Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. The image of a traveler who stops the newly enlightened Buddha on the road and asks “What are you?” — receiving the reply “I am awake” — anchors Ven Jampa Gendun’s opening in this 135-minute Lamrim session. He uses it to reframe going for refuge not as a religious formality but as orienting toward a personal compass: wisdom, compassion, and effective power as qualities anyone can begin to embody. He then leads a guided nine-part death meditation, building three reasons for inevitable impermanence — everyone dies, lifespan only decreases, the body is a composite of conditions — into a quiet reflective exercise. The longer second half unpacks karma systematically: accumulated versus performed karma, definite versus indefinite results, and four categories of karmic fruit, illustrated with concrete pairings — killing yields a short life, generosity yields wealth, covetousness produces lifelong craving. A Q&A on rebirth realms closes the session. Pitched at practitioners already engaged with Lamrim study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 3PA 2007 05 14.mp3
UUID: 37e37065-0f3e-40f1-bae7-64fc2f6bc9a2
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2006-2007 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2007-05-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 135.1 minutes
Words: ~10,595
Can you hear me? Is that loud enough or you want it louder? What do you think Becky? A little bit louder. Okay, is that better?
So we begin adjusting our motivation. We’ve been talking about the two basic causes for what we term in Buddhism, going for refuge. As I try to emphasize, the idea of going for refuge is not particularly Buddhist or Eastern, it’s something that we have more or less been going for refuge our entire life. In some way or another where it is that we’re going to find solutions to our problems, our happiness lies. And perhaps our refuges haven’t really delivered the goods in some way that we expected.
They haven’t brought us the happiness that we wanted and they haven’t perhaps solved our problems that we thought they would. Or maybe we just have to begin to look for, maybe it’s not such a matter as trying harder, but trying differently in finding, looking for what is going to bring us the happiness that we want and help us to solve our problems. So, you know we set up a model, an image for ourselves, that gives some directionality to our mind, something that we can work toward, an object of our commitment that we can from time to time keep bringing to mind as like a magnetic north. Do you have magnetic north in Australia? Okay, their compasses work just like they do.
Okay, it’s like when we get off course, we can say, is that the direction I really want to be headed? Is that where my happiness lies? Sometimes when our sanity is working, when we aren’t overcome by our neurosis or our delusions in some way, when we’re clear sighted and working with our wisdom and so forth, we have some ideas about where begin to set our priorities and what actually might bring us the happiness realistically beyond our unfounded hopes we can doing same things, thinking in the same patterns, behaving in the same ways, and somehow or another, we’re not quite sure, but somehow or another life is going to bring us what it is that we want. It’s going to help us to get rid of the problems that we don’t want. Something unexpected, something new in the plot.
So, we orientate ourselves and prioritize what is about, and I, you know, we don’t know. I guess we can begin to translate in terms of what is most relevant to ourselves. We don’t have to work with abstractions, what might feel alien to ourselves at present, the idea of a Buddha, you know what has meaning for ourselves, what has value, what would we like our life to stand for. You know I think these are important questions aren’t they? And no matter how vague and tentative our answers might be, begin to orientate ourselves to actualizing them.
Taking this dreamed up life that we’d all wish for at some point in our life and begin to put some solid foundations underneath it, begin to translate it into some kind of, if only even partially, some kind of reality for us, some actual experience. So this goal, this commitment, this image, this idea we call Buddha and the good life as we define it for ourselves at present, the best possible story that we could ever hope to tell ourselves about who we could be and what we could do with our life. It’s worth thinking about and maybe considering, you know, investing some type of energy and time and commitment to, to in some way enacting that out in our life, in our everyday life. So, the years we aren’t just concerned with the trees as we come to them, but we begin to see where we’re headed in the forest. We begin to take a greater perspective.
So that’s, you know, maybe ten years, twenty years down the line we can have this idea that we’ve moved on in our life. We aren’t still dealing with the same problems. The same, you know, we aren’t living out with opinions, the same attitudes. We aren’t thinking in quite the same ways. There’s been some kind of progression.
We can see that with our own experience and maybe we begin to cheer up a little bit. Life isn’t as problematic as it used to be. You know, happens, okay? But I’m talking about the overall impression. So we call this a Buddha, and this is our orientation.
You know, we come in this room and we empower the Buddha, that idea within our mind. Some ways we project it outside of ourselves so we have something we can crystallize it and have something to work with. Prostrate to it, we show it respect, we empower it so that actually it begins to be able to influence ourselves. We begin to bring to consciousness some perhaps what are some of the unconscious ways of being that most appeal to ourselves at present? You know, we clarify for ourselves.
So anyway, the ideas that we call this Buddha. This is like our refuge, this is our commitment or direction. But I guess, you know, what does Buddhism mean by a Buddha? You know maybe we can begin to translate that in terms of some relevance to ourselves. You know a Buddha is a Sanskrit word, means awakened one.
Somebody who is awake, who is no longer who’s awakened from the half slumber of ignorance, the grandiose daydreams of ego, to the possible reality of who they could be and what way of life they could live in its fullest extent. So, you know, a Buddha is someone who is awake, but what does that mean? And perhaps we’ve talked about this a number of times, you know to orientate ourselves toward what might work for ourselves in solving our problems and finding happiness begin to, you know like you have this white light and we begin to break it up into a spectrum of different colors and see if we can begin to work with those individual qualities of a Buddha. You know like wisdom, you know simply a mind that sees things clearly, directly without any mistakes and free of all illusion, all wrong thinking, all obscuration, clarity of mind which knows directly, love and compassion. You know this is a profound overflowing feeling that a caring that others be happy, that they not suffer.
