Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 101-minute talk, Ven Jamyang teaches karma through direct confrontation: she demands that students check their own minds rather than blindly follow teachers, and exposes the guilt and people-pleasing that masquerade as spirituality. From there she systematically explains the ten non-virtuous actions—three of body (killing, stealing, sexual misconduct), four of speech (harsh words, divisive speech, gossip, lying), and three of mind (covetousness, ill will, ignorance)—and the four conditions that complete a karmic action: motivation, discrimination, execution, and remaining alive at completion. She covers how karma ripens as rebirth, personal tendencies, and environmental conditions, grounded in real-world examples from animal liberation ethics to family relationships. She closes with homework: analyze your own life patterns to recognize the karma you are actively creating.
File metadata (for organising)
File: session2 week 8.mp3
UUID: d6f72c3b-96a8-4664-aae0-ebf18b309644
Teacher: Ven Jamyang
Collection: Jamyang Mind Healing (Ven Jamyang)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 100.7 minutes
Words: ~14,972
Has Rebecca heading back to the settings? No. She’s still still she’s probably now driving to no. No. She’s now on her way to the airport.
Oh, okay. She’s flying to Kuala Lumpur to do some work, and then she goes to Kathmandu for some work. When is she gonna be in Kuala Lumpur? Oh, I’m not sure. I think he’s a week in Kuala Lumpur right after that.
You won’t see. Okay. Time are you playing until? Twelve thirty, twelve forty five? Okay.
See you, Anne. Can you close the door, Thank you. She went to Perth, and then she gave there some teachings. And then they went up the coast to to a very little town, and she gave some teachings there. Where are you coming from?
Don’t put it back on me. I’m not looking to I don’t put it back on you. I do put it back on you because that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about karma. So you check where you’re coming from, and you can do whatever action you wanna do.
You know? Don’t put it on me. Do we really have to do this? Don’t do that. What is the next thing I have on the last song?
So you put it on me. Don’t do that. You you take your responsibility. If you feel that, you do your action and you take responsibility and whatever happens after that, you take responsibility for that. Just do it.
Don’t ask my permission. Don’t ask my permission. I like to have these on actually. I turned the echo off. It’s not about Robina says, it’s about you.
But I just need to understand. You have to understand that what yes, I’m going talk about the laws. So that means that I’m going to ask you to listen because I really have to talk about laws without knowing that you cannot practice anything. We’re not going to question the laws, we’re not going to judge the laws, we’re just going to listen how it is presented and then you can do something with it. With your own action, it’s your responsibility whatever you do.
Yes, and we don’t have the wisdom yet to know why we do things or how to do things so that we get a proper result we don’t know yet. But one thing is that we have the responsibility to look into that, to make the decisions. Not because Robina says something, you’re going to do it. Don’t ever do that. Don’t follow any teacher blind like that.
Oh, I like Robina. I’m going to do what she taught me. Check yourself. Check with the scriptures. Check with your own mind.
Then you make the decision. Then anything that happens after that is your responsibility. It has nothing to do with Rubina. That’s the first thing about karma. We are responsible.
Every step we make, even if we don’t know what we are doing, we are still responsible to check to the best of our ability to make a decision. But we don’t have pure wisdom. We don’t. So we make mistakes. And because we make mistakes, we learn.
Because something bad will come back to us. And we can look at it. Oh, I made a mistake somewhere. We can change our mind and we can do it again. We try it again.
Wisdom is not easy to develop. We learn that from our suffering. We cannot prevent suffering by following somebody. Oh, Robina taught me to do that so when I do that I will be a good girl and I won’t experience any suffering. It’s not like that.
You’re gonna suffer like hell if you do that. Don’t do it. You know, check with your own wisdom mind. You have that. And I could not find a book, but I’ll check next time.
We have new books, so next time the boxes will be open and I can check for that. Remind me, please. My memory is not always very good. I’m I’m a bit I’m just don’t think but I’m a bit guilty of all that too because I like don’t like to be different. I like to please people as well.
So We all have that. We all have that. I suffer from the same. Know, don’t think that I’m being Yeah. We all want to please people.
Pleasing people comes from attachment. We don’t like it when somebody gets angry at us. We don’t like it when somebody feels not happy with us. And what we do in order to please others, we create negative actions for ourselves. Then when we die, who is going to experience the result from that?
We! That’s the stupidity due to our attachment. Due to the attachment to please people, we experience the result from them. Wisdom means that knowing that you are responsible, knowing what is going to happen if you do this action and then making the choice that even if it doesn’t please people, I still wanna tell the truth and as well as I can, and I live according to the nature of the law of karma and effect even if people don’t like it. Because I know that after I’ve died, I’m gonna take that with me and I’m gonna experience the results.
We can be very selfish in that, but our selfishness is very short term short term. We want today that somebody’s happy. Isn’t it? And if somebody’s happy, we are happy. So it’s very short term happiness that we go for.
We don’t set out for the long goal. That’s the wisdom that helps us to do that. True? Short term is due to attachment. I don’t wanna experience any suffering or people that thinks like this about me or think like that about me.
We don’t want that. That’s what I’ve learned in this the last six or seven weeks about. That’s what’s all coming through to me. Yeah. It’s all formed.
It’s all just our own action that we have to look at and take responsibility for no matter what is gonna happen in the outside world. Very difficult. And I’m absolutely not mastering it. I can promise you. I do so many things to please others which are not really, you know, pure Dharma, which which I actually should practice.
And sometimes it’s a plot to ask. Politeness is a thing is a a a is a why do you have to pull be polite? Well, let’s say Robina is not polite. You just said you wanted to follow Robina. Rubina is not polite.
I didn’t say I want to follow Rubina. I just used an example that you used the other day. I just give it through back to you. This is this You did not say, can I turn the lights off? You said, is it necessary that we have all these lights on?
That’s a different question. If you say can I turn the lights off? I can say yes or no. You did not ask that. Maybe my communication is not how want anybody wants me to to say it.
If you say, is it necessary that the lights are on, that implies a judgment about you are doing something that is bad for the environment and I know better. That is what I was giving my example of that after like if I Can you see my point? I want you to get rid of your guilt. Want you just to act purely from your heart. I want you to let go of that I have to be a good girl because that is what you suffer.
Know you always had to be a good girl. So we all had to be a good girl. Yes. Have. Even Nick had to be a good girl.
Not good girls, and they wanna go pull the gate and say this, say that. So that’s the only examples what we have. Either we are a good girl or we are the bully who go against everything, but there is not a way to go. And the only thing that I’m trying to show you is where we can go that way. Right?
The middle ground. It’s it’s very it’s it’s it’s and there, you need a wisdom in order to know that. But in order to know that, I point I point at your guilt, and I might be not so pleasant. But the only reason why I do that is because I know that when you could get rid of that guilt, you can suddenly just say the things as they are without feeling anything that is gonna, you know, harm you or come back to you or because you know it. You know that part of you that is guilt is not part of you.
We can’t get rid of that. You can free yourself from that. And then you can be free to say whatever you feel you wanna say. And I wanna support whatever you feel you wanna say. You know?
I just wanna free it from the guilt trips. Can you see? And I’m maybe a little bit harsh at you for whatever reason. So I’m trying to understand something that I’ve said that you’ve been you’ve you’ve come back to me because I didn’t use the words that, like, I’d like to turn some lights off because I think it’s harming the environment. I can’t say that way.
It was just a question. You could have said you also could have said, I would have thought, I I actually need these lights on right now. And now we would have to debate. But it’s but it’s know need them on, that’s fine with me. It’s the same that, like, asking You can also say, do you need the lights on?
