Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The scorched seed — karma whose potency is destroyed by purification but whose husk still obstructs realization until emptiness removes it — anchors this 40-minute Lam Rim session by Ven Jampa Gendun. He works through the four opponent powers for purifying negative karma, spending most time on regret: not guilt, which attacks the person, but honest acknowledgment that an action was harmful and a sincere wish it hadn’t happened. Reliance follows — recommitting to refuge or extending compassion toward those harmed. Student questions drive a practical exchange on how often to reapply the powers to the same act, and whether dream signs (flying, white clothes) confirm purification. The session closes by grounding karma in mental conditioning, illustrated by the classic teaching that gods, humans, hungry ghosts, and hell beings each perceive the same glass of liquid entirely differently — and by a brief, vivid account of how a Buddha’s activity, like a fruit tree, leaves no karmic residue.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 LR 2008 05 15.mp3
UUID: 966443c0-18c4-4574-b66a-41569b771387
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Lam Rim (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2008-05-15
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 39.9 minutes
Words: ~4,850
In other words, but the seed remains. But it’s only a seed in name. It’s just this husk. It’s almost like an empty husk. It’s lost its potency.
So these four powers, sometimes you can remember them as the four Rs, as the Brasseur-lang would call them, the four r’s. What are the four r’s kids? Okay. That’s that’s a good that’s a good way to remember them. The first time you know, this sometimes they’re listed in different orders.
Geshe la listed the reliance first, and Ringu Tulku called it basis. There’s many of these terms have never been settled exactly how we’re going to translate them. But I can just share the terms that I use. The first of the four powers I generally present is a power of re what we call repudiation. But the repudiate means actually, it’s more literally repudiate.
It means the idea of when you repudiate something, I don’t I don’t I don’t identify with that. I don’t want anything to do with that. It’s almost like some you develop some kind of aversion toward that. And it’s with regard to the negative action that you’ve created in the past. So, we have to actually acknowledge our negativity that it is negative.
We don’t deny it anymore that it ever happened or somehow we can justify it or rationalize it. Well it was okay in circumstances he deserved it or whatever. Was negative. Okay? So and we develop what we call a healthy sense of regret.
So this is where the regret comes in. Yeah that’s why sometimes it’s called regret. Some people call it regret. In this regret there’s a great difference between guilt and regret isn’t there? We’re not talking about guilt.
There’s no room for guilt here. The focus is upon the action and not upon the person. We’re not calling to question ourselves as a person, which guilt would. Guilt, you know, that somehow I’m kind of a defective person. And this this what I did was kind of an expression of some kind of basic flaw in my character.
I don’t feel so good about myself and so forth. Here we’re focusing on the action itself that it was negative. We admit, we acknowledge that it was negative. And we develop a healthy sense of regret. Know, I wish I hadn’t done that.
I made a mistake. I added one and one made three and it might have had disastrous consequences but that’s not a reflection on me as a person. I just made a mistake. I wish I hadn’t done that. It’s understandable I was under the control of anger I got so angry I couldn’t resist hitting him or I got so attached I couldn’t resist taking what I took and whatever.
It may be understandable but you can generate a sense of regret. I wish I hadn’t done that. So the power of regret is the most important of the four powers. Was it Denny? It was your — you keep thinking, well, I’ll regret I’ll I’ll apply the four opponent powers tomorrow and I can do whatever I want today.
Well, you I wasn’t here Denny. It was Angela. That is too bad she’s not here. Anyway you get to the point where you use how can you develop a sincere sense of regret in that way of thinking you cannot really generate a sincere sense of regret if you simply keep repeating the action again. You really don’t regret it.
You enjoy it. You enjoy it you know. So a sincere sense of regret is embodied in the thought I made a mistake. I wish I hadn’t done that. There is no way that you could keep repeating, reproducing that sincere sense of regret time after time after a while you just realize you’re just fooling yourself.
You’re not being honest with yourself. There’s no sincerity involved. So you can’t keep simply well I’ll go ahead and commit this negativity today and tomorrow I’ll regret it and then we keep repeating that way. We won’t regret it. It’s the most important of these four powers.
Even if you don’t apply these four powers, even if you never remember anything from this particular teaching and we’ll go over this again when we come to the section on karma. If you feel like you’re committed negative action just develop a healthy sense of regret that’s very helpful and I wish I hadn’t done that. The second power is Ringu Tulku translated as basis and as the Brasseur-lang mentioned we sometimes call it reliance Geshe la used this analogy that when you fall down you use that same when you fall down the ground, you use that you rely upon that ground to pick yourself back up. And this is where the analogy this is why maybe the word reliance is a is a pretty good translation. That there are two objects toward whom we can create a negativity, Buddhas and sentient beings.
