Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 47-minute talk, Lama Lhundup teaches the practice of ethical conduct as the foundation for changing perspective on karma and suffering. He begins with the principle that collective virtue and non-virtue shape environmental conditions—explaining how beings’ negative actions cause food to become unpalatable and lifespan to decline until, at ten years, Maitreya Buddha will emanate and restore virtue through his example. Lhundup then outlines the ten virtuous and non-virtuous actions, their four types of results, and illustrates how to develop conviction in karma through recognizing personal suffering as self-created. He emphasizes the power of confession using four counteracting agents: reliance on the Buddha, regret, determination not to repeat, and antidote action. Throughout, he stresses that motivation—whether afflictive or compassionate—determines whether an action is negative or positive, and warns that wrong view, particularly denying past and future lives, cuts the root of all virtue. Practical guidance for serious dharma practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 15 C o P.mp3
UUID: bf05c2de-741e-41e4-b1c4-8389ca4dc6f0
Teacher: Lama Lhundup
Collection: Changing our perspectives (Lama Lhundup)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.8 minutes
Words: ~2,184
And hatred. The country begins to degenerate, and even the sweetness and deliciousness of cake, we think, we begin to become bored with, and nothing we can’t find anything delicious any longer. This is brought about by the the ripening of the negative actions of of all the people, and therefore, there’s nothing that’s improving. Likewise, on the other hand, if the people in the area begin to engage in positive actions and virtue, everything within that area, the quality will begin to increase higher and higher. The food will become more and more delicious.
Whatever you can drink will become delicious. So even our our lifespan is decreasing. It’s not getting higher. Actually, it’s going it’s degenerating to the point where it will become eventually ten years. So now when it finally our lifespan gets down ten years, then it will again increase up to eighty thousand years.
So when the point reaches where the lifespan gets down to ten years at that point Maitreya will emanate. So we’ll call that an in-between period. Also the body of all the beings is getting smaller and smaller and smaller until the point when they reach the age of lifespan becomes ten years then this is the time that an emanation of Maitreya will come and will be one arm span high and he will appear that braids his hair and they will think because they’re even much smaller than that they’re going to be impressed by his great size but he’ll appear very beautiful and have all the various marvels and wonderful things about him and they’re gonna say, you know, how did you become the way you are? And he said, did that by abandoning and doing actions and practicing pure ethics. And and seeing this, and because they’re undergoing such great suffering at this time, immeasurable suffering and seeing it in Maitreya, they will begin to abandon the ten non virtuous and begin to practice ethics and this will bring about the causes for increasing their lifespan until it reaches again eighty thousand years. So it is said that the Buddhadharma the present Buddhadharma will last five thousand years, but and after but twenty five hundred years have already passed.
So if in twenty five hundred years it will decline and become extinct. So after the decline, after twenty five hundred more years, the there will the teachings of the Buddha will become extinct, and there will be a period of eighty thousand years where there’ll be no teachings. Okay. So during this during this period, the during this this period when there are no teachings, the lifespan will they’re decreasing during this period. And then when it gets down to ten years, then the will come.
So if we practice ethics well and make pure prayers, then we can expect to come in contact with Maitreya. If we can become a student of the Maitreya, then it’s certain that we can attain an Arhat or Buddhahood just in that very life. So we’ve gone through the ten non virtuous actions. There are also the ten virtuous actions. These ten virtuous actions are the exact opposite of the ten non virtuous actions.
That is the three actions of body, four of speech, and three of mind. The first for example abandoning and killing. Abandoning killing would be the virtuous action. So then each of these ten virtuous actions also has the four results that we talked about, ripening results, result similar to the cause, functional results, and environmental results. So our most important practice that we can engage in is the abandonment of the to practice the ethics of abandoning the ten non virtues.
So we have to develop conviction that whatever suffering that we experience, it was not created by anyone else. We create our own suffering by engaging in non virtuous actions and therefore, if we don’t want to suffer, we have to abandon non virtuous actions. For example, when when we’re unhappy and we we think you can be day one day. Yeah. We can think that this unhappiness that we’re experiencing is the result of of a harmful action that I’ve committed in the past.
And understanding that, can we make a determination to abandon such actions in the future? Essentially whatever suffering that I experience would you think this suffering that I’m experiencing is a result of the negative karma that I have created in the past and therefore we should make the determination to abandon these negative actions and to create conducive actions to our own happiness. That is to engage in virtuous actions. So if we create the cause of the suffering, even though we don’t desire the suffering, we’re going to experience it. Unless we know about hell, unless we know about what are the causes that create hell, then we are not going to abandon the causes which are going to cause us to be reborn in hell.
So if they come to understand the results specific causes and we won’t even commit the slightest negative action. We could actually get to the point where even at the cost of our lives we would not allow ourselves to commit negative action. So when the Chinese invaded Tibet, they demanded that the monks give up being monks and that they give You can just have a lay life. You know? Yeah.
No more monks. We’re not gonna have that. We said we’re gonna stay monks. So in so they they wanted the monks to marry, and in in in response, many of the monks actually drowned themselves and harmed themselves. So the suffering that we experience in this life in comparison to hell is extremely small.
