Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Tenzin Chogkyi’s 107-minute teaching explores how suffering perpetuates through the cycle of dependent origination—the twelve links—and where practitioners can break free. After setting motivation and reviewing karma’s four characteristics from the previous day, she illustrates the karmic principle with a vivid retreat-center story: after a community purified divisive speech through mindfulness agreements, an unexpected county road worker volunteered to repair their damaged road. She explains how feeling (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral) arises automatically from past karma, not from sense objects themselves, and how most people mistakenly believe external things—chocolate cake, a lover, money—cause happiness. The crucial insight comes at the moment between feeling and craving: by recognizing that past karma shapes experience, not present objects, practitioners can interrupt the cycle and stop planting new seeds of samsaric rebirth. She details the four opponent powers of purification (regret, reliance, remedy, resolution), walks through the twelve links in past, present, and future lives, and emphasizes how temporary sensory avoidance, combined with wisdom understanding cause and effect, allows practitioners to joyfully transform ordinary actions into the path itself.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2012 08 26 End of Suffering Sess. 2.mp3
UUID: fd8fa112-0df0-4418-9048-0780b2b76f60
Teacher: Tenzin Chogkyi
Collection: End of Suffering (Tenzin Chogkyi)
Date: 2012-08-26
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~14,694
Pressing in the right place. Alright. So good morning, everybody. Everybody survived yesterday alright. I was really tired last night.
Were you tired? My brain filled with information. Yeah. It was a lot to take in in one day. It’s kind of challenging to sort of race through the entire Buddha Dharma in one weekend, but we’re doing really well.
We’re on track. So that’s good. Alright. Let’s do as we usually do by just starting with a few minutes of breath awareness meditation to settle our minds, and then we’ll set our motivation. So first of all, just sitting comfortably with your back straight, spending a few minutes just focusing on the sensation of breathing to get yourself centered and focused here in this room in your body.
Just focusing on the sensation of breathing either at the nostrils or deeper in your body, your chest rising and falling, your diaphragm expanding and contracting. We’re so often caught up in thoughts of the future memories of the past. Very rarely are we actually just right here in the present moment, so using the breath as an anchor and a focus brings our attention right here into the present moment. And then let’s set our motivation for our session today. Again, reflecting on your purpose for coming.
Again, it might be that you’re a relatively new student looking to deepen your understanding of the Buddhist path. Perhaps you’ve never really approached the Buddhadharma from the perspective of the four noble truths, looking at how the Buddhadharma is taught according to this perspective to enrich your understanding. It may be that you’re a more advanced student and a lot of the topics that we’ve been discussing are a review, but perhaps a slightly different perspective. And most of all, let’s try to reflect on the ultimate purpose of our study, our practice, our meditation is not only for our own welfare, but to be of benefit to all living beings. The Bodhicitta, this noble intention to attain full enlightenment for the benefit of all living beings.
And let’s try at least to generate some sort of a bodhicitta motivation for our practices, our study today, thinking, may my understanding of the past and of the four noble truths lead to full awakening for the benefit of all living beings. Okay. So let’s just review a little bit the last couple of pieces that we did yesterday afternoon just to get make sure it’s all completely clear in our minds. So we started talking in the afternoon about karma and we had these four laws characteristics of karma. And the first one is that karma is definite.
And what did that mean? What does that characteristic refer to? Does anybody remember karma is definite? Do you remember, Jan? Do you remember, Deanne?
Well, not exactly. I mean, you’re close, but there’s one extra little piece. Yeah, Kathy. That’s right. Yeah.
That’s right. That’s right. So it’s definite definiteness in terms of type, and that is a little bit misleading. Right? Because it does make you think it means that, for sure, the karma is gonna produce a result.
But what it actually specifically referring to is exactly what Kathy said. There’s this correspondence in type between non virtue and suffering, virtue and happiness. Okay? So it’s no mixing up, and that’s when we talked about the proximity that fools us sometimes that you do something and then immediately after. And, you know, John Lennon actually wasn’t right.
The instant karma thing, you know, it’s not really like that. There is this lag period. It’s a great song, and, you know, I I’m sure he was a great, highly realized being. They say, however, the closer you get to the you know, the result of the path, the lag time between the cause and the result shortens. But for people like us, often, like I said, you know, the result of what we’re doing in this life, we might not experience, and we just have to sort of be patient and accept that.
And we talked about that a little bit yesterday, just that sort of long range vision that we have that we may not see a huge result from our actions in this life, but having confidence that we’re planting all these karmic seeds and it is going to bear fruit eventually. Right? So not to get so impatient that we don’t see huge changes in the very short term. And we might see changes. You know, I think we will definitely see changes, but it’s more in terms of how we react to things than it is the kind of things that happen.
You know, and I think sometimes that’s when people give up the Dharma, when they don’t really understand that and they go, hey, I’ve been meditating for six months, and my wife is having an affair. Like, how how come? I’m a Buddhist now. You know? Bad things shouldn’t happen to me.
Well, hey. You know, since beginningless time, we’ve created all of these causes. Like I said, we’ve got these deep pockets of karma that take a long time to purify, so we can’t really expect the changes. But what we can expect is the change in terms of our way of looking at the things that happen to us. You know, when we talked about this, Sandra, it was it was saying, you know, do we take things as a lesson?
Do we try and transform our reaction to things and respond with more wisdom? Yes. We will see changes in terms of that. But it’s a mixed bag karmically for a very long time, and we just kinda need to get used to that. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great idea. That’s a great idea too, really.
It’s a good mindfulness exercise. Yeah. Which we can do. Now we’ve got our karma quiz. So we have all that information, don’t we, about what results correspond to which causes.
And that was kind of the point of doing it too because now it gives you a great list of especially for those environmental things because those are weird, aren’t they? I mean, you couldn’t figure that out. Like, some of the ones in terms of personal experience sort of makes sense, but the weird thing about those environmental results is that you can’t really work it out. We have to rely on the teachings of the Buddha, but now we know, hey. These things are happening because of that.
And just to just on that point, since we mentioned the karma quiz, we’ll we’ll review more about that. There was one of the results of divisive speech is rough, uneven ground that’s difficult to travel. Right? So I had an experience. This is the mid right around the mid nineties.
I was living in a very remote retreat center in California where I’ve lived a couple of times, and very remote, and there was a dirt road about the last couple of kilometers actually of road up to the center was unpaved. This is a part of Northern California where they have this really heavy winter rains, and often the road would wash out or there’d be mudslides on the road, as they call them in New Zealand, slopes. Sorry. I was teasing them about their accent slops. So, you know, the road would wash out.
And in the spring, we would always have to raise a whole lot of money to get the road guys out to, like, fix it and put more gravel and all this stuff, and it was really a huge expense for us. So at one point, one western teacher had come to the center, and he was teaching on karma. And he said you know, and he was teaching about cause the correspondences with the ten non virtues, and he got to the one that corresponds to divisive speech, and he goes and this is this big huge gathering. Those of us that lived at the center are sitting like in the front row, and he goes, and the reason you guys have such a crappy road is because of your divisive speech, and you’re always talking about each other behind each other’s backs. And we were just kind of like, you know, you get publicly reprimanded by the teacher.
And then the next staff meeting we had, we realized, gosh, he’s right. You know, we did have this sort of bad habit as you can get into of complaining. It was hard. You know, people who founded the center that had lived in teepees. It was just a really hard place to live, and we’d sort of kvetch, you know, to use the Yiddish word, just sort of be complaining and sometimes talk about each other behind each other’s back.
So as a group, we decided, hey. We’ve really this is terrible that we do this. We really have to work on this. I mean, not only is it embarrassing because there he busted us in front of the whole group. We said we have to work, and we worked really hard, and we made these communication agreements about how we would check-in with each other, like if we started to get into the habit of of backbiting and talking, that we would very gently, you know, we had these code words that we all agreed on, you know, correct each other in a very loving, gentle way.
And we worked really hard for years, you know, and we’re trying to be very mindful and conscious of this karma that we’ve created. And then one I remember one year, it was after the winter rains, and it was springtime, but we hadn’t fixed the road yet. And we’re all sitting out we had these picnic benches in front of the meditation hall. We’re all sitting out there having lunch, and we hear the sound of, like, heavy machinery, and we go, what’s that? That’s weird.
