Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 28-minute talk from 1987, Lama Lhundup explores how understanding karma and compassion work together in our own practice and helping others. He begins by establishing a fundamental Buddhist principle: recognizing that past lives shaped our current circumstances — sickness, hardship, or ease — through the law of cause and effect. From there he examines how motivation creates karma, using the example of a pilot dropping bombs; he carefully distinguishes between the action itself and the mental intention that completes the negative karma, explaining that harm ripens fully only when the actor is motivated by destructive emotion and consciously chooses to act. Throughout, he stresses that understanding our own suffering clarifies why we need compassion for others, and that genuine helping begins with seeing how the same laws of karma affect everyone. Suited to practitioners beginning to study Buddhist ethics and karma.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 13 HY.mp3
UUID: a51184ec-0f68-47d9-aa1b-f2f6801c946d
Teacher: Lama Lhundup
Collection: Helping yourself helping others (Lama Lhundup)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 28.2 minutes
Words: ~403
To others to same degree. Because you are not really not the last life. You know? So you understood. So now you from you’re clear in your mind.
You have not the last life. I had next life because I was ignorant. Yeah? Yes. You didn’t hurt, then it doesn’t make it.
You hurt, then that that is negative. Okay. So same thing. You hurt animal hurting, so that is negative. Somebody you.
Or not. Are you sick or not? Sit. Sit. Sit.
Are you sick? Okay. This comes from you. This comes from you. See.
Okay. If you don’t like this, you can’t. If you like, Then you get chewed. Also, he’s coming down. Fighting anymore.
Yeah. Flying planes.. Yeah. Flying. Many people have hurt.
Yeah. And then you go you go home and you’re laying you’re sleeping in bed. And then someone someone someone dies because you dropped the bomb. How does how does the action, the karma, the killing implanted in the mind? No.
His motivation. He has motivation. He has passion that is made motivation. He has Yeah. Yeah.
So who have motivation? That can kill. No. But before that person dies, he does not have full it’s not complete negative karma. It’s not complete.
Right. So he sleeps. Sleeps. Sleeps. Sleeps.
And when they die? If that person dies, what happens? That karma is here. Here. Has.
How does it make difference? Because he made you know, he was motivated, then he dropped. Yeah. So then he goes there, living, lying down, drinking, you know? So then after some time, from his side, then he died.
Therefore, you know, therefore, we take we can’t. How does that how does that implant it? How does that place in your mind? Completely complete. You know, you don’t need to be like that.
Just. You don’t need the person sent to you. No need just because he by motivation. When he dies, then he already made. Hello?
So when he died Then he made. Then then the the the karma is increased. Yeah. He’s completed. Yeah.
He increased. How how does how does the become completed? Because because he, by motivation, he made the choice and acted. Therefore, could be created. The karma is created with the motivation, complete..
From that dog, she dies. Yeah. Yes. It is. Alright.
That’s the doubt we have worked out. Okay.