Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 89-minute teaching, Ven Lobsang Namgyel guides practitioners through transformative meditations on the renunciation of saṃsāra and the development of bodhicitta, the altruistic intention to achieve enlightenment for all beings. He opens with a profound reflection on the cycle of suffering across lifetimes and the rarity of meeting a qualified teacher and the Dharma, then pivots to the urgency of dedicating one’s practice toward liberating all sentient beings. Namgyel then introduces a practical visualization exercise, positioning the listener among countless beings including family, enemies, and strangers, cultivating universal loving-kindness and compassion. The latter half shifts to detailed instruction on the four powers of purification, emphasizing the power of regret as the essential antidote to negative actions. He explains how keeping vows—even for brief periods like five minutes or one hour—generates substantial positive karma, using concrete calculations to show that one hour of discipline produces around 250,000 positive imprints. Throughout, Namgyel addresses audience questions about karma, emptiness, vow-taking, and how these teachings apply practically to breaking harmful habits and developing genuine compassion.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 32 Teaching 8.mp3
UUID: a47ffd2a-6023-4aa1-b890-4fdc8c560b5f
Teacher: Ven Lobsang Namgyel
Collection: VenNamgyel Thought Transformation (Ven Lobsang Namgyel)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 89.2 minutes
Words: ~8,598
So from beginningless Samsaric lifetimes until now, I have experienced the general sufferings of Samsāra, numberless times, especially the sufferings of the three lower realms. There is no suffering that I have never experienced. When I think deeply about all this, I am gripped with terror and weep uncontrollably. Therefore, I must no longer allow myself to fall under the control of the disturbing, unsubdued minds, which are the causes that oblige me to experience the result, true suffering. As long as I happily continue to follow these evil, disturbing, unsubdued minds with neither fear nor doubt.
There is no difference between me and a mindless crazy person. If I continue to follow the wrong conceptions, I merely ensure that I will keep suffering for countless lives to come. And when I think about this from the depths of my heart beyond mere words, I’m unable to eat by day or sleep by night. It makes me vomit uncontrollably. Thinking of my foolishness breaks my heart.
However, now I’ve received the inner condition, the precious human body endowed with eight freedoms and ten endowments that gives me the ability to achieve all happiness and perfection. And I’ve also met the outer condition, the holy Mahāyāna virtuous friend who is extremely difficult to find, but can in a single lifetime grant the highest state of omniscient mind. As well as the inner and outer conditions, I’ve met the teaching of Buddha, the supreme medicine that dispels without exception all sufferings of migratory beings. Given my incredible good fortune, if I continue to seek mere temporal happiness or my own personal liberation from the bondage of the disturbing, unsubdued minds and karma, what difference is there between me and a foolish animal? Such an attitude would be extremely upsetting from several viewpoints.
From my own side, how shameless. From the side of others, how very ungenerous. How selfish and cruel. How dare I cherish myself and renounce others. Aren’t other sentient beings the precious ones from whom I’ve received all happiness and perfection?
I must understand that it is inadequate merely to ensure that I shall not be reborn in the suffering lower realms. Nor is it enough to seek simply my own release from Samsāra. All sentient beings have been my mother. There is not a single one who has not. Moreover, each has been my mother time without number, and each time has been just as kind to me as my present mother.
At this very moment, not only are these kind mother sentient beings experiencing great suffering, but they’re also constantly running constantly to create the cause for more. There is not even a second during which they can experience a moment’s happiness. If a mother’s suffering is not alleviated by her own child, who else will do it? Even though it’s up to me alone to bear the burden of eradicating the suffering of all mother sentient beings, at the moment, I’m incapable of relieving the suffering of even one sentient being. Yet if I receive the enlightened holy body, just one ray of its light could ripen the minds of countless sentient beings, leading them to the state of greatest peace.
Therefore, to release all mother sentient beings from suffering and lead them to the sublime happiness of enlightenment, I must attain the exalted state of Buddhahood. The attainment of Buddhahood is not without causes or conditions. Its principal cause is the two bodhicittas. Therefore, I’m going to practice the profound oral teaching on transforming the mind into bodhicitta. And then thinking that you’re surrounded by countless sentient beings, but particularly on your left is your mother, your right is your father, behind brothers, sisters, relatives, friends.
Try to put one person in front of you facing towards you that you find difficult to deal with. So the person who criticizes you or judges you doesn’t agree with you, and then as far as the eyes can see, countless sentient beings. And you try to think of them equally. Having been related to all of them in countless lifetimes. They all deserve your help.
You want to help them all. So thinking, may I be able to have great love and great compassion? The foundation of bodhicitta in order to be able to liberate all those sentient beings. And in order to do that, I need to work on my own mind. I need to remove the causes of suffering and the suffering, create all the conditions for happiness, and then share that with others.
Help others to be happy. Help others to have love and compassion. Oh, yeah. Maybe it’s in the book. Let me see.