And we go running down, and it’s some guy in a road grader with the blade down, like, coming along flattening our road. And we’re like, we didn’t hire the guy to do this yet. What’s going on? And we ran down to him, and he’s like, oh, I’m the, you know, I’m the guy from the county. You know?
And the county road ended couple of kilometers back, and he goes, I just had some extra time. So I thought I’d just finish your part of the road too. Like, I, you know, I had extra time today. I finished early. And, actually, tomorrow, I’m coming out with some gravel.
So I’ll put gravel, and I’m sure I’m gonna have extra. So I’ll put some on your part of the road too. And we were just like, wow. Thanks. I mean, when does the guy from the government, like, volunteer?
And as we walked back up to lunch, we go, ah, it’s that thing. Like, purified, you know, we were working so hard at purifying that karma that it shifted. And we felt like, wow, isn’t that incredible? That was a result of our karmic shift of our divisive speech karma. And if we didn’t know the cause and effect thing, we wouldn’t have made that correlation at all.
But we thought we worked at it so hard. We were so mindful with a very we’re gonna talk in a minute about heavy karmic objects, and your fellow dharma practitioners are an object that your karma is very heavy, both the positive and the negative. So if some of these factors are there, your karma can kind of speed up and you can see the result even in this life, you know, and we’ll look at some of those factors that make it, you know, speed up a little bit and also factors in terms of purification to make it most powerful. Right? So that was an example.
Like, who would have thought? You know, it was something that you’d never predict that the guy from the county would just sort of decide to volunteer to fix your road. Yes, Sandra. But karma, nothing’s random. karma our karma forced him to do that.
Well, it depends on his subjective experience. Was it a ripening of good karma or bad karma for him Depends on what his experience was. For us, it was a ripening of our karma in a purification because we were having the experience that our rough uneven road had been smoothed. You know? So we don’t really know what was going on from his side, but for sure what was happening from our side was that karma of divisive speech had been purified because we’re no longer having that environmental result.
I mean, it’s true. Of course, we’re always interacting with other sentient beings, but we can only really talk about karma in terms of our own experience. And then what was happening for him? I mean, he looked like he was in a good mood. You know, there was something happy.
For sure, his generosity in that moment would have created the cause for some abundance for him. You know, he’s being generous with his time. Nobody asked him to. Nobody was paying him to do it. So out of sort of the goodness of his heart and his generosity of offering that, then then we know for sure that he’ll have an experience of abundance in the future.
Now what what and it may have been that his karma was that he had these habits of being generous. You know, he had this habit energy from the past of being very generous and kind of open, And that’s the karmic cause that led him to choose to do that act. And then by doing that act, he you know, it’s gonna result in some abundance. Somebody’s gonna offer their time or resources to him in the future, you know, so it’s like that. So it’s got it’s very complex, like, when you really get into, you know, sort of this web, what’s the karma of everybody kind of involved?
But, it’s mostly what’s our subjective experience, is it pleasant or unpleasant for us determines whether it’s a ripening of our, you know, or does it change something like that environmental situation? Then that means that karma shifted and, you know, we’re no longer experiencing the result of that divisive speech karma because of our purification. Oh, for sure. Right. And like in the karma quiz, and you didn’t do it, so we’re gonna have to get you one.
We’ll have you do it during the break while you’re sipping your cup of tea. Right? So awareness is a big part of the solution. Right? Because we need to avoid that non virtue and then purifying, right, by doing the opposite thing.
And we’ll talk more about purification in a second. Okay. Yeah. For us? Well, it could have been if he was in a really bad mood and was hating doing it, but he wasn’t.
Like, if he was having a really negative subjective experience when he was doing that in the moment, then it would have been a result of negative karma. Like, if his subjective experience while he was doing that was unpleasant, it would have been a result of that. But it wasn’t because he just volunteered. I mean, you could imagine that he you know, because karma there’s so many karmas ripening. According to the lowest Buddhist school, we’ve got sixty five moments per finger snap.
So within every and according to the highest Buddhist philosophical school, it’s something like three hundred sixty two moments per finger snap. So you could imagine during the course of that two hours that he was doing that, maybe he started with this mind of joy and generosity, which was a result of some karmic imprint of generosity from the past. Then it shifted about half an hour into it. He got really hot and thirsty and tired and cranky, but he’d start and he felt like he had to you know, so it could have changed. It could have changed within the course of that.
He could have had many different subjective experiences. In any of those moments, a different karma was giving him the result. Yeah. So for any of our actions, yes, so many which is why it’s impossible for anybody but enlightened being to completely follow the thread because for mostly for any event that we experience, So many causes and conditions have to come together. We’re simplifying it for the purpose of just learning the basic principles, but if we really try and unravel for any experience we have, what are all the causes and conditions, it gets quite complicated really, which is why only a Buddha can know for sure, you know, exactly which causes and conditions win.
We can apply these general principles to work it out logically in a way that’s helpful. But, yeah, like you say, for the guy over that two hour period, what was going on? Wow. So much, you know, causes and conditions for his experience in that moment. Yeah.
Yeah. Yes. Well, that’s right. That’s right. I mean, we can’t It’s complicated.
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And we have to be careful. And sometimes when we talk about karma, people say things like, oh, but what about, you know, the butcher who has the job at Kohl’s that he has to feed his family?
Don’t worry about him. Just worry about, are you gonna choose to have a job as a butcher? You know, that’s all we can do. We can’t just kind of go, oh, but somebody has to do this thing or else yada yada yada. That’s too complicated.
Yeah. Learning about karma, you know, there’s kind of three ways that we can use our understanding of karma. Avoid new non virtue. Right, by knowing what is considered non virtuous according to Buddhism. And the ten non virtues are one list that’s pretty general, but that’s a great start.
Right? So avoiding new non virtues, purifying the non virtues that you’ve already done. Right? And we talked about that a little bit in terms of the karma quiz. We’re gonna talk a little bit more in a second, and creating good karma.
So that’s kind of our three jobs in terms of karma as a Buddhist practitioner, being really mindful and avoiding new non virtues, purifying the non virtues that we’ve already accumulated, and, you know, accumulating as much virtue as possible. And we talked about this a little bit too. These little mind tricks that you can kind of conjoin with your daily activity, like Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s list of when you’re opening the door, think about this. When you’re closing the door, think about this. Making your non virtues as heavy as or making your virtues as loaded as possible.
And let’s look at that list because that’s really helpful to also keep in mind and is is true for both non virtue and virtue. Right? So we can use this list to also make ensure that our virtue is as powerful as possible and also avoiding non virtue. So factors that deter and this is in your book somewhere. Does anybody have the page of the seven factors in your handout?
Page eleven. Okay. Great. So this is there. So factors that determine the weight of the karmic action, the nature of the action.
And this means there are certain actions that, by their very nature, heavy. Like, killing is a very heavy action by nature, a lot heavier than gossiping. Right? Obviously. So it’s that.
And in fact, in terms of the ten non virtues, you know, in a way, at least for the ones of body and speech, they’re kind of in order of heaviness. Right? Killing’s the worst, for sure, then stealing, sexual misconduct. Lying is the worst, you know, of the speech ones, kind of like that. Right?
Wrong views is pretty heavy. You know, that’s a mental one, but it’s quite heavy because if you’re really completely denying the existence of karma, then it leads to all the other ones. Right? So that’s quite heavy. So you kind of can’t say that that’s the lightest one even though it’s but for the body and speech ones, it’s a little bit sort of linear in order.
So the nature of the action, the intention, right, going into it, things that are premeditated, things that are motivated by heavy disturbing emotions. Right? Like heavy anger, heavy jealousy, pride, any kind of really heavy motivation like that. So the intention makes it something that’s spontaneous, that’s not premeditated, not done with a heavy negative mind would be lighter than something that was done with a lot of anger, for example. How the deed was done, and again, not to be gross, but using the example of killing, killing sadistically, for example, you know, would be much heavier in terms of how it was done than something that was done in a more kind of merciful way.
