Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. “Are you your body or do you have a body?” — the question Ven Jampa Gendun poses during a guided meditation partway through this 131-minute session crystallizes his central theme: that genuine inner change requires examining what we take for granted about ourselves, not merely accumulating information or following rules. He opens by naming two causes that motivate real transformation: constructive anxiety — the recognition that the same painful patterns keep recurring — and faith, which overcomes fear of the unfamiliar. The session’s main doctrinal content works through five criteria that determine how heavy a karma is: the intensity of the motivating affliction, the manner of the action, the presence of antidotes, adherence to wrong view, and the nature of the object, with examples showing why actions toward parents, teachers, or the Sangha carry exceptional weight.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 3PA 2007 05 07.mp3
UUID: afd1acdd-6040-4db4-8d3c-e09106c15f79
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2006-2007 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2007-05-07
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 131.2 minutes
Words: ~12,179
Can you tell me if you can hear me okay? Okay, this is a new system. How is everybody? Good. We have to begin by, is that too loud?
That’s good. By adjusting our motivation. We were discussing the fact that in bringing about change, in opening ourselves to explore other possibilities, other avenues, in fact, types of refuges other than the ones that perhaps we’ve been investing our energy and our time and our resources, our life in because perhaps they aren’t working for us as we might like them. We have to there are two basic causes, and one of these causes is a sense of constructive anxiety, and it’s some kind of unease, some undercurrent of anxiety, and it just seems like we keep going through the same, okay. We keep falling over the same cushions again and again.
We keep going, you know, keep, the same patterns seem to be reoccurring one way or another in our life, the same outcomes in one version or another. We don’t seem to be learning or we keep missing the lesson that life is continually bringing us or we seem to be dismissing the lesson or making the same mistakes even against our better judgment. You know, pattern of mistakes is a call to change, not to make some kind of adjustment or simply to acquire, find a new partner or make more money or move to another house or another car or another roadside attraction to keep us distracted for a while. But it’s necessary that we bring about some kind of inner change in terms of our ideas, our opinions, our attitudes. But we don’t want to change.
I think we have to recognize that at some level there’s a resistance to change, you know, to the new, to the unfamiliar, the foreign. We like to stick to what we’ve already known, you know, be it ever so humble and so full of pain. Still it’s home. It’s the familiar. At least we know what we can expect, more or less, more or less.
You know, things could get worse, even though they aren’t so good now, so why take a chance? So, you know, what I’m talking about isn’t something more than simply curiosity or speculation or gathering of knowledge. I’m talking about change. And there were these two basic causes. One is when you get sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Think necessity is the mother of invention when you really hit bottom. Maybe we don’t have to hit bottom because we’re intelligent. If we use our intelligence, we can learn from our past experiences and we can infer or extrapolate to what’s happened to ourselves in the past and understand that if nothing changes, why should I expect anything different in the future? If my ways of thinking, my ideas, my refuges are consistent, the same as they were in the past, why should my experiences be any different in the future? It is this constructive anxiety which overcomes our sense sense of unfounded hope, a groundless hope, wishful thinking.
That these holes in our life, these difficulties that we keep falling into, are going to go away all by themselves, that things are going to get better as if all that were necessary to make them better were wishing and were making them so. And all that really ever changes in our life is what it is that we’re currently hoping for, what it is that we’re currently wishing for. So we have to change, but we don’t want to change. So we have to begin to create the causes for change, you know, is the law of cause and effect. The other primary cause for helping us to bring about this inner change, you know, exploring other possibilities in terms of other refuges, other ways of being approaching our life is faith.
Faith overcomes our sense of fear around the unknown, around the unfamiliar. Change is always frightening, even to move into a new house. It’s one of the most stressful experiences that people ordinarily experience when they go through a divorce. It’s fearful change. So what is it that brings us what is it that would help us to invite change in our life?
That’s what we’re doing. To practice a path is to consciously involve ourselves in a systematic method of changing our minds, our ways of thinking, our behaving. We’re consciously trying to change ourselves, and it’s not an easy task. I’ve been in this business maybe a little longer than most of you have, and I can testify. It’s my experience.
And it has to be something more than speculation. Oh, it’d be nice to be a warm and loving person, wise, you know. This beneficent smile, this wisdom, you know. Be great, wouldn’t it? Gee, wouldn’t that be nice?
Alright, that’s not going bring much change. Or just gathering more information, like as if becoming an encyclopedia made you wise or can make you loving or compassionate. So the other necessary cause is faith. Know, having faith in the process that we’re involving ourselves in, the outcomes in ourselves, that we can change. We have to have some kind of confidence, some kind of trust.
We have to believe in the possibility of a better way of life for ourselves, that we can change and become more of the type of person we want to be, and moreover, commit ourselves to that. And it is a consistent commitment to the person that we want to become. And who we are now is what we have done. What we do now is what we will become. We can begin to make a habit of the person that we want to be in the future.
Ten years from now, twenty years from now, a lifetime from now. So I guess what I’m trying to point maybe sometimes in my introductory pieces here in this welcome in these motivational, trying to adjust our motivation. Sometimes I think maybe I over belabor, I overdo the point. Don’t know. But I know it’s something for me and something that my teacher said, continue to talk about in terms of our motivation.
You know, I think Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who is the spiritual director of the FPMT, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahāyāna Tradition, which Buddha House is a part of, is a member You know, if he were to give a ten day meditation course, a retreat, he’d probably spend nine days on motivation and then eventually he’d get around to the subject matter. Faith. And I talked about the necessity, trying to emphasize the necessity of change. And that’s what we’re trying to do. It’s bloody hard.
But we have to keep coming back to that. It’s not enough simply to learn more, to gather more information or to be good boys and girls, you know, obeying the rules, signing the membership, paying your dues, that’s not going to change anything, essentially. Changing the mind, seeing the necessity for it, and opening ourselves up and working at the means to do it. So, you know, this emphasis on the need to change. You know, for example, I’ll try to give you an example, and I try not to belabor the point.
You know, for example, in Buddhism, growth, change, the positive change that we’re trying to bring about, this traveling of the path, very much entails or one of the emphases of Buddhism is the development of love and compassion, isn’t it? We talk a lot about love and compassion. You know, love and compassion, attitudes of altruism, kindness, caring are seen as an integral part of the path itself. You know, it’s an indispensable goal, indispensable motivation behind our working positively with others, and they are in and of themselves, you know, being a compassionate, loving person. So, but even, you know, we can set aside Buddhism altogether and just talk about in simply a secular sense, a humanistic sense, that love and compassion, this altruistic attitude is necessary if we’re only to find some kind of meaning and connection with others in our life, a good life.
