Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute session, Ven Jampa Ignyen teaches the twelve links of dependent origination from Pabongka Rinpoche’s Intermediate Scope Lamrim, beginning with the six root afflictions—ignorance, attachment, anger, pride, doubt, and afflictive view. He stresses that fundamental ignorance, though invisible in ordinary life, silently underlies every negative emotion, operating unseen like a mafia boss behind the scenes. The teaching then covers how karma accumulates through intention: mental intention generates verbal and bodily action, and three types of karma (meritorious, unmeritorious, and immutable) produce different rebirths. At the moment of death, he explains, the state of mind determines which karmic seeds activate; a virtuous dying thought awakens positive karma and upper realms, while attachment or delusion triggers lower realms. Jampa Ignyen illustrates this with examples of how past actions manifest in dying visions. For practitioners already studying the Lamrim path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 19 2001 06 14 LR.mp3
UUID: a6033ce4-49c9-4770-81ab-53c9cf8b8cf6
Teacher: Ven Jampa Ignyen
Collection: y Lam Rim 2001 Month 04-06 (Ven Jampa Ignyen)
Date: 2001-06-14
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.5 minutes
Words: ~4,893
So we’re continuing with the text. It’s a great text by Pabongka Rinpoche. And in the intermediate scope and here we’re dealing with probably the central teaching of the intermediate scope. This is the teaching on the twelve links. And previously we’ve talked about the six root afflictions.
And we’ve talked about ignorance, attachment, anger, pride, doubt and afflictive view. And last week we talked to some extent a little bit about ignorance and afflictive view and their difference. And that really serves as an introduction to the twelve links, because ignorance itself is the first of the twelve links. And these afflictive states really express the twelve links themselves. They can be slotted into the twelve links.
So in the previous section, we’re dealing therefore with these root afflictions. And as much as possible, we should try and recognize them when they arise. It’s not easy, of course. We tend to think our ignorance is understanding. But for the most part, although we have a certain understanding of some things, at the very basis of our being, we have this ignorance about ourselves and the world around us.
And based on that ignorance, all these afflictive emotions arise. It’s hard for us to see this. It’s hard for us to step back and observe the process. And in general we tend to think that our assessment of things is pretty much as things are. That’s just the way we are.
We tend to accept the appearance of things. And we often accept the way that our mind is, almost unquestioningly. And in accepting the current state of our mind, the status quo, just how it is naturally, we tend to overlook the ignorance that is there. We tend to think, oh, we have an ignorance about a few things. I don’t know how to if I took an engine apart, wouldn’t know how to put it back together again.
I wouldn’t know how to fix a computer. Wouldn’t know how to build a rocket. I couldn’t read Russian and so on. But all of these types of ignorance are really minor. But in the course of everyday life, we generally overlook the fact that there is a level of ignorance at the very heart of our existence.
It’s there. It’s easy for us to When we think about it, oh yes, I have ignorance. But otherwise, when we go around our normal day’s activities, we don’t even think about it. But it’s that level of ignorance that’s But acting as the precondition for all of our current negative emotions as they arise. But understanding this process will take a great deal of mindfulness and a lot of patience from our side.
Because actually we have enough wisdom that if we saw the process clearly, we’d give it up immediately. It’s like if we stick our hand into a flame, we’re going to pull it out without contemplating whether it’s hot or not. We don’t sit there and think, the flame is hot. My hand is impermanent, it’s made of flesh and bones, if I leave it there for long I’m going to get burnt. We know instantly when we feel the flame, we’ve got to take our hand out, otherwise we’re going to have a serious burn.
Although Samsāra is ablaze with the flames of suffering, it’s almost as if we don’t understand the danger. We really don’t understand the danger. And this is a sign of ignorance itself. So to some degree, we have to contemplate the nature of this ignorance. We’re not so used to thinking about our ignorance.
And we can see this because we’re making judgments all the time about other people. I don’t like this person, I like this person, I don’t like this person, and so on. All of these assessments, I don’t like this situation, I don’t like that situation, I don’t like my situation, and so on. All this resentment, anger that we generate quite naturally. None it is worth the time that we spent developing it.
Because none of it’s accurate. None of it’s reliable, none of it’s valid, none of it is correct. Because it’s founded on wrong ways of looking at things. So it’s not easy for us to understand what the ignorance is. We almost initially have to understand that these negative ways of thinking are really need to be abandoned at every point.
They’re really like poison. So anyway, last week, Pabongka Rinpoche brought up these, the disadvantages of these, root afflictions which we presently possess. We have pride. We have doubt, doubt about the path. We have anger.