Like, you know, it’s, we use our model that of a mother for only child. And we try to direct that, develop that and direct it equally toward all living beings. That’s quite a goal isn’t it? But anyway that’s the direction we begin to try to emulate, to implement in our lives. And it has the idea of a sense of power, personal powers.
A Buddha is not a wimp. A Buddha is effective. He has an inner strength. He is able to make a difference in their own lives and other people’s lives. They have the capacity to overcome obstacles using skillful means but also using whatever power is necessary to get the job done.
So, begin to, these these are qualities aren’t they? And we have to, you know the idea of awakening or the idea of mental health is a social phenomenon. We are social beings. And so, not the path is not a matter of generating understandings or noble attitudes within our mind in isolation from others, but being integrated in the world of others, being a part of that world, finding ways that we begin to translate this wisdom, this love and compassion and personal power in ways of relating with others which are skillful and working with them in fearless ways and able to benefit them ourselves. So this is like the Buddha story, the best possible story that as far as Buddhism is concerned, you know, I’m not saying that you have to make this your story, but at least dream a story and try to live it.
You know something about materialism, something about and beyond bigger, better, more, that’s not enough. Your life is worth much more than that. And you have the capacity for much more than that if you allow yourself. So you know when Buddhism speaks of awakening, enlightenment, essentially we’re talking about wisdom, love and compassion, a personal power and their skillful and fearless expression in our everyday life. But above all Buddha is awake.
You know there is a little story that I, it’s a little paragraph I’d like to read to you. It’s about a Buddha. This was during the Buddha’s time. It is said that soon after his enlightenment the Buddha passed the man on the road who was struck by his extraordinary radiance and peacefulness of his presence. The man stopped and asked, My friend, what are you?
Are you celestial being or a god? No, said the Buddha. Well then, are you some kind of magician or wizard? Again the Buddha answered no. Well my friend, what then are you?
The Buddha replied, I am awake. That’s what we want to be. You know the awakened, this is like our paradigm, magnetic north. The Buddha is regarded as the highest being in the universe. The ultimate outcome of the Buddhist path of mental health, what we could possibly become, and the best thing that we could do with our lives in terms of who we could be and what we could do with our lives.
So, you know, the Buddha is looked upon with immense gratitude for setting an example, for showing us the way, for demonstrating to ourselves what is humanly possible. You know we need some examples, we need some living models of what humankind is able to achieve. The Nelson Mandela’s, the Mother Teresa’s, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama’s. These people are extraordinarily important not only in the direct benefit, but simply as acting as alternative possibilities of how we could be in this world. Buddha Śākyamūni, the historical Buddha, is honored as a teacher, as an exemplar, as a guide, like an ever present reminder of the awakened state, our birthright.
It’s by appreciating his extraordinariness that we begin to understand just how deceptive our seeming ordinariness really is. You know the limits that we’ve already in one way or another set for ourselves and what we’re going to achieve in our life. You know they help us to aspire us up beyond the known, familiar, you know the groove, the tracks that we’ve set that we’re stuck in more or less. You know by understanding exactly how the Buddha achieved what he achieved we can understand how we can achieve that same end. You know the Buddha is looked upon as a guide because he traversed the same path that we too are trying to follow.
Therefore he’s, it only makes sense to trust in somebody like that because they’ve experienced exactly what we ourselves want to experience and they can show us how to do it. So the essential significance of the Buddha, you know as what we call the Jewel of Buddha, as a central object of faith lies in having fully experienced all that we too want to experience for ourselves. The Buddha is How’s that? Does that better? Sounds like FM classical music station.
We’re gonna meditate anyway. So you wanna stretch your legs for a second? Can you stand up? It’s warm, isn’t it? So it’s said that the Buddha said that most all of our experiences are filtered through four misperceptions.
One of them is that we perceive the impermanent as being permanent, and we perceive suffering as being pleasant, we perceive the impure as being pure, and we perceive the selfless as having an independent permanent self, and so forth. This is the basis of our problems, more or less. And so he went on to say that in terms of our actual practice, the foundation is to work with overcoming the misperception, the first of these four, that is to say, misperceiving the impermanent to be permanent. We have this idea, I mean, it’s not rational, it’s not reasonable, if it were we would have overcome it a long time ago. But nonetheless, we harbor the notion that I’m always going to be here in some way.
Even when we think of death, we put enough curtains veils between ourselves and death so that it doesn’t have any immediate impact on ourselves. It really move us. It’s just an abstract notion or theory, an idea, which we rationally agree reasonable, but it doesn’t have any emotional impact. Death is always in the vague and distant future in some way or another. So it is necessary to cultivate a mindfulness of death.
You know, when we talk about death, it’s not a pessimistic, morbid notion. On the contrary, we are primarily interested not in death, but in life. You know, opportunity that life presents ourselves with. In cultivating a mindfulness of death, we, through that process, we paradoxically become more aware of the fact that we are alive. We no longer take it for granted, and we begin to value it.
To begin to pay attention, you know, there’s a very interesting notion, I think it’s quite useful in your everyday life, in the psychology of your everyday life, is that what we pay attention to is our reality. In a way, meditation is like refocusing our attention. We begin to pay attention to those things that we normally overlook or that we dismiss, and it becomes more and more a part of our reality. We become closer to the way things actually are in fact. We begin to pay attention to the fact that we’re going to die.
That fact. When we begin to understand the fact, we begin to understand the value of the fact that we are still alive. And when you combine fact and the valuing of that fact, it leads us to action. It overcomes our inertia, our stagnation of simply overlooking what it is that, in fact, we have. Once you begin to see that you have something, even as basic as your life, you begin to value it, and it leads you to make use of it.
