Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. A guided meditation on dying of fever — craving cold so desperately the mind fixates on ice as its next rebirth — anchors this 46-minute talk by Ven Jampa Gendun on karma and ethics. He opens by reframing morality as pragmatic rather than absolute: right and wrong are defined by benefit or harm, illustrated by the bodhisattva ship captain who kills one man to spare him the karma of murdering five hundred. He walks through the ten non-virtuous actions, the four factors of a complete karmic act (illustrated through kangaroo hunting), and six elements that determine a karma’s weight. He then covers propelling versus completing karma, the decisive importance of one’s mental state at death — King Ashoka reborn in hell after a single moment of anger — and how karmic relationships allow a lama to ripen indefinite karma already stored in a student’s mindstream.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 WtWNN 1987 08 31.mp3
UUID: 96aff2fb-2871-4851-8ea4-8b876bc99782
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: What the world needs now (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1987-08-31
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.8 minutes
Words: ~5,956
The various states of the mind that we pass through every day of our lives, from the closed mindedness, the preoccupation, the stupidity of an animal, the unsatisfactoriness, insatiable desires, consumerism of a hungry ghost, the hostility, the aggressiveness of a hell being to the absorptions of the gods, the jealousy of the demigods, and all the various trips that humans go through. Continually passing through these various states of mind. These are brought about by the ripening, the various skillful and unskillful karmas that we’ve created. We can talk about, for example, the ten non virtuous actions, the ten non virtuous actions. But first, so we have to make some sort of more basic understanding.
You know, the Buddha We cannot say anything is good or bad. There’s nothing which is good or bad. Absolutely. Yeah. Nothing exists ultimately.
Nothing exists absolutely. The Buddha did not say, as Lama Zopa pointed out the other day. You know, we cannot say, it’s wrong, it’s bad to kill. It’s good to kill. When he’s a bodhisattva, there are many cases where he actually kill.
Now what we can say is if you don’t want to suffer, then it’s good not engage in certain actions. As Lama Zopa pointed out, if you don’t care, then it doesn’t matter at all what you do. If you don’t care whether you’re happy, if you don’t care whether you suffer, then you can do anything you want. It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing which is absolutely wrong or absolutely right.
So Buddha took his standard of wrong and right pragmatically from the point of view of happiness and suffering, benefiting and non beneficial. That which that which benefits yourself and others from the point of view of bringing real happiness to yourself and others is right. That which harms yourself and others from the point of view of bringing yourself and others suffering is wrong. That’s the only that’s his standard. That which brings benefit to yourself and others is is right, right action in the case of action.
That which harms yourself and others is wrong. We cannot say any particular action is right or wrong, absolutely. It’s only relative to the standard of suffering or its benefit. For example, when the Buddha said during his rebirth stories, he was a ship captain and there was a man who was He had five hundred merchants on the ship, and there was one man who was planning to kill all the passengers and rob them all. And he and he developed great compassion for this man.
He said, you know, if he kills these five hundred people, he’s going to he’s going to he’s going go to hell, you know, for who knows how long, and he’s going to suffer a great deal. He said, I, you know, I willingly, out of compassion for this he didn’t think this, but out of compassion for this person, I’m willing to take the karma of killing this person so he can avoid the karma of killing five hundred people. So the Buddha killed him. Not the Buddha, but as the Bodhisattva while he was training. Cannot say So there’s no absolute that’s right or wrong to kill.
Obviously, there can’t be. So This is the first determination that we try to engage in right actions, beneficial actions in order to bring ourselves happiness and others happiness. We try to avoid wrong actions, harmful actions in order to cease suffering for ourselves and others. We’re not trying to please creator god. We’re not trying to please anyone else in particular.
