Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 36-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a striking image: anger cycling back on itself like a crocodile consuming its own tail, feeding until the entire world feels hostile and aflame. He then walks through a detailed death-bed scenario — a dying person freezing, desperate for warmth, whose disembodied mind is drawn compulsively into rebirth in a hell realm — to show how karma’s ripening results actually operate. The session then works methodically through the four types of karmic result (ripening, experiential, functional, environmental) before covering karma’s four operative modes: results are infallible, amplified beyond expectation (illustrated by the butterfly effect and a ball balanced at a hilltop), only experienced if their causes are created, and never dissipated no matter how much time elapses. The talk closes with a promise to cover the four counteracting powers — ways to neutralise accumulated negative karma — in the following session.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 H and M of B 1992 08 19.mp3
UUID: b6aea399-a03a-425a-a34f-db3cae102657
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Buddhism (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-08-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 36.0 minutes
Words: ~4,034
It’s like a recycling of anger and hate. You know, like a crocodile that’s eating its tail. The more it eats, the more it’s nourished and the faster its tail grows. And it keeps this kind of recursive recycling until the the quality of the anger is that we never we’re not even quite sure what we’re angry at anymore. Anger begins to feed on itself and the entire environment becomes hostile and one becomes fiery, one’s entire environment becomes fire and pain.
You know, it’s just this completely You know, we were talking about rebirth, weren’t we? Just the last few discussions and how how the mind is is delinking from the body. And the mind, for example, the mind is you know, you’re becoming cold, you’re dying. It’s very cold, becoming ice cold. They’re putting more blankets on you but still, you’re still cold.
You can’t become warm. And you really wanna become warm. You want to fight some heat, something that’s warm, you’re freezing. And the mind is slowly slipping away from the body, the bond between mind and body is beginning to weaken, and to break. And the mind is completely absorbed and becoming warm and finding some heat.
And slowly, you know, it’s it’s panicky. It’s confused. You only have one desire, one drive, one compulsion that is finding heat, some fire, and the mind is slipping away from the body. The body is beginning to break. And you begin to the body can never become warm again.
How is the body to become warm? How is the mind to be made warm when it no longer has embodiment? And how is it to find how is it to alleviate that distress, that pain, cold, if it doesn’t have a body? The mind is experiencing pain, it’s in distress. It’s going to seek to relieve that distress.
It has to find the only way it can relieve that distress is to find an embodiment which is appropriate to relieving that distress. A type of embodiment which is going to be able to experience a cessation of cold, which is going to be able to be relieved of the pain of cold. An environment which is going to be able to relieve that body of being cold, a body which is heat, an environment which is hotter. And the mind is simply drawn in to karmic influence compulsively without choice, being driven to find a material expression where it can find relief from its mental pain. One is reborn in hell realm where there’s only fire And the pain of cold is released only to be replaced by the pain of heat, of fire.
So that’s the this is the ripening result. Specifically of the action of killing. And the second type of result is a result similar to its cause experientially. So this is a formulation of the teaching as you so, socially you reap. You know, you get back what you put out.
Almost for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. Results similar in cause exponentially. We’re going to experience a result which is similar to the cause that we created. You know, what this is pointing out is that our very specific experience is that everything that we experience has a cause. These causes are similar to the experience.
You know, whether it be wealth or poverty, whether it be beauty or ugliness, whether it be a short life or a long life, They all have their specific causes. You know whether we have loving friends or hateful enemies. You know, like beget like beget like. For example, experientially tolerance brings a beautiful body. Intolerance brings an unattractive appearance.
Miserness brings poverty. Generosity brings wealth. Saving, respecting life brings a long life. Having disrespect for life, taking life brings a short life. The action of caring for others predisposes others to care for us.
So these are, you know, as we do to others, as we do in the external world, we’re going to reap that same, similar result. Cause results which are similar to the cause experientially. We’re going to experience similar results. We’re going to experience results which are similar to the causes that we create. The third type of result is results which are similar to the cause functionally.
So this is very much like to some extent what we’ve been talking about up to now. That there’s a tendency to repeat actions. That when you perform an action, the second time it becomes easier. Each time we commit an action, it facilitates the repetition of that action. It becomes the path of least resistance.
In other words, habits. The more we do something, the easier it is to keep doing it. Committing an action once facilitates its repetition. So for example, functionally perhaps someone enjoyed killing in the past. They’re going to be predisposed to perhaps taking up occupations where they can find ways of repeating, of expressing this tendency.
