Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 130-minute session, Ven Jampa Gendun opens by reframing anxiety as spiritually useful — a “constructive anxiety” that breaks the assumption life will improve without real change — and pairs it with faith as the confidence to act despite fear. He works through the Three Jewels as refuges, treating Dharma as whatever genuinely transforms the mind and tracing its root to the Greek word for therapy. The talk then shifts to guided meditation on the unpredictability of death before a detailed map of karma’s environmental results: each of the ten negative actions shapes the outer world one inhabits (harsh speech creates a landscape of sharp objects; senseless speech, orchards that never fruit). He introduces the order of karmic ripening via a Tibetan river-crossing analogy, then explains how dedication protects positive karma before previewing the four powers of purification. Q&A closes on the interdependence of ethics, concentration, and wisdom.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 3PA 2007 05 21.mp3
UUID: 34bf16c2-ba98-42a8-b7f6-78b9d1158714
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Three Principle Aspects of the Path 2006-2007 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 2007-05-21
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 130.9 minutes
Words: ~12,801
Can you hear me okay? How are we how is everybody? It’s cold and wet. Beautiful. It’s nice, isn’t it?
The farmers are happy. Talking about the two causes for perhaps redirecting the emphasis in our lives, what it is that we, what is a priority in our lives, what we call going for refuge. And first was a sense of underlying anxiety, what we might call constructive anxiety. Anxiety overcomes our unfounded hope, the hope that somehow things are going to get better all by themselves and I can more or less keep thinking and acting very much the way I have in the past. Better is going to come out of it all.
Not quite sure how, did you ever notice? Yeah, I mean we start to see why should things more or be different. Not the specific instances of our lives, peculiar events, but the overall impression that we have about the quality of our life, you know, making the same mistakes repeatedly again and again, even against our better judgment, even against our will. And the other cause of this process of redirecting, perhaps reprioritizing what is important to ourselves, what is in fact our refuge, is faith. Faith is important.
It’s not necessarily something confined to religion or spirituality or for the simple minded or the devotional. We all operate our lives on the basis of faith in one way or another. Where are we going to find our happiness? Where do I treasure life? You know, faith is necessary even in bringing about changes in the mundane.
Any kind of change that you want to make, you have to have some kind of confidence or trust that it’s worth the trouble. There’s always change always brings about some kind of tension. Something old is dying away and something new is yet to be born. There’s a transition. As one is in unfamiliar territory so to speak.
There’s always some level of fear. One becomes afraid of the unfamiliar, the unknown, what we’re not used to, what we’re not accustomed to. And you have to have some kind of confidence that it’s worth the trouble. You know, you’re willing to act in spite of your fears. It is faith which overcomes our fears or trust that we don’t pay so much, we don’t let fear run our life.
We still might be afraid but nonetheless we do what we feel needs to be done to make things better for ourselves. And then we talked about okay where is this, all this taking us? You know this whole process of Buddhism, you know this is a process of change isn’t it? It’s not a matter of gathering more information, learning new techniques, control strategies, avoidance strategies. It’s about bringing about some kinds of changes in our world view and the way that we approach our life, maybe redefining what our goals in life are.
So in terms of what are the goals of Buddhism, what are the refuges in Buddhism, where does our commitment lie, you know, what are we willing to invest our time and energy and our resources, is in the Buddhadharma and Sangha. We talked about the Buddha, you know, somebody who is awake. But ultimately, the Buddha that we’re to take refuge in, it’s not to say that we don’t take refuge in the historical Buddha or the Buddhists who are operative in the world at present. Have tremendous respect or gratitude for Śākyamūni Buddha, historical Buddha. He was honored as a teacher, as a guide, a model, as a paradigm of sanity, something that we can work toward, so it’s not a complete abstraction.
Is the goal of the spiritual life? At least as defined by Buddhism, what does it look like? We can crystallize it in terms of personality and the qualities of that person. And wisdom, love and compassion, and personal power, and how they find a skillful and fearless expression in everyday life. So ultimately, the thing that we need to have faith in is that ourselves is, both in our Buddha nature, but in the actualization of that, that we can change for the better.
It’s hard to sometimes imagine I can be any other way than I am. This is all I’ve ever really known. Know, be it ever so humble or barren and quite often so dissatisfactory and painful, this home, who I am now. Draw some kind of comfort in that. But sometimes it’s difficult for us to imagine that I could be really healthy, I could be really fulfilled and content and happy.
So we need some kind of we have another refuge, the Dharma. These are the technically speaking, when we talk about the Dharma, we’re talking about the self sustaining solutions to our problems, and these are called true cessation. You know, there are four noble truths. True sufferings, true sources of suffering, and the third noble truth is the truth of cessation of suffering. So these are the solutions to the problems that we’re able to generate within our own mind.
What was once a problem is no longer a problem. It’s gone. It’s an absence of that problem. That’s the cessation. And then the other Dharma refuge are paths.
That is the means of actually bringing about that change, finding those solutions. True paths, that’s the fourth of the four noble truths. These are are usually talked about as refuges in terms of the Dharma. The word Dharma is a Sanskrit word. It means to hold, literally.
And the Tibetan equivalent is czu. And czu has Dharma has lots of different meanings, but also the word Chu has lots of different meanings. And one of them is to transform, transformative power. So, you know, when we’re talking about the Dharma we’re talking about that which is able to hold us back from these holes in our life that we keep falling in, the pathologies of our life that we don’t want to keep reoccurring. It does that by the power of transforming changing ourselves.
You know the Dharma is whatever is able to facilitate the journey of a single individual. You know, whatever is able to take a person from, to bridge the gap between attachment and generosity, hatred and love, jealousy and rejoicing, wisdom, ignorance and wisdom. Whatever is able to help an ordinary individual to become an extraordinary individual, that’s the dharma. Those methods, those techniques. Actually we’re talking about the truth of things because it’s the truth of things which is actually going to make us free.
You know, that which lies beyond the fictions, the set of fictions that we’re continually projecting upon the world. You know, there’s a Dharma might take the form of something as simple as a leaf floating down from a tree, giving us a teaching on impermanence, or it might take the appearance of something as seemingly complicated as all of these texts. It’s said to be eighty-four thousand bundles of Dharma. That’s a lot of Dharma. But there’s a saying in Japanese Zen Buddhism that to, at one time a blade of grass is as effective as a sixteen foot tall golden Buddha.
At another time a sixteen foot high Buddha is equal to a blade of grass. Which is to say that Dharma is what actually works for ourselves. However lofty the title might be or the person who speaks it, form it comes in, the various trappings around it. It’s what actually changes our mind for the better, what works for ourselves. We actually have to think for ourselves.