Maybe I’ve chosen it incorrect. But maybe I’ve chosen the correct words so we can be having this discussion. You add something about the environment, which means that if I don’t do what you want, I’m a bad person because I don’t take care of the environment and you are a better person. I’m saying that’s how I’ve tried to give an explanation for You don’t have to give an explanation for what you want. Yeah.
But you don’t. That’s the guilt. You don’t have to do that. You can just want it. You don’t have to do that.
Okay. I I I want to put my hands on Judy’s heart chakra because I feel she needs some healing. But that’s my thought because I’m sitting here. Came back at me just like that. I’m going, wait a minute.
But you can just make it clean, clear with your question. What do you want? Do you want the lights off? Good. Do you need the lights on?
Yes, I need the lights on. No, I don’t need the lights on. That doesn’t matter. We all get ourselves lost in all sorts of maneuvers. Yes.
We manipulate. We manipulate to get what we want. Yes, took it in a way and you took it in a way but there was a manipulation that we all do this. You know? Don’t think I’m free of this because I’m not.
Money here at the Buddha House. You know? Like I don’t know. Who tells you that you should save money for Buddha House? You have so many assumptions.
Said that. That’s Yes. So many assumptions. Assumptions, manipulations, all to get what we want. It’s and it’s and we all do this.
You know? This is attachment. This is this is our lack of wisdom. This is why we don’t understand karma because we have what we are driven by is we want to get what we want. karma is not about getting what we want.
It’s all you look in the very, very far future. If you really understand karma, you’re not too worried about the finances of Buddha House, you’re not too worried about the lights, you’re not too worried about the environments. Yes, you can do your contribution but you don’t have to share that like that with others. It’s like it’s your own responsibility. It’s my responsibility.
If I do stupid things, if I create lots of negative karma towards my environment, I will experience that result in the future. No way I will be free from that. I will experience that. I might have a lack of light or maybe because I give myself no light, will have lots of light. I don’t know.
It depends on my motivation. I’m going to talk about karma because the way we think is very polluted with our attachment. And then we try to think we use that to think about karma, which makes karma polluted with attachment. And that is we have to try somehow to get rid of that. So I’m just gonna explain the laws as it is given.
Right? And then it is up to us to help to purify that. And then I’m happy to talk about that. But first, we have to know how it is clean clear. Okay?
Is that alright with you, Elizabeth? Why you asking my permission? I’m not asking your permission. I just wanna see if you can just sit there on a chair and listen to the explanations that I’m gonna give. I’m gonna do my best.
Good. Great. That’s the best we can do. What a good girl you are. Okay.
So what so we have actions that cause if we say karma is action and karma is that what was the result of our actions is our experiences in the future. So whatever we experience today is a result of actions that we have done in the past. In general you can say: we experience suffering, that comes from actions that have caused suffering, either for ourselves or for others. If we experience happiness, that experience comes from actions that have created happiness for ourselves or for others. Normally for others.
Virtuous actions, actions that are for the benefit of others lead to happiness in the future. Non virtuous actions where we harm others lead to suffering in the future. We just said our life is in the nature of suffering. Right? Our nature, even if we try not to harm just because the nature of our life, there is always some harm involved.
In order to sustain our life, we there is always in order to sustain our life we always create harm for others. If we like it or not, it’s just the way it is. When we create food there is always killing involved. We cannot stop killing in order to produce food. So that is part of our life.
We cannot change that. We can look at what makes actions So, in general we can create actions with the thoughts, with the speech and with the body. The body is most obvious. We can all see that in each other. So the negative actions of the body are killing, taking somebody else’s life, including animals.
Next one is stealing, taking somebody else’s property, when it’s very meaningful for that person. And then the third one is sexual misconduct, which means that you go into a relationship with somebody else’s partner. That’s the biggest thing. The actions of the speech. They are harsh, full speech, saying harsh words, speaking divisively, speaking behind people’s back.
Gossip, means just chatting, chatting, chatting about nothing. And the other one is lying. Lying is biggest one. Then I think divisive speech. But gossip is also very powerful because we do much gossip on a day, we talk so much about nothing, that because we do it for such a long amount of time during the day, becomes a big non virtuous action.
Then the negative actions from the mind are covetousness that when somebody has something we think oh I want to have that too’ or wanna actually have that. I don’t wanna have the same thing. I wanna have that. That’s what we think. There is ill will, that if somebody does something to us, that we wish them harm.
Or if somebody does something to our friend or to our partner, we wish that person harm. And the third one is ignorance. Ignorance is divided into not knowing. So it’s like you just don’t know something. You don’t or it is about distorted knowing.
For instance saying: Oh no, reincarnation doesn’t exist. Or karma doesn’t exist. The law of cause and effect doesn’t exist. Because you can say: I don’t know if it exists or not, then you’re open. So then there is a way that you can listen to that and learn about that.
If you say it doesn’t exist, you close yourself more. And what you create is actually suffering for yourself. Because if you say karma doesn’t exist, then it doesn’t matter what I’m doing. So I can harm whatever I want to do to get what I want. So you open yourself up for a lot of negativities and for a lot of suffering for yourself.
So distorted knowing is much more negative than just not knowing. Because under the influence of distorted knowing we create a lot of negative karma that is going to lead to suffering in the future. Our problem with karma is that we say it’s about good and bad. And good we mean that it looks good and bad means that it looks bad. This is about the mind and has nothing to do with how it looks like.
So, are stories from the Buddha where he killed somebody to save that person from experiencing the negative karma of killing. Right? For our eyes that Buddha looked like a killer. But in the mind of that Buddha actually ripened a lot of virtuous karma because of his motivation. So then with with karma, you you need certain aspects.
Every action has certain aspects. For instance, we have the motivation. If I have something itching here and I do this and then I realise there was a mosquito, I had no intention to kill that mosquito. My intention was to get rid of that itching feeling. But if, for instance, Mary rides over my toe with her wheelchair and I get really angry and I think ‘wait till she comes back and I will get’, that is a very heavy negative karma because of my intention.
I deliberately want to harm her. Not only that, I make a plan for it and I wait till she comes back. The more I do that, the stronger the karma is that I create with that. So that’s one aspect: the motivation. Why do you do that?
So when we look in our life, many times we kill, but not with intention. So killing that we do without an intention does not have the power, for instance, to propel us to another rebirth. In order for me to get a suffering rebirth in the sense of having a body of a very suffering creature like a hell creature or an animal creature I have to have a very strong intention to kill. Without that intention, that cannot throw me in such a rebirth. If I just live my life and I try to avoid killing and I try to help sentient beings, I practice virtuous actions that can lead me to a higher rebirth.
Even I know that I have done many killings in this life. So that’s one thing. Then there has to be the First of all there is the basis which is a sentient being. I’m going to harm a sentient being. Harming a sentient being means that somebody is going to experience suffering from an action.
So I have to pick something out. I’m going to harm a sentient being. If I harm the table, that is not a full karma. That’s not a full action because there is no sentient being involved. The other one is the thought which is divided into your motivation.
But also it is very important that my discrimination is proper. For instance, I might think actually Susan rang over my toe. I was not Mary. But I thought it was Mary and I’m going to lift my anger out towards Mary because I think that was her who did it. Then my discrimination is mistaken.
Like that. And then another thing that has to be in my thought is that it has to be a negative emotion in the sense of I need to have the wish to really harm or I need to have the wish to really get something from her. It depends on what I want to do. So these things have to be in the mind in order to create one aspect of the action, to make the action complete. In order for the action to be complete we need four things: sentient being, thought Then you have to do the action.