For example, you know, they’re going to going go in the military, they’re going to become butchers. They’re going to be predisposed to ways which enable them to express the built up tendency of habit. And then built up in the past. They would enjoy hunting for example, or just in general have little regard for life. Fourth type of result is the environmental result.
So this is the specific ecology or the immediate environment which one is born in, one’s surrounding. For example, the environment of one who, the resultant environment of killing is upon taking rebirth in general the human realm, to be reborn in a place where it’s difficult for things to survive, you know, a rough, barren place, where forms have great difficulty in growing. This would be the environmental effect. So with respect to karma, in order that it becomes what has some practical implication for our lives, some practical application to our lives. There is said to be the four distinct modes of karma.
Four distinct modes of karma. You know, this is the way that when we consider karma, it has some meaning to us, aside from some kind of theory, some kind of abstraction? What does it mean on my practical level of dealing in my everyday reality? So these are spoken of in terms of what are called the four distinct modes of karma. The first of these is that the results of actions are infallible.
The results of actions are infallible. So When we talk about karma and various actions, you know, as we’ve mentioned, we’re not making any moralistic judgment as to good or bad. The Buddha, it is said that Buddha taught two things, suffering and the alleviation of suffering. That is to say his path, he used this as a standard in that you know, beyond all philosophicalizing. Philosophizing, fantasizing, theorizing that no one wants to suffer.
This is our experience. So everybody wants to be happy. So taking this as the pragmatic basis of a path, the fact of suffering and the way to alleviate that suffering. So all of the presentation of the past is set up in terms of these two fundamentals, suffering and the alleviation of suffering. So this is, you know, the basic assumption is that actions which bring harm are wrong, are unskillful, are destructive, harm to either oneself or to others.
Actions which promote the well-being of either oneself or others are termed skillful, are termed constructive positive. This is the standard that we’re making use of, whether the action promotes their well-being or harms. There’s no absolute moral judgment being made. So mental states such as hatred, jealousy, spite, anger, attachment, these, that is to say, these various afflictive emotions are experienced in themselves as dis ease, as some level of distress, some disturbance of the natural peace of the mind. They in themselves are experienced as some harm to oneself.
And they have a concordant. When we talked about results are concordant with the cause, that they’re similar in nature, that they in themselves are experienced as dis ease or distress, and they will bring about a result which is similar in nature to themselves, some harmful result. Therefore they’re classified as negative mental action because they’re going to bring about a result which is similar in type to themselves, that is to say some type of harm. And therefore they’re classified from this standard of suffering and happiness as negative. Not only that will they bring about some kind of mental dissatisfaction, but they’re going to precipitate negative physical and verbal action.
You know, such as acting out of killing out of anger, stealing out of attachment, using abusive speech out of jealousy, whatever. And this brings suffering to others. And the reactive result is they act as conditions for our own suffering in the future. By we experience a mental dissatisfaction ourselves, in the immediate experience of anger, of all these very particular emotions, they have a result which is similar in type to themselves, that is to say some type of mental pain for ourselves as a result. And they precipitate negative actions, such as acting out through speech, acting out through the body.
This in turn acts as the condition necessary for these individuals to react toward us, such that they become conditions for future physical and pain for ourselves. But on the other hand mental states such as generosity, love, wisdom are in themselves, these positive states of mind, are in themselves experienced as well-being. As know I call these kind of self authenticating experiences. We call them well-being and call them happy. But they have some kind of inherent positive desirable state quality about them.
Experience essentially is happiness. And they will bring about, therefore we call them positive mental actions. They will have a result which is similar in class to themselves, similar type to themselves. So out of these positive mental states we’re going to experience positive mental results. They are going to predispose us to act out physically and verbally positive types of actions, which are going to have a reactive set of reactive conditions where others are going to act toward us in such a way that they act as conditions for us to experience positive experiences, positive mental happiness in the future.
You know throughout, you know we’ve talked about that throughout nature there’s a consistent similarity of type between causes and results. You know we said that it depends upon a wheat seed, only a wheat plant arises. You know, barley doesn’t grow, corn doesn’t grow, oats they don’t grow. There’s not even the slightest dissimilarity between the type of result and its cause. There’s always a strict concordance between causes and results.
In fact, we can infer what the cause was by knowing the result. You know, we do this every day of our lives quite unconsciously. So there’s an infallible relationship between causes and results. By knowing the result we can infer the cause. Otherwise anything could rise out of anything.
You know, could plant a flower seed and get a glass of water. It wouldn’t be this infallibility, this unfailing relationship between results and causes. All that we experience is a result. And it has a cause. And there is a specific relationship, a type of relationship between the cause and the result.