Yeah. Homework. Aren’t you sorry that you said you had too much space in your lives? Now homework. So, if you can read in the five o’clock break or the dinner break, page seventy two onwards, seventy two, seventy three.
This is the practice that we’re doing tonight. It’s mostly me reading it. And for those of you who are not Buddhist or don’t believe in Buddhism or just you’ve got your toe in the water and don’t feel comfortable about relating to Vajrasattva. Vajrasattva is the Buddha who particularly made prayers to help us to purify. So if you can’t relate to Vajrasattva, you can think of, if you’re Christian, Jesus or God.
If you don’t want to visualize anybody, just a ball of energy. So just above the crown of your head, a ball of energy. Okay? So you’re welcome to change it in whichever way suits you. For those of you who, believe in Buddhism, you’ve checked it out for a while.
There’s a visualization, so I’ll be reading it to you. But what I’m particularly interested in is the power of regret. So remember, you have four powers to oppose the four powerful actions. So you have the power of regret. So you can read about that.
This is I’m really sorry that I’ve done these negative actions and now I want to purify it because I see that I’m going to experience the result of it and I don’t want to experience the result. If I’m really suffering, how am I going to benefit others? You know, if I’m in that situation of being in constant mental pain, physical pain, how am I going to be a benefit to others? So you don’t have to experience it, but you do need to purify it in order not to experience. Then on page seventy three is the power of dependence.
Now there are two objects on which you can depend. For a Buddhist, one object is Buddha, and the other is all sentient beings. They’re called two fields of merit. So for those of you who are Christian, it would be Christ, God, and then all sentient beings. If you’re some other religion, it could be God or it could be just all sentient beings.
Why the two fields of merit? If you’re Buddhist, you make promises to Buddha. Buddha. You say, I won’t kill. I won’t steal.
I won’t lie. You know, you make these certain promises. So when you make those promises, it’s made to an enlightened being. The other side of it is who do you harm? You don’t harm Buddhas, but you harm sentient beings.
So in order to purify, you need to purify in relation to sentient beings. Do you understand? So one is the the promise that you’ve made whether you’re Christian or any other religion towards that being or beings that you believe in, and then the other is generally all sentient beings. How we purify all sentient beings and our negative connection is bodhicitta. So bodhicitta is wanting to give something good back rather than something bad.
Okay? So you can read about that. And then there’s a mantra. So that’s seventy four. Quite simple.
It’s only a hundred syllables. So that’s one. Then you can recite that seven or twenty one times or as many times as possible. Then you have generating faith and being purified. Then you have the power of refraining from creating negativities again.
So you have the power of regret, the power of dependence upon whom are you depending to take refuge. Power of regret, that’s two. Power of dependence, three, in the way of generating bodhicitta. The power of remedy, mantra recitation, and particularly the power of refraining from creating negativities again. So you need to make a promise, I’m not going to do this again.
If you discover in your pages that you’ve been angry a lot or whatever negative action you’ve done that you really regret and you want to change, I promise I’m not going to do it again. Now, can you absolutely promise you will never ever do it again? If you can’t, you can’t promise you will never do it again. So you can promise for an hour, two hours, a day, a week, a month. It’s up to you.
And then if you’re only promising for an hour, it means again you need to do the same ceremony. Again you promise for an hour. I particularly say this for people when they’re trying to give up smoking. Really hard to give up smoking. Right?
So if you want to give up smoking, promise when you go to bed, you won’t you won’t smoke for the next eight hours. It’s finished. Then it’s finished. And then if you can promise in the morning you won’t smoke and you can keep it, if it was eight hours, you could promise. But if you can’t promise to not smoke for eight hours, you can promise not to smoke for an hour or two hours.
However long is reasonable. Why? Yeah. Sure. Sure.
Yeah. You you could keep doing. Yeah. The point is that when when you’ve made a promise, you made a vow, that vow becomes very important, powerful. It means every minute of keeping that vowel, you’re accumulating positive energy.
So remember I said sixty five? Sixty five is one second times by one minute is three thousand nine hundred, I think. So one minute of keeping that vow is three thousand nine hundred positive imprints. You kept it. One hour is something like two thousand two hundred and nearly two hundred and fifty thousand.
It’s nearly a quarter of a million. So if you can keep it for an hour and you think, oh, it’s only an hour. Out of twenty four hours, it’s only an hour. It’s not. It’s two hundred no.
Sorry. It’s two hundred and fifty thousand positive imprints that you have put on your mind stream that are going to ripen into positive potentials in the future. It’s consequential. Even keeping a vow for one minute is consequential. So if you can’t give up any negative behavior for a long time, you can’t promise to never be angry ever again.
Promise to not be angry for five minutes, ten minutes, half an hour. When you’re going to bed, promise, I won’t be angry tonight. Right? It’s great. You can keep it.
Right? So this is skillful because sleep is a neutral activity. Right? Sleep is neutral. So if you make a positive motivation when you’re going to sleep, sleep becomes positive.