It’s quite a challenge, I think in that respect. Sometimes it’s said of the Buddha that he only taught two things, suffering and how to end your suffering. You know, that seems pretty straightforward and pretty uncomplicated. You know, The Buddhist world view, I mean these teachings, these methods, these trainings, the truth of things that we’re trying to work with, take as their criteria, take as their basic assumption that no one wants to suffer, everyone wants to be happy. You know, it’s pretty hard to disagree with that, to argue with that.
We can argue about anything, and people do. Whether Whether God exists, the nature of the universe, we can go through it all. But the one thing that we can more or less, know, each of us might define happiness and suffering very differently for each of ourselves. It might be unique, you know, your happiness, is happiness for you, what is happiness for me, and suffering and so forth might be very individual. But the fact is none of us want to suffer, we all want to be happy.
So that’s criteria. It’s a pragmatic approach to the problem of life. And we’re not so much concerned with eternal truth, with principles which stand outside of the human experience. What is workable in terms of actual lived experience, in terms of suffering and happiness. So, you know, Greek word related to the root Sanskrit dhri, which is related to the word Dharma.
So there’s an actual, you know, there’s a linguistic connection between our word for therapy and the Buddhist word Dharma. So you know the Buddhist therapy is the Buddhadharma and for Buddhism there is no other therapy than truth therapy. Know Dharma is truth, is this truth which is going to make us free. Whatever else, we want to know what is actual fact as best we can. And I think some people, there was some mention, yeah I was watching a video, actually we, on the Dalai Lama when he was last here.
A video called the Heart of Tibet and it was a symposium that was at ANU on the nature of mind. I think it was in maybe two thousand and one or something like that. And the speaker who was introducing the Dalai Lama said it’s very unique that someone simply wants to know the truth. Scientific findings come out and they’re validated and they seem apparent and they’re accepted in all respects, then the Dalai Lama said, well that’s what we have to follow. That’s what we want to know.
It is the truth of things which is going to set us free. And it’s a real challenge, I think, to think for ourselves. We’re not really used used to that in many ways. We like our truth to be given. Know what’s the bottom line?
What is that I need to believe in? Where do I sign? As if we can become a member and that’s all, that’s enough. So the Buddha Dharma is above all else Buddhist truth. You know it’s simply a world view, the way a Buddha sees the world.
And you know, to go for refuge to the Dharma is to go for refuge to the truth, to become a student of the truth, the way things are, and who we are, you know, in terms of what we can be and what we can do with our lives. Ultimately the jewel of Dharma that we are going for refuge to is ourselves, each of ourselves as the kind of living embodiment of the truth of things, the way they are in fact. These realizations within our mind. And we can’t, we can, a lot of things we’re learning we have to take as a working hypothesis, as an operating principle. But that’s only provisional.
We can’t leave it at that. We have to keep reexamining whatever the teaching might be. You know we can’t allow this to remain doctrine simply like oil floating on water. It won’t change your mind. You may be quite informed about Buddhism, you may become quite familiar with the terminology and the concepts, but that’s not sufficient.
That’s not what Buddhism is all about, isn’t actually bringing about some kind of change. So we have to take these teachings, this world view as presented by the Buddha, and try to validate it with our own experience to see for ourselves whether it accords with our own truth, resonates with ourselves in terms of our intuition, in terms of our logic, our reasoning, in terms of our own life experiences. And then it becomes ours. Know, we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, we have the wheel of Dharma, but we have to, as it were, discover again all of those truths that the Buddha, Him, and her selves over the path many centuries have discovered for themselves. So, you know, this is our ultimate refuge.
It’s the Dharma. It’s bringing about positive change in our mind. And the way these find expression in our everyday life, how they solve our problems and those problems and the solutions in themselves. This is our Dharma refuge. It’s the actual refuge.
You know, the Buddha is referred to as a sure refuge, and the Sangha are those who assist you in going for refuge. The actual refuge is the Dharma. And that’s what we have to try to integrate, discover for ourselves. So this becomes our priority. Above all else, I want to know the way things are.
And being kind of fearless in that investigation. So in this process, my priorities, the central focus of our internal life becomes Buddha. It’s becoming happy, healthy. You know it’s important that we all sit, we pause from time to time and check up. You know we get lost, don’t we?
In the busyness of our everyday lives. You’ve got work to take care of, you’ve got the family to take care of, you’ve got the house to take care of, you’ve got the car to take care you’ve lots and lots and lots of demands taken upon your time and energy. And so we get distracted, necessarily so. We have to create some kind of balance perhaps. And times it’s necessary to stop and check up, then reflect.
This all taking me in the direction that I really want to go? What do I want my life to stand for? What do I value most? Even in small ways, setting limited goals. So we don’t, you know, pass five or ten, twenty years or a lifetime and wake up one morning and say, this wasn’t the way I wanted it.
This wasn’t the way I would have planned my life if I thought about it, if I had reflected upon it in a deeper way, in a more meaningful way at some point. And then, you know, whatever ideas you come up for yourself, know, not so important that you take on Buddhist ideas. That’s not the point. But finding ways, the point is to make your mind happy, to find some kind of peace, to work through some of your more fundamental problems at a deeper level. That taking that as your orientation.
And, you know, finding ways that you can, you know, how can I express that in my everyday life? You know, how is this going to translate? I have to take these noble ideas and find some way to bring down to my lived experience in my everyday life. How is what I’m doing supporting the person I want to be, what I want to become, you know, ten years from now, twenty years from now? You know, if you’re pointing your cart north when you want to head south, how are you ever going to arrive?
So at least from time to time, that’s what we do in adjusting our motivation. That’s all it is. We’re checking up from time to time to ensure that we don’t pass a lifetime in ways that in our better, our more noble moments, when our wisdom is operating, when our mind is clean and clear, we would choose for ourselves. Maybe we have to do that quite often, maybe every day. Anyway, so in this process, the inner focus of our life becomes Buddha.
Whatever that might mean for you, the best thing that is a possible story you can tell yourself about yourself, that you’re Buddha. And we have to do something. How are going to support that? How are going to translate that idea into some kind of lived experience? That’s the Dharma.
And we rely upon our spiritual friends and those who support us in what we’re trying to do. And we try to raise the level of emotion of motivation, you know, what it is that we’re seeking. You know, for most of us, our own self interest is the only reality that we know at present. But maybe we can begin to expand our notion of what our self interest entails beyond our individual selves and begin to include others in that. And what mental health would be like in taking, what our goals are You know, broadening our conception of what a successful life might be includes others, even if only for now a limited number of others.
Somehow being a benefit to them would be part of this. 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. 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.
I go for refuge until I am awakened to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Through my practice of generosity and yellow 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 actual and arranged imagined. I disclose all my negative actions accumulated during beginning this time, and rejoice in all the virtues of superior and ordinary beings. Please remain to the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of Dharma for migrating beings.