It’s because these are skillful ways of actions. But also another way to look at the problem of ethics, or conduct in general, is that the virtuous, the ten non virtues, are expressions of the ego, by the way in which the ego is able to manifest itself in our behavior, through our behavior. So all the various modes of conduct, whether it’s the ten virtuous actions, whether it’s the vows of individual liberation, the bodhisattva vows, the tantric vows, whatever types of modes of conduct you apply to yourself, all become expressions of peaceful, loving states or skillful states. You know, these are types of actions which are naturally, spontaneously expressed expressions of realization. Buddhists do not have to take vows, but they naturally would enact the ten virtuous actions.
They naturally would not involve themselves in the ten non virtuous actions. By living in accordance, adjusting our behavior with, for example, the ten virtuous actions, we begin to live in harmony with the behavior of enlightened beings. Or that is, we begin to express initially artificially skillful, loving states of behavior which will eventually begin to affect our mind and begin to transform our mind By transforming our behavior, at first artificially, by putting ourselves into certain restraints, they will eventually begin to transform our very intentional quality of our mind. This will become a natural part of our mind. All these are We can see that ethics is not meant to restrain yourself, not to repress yourself, but as an aid to bring yourself in harmony with actions which are natural expressions of skillful, loving states of mind, and hope eventually they become an integral part of our own behavior and our own mind.
It’s a very skillful way to work with our mind, to transform our mind through ethics. Another quality of ethics is because the ego is not able to express itself as it has before, the mind becomes pacified. Really, if we look at it from the point of view of the three higher trainings higher training in ethics, concentration in wisdom. On the basis of concentration, we develop wisdom. On the basis of ethics, we develop concentration.
By restraining body and speech, initially, the mind becomes quiet, calm, pacified, and then we can begin to work on the mind. If you look at all the various vows of individual liberation, the lay person’s vows, the novice and fully ordained monk and nun’s vows. They initially only concern with the body and speech, whether you’re restrained from killing, lying, stealing, sexual misconduct. Initially, we begin to subdue our body and speech. This has an effect on the mind.
It begins to calm the mind. The ego is not able to express itself as it once was. So merely through the power of ethics, we develop concentration. And in dependence upon ethic, we we can begin to control the mind and to develop full fully empowered concentration, whereby we can develop real wisdom. So another aspect of ethics is that it has the calming effect on the mind, enabling us to develop concentration, is necessary to develop wisdom.
So we can talk a little bit about the ten non virtuous actions. There’s three of body, four of speech, and three of mind. Abstinence from killing, not taking that which is not given. Abstaining from taking that which is not given, sexual misconduct. And then lying, divisive speech, harmful speech, idle chatter, covetousness, and of mind, covetousness, harmful intention, and wrong view.
Now, if we look at these, these are all expressions of ego. Are there a way that ego can reestablish itself, reaffirm its existence? You know? My life is more important than yours. I can kill you.
You know? I don’t care if I hurt your family, if I hurt your relationship. I want my pleasure. I’m going to have sex with your partner. Right?
Continually, this reaffirming of this existence of this I, I, self-cherishing, selfishness. By seeking to restrain this, we’re going a long way to diminish the power, the influence of the ego, of selfishness, self-cherishing in our lives through adjusting our behavior. Even initially artificially, we begin to restrain the ego and its influence in our lives. The quality of the actions, whether what is called the full path of action, whether it’s a fully empowered karma, is dependent upon four factors. These are the four factors of a complete action.
What is a complete path of action? Complete path of action has four qualities, has four factors. If any of these factors are not present, the karma, the consequences and heaviness of the karma are less. The first is the identification of the victim, identifying the object, identifying the base or most properly basis. Basis.
Then there’s the Second is the intention. The third is the engaging in the action. And the fourth is completion. So if we just take an example of killing, and then we haven’t the we are going out hunting, We’re going to We’re going to shoot What what they shoot in Australia? They shoot I’m going out kangaroo hunting.
First of all, in order to develop a complete path of action, I have to identify the victim. That means I see the object that I want to kill. I see a kangaroo. If I’m just shooting practice, you know, shooting at a tree and I accidentally kill a kangaroo, then this particular factor of a complete path of action has not been satisfied. I must identify the victim properly.