There’s no motivation to sleep. It’s just sleep. Yeah. Same with eating. Any activity like that, if you make a positive motivation for eating, eating becomes positive.
Otherwise, it’s just eating. Oh, then you’re in big trouble. Then you gotta go back to Vajrasattva, and then you got to do more Vajrasattva practice because you said, listen. I’m really sorry. I promised I wouldn’t be angry for an hour.
Something happened, and now I really regret it, and I want try even harder. Right? You’re actually just hurt you’re hurting yourself. That’s all. You’re not hurting Vajrasattva.
It’s just you need somebody towards whom you can promise. It would be the karma would be worse than Heavier. Had just Yeah. It’s like you become a monk or a nun. You take vows, and then you break those vows.
It’s even heavier than if you didn’t take the vows, but having the vows means you’re purifying twenty four hours a day. From the minute that you take a vow, even you do nothing, you’re accumulating merit. Right? So you The minute you take a vow of not killing, every second from that time, you’ve got that vow in your mental continuum. You’re not doing anything, but you’ve got that vow and you’re keeping that promise.
If you don’t have the promise, it’s not the same as having a vow. You understand? So when you don’t have a vow, it’s just when there’s an opportunity to kill, you choose not to. That’s when you’re accumulating merit in that moment when you could have killed. But when you’ve got a vow, it’s twenty four hours a day.
So if you can’t take vows for twenty four hours a day, if you can keep a vow for half an hour, five minutes, an hour, I don’t care. But just do something positive for yourself. You know? Because you can see from these sheets that there’s some things that need to be changed. Then you say, well, then how can I change it?
What can I do? You promise for five minutes. If you’ve got low self esteem, promise for five minutes. I won’t have low self esteem for five minutes. And then for that five minutes, keep thinking of the good things that you’ve done, the good things that you know, or if you’ve got the opposite, pride, arrogance.
For five minutes, I’ll think of all the things I don’t know, all the languages I don’t know, all the subjects I don’t know. That’ll bring you down a bit, you know. So if you find pride is a problem or arrogance problem or low self esteem is a problem or anger, there’s always an antidote. There’s always something you can do. But don’t bite off too much.
When you become a Buddhist as a a part of refuge, you promise never to kill. Right? And some people say, strange as it may sound. I’m not sure if I can keep that. Well, not to promise, better to wait.
Right? If you take the vow to keep it for the rest of your life, it’s the rest of your life. It’s not just a few hours. So this is training. Training and discipline.
Right? Discipline is a bit difficult for us, isn’t it? You know, we’re westerners. It’s like, yeah, discipline. Must be nice to have or must be nice if they have it, but for us to have it, sometimes it’s quite tough.
Getting out of bed when it’s rainy and cold, doing your meditation, doing your yoga, it’s a bit tough. But if you can do it and you build up that discipline, then you know how beneficial it is. It’s the same as taking these vows. If you can take it for five minutes, ten minutes, really keep it, you’ll find there’s a benefit over the time. Yeah.
Does every Buddhist? Well, when when you become Buddhist, you take refuge vows, you know. So you say I believe in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, and there are certain commitments with that. But the main vow that you take is not killing. It’s the main vow is not killing other than humans.
Right? So you start with animals, smaller creatures. Sorry. The other way around. I knew I should have had a sleep today.
You promise not to kill human beings, then the secondary vow is not to kill any other being. So you start with what should be easier, and then you work up to what’s more difficult, not killing any being. And then choices are not killing. The killing is you have to have it. Not stealing, not lying, no sexual misconduct, then no intoxicants.
So four vows are optional, voluntary. So when you’re born, it’s you also give yourself They’re not in your mental continuum. Bodhisattva vows and tantric vows continue until you’re enlightened. You’re born with them. If you’ve taken them before, you’ve got bodhisattva vows and tantric vows.
But these individual liberation vows are for a lifetime. So when you’re reborn, you’re not reborn with refuge in the way of these vows. You have to retake them. It’s it’s like as the child gets older and they decide. But bodhisattva vows and tantric vows, you actually say until enlightenment.
These individual liberation vows, we say until the end of this life. It’s more practical. Yeah. One thing. But the other thing is the power not to do it the power of regret not to do it again, but also what’s the equal and opposing action to killing.
Come on, people. Yeah. So then if somebody has killed and they have strong regret about it, then saving life. So then you’d have to go about thinking, how do I do that? It requires requires some thought.
If you go and buy some goats and release them in Copan, they might not be so happy about it when they’re eating all the flowers. You have to go and ask first, is it okay if I go and save a goat or some chickens or something like that, you know? So often people think, oh, that’s the idea, and they just arrive with a goat and then say, bye. It hasn’t solved the problem. You know?
It’s just easy for you. So you have to be a bit more creative than that. What I often tell people is when you go home, if you can help out in a hospital, a hospice, people who are dying, know, things like that, that’s a very appropriate antidote for killing. So it has to be an appropriate antidote. But if you feel guilty about it, guilt is not helpful.