The object of the action. And we say that, you know, beings who have shown us a lot of kindness and the examples often given are your spiritual teachers and your parents. Any action done, both positive and negative, with those beings as the object is gonna be heavier. And when we think about karma being imprints in the mind, you can understand that if you did something really negative towards your spiritual teacher, you can imagine that would be a much heavier imprint in your mind than some negative action towards some random stranger. Doesn’t mean that your spiritual teachers and your parents are better than other people or anything like that.
It’s just talking about what kind of an impact is that gonna have on your mind. They also say that things done, for example, acts of kindness and generosity done to beings that are in great need. You know, that would be a heavy object. Like, somebody who’s really suffering and you do something virtuous to help them is also gonna be a heavy positive positive karma. Right?
Frequency again, an action either positive or negative, you just do one time. It’s gonna make an imprint in your mind, but, obviously, the more frequency, the stronger that karmic seed, the stronger the imprint in your mind. And, also, an action is heavy if no antidote has ever been applied. And when we looked at the karma quiz, we looked at the antidotes and we said it’s sort of the counteracting energy. Right?
You have some karmic seed there, like my friend who does the dog rescue, you know, the ex soldiers. So he’s got these killing karma imprints, and then every time he rescues one of these dogs, it’s like the act exact opposite of the killing. So but if he’d never done any antidote, those karmic imprints would still be there, very powerful. So this is also the way that we can engineer our virtue to make the biggest bang for the buck. Sorry.
As we would say in America. Right? So, you know, if we’re doing a virtuous action, do it in relation to an object that’s karmically potent for us, which is why they say in especially in Tibetan Buddhism, we have this special relationship with the spiritual teacher. So they say anything that you do in relation to your spiritual teacher, very heavy karmically. Right?
So any kind of act of helping them, offering service, generosity towards, in fact, the Three Jewels, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, which is why, like, serving your Dharma center is very potent karmically. And then we set our motivation really strongly before doing it. Right? So it’s done with an intention that’s as virtuous as possible. Try and figure out how to do the deed in a way that’s very virtuous.
Right? Do it as much as you possibly can and don’t mess it up by getting angry and frustrated about it. Right? Because that’s the antidote. You can have an antidote to virtue too.
You can mess up your virtue by doing the opposite thing. Just, you know, the same thing that works in our favor in terms of purification can really, you know, work to to screw us up in terms of our virtue. So keeping all of those in mind. And like I said yesterday, don’t just sort of do a virtuous act sort of mindlessly by rote. It’s not gonna be very powerful.
Set your motivation. Really try and figure out how to make it as positive as you possibly can, you know, and do do it as frequently as you possibly can. And even in those tiny little ways because it really transforms our mind. Like, if we could really get into the thing of every time we walk up the stairs thinking of leading all beings out of the lower realms, that would be amazing. I mean, if we could really get into this thing of transforming all of our daily actions into dharma, wow, our mind would really change.
Right? And we’ve got that opportunity. It’s just a question of training our minds. Okay. Yeah.
Yeah. And act Yeah. Yeah. And they say the lamas say, and this is really important in terms of kind of daily Dharma. They say, set your intention really strongly first thing in the morning.
And the teachers that I said, before you even get out of bed, wake up and go, okay. Today, you know, may my life be as meaningful as possible. May I overcome my self-cherishing as much as I possibly can and serve others. May all of my actions today be as beneficial to others as possible. And if you set that course, you know, at the beginning, you yeah.
You might get distracted. You might forget, but it’s very powerful to at least set that intention. You know, you’re aiming in a certain direction with your energy at the very beginning of every day, and it really does help. It really you know, like I say, you can get off track. You can kind of get distracted and forget about your intention, but there’s something very powerful about setting that at the very outset of the day.
Yeah. So any questions about this list? We got kind of derailed in our review, but I think we’ve sort of hit most of the main kind of bits. Yeah. And it’s great.
That’s right. That’s right. Just one mind at a time, and we’re responsible for ours, you know, and we have absolutely. And we’ve got so much potential to really completely transform. You know, we’ve got all the tools that we need.
It’s actually really exciting, which is why the lamas also say, in the morning, meditate at least briefly on the pre what we call the precious human rebirth, this incredible opportunity that we have to grow spiritually because then you know, and that’s the big somebody was asking the other night, what’s the Buddhist view on depression? And Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, meditation on the precious human rebirth is the best antidote to depression because you feel hopeful. You feel like, wow. It’s amazing. I could really do it.
You know? You can really transform with this amazing opportunity that we have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jen. Yeah. You know, it’s in the silver one. I’m pretty sure it’s an appendix. Well, may it’s either the yeah, it’s either in the gold one or the silver one.
I can’t remember but during the break we can check. Oh, right, right. Oh, is it in that one too? Good. It’s great too, isn’t it?
And like I said, like, it doable and not overwhelming by taking, you know, one or two at a time and train. Because otherwise, you read the whole thing and you’re just like, oh my god. You know, it could be so overwhelming. It’s like, well, all well and good for Lama Zopa. He’s already a Buddha.
But for me, you know, I’m so easily sort of overwhelmed these days, you know, so it’s good to just do it piece by piece. And then really and then it becomes habitual. A student in California told me, and I never knew this. He told me this really recently, and I found it so awesome. He said, It only takes twenty nine days to create a new habit.
And I thought that was great. He says, If you do something really consistently, you have to sort of remember for twenty nine days and then it’s a new habit. So any of those things of Lama Zopas, twenty nine days, that’s nothing. I would have thought it would be a lot more than that to make a new habit. We’re talking Oh, yeah, the twenty nine to make a new one.
Yeah, right. But all of that’s such good news. I mean, imagine what are we on by the end of September? We could have all of these fabulous new habits, you know, if we just really worked on it and tried to be mindful. Yeah.
Oh, ritual has even worse connoteachings. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. To me, ritual is feels really overwhelming and complicated. Habit sounds doable to me, but I guess it’s all just what’s our what ritual is like, oh god, I’m gonna have to light a bunch of candles and do some more complicated things.
Habit is like, I’ve got plenty of those. I can relate to that. So let’s talk for a minute about purification since we’re kind of on the topic of purification. And for a lot of you, this probably is familiar, but let’s just quickly go over the purification. We say in order to be powerful and effective what page are we on, Kathy?
Twelve. Great. It’s done with what we call the four opponent powers. Okay? So the first power purification is regret.
So in order to apply our purification techniques, whether it’s one of the traditional ones or one of the sort of unique ones of figuring out something you can do that’s the opposite, conjoin with the four powers. Now regret is just this is not guilt, really important to make that clear. This is what a friend of mine when he teaches the four powers calls the intelligent regret of an educated Buddhist. It is understanding cause and effect, understanding that if you did some non virtue, you will experience a result of that in the future. That’s all.
Right? So you generate regret. It’s not that guilt thing of, like, I’m bad, born in sin, all of that stuff. So forget it. That has no place in Buddhism.
In fact, I’ve heard that in Pali, Sanskrit, and Tibetan, there isn’t actually a word that corresponds directly to the word guilt. The way we think of it is you know, when when I say I feel guilty, it’s it’s more of an idea of I’m bad than that action that I did was unskillful and is gonna lead to a suffering result. That’s what we generate. Right? So regret is different.
But, obviously, you can’t purify anything until you’ve sort of acknowledged that it’s non virtuous. If you’re still in denial, your purification isn’t gonna work. So that’s the first step. And then reliance. And usually, what we do in the purification practices when we get to this step is take refuge and generate bodhicitta.
Okay? We’re relying on the techniques that Lord Buddha taught to purify our negative karma. It’s really reliance in the Dharma. We’re relying on the four noble truths, really. We’re saying, what the Buddha taught about where my suffering comes from and how to get rid of it, that makes sense to me.
So I’m gonna take refuge in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha and also generate bodhicitta, remind myself of the bodhicitta motivation. We also say that most of our non virtues are done in relation to the Three Jewels and sentient beings. Right? So taking refuge and generating Bodhicitta is a way to sort of atone in relation to the holy beings and the ordinary beings who are the objects of our non virtue. Okay?