I really have to hit Mary or kill her in order for that action to lead to a full karma. If I only have the thoughts in my mind but I don’t do it, then the karmic seed is very different than from when I really do the action. What? If I want to harm you and I choose to let the the tires down, I still have the intention to harm you. But I can also be so angry at that wheelchair I don’t even see you.
So angry at the wheelchair that I let the tires down. That’s different. It’s a different action again. One is towards you who are a sentient being. The other one is towards your wheelchair which is not an sentient being.
But that’s not my intention. If it’s not my intention So that’s about karma. karma is about what creates my mind. It has nothing to do with Mary. It’s my mind who wants something.
If I want to harm Mary, that’s my karma. If I want to harm the wheelchair, that’s my karma. Very different result. Yes. But for her it might be similar.
For her, the one that is for me less has less result, you know, harming the wheelchair might actually be more harmful of as being more harm as experienced as more harmful for Mary than if I had harmed herself. Can you see that? So what I’m doing has maybe sometimes nothing to do with what that other person experiences due to my intention. In order to be action and a full action can lead you to a certain kind of rebirth you need the basis which is a sentient being. So it always has to be towards a sentient being.
It needs to have the thought of I’m going kill that person’, I’m going to steal from that person’, I’m going to gossip about that person’. You need that intention for the act to be complete. If I say ‘I just want to hit you and by accident I kill you, that karma of killing is not a full karma of killing. Because I had the intention just to hit you. If I have the intention to kill you but I didn’t do it, it’s not a complete full action.
Because something else happened that really I really set out for. This is just practically how karma works. This is not about judgement. This is just about if you do this, then that. If you do that, then that.
So then the third thing is that you have to do the action. You first set out and then you have to do the action. And the last one is what I call the combination of the action that you still have to be alive when the action is finished. For instance, I want to kill a person. I want to kill myself and I have the intention to kill.
And then I actually do the killing. But I have died before the action is completed. I’m not alive anymore when the action is completed. That means it’s not a complete act of killing. Although I have done the action of killing, according to karma, that can that action does not have the power to throw me in a lower rebirth because the action is not complete.
So if somebody shoots let’s say, shoots somebody, get rid of them, and then they shoot themselves Yeah. Because, you know, they’ve been angry at that person, whatever. If I can’t have you, nobody else can. And they and they’re dead too. What do you say?
That’s not a complete That is a complete karma because you still alive when that person dies. You shoot that person, imagine that person hasn’t died yet. That person is laying down on the floor with a bullet in the stomach but it’s not dead yet, then you shoot yourself. You die before that other person, then that action of killing is not a full action of killing. Even though I had the intention of killing?
Yeah, you had the intention of killing because you need four things for the action to be complete. You need the intention of killing, need that there, you have the sentient being which is there, then you do the action which is there, then you have to be alive when that action is complete. That action is not complete. The person hasn’t died yet. You are dead.
If they have died and then you killed yourself, then you’re Then the action is complete. These are just the rules. What you do with this is you’re going to think about it. It. So what does that mean with my action of giving?
What does it mean with my action of lying, with stealing? What does it mean? And then you’re going to check your own mind. So what have I And you’re going to apply that Oh wow, that’s a full act. I better purify that because that’s definitely going to ripen into something like that.
Or That is not a full act but still, I would not like to experience that result so I’m going to do something about it. Or I want to achieve this then I better make a full action. Better when I give I have really the intention to give because if I don’t have really the intention to give and I just give because I feel guilty that’s never going to ripen in that full karma. So if I have the intention to give and if I have the intention to give that sentient being and I have the intention And then you do the action and then you rejoice in the fact that you have done it and you’re still alive after you have done it. Then you know: oh I’ve done a full action!
That is definitely going to lead to the result in the future. How fantastic! And you can rejoice in that action. If you forget your intention, you might miss out on the biggest thing that is behind your action. You might be very mindful of your actions.
What am I doing? Why am I doing it? And if you put all the right things in place, that is definitely going to happen in the future. Positive, negative, it doesn’t matter. If you want to be happy and we all want to be happy this is what you’re doing.
Here is the recipe. You want have a nice cake? This is the recipe. You don’t only think about the recipe, try to make the recipe. And maybe first you miss some ingredients.
That’s always how it happens with a cake. But then the next time you know, you taste and you think oh, it’s not completely how I wanted it. I’ll try it again and I’ll it again and I’ll read again the recipe and did it do everything and put everything in it that I thought I was going to put in it. And then when you do it, the more you look into that, the more you perfect it. And you will experience that you get a better and better cake.
Same. So then, how can karma ripen? So we can look into that. And then how does the result of karma look like? So there are three types of results.
One is what is called ‘resultant fruition’ which means that karma is throwing you into another rebirth. So for instance, if I practice ethics, that is the karma to throw me in another human rebirth. In order to have that power, you need to have all the four parts aspects of that action complete. If I only have three, that is not strong enough to really throw me in that rebirth. So if I don’t have the intention to practice ethics but I’m just born in a place where people don’t harm each other and people take care of each other but I really don’t have the intention then it’s maybe not leading.
I shouldn’t say that. Yeah. That makes sense. If it’s just taken for granted, if there’s no sort of thought behind it. The intention is not so strong.
Yeah. But I’m not sure if I can say it so that karma is not strong enough to lead you to a positive rebirth. I’m not sure if I could say that. But you see what I mean, that if you don’t know what you’re doing, your action is not that strong. You’re not it’s not that powerful.
And that can be in both ways, positive, negative. If I kill Mary out of rage and I’m when after she has died, I’m so happy that she’s gone, you know, that karma is a full karma that has such a potential to throw me in similar kind of experiences but are much worse like Hell Realm. All these four have to be complete. So that’s what we have to look at. If we kill them, what we do is we try not to kill, we abstain from harm.
But if we notice that we have done that, yes, you’ll regret it. But that karma is not that powerful that it can throw you into a normal rebirth. So you check. You keep on checking. You keep on checking.
What am I doing? So one karma is the karma that can throw you into a certain type of rebirth. And another karma is which is called the karma which is similar to the cause. And that can be of two different things. One is that things happen into your life that you experience that are similar than the cause.
For instance, at school they always beat me up. Every day when I go to school, they wait for me and they beat me up. That is a result of having done the same in a previous life to other people or to other beings. So, I experience something that is similar to the cause. If we look into our own life, we can recognise certain things ‘Ah, that happened again to me!
How did that happen to me?’ I didn’t ask for this. It happens again and again and again. I don’t know why but it just keeps on happening to me. If that is true, that is the karma which is similar to the cause. Does that happen the other way around?
Is probably something unnecessarily because someone’s been beaten up all their life and it’s ostensibly a product of their beating beforehand. Does it not also transpire that if they’re being beaten up now, they’re going to start beating other people up further in their Could be. Yeah. Could be. Then if you do that repeating a violent father that child and it becomes violent to his child.
Yeah. Yeah. So then that cycle keeps on going. That saṃsāra just keeps on going. I’m not going to do this anymore.
True. So it goes backwards and forwards. Well it’s like if we feel harmed we get angry and we want to harm back and maybe when we don’t feel strong enough to harm our father back, you know, we wait till we’re in a position that we feel strong enough to harm. So then when we are growing up and we have children, we can do it then. Or maybe we’re just following the example of the father because we don’t know another way of being father except by beating your children up.
So then the intention is maybe not so much there to harm but it’s just like a habit. So one is that you experience something that is similar than the cause, right, which is that somebody’s beating you up. Another thing is that you might have the tendency to do it yourself. If you have been beating up other people in previous lives then maybe now you’re going be beating up yourself but it can also be that you have the habit to beat up and that is when you grow up. You lift that habit of beating others up.
