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 traces how afflictive emotions arise and ripen into future rebirth, grounding the teaching in six root afflictions: attachment, anger, delusion, pride, jealousy, and afflicted views. He explains the mechanics of karma through intention, showing how mental habits plant latencies in the mind that remain dormant until conditions of desire and grasping activate them at the moment of death. The dying process itself becomes the critical juncture: the state of mind at death — whether virtuous or afflicted — determines which latency ripens and shapes the intermediate state and next rebirth. He uses vivid examples of a person habituated to killing encountering visions of slaughtered animals at death, or a habitually virtuous person seeing Pure Land visions instead. Lama Lhundup concludes that liberation requires recognizing the root ignorance driving this cycle and cultivating genuine renunciation through meditation on impermanence and the suffering nature of conditioned existence.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 TK and I.mp3
UUID: b3623cb2-2cef-4d1e-81d9-5234e9c03355
Teacher: Lama Lhundup
Collection: Towards kindness and insights (Lama Lhundup)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.6 minutes
Words: ~2,703
Only excellent qualities, only wonderful qualities. Their body is extremely handsome and beautiful, the color of their skin. They keep going over and over in their mind how beautiful, how wonderful the other person is. And and as they go over and over in their mind, their attachment grows and grows and grows. They keep applying their mind again and again.
And so their attachment arises, grows greater and greater. So that sixth one should be called mental engagement, other than that, the thing with mental So, with respect to the first basis, the basis with the seed, as long as we have the seeds of the afflictive emotions, though temporarily we may not be experiencing a particular afflictive emotion, if the seed is there, it’s just a matter of time until we develop the afflictive emotion. So therefore, recognizing these various causes for the development, these are the causes for the development of afflictive emotion, recognizing them and we should begin to avoid all six of these causes for the development of afflictive emotion. So, you know, these six root afflictions, fourth was pride. The Pride is when we think how great we are.
That I’m supreme, that I’m a great scholar, that I know a lot. We develop pride, we become puffed up. The way can begin to think about this as an antidote is to understand that actually we know there’s more that we don’t know than we know. We consider not what we know but think if we have actually developed pride we should think about everything that we don’t know. And also we can begin to think about if we take pride in our body, we can think of that it’s really composed of atoms.
Likewise, if we can develop a habit of respecting other, this will lessen our own pride. So the next afflictive emotion was ignorance. The antidote to it. Ignorance is a factor of not is not not knowing. And therefore, as an antidote, we must train in understanding dependent origination and emptiness.
And as much as we train and study dependent arising and emptiness, our ignorance will lessen. It’s just as if we entered into a dark room. You know, there might be there would be many different objects in this room. We simply aren’t able to know what objects are in this room. But if we take a torch and we shine the light in this room, we can easily come to know exactly what this room is like, what’s in it.
Likewise, right now we have an unknowing, an unknowing with respect to the law of cause and effect and with respect to reality or emptiness. As much as we make use of the torch of wisdom and train in the view of emptiness and the law of cause and effect, we will eliminate the darkness, the obstruction to knowing. And so the sixth, was an afflicted view. There’s there’s various types of bad views. By studying the words of the Buddha, to that much of a degree our bad views will lessen and our realization of correct views will increase. We probably don’t have bad views in our mind presently now.
Whenever we are motivated by afflictive emotions, we are going to create negative karma. For example, when we develop anger, this anger acts as a motivation for us, for example, to So, root motivation is the ignorance conceiving of I. This generates secondary motivations. For example, we generate anger towards a person. Due to this motivation, we may, for example, speak harsh words towards this person.
This action, this activity is the intention to speak harsh words is karma. This factor of intention is karma and we have a negative intention, we create negative karma. So, dependent upon this intention, we speak harsh words, we create negative actions of speech, we engage in negative actions of mind. These are all negative karma. So again, based upon ignorance conceiving, is the conception of I, acting as the root of our motivation, we observe an object which appears to us to be pleasing.