Guilt just makes you feel sometimes angry and resentful. Resentful. So in Buddhism, we don’t have the word guilt. We have regret. So you generate regret.
Because you have regret, you’re not defending it, and then you want to purify it. Right? Where is the negativity held? It’s held in the mind. Nowhere else.
Right? So you have to purify the mind, but then as Westerners particularly, we like to feel that we’ve done something physical in order to overcome that negativity. We feel just sitting on the cushion purifying is not enough. So we need to do something physical, like saving lives, working in a hospice, something like that. Yeah.
It’s really just how how you feel about it. Yes. Yes. It’s the belief. I have purified.
You know? And the deeper the wound, the feeling of negativity, the more you need to do on a regular basis in order to purify. So like every month on a Sunday, I go to this old people’s home and I help them, you know, I help the people who are sick or something like that. Often people give Reiki, they give massage for the old people. That’s incredible to do.
You know? So if you’ve got any feeling that there’s something you regret, you want to be a benefit, do that sort of thing. Don’t just sit on your cushion and say, oh, well, I’m doing Vajrasattva. You know, that’s enough. What about people?
What about the field of merit, bodhicitta? Right? You can actually do something to benefit others. I’m talking about this type of demand, or you mean Tibetan or Tibetan? Tibetan.
Tibetan is an invented language. I don’t know if you know, but the language they use now is not the original language of Tibet. They realized that they couldn’t speak Sanskrit, and Sanskrit isn’t a language that you use to say, hi. How are you? It’s a holy language.
So the texts were written in Sanskrit and then brought to Tibet, and the Tibetans very early on realized that they needed a language to teach Buddhism. So they actually invented a language, and so the language they use now is an invented language to teach Buddhism. And there’s two types. One is for the scriptures, and one is for hello everyday language. But these mantras are still in Sanskrit.
They’re kept in the original Sanskrit. They say that the sound is important because it has a particular vibration to it and also you know things like Om Mani Padme Hum, you know the jewel in the lotus. Many people know the mantra Om Mani Padme Hum. So if you recite Om Mani Padme Hum, it’s said that around the world there’s often millions of people at the same time reciting these mantras. And that because it’s in Sanskrit, it has a certain power and energy.
I think up to now, the Lamas haven’t said it’s a good idea to translate them into our own languages. Everything else is being translated except for mantras. Mantras have been left alone. The Tibetans never translated the mantras into Tibetan. They left them as Sanskrit.
They changed the sound slightly when they couldn’t say it, but they basically left it alone because they said, it it comes originally from there. We should leave it as it is. So this may change in the future, but this is how it is now. Yeah. Groups.
I’ve given you your homework. Okay, people? You must be keeping busy now. No time for sleeping. Yeah.
Do you want this? It’s okay. Yes. Become simpler. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So it’s like encouraging. It’s like automatic control, isn’t it? I had a very nice poem.
I don’t know if I’ve still got it, but it was a lady’s life in five chapters. I walk down it’s something like this. It’s not exactly, but I walk down the road. I fall into a deep hole. I don’t know how to get out.
Eventually, I get out. Another day, I’m walking down the same road. I fall into the same hole. It’s a little bit easier to get out. Another day, I’m walking down the road.
I see the hole. I still fall in it, but it’s easier to get out. The fourth day, I walk down the road. I walk around the hole. I don’t fall in.
The fifth day, I walk down a different road. Yeah. So it’s a bit like that, you know, that we can have these habits that are hard to break. You know? We keep walking down the same road.
And even though the road’s rocky or there’s holes or there’s dangers, somehow because it’s our habit, we keep walking down that road. And life after life after life, we walk down those same roads. So I like this poem very much because it gives that feeling of, we do have free will, but it’s very hard to exert, to get the energy to change the habit. Yeah. Okay.
So is there anything I have to answer from any of that? I don’t think so, but I think it was a good conversation. Okay. So who’s another group? Yeah.
Unravel it. It can only be purified because it’s empty. Right. An opposing karma. Well I think you know if what’s what’s good to understand is that karma only operates because of emptiness.
Like emptiness is for me it’s like a freedom. You know? It’s an openness. If everything were fixed, then how would karma work? Would there be any karma if everything was fixed?
But because we can’t we do an action, then there’s a karmic imprint. That karmic imprint is not inherently existent. The karmic, imprint was put there because of an action. So the karmic imprint, the seed, exists because of an action. So it’s a dependent arising.
Anything that is dependent on something else has to be empty, not of its own power. Right? And then because you have that seed, when conditions meet with that seed, the seed then starts to actualize its potential. Without conditions meeting the seed, the seed just stays there. So some seeds stay there a long time, some seeds ripen more quickly.
So you have these potentials which we must be billions of, but they’re empty of inherent existence. They’re there, but empty of inherent existence. Like, I was thinking yesterday about the flower bulb. I think these funny things when I’m sitting alone. The flower bulb produces a flower, But doesn’t have a little flower inside the bulb.
