Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A glass of fluid perceived as refreshing water by a human, nectar by a celestial being, boiling blood by a hungry ghost, and molten lead by a hell being — same object, radically different experiences — is the concrete image Ven Jampa Gendun uses to make karma vivid in this 38-minute session. He opens with impermanence: not only physical death but the everyday “small deaths” — lost jobs, collapsing relationships, unwanted change — asking what inner resource carries us through transition. He then works systematically through karma: its definition as conditioned action and mental latency, four types of karmic effect (ripening, experiential, functional, and environmental), and four practical modes, with sustained focus on the invariable relationship between action and result. The session’s recurring message is that we are not victims — our experience is shaped by our own past actions.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 HMA 1996 10 16.mp3
UUID: b200c6e7-afee-4b91-8575-6e3209deddcc
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1996-10-16
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 38.4 minutes
Words: ~5,445
We are very lucky people. Yeah. That we have everything that we need to avail ourselves of our own potential, to realize our own potential. But this chance isn’t going to last forever. It’s definitely that we’re going to die.
And we simply don’t know when. The time of our death is uncertain. Beginning to question, well, you know, what is of any use at the time of my death? What is it that can actually help? And your loved ones can’t help you, you know, no matter how much how sincerely they may wish to.
There’s nothing that they can do. They can’t go with you. They can’t hold your hand. No matter your material wealth. No matter what you’ve gathered together over the course of your life, you can’t take one CD with you.
Not possible. And even this on your own body, this oh, we take such nice care of, you know, lotions and perfume, get up of good food and vitamins and nutrients. Even that someday going to be something more or less like a slab of meat in a butcher’s shop. It’s nothing more than that. It’s not going to be of any use.
It’s only development of our own mind and the degree that we’ve grown in the course of our life, which is going to be able to help us at the time of our death. And, you know, we don’t have to even consider it. I mean, it’s important to at some level, but at another level, we can we can look at the at an at the these small deaths which occur over the course of our lives. You know, what why is it some people are willing to invite change into their life? And why are some people so afraid of it, you know, that they want to hold on to the past?
Why do some spouses stay in dysfunctional relationships? Why do some people stay on stay in jobs which are killing them day slowly, day by day? You know, the fear of change, the the unknown, the new possibilities. What is it that causes us to, to invite change in our life? And when our these small deaths which occur over the course of our life, you know, when our entire value system, all our securities are taken away from us, all that we’ve known is some way lost, either voluntarily or involuntarily, isn’t there anymore.
You know, what can we depend upon? What can see us through change, transition? Only our own minds, the degree that we’ve developed it, our positive attitudes, to the degree that we’ve grown, that we can find some kind of refuge inside of our own self. And that can give us some kind of confidence that we’re going to we aren’t quite sure what’s coming, but we have a sense we’re going to land on our feet on the other side of the change. And therefore, we’re willing to not only allow change to occur, but to invite it into our life, to systematically cultivate it in the form of a path, which is a way to systematically change your mind and thereby change your life and thereby change the experience and the quality of your life.
But what is it what kind of life are we creating for ourselves? You know, what are the overall patterns of our thinking and our behaving? What kind of actions are we involved in? So this brings us to our present subject that we’re discussing, and we’ve discussed it in part. karma.
If you think again and again about these inevitable effects, so this is introducing the notion of karma. karma, as we’ve mentioned, as we’ve talked about before, simply means action, activity, work. karma is a special case of the general law of cause and effect. Buddhism is very much concerned with the law of cause and effect. It’s very, you know, that concern with dependent arising, that things arise in dependence upon others, factors than themselves.
They arise dependent upon causes and conditions, for example. And if we want to create an effect, if we want to create some kind of result, some kind of product, then we have to begin to look at creating the cause. And it’s quite in a systematic, quite rational, quite reasonable way to approach the problem of suffering and the finding of happiness in life. It’s it’s not something willy nilly. It’s not something which occurs by chance or is brought to us by some divine power, but through our own actions, we create our own destiny, our own experience in life.