We develop attachment towards that object. We develop an intention to acquire that object. Having developed the intention to acquire that object, we enter into bodily and verbal actions in order to acquire that object that we want. These all are creating karma. So because if the intention has been motivated by, in this case, attachment, then all the various actions which come issue forth from that, for example, the body, with the hands, you know, whatever we do in order to bring about and acquire that object, become negative action.
So this is the way we accumulate actions. If we didn’t have afflictive emotions, accumulate actions. We would not create karma, but we have no control over a situation. No one amongst all the various six types of migrators has control. So we are collecting actions through our intention.
Through our intention, we engage in action. But the second moment of that intention, you know, the actions are impermanent, but all these actions that we are engaging in implant a seed, a latency in our mind stream. All these actually make an impression in our mind stream. It’s like if we had some money, we put it in the strong box and we put it into a bank and we lock it up and it’s safe. It’s going to be stored there, our money.
Likewise, the impression or the latencies of all these actions are being stored in our mind. So all these latencies which have been implanted in our mind, If we don’t apply any antidote to these latencies in our mind, then no matter how much time passes, whether it’s thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, they’re not going to go away. They’re going to remain there. What result will they have? So just like so when we plant a flower seed, we provide conditions for the flower seed to grow.
We water, we put fertilizer, and this acts as conditions to cause the flower to grow. Likewise, we have these latencies within our own mind, and by providing the conditions for these latencies within our own mind, we cause them to bear their fruit. These conditions are desire and grasping. So what is it that ripens? What is it that ripens?
It’s the latencies of both virtue and non virtue, which have been implanted in our mind stream. What is it that causes them to ripen? It’s desire and grasping for them to ripen. So when do they ripen? At the moment of death.
So at the moment of our death, whatever we have been commissioned, whatever type of mind arises, this will act as a condition to ripen a particular type of virtuous or non virtuous latency. For example, if at the moment of death we develop a mind of anger, this will act as a condition to ripen a particular non virtuous karma or latency which will cause us to be thrown into rebirth. During our life we have habituated our mind to positive states of mind, then at the moment of death, faith or some positive state arises at the moment of death, then this will act as a condition to ripen a virtuous karma, for example, latency which will bring about a happy migration, a birth in a happy migration. For example, at the moment of our death, if there could arise the appearance of a bird. Observing this, taking this as an object that we develop attachment, a desire and a grasping for such a body as a bird.
This would act as a condition to activate the non virtuous karma to be born as a bird in the future. Likewise, during the course of our life we have been habituated to killing at the time of our death there could arise the appearance of knives, weapons, and which would cause us to we would do we develop a violent type of mind, anger. This would act as a condition for us to be reborn, to activate latency to be reborn in hell. So, who has been habituated to killing during his life, killing animals. At the moment of death, he may have, there could arise a vision of all the various animals he’s killed during his life, you know, whatever it was, cows, cattle or whatever.
Towards them he would develop a very violent mind. And this violent mind would act as a condition to activate the non virtuous latencies to be reborn in hell. If someone at the moment of death, they had a vision of someone bringing them food and water and they develop anger toward this person. And this could act as a condition to ripen the latency to be reborn as a hungry ghost. Whereas a hungry ghost, he doesn’t see any food or water during his lifetime.
So this anger at that moment would act So not wanting to see any food or water. Gets angry and he has a vision someone bringing food or water and he gets angry and he just arises the thought not to see any food or water. This will act as a condition for activating the latency to be born in a place where he’s never going to see food or water that is as a hungry ghost. But then on the other hand, when somebody has habituated their mind to positive states, for example, awakening mind, this positive state, at the moment of his death, will have visions, visions will arise of a Pure Land or he will have visions of light. So there was one great master, Geshe Potowa, who at the moment at his death he had said I have prayed throughout my life to be reborn in hell in order to help the sentient beings in hell but now at the moment of my death I realize my prayer is not going to be answered because a vision of a Pure Land has arisen.
So this is the difference. This difference will rise at the moment of death between a person who practices Dharma and who does not practice the Dharma. There will arise a difference at the moment of death. So the moment of death has arisen and we are in the process of dying. Now there is a connecting link between that moment and future rebirth.