You know, we don’t have to talk about Buddhism or religion or spirituality. Just being a kind person, a caring person, doesn’t it lead you to have an infinitely better quality of life. So when we talk about the development of love and compassion in just these ways that we do, we can easily begin to think about love and compassion as some some kind of isolated factors, some kind of independent functions of our minds that we should make effort in cultivating. Just like you want to make effort in cultivating a particular variety of flower in your garden. You know, there’s kind of this unexamined assumption that we can stand apart from these mental flowers of love and compassion that we’re trying to grow in the garden of our mind.
That we can remain relatively the same person and we can develop love And on good days, you know, on special occasions we can hand out these beautiful blooms of love and compassion to our best friends, those who have been nice to us. You know, it’s as if we have a sense that we stand apart from change. I can remain relatively the same person as I am now, but I’m going to get grafted onto myself love and compassion, and I can use of that love and compassion as and when I feel like it, when it’s convenient, when it suits my purposes. You know, the but we are in fact, we’re not isolated egos as we might appear to ourselves to be. We are It’s just that as part of our Buddhist training, we are intentionally to cultivate love and compassion, but more importantly, we are to become loving and compassionate people.
You know, people, you know, we’re not trying to acquire another quality, even the quality of love and compassion, but we’re trying to be compassionate, to be loving, you know, to be people who are aware of, who are sensitive to, you know, are concerned with others, others’ happiness and others’ suffering. You know, our compassion kind of permeates other areas of our life. It changes our ways of thinking and behaving. Love and compassion color various other qualities within our mind, within ourselves. So, love and compassion are in some sense living even when they are not manifest in our mind.
They pervade our entirety of our being, our perceptions, our experiences, our relationships in the world. They’ve all changed in some way, in some fashion or another. To grow is to change, and to change is to change our world. Both ourselves and our world are going to be different than they were before. We’re never quite going to be able to go home again, back to the same familiar patterns in mind that we’ve taken such an attachment to, you know, that we’re so familiar with.
Back to the old neighborhoods. You know, our self identity, our values, our beliefs, what it is that makes us happy, what it is that makes us unhappy, our relationships, our work, our interests, our pursuits, you know, are all in some way going to be changed. They’re going to be different than they were before we became loving and compassionate people. They’ll be different because we’re different. Don’t stand apart from the change that I’m trying to make.
So the point is, in trying to draw this again together, in emphasizing change, you know, emphasizing that growth is in fact change, is that cultivating qualities such as love and compassion will bring about a real world impact on ourselves in many of the significant areas of our lives. And we cannot foresee all the details of that eventual impact. There’s a certain degree of unknown about the outcome of becoming a loving and compassionate person, where love and compassion are going to lead us, where they’re going to take us. But we have faith that becoming a loving and compassionate person, we are going to be a better person leading a better life, being a greater benefit to others in a better world. We have a kind of confidence in that, in love and compassion itself.
In a way, it’s like we’re going to refuge through love and compassion itself. We trust love and compassion. You know, our life is going to be better. We don’t quite know how yet, all the details. Maybe you’ll have to change your job.
Maybe you’ll travel to another country. Maybe you won’t. Maybe it’s going to entail lots of other practical changes in your everyday life. It probably will. But we can’t foresee them all.
We can’t detail all the changes. To demand to know every detail of the outcome of any change is to ensure and be assured that nothing will ever change. It’s the way of copping out. What I’m saying is the change that we want to make, we have to have some kind of confidence, some kind of trust in that outcome. Or because we will never at a deeper part of our being open up to the possibility of that change.
There’s always going to be a resistance, a holding back. We’re never quite going to give ourselves over to this new possibility. We’re never going to open the change that we’re even considering. So these ideals like compassion will simply float on surface of our minds like oil and water. They’re never really integrated because there’s a resistance to the unknown, to the unfamiliar.
You know, We are continually empowering people and things and ideas, situations about us, such that they’re continually in return influencing ourselves. So the point is that what we empower is what we value, and what we value is the direction our mind will tend toward, the natural outflowing of our life. Whether we’re religious or not or whether we are aware of it or not, we all spend our life to a great deal, in dependence on faith, how we lay out our daily lives. And our faith is of various types. Let us say, what it is that you have some kind of confidence or trust in.
And maybe it’s deserted you again and again and again, but still you go back to that same possibility with great hope. We don’t know what the alternative is. It’s never really been explored. We don’t quite trust it as of yet. So the faith of Buddhism is that there’s a heartfelt trust that the objects of our refuge have the power to protect us from this anxiety surrounding this continual continual reoccurrence of these dissatisfactory patterns of our life in all their various forms, the pathologies of our lives, and that they’re able to act as reliable resources for bringing about what it is that we want in our life in the positive sense.
And it is that faith which endows our refuge with a substance, some kind of reality which at present isn’t completely accessible to us, but nonetheless makes it very real and a real power and force in our life. So in practice, within Buddhism, Our faith is a courageous trusting in our own intelligence, that I have the potential to become the type of person I want to be, leading the type of life that I want to lead. And a dedication to that, our own basic goodness. And the basic goodness of life, that life is in fact not just a bitch and then you die. That there are radically alternative approaches to the living of life and I can bring that about for myself.
You know, it’s hard to even begin to imagine the reality of that fact for oneself, to open up to that possibility. All we can do now is talk perhaps about the words and maybe get some kind of glimpses of it once in a while and our teachers can model it for us in some kind of living reality for ourselves, that it is possible. So, in the beginning it’s said that the Buddhas ask only to be acknowledged and for small offerings like maybe flowers or fruit. But in the end, they demand our very flesh. That is to say, you know, that ultimately our Buddhist faith has us to progressively give over more and more of ourselves, our life, and our life energies to that which we are the final transformation, to ourselves as Buddha.
However you conceive of that Buddha, this finest possible story that you could ever that you can presently imagine about yourself, that you’re Buddha for now, and that you begin to give more and more of yourself over to that realization, that actualization, that you begin to take it out of your imagination and begin to work with it and to transform it, to translate it into some kind of living reality. So the consummation of Buddhist faith lies in a life consuming dedication to this possibility. Isn’t that worth our life to be all that each of us can be? You know, it’s whether we achieve that or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s trying, making the effort, bringing meaning and purpose and value to our life.