So I see the kangaroo and I shoot it. I’ve identified the victim properly now. That’s the first part. The second is the intention. I must actually have the intention.
It has to be the motivation. Usually, it’s either motivated by one of the three poisons, that is ignorance, desire, or hatred. Maybe you’re in the business of selling kangaroo skins. That’s your business, so you’re motivated by desire. Or maybe you’re a farmer and these kangaroos are eating all your crops, and so you’re trying to get rid of all the kangaroos, and you’re motivated by hatred, ignorance.
Maybe you think that it’d be tough with that. It’d be tough to kill a kangaroo out of ignorance, in the sense that, for example, Nepal, once a year they kill they have this one festival where they kill tens of thousands of goats and make these sacrifices. This is what’s called killing out of motivated by ignorance, making actual living sacrifices, blood sacrifices. This would be an example of killing out of ignorance. Then there’s the intention.
This is a very important aspect. It’ll come up later, this factor of intention. The third is actually engaging in the killing. If you identified your victim and you intend to kill, but maybe your gun jams, you know, then this the latter two these latter two factors aren’t complete. You haven’t actually engaged in the action.
If you intend and you see the kangaroo, you intend to intend to kill it because you want the meat or something, and you pull your trigger, but you just wound it. And the fourth and he runs away, he gets well again. The fourth factor has not been completed. There’s been no completion. That is the loss of life, of the life faculty of the object.
So there’s these four factors which must be complete. In the case of killing involuntarily, where you’re constantly killing involuntarily, the heaviness of the karma would depend upon what your feeling was after you realized that you had killed something, whether you could say, Oh, I’m glad I killed that, even though I didn’t mean to. And maybe you stepped on a spider that was in your room or something. Oh, I’m glad I didn’t sleep with that thing around. I’m glad I stepped on it.
Or maybe you didn’t care, you just said, it doesn’t matter. Or maybe you felt regret, I should be more careful next time I killed a living sentient being. The heaviness and the karma would depend upon your feelings after the action. We can talk about karma also from the point of view of heaviness of the karma, how there’s six factors which determine the heaviness. From the point of view of nature.
For example, if we use the ten non virtuous actions. From the point of view of nature, the first two categories of body and speech, the heaviness is from the lower up. That is, it’s heavier to kill than it is to steal because life is more valuable than property. It’s heavier to lie than it is to have hard speech. Now, the third category is the non virtue of mind.
Wrong view is the heaviest of the three. It goes down, wrong view, harmful intention, and then covetousness. So there’s the ordering of heaviness of karma. And from the point of view of intention, heaviness of karma, the case of lying harmful intention, from the point of view of nature, it’s worse to lie than it is to have harmful intention. If the intention involved, the motivation is very strong, as there’s a great deal of animosity, hatred, anger involved, then of course, from the point of view of intention, the karma will be heavier than if you merely lied, with less hatred or anger, and less strong motivation.
And the point of view of application or preparation is the third factor determining the heaviness. This means that karma would be heavier if we killed something cruelly as opposed to killing it with mercy, trying to kill it as painlessly as possible. So this is the heaviness of the karma from the point of your application, the way you killed it, the sentient being. And from the point of view of basis, for example, it would be heavier karma to kill a human being than it would be an animal. The life of a human being is considered more important, has more opportunity to practice.
From the point of view of habit. This is from the point of view that for someone who is habituated to a particular non virtues, for him to commit that same non virtue is heavier than for someone who does that same non virtuous rarely, know, someone who rarely kills as compared to a butcher, for example. His The action would be heavier for the butcher because he’s habituated to it. This is from the point of view of habit and from the point of view of antidote. So if the person who commits the non virtue, an example of a non virtue, if he’s generally a virtuous person and he commits a non virtue, as opposed to someone who’s usually a non virtuous person committing a non virtue, then the virtuous person that action will have less heavy consequences.