We’ve lots of anger actually. We’ve become very skilled in not showing our anger. We may even fool ourselves that we don’t have any. We also hatred, a lot of hatred also. And resentment, long term resentment.
Sometimes it’s manifest, other times it’s not manifest. It’s there but not manifest. It doesn’t take much for it to develop. You just have to think of someone. Dislike arises.
A bit of resentment arises. Or a little bit of hatred is there. And it’s hard to put that thought down once it’s arisen. Because while it’s there, we can’t be happy. That thought of hatred will tend to destroy our happiness and contentment.
If we can’t have contentment, we can’t have hatred at the same time. And so on, then a bit of jealousy, then attachment. That we’re attached to all manner of things almost automatically. And these are hard to see really when attachment attachment arises. It’s often hard for us to see that we have it.
But all of these are called root afflictions. They’re afflictions because they afflict us. And true, they do afflict us. If we got anger, definitely that afflicts us. Although often we’ll have anger and we’ll think it’s valid, it’s appropriate and so on.
Yet it’s afflicting us. Our attachment afflicts us. Our pride, our jealousy, and so on. Our ignorance. Perhaps to us it seems that the ignorance is the least harmful of all, sort of a neutral sort of thing that’s there in the background somewhere.
It doesn’t seem as if it’s the big brother behind the others. But it’s that ignorance that allows it’s like the mafia boss. It sits right at the back. He hardly does anything. He just, you know, flicks his finger every now and again and the others go into action.
Know, the mob’s down here doing their work down there or they’re up there and so on. And, of course, all of these are our real enemies. We don’t have any other enemies than these. Ignorance is the big one, the big boss. But of course then doubts arise.
How do they actually act to harm us? How do they function to bring about this vast and complex existence that we experience. Of course, we can have doubts about whether it is possible to understand this process. For this we need to investigate. So in understanding, or at least in thinking about these issues, we come to see these afflictions as being our enemy.
And then the thought arises, well then how do they How in fact are they our enemies? A little bit more detail about this. What’s how do they gather together to create unhappiness for us? So just so on the top of page five twenty one, there are no more powerful enemies than these, these six root afflictions. When we accumulate these enemy like afflictions Sorry.
So these actions, these enemies are even worse than even our normal enemies. But when we accommodate our normal enemies, or when we pacify them, when we actually make friends with them, that may pacify our enemies in the world. But the enemies of the afflictions are far worse than this. It’s very difficult to simply pacify them in the way we would pacify an external enemy. We must go much deeper than that.
And there’s a saying given by one of the Kadampa lamas on this. We should train to stand at the attack against delusions or the afflictions, but to extend our hands to sentient beings and benefit them. So normal enemies that we have, that we take to be enemies such as other beings, we should always forgive them, but we should never forgive the afflictions. We’re always on our guard against the afflictions. And as Geshe Ben Gungyal said, I guard the entrance to the fortress of my mind with a spear, the antidotes, with a dung, and at no time am I not doing this.
When delusions are at the ready, so am I. When they relax, so do I. So that’s really the only thing we have to guard against. At the door of our mind, we stand there with a spear. When the afflictive states ignorance, attachment, anger, then we attack it with a spear or a club, a mace.
Sorry. An atomic bomb. Exactly. As Rinpoche said, an atomic bomb. Whatever weapon we can bring to bear, then we apply it to those afflictive states.
Of course, we need to be mindful that they’ve arisen. Without being mindful that they’ve arisen, we won’t even recognize they’re there. So here we need a certain mindfulness. But when they arise, then we give them no quarter. We show no mercy on them.
They’ve given us no mercy, so we show no mercy to them. An eye for an eye for the afflictive state. In other words, we must see afflictions and delusions as our worst enemy and apply their antidotes right away. Now the next section is how karma is accumulated. So there are two types of karma, mental karma and intended karma, or intentional karma and intended karma.
These come from one Tibetan word called sempa. And the term is sempa or sempa. Sempa means intention. And the past tense of that verb is sempa. So it’s intentional action and intended action.
And what they refer to, intentional action is the intention we have in our mental continuum, in the present. That’s actual karma. That’s really what karma is. Intended karma is what arises from that in terms of verbal and physical action. Mental action is the actual karma, therefore verbal action and physical action are intended karma.
So the first one: mental karma or intentional karma. Asaṇga’s Compendium of Metaphysics. This was a great commentary written by Asaṇga called Abhidharmasamuccaya. And this text is quite profound. It’s this vast list of definitions of different things.