Dedicate all virtue, mine and that of others, to the great awakening. So we’re going continue our meditation on death. That’s kind of it, it’s one of the truths, we’re all going to die. You know I think it’s useful because it cuts through a lot of distraction and it helps us to keep our eye on what’s important, what is our priorities. You know I mentioned that the Buddha said that most of our experiences are filtered through four mis perceptions.
One of them, the first one is that we misperceive the impermanent as being permanent, as if we’re always going to be here. You know it’s not rational, but at some level we hold that we’ve got plenty of time. That I can always get around to doing what it is that I want with my life one way or another. I’ve got plenty of time. But we don’t, so meditating on death is helpful to give us some kind of impetus to bring about the changes that we might want to make.
Our time is limited. It’s definite. We’re going to die. That’s what we meditated on last week. And the second part of this meditation, it’s called the nine part death meditation, is that death is unpredictable.
That is say the time of our death is unpredictable. We simply don’t know when we’re going to die and this has three parts which we’re going to meditate tonight. The fact is that people can die at any time. The human life expectancy is uncertain. Know we, not me but you, you’re young, healthy, I’m okay.
Maybe when I get old, That’s what we think at some level. Unconsciously perhaps we have that kind of assumption that we’re operating on the basis of. But that’s that’s not very reasonable or rational, really. I mean, fetuses die in the womb, babies die at birth. They die at the age of one and two, young people five and six, a four-year-olds, young adults, middle age, you know people can die at any time.
It’s just that we’re not sure. There’s a good chance, you know we talk about the fact that statistics would say you’re going to live to an average age. Yeah, but average, the probability is not certainty. Statistics, average is just that. Necessarily there are those who die before that.
Might be you. It might be on the low side. You don’t know. We can’t be certain. So we can die at any time.
The second reason is that there are many causes of death. So we just begin to, and this is not to make you paranoid, I guess it’s to overcome our sense of invulnerability. Somehow we’re super men and women. I’ve got this body which is immune to everything but kryptonite, but that’s not the case. It take all of that much.
You know, there are many causes of that, you know, you went out tonight in the rain, there’s probably lots of accidents on roads tonight with the wet streets. Anyway, I don’t want to make you paranoid, but that’s the case. And so we have to think about that we aren’t invulnerable, that there are many causes of death, that we live in a kind of inimical conditions. Some degree it’s like a hostile world in terms of the conditions we live in and maintaining our life and our health. We always have to be.
We can’t take it for granted as it were. The third reason is because our human body is extremely fragile. You know, it doesn’t take, you know, there’s all these, there’s not only these external conditions, accidents and all the various types of possibilities outside, how complex the body is. I hear when many students when they become medical students, when they start going to medical school they become hypochondriacs. They didn’t realize all the possible diseases that they could get and all the things that could go wrong with their body.
They begin to notice all the difficulties, the little pains and little upsets in their body become blown out of proportion. All these systems in our body and the chemical balance of our body and each of the various within the cells even, in the interrelationship between the various organs and the systems of the body. All these balances and processes that are continuing to take place that we take for granted. It really doesn’t take all that much. So again, this is not to make you paranoid, but I guess it’s, you know we talked about seeing the truth, you know just becoming, acknowledging that fact, but also recognizing that maybe you’re holding the opposite of that at some level.
Now we can hold at different levels of cognitive awareness, can hold different positions. We can hold reasonable understanding that I am definitely going to die in another level, that I’m going to live forever. We somehow we have to bring those in opposition to one another. And then the truth will win out. And it’s that truth, not the paranoia or being the fear.
It’s simply living according to the way things actually are, which frees us. You know, there’s a certain dishonesty in demanding that the world be other than the way it is. And that dishonesty is paid for in terms of all our various levels of suffering. We have no choice but to accept the way things are and to begin to live our life in accordance with that, to harmonize ourselves with that if we’re ever going have any chance of really solving our problems. So anyway, this is one level of working with our problems, this misperception of seeing the imprint as permanent.
Okay, so I’ll give some guidelines as we go through that. So taking a comfortable firm posture. So, again, by relaxing the body starting starting at the crown of the head, the scalp, the forehead feeling the wrinkles in your brow beginning to smooth out. The pressure in and around the eyes beginning to diminish. The muscles of the face softening, relaxing.
Jaws are relaxed. And the muscles of the back of the neck, perhaps gently turn your head to the side a few times. Loosen. Relaxing the muscles in the throat. The upper back, the shoulders, it’s rotating your shoulders a few times, allowing them to drop comfortably to the sides, and feeling this burden, this weight that we normally carry on our back, which kind of weighs us down, making it to move down through your body into the ground.
Your hands are loose. Relaxing the lower arm. The upper arms. Your chest is at ease. Relaxing the heart.
The lungs. The central part of the back. Releasing the tension that we hold in our stomach muscles, just allow your belly to go soft. Relaxing throughout the abdominal cavity. And holding your trunk erect, relax your lower back muscles.
Ear buttocks. Throughout your upper legs Lower leg. Your feet. And bring your awareness to your body in general. Notice any tightnesses, any tensions within the body.
And consciously relax, soften, feeling the tension diminish, the tightness loosen. Body becoming comfortable, at ease. Sense of physical well-being pervading your body. It’s a nice place to be in your body. And then bring your mind to the breath.
Easy, gentle, in and out flow of natural breath. If it’s helpful, use the techniques of counting and noting the breaths. Now we’re going to meditate on the fact that the time of death is unpredictable. We’re going to use reasons. The first is that the human life expectancy is uncertain.
You just have to go over the facts within your own mind with respect to this. The fact that people die at any age, whether it be as a child or a four-year-old, young person, they even die at the age that you presently we are. Just because you’re healthy now or young now there’s no guarantee that you won’t be dead one week, one month, one year from now. There’s no guarantee. We don’t know when.
The second reason is that there are many causes of death. So we can simply go through our mind all the external causes of wars and floods, car accidents, but also there are internal causes, cancer, heart attack. All the various possible ways that we might die and where we might die. People die in almost any situation. They die waking up in the morning going to work, they die coming home in the evening and going home.
They die meditating on Monday night. There’s no time or place that people don’t die. And then the final reason is that the human body is extremely fragile. It really doesn’t take all that much. Even a virus, which you can’t even see, or a few cancerous cells in your body can be the causes of your death.
A sharp object, a simple slip, a bump on the head. And then it’s over. So see if you can come to some conclusion from these reasons, develop some kind of resolve to begin to pursue the goals that you’ve set for yourself, to begin the development of your mind from right now onward, because the future is uncertain. We don’t know how much time we have left to get what we want done, done. And then bring your mind back to the breath And get in touch with your body.