The karma is less heavy. What would be the worst possible action you could come up with if we look at all these factors of the six heavinesses determining the heaviness of the karma? Anybody have an idea? Killing a Buddha? That’s good.
With hatred? Okay. Let’s yeah. Any more? What about from the point of view of application?
We add something? That’s right. This this this be the heaviest And enjoying it. That’s right. And rejoicing when you’re finished.
And all of them. So that would be that would be the heaviest heaviest karma you could create. So we can talk about karma also from the point of another categorization that is propelling karma and completing karma, propelling karma and completing karma. So it propelling karma which actually throws us, propels us, that’s where it gets this term propelling, into a into rebirth. So at the time of our death, the time of the moment our death is extremely important moment in our lives.
What karma ripens at that moment will determine what type of rebirth, where our consciousness is going to go. So how and what how can we determine which karma is going to ripen at that very moment of death? The death karma, the death moment. So the first is the is the the first possibility is that the heaviest karma, the strongest actions that we’ve created during our life, the most negative or the most positive type of karma that we’ve created during our lives will most likely ripen at that moment of death. But if there’s no if we if we don’t have any particular heavy karma, and both positive and negative I’m talking about.
If we don’t, you know, we’ve really never done anything really good, nor nor have we done anything really bad, then the karma which we are most habituated to will ripen at that point. If we have no strong habits of any kind, then the nearest karma, are the last types of actions that we’ve engaged into before the moment of death will ripen. This is the threshold karma, karma which is ripening at the very moment of our death. So it’s extremely important to die with a positive state of mind. There’s a story of King Ashoka, King Ashoka, who was one of the greatest kings of ancient India.
He was a patron of Buddhism. He built many temples, hospitals, and roads. He was a very benevolent king. But at the moment of death, he had all his attendants around him, and his harem was around him, his retinue. And this one concubine, I guess, I don’t know, one woman was fanning him because he was dying, and he was having a fever.
And she was fanning him to cool him off. And she stopped, and he looked over and he got very angry at that moment, but she stopped, and at that moment he died. And though he had led this extremely virtuous life, it created a great deal of benefit to others. Because of that moment of anger at his death, karma to be reborn in hell ripened, and he took rebirth in hell because of that. So the moment of our death, what is going on around us at that moment, if we can somehow control that moment mentally, hopefully, but also physically with the people around us, is extremely important.
It will determine what types of what karma is going to ripen, what type of propelling karma is where we’re going to be thrown into our next rebirth. How can your guru help you at that time, like when you pray that, you know, if you don’t have the power to transfer your own consciousness, and the guru’s phowa? How can your guru help at that time then? So, this we can we’ll talk about this. There’s one type of karma called indefinite karma.
We have a pool, a treasure trove, a storehouse full of indefinite karma. That means the time of its ripening is not definite. It is possible through having developed a karmic relationship with another person that they’re able to affect the ripening of karma within this pool of karma, the indefinite karma that we have. If you don’t have the karma within that pool to take a positive rebirth, to take a good rebirth, there’s nothing that the lama can do. There’s nothing that Buddhists can do.
There’s nothing anyone can do. But in conjunction, if you have this potential within you and you have a karmic relationship, he’s able to affect that ripening. So what indefinite karma, what is that the result of? What actions, body, speech, and mind create indefinite karma? We’ll get to that, okay?
That’s an important subject. Actually, it’s an extremely important subject because it makes a lot of Otherwise, things like pujas and things don’t make any sense. We aren’t trying to propitiate any particular gods and things like this, you know, up in the heavens, and who are going to who are pulling the strings on our life. Are trying to, in fact, be very skillful in developing specific karmas, trying to ripen certain karmas that we already have in doing these pujas, doing these rituals, ceremonies. He had created the causes to be reborn in hell, and they were it had not purified them.