Otherwise, we like a we could be a poor person who has a golden pot and still lives in poverty. They don’t realize the value of what is sitting there before them, and they don’t make use of it. However you want to use your life, and that’s up to you. You know, one Zen teacher, I think, said, Zen doesn’t teach you how to be a saint. It just teaches you how to be a better person.
If you’re criminal, it’ll teach you how to be a better criminal. Whatever it is you do, you do it with greater intensity. So maybe we can live with a greater intensity, a greater order of being. Anyway, going to meditate on death. We’ve done this before.
We’ve talked about it and we’ve meditated on it before. You know, the very last teaching that the Buddha gave, interestingly enough, the very first teaching he gave. Khensur Rinpoche, we gave a talk yesterday on death, impermanence. And he brought out the fact that the very first teaching Buddha Śākyamūni gave after his awakening was that of the Four Noble Truths. And the first of the Four Noble Truths is true sufferings, which has four parts: impermanent suffering, selflessness, emptiness.
The very first aspect is impermanence. That was the very first teaching he gave, was the truth of impermanence. Then when he was about to pass away, his last words, his last teaching, were that all compounded phenomena are impermanent. So there must be something really important there if it was the first teaching and last teaching that he ever gave. So it’s worth our efforts.
So we’re going to work through nine part death meditation. The first, it has three roots. And the first root is that death is inevitable, and it says definite. And each of these three roots is going to have three reasons. So there are the three reasons which support the fact death is inevitable, that death is definite, is that everyone must die.
You know, what is so bloody special about me that I don’t think I’m going to die. You if all the You know, you can think about the billions and billions upon billions of creatures which have evolved on the planet Earth over the millions and millions of years life upon this planet. And every single one of them died, from the lowest microorganism to Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, you know, the holiest of beings, they all died. Of the billions of people on this planet a hundred years from now, even those beings who are born today, they’ll be they’ll they’ll be dead in a hundred years. I’m sorry.
Everyone in this room will be dead in a hundred years. I wish it were otherwise, but that’s not my wish isn’t going to make it different. So no matter how wealthy, how powerful, you know, how eloquent, insightful, how beautiful, we’re all going to die. It’s quite inevitable. The second reason is that we’re going to look at is our lifespan is continually decreasing and there’s no extension forthcoming.
Even as we sit here, seconds become minutes, minutes become hours. It’s getting late. Hours become days, days become weeks. You know, life creeps on at its petty pace, but it still creeps on, doesn’t it? I like the image, if you’ve ever been to India and you’ve gone on an overnight journey, most of the train journeys in India take quite a long time.
Even in your bunk, if you’re lucky enough to have a bunk, a sleeping platform, and then you hear the train, there’s a little dim blue light up on the ceiling, chugging through, rolling through the countryside. And you come to these little stations and you hear the Chaiwala selling tea and selling, don’t know what else they sell, sabzi and whatever, vegetables. And then you move on. And even on these train journeys, you’re moving closer and closer to your destination. Whether you’re having a good time or a bad time, whether you’re talking with the other travelers, or whether you’re by yourself, whatever the reason, whatever goes on, inexorably moving to your destination.
Then finally you get there and you have to get off. You don’t have any choice. So our life is continually decreasing. And the third reason is that this body is a composite of causes and conditions. All that comes into existence, in dependence upon causal conditions, will cease when those causal conditions cease.
Our life, who we are as a person and so forth, are simply dependent upon the aggregation of a crisscross, a complex matrix of all these variables, know, of physical and mental variables, which like happening and experience coming together, forming this body and mind, this person. But they’re impermanent. They’re constantly undergoing change. And as they change, we change. We grow older.
Our mentality changes over time. For better or worse, we’re changing constantly. And finally, those causes and conditions no longer aggregate, if they no longer come together in a similar continuum of type, then whatever it was ceases. It disperses, and it’s over. It’s finished.
We’re like a happening, a blip on the screen just for a moment, and then it’s over. Sit down. Take a comfortable posture. It’s not so bad. Begin by relaxing the body, starting at the scalp, the forehead, feeling wrinkles in your brow beginning to smooth out.
The tension in and around your eyes beginning to diminish. The muscles of the face softening, relaxing. Your jaws relax. Moving your awareness to the muscles at the back of your neck perhaps gently turn your head to the side a few times. It’s loosening, softening.
And the muscles of the throat, the upper back and shoulders. Perhaps rotating your shoulders a few times and letting them drop comfortably to the sides. Your hands are loose, soft. Relaxing your lower arms, your upper arms, Your chest is at ease. Relaxing the heart and the lungs the central portion of the back.
Relaxing your stomach. And releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles. Just allow your belly to go soft. Release your your back erect. Relax your lower back muscles.
New buttocks. Upper legs. Lower legs and feet. And bringing your body to your where to bringing your awareness to your body in general. Noticing any tightnesses, any tensions within the body, any areas of discomfort.
And focusing upon those areas and consciously relaxing, softening, feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen. Body becoming comfortable, at ease, a sense of physical well-being pervading your body. It’s a nice place to be in your body. It feels good. And then bring your mind to the breath.
Just the easy gentle in and out flow of the natural breath. If it’s helpful use the techniques of counting and noting the breaths. Now we’re going to meditate on the inevitability of death, that death is definite. The first reason is that no matter who the person might be, whether they’re a king or a president, a writer, a philosopher, a criminal, a terrorist, whoever you can think of, however powerful, however rich, however saintly, everyone must die. There’s one we can think of who hasn’t died.
What’s so special about me? The second reason is that our lifespan is continually decreasing and there’s not going to be any addition to it. Even as we sit here, time is going by. We’re getting older. We’re getting closer and closer.
There’s a point in time, in one way or another, we’re going to die, and we’re continually approaching that moment. And then the third reason. Our body is a composite of causes and conditions. And whatever comes into existence through the coming together of causes and conditions is subject to going out of existence when those very causes and conditions themselves cease. Whatever is born is doomed to die.
