Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 38-minute teaching, Venerable Lobsang Namgyel guides intermediate practitioners through core Buddhist concepts of karma and emptiness, drawing on the Lamrim tradition. He begins with why good actions don’t always yield immediate good results—karma ripens slowly, sometimes over lifetimes—and emphasizes the need to understand the four parts of karmic action and how to purify them. He then traces the progression from recognizing samsaric suffering (endless unsatisfied desire) to individual liberation, and finally to the Mahāyāna path focused on all sentient beings. The heart of the teaching explores how we construct fixed, inherent identities: enemies, beautiful people, “bad persons”—through projection and labeling, not objective reality. Using a flower as his base example, he shows how labels depend entirely on a changing base and collapse when deconstructed; nothing exists unchangingly from its own side. He illustrates this with practical examples: why replacing one difficult coworker leads to encountering another, why labeling inmates “bad people” fails rehabilitation, and why changing your own mind through thought transformation works better than trying to control the world. The teaching presupposes familiarity with Buddhist terminology and concepts introduced in the previous day’s session.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 28 Teaching 4.mp3
UUID: ab4c6168-ca36-493a-adca-c955159448f3
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: VenNamgyel Thought Transformation (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 37.9 minutes
Words: ~4,895
So all your passport, your passport, your money, everything is taken. And you could think, but why me? I’m doing good things. I’m helping mother Teresa. I’m working to benefit others.
So why me? So one thing is karma is not immediate. karma takes time to First you’re planting it and then for it to be ripened, it takes time. And sometimes it’s life time, sometimes it could be millions of years. So it’s not immediate.
So this is the explanation of why when you’re doing good things, it doesn’t necessarily mean good things are immediately going to happen. There may not be a relationship between your action and the effect. It seems like you’re doing something good and what you’re getting back is something bad. Right? I mean have you had that experience where you’re doing something good and what comes back seems to be bad?
And then you think, but why me? So unless you understand karma, then you keep saying, but why me? It doesn’t seem to make sense. And then the the people who do negative actions, they rob banks or you know they’re doing something bad. They seem to have all the good things happening because now they’ve got all this money and they can buy the things that they want and they don’t get caught.
So then you think, well bad people do bad things and something positive happens and good people do positive things and something bad happens. So there seems to be no logic to it. Right? So you have to understand the logic behind karma in order to understand why these things are happening to you. And because this is, supposed to be an intermediate course, I don’t have time to go into it.
But if you don’t understand to that depth what karma means, I suggest you go to the library today and you get a Lamrim book. And you have to know about the ten virtues, the ten non virtues, the four parts of a karmic action. And when you know the four parts of a karmic action, you then know the four parts that you need to purify with. Yeah? So you need to know how you’re creating a very powerful action and how to purify those very powerful actions.
You need to know it from both sides. Because in Buddhism, our creator is karma. We don’t have a creator. We only have karma. So it’s very important that you understand the law of cause and effect.
So then the next subject in the Lamrim is the sufferings in Samsāra. And basically the worst one in this particular time is constant dissatisfaction with whatever situation that we’re in. We’re in the desire realm. So the actual situation that we’re in this world and this time is actually called the desire realm. Very easy to understand.
Yeah? But if you keep going after desire, you know, you want more desire, more desire, more desire. The example in the Buddhist texts is it’s like drinking salt water when you’re thirsty. There’s no end to it. So you keep wanting more and more and more.
So at the moment we’re in the desire realm and as a result of that we often feel great dissatisfaction. So dissatisfaction of the situation we’re in brings us to the medium scope in the Lamrim. The conclusion, I want to get out of that situation. Okay? I want my individual liberation.
Like I said yesterday, nirvana. So I want to get out. I’m not looking at the situation of others. I’m only wanting to end my suffering. Then if you go on beyond that, we’re entering the Mahāyāna path.
So it’s only up until this point that we have not entered the Mahāyāna path. Now we’re sort of opening the Mahāyāna gates and we’re saying, okay, I want to go into the Mahāyāna path. And what is the Mahāyāna path? So Mahāyāna means the focus of attention is all sentient beings. That’s what Mahāyāna means.
It means a path that incorporates all sentient beings. Mahāyāna. So Maha means great in Sanskrit. Yana means path, so the great path. So how do you work for the benefit of all sentient beings?
Then you need great compassion. Not just ordinary compassion, compassion. And great compassion means, again, all sentient beings. We have great love and great compassion. So great compassion wants to remove the suffering of others, and great love wants to give happiness to others.