So sentient beings is a is really a technical term. It doesn’t include all living beings. It includes all beings except Buddhas. There are Buddhas and the rest of us. Okay?
All living beings who aren’t Buddhas are sentient beings. It’s a little bit of a slight technical term but it’s not synonymous with living beings. Okay? Sentient beings. And so there are two objects toward whom we generally commit negativity, the Buddhas and sentient beings.
With regard to Buddhas, you know, this would be in the this would be, for example, in the context of, you know, having taken some vow or made some promise whether formally or informally to restrain from particular action. You contradict that action. Maybe you took some, a vow not to kill and you went you killed. So this would be a negative action against, with regard to the Buddhas. You know, you kind of you broke your promise, your word.
And the way in which the power of reliance is we use that same object to pick ourselves back up and this would be that recommitting ourselves to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, you know, to the path and those who assist us on the path. So we go for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. It’s like you turn your back on what it is that you value. At some point in our life we clarify for ourselves what we’re about. And part of that is that we want to grow and the goal of our path is Buddha and you’ve turned your back on that in acting in this way and you recommit yourself to becoming that possible you can become and using the methods, the Dharma, and recommit yourself to those who are helping you, to assist in you along the path, the Sangha, you go for refuge.
And the other object is sentient beings and, you know, we we, in harming others, you know, we, we, you know, in the various ways we do, we we that’s not what we’re about. At some point in your life, you’d rather, You’ve clarified for yourself that you’d rather be about compassion and love. And so you’ve turned, know, we have to recommit ourselves rather than harming others to helping others. So we generate the awakened heart. We just generate love and compassion toward those same people we’ve harmed.
Rather than hurting them we do, we aspire to help them to benefit them this is the way we pick up pick ourselves back up we rely upon those same objects that’s a good point I think. I mean these are all terms of these are mental. I think it’s been suggested by teachers, if you can, that it shows a real it would just be a real sincerity and would go even further further in terms of acting as one of these antidotes, one of these powers. So it’s carrying that power even to his physical expression. You know, you wish I hadn’t harmed him and developing love compassion and the way that love and compassion could really be expressed is in actually physically doing something.
But I think it’s good to make amends, to right wrongs if it’s possible. I think that’s in the power of regret. And if you think you made a mistake, if you really think you made a mistake, if you possibly correct that mistake, then that would be even best. So that would carry that power of regret even further. Yeah.
We don’t have so much control over our mind. Don’t know if you ever noticed but we have most of our control. We have some degree of control over our body and some over our speech. So you’re worried about your thoughts. Thought bad thing.
Well I mean amongst the ten unskillful actions is harmful intention so just the thought of harming someone is a negativity but just to think oh yeah maybe he’s stupid or something like that maybe that’s not harmful intention is it? Yeah, but harmful intention is a negativity. You know, the wish to harm somebody even though you don’t act it out. Yeah. So that in itself is a negativity.
So that that would be useful to to try to apply the four opponent four powers too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s quite often the case, isn’t it?
Oh, I see. Yeah, that’s, that’s a good point. I mean they say that you can apply the antidote again and again even to the same negativity. Traditionally there are certain signs that are said that the negativity has been purified. These occur in a dream for example.
You have dreams of flying, wearing white clothes, riding a donkey to the south, drinking milk, drinking milk. And then that’s a sign that the negativity has been purified. Maybe you won’t have these signs. You know, I don’t know. Don’t know.
It’s a good question. And I think it deserves a better answer than I can give. How’s that? Yeah. Yeah.
That sounds fair enough. Yeah. But I mean yeah. So maybe there is a point when you just let it go. But you can you can you can repeat the apply these four powers again and again with regard to the same action.
But maybe there is a point when you let it go even if you don’t have the one of these signs. Now you got problems. You better see somebody. No. I’m joking.
Yeah. There are certain yeah. Certain negative signs actually. Maybe yeah. Something like that.
Maybe that but these signs these dreams these dream signs are when you do a powerful purification practice. If you were doing a Vajrasattva practice, were saying one hundred thousand Vajrasattvas, you’re doing one hundred thousand prostrations. Then you actually look for these these ‘m halfway halfway joking not only halfway these signs might occur in the context of a powerful purification practice. They’re probably not on everyday practice that you’re doing in terms of applying these four powers. Yeah.