So see if you can come to some kind of conclusion to use your life wisely, mindfully, know, coming to set your priorities and what has meaning and purpose for you. You’re not always going to have this opportunity to take hold of that opportunity while we still have it. And then bring your mind back to the breath. Just the easy gentle in and out flow of the breath. And get in touch with your body.
Notice the feelings and sensations within the body. And then in an easy and relaxed manner, slowly become aware of what’s going on around you. But just take your time. There’s no hurry. Last week we, were looking at karma, the mechanism by which our intentions that we’ve had in the past are translated into future experiences of one sort or another, positive or negative, pleasant or unpleasant.
And we talked about the various ways in which karma, our actions, in terms of the heaviness and lightness of those karmas. Went through the, you know, I think there was a handout that was, if you haven’t gotten the handout, there was an additional handout, page three and four. There’s some more copies there. We’re going to continue using that tonight. So, last week on page three we talked about the heaviness and lightness of karma.
What determines the quality of the result in terms of its intensity, its weightiness. If we begin to appreciate this fact, then what the significance of talking about heaviness of karma? When we perform a positive action, it’s important to have, you know, to, if you’re going to do it, to try to develop as strong a positive motivation as possible. Very much karma, the heaviness, as you know, although there are all these various parameters, criteria for determining the heaviness and lightness of karma, the most important factor is that of motivation. And dependence upon the intensity of the motivation, there will be a proportion of intensity of the karma created, and likewise, the result will be proportionally intense.
So if you’re going to the trouble of doing something, to make it worthwhile as best as possible in terms of your motivation, strengthen your motivation. Carry out the act, put your best effort into it, into having the action succeed. Whether it succeeds or not, it’s beside the point. But have the intention of bringing it to some kind of successful conclusion. And when you finish the action, a positive action, dedicate.
We’re going to talk about the results of actions. And our positive actions, the karma, the seeds that are implanted as impressions which are created by our various intentions, susceptible to be destroyed. The positive karma is susceptible to be destroyed by anger and misguided regret. But it’s said that if we can dedicate, if we give that that that that karma some kind of directionality, you know, may it be bringing about such and such a type of result, you know, whatever. Whatever you you know, it’s up to you.
It said in some way it’s not as vulnerable to that it’s being destroyed by anger, and it’s a matter of degrees, and so forth. In terms of our negative actions we create, try, you know, okay, we’re in the real world. We call the real world. Our world is made up the reality that most of us know at present is in terms of our self interests, in terms of our attachments and so forth. Okay.
We have to work from that basis. You have lots of termites in your house. What are you going to do? The exterminator says, I can get rid of them for you. What are you gonna do?
So I, you know So you’re gonna commit a negative action. Okay. But try to to lessen the intention, the strength of that motivation behind that action as much as possible. If you have to do something negative, don’t take pleasure in it. Don’t rejoice in it.
Don’t be glad that you’re doing it as best as possible. What if you have to kill something? Kill it in the most humane, the least way that causes the least amount of suffering. If you can, develop some type of regret. I wish I didn’t have to be in this situation, but this house is important to me.
I’m going to have to kill these termites. I wish I didn’t, but that’s my reality. That’s where I am at present. This has a tendency, all of that taken together, will weaken the negative karmic result. So at least if we’re going commit a negative action, can weaken the result of that negative action.
We can do something. Okay, so we’ve been talking about karma in terms of causes. These ten negative paths of and they’re opposite, they’re antidotes to those, the ten positive action, paths of karma. We’ve talked about the weightiness, which, of the karma in terms of heaviness and lightness. And now we’re going to talk about the results of these actions.
But before talk about the results, have to actually examine and analyze, is in fact, is karma going to bring about a result or not? Not all actions in fact bring about a result. And so we can make some kind of distinction in terms of the result. And this distinction is made in terms of karma accumulated and karma performed. karma accumulated.
This is the mental aspect of of the action, the mental component. You know, you thought about doing something, you consciously weighed it up for yourself, you planned it, you know, whatever, and then you, you that accumulates karma. Accumulates karma. You know, it involves motivation, involves intention and so forth. That’s the way karma is actually accumulated.
But there’s another aspect to that action, and that is karma performed. So, you, you know, this is the, the, the doing of the action. You actually thought about it and now you actually put it into that plan into effect. That’s karma performed. For example, you know, you get angry.
Anger is your motivation. Out of this anger and maybe not you guys. Okay. Somebody. Anger is your motivation.
You say, I’m you out of that anger comes an intention. I’m gonna kill you. You know? How am I gonna do this? Well, I’m gonna go I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna get I’m gonna go get a gun.
You know? You you plan it out. You work it out in your mind. That all those mental processes that are involved in that, that’s the accumulation of karma. That’s karma accumulated.
Then you actually implement your plan. You know? Bang, bang. You kill the person. The doing of the deed, physically in this case, of killing, is the karma performed.
So we make a distinction between karma accumulated and karma performed. Okay. What is a karma karma accumulated? Now, if you notice, a list on page three. It goes over to page four.
Accumulated Accumulated karma are all actions with the exception of the following ten types: What is done in a dream? So, can go around, you know, shooting people in your dreams. It’s quite possible. You can do good things and bad things in your dreams. That’s not a you don’t accumulate karma.
What is done unknowingly, what is done accidentally, we do that all the time, don’t we? Just driving over to Buddha house, you know, to make yourself into a Buddha, you killed a lot of sentient beings. And that’s that’s the situation we were in. But you did it accidentally. I don’t think you had the motivation to kill them.