You know what I mean? It has the potential to make a flower, but it doesn’t have a little flower. It doesn’t have this plastic flower inside waiting to do this. It just has the potential. Right?
So if we give it all the right conditions, then the potential arises. The same with our positive negative karma. There’s a potential there, but the potential is empty of inherent existence. Meaning, inside that little potential, there is not, the flower. There is not the killing or the stealing.
It’s just a potential. Does that make sense? So without the conditions, it just stays there. You know, it’s just sitting on concrete. It’s not growing.
What we want to do is quickly remove the seed. Right? So by doing these counteractive practices, then you’re actually removing the seed and the main one is regret. And mostly we don’t have regret. You know?
We we find it difficult to regret. We have guilt because we’re trained in guilt. But regret is a different emotion. It’s, oh dear. You know, you weren’t so intelligent when you did that, were you?
Now you know better. If we knew better then, we wouldn’t have done it. We didn’t know better then. Right? We had karma and delusion.
So then, we have problems to understand. Now we understand better. So now we can truly regret the past negative actions. Right? Because our mind has evolved.
We see things differently. Sorry, please. Why does it happen? Once you get that calculator out, you know, I think the good news is on the positive side when you’re doing good things, can keep thinking one hour, two fifty thousand, two fifty that, like that. I think that’s great, and it also helps you to avoid the negative.
You know when I was a child into my teens, I used to get these, you know, incredible anger or moodiness, you know. And when I look back, I used to think, well, was only three days. At least it was only three days, you know, to get upset about something, you know. So then you calculate. Yeah.
Like seventy seventy something hours times times and it’s mind boggling. You know? No wonder I’m having problems now. But you you just think about and you think, you know, in the old days, I could get angry and stay angry for days. Now I think I don’t want to because I don’t want to experience the consequence.
So when you’ve got that sort of mind, it changes you. It takes you away from the negativity, you know, instead of getting into these self righteous angry things or moody things. You think I’ll just let it go. What difference does it make? Will you remember this in three months or six months?
You know? And that this sixty five per second really helps with that. With just sixty five, six oh, let it go. You know? Hundred thirty already, let it go.
Know? So I think to try and look at it on it the positive way of just now you know you’ve got more control over how much negativity you’re accumulating. And when you’re doing positive actions, please do very strong positive actions. It’s worth it. Yes.
Yes. Well, that’s how we reify things, how we make things real, solid and real. Because if I say, I see a red pillar, you’ll say, I do too. And then we ask other people, do you see a red pillar? It’s round.
It’s long. Yeah. I see that. It must be solid and real. Must be because we have a similar experience.
Right? But whether we experience it as solid, real, or we experience it as molecules whizzing around, realization of emptiness, and because it’s not solid and real, I can walk through it, would be a completely different perception of that pillar than it is solid and real, and when I walk up against it, I hit it. And then what about, do you like it or not? Does it make you angry? When you see it, do you have desire and attachment?
You might think, I love to have pillars like that in my house. You know? To have these lotuses on the top and the little paintings. You might think, would love to have things like that in my house. Another people might think, oh, I’d never want something like that.
They’re the individual experiences. And most people, we have indifference as a major experience. Who cares? You know? Not even bothering to look very much at the pillar.
If when we walk out the room I say, describe the room. What color is the ceiling? What color are the walls? How are the pillars? I think most people would say, I don’t know.
I can’t remember. Indifference. But the very strong experiences I really like, I really dislike, there’s the karmic imprints operating in order to grasp hold of something, desire and attachment, or reject something. Yeah? And all variations of that.
Does indifference occur? Indifference is ignorance. Ignorance is because we think of indifference as quite healthy. Right? Our protection is indifference.
I like my family. I like my friends. I hate my enemies. Never want to see them. Don’t want to hear about them, and the rest, nothing to do with me.
So desire attachment, hatred, ignorance, sorry, hatred, and the middle one, the most number of people, ignorance. Not recognizing our relationship, you know, how we are related to the environment, the world, and all the rest of it. If we had more interaction, would we get into such a mess? Don’t we get into a mess because we sort of we go, oh, well that’s nothing to do with me. You know?
My house, my car, what George Bush does is his business but it’s not, you know, or what Saddam Hussein does, you know, whatever it is. We sort of we can tend to shut down. And as you start to open up, it becomes much more complicated. Your view is much bigger. You’ve got many more people inside that view wanting help, wanting this, wanting that.
So gradually, we’ve got to open up and eventually incorporate all sentient beings. But just right now experiencing just say one room, you’ve got all these different experiences of that one room and those teachings within that room and those individual karmic experiences. That’s what makes our view sixty five, sixty five, sixty five. So we’re we’re digging up those sixty five imprints per second to experience. Then if you experience it very positively, you’re making future good karma, future positive karma.
If you’re experiencing it very negatively, because they’re holy objects, there’s still some positive karma, but then some negative karma. It said even if you look at a Buddha angrily, there’s still some positive karma. Good news. Yeah. Because of the power of the object.