I’d like to maybe hear Geshe la, you know, maybe bring that up next week. Yeah. I mean, there’s Ajahn Brahm’s advice that I it’d be interesting. Pardon? And learn from it, not let it go.
Okay. Yeah. I I don’t know. I I think you do come to some kind of you come to terms with it, in fact. But I don’t know if that’s good enough.
That’s a good question and that’s worth bringing up. You mind bringing that next week again? You know, whether how often if with regard to a specific action, when could you in applying the four powers, could you know, was it do you reach a point when it’s no longer necessary to apply those four powers to a particular action, that negative action you’ve created. Yeah. But surely it wouldn’t, you wouldn’t for one action continuously apply for a kind of power because obviously there’s lots of moving actions to purify.
Yeah. You know, if you held onto one, it seems Your list would, you know, surely once you’ve purified it, realize the error, the wrongness. I don’t know if I, I don’t know if I rely on once, to be honest with you. I might I might want to do it more than once. Well, yeah, I can see where maybe once, you know, you might do it a handful of times, but you wouldn’t hang on to it for any rate.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean quite often you do what’s a general disclosure that, you know, because we’ve committed negativities that we’re not even aware of and that and moreover we’ve committed negativities in past lives that we don’t even know we can’t list so you know knowing that these negativities are there and you can develop a general sense of regret around these negativity under the control of attachment, hatred and ignorance. I’ve committed negativities that I wish I hadn’t created because it’s going to result suffering in the future.
So you can do a general sense of disclosure disclosure without being specific. But it’s more powerful if you can be more specific. I don’t know when you’d It’s a good question. So I don’t have a good answer to your question. I don’t have a good answer.
Yeah, that’s general but also you want to you also want to purify you want to bring up negative specific acts that you’ve done I would, I mean ideally Well I mean mean, maybe a thoroughgoing practitioner would review the course of their day at night. And they would review their day and any negativities that they felt they created, would apply these four powers to course of our life. I think it’s useful to apply these four powers again and again with specifically with regard to those. And then, of course, then the general negativities, having developing a sense of I think it’s more difficult to actually generate that sense of regret with regard to general negativities. I think it’s much easier to develop a sincere regret with regard to specific things that you can actually recall, that you actually hurt somebody, you know.
For example, you really you can develop a real sincere sense of regret. But with generalities, think it’s more difficult. I know if you I mean, there are ten cases when you don’t accumulate the negative karma. For example, I mean there’s a list of I don’t know if that’s included. There’s like the karma that the negativities that you create during a dream is not accumulated even though you kill somebody in a dream.
It’s not accumulated. There’s a what else is there? Anyway, there’s a when we come to karma we’ll go into this in detail. And so I don’t know about all these thoughts. Doesn’t sound so right, does it?
Yeah, have a cause. They’re not So all these karmas are ripening. They’re probably produced by karma but we don’t, they are very insignificant karmas I guess you might say. I don’t know, a difficult area. I think what you meant here through the application of the four powers we said that you can destroy the potency of the seed.
And I use this analogy scorching a seed. Yeah? The seed remains. It’s been scorched. It’s lost its potency but there’s still that husk.
Emptiness — realization of emptiness removes the seed. So these seeds even though when their potency has been eliminated they still act as obstructions to various realizations. Cannot themselves they cannot can no longer produce any result but the presence of the seed itself, some kind of residual can only be eliminated by realization of emptiness. So they have some they act they obstruct the mind from gaining certain realizations. So that’s what he’s talking about the fact that the four powers can purify, can harm the potency but only emptiness, realization of emptiness can remove the seed completely.
I don’t know if that Intellectually I sort of It’s pretty hard to understand. I mean the karma is simply our minds are conditioned. And how our minds are being conditioned continuously by advertising, by the things we do, things we and So we come to all our various life situations not with a blank slate, but with a conditioned mind. And so we all react differently to particular stimulus. We each have the same stimulus, but our minds are conditioned to react differently to the stimulus.
And some people see might have a positive reaction, Some people have a negative action with regard to the same stimulus. That’s due to this condition. Our minds are conditioned to react in particular ways, to organize chaos, kind of this world of colors and sounds and shapes, and we are trying to make sense out of it all the time. And we are trying to organize it in various ways, trying to secure ourselves. What is it that how do we go about organizing our reality?