What is done neither with intensity or continually, what is done erroneously, what is done absent mindedly, what is done unwillingly, you know, somebody forces you to do something, actions which are by nature ethnically neutral. Am I raising, my hand? It’s a neutral act. Those that have been cleared away through regrets those that’s, you know, applying to an antidote, and we’re going to talk about the four powers, which are the antidotes, especially to negative actions, but you can also develop regret with respect to positive actions. That has been cleared away by means of an antidote and so forth.
So, these are said to be karmas which are not accumulated. Okay, so we have an idea. You know, essentially, we can see that most of these ten actions that are not accumulated have in common a lack of intentionality, a lack of motivation behind them. This is the most important factor in determining karma, whether there’s motivation to commit the act or not, and whether the action is actually accumulated or not. Okay, so we have two types of karma: karma accumulated and karma performed.
And so, between these two, there are four combinations, and this is what is mentioned on this chart on bottom of page three. If we have both accumulated and performed, we had the motivation, the intention, planned it out, and we actually did it. Okay? So that’s both accumulated and performed. The second is accumulated, but you didn’t perform it.
You thought about doing it, but, you changed your mind, or you didn’t have the opportunity. Something happened, interrupted, and you didn’t get around to it for one reason or another. So it wasn’t performed, but you had the intention to do it. The third combination is you didn’t accumulate, but you performed it. You didn’t have the intention to kill the insects or what so forth when you drove over here, but you still performed the killing.
So that’s not accumulated but it is performed. And then the fourth combination is not accumulated and not performed on the basis of killing. If you read a book, you didn’t accumulate the action of killing, or did you perform the action of killing? Okay. That’s the way these technicalities work.
That’s the way Buddhist debaters debate about these things. Anyway, so this brings us up to which of these combinations is going bring about a result or not. And this is mentioned in what we call definite and indefinite karma, and this is on page four of your handout. Is a karma that is one and two of the above in that chart, both accumulated and performed and accumulated and not performed. The results of definite karma are said to be certain to be experienced.
They’re going to bring about some kind of effect. When we say certain to be experienced, we have to slightly qualify that, don’t we? That means unless there’s some kind of counteracting agent, that something happens to that karma which destroys weakens it. If the karma isn’t destroyed or weakened in some way, that karma, when it’s a definite karma, is certain to be experienced, the result. When it meets with the activating condition, just like a flower seed, when it’s planted and comes into contact with the proper conditions of soil and water and warmth and so forth, then some kind of reaction takes place, and a result comes about.
Likewise, with these types of karma, definite karma. The other two combinations are called indefinite karma. You know, when it’s not accumulated, but it is performed, driving over here, killing those insects it was not accumulated, but it was performed it’s called indefinite karma. Or if it wasn’t accumulated or if it wasn’t performed at all, that’s also called indefinite karma. So indefinite karma means that the karma will not be effective, though there’s going to be no result or extremely minor result.
So that we commit an action, it’s not necessarily that it’s going to bring about a result. It can be an indefinite karma. Even with regard to definite karma, the types of karma which are certain to bring about a result, they can bring about a result at various times in the future. We can talk about three different levels of time in general: the result experienced in the current life, the result experienced in the very next, immediately next life, or the result which is experienced in the second life after this, or some indefinite period of time in the future, a hundred thousand lifetimes or a hundred million lifetimes in the future. Which one of these three time periods the result is going to be experienced is determined by the intensity or the weightiness of the karma.
And those which are of the most forceful, extremely heavy karma can be experienced in this life. The results can be experienced in this life. And what this means is, is that the results actually begin to be start to be experienced in this life. But the main result will be experienced in the next life. But there’s actually some kind of experience related to that action which begins to be started to be experienced in the course of this life.
And those which are middling types of intensity or heaviness are said to bring about results in immediately next life. And those of a lighter nature will bring about results in some indefinite time in the future life. But nonetheless, when the proper conditions aggregate, come together, then some type of experience will come about, whether it’s in this life, next life, or some type of future life. Now, we’ve talked about actions as causes, the weightiness of those actions, which of those actions are going to bring about a result, when they’re going to bring about a result, and we’re going to talk about the various types of results. And these begin to are mentioned on page four, the results of karma.
So, you know, in order for an action to be included amongst the ten positive paths of karma, it has to act as an antidote or a preventive or a restraint from the ten negative paths of karma. Therefore, we have to know what are the ten negative paths of karma, and we went through those the three of body, the four of speech, the three of mind. And we also have to understand, well, what are the consequences of those particular actions? And it depends upon knowing what are the actions, what are the negative actions, and what are the consequences. Then we can make some kind of informed choice, you know, using our discrimination.
In that way, we can restrain or prevent ourselves from becoming involved in those ten negative actions. And whatever that action, that restraint in itself is included within ten positive actions. So we have to know what are the results of the various types of actions that we’re creating. And we can discuss the results of our actions, our karma, in terms of four over all categories. Let’s say, karma creates four types of results.
And they’re listed here. There’s an explanation of it briefly on your handout on page four. The four types of results of karma are: Fruition results this is the overall type of rebirth that you take according to a particular karma that you’ve created, the result corresponding to the action in terms of experience. There’s a similarity of type between karma as a cause and the result which we experience. And, you know, this is more or less what we say, As you do, As you sow, so shall you reap.
And this is what this is getting at. Gets like. The third type of result that we’re going to look at is result corresponding to the action in terms of behavior. And most simply, this is that we tend to an action once facilitates us doing it again. We form habits.
We have propensities to repeat the same types of actions that we have done in the past into the future. And then the third type, the fourth type of result is the environmental result. And this is a type of, you know, these first three are in terms of within the continuum of the being, within the mind and body of the being. This fourth type of result is in terms of their environment, you know, the place in which you’re born into, the resources that are made available to you, the possessions that you own or have, the things that aren’t within your continuum but do affect your life. So we’re going to go through these four types of results.