So that’s the power of reliance. The power of the remedy, like I said, I think for us, it’s useful to be kind of creative and look at your karma quiz and try and think of things. Now I’m not saying that you necessarily have to start an animal rescue organization or do what my friend did, you know, but in some way, think of something that you can do that’s the opposite of the karma that is most problematic for you. I think it’s also helpful to do some of the traditional ones and in the little box on page twelve, there are six traditional purification practices mentioned in the scriptures, reciting the names of Buddhas. What would an example of that be in the practices that we do?
Yeah. We have a practice that we do often coupled with prostrations where we recite the names of these Buddhists that have made special vows in the past to help purify our negative karma. So that would be that practice, reciting the names of Buddhas. Mantras, like Vajrasattva. There are several purification mantras.
The one that we emphasize a lot in our tradition is Vajrasattva meditation. So that would be an example of that one. Reciting sutras, and Lama Zopa has us doing a lot of those these days, the Sanghata Sūtra, the Diamond Cutter Sūtra. Sometimes he’ll recommend. He’ll send out a message to all the centers and say there’s a certain obstacle happening, recite this sūtra a certain amount of times, which purifies the negative karma that’s causing that obstacle.
Meditating on emptiness, very powerful purification. Because as we’ve seen, the ignorance that’s the opposite of the wisdom understanding the nature of reality is the biggest troublemaker. So that actually hits our non virtue at the root, at the source. Right? So study it’s this includes studying also, studying and meditating on emptiness, making offerings, and making images of holy beings.
And there’s a practice that we do that is making tsatsas, these little plaster. Do we have satsas up here on the altar? Yeah. We have these little plaster. Oh, here we go.
Right above the doorway. So these little plaster, there’s molds and you pour plaster into them and and that’s one of our preliminary practices that we’re often given by our teachers and it’s a purification practice because we’re actually making images of holy beings. And then there are people I have a friend who just went to New Zealand to do retreat, he thought. Right? And it turned out that the big stupa at Mahāmudrā Center, Di-ann said that she had been there and seen it, had become filled with water and totally rotten and had to be completely cleaned out.
Well, he’s built like five stupas. So he ended up his two month retreat turned into a two month stupa rebuilding retreat. But he was so happy because he really understood that making holy objects is as good as sitting cross legged and doing you know, it he was there. He had the skills. The people in the center are, like, freaking out because they find out that because it rains, like, all the time in New Zealand, the whole stupa was filled with water and all of the it’s stupas are filled with these holy objects, and it was all completely rotten.
I mean, it was just awful. Coromandel Peninsula. Yeah. Yeah. Well, on the other other side of the bay.
Yeah. So he was so happy to do that because he understood how powerful it is to make holy objects. You know? So there are a lot of people who do that and spend a lot of time making holy objects. That’s part of their purification.
So it’s very important to like I said, whatever you’re doing for purification, you know, now that you have the results of your karma quiz, which Judy’s gonna have in a minute, conjoin with these four opponent powers. Okay? So any questions about those or anything we’re gonna we’re gonna leave karma and go on to the twelve links, which is really cool. So, any last questions to clarify? karma, let’s see.
Do we Sorry. Alright. Thank you very much. I will now that you’ve reminded me. So we make a resolution not to do it again.
Thank you because this is really important. Because it’s you know, sometimes people say, oh, you Buddhists. You have this purification practices. So that means you can do whatever you want and just purify it later. Well, no.
Because it doesn’t work that way. You know? So the power of resolve means to promise for as long as it’s reasonable. And this is really an important part. We shouldn’t say I mean, don’t be you know, it’s great to be enthusiastic and excited.
Don’t say, I’ll never gossip again for the rest of my life. You know, we can make promises for life to not willingly take the life of another being. I mean, that’s easy. For things that are really habitual and that we have trouble with, you know, the speech ones for example, I say it’s better to promise for an amount of time that you know for sure you’re gonna be successful. Then, renew the promise.
Even if it’s just for an hour, even if you say I’m not gonna, you know, I’m not gonna talk about somebody unless they’re in the room. That’s a great one, actually. Jack Kornfield really recommends that one. He says, you know, make a vow for a week that you’re not gonna talk about anybody who’s not present in the conversation. That solves a lot of the speech ones, doesn’t it?
Right? But it’s you can’t say you’re gonna do that for the rest of your life. Say you’re gonna do it this morning. And then if you’re successful this morning, say you’re gonna do it for the afternoon. And it gives us an imprint of success.
I think in Alcoholics Anonymous, they do that, don’t they? Like, one day at a time. You know, I’m not gonna drink till lunchtime, and then I’m not gonna drink this afternoon, and then I’m not gonna drink for the evening. And then you have an imprint of success. So we do the same thing with our non virtues.
So, you know, which takes a little bit of thought, especially for the ones that are very habitual. How long can I really say that I’m gonna refrain from doing this? And then, like I say, renew it, and that’s awesome to do. So thank you for reminding me because that’s super important. I got all excited about the remedies that I forgot.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
It’s not as bad. Yeah. Yeah. And I have I have a friend who’s a nun who lives in New Zealand, and she refuses to talk about anybody else unless they’re there. Like, sometimes I mean, not even you’re talking about them in a bad way.
Like, I had heard that a mutual friend of ours was yeah. Yeah. But she but it’s so striking that she does that. Like, in a way, for example, I was just asking because I’d heard that a mutual friend of ours was going off to do retreat. And I just said to her, oh, I heard that so and so is going off.
What how did she decide to do that? And she just said, it’s better that you ask her. And I remember going, well, that’s actually cool. I mean, it wasn’t that I was gonna say anything negative or she was gonna say anything negative, but it’s okay that she just said, you know, it’s better that you just ask her. So it’s interesting to see about applying that.
Now I sit around with my friends, and we tell all these really inspiring stories about our experience with spiritual teachers. But maybe it’s a thing where you just decide. You know? And when she said that, like I said, I wasn’t at all offended. In fact, I felt real a lot of admiration that she just had this boundary of like, you know, I don’t even even if it’s something positive, let’s just not talk about it because, like I said, you never know when that’s going to drift away from the virtuous.
So, that’s just her boundary that she said of like, don’t ask me what’s going on with somebody else. Just wait and ask them. And it was okay. And I like like I said, it really made an impression. So I think if the speech ones are ones that we have trouble with, it’s a good idea to think in terms of maybe implementing thing.
And don’t worry that people aren’t gonna like you anymore. I mean, we have this whole thing that if we don’t act in the way that people expect us to, they won’t like us. Like, the world will come to an end. It’s better that we do things like that. We can, you you know, we can be an example to the other people in our life.
So don’t feel like at work or whatever you need to get drawn into gossiping just because everybody else is gonna do it, and you don’t wanna offend them. Just, you know, set the line. Draw the line for your own behavior, and you can really positively influence other people. The world will not come to an end if you keep your virtue publicly, like, really, it won’t. You know?
And if if you do it skillfully, people won’t be offended. Yeah. What’s going on with this person? Yeah, yeah, yeah. She likes to tell me what’s going on with all who Right.
Right. It’s it that’s been bothering me for ages. It’s really That’s right. I’m just summon the same or you’ll come? You know what really works well?
What I found when I wanna do something like that, I really take responsibility for my own struggles. And you could say it in a way like this, you could go, you know, through my Buddhist practice, I’ve really become, you know, clear about the problem I have sometimes talking about people behind their back and, you know, I I’ve decided for myself, it’s really better not to talk about people because I have this tendency and could you help me with that? I mean, that can be because you’re asking for their help, you’re not blaming them and saying that they’re doing it, you’re just totally owning. This is something I’m struggling with and I’d really like your help. I’m gonna experiment with this thing for a while of just not talking about people if they’re not there because I know I have you know, and I found that if you just, like, take all responsibility yourself, that can be very helpful.