Looking into our own mind, what are my tendencies? What am I doing? What are my negative tendencies? What are my positive tendencies? What are my tendencies of the body with regards to killing, stealing, sexual misconduct?
There are people who have a relationship with another person every week. Three times a week. They don’t care who it is. They just have it. Isn’t it?
It’s a tendency. There are people that, no matter where they are, in any shop, they just have to take something with them. It’s a tendency. True, there are children who are born very young. They have the tendency to torture.
Isn’t it? They’re going to pull out the legs of the ants. That’s a tendency that is there. That’s something that they have done in previous lifetimes and they take that tendency with them in this lifetime. So that is one way of experiencing karma having tendencies.
But also, you can have a very loving and kind heart. That’s a tendency. That means you have practiced that before. Or you are already a generous person. That is a tendency.
You have practiced that before. So one is making then your personality. I like that how Robina said I don’t know if anybody was there. I think she said it in a retreat. One is your personality where you have the tendencies to do it and then one is whatever you experience in your life.
One is the rebirth that you have and then there are two things that determine your life: one, whatever you experience, the other is your own tendencies. And then the third way karma ripens is your environmental karma. Anything that happens around you that has to do with nature, with the people that are there, with just the material objects that are there, that is also a karma that ripens. Some people are born you know, if you’re born in the desert where there is nothing, just dry ness and heat, that’s a karma. For us, if we would think about that, it’s like a hell karma.
Isn’t it? Dry, the sun and heat, no water. That’s like hell. If you are born in a place where there is just lots overflow of material objects beautiful, beautiful, beautiful that’s a very positive karma. It’s a virtuous karma.
These three things. What I want you to do is to look at that. I did not have the time this morning to write this down so I don’t know if you can remember it or if you want to write it down yourself. But look into your own life. What are the experiences that I have that come back to me?
Sometimes you experience only something one time but sometimes things come back more and more. Some people always lose their money. They always lose their purse, isn’t Some people, you know, whenever they’re gonna gamble, they always lose. Some people always win. What is your tendency?
And you can check anything. You know? You can check about whatever comes to you, people, material objects, experiences. And you can look at what you give, how you act, what is your tendency to do. This is homework, right?
Give every week some homework. You don’t have to share that but I want you to do that reflection with your own mind. Just to get clarity in your own mind. Right? Because what you want, I guess, by listening to the teachings is you wanna improve your life.
You wanna make sure that you’re gonna be more happy in the in the future. You wanna make sure that you’re gonna suffer less in the future. So the more you know about karma, the more you can direct your life in the direction that you want it to go. The more you can become in control. But in order to do that, you have to look.
What is happening in my mind? What am I doing? What do I experience? And I’m gonna hand you out maybe we pass it on. Take one of each.
That’s about karma that we create. And it is called challenges. What kind of challenges do we have in life? We call it problems. What kind of problems do I experience in life?
For instance, if you get very easily sick or if medicines are not effective or if you have no energy. These are a result of killing. What actually happens is that you have killed in the past. In your mind stream there is that seed, that imprint that comes from that killing. And then in the future which is now that imprint ripens in the form of I have no energy.
If you have a life and you have no energy, no matter what you try, you can say that must be a result of killing in the past. We don’t like to hear that. But what we do is look at problems normally. Right? So I give you the job to look also at the positive things in your life.
But normally we wanna solve our problems. Isn’t it? We wanna know we wanna get rid of our suffering. So in order to do that, you have to look at the at the at the problems that you experience. Thank you very much.
And as we said, problems are coming from creating negative karma, from creating non virtuous actions, they’re coming from harming. If we would harm no sentient being, we would be perfectly happy. Right? But we know that because of life we do harm. Because the way we believe we do harm.
Because we hold on to me, me, me so strong we do harm. So naturally we do experience the result of that. I think Susan was a very good example of that. She experienced so many things that normally, you know, any person, any other person might have gone mad if you have all these things happening in your life. You think my god, what is wrong with me?’ That experience all that?
And she just said, it’s part of life. Know? I’m not gonna let my mind be affected by all of these things that are happening to me. That is where you try to go with your meditation. We do experience things that we have created in the past.
But when we stop reacting to them, we at least don’t create more of them. Then the experience of losing your house, getting sick, of losing your life, they do purify these seeds that are in your mind. If we can abstain from reacting, that seed is gone. We’re free. That seed cannot ripen again in the future life.
It’s gone. If we react to that, we create a new seed. So in the future we will have the same. Right? So we are not in control of our things that come to us but we can become in control of our reaction.
And if we the more we have control over our reaction then it just cannot happen in the future again. Okay? But sometimes you just do experience a life with a lot of suffering. There’s huge purification. Many many many seeds purify, get exhausted.
Know? Lose their power. They cannot ripen in the future again. Anything that is exhausted is gone. If you want to purify that, what try to practice is then you try to respect life, you try to protect life, you try to save lives.
So if somebody has a terminal illness or for instance cancer, then normally what you do is you go to a High Lama and you say, so what kind of practice do I do in order to change this karma or in order to exhaust this karma? And they do a mo, they check with a kind of divination. And they might say, have to save ten thousand animals. Then you have to organise somehow that you’re going to save ten thousand animals that normally were going to be killed. For instance, fish on the market.
You buy them and bring them back to the natural environment. You have saved ten thousand lives. That’s a lot of merit. Even if the fish dies after that, it doesn’t matter. You did the action of saving the animals.
So why do you save yourself? Is it? Not necessarily. Why? Why would you use your long life?
If I have a long life, I can practice much longer. And the longer I can use this human rebirth, the more merit I can create, the better I can be of benefit to other beings. So yes, if you have that motivation, if you just say I just want to have a long life, your action is not going be so powerful. But if you do it, I can practice and then I can develop my mind more. I do have a human rebirth now.
I don’t know what I’m gonna have in my next life. Then you have to be aware of your motivation when you say what it is because otherwise there’s so much point doing it. No. But I but I think you already have some understanding when you ask the question to a Lama, isn’t it? Otherwise, you would not engage in these actions.
True. We once did it in the Chenrezig Institute. Did I think it was His Holiness sometimes sometimes they send this message that says His Holiness the Dalai Lama has obstacles to his life and then they ask us to do practices and to release animals. So we did a collection of money and we had quite a lot of money, I don’t know, almost two thousand dollars. And we went to a shop and we bought these big crabs.
We bought for seventeen hundred dollars crabs. And we did Crabs. I’m sorry. And we did and what you do is first you do the blessed because these animals have the karma to die. Right?
They’re caught. They’re almost about to die. They maybe have another day to live but they are about to die. So they have the karma to die. If you release that animal, you know, you can say oh I’ll release that animal from death but you also have to change the karma.
Because if the karma to die is there then no matter if you take that animal away that animal is definitely going to die. So you not only have to save that animal you also have to change that karma to help to change the karma. In order to do that, do certain practices and you blow mantras on the animals. So we did that. And after that we released them.
These stupid Buddhists releasing spending seventeen hundred dollars on the crabs and then what happens? People knew that we put them in the river back. So people came there to fish and got them out. You know? So we could not save the crabs They had the karma to die.
But also saying why didn’t you give the money to the hospital so that we can save one human being? It’s not about that. It’s about saving lives. It’s not about having a human rebirth is better than an animal rebirth. It’s about what you want to do.
Want to save life in order to save the life of His Holiness which is a very different action than what we normally would do. Isn’t it? So it took me a long time to think about this, you know, and to really feel like happy with that. If an animal has the karma to die, we have to change the karma for that animal in order to survive. We try it with worms.