The first of these is fruition result. So this is the main result of ripening of a karmic seed. It’s the type of life that we’re born into, you know, whether it be from the lowest hell realm up to level of the celestial beings, the gods and so forth. This is the fruition result of the karma that we create. It’s a given situation.
Within that situation we’re going to undergo various other experiences. But the the given is the Fruition result, and the remaining types of karma are the variables within overall situation we find ourselves in. So, each of, you know, all of the various negative paths of karma have different intensities as we’ve mentioned. In terms of these negative paths of karma, we talked about three levels of intensity, you know, that which is heavy, and that which is less heavy, middling, and that which is lighter. These all have a Frictional result, again, which correspond to various levels and types of rebirth.
Okay, so the fruition result is most simply the type of, you know, we are born within the human realm as human beings. The fact that we have the human type of embodiment is a fruition result of our past karma. The second type of result is result corresponding to the cause in terms of experience. So as I mentioned, this is simply the formulation of as you sow, sow shall you reap. You know, whether you have wealth or you live in poverty or whether you’re beautiful or whether you’re ugly, whether you’re short or whether you’re tall, whether you have a long life or whether you have a short life, whether you have lots of loving friends or lots of hateful enemies.
All of these are results of specific causes, similar in type to themselves. For example, we’re going to go through the various experiential results of each of the ten negative actions. But if we talk about giving some examples which are often presented in general, generosity brings about wealth, affluence, miserliness brings about poverty as a result. The action of being generous, experiential result in the future is that you’re going to have lots of material things. You’ll be well off.
Miserly, if you hold on to what you have, in the future you’ll be born into poverty. If you practice the results of tolerance or patience is to have a beautiful appearance. The result impatience is to be ugly. Killing, the taking of life, has as its experiential result that you yourself will have a short life. On the other hand, if we save life, if we give life, then you yourself will experience a long life.
If we care for others, if we’re kind to others, it’s not too hard to imagine that others will care for ourselves, that they’ll be kind to us as a result. So in terms of this experiential result, each of the ten karmic paths, and here specifically the path has specific experiential results. And these are mentioned on page four of your handout. So these are corresponding to the, you know, karma as cause, our actions as cause, our intentions as cause, have a corresponding result similar in type. So the corresponding result of killing is as we just mentioned, that you yourself will have a short life.
I guess, you know, how how It’s hard, know, as we’ve talked about, the connection. Mean, some of these sound rational, reasonable, illogical even. But the mechanism is quite, as we mentioned, is extremely subtle. It’s an explanation which tries to help us to gain some kind of control over what it is that we experience. You know, how how do we explain?
You know, I mean, it’s been a problem throughout the history of humankind to explain explain our experiences. Why does a baby die? You can experience it perhaps in terms of its that this baby had a birth defect or something like that, but maybe it has an accident. Why do some people seem to get along? Things go easy in their life.
Others have great difficulty. Questioning, what is something beyond the superficial level, trying to question, well, what are the deeper causes of what brings about all these various results that I’m experiencing? Guess each of our various religions have their various explanations to try to understand why we’re in this position, what’s the causes behind what it is that we experience. And materials, you know, scientific materialism has its various explanations. Know, but, you know, they, at, it comes down to, well, some of the mechanisms are simply we have science would say, well, it’s chance.
It’s random. But that’s just another word for saying that the causes variables are so subtle that we can’t follow the relationship of the sequence of events. It’s so complex that we can’t take all these variables and make any real, practical, useful predictions. Or we can’t trace them back to what it is that actually precipitated, what brought about this. So therefore, we’re going to call it chance, or random happening.
And it’s there’s no really there’s no ability to really look at the deeper causal mechanism that’s operating. Everything in the universe arises in dependence upon causes and conditions. If we could but we simply, you know, even with materialistic science would go along with that. But we can’t this causal chain, which has brought about this you know, we’re we’re sitting here at Buddha House with our particular bodies, with our particular mentalities, and with our particular situation. And all all the the complexities of who we are, all of this is, you know, could be there’s a we could trace all, you know.
I know there’s no computer in the world that could that could take in all the variables which are bringing about this present gestalt, this present complex situation. Buddhism is trying to offer mechanism of explanation. I think some of them sound reasonable, some quite rational. Some of them just I guess we have to use them as a working hypothesis, as an operational basis, until we know better. It’s not chance.
It’s not random. Everything, you know, that is not the way the universe operates. God doesn’t throw dice. Everything is working out in terms of cause and effect. This pervades the entire universe.
It’s just that this causal chain is so subtle that we can’t, we aren’t able to fathom it at present. So we can make use of this as an operational basis in how we conduct our lives. That seems, It seems legitimate. It’s a smart thing to do until we know otherwise. That’s a long justification, wasn’t it?
The corresponding result of stealing is to live in poverty. You know, whatever property that you do have is not your own. You have to share it with others. You don’t have anything that’s completely that you possess for yourself. The corresponding result of sexual misconduct is to live with a very troublesome partner.
So it’s not their fault. It’s your fault. Know, all of these things happen. I guess we could talk a great deal about this. You know, to to to talk about the fact that, you know, it doesn’t mean that you was that you it’s predestined, you know.
You have you have a troublesome partner, but it doesn’t mean that you become a doormat or whatever. You can still work with the present situation. It’s just that you to know that you’ve played you are playing a part in that dynamics of that situation. You know, it takes two to create a relationship. You know, the main point in sexual misconduct is that there’s some kind of violation that you take for your own pleasure someone who is in a committed relationship.