I have another friend who used to be the manager at this at this retreat center in New Zealand and she said, even before she heard about this, she has a big family, brothers and sisters, and they talk on the phone all the time and she said that her brothers and sisters, they’d made a deal that they weren’t gonna talk about the other ones with each other on the phone. They were just gonna share what was going on with the two of them and then, you know, call the other one if they wanted to find out what was going on. You know? So I thought that was kind of and like I said, that was even before she started thinking that in terms of Buddhist non virtue. It was just something that they decided they felt more comfortable not talking about the ones that weren’t present in their conversations.
You know? So I think there’s ways that you can do it that aren’t offensive. You know? And again, if you just say, wow, could you help me? I’m working on this thing because I realize, you know, that that can be helpful.
That can work. Yeah. So, any other any other questions about purification? Yeah, Jen. It was too late or whatever.
Yeah. Right. Right. Well, strictly speaking, that karmic imprint is still there because he didn’t generate the regret during the continuum of that deed. Right?
So the four components would have still been there. I think, however, regret even after the fact I mean, he may not engage in the four, you know, component. But just his mental regret could have an effect, could mitigate, you know, the negative karma of that. If he generated regret and then done an action, you know, like really done something that was the opposite, for example, you know, rescued some cows that were gonna be put down or something like that. You know, that would have been more complete.
Right? So the more complete it is, the better. I can’t really say in terms of the regret after the fact because in the Buddhist perspective, the regret after the fact is part of then the pure you know, the conscious purification practice. So for somebody that’s not Buddhist, if the other components aren’t there, hard to say how much purification of that negative karma there might have been. Yeah.
Because we’re just you know, it’s just explained to us kind of in terms of then that’s the first step of engaging in these four opponent powers. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. These imprints in his mind of yeah. Yeah. Not oh.
Yeah. Oh, good for him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
That’s great. Yeah. You know, in in Lama Zopa, I’ve heard Lama Zopa Rinpoche say once and it really struck me because we try so hard with our practices and to be virtuous and sometimes you can get discouraged. And I remember him saying, if you even go out of this life with a really strong imprint not to kill, that’s amazing. Like he said, if you can just generate a really powerful imprint not to kill.
So maybe that was happening with him, you know, because of you and the bugs, and he started thinking about it and the cows, and maybe his kind of dream was about his regret about not. So maybe maybe he left this life with a really strong imprint of compassion and a really strong imprint of not killing, which was, like, fabulous. You know, that’s amazing. So, yeah, that’s a really good sign, actually, that near death, he was having those kind of thoughts and those kind of feelings. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s fantastic. That’s right.
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s very powerful in terms of imprints, you know, for for for future lives then, at least, like I say, he left this life with a really strong imprint. Yeah.
Yeah. Alright. Let’s let’s do the twelve links of dependent origination. This is so cool. You guys are gonna love this.
Do we have time? Yeah. Can you handle another half hour before the break? You alright with that? I’m so confused because we started late.
I’m like, wait. What’s going on? So this is a diagram. Some of you may be familiar with a drawing that we call the Wheel of Life, which is where is it? Right next to the door.
But what I’ve done is simplify it so that we can understand. Did you just have you just had this is that right? Yeah. Okay. This, the wheel, this I think you might have here, it the drawings that you can Right.
The Wheel of Life is this one that’s the biggest one on that back wall right there, and it’s actually the only painting designed by Lord Buddha. There’s kind of this interesting story. Two kings that were his disciples were had I think one of them was the other one’s father-in-law, and they kept giving each other gifts, you know, and it would sort of what when you’re a king in ancient India, what do you give the other king? Oh, ten white elephants laden with jewels and a troop of dancing girls. Right?
And so the other king then would send twenty white elephants laden with even more jewels and three troops of musicians and down you know, so it went on like this for a while. And then finally, the king one of the kings went to Lord Buddha and goes, the royal treasury is empty. Like, I’ve nothing else to give him. What can I give? Of course, Lord Buddha said, the gift of the Dharma is the best gift you could ever give.
And he goes, you know, I’ll design a painting. Have the royal artist paint this painting and then send it to him. And this painting just basically explains everything, and it’s the best gift you could ever give him. So the painting designed was this one that’s got sort of this monster, Yama, the lord of death, with this big wheel in his mouth that represents Samsāra, basically. Right?
And then outside on the upper right hand corner is lord Buddha, outside the wheel of Samsāra. So, there are twelve little compartments in the very outside of the wheel that are the twelve links. Now, they’re back in the days of Lord Buddha, not everybody was literate by any means. So, all of these paintings in the twelve compartments are symbolic of the twelve links. It’s located to learn the concepts and the drawing, and you’re like, what’s the monkey jumping around in the tree?
Alright. That’s that one. So I’ve done the western thing of making a diagram that looks a little bit like the pie chart of the budget of a Fortune five hundred company, but that’s kind of what we can relate to. So I’ll present it like this, and then during the break, you can have a look at the monster on the back wall and try and match up. Some of them aren’t accurate.
Hopefully, that one’s accurate. Hopefully, Venerable Jamyang, when she was teaching, checked because some sometimes people have and they’re not in the right order or the pictures aren’t quite right because you get these Nepali tanka painters and they just paint these things for tourists that aren’t really accurate. So, actually, a couple of centers where I’ve taught the twelve links, then I’ve gone to the thing and I go, uh-uh. It’s all wrong. But anyway, we’ll check.
So the twelve links are around the outside of the circle. So let’s look at those first. And there are a couple of ways of explaining the twelve links. One of them, which we’ll talk about, is in terms of three lifetimes. So that’s the middle circle here past life, present life and future life.
And remember way back yesterday morning which seems like a million years ago, I said, the twelve links explains what causes us to have rebirth in Samsāra. Right? It explains the whole dynamic of our uncontrolled rebirth in Samsāra. The point of Buddhism is to break free. So, looking at the twelve links, we’ll also look at the places that we can break through this reaction because that’s the whole point of the Buddhist path.
So now we’re starting to get into the realm of cessation and path. You know, this is sort of the segue into the last two links. We’re going to show how everything that we’ve talked about so far all hangs together in terms of causation of our samsaric rebirth and then how we can cut through. Okay. So we start at the very top at sort of one o’clock on the clock of the twelve links with ignorance, our old nemesis.
Now, same ignorance. Remember I said ignorance shows up at the top of all of these charts and we had him or her on the top of that other chart. Same ignorance, which was what? Remember we had two flavors of ignorance. Yeah.
That’s right. So, same ignorance here. Right? Ignorance about the nature of reality. Remember the dichotomy thing?
I keep hinting to you about that. We’ll talk more about that what that dichotomy is this afternoon. Same ignorance. Right? And then the second link, karmic formations.
Karmic formations. And what this means is and let’s go back to that diagram. This refers to exact same thing as this. Ignorance, karmic formation. Right?
What’s missing in this diagram is the disturbing emotion, but obviously, there was a disturbing emotion in there. This is just sort of condensing what’s happening in the past life to the essential points of ignorance and karmic formation. But this is exactly this. Right? Exactly the same as this.
Okay. So this is all happening in the past life. What are we doing? Past lives. Right?
Because it’s not necessarily just the one before. What we’re doing in the past lives is due to ignorance, you know, generating disturbing emotions and then karmic actions over and over and over again. We’re building up those deep pockets of karmic causes. Okay? Now, present life.
Okay? Consciousness. So, this is talking about the mind stream, the stream of consciousness that goes from life to life to life. And if we’re talking in terms of a human being, we say that that consciousness loaded with karmic imprints from the past enters at the moment of conception, the fertilized egg. Right?
So this is talking about consciousness loaded with these karmic imprints in the present life, you know, uniting with that fertilized egg. Okay? So that’s consciousness. Now, the next link, name and form. And this is kind of a code word for body and mind.
Okay? Form the body. Name again, code word. And I’ve left it as name and form. Sometimes you see the Sanskrit word Namarupa.
Right? So I’ve left it as name and form because that’s that’s how you usually see this one explained. Now, for those of you that may have already studied the five aggregates, is anybody familiar with the five aggregates, the five heaps, the five components of a person? Okay. That’s what this is.
The name refers to the four mental aggregates or parts of a person and then the form refers to body. So when you’re talking about a human being, human rebirth, in the womb, these start to develop. Right? And there’s all those pictures now of, like, the egg and then it’s fertilized and then it splits into two and four and yada yada yada, and then the body starts to develop. Some of the mental you know, we have a raw mental consciousness.