They wouldn’t want you to experience suffering even if you were looking at them angrily. Yeah. So there’s still some positive, but also then some negative. But I think this is it’s an ongoing research, isn’t it, to keep looking into these things. It’s not something you just you just decide.
Anymore? Well, it bothered you and you haven’t got the answer, it might bother me. Go on. I think you know because it’s an imprint, a potential on the mind stream, you then attract it. Attract the possibility of having a shorter life or having people attack you.
It’s sort of like, you know how some people seem to attract their victim and people victimizing them. And you think, why me? Why am I being victimized? Why not victimize somebody else? Or why why always getting angry at me?
Or why is this person always loved? Even in children in a family, you see this. You know, different children treated in different ways. And it seems like you’ve got some sort of emotional isn’t it that attracts a certain way of being treated and I think when you’ve killed it doesn’t just stay like that. There’s a magnification of the action and so then it becomes more possible to have not not just necessarily somebody comes along with a knife and and kills you, but you you might just be in a very dangerous environment and experience the fear, you know, and the danger of that environment.
And that would be horrible. And then you could have short life but you know if you’re born as a worm they’ve got short lives. If you’re born as a butterfly they’ve got short lives. So it could be that way that you’re born into a body that only has the capability of having a short life. And then you go back to, once you’ve purified that, back into longer lives.
So, yeah, I think, yeah, maybe that’s it. Yes, my child. And do I purify this bad karma? And in that moment, did I experience this bad Back when it’s happening to you. Thought transformation would be there is no negative.
Oh. Oh, there’s two parts. Yes. Whenever there are no no matter if I think positive after the experience or negative Uh-huh. I purify this this past karma.
Will you yeah. Yes. So you you reach a junction a a junction, maybe a three three maybe three. You’re you’re experiencing this past negative karma. If you know about thought transformation, you can transform it and use it in order to make future positive karma.
Then that habit will not continue. You could possibly be indifferent to it, not transforming it, but just, oh, well, this is my karma. In which case, not positive, not negative. You’ve just experienced it. Suffering is suffering.
So you could be a, oh, well, suffering is suffering. What to do about it? That’s your karma. You know? And then the other one would be, it’s happening to you.
You say, what did you say to me? And, you know, you start again, and there goes the habit. It’s a continuation. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That’s the the purpose of applying the antidotes is not, in the time that you learn about it, but you have to learn about it before the problem. Right? So you have to know about the the benefit of applying the antidotes, and you have to meditate on it before the problem problem arises, you’ve got the habit, you’re ready, you’re prepared, and you want to do something about it.
But if you’re not prepared, you’ll fall back into the habit. And we understand that, isn’t it? Yeah. We have the we do have a habit. Did you do a Buddhist course before?
I think you’re very strange. Have many very Buddhist ideas for a non-Buddhist. It is really, you know. Yeah. Yeah.
But listening to you, you think you’ve done so many Buddhist courses. So for a non-Buddhist, you have a very unusual mind. You do. Think if we vote on it, we’ll vote you the most unusual, which is a compliment. I saw the Buddhist teachings, is it possible for parents to transmit their karma to their children or is it only individuals?
To transmit their karma, you mean when they are having a child? Is there a generational effect? It goes through families, for example. I haven’t heard it. I think what that is, is condition.
We have the karma, we have our karma. You know? So, okay, let me go back. Somebody is dying, they go into the intermediate state which we call the Bardo, which is like a ghost realm. You have a subtle body and now you’re looking for a suitable rebirth.
Okay? So you’re looking around and you see two parents having sexual intercourse, a male female having sexual intercourse, and because of your karma, you’re attracted to the situation. And so then you take rebirth into that family because of your previous karma. Then as you’re growing up, the family has a certain way of behaving and a conditioning effect on the child. So that conditioning effect will ripen particular karmas within the child.
So it’s a bit of the child. It’s mostly the child, some of the parents. It’s sort of having the cause and the conditions produce the effect. Does it make sense? Depends on the karma of the child.
If you’ve got Tenzin Phuntsok down here, the little reincarnation of Geshe Mukung Sönam, he’s picking up from two years of age bugs and putting them on the side, and if he saw you killing, he’d say don’t kill as a child. So if he saw anybody killing, he’d be telling them you mustn’t kill. Whereas if an ordinary child has some some saving karma, some killing karma, and sees the parents killing, it could be a condition for the child’s karma to ripen and then to teach the child this is what we do. Then the child grows up, maybe learns that sentient beings have a mind, sentient beings want to hold on to their body, killing is not beneficial and then they change their mind again. So there’s the karmic imprints that are ready to ripen according to the conditions and then different conditions throughout our life.
The conditions aren’t always the same. So you know when you travel, haven’t you felt sometimes when you’re traveling that you’re different people in different places? I feel that different karmas ripen. You know? It’s the conditions ripening different kamas.