How could he do that? Well, there’s no — I mean, he just — well. This was the nearest thing this was this ripened this was the the strength of that anger over overpowered the from the point of view of heaviness of karma, from habituation of karma. It was the nearest type of causal condition. It overrode all the heaviness of karma, habituated karma, you know, due to it, it was so near at the moment of threshold of his death.
It didn’t it had the greatest influence at that moment. Why is the moment of death so important? Because Why is the moment of death so important? Because it’s going to determine your next rebirth, What karma ripening? See the mind?
Okay. Let’s look. Let’s do the meditation. You’re laying on your bed, you’re dying. You have a fever.
You’re dying of AIDS maybe. I’d say something else. Got a rare type of flu. You’re burning up. It’s hot.
You’re sweating. Sweat is pouring off of you. You’re just tossing it. You’re burning. It’s hot.
Your skin is baking. Like you’re like you’re laying in the hot desert sun, you know, without any clothes on, you just get burning. And you can’t get cool when you want to be cool. You’re so hot. You’re panting, you want to be cool.
Cool. And you just keep praying cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, and the mind is beginning to withdraw from the body. Everything’s becoming dimmer and dimmer. It’s just cold, cold. You want to be cool.
You want to be cold. You have just your whole entire being is going toward cold. The mind is withdrawing from the body. Withdrawing. Withdrawing.
Withdrawing. Things become dark, black. You become unconscious. And you wake up It’s getting cold. You wake up in the middle of a block of ice for the next one hundred million years.
This desire for cold ripened, this possibility of rebirth. And that’s the point in doing what we’re doing now then. Well, I am from my point of view. I mean, why not just practice at the last moment? You don’t know when that’s going to be If you if you had complete control, I would agree.
It’s supposed to motivate you to do something. But then there’s yes. It’s not as hopeless as it looks. There’s there’s a way out. But so that’s propelling karma.
And there’s also the factor of completing karma. How having once taken rebirth, what type of lifestyle we might enjoy in that particular rebirth. So there’s these there’s the, you know, the four alternatives between propelling karma and complete completing karma. You know, we can have good propelling karma, good completing karma. We’re born as a human being.
We’re born in a nice place where you can practice Dharma with enough money to get by on, where you can help others. Yeah. Everything goes well for you. That’s good good propelling, good completing. On the other hand, we have good propelling, bad completing.
We’re born as a human being, which is good propelling karma, but we’re born in the Ethiopian desert starving to death. You know? That’s bad bad bad completing. We can have bad propelling, good completing. You’re born as a dog, but this dog happens to be owned by Elizabeth Taylor.
You get a nice nice coat every year for your birthday, and steak every day or whatever. So that’s bad propelling, good completing. And of course, then there’s bad propelling, bad completing, which is maybe just born in hell and just burned for millions of years. So different possibilities. So not all karma is experienced The effects are experienced immediately.
There are four possibilities for the experiencing of karma. There’s karma which is created and experienced in the same life, karma which is created in one life and experienced in the next life, immediately next life, immediate next life. There’s karma which is created in this life and is created in some indefinite time in the future. And then there’s karma which is created but never it will never come to fruition The necessary conditions will never come together for it to ripen. So it’s called lapsed karma.
So there’s four possibilities. Example of lapsed karma. Well, one there’s there’s some debate. One would be the karma within a lesser vehicle, a foe-destroyer. Or someone who has karma, but because he’s gotten rid of all the afflictive emotions, example, the various negative karmas that he has in his mind can never ripen because the conditions of the negative afflictive emotions can never ripen them.
They can never ripen. In order to ripen negative karmas, we have to have the afflictive emotions arise as the necessary cooperative conditions. If these afflictive there’s no desire, hatred, or ignorance in that mind, even if there’s karma still present potentials to suffer in that mind, it can never suffer. These karmas can never ripen. The conditions cannot cannot be completed for them to to ripen.