There will be change for the better. So the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha, you know, this final transformation, this happy, healthy, loving, sane human being that we’re all trying to become, that we haven’t known how up to now, that we have to actually do something. We have to do the work, you know, placing real foundations beneath this dreamed of castle that we’ve all built in the sky at some time over the course of our life that maybe we’ve forgotten about, that we need to be reminded about over and over again to do the work necessary to make it, in fact, in some small part, you know, in actuality, to begin to notice the subtle changes that are coming about. And we direct ourselves, we connect ourselves to this social context in which this process is all occurring. The spiritual community, the Sangha, and those who in fact act as conditions to bring this about, to encourage us, to assist us in creating the physical situation that we all are fortunate to be able to share even at this moment.
And trying to raise a level of motivation. You know, you can go away tonight. Maybe I can be a little more caring, a little more patient, a little more understanding, little more wise than I came in this room for the sake of one other person. Somebody out there who matters, if not more than yourself, at least equal to yourself, to be able to be there for them. Something beyond your own ego and its narrow self concerns, its limited vision to begin to widen our scope of concern to even one other person.
Beginning there. So that would be a good motivation. I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Through my practice of generosity, and other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, the Dharma, and Sangha.
Through my practice of generosity and other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. I go for refuge until I’m awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and the other perfections, may I become a Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings. May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all sentient beings be inseparable from the joy that is without sorrow. May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment for some and aversion toward others. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech, and mind. I present clouds of every type of offering those actually arranged. I disclose all my negative actions accumulated during digging of this time and rejoice in all the virtues of superior and ordinary beings.
Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of Dharma for migrating beings. I dedicate all virtue, my own and that of others, to the great awakening. We’re going to meditate. We’ve been studying karma. Within Buddhism there are two levels of ignorance.
One is ignorance with respect to the conventional, with respect to the law of cause and effect, having some various misconceptions about the actual causes of happiness and the causes of suffering. But there’s also a second level of ignorance, and that is ignorance with respect to the ultimate. And this is the third of the three principal aspects of the path which we’re going to look at toward when we work ourselves through the first and second. But I think it’s good. This is the awakened mind, isn’t it?
Have to, however much we talk and aspire and really want to bring about some kind of ultimate change. Without this, the awakened mind, there’s no possibility for real liberation of the mind. So I think sometimes it’s good to keep coming back to it and reminding ourselves of that. And I thought we would just, you know, we can meditate on the awakened mind, on selflessness and emptiness, but we can just approach it in some, I think, very useful questions in terms of ourselves. Just asking ourselves some simple questions which I’ll put to you in the course of our meditation and see what kind of answers that you can come up with for yourself.
Many of you have heard teachings on selflessness and emptiness perhaps many times before, and sometimes this can short circuit the process of actually examining for yourself what it is that you actually do understand and know for yourself about the nature of the I, the nature of the person, the self. So, you know, just even if you might have all the answers as if you had them listed in some book or something, see if you can come up with some of these answers, these questions I’m going to put to you for yourself, and see if, in fact, maybe some kind of curiosity is aroused about what is the nature of my eye, which I take so much for granted, which I probably have lots and lots of misconceptions about. So anyway, in the course of our meditation, first we’ll begin with mindfulness and breathing, and then I’ll simply ask you some questions to put to yourself as to the nature of the eye and see if you can come up with some answers for yourself. It’s not so much the answers which are important, at least at present, it’s the questioning. Fruitful types of questionings, ways of creating some kind of doubts in your mind.
It was at Āryadeva, one of the great masters of ancient India, said that even to have the doubt as to whether things truly exist is to shake the roots of cyclic existence, shake the roots of our neurosis. So even this question is quite helpful, useful. Taking a comfortable firm posture. We’ll begin by relaxing the body, so starting at the crown of the head, the scalp, the forehead, and feeling the wrinkles in your brow beginning to smooth out. The pressure in and around your eyes diminishing.
Diminishing. The muscles of the face softening, relaxing. Jaw relax. And the muscles at the back of the neck, gently turn your head to the side a few times, just loosening, softening. Muscles of the throat, The upper back, shoulders, perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times, letting them drop comfortably to the sides, feeling this burden, this weight that we carry on our backs and our shoulders beginning to move down through your body into the ground.
Your hands are loose, relaxed. Lower arms. Upper arms. Your chest is at ease. Relaxing the heart, the lungs, the central portion of the back.
Stomach. Releasing the tension that you hold in your stomach muscles. Allow your belly to go soft. Relaxing throughout the abdominal cavity And holding your trunk erect, relax your lower back muscles. Your buttocks.
Your upper legs, thighs. Lower legs, Your feet. And then bring your awareness to your body in general. Notice any tightnesses, any tensions within the body. And focusing upon those areas consciously, relax, soften, Feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen.
Your body becoming at ease, comfortable. A sense of physical well-being pervading your body. It feels good to be in your body. And then bring your mind to the breath. Just the easy, gentle, in the natural breath.
If it’s helpful, use the techniques of counting and noting the breaths. Now we’re going to put some questions to ourselves and see what kind of answers we can come up with regard to the nature of the I, the self. Beginning by questioning, how can I establish that I am sitting on the cushion or I am sitting on the chair? Are you your body? What do you mean when you say when you have a when your stomach hurts?
You say, I have a stomachache. Are you your stomach or do you have a stomach? Are you your body or do you have a body? What do you mean when you say I am happy? Are you the happiness or do you have happiness?
Are you the mind or do you have a mind? Are you your mind or do you have a mind? If someone were to offer you the opportunity to exchange your present body for a healthy, beautiful, youthful body, would you accept? Doesn’t that mean that there is an I who would be benefited from the exchange? An I that would be benefited from getting a new body?
Would you accept that exchange to get a new body? If someone were to offer you the opportunity to exchange your present mind for a compassionate, wise Buddha mind, would you accept the offer? Doesn’t that mean there would be an I which would be benefited from that exchange? So you could receive a new body and a new mind. That I would receive a new body and a new mind.
Does that mean the I is separate from the body and mind? Can you find that separate eye? What does that separate eye look like? And then bring your mind back to the breath. And then get in touch with your body, noticing the feeling sensations within the body.
And in a gentle and relaxed manner, just slowly become aware of your surroundings. Just take your time. There’s no hurry. What reason did you come up with? How do you know that you’re sitting where you’re sitting?
How can you establish that? What reason can you give? That’s right.
I have a, I am sitting on the chair because I have a sore bum. Are you your sore bum? Feels like it’s one science, doesn’t it? I and my bum are one. Anyway, I appreciate your answer.