The conditioning factors within our mind. Reality is not given to us. Goodnight. Take care. Drive safely.
So, yeah, so it’s that glass of I don’t know if it’s like a glass of there’s one standard illustration. It’s like glass of liquid. They have a glass of liquid. And to a God, a celestial being, they perceive that particular object as a glass of nectar, and they would experience great bliss by drinking it. A human being would would perceive a glass of water, and, know, maybe they would enjoy that.
It would it would quench their thirst. A mosquito sees it as a place to lay its eggs. A fish sees it as a complete environment. hungry ghosts would perceive it as pus and blood, and they would experience it as revolting. A a hell being would would perceive it as molten lead, and they it would be tremendously painful to them to drink that.
So in a way, have this shared object, but they’re all the way they, due to their conditioning factors in their mind, they have different perceptions. They’re all perceiving that same, what is more or less the same object, a glass of liquid in a variety of different ways. And that’s what we’re all doing in a way. We have certain commonalities that we all there’s a table here for all of us, I I guess. I don’t know.
Maybe I should check up. But we all see it in a slightly different way. But tables don’t don’t make any big difference. But there’s much subjectivity. Our karma is pretty much shared around that.
But there’s certain as we begin to become more subjective that, you know, this I like that person. Oh, you like him? I can’t stand him. You know, so that’s our karma. So these conditioning factors in our mind.
And the way that we think in the past, the way that we’ve thought in the past, the way that we’ve spoken, way that we acted, is conditioning our mind. There are certain ways of acting, speaking, and thinking which condition our mind to interpret our reality in positive way fashion. And we call that skillful karma. That’s the only way because it brings about happiness. That’s the only reason we say that.
Certain ways of conditioning certain conditioning factors in our mind causes us to organize our stimulus. The celestial beings sees a glass of fluid as as nectar. Hell beings sees it as as molten lead. And a certain factor there factors in their mind are causing them to to organize that particular to to react to that particular stimulus and perceive it in a certain way which is seen as attractive. Hell beings see it as very unattractive.
And this is due to their past conditions of their mind, what they’ve done, how they’ve thought in the past. In that, you know, I don’t know. That’s trying to get a handle on what we’re talking about here. So emptiness. Oh, yeah.
It’s all, it’s all empty. Emptiness you can begin to step out of that. Emptiness is that which we no longer condition in our mind. A Buddha has activities. It commits lots of different, you know, helps people.
We call it enlightened activities. But his activities are likened to a bird, the tracks, the trail left by a bird flying in the sky. You ever seen a bird’s trail in the sky? The trail that a bird leaves when it flies through the sky? There’s no trail, is there?
He doesn’t leave any tracks. All his all his actions are completely spontaneous. There’s no effort involved. They’re completely, you know, they don’t leave any residue in his mind. He didn’t you know?
That’s that’s yeah. So he he’s there’s nothing coming from the past, which there’s no conscious effort. It’s all spontaneous. It’s all out of you know, like yeah. Buddha has no intention to help people.
I mean, might sound strange. You know, it’s like a sometimes a Buddha is is likened to a fruit tree. You know, people come along. This fruit doesn’t have any intention to grow fruit. This is what it does by nature.
It’s nature is to grow fruit. And people can come along and they pick and pick it and they can enjoy it and they can be nourished by it. But that’s up that’s that’s on their karmic that’s on their side according to their karma. The tree, it’s just doing its thing. It’s just putting out fruit.
And that’s what a Buddha does. It’s just putting out all these teachings. It’s trying to help people. And whether they pick that fruit, whether they have the karma to be able to enjoy that fruit, that’s from their side. But a Buddha has and it’s not like the tree is trying, Oh, I think I’ll grow this piece of fruit for this guy coming along here.
You know? And it sticks out a branch or something. It just it’s by its very nature, it is beneficial coming from wisdom and compassion. There’s no karma operating. There’s residual from the past.
Anyway, it’s pretty cool, I think. So it’s all all his activities. Can you imagine? All his act all Buddha’s activities, completely spontaneous, but and they’re always beneficial. They’re coming from a place of wisdom and compassion.
So anything a Buddha does is beneficial. And it’s just like this tree. But the Buddha doesn’t think about doing it. He’s just doing that’s that’s that’s he’s just going about doing his thing. Yeah.
Yeah. I was Yeah. I see what you mean. Yeah. I see what you mean.
