Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 47-minute teaching, Lama Lhundup provides a detailed examination of the ten nonvirtuous actions, focusing on the nuances that transform destructive speech and thought into constructive ones. He walks through the four divisions of harmful action—body, speech, and mind—explaining the structure of each transgression: the object or basis, the intention, the action itself, and the completion. A recurring theme is the ethical exception: lying to save someone’s life, or separating a friend from a harmful companion, can constitute virtue rather than vice depending on motivation and circumstance. Lama Lhundup then maps the four karmic results of each nonvirtuous action: the ripening result (rebirth in lower realms), the experiential result (suffering in human life that echoes the original act), the functional result (habitually enjoying the same vice), and the environmental result (being born into a hostile world). Throughout, he emphasizes mindful self-examination and the power of regret to diminish negative karma. Suited for practitioners studying karma and ethics in depth.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 14 C o P.mp3
UUID: 22c16c66-cd1b-4ed4-9d37-0bba1ce97c54
Teacher: Lama Lhundup
Collection: Changing our perspectives (Lama Lhundup)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 47.1 minutes
Words: ~2,453
So the degree of heaviness of the negative action is also determined by the object that would be worse to lie to, for example, your parents or your spiritual teacher. There are cases. There would be a case for example that if you saw someone, you saw a certain person go by and then later another person came and he was looking for this person and he was going to kill this person and he asked you did you see this person and you said no I didn’t see this person. Really I didn’t I didn’t see a truly existent person. I didn’t see this truly existent person go by.
Then this then in such a case, it would not be a nonvirtuous lie. So the next number is divisive speech. This means that So this also has these four parts: basis, intention, preparation, completion. The divisive speech means through our speech we divide two groups or two people who were harmonious before or friends before and now through our speech we break and we cause them to split up. This could be two friends, by speaking causing division.
What was causing a husband and wife to break up, causing a some sort of a split between a mother and child, parent and a child, between friends, or even within group causing divisions. So this is causing schisms. This is divisive speech. So the the basis is someone else. How much is it?
The the the intention and the motivation to bring a split between someone else when it or they have to be more than two. Then in order to bring about that that split between these two, actually engaging that action. So whatever we do and to bring that about, you know, the various work, whatever we say is all negative actions. So no matter what we do, if it’s motivated by this in order to bring about this split, this division, you know, if we drive a car, if we we go here and there, we give money to this end. There’s all these actions and negative actions.
So the is when these two, whether a group or two people who are in a who are harmonious before actually split. We we we’ve broken their relationship, their harmonic relationship. But if there was a situation where there were two people who were together and one of these people was extremely a bad character. He liked to kill and he was a thief. He was always involving in negative actions.
This other person just by hanging out with this first person, he’s going to become he’s also by the influence he’s going to engage in these non virtuous actions. And engaging these non virtuous actions is going to result in suffering in the future, not only in this life but in the future and a bad migration. So you can’t bear that this person is going to have to undergo all this suffering in the future so you go to the second person and explain what kind of character this first person has. You explain the actual situation that he is a thief, he is a killer, etc. And in order to separate the second person from the first person this This is not a divisive speech.
Like like the others, just in this case. We don’t have to engage in this divisive speech ourselves. Likewise, if we call if we engage someone else to do this to commit divisive speech for us and and whenever whenever the the group the two groups or the two people split and also we create the create the divisive negative action, divisive speech. The next number is harsh speech, harsh words and this is uttering words, speaking in order to harm someone else. So there are these four parts.
Has been achieved and the other person has actually hurt, then the action has been completed. Within harsh speech, the greatest negative action, greatest negativity is created against harsh speech directed towards your mother or father or holy The most great of the negative actions of harsh speech would be directed against these beings. So the next nonvirtuous action of speech is idle chatter. Idle chatter is speaking words which are motivated by either desire, hatred, or ignorance, which I have have no connection with Dharma. Would be such words with the idle chatter.
So let’s let’s talk about sport, war, play, by being motivated by desire, this would be Would be examples of idle chatter. So we have to be careful because most of the time we’re in idle chatter. So in general amongst the ten non virtuous actions it’s the lightest of the ten non virtuous actions that we engage in the most. So these are the four non virtues of non virtues from the point of view of speech. So from the point of view of mind, are three.
There’s covetousness, harmful intention, and wrong view. Covetousness is when taking an object of observation, some sort of beautiful object and there rises the desire to obtain that object. This is covetousness. So like the others is the four parts, the basis, intention, action and completion. So the basis is a pleasing object.
Object. So the intention is being motivated by covetousness. Action is being engaging in order to attain that object. The action is the engagement when arises desire to obtain that object. And then the completion would be there comes a decision.
One makes a decision. I’m going to get that object. So it’s quite easy for covetousness to rise in our mind. We see a beautiful pleasing object, it’s almost automatically to own that object arises. So next is the harmful intention.
This is the intention to bring harm to another person, another being. So So we actually in desiring to bring harm to another and then when we’ve made when we had a decision or determination to actually bring harm to another when this mentally arises this decision, then this is the completion. The third is wrong view. An example would be when one has made the firm determination in one’s mind that the law of cause and effect doesn’t exist that past and future lives do not exist. This would be wrong view.