Part of this is concerned with karma. karma is concerned with the cause and effect with internal to sentient beings. You know, there’s cause and effect occurring within nature, like a like a tree falls down from a like a branch falls from a tree. That’s simply the the ongoing process of cause and effect within nature itself. But if there’s a person standing under that branch when it falls, then that’s explained in terms of karma because that is an experience internal to sentient beings.
So, you know, karma is all of the of the shapings which condition our minds. You know, all of our you know, our minds aren’t blank slates. They are they are conditioned by our past thinking, by our past behaving. They are conditioned by our cultural condition, our social condition, and conditioning within the womb, our genetic codes, all of these factors which shape who we are. You know, we are in very much, to a large extent, our karma.
All of these forces which are interacting, influencing, determining to a larger extent what we think, what we do, what we actually experience and feel. This is very much our karma. But so but essentially, karma means action. You know? Picking up a glass is an action.
It also refers to the residue, some kind of latency which is left upon the mind, the consciousness. When an action ceases, it deposits a latency upon consciousness, and the continuum of the consciousness carries this latency. It’s very much like a seed, like a flower seed. A flower seed, you know, a seed is characterized by a certain potential. It it carries information.
In this case, some kind of chemical material. It has, like, a chemical code. When a seed is placed in earth and then watered, Due to this, you know, this configuration of this genetic material, this information, it begins to interact with this environment in a very specific manner, begins to draw nutrients out of the soil. Different molecules are are begin to are begin are begin to organize in a very specific fashion, begins to grow, in other words. Likewise, with these karmic latencies within our consciousness, you know, this past evolutionary history which is imprinted, which is encoded within our minds, when it meets with specific conditions, people, things, situations, it it triggers, activates ways of thinking.
It begins to, ways of reacting, ways of perceiving, ways of experiencing the feeling. We begin to organize our our world among specific lines using specific rules. We begin to have it draws us into ways of behaving, of speaking, and and and acting. You know, karma is very much the conditioning influence of our lives, why we feel and experience what we do, why we think and know what we do. You know, it’s a very profound concept because, you know, one of the fundamental notions of Buddhism is that the world doesn’t exist objectively out there independent of our mind, that knowing is an organizing into the known.
You know, what we know, what we come to know is very much dependent upon ideas and beliefs within our own mind, our own karma, how we’re organizing our world about this. You know, some people might see the glass as half full. Other person might see it as half empty. You know, perhaps that’s not a significant difference. But if you if you if you extend that to the way our attitude towards life in general, some people see the world as benevolent, as supportive, as full of goodness.
Other people see it as threatening, as hostile, as full of evil. The same world is just perceived quite differently. What is it that determines their perception? Why is it that one person has this one attitude and the other another completely opposite? That’s part of their karma.
The conditioning factor is within their own mind. But this can extend to all of our everyday life, all of our various experiences, our various attitudes. The way that we organize our experience, the way that we look upon the world is all viewed through our karma. It’s shaped by our karma. It’s determined by our karma.
So our karma much it is fundamental in how we’re going to experience life and what type of karma are we creating, what kind of latencies are we implanting, what what kind of behaviors are we involved in. We’ve looked at some of the different types of effects of karma in terms of, you know, karma as as cause, producing a specific type of effect. We talked we talked about four types of effect. One was the ripening effect. Ripening effect is the overall realm in which we come to know.
At the moment of death, we are a particular karma, karmic seed, will ripen. That’s why the time of death is considered such a crucial moment in the course of this life. A propelling karma will be ripening, will throw us into a particular type of rebirth. That’s part of ripening karma. The overall quality of that type of rebirth and the general patterns that we experience in the course of that life is called completing karma, another type of ripening karma.