Like begets like. Pain begets pain. Negative states begets pain. Positive states begets happiness. That there’s an infallible relationship between causes and effect.
So if you’re gaining a conviction in this relationship between actions and the results, we will naturally begin to adopt skillful constructive actions and begin to avoid unskillful, destructive actions. Does that make sense that there is all that we experience, our happiness and suffering, our experiences, They are products. They arise from dependence upon causes. These causes are not haphazard. Are discernible variables which bring about particular results, happiness and suffering.
Those types of actions which bring about happiness we call positive action. Such types of positive actions are exemplified by generosity, love, wisdom, ethics, tolerance. It’s not to say that these are absolute inherently beneficial, but they do have it. They are the types of qualities of mind, states of being, expressions of body, speech and mind which bring about a particular type of result which seems to be desirable, which seems to be meaningful and worthwhile. Other types of actions, experiences such as all our various sufferings, dissatisfactions, disappointments, they have a cause.
These causes are in accordance with the experience of the result. Such types of causes as anger, hatred, jealousy, attachment. Seem they had the nature that they produced these types of cause, these types of results. They are not inherently negative. They are not somehow bad in and of itself, but they predispose the mind to experience negative results.
They bring about destructive effects. Therefore they’re termed unskillful. So I think if we begin to sense some kind of impeccable relationship between causes and results, that there are certain types of classes of actions which bring about negative results, destructive results, pain, certain classes of actions which bring about a positive result, constructive result, happiness. And I think if we present that to the mind then I think to some degree quite naturally we’re going to begin to tend tend away from creating negative action and tend more and more toward creating constructive action. So the first of these four distinct modes of karma, the result of actions are infallible.
The second is results of actions are amplified. The result of actions are amplified. So this is essentially that even insignificant constructive and destructive causes give rise to disproportionately greater results. The increased result in happiness and suffering. And we talked about the fact that our various actions leave karmic imprints upon the mind.
Some type of encoding, some type of impression, latency is placed upon the mind. And that when these are activated, you know, they yield a variety of results, among which are present and unpleasant feelings. So, you know, various latency do not exist independently of one of each other. You know just as I mentioned previously in going in a supermarket, you you can take one can off the shelf and everything is left very much as it was. There exists as it were, All the cans on the shelf is independent of one another.
But these latencies, if one is activated, the activation of one latency can be the condition necessary to activate another and become somewhat of a chain reaction process. One way to begin to know what we’re saying is that even insignificant actions can bring about great results. For example, you know, if a ball were at the crest of a hill, and ball it possesses what is called potential energy. It has a certain mass. It has a certain mass and position.
It’s at the crest of a hill and therefore it has a certain potential energy. And if it’s, you know, if this ball is in equilibrium, it’s not, it’s not moving either way to either side of the hill, but it’s perfectly bound. If it’s perfectly balanced with the crest of the hill, then even a mild breeze blowing could be just enough to imbalance, cause an imbalance. The ball begins to roll down one side of the hill and all of this potential energy becomes translated into kinetic energy. Now just the slightest breeze could overcome this balance and that would bring about, just a slight breeze could bring about a tremendous effect as the ball rolls down the hill.
Or there’s another way of looking at it in terms of what is called the butterfly effect. And this is the butterfly effect is meteorologists. They say that it may become inherently impossible to make long range weather forecasts because of the almost innumerable subtle variables which augment over time. For example they give and why it’s given this name is that they say the simple motion of a butterfly, the action of a butterfly’s wings in France could a month later precipitate a tornado in the United States. That this simple motion of air current set up by a butterfly flapping its wings in France could be augmented over time such that it ends up with the tremendous result of a tornado in the United States a month later.
So this is you’re trying to gain some sense of an idea of how actions can facilitate one another, that they can augment one another, that one slight action can act as a condition to ripen another action, which can ripen another action, as in a chain reaction, or it can simply be enough to cause a balance within equilibrium to move toward in a particular direction instead set a whole chain series of reactions into motion in place. They can be augmented over time like the motion of a butterfly wing. If we gain a conviction in this amplifying nature of action, you know, will begin to tend to adopt even minor constructive actions and begin to avoid even minor destructive actions. So beginning to see that action can have greatly amplified effects, greatly increased effects than what we may expect them to have. Somehow we have this kind of materialistic perception that light minor causes will have minor results.
Heavy causes will have heavy results. But this is saying that’s not necessarily so, that they can have greatly amplified effects over time. The result of actions are amplified. The third distinct mode of karma is the result of uncommitted actions are not experienced. The results of uncommitted actions are not experienced.