Notice the feelings and sensations within the body. Relax in easy manner, just slowly become aware of what’s going on about you but just take your time there’s no hurry. We’ve been looking at karma, the mechanism whereby our intentions and the various actions that are motivated by those intentions, bring about our lived experiences in the future, you know the connection, how do we connect the two. And we’ve been looking at the results of our karma. And we said that there were four results of karma, the fruition result, the overall realm in which we find ourselves in, the result corresponding to the cause in terms of experience, and so each of, for example, the ten negative paths of action has a particular corresponding experience.
Just by way of example, that of killing, that you yourself would experience a short life. That would be a result corresponding to the cause in terms of experience. Experience very much what you put out, like begets like. Result corresponding to the cause and terms of behavior, and this was the simple fact that we, the more that we involve ourselves in a particular action, the easier it is to repeat that same action again. I would say we form habits, inclinations, we’re predisposed to acting in certain ways, responding in certain ways, behaving.
And then we’ll begin with the fourth of these, these four types of results and that is results corresponding to the cause in terms of the environmental result. So, you know, these first four, the first three of these four that we’ve looked at are types of results that take the form of our individual personal inner experiences whether it be having a human body, you know, with human mentality, having experiencing a short life or a long life and so forth, whether it be having particular habits, predispositions, tendencies, those are kind of more or less internal to the being. Here this fourth type of result, environmental result, is our results that manifest externally in terms of our surroundings, in terms of our environment, our resources, our possessions. Those types of results which are not included within our continuum of our body and mind. So each of these, you know, I think many of you have, there’s probably some more copies if you’re interested.
There was a handout in which there is four pages altogether and we’re looking at the fourth page, Results of karma. Would you like to put some copies there I think? You’re welcome to keep those if you like. And so we can actually work through each of, and again, most of the, I mean some of the results sound reasonable, logical, but to a large extent karma is a type of phenomena which is not amenable to reasoning, logic. We said it’s subtle phenomenon and therefore to a large extent we have to take it as an operational basis, a hypothesis.
You know like the Buddha, you know, are coming from the teachings of Buddha Śākyamūni, and he had a pretty good track record on many other teachings that we can validate for ourselves. There’s some that we simply aren’t accessible at present to ourselves. So, we give him maybe for the present, unless it contradicts our actual experience or it contradicts our reason, but if it doesn’t either, then we can simply give them the benefit of the doubt for the present while still examining, but use it as, you know, I think we use the example of the fact that we don’t have any experiential proof of where we were born and what time we were born. We rely upon documents and our parents’ word that you were born in such and such a city at such and such a time. It’s okay, I’ll take your word on it unless I can prove you otherwise.
It just makes sense. So to some extent or I guess to a larger extent, though we can use analogies, we can use it seems like many of these mechanisms sound reasonable, but we can’t establish them, we can’t prove them within reason. But nonetheless it seems useful to make them working part of a basis of our life until proven otherwise. Okay, so we’re looking at the environmental result of the ten negative paths of karma, the first of which is stealing. I’m sorry, killing.
The environmental result of killing is that things like food and drink and medicines simply aren’t effective, or you know to say that they don’t food and so forth and medicines usually normally sustain life, they benefit life, but for as a result, the environmental result of killing is that these very same life sustaining, life supporting factors in our environment are ineffective. In fact, some people have a hard time digesting food or medicines actually prove ineffective, not only ineffective, they actually I know I’m allergic to a particular drug, a drug which is beneficial, actually once I took it and I ended up in the hospital. So anyway, that’s fine, I must have killed somebody in the past. Anyway, they don’t work for ourselves. The food isn’t very nourishing to ourselves that we can’t digest it.
Know, than, moreover, rather than being able to live out the, you know, have, there are numerous types of karma. We’ve been going through many of them. In the future we’re going to go through two more when we talk about the twelve links of dependent origination. There’s one which is projecting karma and completing karma. Projecting karma, it projects the longevity, how long, a lifespan in a particular lifetime is karmically determined.
That is to say, there is an energetic bond between body and mind. Death is constituted by the breaking of that bond between body and mind, and that the strength of that bond is established through karma, and that we have this particular strength of the connection with this particular embodiment between the body and mind due to the, for example, the effects of having killed in the past. Then even though that have a, that bond is going to be weak, but moreover the environmental result is that we aren’t able to even live out that projected longevity of that lifespan that we find ourselves in a position of being in a famine or an epidemic or we’re in a war situation, you know, or we’re in a situation where medicine is not available. You know, like people are dying of AIDS in Africa where the same people if they lived in Australia, they would be able to find proper treatment and they would live out their life. So, the fact that that medicine is unavailable to them would be said to be an environmental result of killing.
That what could help them to live out the longevity, the projected longevity of their life is missing in their environment. People die of famines and so forth. So this is in terms of how your environment would act, not to support, in terms of killing, you would have a shorter life. The environmental result of stealing is that the area that you live in has meager resources. Know, this sounds reasonable, does it anyway?
You get back what you give out. So maybe that’s, we can sort of, that feels intuitively understandable. Situation that we find in is rough. It’s a barren place. Life forms have a difficulty surviving there.
Know, things have difficulty growing. Are poor harvests, maybe through drought, through floods and so forth, one or the other. So that’s the environmental result of stealing. Environmental result of sexual conduct, misconduct, is to be born in an unclean place, you know, this is described as a place full of filth, you know, where there’s all kinds of excrement, urine, a filthy place that stinks like a sewer. Okay, environmental result of sexual misconduct. Those are three of body and there are the four of speech.
Environmental result of lying. So know, so the environmental result is things don’t turn out well for you. You know whatever you try it doesn’t quite work out. Know lying is like, in a way it’s like cheating others and as a result you encounter repeated failures in all that you endeavor to do, all your efforts like to make a livelihood and so forth. You know, whatever efforts you undertake, it turns out badly and moreover people are cheating you, deceiving you in return.
Environmental result of divisive speech is to be born in a disagreeable place. It’s unpleasant environment. There’s no pleasant parks or ponds, there’s no beautiful scenery. It’s full of, it’s inhospitable. It’s a difficult place to live.
It’s interesting because we’re talking about the environmental result of divisive speech. One way of describing this area, one of the characteristics of this area is that it has many canyons and rivers that divide up the land. So the land is all chopped up, it’s hard to travel. You you have to go up and down at high altitudes and descend to low altitudes in traveling so it’s hard to get around. The surface is broken up where you want to travel.
It’s very divided up. The result, environmental result of harsh speech is to be okay. Again, it kind of fits I think. This area is full of sharp objects, thorns, you know, rough stones. Stones.
The place is full of sharp objects like bits of broken glass and chards of brick and so forth. Know, harsh speech is like a weapon that we use to hurt other people. And so, the result is, in terms of our environment, very much in keeping with that. It’s a harsh, rough place. It’s a difficult place and it brings similar kinds of discomfort to ourselves, our very environment.