Right? The raw consciousness that enters at the time of fertilized egg. Some of them are dependent on brain function so all of this starts to develop in the fetus. Then the next one, the six senses and this refers to the potential to have a sense experience. Right?
To be able to hear, smell, see, which also happens when the fetus is developing. You know, there’s the thing at a certain point they can hear sounds, a certain point they can smell. So this potential for sense contact that develops in the fetus, and then, of course, obviously, after birth, we have the potential to have any number of sense experiences. What are the six senses? So, what are they?
Taste. Taste. Smell. Touch. Sight.
Hearing. What’s the sixth one? Well, that’s the tactile consciousness. Yeah. Touch.
Yeah, mental consciousness. So, the sixth sense isn’t ESP like Yuri Geller bending spoons for those of you that are my age and remember that. It’s mental consciousness. The object of that one is a thought. Right?
The object of visual consciousness is an external visual sense object. The object of a, you know, auditory consciousness is a sound. The object of mental consciousness is just a thought. That’s all. Those are the six senses.
Okay? So, now we have the potential to have all of those experiences because the six senses are fully developed. Next is contact. So contact is the coming together of the sense organ, the object and the consciousness. We need to have a stream of consciousness in order to have this contact.
It’s not enough to have the sense organ. A corpse has an ear, but a corpse can’t have hear anything. Right? So, we need the stream of consciousness, we need the sense organ, and we need the object. And those three things coming together is contact.
Okay? Any questions so far? Yeah. Of the three things, so we have a consciousness, just mental consciousness. We have a sense organ.
And then we have an object of that sense consciousness. So those three things are required, right, for contact. So this is just talking about, you know, in the case of a human being, obviously, and other realm beings, but let’s not complicate it. Let’s just think in terms of a human being. This is just talking about what are all of the things that are required to have sense contact.
And, Lord Buddha talked a lot about sense contact because that’s mostly what our experience is, isn’t it? We’re going around, you know, experiencing through our six senses. Even mentally, if you’re very cerebral and you sit around studying dharma books all the time, still mental sense consciousness. It’s mental consciousness. Okay?
So that’s mostly what’s happening in our experience is just one sense experience after another. Contact, contact, contact constantly. So that’s why Lord Buddha really emphasized. Now, the next link is feeling. And this isn’t what we usually think of when we use the English word feeling, which is sort of synonymous with emotion, isn’t it?
Oh, I feel sad. I feel happy. That’s not what this is talking about. This is just talking about a very basic three flavors pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. Okay?
And again, Kathy said she was familiar with the five aggregates. This is one of the aggregates or one of the parts of the person. This is one of those mental factors that we were talking about yesterday. Remember we said what we call emotions or mental factors. This is one which is called an omnipresent mental factor.
It’s always there because we’re always having sense contact. Every sense contact or mental contact results in a feeling of either pleasant, unpleasant, neutral always there in our consciousness. Yep. Oh. Mm-mm.
This is much more basic, much more basic than that. Just raw experience of pleasure, unpleasant, neutral. Right? There are many other mental factors that also color and flavor our experience but this one is just as a result of every sense contact, always there’s a experience of pleasure, unpleasure, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Right?
That’s all this is talking about. So I look at the chair that’s beige. Right? I have a sense contact because I’ve got an eye sense power. I’m have a consciousness, and then there’s an object.
Those three things coming together. So I have a sense I sense consciousness of beige chair. Beige was my mother’s favorite color. She had about twenty five beige dresses. To me, they all looked the same.
I just couldn’t get it at all. To me, maybe because of that experience, they it’s not unpleasant. It’s just total flatline. Mhmm. Purple, I love.
In fact, Kathy’s shawl is all of my favorite colors in one fabric. So when I look at that, you know, I have an eye sense consciousness and an experience of, wow, that’s beautiful. Whereas the chair is like neutral. That’s what we’re talking about. No.
No, no, no. That’s not what we’re We’re saying, What causes me, by the way, to have that feeling is my karma. Okay? So, it’s forced on me by my karma. I have no choice.
I have a choice how I react, but we’ll get there. Let’s hold your question for a minute because you’re going in a direction yeah. You’re jumping ahead. So let’s let’s hang on. But that’s what’s happening here with every sense contact.
Now, like I said yesterday, lots of them are neutral. That’s sort of background noise of our samsaric experiences, loads of neutral. But there are the pleasant and the unpleasant. I’m like, wow, you know, there might be another sense experience that I could have that would be unpleasant. So we have those, a lot of them are neutral.
Now, as a result of that, right, so that feeling happens, next is craving. Craving means when it felt good, this is just the idea, oh, I wouldn’t mind having more of that.’ That’s just that idea that’s attracted to more of the good stuff. We also use craving to refer to craving not to have any more contact with the yucky stuff. So craving refers to both. You know, usually when we hear the word craving, we think of attraction And this gets interesting too because in the Theravadan tradition, in the Southern Buddhist school that’s prevalent in Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, they say in that school that attachment is the root of saṃsāra.
We say ignorance is the root of saṃsāra, but they’re mostly right because attachment we have about nine hundred ninety nine attachment thoughts to every one aversion thought. Mostly, we’re going around life going, what feels good? What feels good? What feels good? You know, give me the good stuff.
Give me the good stuff. And then every once in while, we’re like, oh, get away from that. So for most people, it’s their right. You know, there’s a lot more attachment thoughts to aversion thoughts. Unless you’re an inmate in a maximum security prison, you know, then you have but this refers to both.
Craving for more, pleasant sense contact and craving for, you know, less unpleasant sense contact. This one is just the thought, Wouldn’t it be nice? The next one is grasping and that’s more intense. I’m going to do something to get more of the good stuff. So it’s still you haven’t done anything yet, but grasping is a decision to act on the craving.
Okay? So, again, both of these mental, it’s a matter of degree. Right? You had the sense contact with the chocolate cake. It tasted good.
You thought, wow, wouldn’t it be great to have more? Then you thought, I’m going to get some more. Right? So it’s intensifying that desire. Then becoming and this is weird word again but I’m just translating it literally.
This means new karmic cause created, new karmic action. Right? So, in becoming, you’ve acted on that grasping and you’ve done something about it. So, new karmic cause created with becoming. And then the result is the future life birth, old age and death and everything else in between.
Right? So, this is saying, this is how our karma is created that forces us. Remember I said, it’s like a catapult into our next life. We have no volition about it. The force of this and all of these karmic seeds, newly implanted, trajects us into the next rebirth without any volition, without choice.
We can’t stop it. Okay? Now, there’s a very specific craving, grasping and becoming. Very specific one. I mean, in general, we’re doing that all the time.
And by the way, the twelve links, it doesn’t just happen once in a lifetime. We’re doing it all the time. I mean, this is happening like this. We’ve got, like, infinite amounts of overlapping twelve links. You know?
It’s like you got the piece of chocolate cake down the street at the Dulwich bakery, and you’re sitting there eating it. So you’re already over here in terms of the chocolate cake, and then the cute guy walks in the door. You know? So it’s like that overlapping right? Yeah.
Right. And then it and then it can very quickly, you know? This can be quite instantaneous seeming but this is the way it goes. Now the very specific craving, grasping, becoming is the craving for embodiment. So at the time of death, there’s a specific craving and grasping that arises And I mentioned this, I think maybe it was the other night in the Bodhisattva vows.
When you feel your consciousness being sort of ripped away from your body, there’s this panic and a craving for embodiment and that’s a big cause for rebirth. Right? Because that craving and grasping because you have such a strong identity with this is who I really am. Right? That that’s a specific flavor of craving, grasping, becoming that leads to birth.
So any questions about the twelve links before we look at where to break through? That’s the next step. Yeah. Result. We’re looking at what’s the result and what’s the cause.
Oh, sorry. Yeah. Result. Result. Yeah.
My my quick handwriting because remember, I wasn’t gonna do this with you, then I got all excited about it, and so I quickly drew the flip chart standing up, bending over. Good. So any other clarification about what any of these twelve bits are? Okay. Then the next question is, where do we break through?