Can you swap your mind? Wouldn’t you like to have a new mind? Wouldn’t you like to have a Buddha mind? I’ve had a lot of work. With?
I mean, if we could do a transplant. The I? What’s the I that’s doing? Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out. There’s no one at home.
Who’s running the show? There’s some handouts to complete. There’s karma. You received page one and two, and here’s three and four. So if you could kind of pass those around, please.
They’re all the same. You received pages one and two previously and these are pages three and four. This is what we’re going to be covering tonight and the next few nights. Give you something to to hold on to. We have been talking about karma.
We have gone through the ten negative paths of karma. What are the ten negative paths of karma? Examination. There are How many of body? Three of body.
What are the three? Great. How many of speech? Okay. What are they?
Fantastic. And how many of mine? Two? Any new answers? Pardon?
Okay, it’s okay to cheat. What are the three? Oh, what are they? Covetousness, malice, and wrong view. Okay, good, So, we’ve looked at, we’ve gone, you know, in order to practice the ten positive paths of karma, it’s necessary to know, the ten positive paths of karma are the antidotes or the methods by which we can prevent the ten negative paths of karma.
So in order to practice a ten positive, we have to know what the ten negative are and then moreover we have to know what are the consequences of the ten negative paths of karma, and then make some kind of informed decision using some kind of our discrimination. Now that we’ve gotten some information in terms of cause and effect, we can make a choice whether we want to when the intention arises to kill or the intention arises to steal. If we that would not be in in my own best interest. That would not be very skillful. I think I’m going to refrain from that.
And so then in refraining from that negative action, we engage in the positive action. And so we have to know what are the ten negative actions are, so we’ve gone through those. But we also have to know their consequences. What are the results of these negative actions? Is it really worth all the trouble?
More you know, we’re always working on the basis of payoff in one way or another. Is there more payoff in stealing that money or in not stealing that money? Killing or not killing or having sex with that married person? Or forgoing sex with that married person, and so forth. So, we have to make some kind of informed decision.
But with regard to having looked at the ten negative paths of action, we’re going to look at what determines the heaviness. You know, what kind of parameters, what kind of criteria can we make use of to determine how heavy that karma is going to be. So, this is what we’re going to look at is on, well first we’re going to look at what is the concluding motivation. In looking at these ten negative paths of karma and analyzing them, we said that all of them could be as a distant motivation or initiating motivation, be motivated by any of the three afflictions of attachment, hatred, or wrong view. So that’s the distant motivation.
For example, I get angry with somebody, Yeah? They say something to me, something I say, stupid. You know, you’re really stupid. Yeah. I get angry.
That gives rise to an intention. I’m going to hurt them. Maybe I’m actually going to kill them. Exaggerate, okay. And I get so angry.
I’m going to kill them. I have the intention to kill. So I think, am I going to do it? I plan it out. And then they’re walking down by themselves on a dark street one night and waiting.
At the time of the actual commission of the action, when we do the actual action itself, there’s also a motivation. So, there’s a distant motivation which initiated this past anger at him calling me stupid, but at the time of actually when I commit the negative action, there’s also motivation. What is that motivation? So, you know, when we’re actually following through the action, what kind of motivation is active at that time when the action is underway, when it’s being brought to a conclusion. So, you know, this will just give us an overall idea.
For the actions of killing harsh speech and malice, killing harsh speech and malice, the concluding motivation is hatred. So at the time of the actual committing of the action, regardless of which of the three poisons, attachment, hatred, or wrong view, were the initiating motivation. At the time when we’re actually destroying that life, there’s a sense of hostility, wanting to take that life, wanting to destroy that life, this person. So, this is the concluding motivation. So, we can say that these three types of actions of killing, harsh speech, and malice have the overall dominant affliction of hatred motivation.
There are categories in the area of the affliction of hatred, hostility. And then there’s the negative actions of stealing, sexual misconduct, and covetousness at the time of when the action is actually undergoing, being brought to completion, the motivation is attachment. So these three actions of stealing sexual misconduct and covetousness are dominated by attachment. And then with regard to the three of lying, divisive speech, and senseless speech, these could be at the actual when you’re actually telling a lie or actually speaking words which try to divide people. These can be under the influence of either of the three poisons of attachment, hatred, and ignorance.
And then finally, with regard to the last, that is the wrong view. So, wrong view is initiating motivation, and that wrong view itself is the concluding motivation. When we actually make this kind of, come to some kind of decisive conclusion in our mind about one point or another thinking this doesn’t exist. That motivation is itself the wrong view. Okay, so now we’re going to look at what makes a karma heavy and light.
How do we determine? And we’re going to look at five different parameters or criteria, and this is on page three of your handout. There are five parameters that determine the heaviness of the ten negative paths of karma. So, the first of these is karma that is we’re talking about in the context of a complete negative path of karma, and we said a complete path is that which has these four branches. There has to be a base, there has to be the thought, the actual action, and the conclusion.
So, when we have these complete four branches of a negative path of karma, how do we determine how heavy is that action? How heavy is that killing? How heavy is that stealing? What determines the heaviness, the weight, which will bring about a more forceful type of result. So the first of these is karma that is heavy because of the thought.
Any action that is performed under the influence of a powerful affliction, you know, of one of the three poisons. When you act out of strong, intense hatred, strong, intense attachment and so forth, then that karma is going to be heavier. If the underlying affliction is weak, you know, if it’s only a mild desire, only a mild attachment, only a mild hatred, mild anger, so forth, then the karma is weakened. So, this factor of thought is extremely important in determining the heaviness of the karma. So, not all these karmas are going to be the same, are they?
Sometimes you’re going to perform an action with a great deal of attachment, and therefore the karma is going to be much more heavy, and another time you’re going to perform an action with the same type of action, but the motivation will be less intense, for example, the attachment, and therefore the heaviness will be lighter. The second is karma that is heavy because of the manner of the action. You know, here we’re taking as the basis of illustration killing. So we can determine whether, you know, what is the way in which we’re killing, what is the manner of the killing, and that will determine, you know, how’s the action actually being performed. That will determine in terms of this second factor of how heavy the karma is.
And here’s some criteria which are listed here. If you kill with an attitude of great satisfaction, okay, you enjoy killing. So that’s going to make the action heavier because of the manner that you’re killing. If you praise an act of killing, you have done yourself or caused another to participate in. If you do it with an attitude that is happy to see an act of killing or if you plan the act for a long time and make an elaborate preparation, preparation, you know, you really get, you’re enthusiastic about it, you really get involved in it.