So the the general realm of our perception in which we come to exist and the general patterns of how we perceive and how we the general quality of our existence is part of ripening karma. And there was as another of these four effects of karma, the effect which is experientially similar to the cause, you know, experientially similar to the cause. All this means is that as you sow as you sow, you reap. The experiential effect of killing is to have a short life. The experiential effect of generosity is to have prosperity.
There is always a relationship between the type of behavior, these patterns within our mind, and the type of results that we experience. Here we’re talking about we will experience results which are very much in keeping with the types of behavior that we are thinking. If you’re if you’re a loving person, you will experience love in return. And then it’s not too difficult to think in these terms. But we it’s necessary as we’re going to go further tonight that to begin to, you know, actually analyze and begin to take control.
You know, the essential message of karma is that we are responsible, that we are not victims, that the world is not haphazard or it’s not preordained, is not outside of our power. Our destiny is in within our own control. That’s the essential message of karma, that if we can intercede skillfully in this process of cause and effect, we can begin to shape the quality of experience that we go through in the course of our life. If we begin to intercede skillfully, you know, with some awareness of what we want and how we go about getting it, we can do that. It’s in our control.
It’s not out of our control. And we aren’t victims. That’s the main message of karma. Second type of effect or third type of effect, the effect which is functionally similar to its cause. So the second was the effect which is experientially similar to its cause.
That means we experience very much what we put out. This third type of effect is that the the effect is functionally similar to its cause. This simply means that that there’s a tendency to repeat actions, that one of the effects our actions is to repeat the same action, that doing it once facilitates doing it again. You know, if if a person has committed the action of killing, for example, in the past, they will have a tendency or predisposition, an inclination to take up occupations like like a soldier or a butcher where they can begin to repeat the same types of behavior. So the notion that doing an action once facilitates or makes it easier.
There’s more of a tendency to do it again and again and again and again. And we become addicted to certain types of behavior. This is one of the this is the functional effects of karma. And then finally, of these four types of effects of karma, is the governing effect. Governing effect Sometimes it is referred to as environmental effects.
And this is the quality of the immediate resources that we have available to ourselves, the type of environment that we’re born into, that we experience. For example, it’s said that one of the governing effect of killing is that one will take rebirth in a place where things have crops, plants have a hard time growing, surviving. Medicine doesn’t work very well. It’s not potent. There’s a difficulty in general of surviving, and there’s a difficulty of health.
There’s a certain bareness. The actual physical environment will be barren, will be difficult to support life. So these are the qualities of effects that we can experience. So we’ve talked about these in the past. You know, to if you know, the the notion, as I said, if we can intercede skillfully within this this process of cause and effect, then we can begin to to shape our future.
So there has to be some kind of practical implication of karma. You know? What is it that we can actually do once we begin to maybe develop some kind of conviction that there is this relationship between our experiences and what we’ve done in the past. This this is what’s called the four distinct modes of karma. So I don’t think we’ve covered this yet.
So this is some new material that we haven’t talked about yet. The four distinct modes of karma. Is this okay? Are you following? Some of this material we’ve covered before.
So this is kind of a very quick review. The four distinct modes of karma. The first of these and it makes a difference, I think. It’s I think these are difficult to see. They’re most of karma is what are called extremely hidden phenomena.
There are three levels of phenomena or three levels of phenomena. There’s what’s called obvious, slightly hidden, and extremely hidden. Yeah. Obvious, like a glass of water. I can see it with my eye consciousness.
No problem. I don’t need to it doesn’t take we don’t have to, you know, receive a teaching on it that this glass of water exists. I can know it quite readily for myself. Another level of phenomena, which the first realization of it is gotten at by means of logic, by inference, not by direct perception, for example, eye consciousness, seeing the glass. Slightly hidden phenomena.
The first time we realize it, we have to realize it by means of inference, by some type of logical reasoning. For example, impermanence, emptiness, the back of your head. Think about it. You’ve never seen the back of your head directly. You have to infer that there.