The environmental result of senseless speech, this is an interesting one. I don’t know, it’s kind of a play on words almost. Senseless speech is a type of speech which is, doesn’t bear any fruit. So one of the characteristics of the environmental result is that the fruit trees they don’t bear any fruit. That’s part of your environmental result.
In a place without any beautiful features, it’s an unpleasant place, barren place, you know, full of, there’s lots of causes of fear in your area. The environment result of covetousness. Know covetousness is this we’re always craving, you know, we always want better, we always want more, there’s never enough, we’re never content, we’re never satisfied. So, the environmental result of covetousness is to be born in a situation which is just the opposite. That you never have enough.
All that you have is continually being taken away from you or it’s wearing out or it’s disappearing, it’s being lost. That’s the environmental result of covetousness. So then the second of these three negative actions of mind is malice. Malice, the environmental result is that somehow your environment harms you just as you had harmed others in the past, or the intention to harm others in the past. You you’re born in a place which suffers from epidemics, for example, all kinds of infectious diseases, or there’s all kinds of civil strife, or there’s war going on about you.
There’s all kinds of social upheavals. You have a very unpeaceful, disturbed atmosphere about you, a situation you find yourself in. Like an environment is actually almost acting against you, bringing harm to you. And finally with the tenth of the ten negative actions is that of wrong view. And we said wrong view is coming to a decisive conclusion of the non existence of something which in fact exists.
So it’s in the environmental result of holding that kind of position is that all the precious things about you, the worthwhile things about you are always disappearing, are always vanishing, are always deteriorating. You can’t hold on to those things which are really important to you, which make life all the better for you. They’re always disappearing in one way or another. As a result, the environmental result is that pure things, impure things appear pure to you or that really what is in fact suffering appears present until you actually go to experience it and then you realize you are wrong. You know, you won’t, I get in the one of the environmental results of holding wrong view, and the idea of coming to some kind of different conclusion, this is the way things are in reality, is that you will not meet with spiritual teachers in the future, or you will have difficulty in your relationships with them, that you won’t come in contact with spiritual teachings and so forth.
So these are the environmental results of the ten negative actions. You know we’ve been looking at, we’ve looked at karma in terms of the four types of results, the fruition result, the result corresponding to the cause in terms of experience, the result corresponding to the cause in terms of behavior, and just here now in terms of the environmental result. You know we have we have in our mind innumerable karmic seeds, you know, as we’ve tried to emphasize, you know, we have intention, you know, to drive, the impulse to act out, to speak, do certain, act out in certain ways. This intention conditions the mind. It leaves some kind of residue on the mind.
We call these karmic seeds. And within our minds at present are innumerable types of karmic seeds from all the innumerable types of intentions that we are continually producing, generating over the course of even one day. You know and during one lifetime we create a wide variety of types of karma. So all of these various karma cannot be activated or cannot, we say, ripen all at once. So we can ask the question of which of these seeds is going to ripen first and which one later?
You know, what is the order of ripening of this almost innumerable seeds which are presently within our mind? All these condition factors. When they meet with the appropriate activating condition some kind of response is going to be experienced. Which of these is going, what is the order, how are we going to determine which of these various karmic seeds is going to ripen first and second, so third and so forth. So the order of ripening of these karmic seeds is that first is the heaviest karma.
And when we talked about how we determine heaviness of karma, the various parameters or criteria for determining heaviness of karma, the most important criteria is the intensity of the motivation behind the action. Whether it’s positive or negative, either one. If you save a life out of great compassion, that’s a heavy karma. It’s going to bring about an intense type of result. If you kill it out with intense hatred that’s a heavy type of karma.
That’s going to bring about a heavy negative result. So, the order of ripening would be that the heaviest karma is going to ripen first. It’s going to take precedence as it were. If there are a number of karma, and there probably will be, which are of equal heaviness, then it’s said that the one which was created nearest the time, you know, we’re talking about which of our karmas is going to ripen at the time of our death. And we’re going to go through the twelve links of dependent origination which describes the evolution of how we came, how we come into being, this situation we find ourselves in.
And at the moment of our death, these various seeds are going to be activated due to the forces of craving and grasping. It’s like they’re going to be nourished. It’s like adding, you know, the seeds are there and then water and soil. The conditions necessary for some kind of development which will give some kind of impetus to our mind, some directionality to our mind, which will go on to bring about a particular type of embodiment. These various four types of result, for example, the fruition result, the very realm that we find ourselves in, and then these other types of result in terms of experience and behavior, and then the environmental result.
So first there is the one that’s going to, that which is most heavy is going to ripen first. But if there are many karma which are the same degree of heaviness, then that one which was created nearest to the time of death would take precedence. If in fact they’re all equal, there are a number of karma which are equally heavy, equally created near the time of death, then that which we have the most familiarity with in terms of the action, action, that which is most habitual, that karma will take precedence. And then finally, all these factors of of a number type of karma were equal, then that which created first. And I know that sounds maybe awfully complicated, but there’s a simple way, they usually have some simple way to, first they make things very complex and then they usually have a simple way to explain them or to try to remember them.
And the analogy that they use when talking about which of these karma is going to be activated, which is going to ripen first is, The analogy is that, you know, Tibet there were many rivers and a few bridges, so quite often they had a small boat that would take you across across the river. So, are all these people, you know, waiting to be taken over across the boat, across the river in the boat. So, of those people are going to go first? So, according to Tibetan tradition, the most powerful, and they say if there’s a government official amongst these people, that person will go first. Now if there’s no government official or they’re all government officials, let’s say they’re equal in that respect, then the person who is most familiar to the boat person, that person is going to go next, would be next in line.
If there is no person amongst the people waiting which is particularly familiar to the boat person, or they’re all particularly the same familiarity, then the person who arrived first will go first. So this is kind of the way they can simplify this process. The most powerful, the most familiar, the one who arrived first. This is the order of precedence of the ripening of karma. You know previously we described, we said, we’ve described karma in this particular fashion in terms of the ten negative paths of karma.
Those are particularities of karma and we’ve talked about their results, but previously we talked about karma in terms of its general principles. We said that there were four general principles. The certainty of karma, that is to say happiness and unhappiness are invariably the result of respectively positive and negative karma. That there’s this invariable correlation between positive karma bringing about positive ends results, negative karma bringing about negative results. Essentially suffering of one type or another.
That’s the certainty of karma. The other general principles are the magnification of karma that even a minor cause can bring about a significant result, that there is an increasing effect of karma. And the third was that if an action is not performed, we will not experience it’s result. If you don’t have the cause, you won’t experience the result. If you to bring about a particular cause, you know this is, we operate on this basis and we should try to operate on this basis in our practical everyday life if you want to.