Think about it for a long time. Take great joy in the process of thinking about it. If you perform the action constantly or repeatedly, do it with great avidly or enthusiasm, and each time you kill numerous beings. If you purposely kill in especially a cruel or painful way. If you kill after forcing your victim to perform improper actions out of fear.
If you mercilessly kill a being who is weak and helpless, who is suffering greatly, who is poor, who is pathetically or pitifully crying in pain. So, are some of parameters which we determine in terms of the manner of the action, whether it’s going to be heavy or light. Okay, another parameter is karma that is heavy because of the absence of an antidote. You know, there is always some antidote available, you know, what we call a countervailing power. Later on we’ll talk about a particular practice that you can do.
It’s called the four powers, the four countervailing powers. The power of repudiation, of reliance, of the antidote, and finally the power of restraint. This is a particular practice and we’ll go through it in the future in the next few weeks. It is said by applying these four powers sincerity, again and again, there is no negative action, none, which cannot be completely purified, such that its results will never be experienced. But even just the slight purification will bring about a mitigation of the result.
There will be a lessening of the power of the result. The karma becomes weaker and weaker until it actually comes to a place where it’s not actually able to produce a result at all. You know, what it’s described like is taking a seed, and these karmic seeds are analogous, and you don’t burn the seed, but you singe it such that it loses its potency. Though the seed remains, it no longer has the ability to bring about a result. So we’re going to go through these four powers whereby you can actually purify or mitigate or lessen the potency of the karmic seeds.
I don’t know about you guys, but I know I’ve done a lot of negative things in the past, and maybe you have too, so it might be useful. But if you haven’t done any negative things, can skip that day. You might be above all that. But anyway, here we’re not talking about necessarily this particular practice of the four powers, but antidotes that are naturally enacted over the course of our life, that we naturally involve ourselves in from time to time. It’s almost like a way of life.
What kind of life do you generally lead? Not a specific practice, which we’ll go through later. For example, types of antidotes which if we were involved in over the course of our life from time to time, then our negative karma that we might generally create would be less heavy, would be lighter in fact. These are some of the natural, well not natural, everyday antidotes that we might involve ourselves in. From time to time taking the one day ordination vow, which includes eight precepts.
So, you know, quite often within the Buddhist tradition there’s a taking of twenty, a vow for twenty four hours, and especially taking on the full moon or the new moon or special holidays, auspicious occasions. And there’s eight precepts which are taken by laypersons and they’re only kept for twenty four hours. So it’s possible. We can do it. Killing, not to kill, still involve ourselves in sexual activities, not to tell lies, not to take intoxicants, not to eat after a noonday meal, not to wear jewelry, perfume, dance, sing, and the one which is a tough one, not sit on high thrones.
So you have to watch that one. Yes, so anyway, these are quite often taken by Buddhists for just one day, and so doing that once in a while then the various negativities that you do perform over your everyday life, they would not be quite as heavy as they normally would be if you didn’t perform any type of positive actions over the course of your life, if your lifestyle was such that it was dominated or bound up in a negative way of life, perform virtuous activities from time to time. Feeling of self shame and embarrassment. Now this is interesting, isn’t it? In the West we have an idea that shame is something negative.
I don’t know how we could translate it differently, but the idea of self shame. Self shame and embarrassment are two sides of one coin. Self shame is when you do something that you don’t feel good about having done from your side. That was not a good, I was wrong to do. That was really not so good to do from your side.
You have a bad conscience, something like that. Self shame, maybe a bad conscience. Embarrassment is doing the same action but from seeing it from the side of others. Wow, I’m really embarrassed how many people see me do that. It’s a terrible thing to do.
Get in front of all these people and now they know all about me. So you’re embarrassed. So from one’s own side and from the other side. Self shame from one’s own side and embarrassment from the others. If you have no self shame or no embarrassment around what you do.
Strong regret or remorse, and when we talk about the four powers, of the four powers, the first power is the power of repudiation, and this involves developing a genuine sense of regret. Regret is the most important, but we have to analyze, we’re going have to examine that because there’s a great deal of difference between guilt and regret. And maybe beginning to come up with some feeling, a different sense of the difference between regret and guilt. You know, I added one and one to make three. It could have terrible consequences, but it doesn’t reflect upon me as being a bad person.
I made a mistake. I regret that mistake. I’m not a bad person. Something like that. Anyway, regret is the most sincere, genuine regret.
Is the most effective way, know, of the four powers, probably the most influential and actually they each have, each of the four powers has a particular, plays a particular part in the overall purification, but regret is probably the most dominant. The development of the mundane path, this is simply in developing a very strong concentration. If you develop a very strong concentration then the various afflictions aren’t able to arise, they are not able to manifest. And therefore you don’t involve yourself in negative actions. Negative actions are motivated by the afflictions.
The development of ultimate antidote, the direct realization of emptiness, all the various afflictions whatsoever are eliminated in our meditation. And I talked about the fact that we have to overcome ignorance. There’s no other way to be liberated. All the various afflictive emotions, all of them, and therefore all our suffering, which is a result of the affliction, of our actions motivated by the afflictions, have at their root ignorance. Hatred, jealousy, attachment, spite, miserliness.
It’s said to be maybe, I don’t know, eighty four thousand. I could count them. In my own mind, I could count them. All eighty four thousand of them. They all have as their root misconception of the nature of the I, the self, nature of reality, that ignorance.
So if we can develop the direct realization of emptiness, which overcomes that ignorance, that wisdom, which overcomes that ignorance, then the afflictions can no longer arise. Therefore, we no longer create negative karma, and therefore we no longer experience the suffering of negative karma. karma that is heavy because of adhering to a wrong view. That would be, for example, types of actions that if you were to kill an animal, for example, as part of your spiritual practice, it was beneficial practice to make animal sacrifices. That would be an example of karma that is heavy because of adhering to a wrong view.
So, this would be a heavier type of karma. karma that is heavy because of the object. And this is a big area, a big subject. Sometimes a bit controversy around some of these things. In terms of, you know, we can actually go through the various types of karma, these ten negative paths of karma, terms of the various objects and heaviness with regard to the object.
What are the heaviest types of objects that we can relate with? In terms of killing, I’m just going to repeat this, I’m the messenger so, it is said that in terms of animals, in general it is negative to kill animals, right? But it’s heavier to kill a larger animal as opposed to a smaller animal because it is said that it causes greater suffering due to the size of the animal. Okay, I’m just giving you this information. That’s not to say it’s okay to kill small animals.