And in this form, what is mental karma? It starts from the beginning. You know, what are the aggregates? What are the bases? What are the realms?
And so on. What are the mental factors? What’s their definitions? So it’s a great and profound text. So this states, what is mental karma?
So what is intentional karma? In other words, what is intention itself? It is the karmic action of the compositional factors aggregate that makes a thought manifest. Its function is to engage the mind in the virtuous and non virtuous or a neutral. So this mental factor of intention is what we have in the present.
Just the intention we have. Intention is an omnipresent mental factor, meaning it’s always there. Intention is always there. Sometimes it’s neutral. We don’t have positive intention or negative intention.
We just maybe veg out a little bit, or we’re just sort of in an indifferent state. At other times it becomes negative. And then other times it becomes positive. It depends on us. What our intention is, of course, is our own responsibility.
And it functions to engage the mind in a virtuous. So it’s intention that’s making the mind virtuous or non virtuous. The mind itself is neutral, but intention makes the mind either positive or negative. That’s the function of intention. Because what intention is doing is that in relation to an object, it’s either bringing positive mental factors to bear on that object or negative mental factors to bear on that object.
This process we really should be completely familiar with. Whenever an object comes to mind, what intention is doing is just bringing either positive or negative mental factors to that object. So we think of an object and we start, oh, we may have a dislike, then we’ll hate the object, so forth. Our intention there is actually gathering negative mental factors such as hatred, anger, resentment, jealousy, and so forth, to focus on that object. On the other hand, if we look at another object, our intention may gather love and compassion, patience and so forth to the object.
So intention is acting in this way. It’s functioning in this way. At other times we look at an object and our intention is neither bringing positive or negative mental factors to the object. The mind just sort of maybe then more like a vegging out. The object is there, but it’s sort of neutral, and we’re not interpreting it in a positive or a negative way.
Really, to be karma as we know karma, it has to either be positive or negative. The neutral, although it’s technically intention, it’s not technically, it is karma. It’s not the type of karma that’s going to produce results or what we would call karmic results. Right. So that’s the basic idea of what mental karma or intentional karma is.
In other words, a mental karmic action is, for example, the primary mind that provokes us to feel we should speak insulting words or to a or it is a karmic action of the secondary mind that provokes or encourages us while we are saying these insulting words. So then intended karma. This consists of the actions of body and speech motivated by mental karma or intentional karma. And then there’s a quotation from the text Abhidharmakośa of Vasubandhu, which states, karma is mental, it is mental or created by the mind.
Mental karma is mental action. It gives rise to karmic actions of body and speech. In other words, having a mental intention to act in a certain way, then our speech and physical actions follow accordingly. And so then afflictions give rise to three types of karma, unmeritorious, meritorious or immutable or unchanging. Unmeritorious karma is karma accumulated from yearning for the things of this life and then acting upon this by killing, etcetera.
So because that’s non meritorious, that’s easy. It means non virtuous. The accumulation of non virtue is, what is non meritorious. The accumulation of virtue is what is the meritorious. In a sense, merit is the accumulation of virtue.
Non merit is the accumulation of non virtue or lack of merit. So this is what we’re engaged in all the time. Engaged either in the accumulation of merit or the accumulation of non merit. So meritorious karma is karma accumulated from yearning for essential happiness in a future life. So we collect merit by yearning for a positive future lifetime, as in the small scope.
By wanting to be rich in future, we start giving to the poor. For instance, this karma makes one take rebirth as a desire realm god, and so on. Immutable karma is as One repudiates sensual pleasure in future lives, indulges in happy feelings that come from single pointed concentration, and is thus reborn as a god in the first three dhyana concentration states, or the first three absorptions. Or single pointed concentration yearning for feelings of equanimity and so forth. What this is saying here is that initially three types of karma were set forth: non meritorious, meritorious and immutable.
Meritorious karma is the karma which is the accumulation of virtuous intention. The product of the accumulation of virtuous intention. Non meritorious is the product of the accumulation of non virtuous intention. Now the author goes on to the third one here, the immutable. Immutable karma is generated through attaining single pointed concentration.
In a sense, it’s an immutable state. It’s a very stable state of single pointed concentration. In that, if one becomes attached to the bliss of the three levels of the form realm, then that in fact, is a type of immutable karma really attracted to blissful feeling. Above that, then only a neutral feeling exists. If one is attracted or attached to that type of neutral feeling, then in developing concentration one seeks to attain that end and accumulates karma that is attracted to the neutral feeling of the fourth absorption and the formless realm.