But when you say great, it means you’re encapsulating, incorporating every single sentient being. We’re not just talking about humans. We’re talking about every being in every realm. Then how do you develop that compassion? We have two methods.
One’s called the exchange of self for other. Exchange of self for other. That’s Śāntideva’s method. And the other method is called called Sorry. The six cause and one effect.
And that’s Maitreya and Asaṇga’s method. So we have these two methods, two lineages by which we can create compassion. The lineage that we’re studying right now in the eight verses of thought transformation is the exchange of self for other. So that comes in the seventh verse. Remember yesterday I gave you these verses.
If you look at the seventh verse, it says, in short, both directly and indirectly, do I offer every happiness and benefit to all my mothers, I shall secretly take upon myself all their harmful actions and suffering. This is exchange of self for other. So we’ll be talking about that later. So in the Mahāyāna path, that’s the point that you would reach that you want to give something and you want to take something. That’s called exchange of self.
So then, what I want to talk about before we go back to the first verse. I think the most difficult subject to talk about and probably something that I shouldn’t be talking about because I’m not qualified to talk about it. But if I don’t talk about it, who’s gonna talk about it? So real or plastic? Really?
Yeah. Okay. Usually, there’s a real flower here so I can deconstruct it, but I can’t deconstruct this flower. So you’re gonna have to do it in your imagination. Here’s an example of a conventional truth.
While I’m speaking, if you don’t understand the words that I’m using, put your hand up and I’ll tell you again in another way if I can. This conventionally is a flower. If we’re negating everything, remember I said you can go to the extreme and you can say nothing exists, then you would be saying, but there is no flower there. Right? If you were totally saying nothing exists and that would be crazy, wouldn’t it?
So does everybody agree? Sometimes there’s an exception. Does anybody, everybody agree there is a flower? Nobody disagrees? But what if I say it’s a real flower?
Now do you agree? Does anybody agree it’s a real flower? It’s a real plastic. But I didn’t say real plastic. But yeah, you’re right.
You see what we’re doing is finding appropriate labels. Okay? In conventional truth, what you’re looking for is appropriate labels that work in this situation. Okay? So the label must be appropriate to the base.
Appropriate means the right one. I mean, I can’t call this a television. Yeah? So we have a base. So this is our base upon which we’re going to put a label.
Okay? This is a a correct base to be labeled cup. Alright? You’re following? This is a correct base to put the label flower.
Okay? So you have to have that correct, that base, and upon that base, you’re putting a label. Does that label exist from its own side? Who thinks yes? Okay.
Does the label exist? Does the label exist from its own side? Does the flower so does the flower from its side say, hello, I’m a flower. Right? That’s what it would virtually be saying to us, hello, you know, you’ve got to recognize me, I’m a flower.
Because it would have flowerness. Not Loch Ness, flowerness. So I’m trying to go slowly and carefully so you get the idea of what I’m saying. So if there was a flower nest, and what I mean is not a label, but something more than a label so that if and this is usually what I do, but I can’t do it. If I pull the petals off this flower and turn it into parts, okay?
So just imagine in your mind, now we’ve got a heap of petals. We’ve got this. This is the stamen. And but this I think the stamen, isn’t it? In the middle, you know, where the the little yellow things are.
So that part in there, we’d have this little bit underneath this stem. Say I put it in separate pieces like that. If the flower really existed from its own side, not as a label, not as an imputation, if it existed from its own side, you should still see the flower in the parts. Right? But it’s disappeared, hasn’t it?
So now those parts are not a logical basis for you to put the label flower. What would you say? You’d change the label, wouldn’t you? Oh, you’ve got petals, you’ve got a stem, you’ve got this. But you wouldn’t say, there’s a flower.
Would say it’s a disintegrated flower. A disintegrated flower. Yeah. You change the label. So it’s a disintegrated flower.
Yeah. Well, you’ve got the you’ve got the parts. And if you’re very clever, maybe you could glue it back together, but it wouldn’t be the same flower it was before. Right? So this is the conventional truth that when you take a base and you see flower, remember we talked about permanence, impermanence?
We tend to see it as permanent. Now this is really strange because we actually understand impermanence. We know the flower’s impermanent, But when you get given really beautiful flowers and one day you come home and all the petals have fallen down, you go, oh, dear. You know, it’s sort of like it’s a surprise that the flower fell apart. But and yet, we know it’s going to fall apart.
So there’s some deep down non realization of impermanence. Now if you go beyond impermanence into wisdom, into emptiness, it goes even higher, goes even into the more difficult steps of it. When you take all these pieces, you’re looking for flowerness. Something that exists inherently unchangingly wouldn’t need a label. It wouldn’t need my imputation.