So as I said, all products whatsoever are the result of causes are happiness, long life, prosperity, wisdom, love, anything and everything that we may feel worthwhile and desirable. These are all products therefore they all have a cause. Therefore, your experience directly If we do not create the causes for these, we will never experience the result. If you, for example, if you wish a long life, then we must respect and save lives. If we desire prosperity, then we have to practice generosity.
If we seek wisdom then we must make use of our awareness, we have to use our intelligence. In the case of wanting to be loved, it’s not difficult to see that acts of love, acts of caring toward others, predisposes others to care for us, to act lovingly toward ourselves. So if we want a particular experience we have to ensure that we create the causes which bring it about. If we don’t, then we’re not going to experience the result. So the result of uncommitted actions, if we don’t commit the actions, we’re not going to experience the result.
The results of uncommitted actions are not experienced. So if we gain a conviction in this, then whenever a desire for a particular type of result arises we’re going to create the action. We’re going to create the cause which will bring it about. The third, distinct mode of karma. And finally the fourth, actions once committed are not dissipated.
Actions once committed are not dissipated. Actions once committed are not lost, are not somehow wasted. However long elapses between the time of committing an action and its latency will not be lost. When that latency encounters a correct condition, that latency, it will be activated and the result will be experienced. I think I’ve used this analogy before, but it’s a fairly good one In terms of the fact that they’ve had they have found their seeds, wheat seeds in the pyramids of Egypt, which are five thousand years old.
And they’ve taken these wheat seeds and they they’ve put them in soil and they’ve watered them and they sprout and they grow. So even over five thousand years old, five thousand years, these wheat seeds, they maintain their potency. When they met the correct conditions, that potency was activated and the result the plant came about. So likewise, are various latencies or seeds within our mind. For example, at this present moment you may not have any desire in your mind.
At least they manifest desire. But there is a latency of desire within your mind. There is a seed of desire in your mind. How can we know this? Because if you, for example in my case, you put a piece of chocolate cake in front of me, some kind of desire arises in my mind.
So I can look back, know, mentioned that we can know the results from, we can know the causes from the results. So put a piece of chocolate cake in front of me and desire arises. That means that there must have been some potency, some potential in my mind for desire to arise. There must have been some germ, what we call a seed, a desire within my mind which was not active, which was not being expressed, which was not manifest until it met the correct condition. When that correct condition, a piece of chocolate cake, when it came, was presented, it came in contact with it, that seed, that germ, that whatever, that potency was activated, became expressed, desire arose.
So the same in terms of these various latencies of action that we have these seeds within our mind, the latencies, the predisposition, the potency, the potentiality of all of these actions and within our mind, implanted within our mind, like encoded within our mind, like DNA molecule has some information that comes in contact with the correct condition, expresses some, it interchanges with its environment in some way, relates in a very specific fashion with its immediate situation, its immediate material environment, creating new constructs. So unless these potency, these seeds are acted on by a destructive force, they will remain and retain their potency just like these seeds from the pyramids of Egypt until they meet the right cooperative condition, until they meet, until they’re activated. You know they don’t somehow get lost in the course of taking rebirth or they don’t get misplaced. They don’t wear out. They’re not dissipated in other words.
No matter how long of the time may elapse between the creation of an action and meeting with the quick positive condition, the cooperative condition, those seeds will maintain their potency. So unless they’re acted upon by a destructive force. In terms of destructive forces, for example, in terms of positive actions, these latencies, these seeds of positive actions can be destroyed by the force of anger or the force of misguided regret. That’s one of the reasons why we dedicate the positive energy that we create in order to as it were seal, give it some direction where it’s not able, the force of our anger, force of any type of misguided regret that we might generate is not able to destroy the potency of these karmic seeds. And in the case of negative action we can destroy them.
And I was hoping, well, we’re going to have to talk about that next week. In terms of that we all have within our mind the latency, the seed of the negative actions that we’ve created in the past. And that when these negativity, these latencies or these negative actions meet with correct cooperative conditions, we experience a particular type of feeling, a suffering feeling as a result, a particular painful situation, some type of dissatisfaction, some type of suffering experience. And we all have these seeds within our mind. But we can implement what are called the four counteracting powers.
The four counter forces in order to it’s like it said where it’s described as like taking a seed and scorching it such that the seed loses its potency it’s not able to germinate. There’s no cooperative condition which can cause it to ripen which can activate it. And this is what is done by means of the four forces, which we’ll talk about next week. So let’s drink a cup of tea, and then we can have a discussion.