So as you move from country to country, you have different experiences based on different karmas ripening in accordance with the conditions. That’s interesting to watch. Another group. Your group was very loud and noisy today. I know.
I could tell you were in charge. And it seemed like you were having a very good time. It’s a good time. No. No.
This is a monastery. You’re not supposed to enjoy it. So the roof cover is heavy stuff. Stuff? Yes.
So first of You were trying to lighten it. Yes. Yes. Okay. I want to see those two.
One is you, and I want to see the other one. Right? We had our spy cams zooming in on you. It doesn’t seem to make sense. It doesn’t seem to make sense.
Yeah. Unless you do it in the Exactly. Yeah. But what they’re experiencing now is the result of their generosity. You can experience in this life the result of your generosity which is wealth, but instead of using wealth in a positive way, could be doing it in a negative way and so then you’re creating new negative karma which you’re going to experience in the future.
So this is the problem with I said the other day with karma is that because it’s not immediate, then you can be a really good person doing all the right things and having terrible things happening around you, or you could be a really bad person, really evil, and seemingly many good things happening. Know? And then people say, that doesn’t seem to make sense. karma isn’t usually within this lifetime. It’s usually lifetimes.
If you want to know more about karma, you should speak to him in the tea break. I’m setting you up, you non believer. I’ll give you the application forms. He’s our secret secret commission agent. Yes.
Heretic. I wonder who that could be. I think this is great. Yes. So and who who benefits from this?
Yes. First of all, the political And and society. And society. Yeah. Also, the individuals benefit because they are not getting frustrated.
Yeah. Well, I must Hang on a minute. I just want to mention India’s idea of karma is not the Buddhist idea of karma. India’s idea of karma is fatalism. Know, this idea of you’re born into a caste.
This is your karma. Oh well, what to do? Just live like this for this life. Next life will be better. This is not the Buddhist idea of karma.
So this is what Buddha fought against by, saying he didn’t believe in the caste system and he didn’t believe in that type of karma. He believed in karma but free will. The ability to get out of your situation. So I I agree with you. I I think this is the situation in India and that’s why it’s actually in a way a disastrous system because people find it very difficult to rise up out of being untouchable.
You know? You get stuck there and the system holds you there and even though you try to empower them, they’re they’re sort of mentally stuck in the idea of I am untouchable. I am a lower caste. So this is not healthy. Even though maybe it keeps everything quiet, it’s not a very good quiet.
There’s always, you know, these things under the surface erupting, you know, like little volcanoes. So yeah. And still they wanted you as a leader? Okay. Something that’s natural.
That’s it. Like gravitation, like water is wet, fire is hot. Buddha said this is the truth. It’s the truth for anybody of a certain level of mind. It’s just a truth.
You hit somebody they want to hit you back. You steal from somebody they want to steal from you back. You kill somebody then you’re attracting short life. You know so Buddha said that this is just a natural law. He didn’t say it’s a a law for Buddhism.
He just said it’s a natural law. Yes. But for two thousand six hundred years we still had no killing, no stealing, no lying, no sexual misconduct. But there are subtleties and that’s why the law of karma will change according to those subtleties. It’s not a hard and fast rule.
You know, like I said, that this is always like this. I often talk about in America, in the nineteen twenties I think it was, there was prohibition. So they said you should not drink alcohol. So if you’re basing your morals and your principles on what the government says, then they’ve done a complete about turn. At that time, nineteen twenties, you have prohibition.
Today, you’ve got alcohol in supermarkets and everywhere. Your parents, your family, blue and green should not be seen, this sort of thing, black cats, salt, that doesn’t help you. I think, this law of karma operates I I don’t know if I’ve read this, but maybe I’m just saying it from my own side. Operates in relation to the society of each country, doesn’t it? The motivation of the people, the action, the karmic potential, the karmic harm or the karmic benefit must be in relation to each society and what that society believes.
Isn’t there a universal karmic This is sort of universal a universal law, but I think it must also each place must have an effect on that karma because you have a karmic, a collective karma, and you have an individual karma. I can’t think of an example, but I’ll have to think about it. So it becomes part of the society. Yeah. To work with it.
Yes. So so that’s Yes. And I think that’s really natural. Yes. Just everything that exists don’t exist at once.
It’s it’s multiplying. Yes. Well, yeah. That’s the law of karma is that any action gives a similar reaction but also grows in power and strength over time just like a seed planted starts to grow. But you know if you go back to Buddha’s time and and people asking Buddha, know, well what’s the what is the truth?
What is this? Then Buddha would say, then there’s a truth in karma which is just natural. It’s it’s not a manufactured truth. It’s just something the Buddha perceived with an enlightened mind as that’s the way it is, and it isn’t any other way. You know?
So just he called it a law because he said it’s a natural law. It’s not a man made law. So we have man made laws and we have natural laws. And sometimes they might conflict. You know?