It wouldn’t need my cognition. It would exist from its own side as a flower. Do you understand? That’s what we’re negating. That’s what we’re saying doesn’t exist.
That flower that exists from its own side without causes and conditions inherently, and inherently also means without causes and conditions and unchangingly doesn’t exist. And yet somehow, we think it exists. And I’m not talking particularly about flour but what about enemy? Once you’ve got an enemy, you keep thinking enemy exists and you go on and you go on and you go on and you solidify them into something that seems to exist from their own side as an enemy. They now have enemy ness.
Right? Not I had a situation with them and I imputed this onto them, but for me, they are an enemy. When that doesn’t work is when you get together with other people and you start talking about, is anybody’s name here Fred? Okay. So, I’ll talk about Fred.
So, Fred the enemy. You know, you’re talking to Joe and you’re saying, Fred is a really bad person. I hate Fred. Fred did this. Fred did this.
And Joe says, you’re talking about Fred so and so? Yeah. Fred’s not an enemy. Fred Fred’s my friend. How’s it possible?
Right? Then you try to persuade Joe that Fred is a really bad person, doesn’t have the qualities that you think. So in this way, if you talk to different people about one situation, one person, I really like this person or I think this person’s really beautiful or really handsome or really ugly or really this or really this. When you talk to other people, you start to realize it doesn’t exist that way. It’s the way that we think it exists individually.
We’re projecting it onto that person, onto the base. What is projecting it? Projecting it? Now that’s where we get to this. The sixty five karmic imprints per second are what provides the negatives, you know, all the dots, the pixels per second, projects it out from your mind according to your karma.
Positive, negative, neutral, all different sorts of karmas are projected out onto the building, onto the place, onto the person, onto anything and you experience it in your own way because of the karma that you’ve created. So you’re experiencing Fred because of your negative karma, your angry karma or your jealous karma, your ignorant karma, whatever it is. You’re projecting that karma onto Fred and saying, Fred exists as a bad person. But is it really true? Does it really exist In the way of flower ness, now we’ve got Fred ness.
Right? Fred exists as a really bad person. Is that true? Now now I think we have separate negative actions from truly negative persons. Right?
Because actions, we can see something negative. We see Fred hitting a dog and we think, oh that’s a really bad action. But Fred as a really bad person that would be accepted by everybody in this universe as Fred the bad person. Everybody would recognize, oh that’s Fred the bad person. Does that person exist?
Even Osama bin Laden has somebody who loves him. Right? Or what was the one we wanted to get rid of? Saddam Hussein, right? When, oh goodness, when we get rid of Saddam Hussein, we’ll all be safe and we’ll all be happy while we’re still waiting.
Right? This was supposed to be the cure for all our problems, wasn’t it? We get rid of this one man, the enemy. Now can you start to see how it works? We fixate on an enemy and if it’s about nations, you know, we have a really big enemy.
And by getting rid of this really big enemy, and it’ll only cost us a hundred billion dollars, and so many people and blah, blah, Just we get rid of that person, and then we’ll all be safe and we’ll all be happy. Well, we saw how false that was. And then the next one was Osama bin Laden. If we get rid of him, now we’ll all be happy. We’ll all be safe.
Well, years later, we’re still waiting for it. So this this is a false way of viewing the world. That if you get rid of your enemy, everything will be great. What about where you work? Isn’t there somebody where you work that you don’t like?
If I just got rid of that person, work would be great. You get rid of that person, worse arrives. You know, you think, oh this looks like a nice person and within two or three weeks that person is a worse enemy than the one from before. Why? Because your karma is forcing you to see a disturbing person.
So it’s no use changing the person, you have to change the karma. How do you change the karma? You go against the grain. You do the opposite of what you would have done before. And that’s thought transformation.
Doing the Where you would have hated them, you try to like them. Where you would have tried to get rid of them, you try to keep them. You don’t go to the boss and say, I really don’t like this person. They’re doing the wrong thing. And you go on and on and on.
What are you doing by doing that? Digging your own grave. Right? You keep dividing people. You keep gossiping about people, you keep sharpening the knife, you know, like this.
What are you doing by creating all those negative karmas? It’s all gonna come back on you and when you’ve got a great job, somebody’s gonna take it away from you. You’re gonna be removed from your job. You think, why me? What did I do?
You can’t remember the past where you did this to somebody else. So now, you see this situation as empty. And I’ll write it down because there’s a phrase. Empty of, and then I am putting what in brackets. Because I find what happens is, most people are using this word empty.