So the corresponding result is that your own partner is going to be unfaithful, is going to be disloyal, is going to, you know, you’re going to have difficulties in your relationship. They’re going to be difficult to get along with for one reason or another. And the people around you are going to be difficult. They’re not going to be trustworthy. You know, they’re going to be of a bad character in one way or another.
The corresponding result of lying is that you yourself will be subject to slander. That, you know, you’ll be people will talk badly about blame you for, you know, for for almost people will deceive you in various ways. They’ll cheat you. And the corresponding result of divisive speech is that you will, you know, just like you did to others, that you yourself will be divided from those who are dear to you. You’ll be surrounded by the people who around you will be un harmonious.
So there’ll always be quarrelsome. There’ll be disagreements going on about you. It’s interesting, isn’t it? In that we we can see sometimes how we set up these dynamics within our relationships or the types of relationships we find we choose to be in. In some ways, it’s like a self fulfilling prophecy in many ways.
Anyway, the corresponding result of harsh speech is that you will always be hearing unpleasant words directed at yourself. Even when you try to speak nicely, other people will think you’re just trying to be argumentative, aren’t you? We can’t even be nice when we try. Though people define our what we say as unpleasing, as unpleasant. And and we we what what we say is seem to be unreliable.
This we’re thought to be dishonest even when we aren’t. It’s very frustrating, I would think, when you’re trying to do your best. And some people’s words have great power. Just a few words. Some people people ignore them.
It has no significance. The corresponding result of senseless speech is that people don’t listen to you. They don’t listen to anything you say. You’re not considered trustworthy. And I think it’s interesting.
One the corresponding results of senseless speech is that you lack self confidence. You’re not confident in your own thinking or in your behavior, in your in your what you do, in your actions. The corresponding result of covetousness is that you would have a predominant emotion of attachment. You know, some people are you know, we we see this, that their lives are completely consumed in one way or the other, bigger, better, more.
They always they never have enough. They always want more and more. You know, greed, in other ways. So this is personality type, which is the corresponding result of covetousness in the past. The corresponding result of malice is your predominant emotion is that of anger or hatred.
You know, some people naturally get angry. They have very short tempers. It doesn’t take much of anything. You know, I’d notice, you know, like some people I notice is like, they have Velcro minds. You know?
It keeps getting caught. The and somebody said the littlest thing in mind. Other people, it’s like, you know, they have what would you call Teflon. They have Teflon minds. They just glide through life.
And then people say something they don’t even notice. They just keep on going. Other people, they’re still stuck back here. I was terrible to be to have that kind of everything is problematic. Everything is a hassle.
So they they always see other people. You know, they’re paranoid. They always see those people out to get them. They can’t trust anybody. Everybody’s out to harm them to get the best of them.
It’s a difficult way to live. And then finally, in terms of the corresponding result is that wrong view. And this is that your, you know, in terms of your predominant emotion is stupidity. You know, stick to incorrect positions all the time. You hold on to incorrect positions unthinkingly.
And Also, you’re constantly deceitful to others. You’re not real, authentic. So these are the various types of results corresponding to the cause and terms of experience. Essentially, we’re saying that actions are causes and that they will bring about a type of result which corresponds in type, we will have that kind of experience. Let’s talk about the next one and then we’ll stop and we’ll discuss some of this.
The third type of result. Result corresponding to the cause in terms of behavior. So, this is an easy one, though we forget about it quite a lot. These are kind of guidelines, think, aren’t they? If we take them sincerely, if we examine them.
The tendency to continue to act in the same ways that you’ve done in the past. You know, habits, more or less. Committing an action once facilitates its commission again, that you’re likely to repeat that same action. The more that you hate, the more that you hate. Of course, the adverse is true also.
The more that you love, the more that you love. The more you see it’s worthy of love. Easier it is for love to arise in your mind, the easier it is to express that love. And so forth. It’s like a snowball effect.
You know, a person who was killed in the past might take up a livelihood of becoming a butcher or joining the military, where they could enact out this same tendency to harm, to kill. There’s little regard for life. It’s interesting that sometimes you hear on television about someone who’s extremely rich. And they get caught shoplifting something that’s worth ninety eight cents. It’s like it’s a real buzz for them.
It’s a real excitement. This is this result corresponding to the cause in terms of behavior. You know, is interesting because I remember back in this is before your time. Quite. Maybe back in the eighties.
They used to have these encounter groups. Remember encounter groups? They were very popular. And it was like you let it all hang out. You I used to get in these encounters and everybody else is freaking out and punching.
I go, Wow, there’s something wrong with me. I’ve got to find something bad in here so I can get it out. And suddenly, you know, these people with their pillows, I hate your mother. Know, they’re pounding these pillows and taking out all their hatred. Mother, why did you do this?
You know? And, you know, the fact is that the more that you get angry, the more you get angry. It’s not as if you’re going to get it all out and then it’s finished. Actually, you’re facilitating the propensity to find more to be angry about and to express it. You know, it doesn’t work that way.
But I think that, anyway, that was one idea in the passing of California psychology that became very popular for a while. Anyway, this is called the result which is similar to the cause in terms of behavior. Simply, performing an action facilitates its performance again. One has a propensity, predisposition to do it and again and again. So, you know, we’re going to talk about how we can interrupt a lot of these patterns, these various four types of results.
Having committed a cause, which could bring about these four types of result, we can play antidote, can weaken or prevent the arising of each of these four types of results. So maybe we can talk about the fourth of these next week. Do you have anything you’d like to share? Questions or comments that you’d like to make? What we’ve been talking about?
I’ve got a question. Yeah. I was visited by the Romans recently. Gave few references. Yeah.
I mean, you wake up and you find yourself as a slug under a rock. Okay. What do I do? You don’t know any better? Is like a centipede?