So like, don’t kill. Some countries might believe in killing. No stealing. Some countries might think stealing is okay. So the natural law would be you shouldn’t steal because it harms others, but within a country they might decide stealing is a really good thing.
So then you have a natural law and a man made law. So you know, I said, my mother’s man man made law was some quite strange things. Didn’t help me. So then you have to decide for yourself which are the laws, which are the principles, I guess, that you live by, which help you, which benefit you, which benefit your society. Well that’s what I’m wondering.
I haven’t heard this but I’m wondering. I’m just now I’ve got a sort of question mark over this because it’s a very interesting question and I’ll try and get Lama Lhundup to come, the abbot, and then I’d like to ask him these sort of questions because it’s the sort of things we don’t usually get to ask. So I think it would be very good to ask how does it work, you know, with different societies, different belief systems? Is it always the same? Is it different?
I think this would be great to ask. So I will try and organize it. We still have other groups, but yes, if it’s an important question, do ask. I did a negative action. I am guilty.
I am wrong. I’m a bad person, and now I should try and purify that. But where is it? It’s just an imprint in the mind. Just a potential, you know?
So unless you think about emptiness, you you reify, you make it solid, real, negative. It’s like like a rock inside your head. You know that you’ve got to take out, but in order to purify it, you have to believe in emptiness. You have to believe it’s empty of inherent existence, that the negativity was created out of emptiness. Therefore, because of emptiness, it can be purified.
So what it’s asking you to do is remember, you are not solid and real the way you think. You are not then the way you think. You are not this the way you think. Just like it says in the Heart Sūtra, no no no no no no. Just dissolve.
You know? Quickly you’ll come back together because you believe you exist, but just let it go. Let it go. And then you’ll say, no. The ego and everything comes back together.
You know? But just have that experience of letting go of it helps you to let go of your negativities. So it’s sort of dependency between subject and object or not. Is that sort of thing? Yeah.
There’s a there’s a dependency between the two. But because of the dependency, it’s empty. It’s not inherent. Right? So dependent on a person, you created a negative action.
Dependent on sentient beings, you can purify that action. Dependent on the Buddhas, you can make vows. Dependent on the Buddhas, you broke those vows. Dependent on the Buddhas, you can purify those vows. Emptiness makes that possible.
If it’s solid and real, it’s not possible. You’re stuck. Yeah. So we’ve got to get out that feeling of being stuck, feet in the mud, you know? Emptiness does that.
Okay. Now, you’ve got nine minutes. Other groups? Who are the other groups? Give me the the crucial point.
Yeah. Right. Right. An effect. Yes.
Yes. Bad luck, good luck. Yeah. Yeah. So they’re the bad luck people?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So did you sort out where all the extra people are coming from? So the population is increasing.
Where are they all coming from? Did you sort that out? More human beings? Yes. Who was talking about the extra population?
Yeah. Yes. Yes. I often say to people, you know, those people who keep watching Star Trek may not be reborn on this planet, could be reborn with pointy ears and flying around the universe. Possible.
Buddha said there’s parallel universes that this is not the only place where there’s life. However, the life may not look like this. He didn’t say we all have two arms, two legs, human. He said there’s life on other planets. So yes, that’s one possibility, and then the other possibility is other realms.
There’s hell realms. There’s hungry ghost realms. They’re realms that we can’t see, and they have far more beings than human realm than this human realm, including the animal realm. Then you think about the animal the fish, all the creatures in the sea. Then you think about all the creatures under the earth that we can’t see.
You think about termites or ants in one small area. You can have millions of ants in a small area. And then demigods, again, it’s a sort of ghost realm where they’re very jealous and angry. And then god realm experiencing lots of bliss. So there are one, two, three, four, four realms that we can’t see with many, many beings in those realms experiencing different types of sufferings or pleasure.
So we can we come from those realms and we go to those realms. So we can have have form body or formless body. There’s many many different possibilities. So that’s where all the all the bodies are all the the minds are coming from. Not where the bodies are coming from, but where the minds are coming from.
Many different places. Okay. Three minutes. Another group? Uh-huh.
Yeah. Go on. Oh, how about you? So everybody’s finished? Okay.
Over to you. Because it’s it’s not your own. It’s your mental continuum, but it’s not your own. Yeah. Then my bad action comes back to to myself.
Yes. I am that human being. I’m every everybody. Yeah. I should You’re talking about bodhicitta.
What you’re actually talking about is having the mind, the level of bodhicitta that cares about all beings. And because you care about all beings, you wouldn’t want to harm them. It’s like one of the analogies in the text is if you’ve got a thorn in your foot, your hand which is not related reaches down to your foot and pulls the thorn out. So even though the hand is not experiencing pain, it wants to take the thorn out from there. In the same way, we all have a relationship and we should have that same caring that if you’re experiencing a thorn in your foot, I want to take it out because I see you suffering.
The problem with that is not everybody has that level of compassion. You mean in in as you? As me. Oh, you mean you mean one complete oh, oh, there you’ve gone a little bit too far. Now you’ve lost me.