That’s negative also. Over and above animals it’s more negative to kill a human being because of the potential that they have, their capacity, their intelligence and so forth, what they’re able to use that human life for. It is said to be more negative to kill a human being than an animal. That’s in terms of the object. It would be extremely heavy, so sometimes objects which are extremely heavy, example, to kill, killing your mother or your father, killing one of your close relatives or brother or sister, killing your spiritual teacher, killing your best friend, killing a bodhisattva, some type of holy being.
So these objects, throughout all of this, it’s interesting. One of the most heavy objects that we have both in the negative and positive, is your parents, you know, both in terms of creating virtuous actions, positive merit, or committing negative actions, which would be how you treat your parents. Killing your parents would be an extremely, extremely negative action by the nature of that object. The other nine negative paths of karma each have their particular object and therefore each of them has a particular lightness or weight to karma that they’re going to be created by that object. For example, stealing.
Stealing is made heavier if you’re stealing a large quantity or something which is extremely precious or extremely valuable. It’s heavier when what you steal acts to betray trust. You know, somebody gave you something to keep for them, trusted you, and if you were to steal that, that would be a heavy form of stealing. It’s heavier when you steal from people who are having difficulties, people who are poor, people who are sick or having a hard time, stealing from them is heavier. It’s heavier if you steal from your parents, the whole other person, even from an object.
For example, if you were to steal from the altar, steal from a stupa, that would be extremely negative by the nature of the object that we’re stealing from. Sexual misconduct is heavy in terms of the object if you have relationships with those who are close. For example, if you would have sexual relations with your parents, that would be an extremely heavy object. Or with a very close relative, a brother or sister, it would be more negative to have sexual relations with your best friend’s partner because there’s a betrayal of the trust of your friendship, the intimacy. There’s more harm in all of these.
It would be, for example, a guardian, a child was given over them to be taken care of by them. If you were to betray that trust in having a sexual relationship, that would be extremely heavy. Or if the person had a vow of celibacy, that would be extremely heavy in terms of the nature of the object. Object in terms of lying is, you know, example, if you lie to your parents, or if you, people are worthy of our respect if you were to lie to them or if you lied to a close friend. That would be heavier than if you lied to just a stranger.
There is more harm involved. It’s heavier if this life leads someone to go on to commit a negative action, if because you lied to them they went out and committed, they out and somebody or they stole something or they did something wrong, then that lie would be heavier because it led them to some negativity for their own side. It would be heavier if you lied. One of the heaviest lies is lying, you know, would divide the spiritual community, causing a schism within the Sangha, it’s called. Lying, divisive speech, so in terms of its object, what are the heavier objects in terms of divisive speech?
Again, if you were to divide, separate your parents, your mother and father, that would be extremely negative. Or if you were to cause a division between two people who had been friends for a very long time, who were very close previous to your action of divisive speech, that would be extremely negative. Or if you divided two teachers or if you divided a teacher from the student, that would be extremely negative. Or, you know, if your division were to cause a schism within the Sangha, division within the spiritual community, that would be extremely negative, heavy karma, divisive Harsh speech, again, in terms of the object, it would be if it were your parents, if what you said was not just harsh, but it was incorrect, it was a misrepresentation, then that in itself, or the fact that not only harsh speech, but it being a lie, then it would be even heavier. If, you know, it’s heavier if the harsh speech is to the person, you abuse them in their face, that would be extremely heavy.
Hard speech. And then that of all of these first three, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, they’re all forms of senseless speech. So whatever we said about each of them in terms of whether the sense of speech is directed towards your parents or directed towards various individuals apply. But also senseless types of speech, sometimes this is translated as gossip, idle chatter, or something like that. If it’s talked about, you know, if the senseless speech is types of speech which talk about people who are having difficulties, you know, maybe there’s a couple which is having, they’re having a hard time in a relationship, and you kind of gossip about it.
That would be extremely heavy sense of speech or idle gossip. People who are kind of in disagreement or talking about somebody else’s faults, or something that is going wrong for someone and speaking about it not in a constructive way, but just in a sense of gossiping about the difficulties that people are having. So this would also be a heavy type of sense of speech. So that’s the three of body, the four of speech, and then finally there are the three negativities of mind beginning with covetousness. So in the case of covetousness, it’s desiring things that, know, covetousness is one is desiring or longing to have property that belongs to another.
If that property belongs to, for example, to the spiritual community, the Sangha, then that would be a heavy form of covetousness. Or if you have greed for religious objects, that would be a heavy form. Have, out of arrogance, covet being respected or praised, you know, just like, oh, they should think of me just like they think of the Dalai Lama. And you covet that kind of praise, that kind of respect. And that would be a heavy form of covetousness.
The second of the three of mind is malice. So, you know, this kind of this harmful intention, thought to hurt, is made heavier in terms of the object when it involves malice towards one’s parents or towards one’s relatives or towards one’s spiritual teacher. These objects come up again and again and again, the very same types of objects. If you have a malice toward those who are having a difficult time, those who are poor, those who are sick, those who are in kind of a pitiful situation or suffering in some way or another. Having malice toward them would be heavier.
It’s also extremely heavy if you have malice, this intention to harm, for someone who has apologized for having hurt you in the past, and rather than accepting their apology, you hold onto your sense of grudge. The grudge is of lying in wait. I’m going get you when the opportunity arises. That would be extremely heavy since this person has in fact apologized for what they’ve done. Then finally with regard to wrong view, you know, in terms of object.
So we said that wrong view is like a nihilistic view. It’s denying, you’re coming to some kind of decisive conclusion, this does not exist, when in fact it does exist. Through faulty lines of reasoning or mistaken evidence, you come to a definite conclusion in your mind, this doesn’t exist. So, with regard to that, whatever, coming to this view regard to the law of cause and effect would be negative. Then, okay, so we’ve gone through some of the ways in which objects can be heavier or lighter, the weightiness of the karma.
Also there’s one great master by the name of Asaṇga, and he sets out the same notion. We can apply this, the way he sets it out, his parameters for determining the weight of karma, whether it’s heavy or light, we can apply it to both light, both negative but also positive karma. So, you know, it gives us some guidelines overall. In all of this, the most important, the most weighty aspect is the motivation behind the action. We can talk about various types of objects.