Yeah. So whatever has mind? Yeah. It’s like it’s something you need. So, yeah, I I mean, as far as, yeah, you could be reborn in a What it what it takes to be reborn in a slug, I’m not sure.
Maybe you have to be kind of slimy in the way you act. I don’t know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They come back. Probably, I mean, therefore, could is there anything negative about it?
Oh, it’s just a degree of suffering. Yeah. I mean, this it’s said in general in general. I mean, there’s different there’s a difference in degrees of suffering from as you go from a hell being to a hungry ghost to an animal to a human being and so forth. So it’s this degree of suffering, physical sense of suffering.
And and also you’re within the human realm, have a potential to to use our mind to its maximum, and therefore, to be free from suffering. So but it’s a matter of degrees of suffering. So it said I mean, in general in general, I mean, you see some human beings suffer a lot. That’s quite true. Bigger the mind adds to the suffering.
The bigger the the bigger the potential for suffering. The bigger the mind? The bigger the potential for suffering. The mind will slightly presume the smaller. That’s, like, the potential for suffering might be small smaller.
Yeah. I think they’re than something. Yeah. So it’s just a that yeah. The problem is Perhaps it’s control.
I mean, if you have no control over your life, a slug has no control. Animals are reliant on perhaps well, humans have the most control because we control the environment. We control the animals. Yeah. We decide whether slugs are gonna live or not.
Yeah. So I think it’s probably with the human, it has the greatest control over themselves and potential to control themselves and their mind. Yeah. And all send you beings. So that’s probably the the highest part.
So, yeah, that’s when we sometimes the the human realm humans are kind of the optimum situation because they have just the right balance of suffering and happiness. If you have too much suffering, then it’s difficult to to have the opportunity or follow a path. If you’re too involved, overly involved in suffering or if you’re too happy, you aren’t inclined to. So you have to have a nice balance between suffering and happiness. It’s the optimum situation.
You in the human realm though too, isn’t it? Yeah. I’ve had the human rebirth at the way it is. Yeah. So many people that are either in such good life.
Yeah. That’s right. See a need for it. Yeah. People that are suffering Yeah.
Day to day. Very much so. So you people are you know, sometimes they talk about who is it, hierarchy of needs. I talked about this last day I asked. At the basis, have your physiological needs.
You need shelter. You need food. You need clothing. So unless you have these basic needs met, you can’t concern yourself with higher needs. So there are lots of so and then there are lots of people in this world simply their time is complete and their energies and lives are completely consumed with fulfilling their basic needs.
We’ve got those pretty easily met, don’t we? Once we’ve had those basic physiological needs, then there’s the needs for security and safety. You know, the people in Darfur, you know, the Janjaweed, these militias could ride up at any moment and begin shooting raping, and so forth. They live in constant fear and paranoia, quite justifiably so. So they’re not in a position to meditate and sit around in the luxury that we have and talk about the karma and so forth.
And then once you have some kind of you know, we live in an extremely safe and secure environment. We don’t really have to think about those things very often. Then once those needs are met, we can think about self fulfillment, self esteem, love, truth, beauty. These kind of way out there. So we were extremely fortunate, even amongst human beings.
I guess it’s very much part of life isn’t it? We by way we act, we can serve as a condition for someone to become angry and to talk to us harshly. We’re in some way, responsible for their negative karma which they create. People were actually quite saying something that’s That’s helpful. Like you said, you can’t get you saying something that’s quite okay.
The other one three acts in a way and you think, hey. That wasn’t my intention at all. Yeah. And then We’re in a Yeah. And in relation it takes I mean, it’s it’s quite complex, for, there has to be an interlocking or a fit in karmas.
That somebody, for example, if we have, in order for a theft to occur. We ourselves have created the karma to own property, you know, whatever it might be, a car. But we’ve also created the karma to, whereby it’s able to be stolen, and someone else has the karma to be able to steal my car, to have the desire to steal my car, and that these two come together and that out of this fit between our karmas, something a theft arises. So there’s a certain responsibility on both sides. I don’t know if that’ll hold up in court, but diminished responsibility.
If he didn’t have the car, I wouldn’t have stolen it. I don’t know how to work as a Any other comments or questions? Yeah. Yeah. Everything that we’re saying, I know why we pick on negative karma so much, anyway, all of what we’re saying would equally apply to positive karma.
The more that you’re generous, the more that you’ll be generous. The more that you love, the more that you’ll love. I think it’s true, what do they call exponential at some point? You know, they say that the further you progress along the path, the easier it becomes. Because these positive propensities accumulate, the more that you love, the more that you love.
It becomes easier to love and the more that you do it, generous, the easier it is to be generous and the more stronger is your generosity, it becomes easier to do it. Everything becomes But we’re in a difficult situation because we’re trying to overcome a lot of negative propensities. But when predominance preponderance of our propensities are positive, there’s an exponential result that starts to come about. Things just start to become easier. And the more easier they become, the more we like them, the easier to repeat them.
And it just snowballs on itself. And I think somebody was told no not to eat fish because they’d actually been done a whole lot of fishing in a past life, and so they they created all this negative karma. Uh-huh. Whereas somebody hadn’t done any fishing at all. They things, on balance, fish, but they sort of yeah.
So we created a great deal of positive karma. We began our discussion together with a positive motivation and out of that came a lot of positive karma, we can dedicate that before we destroy it. 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 deaf hear sounds, and 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 they 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 those bound be freed.
May the powers find 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 of 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 circled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well Powerful Chenrezig, Tenzin Gyatso. Please remain to the end of cyclic existence.
Thank you. Don’t get wet. This Saturday is Mindfulness Day. Eight thirty. Yeah, so you’re all welcome.
You might find it useful. I think that’s all the announcements.