Anyway, are types of immutable karma. In reality, they’re immutable karma because they’re types of karma that are accumulated, which only give a result of rebirth in that realm. Otherwise, the karma we collect, the virtuous and the non virtuous karma that we collect, is not fixed. It’s not fixed in the sense that it can give rise to rebirth in various places within a desire realm. Or that sort of karma could manifest or later be awakened as projecting karma or completing karma or establishing karma.
Anyway, this will come up a little bit later. So in general, we only collect either meritorious or unmeritorious karma at present. We don’t accumulate any fixed karma or immutable karma because we don’t have single pointed concentration. If we have single pointed concentration, then we can generate this third type of karma, immutable karma. And as the author says, both meritorious and unmeritorious karma throw one into a birth in the desire realm, not in any other realm.
And the results are mutable, not fixed. For example, one may have already achieved the Bardo state of a being on its way to the hells, but through the power of one’s Guru or rituals of the secret tantras and so on, one’s Bardo state can be changed so that one is able to receive rebirth in the upper realms. There’s some debate on this point actually. Dromtönpa said that if all the people of Reting with lay vows were to hold their property in common, it would be particularly helpful in the creation of root merits after one of their deaths. In other words, because these lay people would all have the same property, root merits created in relation to this property would be especially beneficial to any of their dead colleagues still in a Bardo.
So this is just a comment by Pabongka Rinpoche the ways in which karma can be collected. And in fact, in talking about meritorious karma, if one owns property in common, then even after one’s passed away, that property put to a good use will even give benefit to an owner who has passed away, a co owner of that property who has passed away. Anyway, the basic point here is that the karma that we produce is changeable. It’s mutable. It may manifest in different ways.
Whereas the fixed karma, the immutable karma of a being who has single pointed concentration is different than that. Then, Pabongka Rinpoche mentions that in the first absorption, if we have single pointed concentration, we develop that single point. For instance, if we go through the nine stages of mental placement, we spend, six months in retreat, and we happen to go through stage one to stage nine of the mental placements and attain equipoise. Then from there, we develop mental and physical pliancy. And from there, we enter the actual form realm.
We transcend the desire realm. Our mind becomes a form realm mind by combining, Calm abiding and insight, although it’s mundane. By combining those two together, it’s possible mind to actually enter the form realm. When it does that, it doesn’t mean to say that physically we enter, but our mind reaches that level. Then from there, we start to accumulate karma, to be reborn in the form realm.
But even then, one needs to go through the six preparatory states to the first absorption. So during those six preparatory states, one is overcoming attachment to the desire realm. And when one completely overcomes attachment to the desire realm, one actually enters the form realm. One achieves that level internally. It’s possible that one even sees beings in the form realm and so on.
Having attained that, then one is accumulating karma to be reborn there. So if we want to be born in the form realm, this is how we do it. We do retreat, we get single pointed concentration, we overcome attachment to the desire realm, and we accumulate then karma, which is intention, which is the intention to experience, say, the happiness of the form realm. In fact, this is much of our meritorious karma is in fact like this. It’s because we’re attached to certain things that we will act in certain ways.
If we want the bliss of the form realm, then we would proceed to go into retreat and develop single pointed concentration, experience that bliss, develop attachment to that type of bliss. And in experiencing that bliss, then one is accumulating karma because one has the intention there to experience that. Just as at present, we accumulate positive meritorious karma through wanting to experience happiness in our future life, being attached to the happiness of a future life, we would currently engage in virtuous practices. So the process is similar, whether we’re talking about fixed or immutable karma or meritorious karma. So, of course, this brings up the whole question of death itself.
Then Pabongka Rinpoche then moves on to explaining how the death process manifests. So then our lifespan does exhaust itself, and our merit may then exhaust. Actually, the process of death can occur in various ways. And here, is Pabongka Rinpoche is implying this when he says, what happens to death? Your lifespan may run out.
Your merit may run out. You have not rid yourself of danger. In fact, death can arise because our lifespan has run out or our merit has run out or both have run out and so on. So death occurs through different factors arising, through different conditions. And there are nine factors for death that are mentioned in one sūtra.
So, the absence of these factors and so on can give rise to our death at any point. So our dying thoughts activate the karma that will throw us into the next rebirth after that death. So what we Our thoughts at the moment of our death, or as we enter the death process, will determine what karma we’re awakening that will therefore determine our future rebirth. The activators of this karma are craving and clinging, or craving and grasping. And this is what happens.