You simply have to make the provisions by creating the causes for some type of result that you want to experience, you know. If you want to retire with a good pension you have to begin to save up money for that. You have to create the causes for that and so forth. And then finally the fourth, it was actions that are done are not dissipated, they’re not lost. So we have all of these condition factors within our mind, these karmic seeds, seeds, and they’re not going to go away by themselves.
Over time, the course of one lifetime or the course of many lifetimes, they’re not lost in the shuffle. They will remain until they yield their result. But we made a pervasion and this is what we’re going to be talking about. And that pervasion was unless they’re destroyed or weakened by some countervailing agent. These karmic seeds are going to remain, you know we use the analogy of wheat seeds that they are found in the pyramids of Egypt, and some of these seeds are four or five thousand years old, and they’ve taken these seeds and they’ve put them in soil and added water, and they sprout, they actually grew wheat.
So over that length of time the potency of these seeds remained, it wasn’t lost, it didn’t fade away. And likewise with regard to these karmic seeds within our mind, the potency is going to remain, it’s not going to be lost. Unless it’s weakened or destroyed by a countervailing agent. And this is what we’re going to talk about. This both in terms of positive terms and also negative terms.
First we can look at the fact is we have positive karmic seeds within our mind, know the various positive paths of action that we’ve created. We’ve saved life, we’ve been generous in the past, we observed ethics. All of the various positive actions that we’ve created in the past have all left their karmic seeds, it’s not all a matter of negative seeds in our mind, but these can be destroyed or weakened. They can be weakened by anger or hatred, by wrong views, and by misguided regret. So aside from the many other, what do you say, detrimental consequences of anger in destroying both one’s own immediate happiness and kind of poisoning the atmosphere about you and creating, disturbing the peace and happiness of others.
Over and above that, karma also, anger also destroys your future happiness. You know, by the fact of destroying the positive karmic seeds within our mind. And due to anger, positive karmic seeds in our mind will yield either weakened or no result in the future. You know when we talk about people working with anger and developing a list, you know one of the first ways to work with afflictive emotions, you know there’s many different levels, different tools. The very initial level is you need to work with the disadvantages and the advantages.
What are the advantages if I continue to be angry? If I use, if I have recourse to anger, what’s the payoff? You you actually, I mean, at some level, our various ways of acting, we have a notion that’s going to bring about what it is that we want, it’s going to help us get rid of what we don’t want. Maybe we haven’t really seen through the fact that it’s not working, but at some level that’s the assumption that our behavior is based upon. It’s in our favor.
What are the disadvantages, what are the advantages, for example anger. So, in looking at this in the various levels of working with anger, this is, can be used as, and then once one has some kind of confidence that this is in fact the case, it can be used as one of the disadvantages of anger. Anger not only destroys what happiness at present, but it’s also unbeknownst to ourselves, is destroying the potential for happiness in the future as well. We said also in terms of destructive agents that positive karma is that of wrong view. Here we said that you know wrong view was is denying something that exists.
In this context it’s coming to some kind of definite conclusion that karma doesn’t work, cause and effect doesn’t operate, and therefore there’s no motivation to actually use this as a working hypothesis of how you’re going to act. That you’re not going to go out of your way to create positive karma, you’re not going to go out of your way to avoid negative karma. And then finally that of misguided regret, and this one we can easily, you know, maybe anger, wrong view, I don’t know, not so much, perhaps in our cases. Anger, yeah, that’s a problem. Misguided regret is quite common in the sense that misguided regret is like having second thoughts about something positive that you did.
Maybe even an irritation with yourself. Had this old lawn mower and it worked really well in the garage. He said, just bought a new lawn mower, I’ll give that to Salvation Army. They can use that. A couple weeks later you need to mow in the grass.
Your new brand new lawn mower was kaput. And you take it down to the lawn mower repairman and say it’s going take a couple weeks, I have to order a part from Sydney. He said, that’s okay, I have my old lawnmower on. Oh, God. Why did I ever give that lawnmower away?
That was really stupid. I should have known I’m going to need that sometime around. And it’s something that you positively did. You gave, you know, you had good motivation, good intention behind it just to help out, but now you regret it. So that, this is what we mean by misguided regret.
And this has the ability to weaken or destroy these positive karmic seeds in our mind. One thing that we can do with regard to the danger of destroying the positive actions that we do is to dedicate. And that’s why this is part of practice. Know, we said that a perfect practice involves three there’s adjusting what’s motivation, the action itself, and then dedication. So, you know, this is, we can protect, as it were, the positive karma that we create within our minds through the dedication of that action.
We give it some kind of constructive direction towards some kind of positive end. Will not only help in its ripening in terms of the direction that we’re giving it toward the ends that we wish for, but it also protects it from being destroyed by anger and wrong view and misguided regret. Immediately prior to a thought of dedication there’s some kind of there’s a there’s a factor of aspiration. Aspiration is a mental factor which seeks a particular object. Know maybe I like a beautiful body, or I like things to turn out well in my relation, or I like a better rebirth, any, you know, whatever.
It can be anything. So, it, with respect to that karma that we’re dedicating, it further conditions that karma. It adds a sub clause to the contract, to the quality, the characteristic of that karma. In terms of that, it will eventually yield its result in terms of what it is that it’s been associated with, in terms of our aspiration toward that object, the object of our dedication. And moreover, this tends to protect it from being destroyed, The factor of anger and so forth, being able to weaken it.
This directionality that we have given it by means of our dedication, it becomes associated with some kind of end which seems, I don’t know the mechanism, I can only speculate. It seems to be the case. We can dedicate our actions toward it, you know, any end. We can, you know, both temporal, beauty, long life, health, wealth, good results, exams, getting a better job, whatever, but we can also dedicate toward ultimate ends. May all sentient beings be separated from suffering, the causes of suffering, and all beings have happiness in there, causes of happiness.
May I attain Buddhahood by it due to this. And it’s said that this latter dedication, you know, it’s like, you know, may I achieve awakening, may I achieve Buddhahood, may I achieve enlightenment, is like taking our drop of of positive action, our merit, virtue, and put it into the ocean merit of all the Buddhas. And it’s like, you know, until that ocean dries up, that drop of water is going to remain. So it’s as if that drop will never be exhausted until we actually do ourselves achieve Buddhahood. Okay, so now we’ve about positive karma, but there’s an important, there’s another important area.
I don’t know about you, but I myself have created negative karma. You be above that, I don’t know. But if you’re like me, then this is an important area to consider, that within our mind stream at present are innumerable negative karmic seeds. That is whether we are aware of it or not, whether we remember the various negative actions that we created or not, still they exist within our mind, these conditioning factors. And when these conditioning factors meet with the proper appropriate activating condition, some type of undesirable experience is going to come about, and we don’t want that.