People who do this practice, what they’re constantly doing is like what animal can we get that definitely has the karma to die and we can change it. So once we did crickets? Crickets? Yes. So we bought a whole box of crickets.
Then we tried to put them out and something happened that you just see that they’re just dying. There where you release them. You try to think about what is the best place to release them. Then the natural enemy comes and eats them. They think, oh fantastic.
Same with the fish. Then you try worms. You know, you release the worms. Same happens. Oh, it’s too dry or it’s too this or it’s too that.
They die. But what you’re doing, you have the intention to release. Lama Zopa, he goes to India. Right? What he does one time I did a Kopan course.
You’re go there, don’t you? And, you know, you’re waiting for your teacher. You’re waiting for your teacher. And he didn’t show up. And he didn’t show up.
And then suddenly, we saw this person walking around the compound. I said, what is this person doing? And then we went, you know, looked out of the window. The person was running with a goat around the compound. And then we heard that the night before, he went into town and he saw three goats at a butcher’s place and he released them.
So he bought them and he brought them up to the compound. But because they had the karma to die, he did lots and lots of lots of prayers. He didn’t come for many sessions. He was only doing prayers to change the karma of these goats. If you don’t do that know so I don’t know what would have happened with these goats because he changed it.
I know that in Bodh Gaya, they do the same kind of practice. You know, they release animals. There were like seven goats and then suddenly, within a week, five of them died. Very soon after they were released. If the karma is there to die, you will die.
Right? Yeah. Just going back to, crickets Yep. You release them, and and you try to sort of do some stuff yourself, and you might say, you know, some freeze, whatever they’re going. Yeah.
But you know by buying them, they’re in the food chain, and some other animals could die because they’re not being fed. Did you know that? If you buy a chicken to eat, right, you don’t kill the chicken. True? If you buy a cricket to save the cricket, it’s not that you want somebody else to die and just don’t give the cricket because of that It’s your motivation.
You wanna save the cricket. That’s karma. Like it’s very clean, pure. And if, yes, we are in that in that interdependent relationship with each other. Yes.
Every action that we are doing will have an effect for somebody else. Yes. Because I save this, maybe that person won’t get what they want. But it’s about your action, your motivation. That is what is an imprint in your mind.
That is what is going with you. We cannot change the world where we are all so interconnected with each other and we don’t want that. What we want to do is bring in positive intentions in order to save lives. And yes, that other side is there too. But that’s not your intention.
True? If I want to have the lights on because I want to make everything bright and I think that makes people more happy, I don’t have an intention to harm my environment. My intention is to lift up the mind of beings. That’s a positive intention. That is my karma of having the lights on.
My karma is not that I’m going to be reborn in a dark place because I misuse the resources of the earth. But if I have the lights on, if I really waste it with the motivation of wasting it, I might be reborn in a very dark place because I wasted it. Right? So it a lot to do with intention and you can use resources with a very positive intention without beating yourself up. I beat myself for years up because I had to buy this plastic bag and I knew the plastic bag could never digest on the earth and always feel bad if I had to do that.
And, you know, I beat myself up for years. I did not allow myself just to live my life because my strong tendency to judge and to beat myself up for actions that I could not prevent doing. And you end up with a mentality. That’s exactly true. Then I create a lot of miserliness in my own mind.
Can you see that? It’s more than just having that one truth: If you do this, then that, that is the result. There are many results and they all depend on your motivation. And it’s about checking that: Why am I doing it? I’m doing it to save a life.
If I give Mary a drink because I know that she’s very thirsty and I know I want to actually help her to be in a good condition, but then she swallows it into the wrong pipe and she actually I said it. More than that you die in doing that. Right? My action of helping triggers the karma in Mary to die. Right?
I haven’t killed her. I try to help her. Yeah. Sometimes we wanna help this ant. You know?
You have this cup of tea with sugar in it and and and you have it outside and then the ants coming. And you try to help the ants and then helping, you kill them. Yeah. You’ve done that before. Isn’t it?
Or in helping them, they drown. Or helping them it’s like it’s like even if we try to help, we might kill. That is how killing is involved in our whole life. But what it is about is that we try. How can we do it without that letting that happen?
And if it happens, you know, don’t beat yourself up. We try. That’s all we can do. Then the animal dies, then we try to say some mantras, we blow them on. We try to pray for the next life.
Maybe due to our connection they’re going to have a good next life because of the actions that we did, them, because our connection with them. Not killing or not being involved in the killing? Not killing. Mhmm. Yeah.
So how do you get around So you can think about, oh, I’ll ask somebody else to kill, and then I don’t have to do it. Being being involved in the treatment, I guess? Because if you don’t, you can’t do the visit. It’s just the way it is. Then you have the cat, you know?
When I’m living there, there a few cats and one of them is a real tiger and outside are chickens and rats. So regularly they come in with a rat and they kill rats. It’s like Yeah. But that’s different. That’s different.
But that’s the Because and Because then the cat has done it, and not you. Actually fed the cat the live rat. I mean, you you’re not feeling it. But when you have a visit, you have to make sure that, you know, you have to expose have to give it some life. It it doesn’t survive on just vegetarian food.
All it actually needs to eat something live. So how how can you I don’t know. I’m sad. Why do you have to live with a lizard? I don’t know.
I really don’t know. My son’s got a lizard. That’s what I’m asking. And he you know, he’s vegetarian, but he doesn’t just survive. So, you know, I’ve I’ve had to really they might not be saying what they do.
But if it’s your son’s, why do you do it? Yes. Because I’m the mother, I kill for my son. That’s how we create karma. Because I’m the mother, I kill for my son.
This is how we create karma. Because I love you so much, I’ll do negative actions so that, you know, I’ll help you. This is what mothers are doing. She’s not actually killing. She’s buying for live crickets.
Yeah. Knowing that they’re gonna be killed. Going to be gobbled up in front of her eyes and just not have to drink quickly. Because otherwise, Elizabeth will die. Yeah.
If I don’t do that. So Let me think. So you’re not killing yourself. You are not killing. No.
No. I’m not killing. I get So what if you if that happens and you think you’re just feeding you’re feeding the lizard? I don’t know. I I find it really difficult.
I can’t say anything about this. I know. It’s a really it’s a really difficult thing that and it’s getting good that I think it’s where you focus upon, isn’t it? Is that what you’re saying? So you focus on helping your son, you focus on helping the lizard.
You’re not focused on killing the crickets. You don’t buy the crickets so that they’re going to be killed. Buy the crickets so that your lizard is going to be fed. That’s the motivation. So if you keep on if you keep on pleasing your son things.
Like, it’s it’s bigger than above all of us to even sort of try and Yeah. Get around it maybe. Yeah. It’s a hard one because I went to the pet shop one that I’ve I’ve been to talk about, you know, releasing. And I’ve got all my dog cat food, and I went in the.
This and I said, chip chip chip chip chip chip. And I sat, and I thought, what are you gonna do? Put your money where your mouth is sort of thing. So I went in and bought a whole pile of them. And the girl behind the counter grabbed one box and said, well, I’ve got something for my for my listen to it.
You know? So, you know, I understand what you’re saying. Anyhow, then I thought, well, we’re gonna take the guy that Yeah. Yeah. No.
But it’s like vegetarian lizards are not stopping, you know, the the harm that is done in this life. It’s not about that. It’s about your action and your motivation. Just only check your action and your motivation. The one thing you do have a control on in this whole equation is how you tackle it.
Yeah. Because it’s going to happen regardless. Yeah. Or what? You just said he’s my son.
It’s not not really our son. So he too Did I use that? Yeah. Is it not? You want you you you say, my son really likes that lizard and you really want him to have that lizard.