So these are called lapsed karma. The karma, the potential is still there on the mind stream, but because it will never meet the conditions to ripen, will never come into effect. That’s one possibility. Is it karma if you tell somebody a lie and you may find out Is that karma? The The of the lie and that, you know, is it only ten minutes?
Yeah. I think so. As holiness has said that, you know I mean, it’s very difficult to see the relationship between cause and effect. That’s why we don’t believe in karma. It’s difficult to say that this this action produced this specific effect, but this awareness talks about the fact that, you know, when he was speaking once, that if I speak with some sincerity, you know, wishing to benefit others with some warmth, then this has a common consequences of developing a very peaceful attitude atmosphere in the room, that people’s minds happy.
This is a common consequence from my attitude. Obviously, there’s some effect that we can that is felt immediately from from the action from our actions of body, speech, mind. There’s other examples when you get angry you’re running out the door and you hit your head on the door. The anger was a condition to ripen a previous karma for hurting your head on that door. That anger did not cause most likely did not cause you to hit your head on that door and get hurt.
But it served as a condition to ripen that karma to hurt your head on that door. Right? So there is there’s a relationship between these negative emotions and and the suffering. But generally, this this this actual cause is coming from a much earlier time, not that immediate time. So many people might think that that is.
You say, oh, see you got angry and you stubbed your toe or something like that. Anger act as a condition to ripe a previous ripen a previous karma. And it didn’t create an an effect immediately. And this travels with you from life to life to life. These these potentials.
Yeah. Yeah. The mind is conditioned. Sometimes they, you know, they use this simply they try to simplify it and say seeds, and these seeds are implanted on the mind stream. This is what goes on to the life of life.
These various categories of karma karma created in this life, experienced in this life, immediate next life, sometime in the indefinite future, and lapsed karma. So this this third category is quite extremely extremely important. They’re all important. But this fact that we have a pool, a reserve of indefinite karma. That means it can ripen at any time, that it meets the specific the ripening conditions.
It can come into fruition. If So we have talked about karmic relationship. We’re talking about the lama transferring consciousness or helping at the moment of our death. We have to have some relationship, some karmic relationship, to begin to get an idea of what a karmic relationship might be. Now, I’m I I, for example, may have created Let’s say I created karma to become rich in this life.
I became rich. I also had the karma to have my money stolen. So I created these various karmas to become rich and have my money stolen. Now, if no one else has created the karma just to be able to steal my money, then that karma of my that I created to have my money stolen can never ripen. My money will never be stolen.
So if someone else has created the karma to be able to steal my money, and I didn’t I didn’t have the karma either to create money or have it stolen, then though he has this karma to to be able to steal money, he’s not he’s never going to be able to steal money. But when the karma karmic situation is such, I had the karma I created the karma to, become rich in this life. I created the karma to have my money stolen. He had to he had the karma, created the karma to steal my money. These karmas in conjunction coming together, a theft occurs.
Right? So there is a karmic relationship between the thief and the person who has money stolen. Their karmas fit together. So we have these relationships with various people, obviously. We have relationship with together here now.
The reason we’re here together now is we’ve had we have a karmic relationship from the past. The reason that you have so if you have a a lama, for example, who you have a karmic relationship with, you can develop karmic relationships. We have karmic relationships with various deities. You notice it says in the praises to the twenty-one Taras that I have a connection with you from past lifetimes. There’s a reason that we’re practicing these twenty-one Taras.
Or you can develop karmic relationships, whereby, you know, we can begin to do pujas, we can begin to make supplications, requests in connection with deities, you know, in connection with our Lama, we have a karmic relationship with, whereby we’re able to, through the through the power of this relationship, to ripen specific indefinite karmas within our mind, within this store that we have already built up. Everything must operate within the law, within the confines of the law of cause and effect. There’s no question about that. But within this, we have a great deal of We can use a great deal of skillful means too because we have the various karmas. We have karmas to attain great realizations.