So what can we do about that? There isn’t, you know, we said that these seeds remain until acted upon by a countervailing agent. In terms of the positive karma, they remain until, unless they’re affected, weakened or destroyed by hatred or wrong view or misguided regret. Well, that’s in our disfavor, isn’t it? But on the hand there’s something we can do in terms of, in our own favor, and that is to be able to weaken and destroy the negative karmic seeds within our mind by means of a countervailing agent.
And those are what are called the four powers. That’s what we’re going to begin to look at, the way that we can apply the four powers, the power of repudiation, the power of reliance, the power of restraint, and the power of antidote. So we’re going to go through each of those powers and this is a very practical way that we can help ourselves. Even within our level of confidence in these factors of karma, you know, whatever degree of trust we have in this notion, we can make use of these powers in benefiting our mind and our future. You know there’s a psychological mechanism at work here which is quite useful even in the temporal sense.
What to say of its deeper function of actually helping us to avoid undesirable experiences even though we’ve created a cause for them in the past. So we’re going to go through these four powers. Begin next week, okay? So don’t do anything bad until you hear from me. There any any questions or anything like anybody like to share?
Some ideas? Did you have something in mind behind your question? Yeah. There’s, I mean one explanation of the doctrine, one area of explanation is in terms of the three higher trainings. The training in ethics, meditative stabilization, and wisdom, and it said that in order to bring our mind to peace ultimately we have to develop wisdom.
There’s no other door than the door of wisdom, understanding, emptiness. If I actually remove remove the disturbing factors from the mind, you know, hatred and spite and jealousy, and most basic ignorance. So these factors disturb natural peace of the mind, and they can ultimately only be removed by the factor of wisdom. So, but in order to generate wisdom we have to be able to use, be able to focus the mind in analysis and coming to an understanding of the actual nature of things. We have to have a penetrative, we have to develop the ability to penetrate deeply into the nature of the object, to develop that wisdom, understanding, emptiness, or selflessness.
In order to do that we have to develop concentration. That is the same attitude of stabilization and concentration. It’s like, sometimes it’s likened to an axe, axe is like wisdom, sharp, it’s cutting, but in order to actually cut down a tree, though you have the sharpest axe, if you keep hitting in different places each time you don’t get very far and you’re chopping down the tree. So you have to hit at the exact same point time after time after time to actually cut through the tree. So wisdom, higher training in wisdom, which is necessary to find ultimate peace, is dependent upon the higher training in meditative stabilization or concentration.
And then as you pointed out, meditative stabilization is the way that we can begin to suppress, not uproot, but suppress the disturbing disturbing factors of the mind. Begin to pacify the disturbing factors of the mind. And these are internal factors of the mind. But you cannot begin to pacify or calm the internal factors of the mind unless you are able to pacify our gross conduct in the way that we act and speak in our everyday life, which bring about great, which make gross disturbances. So, that is a meditative stabilization is dependent upon, the higher training in meditative stabilization is dependent upon higher training ethics.
Finding some kind of peaceful way of being in a world with others and living in our world, in our relationships in terms of how we relate in body and speech with others. So unless we can begin subdue or calm or find some kind of way of reducing disturbances which are brought about by our body and speech, we can’t to reduce those which are brought about by the mind itself either in terms of temporal cessation or calming factors or what to say of wisdom which is able to remove those factors altogether. So as you said, think, so higher training in wisdom is dependent upon the higher training in meditative concentration, and the higher training in meditative concentration is based upon the higher training in ethics. But having said that, think difficult, but it’s a matter of degrees, and to a large extent we are unaware of what we’re doing. And mindfulness, just the practice of mindful, becoming awareness of your body, your speech, and how you’re relating and the effects that it’s having on people and yourself in your own mind can be quite useful in helping people to correct their behavior.
You know if you’re unaware that you’re hurting people, then you’re probably going to continue, but once it becomes apparent, that you become mindful of that, then maybe not wanting to hurt people for whatever reason. Being mindful of that you begin to correct your behavior. So I think mindfulness and how it affects you inside. You know, we talk about ethics. We were extremely aware, sensitive to our internal being, we wouldn’t need lots of rules and vows and restrictions.
We would immediately know what actions were disturbing the peace inside of ourselves. The idea of ethics in Sanskrit is Śīla, in Pali it’s Śīla, and it has the meaning of coolness. Those actions which are refreshing, which we feel like our being is being washed in some kind of calming stream of being. Those would those are not if we could if we were sensitive to that, then our actions would be naturally ethical. We would not hurt people.
Naturally. It wouldn’t be a matter of having to impose rules of conduct on ourselves or restrain ourselves, because we would act in keeping with the very refreshing, cooling quality of our internal being. But we’re not sensitive, aren’t we? But mindfulness could help that. It helps you to, you know, like you have, it helps you to be in touch with what, with when you create some kind of schism or division within your own mind.
You know, one of the masters said, I think it was one of Milarepa’s disciples said, cyclic existence is characterized by conflicting emotions. We’re always in struggle. Quite often it’s a very subtle level which is perhaps on our conscious awareness, but there’s an uneasiness, anxiety, tension. And if we could become aware enough to find out what it is that’s struggling and try to pacify that struggle and maintain a level of being which was always at peace, then we would be naturally ethical. We would not be involved in these internal struggles.
So I guess my point, I’m really getting carried away Ari, aren’t I, is that the practice of mindfulness does, you know, being introspective, does really help you to become aware of what’s going on inside of you. And I think it bends itself to acting in a less negative way in how you, in your body and speech, how you relate with people. So, though it’s difficult, I think it’s useful for anyone to practice mindfulness in that respect. Oh, that was long answer. So think it’s difficult because their minds are, they’re externalized to such an extent and they’re so disturbed, know, this restlessness of body and speech and so forth.
It makes meditation difficult, but nonetheless I think it would be quite useful. It would be quite helpful. Now I don’t know what do you think. I see. Oh, well I mean, I mean the word Śāntideva says if there’s something you can do about it why worry, if there’s nothing you can do about it why worry.
We have done a lot of negativities and there’s something that we can do about it. For example, apply these four powers. The worry, I guess it’s their attitude toward, you know, we can’t undo the past but we can undo the effects that they have on our future. So I guess a matter of education. The worry is not going to do us any good.
You know, if you have done things in the past, think maybe it’s the psychological benefit of, you know, people feel remorse. That can be seen as a part very positive. The idea of regret as long as it’s directed in the proper, in fact it is channeled in the right way toward the action and not the person. Know, having done something negative is not a reflection of themselves on who they are, but I guess it’s a matter of directing that focus of regret and remorse or whatever it is, feeling bad about what done toward the action itself and its deeper causes. And then it can it can be constructive for us.