Comes about a dissolution of the elements of the body. Earth, fire, water, and wind, these begin to dissolve in a serial order. So these serially begin to dissolve and finally there arises the mind which has been a neutral state of mind will arise at that moment which is which is it has no attachment or or anger. So these various visions that are appearing to the dying mind, this is the coarse mind. As elements begin to dissolve, the mind becomes much subtler and subtler until we reach the subtlest mind.
So this most subtle dying consciousness is a neutral consciousness. Someone who is a great practitioner, a yogi, who has done a lot of great deal of meditation, is at this moment that he makes use of this subtlest mind. He stays in meditation at this moment when his subtle subtlest dying consciousness. He uses this and stays in meditation for days and days, weeks and months. When when the connection between this subtlest dying consciousness and the body is cut.
So when the connection between the subtlest dying consciousness and the body is finally cut, and this is said to be the moment of death. And immediately, this this dying consciousness enters into the intermediate state. There arises the illusion where everyone is going to take rebirth, for example, as a hell being, hungry ghost, desire god or form realm god, when rises in that body within the intermediate state. So this is this body which you take in the intermediate state is in accordance with your actual rebirth that you will be taking in the future. So this body that we take in intermediate state is a mental body.
It’s an illusory body. It has no obstructions. Even though it has all the parts of the body, we don’t need to go through the doors. We can go through walls. We can go through mountains even.
It can go anywhere. So this this intermediate state being if he’s if he’s going to if he’s at hell, hell being intermediate state being, His body is is made up of fire. So this is someone who has great negative actions, karma, and for example, a hell being during this period in the Bardo, there will appear a black light or there will appear darkness. But on the other hand, if someone who has virtuous, someone who’s going to take a happy rebirth, will during this period they will arise the appearance of light like the moon. So if the human intermediate beings or the desire of God human intermediate beings, there arises the color of a golden light.
The hell intermediate beings have tremendous fear and tremendous suffering during this period in the intermediate state, whereas the the happy human or the desire god intermediate beings have little suffering and little fear. So until until the time we finally abandon the afflictive emotion, that is until the time we have abandoned cyclic existence, we are going to have to again and again go through this process of birth, death, and intermediate state. Therefore, seeing the situation that this is going to continue over and over again and that any type of rebirth that we take within cyclic existence we have explained before is still in the nature of suffering. We have to eliminate the root of the problem, of the cause of cyclic existence, which is the ignorance which is the conception of self, conceiving or grasping of self. It is a mistaken consciousness.
We must recognize ignorance as being a mistaken consciousness. Once we begin to recognize a mistaken consciousness, then we begin to eliminate it through understanding the way things correctly exist, the way the self correctly exists, and in this way we will finally liberate ourselves from cyclic existence. So we must we have to meditate on this determination to leave cyclic existence, the mind of renunciation. We should meditate on the impermanence within death again and again. We should meditate on the suffering of cyclic existence.
We should imagine that this body, these contaminated aggregates that we have is just in the nature of suffering. And just like if this building was on fire, that you couldn’t, you wouldn’t even want to remain in for one minute. You’d want to get out as quickly as possible. Likewise, Once we begin to understand the nature of the suffering aggregates or the suffering body that we now possess, we develop the intense desire to be rid of it and get out of cyclic existence. So we should make a great effort from today until our death at developing this mind of renunciation.
So if we actually develop pure renunciation, then no matter what happens to us, we don’t have to worry about it. Is there There’s no difference dying in your sleep or not. So it would there there there could there would be some difference between dying in your sleep and dying awake because if you could manifest a virtuous mind to habituation, manifest a virtuous mind at the moment of death. And this would of course have a positive effect on the outcome where you couldn’t do that if you were asleep. Let’s stop it.
Yes. Yes. You should think. So, you know, each individual must look at himself, you know, depend, see how great are his or her afflictions and which are the worst. If he has a great deal of afflictive emotions, he cannot really be of much benefit to others.
So it’s better that he stay in isolation. Whereas if he has no, for example, attachment, then he doesn’t have to he can go anywhere. He can stay anywhere. So the Buddha said that the monk should dwell in isolation.