In order for him to have that lizard, that lizard needs food. Yeah, but it’s not. It’s got nothing to do with me cleaning him. What would happen if you take the lizard away? Oh, yeah.
He he he would be really upset. Yeah. So what would happen with you? I’d be upset. But So you don’t want your son to be upset.
You want your son to be happy. Of course I do. Yeah. So you want to please your son. But that’s not why he’s got the lizard.
He has lot of lizard. No. No. No. No.
No. No. That’s not what I said. But you feed him. You feed the lizard.
Or you buy the crickets. I well, yeah. Well, he’s at school because he can’t get to the pet. Yeah. They buy it.
Yeah. But he he’s responsible for the lizard. Yeah. Anyway It’s okay to please your son. You know?
That’s what you want as a mother. You want your your son to be happy. Yeah. And I guess I’m just providing you know, I just want him to develop and and learn on the mindful Let’s have a look at the list before we’re too too far. We’re just gonna do a few.
You know, if you go to the next I lack the resources I need. And it doesn’t mean I have no money or I have a lot of money. That I don’t have what I need. That can be anything. If I want to make a product and I have one ingredient, I don’t have that, I lack resources.
So the cause of that is stealing. By experiencing that you lack your resources, you are purifying that seed that is implanted in your mind. Right? The second one. Yeah.
We did the killing, and then you lack the resources. So any experience that we have, which is which is where we experience suffering that has to do with that, we purify some seeds that have been planted in our minds due to previous actions. It’s a purification that happens. So when you lack resources, you can think, oh, I’m purifying some karma from stealing. When that karma is purified, what I can do, I have an option.
I lack resources, I go out and steal it or I accept that I don’t have it. If I go out and steal it, I create causes that in the future again I will lack resources. If I don’t go there, but even practice generosity, I will create a course that next time I will have the resources. That’s the choice we have. There is a choice.
So if you want to practice, you practice that you respect the property of others. And you could check, you know, like with with the Dharma center, if we don’t have money, what Buddha House has to check is what do we do with resources? Where do we steal from others? Do we pay our bills on time? Maybe Buddha House is not paying their bills on time.
Maybe that’s why we don’t have enough money. That’s true. You know, maybe we don’t practice enough generosity. Maybe that’s why we don’t have the resources. That is where you check.
Yeah? If you have a partner who is contentious, so then you must have done something similar in the past. You know, you have created the causes for that. You have created sexual misconduct. If we go to the last one of that page, I lack self confidence.
Self confidence is that you feel that you don’t have any strength, any power. That’s a result of gossip, senseless speech. With gossip, we lose a lot of energy. We lose a lot of strength. If you have somebody who only speaks the truth when they are asked for or only when it’s really needed, if that person opens their mouth, everybody listens.
But if there’s somebody who’s always talking, talking, talking, but nothing, that person opens their mouth and maybe it’s really true what they’re saying, everybody’s like, phew. Your words lose the power the more you talk senseless speech. We know that, isn’t it? It’s not too difficult to recognise it in our environment. So when we say something and nobody hears us, we have to check how many times do I gossip, how many times do I say something that is not really true.
Stop that! Be more mindful of your speech and after some time, suddenly people start listening to you. It will happen, definitely. I’m never content with what I have. That has to do with the mind of covetousness.
You always think I want to have what someone else has. So when you see that in yourself, that if somebody else has something, you always think I want that. Or with whatever you have, you don’t feel happy. Practice rejoicing. If you see that somebody else has something, say how wonderful you have what you need.
Then you create a cause for yourself to get what you need or what you want to have. Just going go to one of the last ones. People who are close to me turn against me. That has to do with holding grudges or causing others pain. Stop pretending to be kind while harboring ill will.
You know? And we I think we, as women, maybe many times do that because of isn’t it? Because of the fact that we have learned that we have to be good girls. And in order to be good girls, we give more than we actually wanna give. And then because we give more than we wanna give, we actually create some resentment or some ill will in our mind.
And in the meantime, have to pretend that we’re really, really kind because if we’re not doing that we actually lose our job or function or the fact that we’re a good girl. And then what actually happens, what that results in, is that people who are very close to us are turning against us. So we have to purify that. We have to live what we are. If we feel I don’t want to give today, you don’t want to give today.
It’s not a problem. If you’re more kind than you feel be, you create a lot of anger, maybe anger towards yourself inside. It’s not what we want to create because we’re going to experience a result from that and it’s not a pleasant result. Be truthful to where you are and practice that but don’t give more than you can give because the resentment will come. We know that from experience, isn’t it?
So, I’m going to ask you to read through this list and just think, because all the negative actions from killing to gossip are in there. And just think, what happens to my mind? Do I recognize something or not? Maybe you do, maybe you recognize things that happen to others, but keep it a little bit with yourself because we are very good in saying, that person must have created sexual misconduct in the past because now their partner is not truthful to them. Don’t use it like that.
You know? It’s very painful. If somebody comes and says, oh, I lost my purse. Why? Must I have been stealing in the past?
Mhmm. That’s not practicing compassion. Right? If somebody tells us what they experience, we wanna be there with their suffering. We’re not using it to put a finger.
Use it only to look at your own mind. Use it to change your own mind. Use it to generate the causes for that what you want in the future. Don’t use it to pin to blame the other person. We’ve all been there, done that.
In what? Where? True. We do. We do.
But we also do all have the tendency. We all have very strong judgmental character. Remember to look in the mirror and say, well. Yeah. Yes.
Well, just keep it there. Yeah. We did it. In the mirror now and think, I don’t really know that person there looking at me, you know, because gravity’s falling all jacked. Very good.
Yeah. So somebody was saying, oh, this gossipy. No. So so Rubina said somebody were you there on the on the dinner? Do you remember that somebody stood up and said, oh, somebody said this about Geshe-la.
And Rubina said, okay. That person said, so what? Oh, yeah. But it’s bad and blah blah blah. This finger came out.
And then at a certain point, Rubina said, so to how many persons have you told this story that that person is a bad person? And she got us this you know? That’s what we’re doing. You know what that person did. Said to one of friends, well, I’ll probably not say anything much at all.
I’ll get around. All do that. You know? All do that. We don’t realize what we’re doing.
And because of that we create so much suffering for ourselves that we don’t have to experience. And that is what it is all about. Just look into your own mind. So what Ravina said is look into your own mind. What are you creating?
You’re constantly talking behind people’s back which means that you’re going to experience something that feels divisive. So you’re going to experience people who say, ‘Ah, this gesh is maybe not doing this right.’ You feel the divisiveness in your heart. But it’s because your own mind is creating it constantly the causes for that. If she would stop talking about others behind the back, then that that appearance of somebody talking about her teacher like that will just go, will will not happen again. As well.
Sometimes you talk about other people compassion or sometimes just because she sounded like she was affected. Not maliciously. But then you talk different. You don’t talk about that person. You can say, you know that person who came to me, that person talked about me and I got so upset.
My mind got completely crazy and I’m not sure what I should do with my mind. That’s a different question. But what we normally want to do is we want to stop that person doing that. How can I stop people ringing me all the time asking for money? We want that person to stop instead of saying what happens in my mind if people keep on asking that?
What happens in my mind? Because that is what we can change. So it’s okay to say ‘I don’t like that’ but you have to look further into what is it that you don’t like and how do you respond to that and how can you change it. Because if you can change that inside, you won’t suffer anymore from whatever happens. And if you stop suffering, somehow it doesn’t happen anymore.
It stops happening to you. It’s a different way. If you keep on thinking I want to stop that, I want to stop that, I want to stop that, you actually feed it and it keeps on coming to you back again and again. Difference with, like, gossiping? But if I were to say, oh, I’m Judy.