I guess it’s a matter of your attitude, your viewpoint, how you how you view what you’ve done. Anybody any comments on anybody? It’s my debate too. Yeah. Because if you’re looking for a quick fix in Yeah.
Meditation is not going to help. Yeah. It’s you know, it would yeah. You you yeah. Meditation can be isolated from your everyday lifestyle.
Yeah. It’s not something that you you bring your yeah. Is there perhaps a chance that it could help then? Perhaps. I felt that it wouldn’t, but now I’m thinking about it.
There is a chance that the meditation in itself might be enough to make it personal. In in in I mean traditionally, probably usefully, meditation is seen within is a part of a threefold activity of listening, reflecting, then meditating. That’s something, I mean that’s why with especially in Tibetan tradition they put a great deal of emphasis on study, listening to teachings and studying the teachings and so forth, you know getting, so we can, then reflecting upon them and then meditating. Actually use the image of, it’s not necessarily a Tibetan image, I think it’s actually coming from India, that someone who meditates without listening and reflecting or contemplating or studying and so forth is like somebody who has eyes but no legs. And somebody who simply listens and reflects without meditating is like somebody with legs but no eyes.
So we went both together. And so meditation is not an isolated activity, in, it is involved, it occurs within a context of education. And so you have some kind of framework to put it within, developing a world view that it’s part of. But I don’t think it’s very much seen in that way, as part of something greater than that. It’s not a particularly isolated activity.
I mean you can’t, a person, as I talked about when I went through these three levels of higher training, a person leads an unethical life couldn’t develop concentration. Your mind would be too disturbed. Yeah. So has to be a great overall education in the same. You can’t subdue your body and mind in terms of the outside world.
How are you going to subdue your body and speech in terms of the outside world? How are you going to begin to subdue your internal world of your mind? You can’t. We have more control over our body and our speech than we do our mind. So we have to begin at the grossest point and begin working from there.
So we can try to stop killing as best we can, stop stealing as best we can. These are actions of the body, and then we can begin to work to more subtle aspects of who we are. So, yeah, in that respect you’re right. I think so. Without ethics, would have a very difficult time meditating.
But I can still come to learn to meditate. I mean, this is it’s difficult, isn’t it? To to to a large I mean, it’s difficult. Yeah. What do you think?
Well, just listening to this discussion, would say, yes. You it’s probably misguided. It’s probably that possibly credit card interest is unethical, but the way your bank makes profits is probably unethical. So your profit comes from profit. Mhmm.
And It’s a very profound question, think. Difficult question. I mean I think, first off you’d have to ask is this actually happiness? Mean, thirty million dollars is, not necessarily, there are people with thirty million dollars who commit suicide out of So yeah, understand. I think this is a hard notion, but I think I have to rely on traditional explanation in part.
I mean partly I can stand behind what I’m going to say, but I don’t understand it completely. But our happiness to a large extent is the ripening of our past karma. Okay? And that these situations serve, you know, becoming president of the Macquarie Bank is the activating condition. Now, there’s no direct correlation between becoming president of Macquarie Bank and happiness.
Could, unless you have the, it only serves act as a cooperative condition. So a lot of times we assign causal, the direct causal, direct cause of my being happy or unhappy in terms of a cooperative condition. And therefore we try to repeat it again and again to create the same kind of conditions about us. We saw, well, I was happy the last time this happened, and that was happened the last time. But if we look closely, it’s not always the case, is it?
And then we’re able to create the same cooperative conditions about us, and we find we aren’t happy, but we assume we often overlook those stuff. So, I don’t know, where am I going with? And a lot of times we assume we should, we are happy when we, well if we’re willing to check up we find there’s a high level, we’re not really happy. But this is what we’ve learned or we suppose we should be happy with this kind of situation. So it’s really complicated, isn’t it?
I have a suspicion that, I don’t know, I mentioned this last week, and this is kind of, oh, it’s getting late. A kind of a bit of just a speculation. I don’t like to speculate too much because it’s only my speculation and I don’t want to sitting up here, I have kind of a responsibility to kind of, but just in my own last year or so, I have a sense that, you know, we make plans, don’t we? We speculate in our mind, we think, oh, if I have this, if I get this, if I do this, I do that. And we’re always working towards fulfilling those plans and all the while, we’re leading our life.
And we miss, you know, but life is, well, I hate to sound like an old philosophy. You know, life is being led in our everyday experiences, but we keep, we have this, you know, kind of on these distant goals. We’re actually experiencing a great deal of happinesses, incidental happinesses. karma is in all kinds of unusual unexpected ways. Know, really don’t know what’s going to happen almost every day.
I know you have a plan, I’m going go to work or whatever. But going to work there’s all kinds of events that are happening. Know, you get stuck in a light or you see something nice on the radio and all kinds of and so it’s like our happiness is more than not made up of all these little incidental happiness and being attuned to those. Whether these great projects work out or not, it’s all incidental to our real quality of our life. Anyway, now it’s not to say that if you want to become a doctor, doing okay, yeah, you go to the university and you have to go through all that training and you become a doctor.
It doesn’t mean you’re going to be happy, it just means you’ve achieved your goal. And maybe you’re happy or not, you can’t be sure. But in the process of achieving that goal, are all these minor little occurrences which pretty much determine the quality of your life. I don’t know what I’m saying, but it’s kind of responding to the question in a way. But certainly, just at some point, it’s been more difficult being in an environment where an environmental result.
Yeah, that would be difficult, wouldn’t it? Yeah, environmental results. Meditation, it really makes you more sensitive. I mean there are times I don’t, I mean people say meditation isn’t necessarily beneficial, there’s nothing which is inherently beneficial, nothing. So it’s the attitude that you bring to it, your mindset that you bring to it is going to determine whether it’s beneficial or And for some people it’s probably not advisable at certain points.
Mean, know, people it makes you very introspective, makes you very sensitive, and there’s certain times in people’s lives when they need to concern themselves with relationships and other things. You know, if they’re they’ve been a bit shaky, some people are going through a borderline psychotic episode or something, it’s not good to meditate. They shouldn’t be overly introspective. You know, that’s not, you know, I don’t know, that’s just my idea. Meditation is not inherently beneficial, but in general I think it’s useful, I think it’s a good thing to do if it’s done right.
I mean, everything should be done right. Everything can be misused in some way. Even medicines can be misused, which are normally beneficial. Okay. So we can protect all this great karma that we’ve accumulated over the course of the evening before we get angry at somebody.
May all 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 find joy. May the forlorn find hope, constant happiness and prosperity. May there be timely rains and bountiful harvests.
May all medicines be effective and the helpful 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 powerless 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 the awakened realm. May this 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 that circled by snow mountains, you are the source of all happiness and well-being. Powerful Chenrezig, Tenzin Gyatso, please remain till the end of cyclic existence. Thank you.
Have a good week.