I see what what you mean. Mean, a Buddha a Buddha You know, because if you say, you know, with with complete a a a tree or, you know, a, know, a stream, a spring that comes out of the mountain and people can nourish themselves on if if they so wish that kind of thing that doesn’t have that dragging of the past and that needing to have an intention and and it’s therefore kind of free from karma kind of thing. Then Yeah. But then I I kinda get the notion that that that situation is transcending of the ethical dualities that we, you know, the yoke of around our neck here in Samsāra Yeah yeah yeah yeah I think so also yeah but Buddha has yeah Yeah. I I I think I think what Geshe la was getting at in terms of positive and negative is that the the the is the evolution of from on the basis of ignorance.
On the basis of ignorance, we, you know, we we see every we, you know, it can everything is inherently inherently existing or intrinsically exist. You know, we do it. We draw a big black line around ourselves. You know, we we we conceive of an independent, isolated, unchanging, solid concrete self. And there’s self over here, and there’s not self over here.
And now there there’s a big black line. There’s a, like, we call it, like, something like the skin encapsulated ego. And now how am I gonna relate with this world out there? We don’t there is, you know, self and other are mutually dependent. Just like high and low, these dualities that you were talking about.
Short and long. Without short, there’s no long. It doesn’t have any meaning. Without high, there’s no low. They don’t have any meaning.
They only gain meaning in dependence upon it, mutually relying upon one another. Likewise, self and other only have meaning. So Buddha would always have that keeps that that understanding nature of things in mind. So he realizes that he is not this isolated other, isolated self, and that we draw an absolute boundary between ourselves and other. Like, we don’t depend upon other.
Other doesn’t don’t depend upon it’s a very notion, you know. So we we have the problem of, well, how am I going to take care of this self over here? How am I going so we if other appears to be enhancing, enhance our existence, other in terms of people or things or whatever, we want to make them a part, a permanent part of ourselves, our own, and we make them we want to make them mine. We don’t want to include them in our territory, on this side of the boundary. If something is distracting, is threatening to our ourself, we want to permanently exclude it, you know, from our territory to get rid of it.
And there’s a sense that we can make something we can include. The ultimate goal of ego, in this sense, perfect egohood, is to become universe. Solid, permanent, concrete include everything. That would, you know, that would be the that’s the dream of the ego. Every that we include everything in the self.
And there would be no problem about relating with I and other because there is only I. Oh, I don’t know where I’m going with that, but anyway. Probably Hitler, a bit. An ego maniac.. an ego maniac. Anyway, so why do we develop attachment and hatred?
Because there is a there’s first there’s what’s inappropriate attention. We see things separate from the self. And whatever the thing itself, we assign certain qualities to it and exaggerate those qualities. You know, there is a conventional reality. That is to say, there is beauty in the world, there’s ugliness in the world.
You know, what you put in the toilet, don’t put on your dinner table and things like that. We we have these conventions in the world. Right? And a Buddha would he would abide by these conventions because that’s the way the world operates and he works in the world as skillfully as possible. But we go on to exaggerate the negativity or the positivity.
So we’re not not relating with the object in accordance with its actual nature. And in dependence upon exaggerating this positive quality, we see that positive quality not as simply a convention, you know, that things but as a positive quality is in the very nature of the object itself. That this this object, by its very nature, has the ability to bring me bliss, happiness. That’s its nature. It’s not just I’m thinking this about it, or it’s just a convention in like the latest fashions.
Know, if you wear olive drab this year, you’re going to look good. We think, no, olive drab is by its very nature beautiful. If I wear olive drab, it will make me happy. It has that intrinsic nature to being able to bring me bliss. And so naturally, we want to make that a part of ourselves.
We want to, you know, we can incorporate that into our sense of identity of who I am, and we can derive a permanent bliss from this object. Because we see that not in terms of its conventional nature, not that the fashion industry has just spent millions of dollars convincing me that that’s the best thing I could wear and that would make me happy. But there’s something about it in its very nature that will make me happy. And we develop desire, attachment. On the other hand, there’s something in the object which by its very nature can will harm me.
We develop aversion, hostility. So it all it’s coming from ignorance, misunderstanding that everything that nothing has an inherent quality. Nothing has an intrinsic nature. It’s all coming from the mind. And how does it come from the mind?
It depends depends upon our karma, you know, how we see things, how we perceive things. It’s your karma to see that as beautiful. When you fall in love, everything that your lover does is beautiful, but that karma won’t last. You know? It it it eventually be exhausted, and you can’t get it back.
You know? Anyway, it’s late. What time what time is it? Yes. That’s our karma.