And here, that’s not a very good example. Emptiness is emptiness, selflessness. These are gotten at by logical reasoning initially. Eventually, we want to develop a direct perception. Just like we see the glass with the eye consciousness, we want to be able to see emptiness with the mental consciousness directly, but this might require some time.
But there is another class of phenomena called extremely hidden phenomena and this is very much a part of what karma is classified. So a great deal of this is simply it’s it’s difficult to to get at the logic of it. It’s difficult to get at the reason. We have to get a sense of it. We can get a feeling of it.
But a great deal of it simply depends upon authoritative scriptures, descriptions which have been set out. But I think we can begin to approach it. I think we can begin to reason it out and have a sense, some kind of intuitive sense about it. So these four distinct modes of karma. The first of these is that the effect of an action is invariable.
The effect of an action is invariable. The second is the effect of an action is increased. The effect of an action is increased. And then thirdly, the effect of an uncommitted action the effect of an uncommitted action is not experienced. The effect of an uncommitted action is not experienced.
And then, fourthly, an action once committed is not dissipated. An action once committed is not dissipated. An action once committed is not dissipated. So, you know, these are these are, like, the practical applications of the theory of karma, the law of cause and effect, the actions as causes. You know, I think it’s useful to think in simply the fact that we overlook that happiness is a product, suffering is a product.
All products have causes. Our happiness simply does not arise haphazardly by chance. It arises in dependence upon specific variables. What are those variables? Our own past actions.
Generally, where do we where do we generally assign the causal the cause of our happiness and suffering out there, him or her or this thing or this situation. From the point of view of Buddhism, these simply are cooperative conditions. No doubt we need cooperative conditions. But the main cause, the substantial cause, is the conditioning factors within our own mind. Why?
Because many of us could we can reason this out from the point of view that many of us can experience the same cooperative conditions, the same external conditions, but experience it in a very different fashion in terms of our feeling about it. You know, I’ve mentioned this before, but the the traditional example is that if we had a glass of fluid, a human being would perceive that glass of fluid as a glass of water and would experience it as being refreshing. Maybe if they had rabies they would have a great deal of dread of it. If you had hydrophobia or rabies, you would have great fear of water. A celestial being would perceive that same glass of fluid as nectar and would experience it as bliss.
A hungry ghost and we’re going to talk about these realms very soon in their nature and how how they arise. A such a hungry ghost would experience this same glass of fluid as passing blood and would experience it as repulsive, as disgusting. A hell being would experience it as molten lead and would experience it as extremely painful. A mosquito would see it as a place to lay its eggs. A fish would perceive it as a place to live.
You know, the you know, what was what isn’t what is from an objective point of view, seemingly the same objective fact is experienced quite differently by these different beings. The glass of fluid is the cooperative condition. The reason it’s experienced so differently is due to their variations in karma, these internal differences in the conditioning factors within our own mind. Now we know this. You know, we can we can have we can both know or three people can know the same person.
But it’s more or less the same person, but they experience them quite differently. One one can say, well, you know, he’s a great person. He’s really a nice guy. The other one says, how can you stand him? Wow.
This why? Why are these differences more or less the same person but experienced differently by different people? There’s some internal factor which is causing that variation. This internal factor is karma. This internal factor is conditioned by our past actions, our past ways of thinking, our attitudes, our ways of speaking, behaving.
The first of these four types of distinct modes of karma. The effect of an action is invariable. The effect of an action is invariable. So this is in classifying an action, a particular action, as being positive and negative, as being skillful and unskillful, we’re not making any moral judgments. It it you know, it’s sometimes said that the Buddha only taught two things, suffering and the way to get out of suffering.
You know, that’s what the Buddha was quite that’s what the Buddha was most interested in. He left the rest to the philosophers of his time, you know, whether there was a god or not, whether there was a beginning to the universe or not. He said, I’m I just want to know suffering and whether it can be gotten rid of. This is you know, this was on the basic practical assumption that nobody wants to suffer. Everybody wants to be happy.