Because that’s the goal. Lord Buddha and by the way, this is what Lord Buddha saw on the night of his enlightenment. When you read in the sutras the story of what was going on during the his enlightenment, this is what he saw. This is the big thing that he saw, the twelve links. They say in forward order, in reverse, in forward and reverse.
He basically saw the whole dynamic of how our samsaric rebirth is created and then how to break through, and then he broke through. So this was the big thing. And personally, you know, just my own experience with this, I had studied this in my Buddhist studies from, like, first Kopan course in nineteen ninety one, and it’s supposed to be this really big deal, and I just couldn’t get it. Like, would have the Lama explain, and I’d look at the picture, and I’d be like the monkey in the boat and the house, and I just I just couldn’t get it. And then in this one of my long meditation retreats, was really working with this in meditation, and I feel like I really got a breakthrough to how important this is.
It was like, this is what the Buddha this is the big deal, the Buddha under the Bodhi tree. I couldn’t get it. And then I had this, you know, I felt like an insight and sort of a breakthrough. So I’m gonna attempt to transmit my exciting breakthrough that happened in retreat. And I was in silence and I remember when the breakthrough came, I sort of leapt up off of my seat and went, I’m free.
And then I didn’t shout because I had a neighbor and he would be kind of alarmed if he heard me shouting, but sort of internally, I had this like, wow, this is awesome. So where do we break through? Where are some of the points that we can break through? Yeah. Ignorance is one.
This is hard. Right? Remember when we looked at the other flip chart page, I said we work kind of from the backwards up because actually getting a direct realization of emptiness really hard. But you’re right. This is what we call cutting through saṃsāra at the root.
And this is huge. This is huge. And this you’re absolutely right. Hard? There’s ways we can work with this while we’re working towards that point.
There’s other ways we can break through. But yeah, this is cutting saṃsāra at the root for sure. Yeah? Oh, good. Right.
And and that’s the hint. That’s the big hint which is why we have this wheel look at what’s cause and what’s result. What can you do about the results that have already been created? Not much. Which is why I say in answer to Sandra’s question, feeling can’t do much.
That’s been created already by past karma. Your karma is forcing you to have that feeling. You can sit there and when something is feeling really unpleasant, you can be sitting there going, oh, it really feels good. It really feels good. It really feels good.
Yeah. See how that works out for you. You know, it just won’t work. Right? Because you can’t change that in the moment.
You can’t change that in the moment. But, you can change, are you gonna let it start a whole another round of causation? So right here is a huge place where we can break through. As I said, not much we can do about the karmic causes that we’ve already created. They are serving up their results to us.
You know? And I have one friend who says, we try and do this thing. I don’t know if you guys have this in it’s sort of more of an American analogy, think. In America, for some reason, it’s always the pizza places, and they have this big machine in the lobby with full of stuffed animals and this claw thing that comes down. Do you guys have that?
You know what I’m talking about? Yeah. For us, it’s just only to do with pizza. You know? It’s only pizza places for whatever reason and you put in your quarter and then you’re pushing the thing desperately as the claw’s coming down.
And he said, that’s kind of what we do to try and manipulate our experience in the moment. Right? We’re having an experience in the moment. Maybe it doesn’t feel good. He said, we’re trying to robo-claw like, no.
No. But he goes, forget it. It’s not gonna work. That karma is already ripening. There’s really not much not really anything you do to manipulate it.
But he says, the only thing we can do with an understanding of karma is garden. Plant a seed now for what kind of results are you gonna do in the future? He goes, the robo-claw thing doesn’t work, but the gardening thing totally works. Right? Because all of this is a result.
So we’re breaking through here. Now how do we do that? How do we have, for example, a pleasant sense experience and not crave and grasp for more? What do we apply? What kind of wisdom do we apply to enable us to do that?
Because it’s really important to understand. You can’t just do it because you go, oh, Lord Buddha doesn’t want me to. That doesn’t work. That’s not real pretty. Yeah.
That’s part of it. Yeah. What we it’s impermanent. And check this out. I mean, this is the real key.
Is the object the cause of the feeling? Is there a cause and effect relationship here? No. What is by if you feel good, what was the cause of that? A virtuous karmic seed By definition, remember we said virtue only results in experiences of happiness, non virtue only result in experience of suffering.
What did the chocolate cake have to do with it? It was a condition. It wasn’t the cause. And that’s huge. Right?
If you’re having a pleasant experience, we mistake. We think this is cause, this is result. What was the cause? Way back here in your karmic formations. Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely. Yeah. No question about it. According to Buddhism, we could have had a karmic seed from the past. Hang on.
Let’s just finish this thought. Okay. So, it’s the misunderstanding and that’s a huge ignorance. Right? It’s the misunderstanding that the object is the cause of our happiness.
It ain’t. What’s the cause of our happiness? Virtue. And when you understand that, you can let go of craving and grasping Because if you grasp onto the object, especially if you do something stupid to get it, like steal or cheat on your partner or one of the other ten non virtues, you have just shot yourself in the foot karmically. But it’s that misunderstanding that we all have because it seems like the chocolate cake worked.
Why is the chocolate cake what’s the proof that the chocolate cake isn’t the cause? Exactly. Yeah. Not everybody likes chocolate cake. It’s hard to imagine, but it I’ve heard it’s true.
And, it doesn’t always work. If your heart’s just been broken, even if you usually like chocolate, if you’re suffering, if you have a toothache or you’re scared about something that’s going to happen, it doesn’t even taste good. If it if it were the cause, it would always work. It’s a condition. It’s a condition.
So we differentiate between causes and conditions. So, this is a huge part of our practice here. When you have that experience in the moment, try to remind yourself, I’m not having this experience because of this object. Whether it’s the yelling boss or the piece of chocolate cake or whatever it is. Say, I’m having this experience because of my past karma.
What would be the stupidest thing that you could do when the boss is yelling at you in front of your coworkers and you’re embarrassed? Yell back. Go right ahead and just create the cause for more karmic rebirths. If you respond with patience here realizing, Wow, I must have yelled at people in the past. And that’s why I’m having this experience so I’m not gonna react.
I’m not gonna do that knee jerk thing. I’m not gonna misunderstand the relationship between the object and my feeling. That’s the way to get free in the meantime while we’re working on developing our wisdom. But that’s a way of applying at least our intellectual wisdom, our intellectual understanding of karma and of the way things are in the moment. And it’s hard.
You know, I say widen the gap here between feeling and craving. One of my students in California said, I never knew there was a gap. He’s like, what gap? You know, usually, you’re just going without even thinking. But if with our and this is where our mindfulness practice really comes in.
You know, there’s Buddhist teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh that emphasize mindfulness pretty much exclusively. We can’t do this if we’re going at such apace and if we’re so kind of checked out about our experience. We have to be tuned in, we have to slow down to widen the gap and to stop our reaction. We really have to work on mindfulness and awareness to notice what’s happening here. But this is a huge Isn’t that cool?
See, now that’s the thing I got. Is that cool? I need a little positive visual feedback about how cool that is. Great. Okay.
Yes, Sandra. Well, I think you still need to apply wisdom. Right? Okay. And I think that can be our inner wisdom.
We talk in Buddhism about the inner guru and we say as our path progresses, that inner guide becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. And I think sometimes that intuition can definitely be that. But we still need to check even, you know, Lord Buddha said, even if your teacher tells you to do something, you still need to check with wisdom. Is it virtuous? Is it non virtuous?
That’s one technique. You know, I would I would also recommend checking it in terms of karma and in terms of what the Buddha taught about cause and result and what’s virtuous and what’s non virtuous. Because like I say, we’re even told to check what our own teachers tell us to do with our own wisdom based on what’s virtuous and what’s non virtuous. Yeah. Okay.
But that’s a huge place to cut through. Now, there’s one other place and then I’ll give you well, gosh, it’s nearly lunchtime. We can probably just keep going. Are you alright to keep going for like twenty more minutes? Alright.