I I don’t know what to do about it. So I heard somebody say something about Ishler, and I don’t know what to do about it. What what are your If you really have the intention that you want to contribute something positive to the situation, no, it’s not gossiping. I don’t think so. But it’s very difficult to have that.
You know? Normally, we don’t have that. We can pack it like that. We can, you know, be look very kind, but it’s like we’re actually something different. We can pack it like that.
We have to be careful. Because it might be that, like, I’m gonna say to somebody over there with what you said about Geshe-la, you know, why are you saying I feel that’s true? But, I mean, I’ve I’ve you know, people say turn it back on me to say, oh, that’s in your own mind. I didn’t say that. And then it starts up a whole Say that again.
Okay. Let’s Give me an example. Can you start trying to say that I’m using an example the girl, the other day. I might Give me an example from your life that you really feel that that is representing what you wanna say. No.
I don’t know. Nothing comes to mind just right at this moment here. But I’m sure there are things. So try to try to work out in my own mind of what’s really gossipy and what is just something to get perhaps somebody’s idea about how I could handle something. Normally handling something is about your mind.
You get upset by something or you notice something in your own mind and you ask help for that. Gossiping. But if you say Oh, you know what? I saw that person talking to that person and I really got upset because that person said this and it really made me upset because that person, you keep on talking about that person even if you talk about your own mind but actually your actions and what that person is doing, that I think is gossiping that you may be pecked at something like actually I want to look at my own mind. But if you mentioned that something happened that made you really upset and you don’t know why you are so upset, you ask somebody to help you to look at what is the reason that you get so upset from that little thing that happened over there, that’s not gossiping.
If you wanna improve your mind, if you wanna understand your own mind and you ask somebody for help and you really keep it with you, that’s not gossiping. Gossiping also implies something with secondhand information. Isn’t it? Also. Yeah.
Oh, I’ve heard that. And we believe it. To be getting from it, except it’s sensationalism. Yeah. And we believe even that it’s true, even if it’s not not true.
You know? But what happens, like, thought in Buddhism, if something happened or you could you were you didn’t have to be a doormat. You could make a statement about it. Yes. So even if does that mean in the case of Geshe-la, you had to hear that person say that?
Or no. You just go up to that person and say, I don’t believe you should talk like that, but not talk to other people. Just say to that person, I make myself clear then. But why would you why would you do that? Well, if if you If you know about karma, then you know that that person by saying that Oh, okay.
Yeah. Is creating something for themselves. Okay. They’re actually creating division or separation from the guru. How sad is that?
Yeah. You know? They might sit here in class now, but maybe in ten years time, they lose their interest. They don’t want to come anymore because they have created the division with the guru or the separation from the guru in their own mind. If you can see that, you generate compassion.
There’s no need then to say why are you doing that? If you say why are you doing that? You are upset. Then you have to look at your own mind. You don’t try to address what others are doing.
And I’m not good in this. But it’s something that we have to learn, you know, to really stick with our own mind and our own actions and take responsibility for that. And don’t that’s that’s the karma. It’s a little bit dangerous for that for us because of our mind of, hey, you. What are you doing?
You know what you’re creating. It’s up to them. Yeah. There’s a risk risk of getting so fraudulent. Yeah.
Yeah. Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself. Zip your lips. What did she say?
What did she say? Mind your own business. Zip your lips and keep your hands to yourself. Is that right? Okay.
That’s the teaching of the Buddha. But if you look at the the speech of man, you know, if men start talking, they are much easier believed than women. It’s a lot more matter of fact and sort of I think that area is more boisterous. But also that can have to do with the gossip. That’s the karma that ripens.
If you’re born as a man, I don’t think you have the tendency that much to gossip and also you have the karma that whatever you say is more believed in the outside world. Somehow the voice of man is more powerful. If a woman teaches or a man teaches you just look who you believe. The man you believe much easier than a woman. It happens naturally and not because we want that.
We might even think but I actually would like to listen to that woman but something in is like that. That’s karma. And it has to do with gossip. And that’s that’s yeah. But we can only change that on an individual level.
So although women might have that karma and although we might all have that karma that we’re not believed that much, if we stop gossiping, people will start listening to us. It’s a question of credibility. Yeah. But somehow your words lose power if you just keep on using Yeah. But also people hear don’t hear you anymore.
You know, even if you say something really truthful Yeah. It’s just it’s just yeah. Some power leaks away. But some people are on such an ego trip themselves by talking, talking, talking. When you when you try to be mindful, when you think you’re trying to be mindful, and then you come in with something, they disregard it.
Yeah. So you feel they’re more powerful? They’re very powerful or what? No. Not more powerful.
I guess what Oh, what do you wanna say? Draw back because I’m But if you are not hurt feel the man as well, like men take up more space. Talking about men. I’m just talking about people. But if you have the experience that people don’t listen to you, that’s your karma.
If other people have the experience that no matter what they say that they’re going to take the whole space, that’s their karma. That they can do it is their karma. That they do it is something that they’re going to create for the future, is going to ripen and some kind of result for the future. What ripens depends on their motivation. If they are talking out of wanting to bully, that will ripen as being bullied in the future.
If they talk because they really want to help others, that will ripen as maybe talking more dharma in the future. If they you know? So could you say that gossiping’s an active ego and the I, and so to stop it, you have to operate in mindfulness? Yes. But any negative action, any positive action are actions from the I.
Yeah. The more mindful we are naturally, we have the tendency to create negative actions. We have tendencies for certain actions. Some people have more tendency for killing, other people have more tendencies for gossip, other people have more tendencies for going behind other people’s back. That’s tendencies that we have.
Being mindful, we suffer from that. That’s why we suffer. So if we want to change that, we have to become more mindful, have to check our own mind, we have to understand what we are doing that creates a suffering, then we can change it. Without mindfulness, we can’t change it. True.
Does that answer your kind of think before you open your mouth. Yes. Zip your lip. That’s even worse. That’s even more than that.
You know? Really be mindful that you’re what you’re saying. Yeah. Just don’t blurb it out. What did she say?
You just vomit the words, isn’t it? You don’t talk all the time, and you think she has a lot of time to think, but she’s She knows so well what she’s saying. Yeah. She’s so aware of what she says all the time. So well.
Yeah. Constantly modify. So Yeah. Yeah. So you can imagine what mind she must have in order to be able to do that, how sharp she must be in order to keep on doing that.
And if I track back what she all said to me, because she stayed with me, which means that the whole day. It’s like, Wow, that was so profound what she said to this morning. She’s just ten steps ahead of me. And I don’t realise that when she does it, it appears like it’s a coincidence that it comes out of her mouth. But now I realise that was not.
She was actually checking on something. It’s quite amazing. It’s like wow. That’s a bloody example of our potential. She had to work really, really hard.
She says I worked through thirty years of shit. Thirty years of suffering. I think the first two years of her ordination she cried every day. She would wake up and cry and cry and cry. She got sacked from every job she had.
People did not want to work with her. She says everything, you know, You like it or not. So, it’s not an easy person to work with because we all have these egos. She’s a very strong woman. She always had these very weak bosses.
So, she had to do the work. And then people would say Oh, you’re so kind that you served that boss. And she said What? Serve that boss! I’m doing the work here!
There was a lot of suffering in that. And that suffering helped her to purify that. That suffering helped her to see her own mind. And that suffering helped her to work through that and to let it go. The Dharma helped her to give the tools to change that karma.
And now she’s in a space that whatever she says, people think ‘wow’ even if it sounds rude. We love to What did she say? Why does Buddha House have these problems? Because you have no bulls. What did she say?