Know, whatever your theology, whatever your religion, whether you believe or don’t believe in God, whether you believe in religion or not, this is basically the human experience. We all have we all instinctually, innately wish for happiness and not to suffer. That’s almost what we mean by sentient life, by mind itself, this tendency. So following directly upon this basic assumption, those types of actions which are conducive to positive states, to happiness, to well-being, are termed constructive, are termed skillful, right. Those types of actions which are conducive to to pain are are termed negative actions, unskillful actions, destructive actions, wrong actions, you know, simply by definition.
No no other reason. You know, There’s there’s no moral judgment being made. It’s simply that we want to be happy. Therefore, those type of actions which are going to bring us happiness, we call them positive actions. We don’t want to suffer.
Therefore, we call those types of actions which have as their result, their effect, suffering, we call them negative. No other reason than that. They’re not negative and positive for any other reason than the type of results that they bring. So mental states such as generosity or love and wisdom, these are benefiting attitudes which motivate skillful types of physical and verbal actions such as giving out of generosity or performing service out of love or teaching out of wisdom. These eventually will have as their ripening result the experience of some type of happiness for the agent of whoever is involved in performing those actions.
On the other hand, mental states such as attachment and hatred and jealousy motivate us to act unskillfully, you know, verbally. For example, you know, using abusive language out of jealousy, you know, stealing out of attachment, killing out of hatred. These have as a ripening result that the person, the agent of those actions, whoever it is that performed that action, you know, there there exists there’s some kind of residue, some kind of impression, latency left on their mind upon committing that action. When they meet with a proper the appropriate objective condition, that latency, that potential, just like the seed, will begin to will induce certain ways of thinking, certain feelings, certain types of emotions, certain reactive patterns within the mind will occur, which which will induce states of feeling of suffering, of unhappiness, of pain in the case of negative action, negative karma. So there’s always a similarity.
We’ve discussed this before when we talked about rebirth. There’s a similarity of type between causes and conditions throughout nature. This this is a you know, there’s not even the slightest dissimilarity. For example, you know, a a a wheat seed will produce a wheat plant. It won’t produce a plant of even a slight variation.
It won’t produce barley. It won’t produce oats. It won’t produce rye. It even slightly variations various other types of plants. That there’s an invariable relationship between the type of seed and the type of result which arises from that seed.
You know, we use this every day of our lives, this this knowledge of this of this of this relationship between a cause and its effect. You know, if if there’s a storm, for example, and lights go out, we infer that, you know, that the that the power lines maybe have blown down. If if you if you if you’re on a trip and you drink some strange water and you get a stomachache, you think, oh, I I had a stomachache because I drank that water. That that water wasn’t so clean perhaps. There was a there was a relationship.
There’s some kind it just it didn’t happen haphazardly, you know, fact that you had a stomachache. And you can trace back the causal process to its to its initial cause, this particular glass of water. And we use that knowledge every day in the course of our life, that there is a similarity a type between a cause and its effect that certain types of causes will produce certain types of effects, that the world is not simply chaotic, that there are these consistent relationships occurring throughout the world, throughout the universe. Mental and physical actions as causes are no different than external causes about us. They also produce a very specific type of effect.
Our actions produce various experiences and there is an invariable relationship between there is a similarity of type between the these actions and their effects. So in dependence upon skillful actions, only happiness is experienced, never suffering. It’s almost by definition. Independent in dependence upon unskillful actions, only suffering is experienced, never happiness. So the experiential quality of an effect is consistent with the quality, the type of its cause.
You know, if it didn’t any difference to ourselves whether we suffered or we’re happy, then it wouldn’t make any difference what we did, what we do. But it does. And the practical fact is that we don’t want to suffer, that we do want to be happy. Therefore, it makes a tremendous difference what we do and do not do because that is what we do and don’t do determines whether we’re happy or not happy. And it’s kind of simple minded, but it’s kind of a transcendental simple mindedness perhaps.