And I am afraid it is creating a wrong impression in people’s minds. Minds. Because you know you have a bowl and if I say, is there any liquid in the bowl? And you say, no it’s empty, it means there’s a container, but it’s empty. Right?
So when we say the word empty, we tend to think of the room empty of people, the bowl empty of something. But when we are talking about this particular wisdom concept, we are talking about empty of, and then you need to say in your mind, what? To get the full phrase. Empty of inherent existence. Yeah?
Empty of inherent existence. Inherent means without causes and conditions. There are no causes and conditions for this situation. So, if something, an object, is inherently existent, go to the opposite way. Look for something that’s inherently existent.
Well, if changing were inherent, then it couldn’t change. See, inherent has the connotation of fixation. Unchanging, right? Like people say, the sky, is it inherent? It exists in relation to this and this.
You know, the space between this and the sun and the moon, isn’t it? Yeah? So if there’s conditions, causes and conditions, it’s not inherent. Without causes and conditions, it is inherent. So do you have an inherent enemy?
Do you have an inherent friend? How do people start when you meet them? How do they start off? Just people. Right?
Just a person. And then because of your karma and what they’re saying to you, how they’re behaving, things start to change. And you start to project onto them, I like you because of this, and I don’t like you because of that, becomes inherent friend, inherent enemy, unchanging. Yeah? So this is very important for thought transformation, to really start thinking about do things exist the way I think?
Because of course, up to now, you think it they do. Up until now, you think things do exist the way you think. But you’re sitting here wanting to know, I think, something different from what you know. You’ve tried to solve your problems your way, and now you want to listen to how Buddha solved his problems his way. Right?
So this idea of emptiness is incredible. It’s unbelievable, but it’s extremely difficult. It takes at least five years to study this in the monastery, full time, day and night, with debates and teachings. And people come to these sort of teachings and they get maybe half an hour and they think, oh yes, I understand emptiness, and off they go. Please don’t think you understand emptiness, but it’s just a beginning.
If you can start to challenge the enemy ness as it starts to appear, or the attachment that we have for certain people as it starts to appear, or the jealousy or the hatred or whatever it is, and you see it as a manifestation of your own mind, you have control. You have the ability to transform it and change it because it’s coming from your mind. If it’s coming from out there, how much ability do you have to change it? So Śāntideva said, if the world is covered in thorns and glass, and you have no shoes, right? So you’ve only got bare feet, and the the world is covered in thorns and glass, you have two choices.
You can either cover the world in leather, or you can put shoes on. We, up to now, I think most of us, are trying to cover the world in leather. Right? In order to make the world nicer, prettier, happier, whatever, we go around sort of putting all this leather down and trying to hide all the thorns and everything else. But the other way to do it is change your own mind.
And by changing your own mind, you’re happy no matter what’s happening. But trying to change everybody else is very time consuming and very exhausting. You have to do a lot of talk, you know, like I have to. And you have to persuade and persuade and persuade, and in this case I’m happy because it often works. People go away saying, wow, this is great.
Yes, I can do this. This is the answer to my problems. This is the solution. But this other way of trying to persuade your partner, the person that you’re living with, to live the way you want them to live. Have you tried it?
Put the toothpaste thing back on. Don’t squeeze from the middle, put the towel back on the rail the way I like it, you know, smooth like that, you know. Make the bed like this, cook like this, clean like this, and they say, goodbye. I’ve had enough. So we do try.
Yeah? We do try that. But does it work? Maybe that yeah. Maybe that’s your discussion group question.
Question one. Right? Does it work? When we’re trying to put leather around on the world, when we’re trying to get others to do what we want them to do so we are happy, what are we doing? One, we want to make ourselves happy.
We’re forgetting about the other. And two, we can do harm to the other. Right? Yeah. I’m still with the inherent existence.
Okay. Thank goodness. So what you’re saying is that the base changes, but the label stays the same. Stays the same. Right.
So the base. Right? Then the base is made up of parts. Isn’t it? Say we’re talking about DNA.
Doesn’t it have parts? Yeah. So if you have parts, you can’t have anything that’s inherently existent because it has parts. Ah, the whole is exist, which is the information. Right.
Which means the whole is more than it’s Right. A a bounce. Yes. So then when you break it down, you say, well, is it one or many? And then you go into another argument, you know.
So there’s many, many arguments to sort of break all these things down. But what the very bottom line is, when we’re talking about say the Four Noble Truths, the truth of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and then the path out of suffering, right? This is the very foundational truths that Buddha found. Are those truths inherent without causes and conditions? There’s another question for your discussion group.