So we have to understand well the Ten Nonvirtuous actions and with mindfulness and awareness examine our own mind and see if we’re committing. We have to check up and see if we’re committing the Ten Nonvirtuous actions. So if we see that we are engaging in some type of non virtuous action then immediately as much as we are able we should try to stop it. So if, you know, if we if Because we are under the influence of attachment, hatred and ignorance, we aren’t in complete control. Therefore if we engage negative action, having engaged in it, becoming aware of that, we shouldn’t rejoice in it, but we should develop a regret that we engage in this negative action and by the power of this regret the degree of the negativity will lessen and become a very small negative action.
Also, just in general, you know, someone who we don’t like, you know someone who we think of an enemy when he has troubles when he you know, there’s somebody we don’t like who we thought think of as enemy and we see that he’s undergoing difficulties, has problems suffering, that he’s involved in a motorcycle, a car accident, that he has big business losses and generally we would rejoice in this and this rejoicing in his misfortune is a great negative action. But on the other hand, enemy, when we see that he’s undergoing some misfortune, if we can generate compassion, think compassion toward him in view of his suffering that he’s going through, then this is a virtuous thought. So if each of these ten nonvirtuous actions has four four So there are four effects. There’s the ripening result, there’s the result which is in accordance with the cause functionally, there is the result which is in accordance with the cause experientially and there is the environmental result. Is a ripening result, the result which is in accordance with the cause functionally, there is the result which is in accordance with the cause experientially, and the environment environmental results.
For example, taking the non virtue of killing, the ripening result of killing is being born in hell. This person having killed due to the force of this he takes birth in hell, he remains there for hundreds of thousands of years until that negative action has been purified. Upon that action being purified if he were to be born as a human being he would be born So he would have a short life. So the second that was the result which is in accordance with the cause functionally when he was born in this life as a human he would enjoy killing. This would be a result.
He would enjoy killing. So there are many people in the world who enjoy killing. We can see this in children. They enjoy killing insects, for example. Someone who we have bad in other countries who we have bad relationships with.
We you know, they go to war and people enjoy killing the people of these countries other countries. So this is this this is the result of the functional result. There’s a similarity between cause and the result functionally that we one likes to do the same action again and again. The numb oh, okay. What I made a mistake in the order.
You know, having the result of having a short life, that is the result of the cause that’s called experientially. I made that mistake. Ripening result was being born in hell and later when you’re born as a human the experiential result would be a short life, the functional result would be enjoying killing and the environmental result of killing is So the environment affected the being reborn in a place where the home, your area would be a very unhappy place to live. Example, the forest would not grow in that place. It would just be an unhappy place to live.
So take stealing. The ripening result is being born in hell. The second result, having been born as a human, one would be very poor. And third result, you would continue to enjoy stealing. And the fourth would be that we’d be born in a place where food and water are extremely scarce.
So environmental effect is the area, our environment, the house we live in, the physical area that we’re taking we’re in. Ripe and result of sexual misconduct is being born in hell. Functional result, that virtuous action was purified and took rebirth as a human again, experiential result would be having a partner who was disloyal and not get along well. So your your partner, your wife, or your husband would be disloyal to you? There you go.
Would be unfaithful. Your your your servants would not listen to your order. Okay. So this is the experiential result of sexual misconduct? Mhmm.
I mean, The experiential result that people wouldn’t believe what you said. Experiential result that people wouldn’t believe what you said. Mhmm. And, again, the functional result would be continue to enjoy lying. The the place and environmental result, the place we were born in would be displeasing.
The unpleasing place to live. The result the ripening result is bad migration. I think I I’ve been saying hell all the time. Should’ve said bad migration just in general. Bad bad bad migration.
I mean, ripening result of Okay? Divisive speech. The second is divisive speech. And the ripening result is always being taking birth in a bad migration. The the experiential result is that you will have you will have no friends and that even when you try to make a friend, something will come to cause you to separate.
Any? And, again, the functional result is continuing to enjoy splitting people or groups up. The environmental result would be is being born in a very rough rough place with yeah.
It’s difficult. A place where it’s very difficult to to go along like the road. It’s very uneven. So the ripening result of harsh words is being born in bad migration. The experiential result would be even though you Even though you have no intention, no motivation to harm and then you to speaking honestly that your words always hurting other people.
So, again, the functional result would be that one enjoys speaking harsh words. So the environment where the result would be born in a state where the environment would be always giving you harm. It’s not smooth environment. It’s always For example for example, if there were wood if there were woods around in the forest, it would be full of thorns and stickers, and your environment would be a very hostile environment. It’s always bringing you harm.
So the ripening result of the idle chatter is being born in a bad migration? The experiential result would be that you would be born dumb. Dumb. Functional result is one enjoys speaking meaningless words. Yes.
So the environmental result is being born in a place which has an unhappy unhappy nature about it. So the ripening result of covetousness is to be born in bad migration. The experiential result is to to have great desire, have no contentment, and your purposes or goals will not be accomplished. Functional results is continuing to enjoy covetousness. So the ripening result of harmful intention is that being born in bad migration, the experiential result is that you possess great fear.
For no for no reason, one one’s always has a great deal of fear. And the functional result is that one enjoys hurting others? The experiential result of wrong view is having obstructions to understanding correct views. And the functional result is enjoying wrong views. The environmental result is being born in a place that is very rough and uneven. When if you plant crops, when they start to come up, the the the there comes a drought and they all dry up.
Previously. Long time. Long time ago. Once upon a time, the the you could just eat it. Even the earth was more delicious.
The soil was more delicious to eat than and and than any of the food that we eat. Cake. Cake. Any cake? So as as the the as the attachment and hatred has increased in an area to the