We are the agents of committing our actions. What we do and don’t do will determine our experiences as the recipients and as objects of those results. So if we can gain a conviction in this relationship that there is invariable and by invariable, mean: from a wheat seed, only a wheat plant arises, not oats, rye, or barley. So there is an unchanging, consistent, unfailing relationship between the type of cause and the result. Our actions act as causes.
What we think, what we say, what we do are actions. They will bring about a result. This result is consistent with the type of action. If it is a skillful action, it will be a skillful result. That is, say, some type of happiness.
If it’s an unskillful action, it will bring about an unskillful result. That is to say, some type of suffering. So if we gain a conviction in this in invariable relationship between actions and their effects, then when you know, if we really think that this is the case and we can check up within nature, we can check up, you know, with the world about us and how it actually in fact runs, that there is an invariable relationship, that we make use of this unconsciously every day of our lives and and getting along in the world. If we gain this conviction, then we’re going to naturally tend to adopt skillful actions, you know, purposely, consciously go out of our way to create skillful actions and to avoid unskillful actions because the practical matter of this of it is we don’t want to suffer. We want to be happy.
So there were you know, once once the the reality of the situation is shown to us, then our own basic sanity, our own ability to to know the difference between right and wrong, to be able to use our discriminative awareness will begin to find expression in our everyday life. We, you know, we won’t have to resort to a great deal of self oppressive behavior in ways of putting ourselves in some kind of spiritual straightjackets if there’s wisdom. If you know you’re going to be burnt by putting your hand in the fire, you don’t need a lot you don’t need a lot of coaching to keep you from putting your hand in the fire quite naturally. You You won’t have to force yourself not to put your hand in the fire. If you it becomes apparent, once you see the relationship, you know, once it become you it becomes part of your wisdom.
Anyway, maybe we’ll we’ll look at the other. We’ll continue with karma next week. The effect of an action is increased. So actions are, you know, are what is shaping us. Our consciousnesses are simply not blank slates.
When we come to a situate you know, the very world that we perceive out there is very much dependent upon our own minds, very much the way that we organize, you know, this this the world about us. This rules that we make use of to make sense of our world. All of our experiences are are feelings. The very fact of our embodiment are consequences of the way are being shaped, are being influenced by these past conditioning factors that we’ve implanted in our minds. You know, we are continually conditioning our mind.
And how are we conditioning? Are we creating the causes of happiness for ourselves, or are we simply continuing to create the causes of suffering? We have to begin, to some extent, to reorientate the source of our problems. The things, the people, the situations are merely the cooperative conditions, the substantial causes of our own mind, the way that we perceive, what causes us to view and experience these things the way that we do. The external conditions, people’s situations trigger, catalyze these karmic potencies within our mind.
They are objective conditions, but they aren’t the determinant of the quality of our experience. That is determined by the condition factors within our mind, our past actions, our karma, and we can begin to control. We can begin the type of karma that we’re implanting in our mind. We can begin to remove those dysfunctional karmas that we’ve already planted in our mind. We don’t have to be victims.
We can begin to create a type of world that we want for ourselves. So we’re going to dedicate the positive karma that we’ve created for ourselves. We’ll talk about that next week. But the fact karma can be destroyed, both positive and negative. But if we dedicate the positive karma, then it’s said that we, in some way, help to avoid destroying it through anger and misguided regret.
So this is one of the reasons for our dedication. You know, we give this positive energy that we’ve created together, some direction, something really positive, something worthwhile, not just you know, I am our goal is goes beyond chocolate cake. It’s something greater than that. Beginning with the long life prayer for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In the land circled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being.
Powerful Chenrezig Tenzin Gyatso, please remain until the end of cyclic existence. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual master and lead each and every living being to that awakened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakened heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish but increase more. Part of the format of evening is that when a those who wish, we quite often get we we get a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, and we make a little circle, and we we have a discussion group. So you’re more you’re all quite welcome to join the discussion group.
If not, have a good week. Okay?