You might feel I’m going to be separated from this body and cling to your present body. Craving includes things like desiring heat when you are to reborn in the hot hell. So if one were to be reborn in the hot hell, one may, at the point of death, have a craving for heat. Or the cold hell is a craving for cold to be. It’s too hot.
One craves cold. The object of this triggering process is your most powerful karma, black or white. If your black and white karma are equal, then the triggering object is whatever these two types is the most familiar. And if these two types are still quite equal, then whichever type of karma was carried out first will be triggered. So here we’re talking about the moment of death, as we enter the death process.
What karma is going to be activated, is going to be awakened at that point? What karmic seeds are going to be triggered? What’s going to sprout, in a sense at that point? So this then depends on the state of our mind at that time. And then really what we’re most familiar with.
If it’s going to be like our current state of mind, then we there may be some cause for concern. So we need to act while we have time because we need a positive state at that time. And at the time of death, it’s really going to be our habits, our habitual thinking pattern, which will tend to be there. The time when this triggering takes place is while the mind is still active and still has the coarse form of recognition. So the death process begins, but it’s not as if the mind is not active.
There’s still recognition, or there’s still discrimination active, still exists within the mind. It must. So that point of death and discrimination does exist. So we have course or gross recognition. And we also have the memory in our past events and so forth.
And we can think about other people. However, when course recognition ceases, and while our dying thoughts are subtle, our thoughts then are neutral, and we are unable to remember virtue or non virtue. So our dying thoughts are of great importance to us. If our dying thoughts are of faith and so on, our virtue will be activated. So at the moment of death, if we, for instance, have faith in the Three Jewels, then that’s the best thought that one can have.
Then that will tend to activate. Then one’s intention is directed towards the object of the Three Jewels. And that will then tend to activate positive mental factors, the eleven positive mental factors, such as faith, patience, non hatred, and so forth. And in fact, this is one of the main purpose of taking refuge that we do, because taking refuge is really going to become of central importance at that time. That what we need refuge from is our negative mental imprints.
And they’re the ones that are going to throw us into a state of hell, if they’re activated. So we’re taking refuge in a sense from those. And the state of refuge that lies beyond those, such as the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, are capable of actually providing refuge from our negative mental imprints. Now having, therefore, at the point of death one activates according to the state of mind one has, which depends on the habits that one has, then one activates a certain karmic seed. When that karmic seed is manifest or is the process of awakening it, is established, then one will then continue to ripen that seed and experience the result of that seed.
At this point, one will be going to either the upper or the lower realms. If one is going to the upper realms, one’s body heat dissipates from the lower parts of the body and collects into the heart. If one is going to the lower realms, heat dissipates from the upper reaches of the body and collects in the lower. So this is said to be the case in some accounts. Also, can know which of these two will happen by such signs as the degree of discomfort of the person experiencing the illness.
And then Pabongka Rinpoche gives some examples such as, for example, Pabongka Rinpoche told how in Lhasa he saw a steward of the Central Deity. He had stolen tea. When he died, he had hallucinations and thought he was being squashed under boxes of tea. So there, that’s really an indication of the importance of the confession of any negative actions before one dies. And so people that have experienced past negative karma that is still potent, then that may manifest, that may be activated at the time of death.
And then that will give an appropriate result, a similar type result, such as that even when that karma begins to be awakened, it may give such an experience. On the other hand, if someone practices very well, then they have positive experiences. For instance, once a beggar who lived on the side of the road had visions of a palace and white light when he died. Pabongka Rinpoche also talked of an old woman in Chusung who had recited OM MANI PADME HUM many, many times during her life and had virtuous visions when she died. So it’s very important for us to keep in mind that it’s our current state of mind that will become the mind of death.
And then he goes on to a description about the intermediate beings, how intermediate beings appear when one has progressed through the dissolution of the gross consciousnesses such as firstly there is a dissolution of the eye awareness, eye consciousness, then ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness and body consciousness. And as these progressively dissolve, there are visions that occur, both external and internal. And then once they have dissolved, then the eighty types of internal conception that we have also then dissolve. They are like an intermediate level of awareness. And then after those eighty types of conception have dissolved, then the four subtlest levels dissolve, such as white appearance, red increase, black near-attainment.
And then finally one experiences the clear light of death, which is the subtlest level of mind. Then having experienced the subtlest level of mind, the clear light, mind of death, the mother clear light, then one can remain there for some time, depending on one’s practice. So an ordinary being can remain there for, say, up to three days.