We have karmas to go to hell within us now. If we can control those various karmas, which ones are ripening through skillful means, then we can direct ourselves toward our goals and avoid, you know And externally the lama can help things ripen for you at the same time. That’s right. Because he has this karmic relationship. How can he do that thing?
Through power of if you have a karmic relationship, through the power of his prayer. He’s there through the power of his own mind. He’s able to cause acts as a condition. When you receive teachings on bodhicitta, when you receive teachings on love and compassion, you have some potential to develop love and compassion within you. His words, the various Lamas have a different ability to activate this potential.
This is one of the necessary conditions for the development of the mind of enlightenment, that is meeting the Mahāyāna Guru. This acts as a condition to ripen this potential to actually realize, have love develop in your mind. If you never met the Mahāyāna Guru, it would be you would never be able to develop probably great compassion. So it’s like he’s planting that seed in your mind to be able to develop it. He’s ripe that you have that seed, and he’s he’s by his by your karmic relationship through the power of his own bodhicitta, his own mind, his words.
His natural Yeah. He’s, you know, he’s he’s like water, like manure. He ripens it. If you hang around holy beings, your good karma is going to ripen. If you hang around other people, good luck.
Also, we develop karmic relationships. When we say, I go for refuge to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, by the merit I create by generosity, etcetera, may I attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. Now we use this We’re always saying all sentient beings, all sentient beings. We really don’t know what all sentient beings are, do we? It’s But merely by saying this again and again, we’re actually developing a karmic relationship with all sentient beings, or in some small way.
This is And what is the difference between Maitreya Buddha, Śākyamūni Buddha, and the hundreds of millions of other Buddhas, are which are beings attaining Buddhahood every day? There is a difference, isn’t there? It’s not from the point of view of compassion. It’s not from the point of view of knowledge or wisdom. It’s from the point of view of their karmic affinities, with the number of sentient beings they can benefit.
They have developed such a vast connection with so many beings that they’re termed universal teachers. Right? Through their cultivation of of karmic relationships. You know, there’s no difference in the quality of Buddhas aside from this. There’s no difference between any Buddha and Maitreya, any Buddha and Śākyamūni Buddha aside from the fact that they have developed this vast network of karmic relationships, they’re able to benefit more sentient beings.
Therefore, they’re called universal teachers. There’ll be one thousand of these in this particular eon, but in fact, there are hundreds of millions of Buddhas. So this is from the development of karmic relationships, where they’ll be able to benefit. As Śākyamūni Buddha, who we didn’t have the karmic relationship to be able to be benefited directly while he was in this specific supreme manifestation body. We didn’t have that karma with him.
But we still have some karma, obviously, with him. But we didn’t We had a lesser type of karma than, say, his immediate disciples, which we were able to directly relate with him at that time. I wanted to So we talk a little bit I want to get to one important point. I guess they’re all important, I think, but one more from the point of view very much from the point of view of practice. So but first, there are four distinct modes of karma.
Four distinct modes of karma. So the first is that results the results of a specific karma are infallible. That means a negative action can only produce suffering. It can never produce happiness. A positive action can only produce happiness.
It can never produce suffering. If we plant a rice seed, we’re only going to get a rice plant. We’re not going to get barley. We’re not going to get corn, anything else. There’s a definite relationship and similarity of type between cause and effect.
We can see this in the external world, can’t we? You know, rice seeds giving rice plants. Likewise, there’s a definite similarity in type between ethical actions and their ethical consequences. The fact is that various afflictive emotions, desire, hatred, miserliness, spite, jealousy, pride. These are our suffering states of mind.
We don’t Some are quite easy to recognize. Anger is quite usually quite easy to recognize as being suffering, you know. But even desire, a mind which is experiencing desire or attachment is an unpeaceful mind. It’s a suffering mind. It will have That mind will create an effect which is similar in type to itself.
It will create a