Bulls. Bulls. Yes. Then she goes, oh my god. What did I say?
What can’t But she can say it and everybody loves to hear it and everybody loves her. Yeah. Know? Authenticity. If you have if you had known her in the past, people hated her.
Now some karma has changed. Now people love her. Why? That’s her purification. She worked through all the suffering that came into her mind during the years.
Thirty years of practice. You know? That is where it can take you. She was poor. She never had money.
Now all the money that she needs will come to her. She knows. She’s probably always spoken that way. Forthright. Yes.
That that is true. That she never like, she she was brought up in all this family of girls, but she never showed girly things. So there’s sort of, like, She said she was born angry. Yeah. Yeah.
All those sorts of But she was born angry. So like Robina, and there’s lots of people like her in terms of her forthrightness and all the rest of it. There seems to be some people that it’s accepted by others Why? The way in which they present themselves, but not somebody that doesn’t that might say something similar in the same way. Why is that?
Well, I was asking, why why is that? Okay. So when Rubina was younger, nobody listened to her. People hated her for what came out of her mouth, you know, one swearing after the other. If she swears now, people think, yeah, you’re right.
But they don’t wanna listen to the teachings, you see. That’s the thing. So what is the difference is that she has created so much merit over the years, has done so much purification even if she uses the same words, the strength behind whatever she’s doing is so much more pure that now people listen and people accept it. She’s not coming from delusions when she says that. Maybe when she was younger there was more anger, more delusions involved, more ego grasping involved.
Then people don’t listen. More negative karma. Now she changed that into virtuous karma and then people listen. Even the words might sound the same. So when there is somebody, even Hitler, that everybody listens, even if it is due to fear, everybody listens.
There must be strong virtuous karma that is so powerful that he uses it in the wrong way. You know, bad for him. But there must be some virtue in it that people listen to him. True? That is the consequence from karma.
If people listen to you that’s due to virtuous karma. That means then when you can do that the way he did that there must be something in it that was virtuous karma. That he uses it for the wrong reasons that’s going to create some karma for him in the future. True? We all have mixed karma, you know?
We have good qualities, we have bad qualities. If you use your good qualities to support your bad qualities your bad qualities become very powerful. But also your suffering in the future is going to become very powerful. You can also use your good qualities in order to change, to transform your negative qualities. Then your whole mind becomes more virtuous.
That’s the choice that we have. And we have both. We have both good qualities bad qualities. Good qualities, positive qualities, negative qualities. Qualities that give us suffering qualities that give us happiness.
It is up to us to transform the things that give us suffering. Using the good qualities in order to support the bad qualities that shows that we don’t know the Law of karma that we have ignorance that we don’t understand how things work in the mind. And you can check it around, you can just look at the different people. What are they doing? What are they doing?
What are they doing? If you look at businesses that go really, really well, that make a lot of money, listen to the people who lead the business, who create a lot of wealth. They have quite virtuous minds. They want to help others. They want to give others what they need.
Give others what they want. Then the wealth can come to them. If you look at companies who have greedy people in the top who make the decisions, at a certain point, the company is going to lose it. It applies in the normal world. We can just look at what happens there in order to understand better.
The reason why we create karma is on the basis of I, the belief of I. And one day, not yet next time, I’m not sure what we’re going do next time, but we’re going to talk about that I that’s the source of all these delusions that come up. You said that if you can get rid of that, then we uproot it completely. So on the basis of that feeling of I, we recognise people who benefit me and people who harm me. And on the basis of that we engage in certain actions.
So in order to change that we have to recognise that yes, maybe today you’re benefiting me but maybe tomorrow you can become a person that harms me. Giving you love today doesn’t mean that you’re not going to harm me tomorrow. If you’re a person who harms me, I have the tendency to harm you back. If I think about karma and if I think about that maybe tomorrow we actually might have a nice relationship and looking at the law of cause and effect, if I can create and generate compassion and love for you today, recognizing that you’re a person who’s looking for happiness then I create a positive action for myself. Then I create a causes for happiness in the future for myself.
Do I give you this meditation at home? Maybe you read through it and we’ll do it next time. It’s a very powerful meditation that whoever is in front of you, if they are benefiting you or harming you, they are just sentient beings looking for happiness. If you react from your immediate experience without thinking, without being mindful, we naturally like to be with the person who helps us and we naturally want to harm the person who harms us. There we create karma.
The more mindful we are about it, the more reflective we are on what is necessary for that other person, what that other person is looking for, the more we can be capable of stopping our own natural reaction. And then we can create a mind that even if we are harmed, we refrain from harming back. We stop our own negative actions. And that’s called practicing equanimity. Equanimity.
Your mind is lifting up. True? Good. So if I give that to you, just read through it or not. Shall I keep it?
Who wants to have it? You wanna read through it? Yeah. Okay. Is it like Tonglen It’s not Tonglen It’s about equanimity.
It’s about realizing that even if somebody that why we like somebody or not like somebody, why we help somebody and not help somebody is based on what they are doing for us. It’s not based on them. Which means that if we don’t look at that, we create actions, positive actions, negative actions all the time without really checking what we are doing. Yeah? Yeah.
Yeah. Just read through it. And I think I have to talk a little bit more about that to really I feel it’s not completely clear what I’m saying. But I have the feeling I have to I have to open up another drawer of information to make it clear and we won’t have time to do that. Is it hard just to do five minutes?
No. You can’t you can’t do this in five minutes. I’m not talking about you. I’m just talking about… You let it go? Everything we’ll do in dedication, maybe.
A nice dedication? Yeah? Okay. Is that alright, or you have to go? It’s quarter past.
Oh, we should stop at what time? Twelve thirty, isn’t it? We are almost an hour too late. It’s a quarter past one. Is it?
Oh, somehow I thought we stop at one. Oh my god. You have to go? You have to go? Go.
You have to go? Go. I’m so sorry. Talking too much. Talking too So she’s now in the airport.
See you next week. And the main thing is try to think about your own tendencies, you know, good or bad, positive or negative, to understand what you can do to improve. So then just for a moment focus your awareness inside. By thinking and talking about things like this, the mind can become a little bit agitated or very full with information. And at a certain time, it might even feel numb.
It might feel that you can’t move the mind anymore, that you can’t think properly anymore. It’s just confusion. So if that happens, it’s good to go back to your breath. Just observing the movements of your stomach every time when you inhale, when you exhale. The breath, experience?
Is that what we feel? And if we connect with our own inner experience, that also helps us to connect with our own inner wisdom. We don’t have to think in order for wisdom to arise. Just imagine that all the busyness in your head, all these movements fall down in the form of a rain. And maybe you can visualize that it’s a golden rain filling your whole body completely, giving you all the realizations of emptiness, of karma, the nature of reality.
And while your body fills up with that golden light, your mind, your brains become empty, clear, spacious, and your heart feels full. And then imagine that your heart feels so full that you just wanna give out of the pores of your body. The light spreads out in all the directions, touching each and every sentient being, giving them all the happiness they need, freeing them from all the suffering. And I think that by having done this discussion, may that become a cause for us to really achieve that state where we are able that just with the touch of the thought of each and every sentient being, we can put them in a place where they experience perfect peace and perfect bliss, where they are completely free of all their suffering. And may our wish to develop our own potential, our bodhicitta mind, our enlightened mind grows stronger and stronger so that we can develop ourselves completely.
Our wisdom, our potential for compassion, so that we also can experience that state of ultimate happiness. Thank you very much. I’m so sorry. I went over time. I have to it’s just so much to say.
You know? Yeah. Yeah. It’s next week. Next week.