They’re going to make some kind of determining how we do the action. That’s going to make some kind of determination. All these different parameters, but the most dominant parameter in determining the weight of the karma is in terms of the motivation and the force which lies behind the action. Asaṇga lists this as the first, the motivational force. So karma is most heavy, and this applies to both positive and negative, when the motivation, when it’s being driven by a very sharp and strong motivation, whether it’s negative, one of the three poisons, attachment, hatred, or wrong view, but also positive.
That motivation is weak, then the karma is weak. If that motivation is strong, then the karma will be strong in general. If attachment, hatred, and wrong view are not present, then the mind is positive. You know, the antidote to attachment is non attachment. That is, for example, generosity.
Opponent to hatred is non hatred, that is love and compassion. The antidote to wrong view is correct view, realization. So, when these are present, when one has strong generosity, rather than stealing, one gives, and so forth, rather than killing, one saves life, depending upon the strength of that motivation, then action is going to be that much more heavy. The second quality is that habituation. Quality is that habituation, what it is that we habitually do, these patterns of our behavior.
Even if the motivation is not particularly strong, if we do it, if we’re accustomed to it, if we do it again and again and again, that very fact of habituation is going to make the karma stronger. And again, if we do something repeatedly, regularly, it becomes stronger, and this applies both negative and positive. In terms of the nature of the action, you know, we can look at the very nature, the quality of the action itself has a certain heaviness or lightness, and we can look at the ten, for example, we can use the example of the ten negative paths of karma. In terms of the three negative paths of body, we begin at the bottom. Killing, stealing, sexual misconduct.
Killing by its very nature is heavier than stealing. Stealing by its very nature is heavier than sexual misconduct. So the heaviness by way of nature is simply good, follows through from the bottom killing, stealing, sexual misconduct. Then we come to the form of speech, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, senseless speech. And again, it follows upward.
Of the four, lying is the heaviest. Then lying is heavier than divisive speech by its very nature. Divisive speech is heavier than harsh speech by its very nature. Harsh speech is heavier than senseless speech by its very nature. So here we have the degree of heaviness in terms of nature, and we can do the same with the mind.
But here, rather than coming, I look at things visually. That’s the only way I can remember things. Rather than going upward, we’re going to go downward. So we have beginning at the top, we have wrong view, and then we have malice and covetousness. So wrong view is by its nature heavier than malice.
Malice is heavier than by its nature is heavier than covetousness. So this is looking at the difference in the heaviness or the weight of the karma simply in terms of the nature of the action itself. We’re disregarding the object, how it’s done, and so forth. Then the fourth quality is that of object. We discuss objects.
And as I pointed out, it seems that there are certain objects which are extremely, we have to be careful because we can create both tremendous negative karma but also tremendous positive karma around them. For example, our parents. Our parents are the people who probably care for us the most on average. They’ve taken care of us in the past. They provide for our welfare.
In some sense, we can create greater benefit and also greater harm with respect to that type of object. But in terms of spiritual path, there are other objects, you know, I generally talked about as having tremendous potential for both positive and negative. And that is, for example, the Buddhadharma Sangha, our spiritual teacher, and so forth. You know, Really extremely important objects, people in our life, where we have special types of relationships with. These are very sensitive objects in terms of the quality of the karma that we can create with respect to them.
So it’s said that we have to take some kind of care around these people. In terms of single mindedness, and this was very much what we talked about. Some people, if some people’s lives are predominantly negative or some people’s lives are predominantly positive, and if this was we mentioned in terms previously whether there’s an antidote or not, and if your life is predominantly negative, all of those negative actions have an accumulative effect. The more negative actions, the heavier they become. This sort of geometric multiplying effect.
Anyway, I don’t what that word means anyway. The same is true of positive, if life is, you know, we have a positive lifestyle in general. And those types, all those various individual positive actions that we create will have that much more weight in terms of positive potential. And then there one called clearing away the unfavorable factors, and this is simply that an individual who has completely eliminated attachment is no longer creating negativity and their lives are purely involved in positive actions. So I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t quite apply to me yet.
So, in general, know, kind of making a summation, what we have to watch out for ourselves. I think I’ve made a lot of these. I’ve emphasized object. The object’s toward, we have to be extremely careful around certain objects. For example, your parents, your spiritual teacher, and so forth.
But also in terms of our motivation, this seems to be the most dominant factor, in terms of the intensity of the affliction. Trying to, as best you can, not not to act upon strong afflictions, not to act them out. We’re going to talk more about what happens if you feel like you have to kill and what can you do, and so forth. At least we can begin, don’t enjoy what you’re doing. You can kill something, you may feel that I don’t really have a choice.
Okay? But at least don’t enjoy it. Don’t be pleased by it. If it’s associated with some kind of grit, I wish I didn’t have to do this. You know, termites are eating the foundation of my house, it’s going to fall down.
I wish I didn’t have to do this, but it seems like I have to. You know, we’re confronted with these moral choices almost every day of our lives. And we can become more skillful around these choices, even if we tend toward the negative in making them. We can begin to, there’s a saying, For the wise, even strong, even powerful negative actions become less, and for the stupid, even small negative actions become great, depending upon our skill around them. So if you have to kill something, to kill it in the most humane way possible, that is in terms of the manner that you kill it, without being pleased about it, having some kind of regret, and then applying some kind of antidote.
And, you know, we do the best we can with what we’ve got. And I was thinking, okay, anyway we’re going to talk more about, we’ve talked about some of the, tonight we’ve talked about some of the factors which determine heaviness or the lightness of the karma, and then next week we’ll go on to talk about some of the results of our karma, of these, for example, ten negative paths of actions, what types of results they actually bring about. And then we’ll talk about, eventually we’ll talk about these four powers in a way that we can ameliorate or mitigate the effects of the negative actions that we have created. But this isn’t just a matter of theory. There is the theory of karma, isn’t there?
But it’s actually, I think there’s a psychological benefit around all of this, of what we’re talking about. I think committing negative action does have some detrimental effect on the psychology of our mind. We lessen ourselves as a human being to some extent, you know, in terms of, I’m more important to you, therefore I can take your life. Or, My happiness is more important, therefore I can steal what you possess. It lessens ourselves as a human being.
And I think it has some immediate, not just this long range karmic effects, but on the overall attitude of how we lead our lives and how we view ourselves. Don’t think, we don’t, I think there is some kind of underlying conscientiousness. We have some kind of conscious about ourselves that maybe we don’t feel so good about ourselves at some level when we’re continually involving ourselves in these negativities. And we never can feel quite healthy. There’s some kind of deadening effect about these negative actions upon our present psyche.