In hell, we have tremendous suffering for extremely long periods of time. Even the suffering that we might experience if someone was cutting our neck very slowly would be insignificant compared to the suffering of hell. So we should look at our actions and negative actions and see what negative actions we’re committing and see how much why we are engaging these actions, why we like these particular actions. We can understand that the reason we like these negative actions is because of previous lives we also engage in these negative actions and we can see this in our own experience. Thinking of the consequences of the results of our various negative actions, thinking about the suffering of cyclic existence and bad migrations we develop fear of rebirth and then we have to ask ourselves is there anyone who can protect me from these sufferings?
Is there anyone who can liberate me? Then we see that the Buddha can protect you from these sufferings of cyclic existence and bad migrations. For example in the evening imagine we develop belief in the Buddha. He is able to protect us from these suffering. We imagine in front of us and then we apply the four counteracting agents, the four powers.
So that’s the four these four powers, the power of reliance. The the second is the power of regret. The power of deter to the power of determination not to repeat again. And the the fourth is power of antidote. Yes.
So we we should whatever negative actions that we committed, recollect them when by by exposing them to ourselves and developing regret, can we can eliminate any type of negative we can purify any type of negative action that we may have committed. So we think we shouldn’t think about, I committed these negative actions in the past. I regret them, but it’s okay. Now it’s okay if I do it tomorrow. It’s okay if I do it.
So if we break our leg and we go to we go to the hospital and the doctor So, you know, if someone said, you know, you know, if you break your leg, you can go to the hospital and the doctor, they’ll fix it up and it’ll be okay. Just just because we know that there’s a way to fix up our leg doesn’t mean that we go out and break it. So there is a difference between not having committed an action and having purified a previously committed non virtuous action. There is a difference between not having committed a non virtuous action and having purified a previously committed non virtuous action. The person who has not committed any non virtuous action will have it will be easier for him to attain realization.
So we have to understand what is So, you know, we we have some understanding of what negative actions are and what should be cultivated, what should be rejected. Understanding what are negative actions we can expose them to ourselves and regret them. But most people in the world, the countless people in the world, they have no idea of what should be practiced and what should be rejected. For example, a great number of people in the army they continually engage in the action of killing and seeing all these people who have no idea of any way of acting in accordance with the Dharma and they will have no way of taking a happy rebirth in the future and therefore we should develop a great compassion towards these people. So seeing this situation that these sentient beings are in, when we do make this confession for ourselves, exposing or recollecting our negative actions committed in this life, should try to do so that I want to abandon all negative actions, purify all these negative actions so that I can help all sentient beings to abandon all their negative actions.
So we said again and again confess our negative actions, remember them and again and again confess our negative actions. If we didn’t have any negative actions, even if we went to hell, we would be happy. The suffering of the hell beings is brought about by the result of their negative actions but there are cases of holy beings who go into hell, and they don’t experience suffering. He he actually went into hell. So So we you know, the when we talk about hell, we aren’t just saying to make people afraid.
It’s definite that it does exist. So for example, we have we we we have a great fear of going to prison. So, you you know, we would have a great deal of fear if someone said we we were going to have to go to prison for ten years or maybe we’re going to have to go to prison for life. For this reason that we obey the laws likewise seen that by reason of the committing of actions that we are going to take rebirth as a nonhuman and these various nonhuman states have even greater suffering than we experience now. So as a fear of experiencing that possible future suffering then we don’t engage in non virtuous actions.
Mainly the the outcome of a particular action is dependent upon the motivation which brought us to to engage in that particular action depending upon the motivation. So if our motivation is an afflictive emotions such as attachment, hatred, jealousy, if these are our motivating force, then an action that we engage in is non virtuous. Then on the other hand, if the motivation is positive, that we have compassion or love or wanting to stop any other person’s suffering, then whatever action we engage in through that motivation is positive. It’s a positive action. In general, if there is no mindfulness in any action which is committed, it should be unspecified. We did say before when we were discussing that through carelessness, engaging in actions, like when we were digging and we didn’t care whether there were insects or not. We didn’t examine and we went ahead and engaged in the action and we killed some insects. There would be some small negative action. So, you know, if if we completely disregarded the the possibility of presence of life and we engage in action, we kill something negative action.
When we’re just walking along and we have no particular motivation either positive or negative and if if we kill something it would be result would be unspecified. Likewise, if we have no particular motivation, positive motivation and even if we give somebody one hundred dollars it’s not necessarily a positive action if we take the case of doubt with respect to past and future lives. Actual wrong view is when you’ve made a firm determination that they don’t exist. But in the case where you just have doubt, you aren’t sure, this is also an afflicted emotion. This is called afflicted doubt.
It’s also a negative act. So within wrong view, it must be single-mindedly if you come to the decision, it doesn’t exist. That’s what wrong view is. Another example of wrong view. So among the ten non virtuous actions, wrong view is the the worst. So with if you have wrong view, then you can cut the root of your own virtue.