being killed in this way or the insect would take a positive happy rebirth.
Dale had a question and we might get to that. So you have intent to kill someone and you actually try. You actually try and they don’t die? The intention to kill. There’s the intention of killing them the end scope action of killing.
So if you have intention to kill, is that is that is that the unskillful action of killing? There’s the killing and then there was the actual action of killing and the taking of when the life force is cut and that’s the action of killing. Now, what you’re saying? Well, we just talked a bit about getting the next action though Of killing. Of doing the ten.
Okay. So, I wanna know it’s the same the same accumulation, So, unskillfulness of the karma created out of actually doing the killing would be greater than simply having the attention. Afterwards. You mean if you actually did it. You actually step on an ant.
You actually step on an ant, and you look back while I stepped on an ant. Yes. Or as opposed to? As opposed to. Alright.
So as far as the power of the killing, There are three possibilities. One, you look back and say, Ah, I said, I’m sorry I killed that. That would create less negative karma. On the other hand, Ah, I’m glad I killed that. That would create more negative karma.
On the other hand, you just look at it say, I killed it. This would create the same amount of karma whether you knew it or you killed it or not. So if he lied to the police out of compassion for those other two. It would not be lying. So if he did that if he said that in order that the other two not be any harm be brought to them, he wouldn’t be lying.
What, just to cover for him? Yeah, so they, but it wasn’t done from his heart. Why would he do it? For For money? What is the motivation for doing it?
So his his motivation is is some kind of caring. Yeah? So because the motivation was a positive action, even though the child is unhappy, it’s still a positive action. Because the motivation was positive. Even though that makes the child unhappy it’s still a positive action.
It’s not a negative action and it will have a positive result. The result of that is not the child’s unhappiness. That is not the child’s unhappiness is brought about because of his not being able to fulfill his desires. So, word the positive that resultant suffering of the child is not the result of the action of the parent. So, you know, there can be a need to talk in this way even though it might result in the child being unhappy that if the child out of caring the parent out of caring for the child wants to help the child to understand the faults of its action.
And so in order to to speak in this way about the faults of the child in order to help the child and therefore it’s not negative. This is sometimes necessary to speak in that way. So this in the end this is going to this will benefit the child and the parents and helping the child to cease these negative activity. Yeah. I think it’s up to another.
So, in the first example that you gave the Buddha there was instance when a monk, a monk’s mother was extremely sick and the monk thought it’s best if I kill her and he killed her. And the Buddha he was turned out of the the Sangha and the Buddha said this was an extremely negative action. And the case of the second then it’s you you should try your best to not to kill this first person that is trying to kill the other person but you should not kill this person. It would be a negative action. You should try some means other than killing.
That’s what I meant to say. Try some other means not to killing. It would be negative to kill. So it said that even though it it hasn’t been foreign, it still has a life force, and therefore, it would be the negative action of killing to abort to kill it. So we still haven’t gotten an answer to the original question about whether these ten unskillful actions are negative or not?
Harmful or not? So actually we wanted to divide this question into two parts. One was that these things unskillful actions are are they harmful to others? And the second part is are they harmful to oneself? We got sidetracked in our conversation.
Mainly what I want you to question is that in all of these ten unskillful actions there is the motivation of one of the three afflictive emotions of either anger, attachment, or ignorance. So the Buddha said that such types of actions motivated by either of these three are harmful. And I myself, I have a great conviction that this is in fact the case. And I want to ask you to examine it to see if these ten unskillful actions actually are harmful to others. So that’s the first part of the question.
But even more difficult to understand, to try to develop conviction is that these are in fact harmful to oneself. That this is more difficult to understand. So you know Buddha said that that these ten unskillful actions bring harm to both oneself and to others. And it’s I would like for you to examine these and to come to some kind of definite conclusion for yourself. If you see that they that they harm others if you see that they have these faults then you will develop an intention to abandon them to be rid of them.
You will make effort in that direction. If you don’t understand this, then you’re never really going to make the effort to begin to cease them to rid yourself of them. So, there’s this great the fundamental difference is that if we understand that these in fact harm both oneself and others, then we will be able to abandon them. And we will be practicing ethics, and out of that will rise happiness. If we do not understand this, then we will not we will not be empowered to abandon them, and we will not practice ethics, and we will experience unhappy.
So this is the fundamental gain and loss to be arrived out of this understanding. So during the interval from now until our next teaching Tuesday I’d like to for you to consider this to reason them you know to reason over them and then you know with their benefit or whether it’s beneficial or not and we’ll have another examination.