There’s another place that we can break through. Okay? So we’ve looked at the two biggest ones, definitely at that root ignorance by developing that direct realization of emptiness. And then in the moment and this one is the really exciting one for me because we don’t it just shifts our whole habitual kind of since beginning this time, we thought the object was the cause kind of thinking because we realize it’s the karma that’s the cause of the pleasure and the unpleasant. And another proof of that is, you look at His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.
He enjoys everything because his virtue forces him to have a blast all the time. Isn’t it? Doesn’t matter what it is, the most ordinary experience. He’s like, woah, this is awesome because his karma is forcing him and that’s one of the qualities of Buddhahood. They say, everything creates an experience of bliss.
There’s so much virtue. Eve every sense contact creates an experience of bliss. And then you can see the opposite. In fact, now I’m living in a place with the television. We went there the other night, Peter said, this is how the TV works.
And I go, oh, I never watch television. Now I’ve gotten into watching the news because I never live in a place with a television, and I never have I never have any idea what’s going on in the world. So now I’ve been watching the world news, so I know all about Syria now. It’s amazing. And I also know that this famous Hollywood director committed suicide, like, four days ago, Tony Scott, Some somebody who I don’t even know.
Ridley Scott. No. It’s his brother, Tony Scott. His brother jumped off a bridge. So once again, proof that sense contact isn’t the cause of happiness because all of these Hollywood movie stars keep doing that, don’t they?
And they’ve got the mansion and the sense pleasure and the cute girlfriends and the sports cars. If it worked, if that was a cause and effect relationship, every rich Hollywood movie star would be blissfully happy, and they’re not. Right? Because it’s not the cause. So more proof of that.
But what’s the other what’s another place do you think that you can cut through? And this is another sort of temporary Band Aid. It’s not as effective as I’ll give you a hint because It’s not as effective as the two ones that we’ve talked about so far but it helps in the meantime to not create more karmic causes. And, with very, very, I mean that’s not the one I was thinking of but, they say with very, very advanced vajrayana techniques, in the intermediate state between one rebirth and the next, you can actually become liberated. So that’s a very yeah, that’s right.
That’s a very the thing I’m thinking of is avoiding sense contact. Right? Now, we’re urged to do this temporarily while we’re working on subduing our minds. Right, we say that, you know, when when we do a whole course on dealing with emotions, there’s six factors that tend to give rise to disturbing emotions. One of them is a related object, a triggering object and we’re advised to meditate on what those objects are for us and then while we’re still kind of babies and newcomers on the path, to temporarily avoid those objects that we know are gonna be triggering while we’re building up our strength.
And the analogy they give is like a little sapling. When it’s really young, you have to protect it by putting the little deer fence or the rabbit proof thing. I go for a walk in Victoria Park and there’s all these little they’ve replanning all these native plants and they all have a little thing around it and then if there’s a high wind some of them topple over so I go around like straightening and putting the thing back because they need that in the beginning. They’re just a little sapling. When it’s grown into a big tree, it’ll be fine.
It won’t need that little protection and our minds are like that too. So we’re advised in the beginning to really try and get clear about what some of these triggering objects and just temporarily avoid. Now it’s not about denial. It’s not about any of that stuff. It’s just smart if you know the object is gonna be especially triggering.
So avoiding this. Now there are a lot of monastic vows that involve avoiding sense contact. For example, we have a vow that we’re not supposed to go to the marketplace. That’s the traditional wording. Just because so much craving and grasping can come up.
If we see those objects, for me it’s office supply stores because I’m really into the cute little pins and the post its and the little fussy. I don’t think about them from one day to the next but if I’m walking along and they’re in my face I’m like, oh I need that and that and that. Right? So, for example, there are certain vows where we protect our minds by just not being exposed. When we’re strong enough, we’re gonna be able to be anywhere, no problem.
You know, when we’re at the level of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, anywhere we go, we won’t be swayed because we’ll have enough wisdom that we don’t have to worry about this. Right? Because we will have enough ignorant or enough wisdom to cut that at the root. And like I say, this is a temporary band aid. Right?
But I think if we understand that, we’ll be willing to take on that level of avoidance of certain sense objects. You know, when you before you get ordained, you have to go take this ordination training course in in Dharmasa like, if you get ordained with his holiness, the Dalai Lama, there’s a two week training course where they train you in all your vows and how to put your robes on and all of this stuff. I always think they should really do part of the training on the twelve links. Because if you don’t understand this, if you’re giving up all of that stuff, you just think Lord Buddha’s trying to spoil your fun. You know, it’s really important if you understand the twelve links, then the avoidance of those certain things, you get it.
Why? And you’re happy about it. And you joyfully take on that those vows, right, of avoiding certain sense contact because you get why. You’re not just kind of going, oh, god, you know? Everybody else is going out and doing all these things that I can’t do anymore and it’s such a drag.
But you’re like, hey, man. I’m getting free because I’m working on all these levels simultaneously. Right? So I think it really helps with our morality and not just for ordained people because there’s the five lay vows, certain things that you avoid doing as a lay person. There’s avoiding the ten non virtues.
Right? And if you understand the twelve links thing, you’re happy about that because you see how it’s gonna get you free. Right? So this is the big thing that Lord Buddha saw that night under the Bodhi tree. And it it really pulls it all together, doesn’t it?
And another level, I’m just gonna hint at this now, just so mostly so you come back this afternoon. Another level of approaching this is is in terms of emptiness. Okay. One level is saying, Okay. The object is not the cause of the feeling.
One level is looking at it in terms of karma. And another level is saying, Even the way the object appears to me, right, as so attractive from its own side, even that’s mistaken. So, it’s an even deeper level, question the appearance. I heard that Lama Yeshe apparently used to say this, this was his mantra, question appearances. So that’s an even deeper level of dealing with the twelve links.
Even the way that object appears to you is so attractive, even that’s forced on you by your karma. Question that. It doesn’t appear. And we talked about the attachment arising from that exaggeration. So, question the way that that appears.
Okay? So, karma, thinking, Even the chocolate cake being there is a result of my karma. Positive karma if I like it, negative karma if I’m allergic to it. The same piece of chocolate cake can be a result of either negative or positive karma depending on your experience with that. And then even the way it appears so attractive is not the way it really exists.
So, that’s an even subtler way. So, applying our wisdom, we can do that. We don’t need to be an ārya yet with a direct realization of emptiness. We can apply that intellectual understanding and that wisdom today and we should. And this is very cool to work with this in your And this is dharma in daily life because this is happening, like I said, constantly.
Mostly, it doesn’t get us into too much trouble, but what’s happening here is just the ignorance that says, this is the cause and it exists in exactly the way it appears. And that’s what creating the neutral karma that’s our background noise of our samsaric rebirth. And every once in a while, this will create an action that’s actually heavily non virtuous. Right? But even doing the innocuous actions that we do all the time, misperceiving the nature of reality, that’s what creates that neutral karma that forces us to have samsaric rebirth.
Right? So even if it’s not coupled with strong afflictive emotions, it still will create negative karma because for us, until a direct realization of emptiness, it’s always mixed at least with a little bit of ignorance. Alright. It’s cool though, isn’t it? Good.
Good. I’m glad. I always love it when people get it because like I said, when I sort of had that experience in meditation, I really saw it was really this one that I saw and I’ve never gotten that before and it was just like, that is so cool because then it really explains so much about our practice, so much about how we can use this understanding to really live differently, joyfully. Again, not with this feeling of like, oh, man. All my friends are doing all this stuff, and I can’t do it anymore.
But like, wow. I’m free. You know? I’m getting free, and this is how I’m doing it. So it’s very cool.
So thank you for getting it. I feel gratified that you’ve gotten it. And now during the break, you can look at the monster and try and work out what all the little thing. But I always think it’s better to explain it in terms of just the simple diagram and then you get the concepts really clear. And then you can hook it up with the pictures, you know?
But it’s more important to really understand clearly the concept than to get bogged down with the ancient painting. I mean, very holy and amazing and great reminder, but it’s really important since we can all read. Kind of nice to to have the diagram. Alright. So it is twelve fifteen.
Time for chocolate cake. Not attractive from inside. So let’s take our lunch break. And is it on or still?