What to say of the long term effects in terms of these sufferings and whatnot, but just the feeling of being a sane, healthy being. You If we were really sensitive to our inner life, we wouldn’t need rules. We wouldn’t need precepts and vows. We would know just by this unease, this sense that there was something wrong in what we were doing. But we’re not sensitive to ourselves.
We’re pretty gross at best, and therefore we have to to sometimes restrain ourselves by vows and precepts, but at least by looking at and intellectually coming to some understanding about what kinds of results these various actions bring about. You know, said that ethics, ethics in Nepali language or in Sanskrit language is Śīla. And Śīla means cool, cooling. Ethics, or ethical conduct, cools the afflictions of the mind. There’s a sense of freshness, a sense of ease, a sense of well-being and mental health associated with ethics, which is natural to our being.
A Buddha doesn’t need any vows, doesn’t need any precepts. The very natural way of being is ethical. There’s no possibility for them to act otherwise. They don’t have to restrain themselves. It’s an outflowing of their natural state of their own sanity and mental health.
And maybe mental health is only possible in terms of ethics. Maybe ethics is the basis of mental health. So we’ll stop there. I’m sorry. Keep meaning to leave more time.
I’ll try. I think maybe I’ll cut my motivation in the game shorter. I’ll try. I don’t know. It’s an idea I have.
I like, really enjoy my people who contribute. Know, everybody got their wisdom, their experiences. We can share that. And sometimes people learn more from other people in the class. Some comment that somebody makes about what happened to them or some idea they have in this formal presentation where I can just cause mass confusion.
Confusion. I think it’s worthwhile to share that. Anyway, it’s easier than me. Does anybody have any comments they’d like to make? Yeah.
You’re beaten. Right. Does anybody have a Will? Self centeredness. Yeah.
No. They’re Yeah. They’re doing yeah. Because I know it’s bad, but they’re still doing it. So an act of their self centeredness because of the of their perverse pleasure at the Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Taking the That’s right. That’s right, I agree. In bringing about change.
I think there are many different levels of remedies, but the first level of remedy is we always act in ways our self interest is the only reality we know at present. So somehow I have to see that there’s going to be some kind of, right now this person expressing their anger, there’s some kind of payoff. They have to see that, so they have to begin to see, so you make a list, you have what are the advantages and disadvantages. No, he’s gonna have to decide it. What are the advantages of anger and the disadvantages?
And he has to actually make a When he’s overcome by anger, there’s probably very little that you can do except stand between your parents and him or something. But when he’s calmed down, you can begin to talk to him about what are the disadvantages, but he has to, as you mentioned, he has to see this for himself. What are the advantages of getting angry? Does it actually help the situation, or does it make the situation worse? What are the advantages of getting angry, and what are disadvantages of getting angry?
And just actually list them. Yes, actually write them down. Unless you see, there’s no reason to change your behavior unless you see that it’s not in your best interests. Why is he angry? Because he’s the only one that’s responsible for the health.
So, I mean, you know, we know he’s It is heavier. Oh sure, that’s one the disadvantages. Does it make you happy to be angry? An angry person is suffering, And does it help the situation? Does it make you closer or more distant with your parents?
Does it bring about the object of your anger, the ends that you want, what you’re trying to achieve, does it actually bring them about? Is there a more skillful way to bring about what you want to achieve? And then somehow, it’s difficult because he has to, maybe he’s, you know, you kind of have to reframe situation such that he’s still taking care of his parents, but he no longer sees it as a burden, that he sees it in fact as an opportunity, a blessing. But that takes a lot of training involved in that. The circumstances outside don’t change, but the way that you view it change.
That it’s really an opportunity to, I don’t know if he believes in karma. I don’t know. Believe in the fact that he can spend time with him while maybe he ate one day, that won’t be. It won’t be. Yeah.
What would tomorrow? How would you feel if you were angry with them today? That’s great. Is there anything that can be done practically? You know, what is it that you find so burdensome in trying to break it up?
Well, can we is there anything that we can do about that? Know, the little pieces, the big piece is too overwhelming, but maybe they’ll break it up into smaller tasks that he can actually work with, little changes that he can make. So he feels like he’s actually in some kind of control of the situation. He’s not powerless. So it would take a lot of doing because of dynamics.
Anybody else have suggestion? I was wondering why, is Buddhism saying all relationships within family are beneficial? No, they’re saying that, oh I see, no, on the whole, they wouldn’t ask you to. There are, I guess parents who abuse their children. They wouldn’t deny that, but we’re just making in general the person has cared for you the most, even if you can’t remember it, even when you were a baby, were your parents, especially your mother.
You wouldn’t be alive if she didn’t care for you at some time. Over the years, the relationship might have soured, might have really become poisonous, but there was a time when without her care you would have died. So they’re just saying that this but they wouldn’t say that you have to force yourself to believe other than your experience. But they might ask you to look at your experience and see if you’re right in the conclusions that you’ve come to. Sometimes we misjudge our parents and we don’t understand them.
Our parents carry a burden which no real live person could ever hope to support of what it means to be a mother or a father. We have an idealized version in our mind and no person probably could live up to that. No human being. But we judge them on an outrageous standard, and they just weren’t there when I needed them, or they didn’t give me what I really needed. When I was young, we blame our neurosis on them.
We blame that we’re in saṃsāra on them to a large extent, that we’re still suffering on them. Heavy stuffy. So we can dedicate the positive energy that we’ve created together. Male beings everywhere plagued by suffering of body and mind attain an ocean of happiness and joy by virtue of my merits. May no living creatures suffer, commit evil, or fall ill.
May no one be afraid or belittled with a mind weighed down by depression. May the blind see forms and the deaf hear sounds. May those whose bodies are worn with toil be restored on finding repose. May the naked find clothing, the hungry find food. May the thirsty find water and delicious drink.
May the poor find wealth, those weak with sorrow find joy. May the forlorn find hope, constant happiness, and prosperity. May there be timely rains and bountiful harvest. May all medicines be effective and wholesome prayers bear fruit. May all who are sick and ill quickly be freed from their ailments.
Whatever diseases there are in the world, may they never occur again. May the frightened cease to be afraid, and may those who are bound be freed. May the power of its fine power, and may people think of benefiting each other. Through these skillful actions, may I quickly become an awakened spiritual master and lead each and every living being to that awakened realm. May the supreme jewel, the awakened heart that has not arisen arise and grow.
And may that which has arisen never diminish but increase more and more. In the land encircled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful Chenrezig, Tenzin Gyatso, please remain to the end of cyclic existence. Thank you. Take care.
Have a good week.