Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Venerable Thubten Chodron teaches the fundamental Buddhist principle of karma — action and its consequences — as the foundation of spiritual practice following refuge. She presents four key qualities of karma: first, that happiness invariably results from constructive actions and suffering from destructive ones, defined by their actual results rather than moral judgment alone; second, that karma is expandable, meaning even small actions can produce large results, like a seed becoming a great tree; third, that without creating the cause, the result won’t arise, so happiness requires deliberate effort and positive action; and fourth, that karmic imprints don’t naturally disappear unless purified through specific practices. Throughout, she illustrates each point with practical examples from daily life — career success, relationships, business — showing how understanding karma transforms jealousy into motivation and encourages mindfulness in every moment. This teaching is suited for anyone beginning Buddhist practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 20 GM.mp3
UUID: e67214f0-f04b-4726-9a5a-eb61e9cb746a
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~992
When we take refuge, we’re opening ourselves to follow the Buddhist instructions. And the first instruction that the Buddha gives us is to learn about cause and effect, to understand our actions and the effects that they bring. So this is the topic of karma. karma simply means action and refers primarily to volitional actions. But all the actions that we do leave imprints on our mind stream that influence what we experience in the future.
So at every moment in our life, we are experiencing the result of actions we did in the past. And through how we respond to all these events in our life, how we act, we are creating the cause for what we will experience in the future. So the more we understand how karma works, the more we can be responsible and take advantage of this knowledge to create the cause of happiness and avoid the cause of pain. Therefore, general aspects karma and how it functions. The first is that karma is definite.
In other words, happiness always comes from constructive actions and pain from destructive ones. In fact, the whole way that positive and negative actions are defined is in terms of their results. So the Buddha, with clairvoyance, looked. And when sentient beings were suffering, he found the causes of those sufferings, and those were labeled negative actions. And when he saw sentient beings’ happiness, he looked at the causes for those, and those were called positive or constructive actions.
So whenever we experience happiness, it’s due to acting constructively. Whenever we experience pain, it’s due to our own negative actions. And similarly, whenever we act constructively, for sure the result is going to be happiness, never pain. And when we act destructively, for sure the result is going to be unpleasant and not happy. So thinking about this makes us want to practice positive actions and abandon negative ones.
So here, you can make some examples from your life. If your career is going well, it’s because of actions that you’ve done positively in the past. If your merit is going well, your business is going well, your relationships are going well, it’s due to your own good actions. If you’re having problems in these areas, it’s due to destructive actions in the past. And so we can also look at the actions we’re doing now and think of what kind of results they’re gonna bring in the future.
The second quality of karma is that it’s expandable, which means that a small cause can lead to a big result. So telling a little white lie can lead to major unhappiness in the future And making even a small offering or showing a small act of kindness to somebody can lead to a very great happy result in the future. This is very similar to the way that a small seed can produce a big plant or a big tree with many, many fruit on it. When we understand this, then we take care to abandon even small negativities and to take the opportunity to create even small positive actions. And so this understanding makes us very mindful and attentive in our life and encourages us to really integrate our spiritual practice with our daily life so that we take advantage of every opportunity.
The third quality of karma is that if the cause hasn’t been created, the result won’t be experienced. In other words, if we don’t act destructively, we won’t experience hardships and obstacles. And similarly, if we don’t create the cause for realizations through positive actions, then we won’t be able to gain them. So often you see two people in a very similar situation, but one is happy and the other is miserable. Or for one, the circumstance goes well, and for the other, they have many obstacles.
And this all comes about because one has created the cause and the other hasn’t. So, again, when we understand this, we realize that if we want happiness, we have to act. We have to create the cause to gain the realizations of the path to enlightenment, and we also have to abandon the cause to have obstacles and difficulties. When we understand that if the cause hasn’t been created, the result won’t be experienced, then that also aids us in letting go of all of our jealousy because we realize that if somebody has a good capability or talent that we lack, it’s because they created the cause and we didn’t. When we understand that, we cease to be jealous, and instead we set about creating the cause to have that happiness or that quality.
The next point is that karmic imprints don’t get lost. In other words, we will definitely experience the result unless there’s some interference. So for sure, if we act negatively, it’s gonna bring pain. For sure, if we act constructively, it’s going to bring happiness. But there are some ways that interferences can occur.
So for example, if we’ve acted destructively and put negative karmic imprints on our mind stream, these can be purified. And if we purify, then the result isn’t as strong or it might not occur at all if we do very strong purification. Similarly, our positive actions will definitely bring positive results unless they’re inhibited from ripening by our anger and our wrong views. So if we act positively but we don’t dedicate the positive potential, and especially if we don’t dedicate with an understanding of emptiness, then it’s possible later if we get angry or generate wrong views that we will interfere with the ability of these positive seeds in our mind stream to ripen and bring happiness. So the more we understand this point, the more we want to protect the positive imprints in our mind by doing dedication and the more we want to engage in purification practices to stop the negative imprints from bringing their result.