Yeah? So these are good questions. They’re good debates to have during the discussion group times because it’s good to get together with people and talk about these things. Not just I sit here and go blah blah blah, like force feeding children, you know, have some of this, and then you go away saying, oh, I believe. And then a week later you think, what was that about?
I think it’s great that you go into the discussion groups and you think about it. You know? But does it inherently exist? I mean, no, I’m not going to get into that. I was going to give an example, but I’m not going to.
So, you can find your own examples. Otherwise, I’ll get stuck and we’ll be here forever. Being here forever wouldn’t be so bad. So, to go back to wisdom ignorance. So ignorance, I introduced the concept slightly yesterday in a crafty way.
Self grasping, self-cherishing, self grasping. So remember I said I-grasping. Instead of saying self grasping, Lama Lhundup used to say I-grasping. I think he still says I-grasping. It still sounds like I-grasping.
I-grasping or self grasping. So self grasping ignorance. So self grasping assumes that there is a self to grasp onto. Buddhism says there is no self ness. You know?
So I’m Namgyal, so no Namgyal ness, like without this imputation onto the base. Here’s the base, body and mind, and then you impute a name which didn’t exist at the time of birth. If I was inherently existent, means permanent, unchanging, when I came out of my mother, I would have been this size, would have been a stretch. So I would have come out like this, looking like this, everybody would have said, oh, he’s back. It’s Namgyal.
And then there’s no death. There’s no change. That’s what inherent means. Right? Without causes and conditions, unchanging, un ceasing, permanent, like that.
Okay? So when we’re talking about, you know, the flower, the clock, all these sort of things, We talk about it in a way that seems to forget there was a seed or there was a bulb, and it took time to grow, and then it developed into a flower, and that flower is impermanent. It doesn’t have a self exist existent situation. What’s more important is to check yourself and to check the other, you and other. Do you have an inherent existence?
In the way of you saying to me, I am an angry person. I am a bad person. I am a loser. I am whatever. You know?
Don’t we have all these I am? Then you believe in it. As if it truly exists. As if there’s no causes and conditions, but it exists. And it’s true for you.
And because it’s true for you, it becomes your operating system, and then it becomes a motivation for living, and then this is projected onto the world. I’m a loser. I can’t get a job. Do you look for a job? No, because I’m a loser.
Right? I don’t even bother. I don’t even buy the newspaper because who would employ me? Or who would love me? Who would want me?
And anything. We sort of put this all onto ourselves as if it’s truly existent. Not an imputation, not a projection onto the base, but as if it exists within the base. And that’s what we call our self. My self.
You know, who are you? I am an angry person. I am this. I am this. But do we challenge it?
Do we say, how does it exist? Where does it exist? If it existed, we should be able to find it. So then we don’t go to the extreme of saying it doesn’t exist at all. Something exists.
Isn’t it? If I say, you don’t exist at all. I’m sure you’ll all come back with, that’s not true. I exist. Right?
You know you’re sitting here. You know you’re listening. You know when you’re meditating. You know there’s there’s something going on. Right?
That’s the conventional self. We’re not arguing with that. That’s okay. Just the conventional self. I exist.
I’m sitting. I’m walking. I’m talking. Is there a problem with that? No.
I drink tea. I go for lunch. No problem. Problem. I’m a bad person.
I take objection to that. I’m an angry person. I take objection to that. Because that means without causes and conditions going on and on and on and on, unchanging, unchanging. I’m an angry person.
Means you can’t purify it. You can’t change it. In this moment. Yeah. I’ve done a bad action.
Yeah. But once you get this label, bad person, really we have a problem with people in prisons now. You know, we label them bad people. We put them into prison. The prison population is getting and bigger.
We don’t know what to do with them. Because once we’ve labeled them bad people, society doesn’t know what to do with them. So then you have to label a program rehabilitation. Right? So now we have bad people, then we have to have rehabilitation, and then where do we send these bad people because we don’t want them living next door to us?
So what do we do with them? Is what happens when you put these fixated labels unchanging. You know? Can we change these bad people? Can we rehabilitate them?
Can we help them to live in society? These are all the questions that are being asked now, particularly in America because you’ve got a huge population in prisons and can’t keep them there anymore. You know? So now we have to relabel the situation and try and get them out of the prisons. And then they don’t want to leave because they like the space that they’re in, you know?
Okay, so we should stop there, have a break, and think about what we’ve been talking about, particularly emptiness and this non inherent existence, blah blah blah. It’s a lot to cope with. And then we start again at eleven, and then I’m going to start on the first verse and tell you where it comes from at last.