Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute evening session, Ven Margaret McAndrew uses the wheel of life diagram—what she calls the original Buddhist flowchart—to explain the twelve links of dependent origination and how delusion and karma cycle us through saṃsāra. She establishes the teaching’s foundation: renunciation, grounded in understanding that lasting happiness comes from dharma practice, not external objects. She describes the death process and bardo, showing how karmic visions signal karma’s ripening and bring rebirth, and how consciousness carries karmic imprints between lives. She then begins working through the wheel diagram, starting with ignorance and compositional factors, explaining how the three primary delusions perpetuate the cycle. Throughout she engages audience questions. Pitched at practitioners of greater mental faculty.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 39 LR 1998 07 09.mp3
UUID: 0b6b77ca-cbfb-4e2a-b4ba-8094e9892ccc
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: Evening with V M McAndrew (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1998-07-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.5 minutes
Words: ~5,716
I could be like a Zen Master tonight with this but actually I’m not going to use it like a Zen Master, I’m just going to use it as a pointer. Thirty lashes. Thirty lashes. You don’t get the right answers. No lollies to lick, just the stick.
So as you can see, we’re up to the twelve links of dependent or interdependent origination. So before we start, I would just set a motivation, and I think that we’re engaging in this study tonight so as to progress on the graduated path. And the purpose of our study and understanding these topics, meditating on these topics, is to be able to progress on the graduated path, and not only for our own benefit, not only bring about lasting happiness within ourselves, but we’re thinking of the welfare of others, thinking that all beings like ourselves wish to have nothing but happiness. They wish to be free of all suffering. Like ourselves, they’re caught up in the cause of suffering and they’re thrown from one suffering experience to another.
And the happiness that we experience doesn’t last it always gives way to some other problem. Having the thought of working to achieve escape from cyclic existence ourselves and to achieve this state of everlasting happiness, of liberation, We also apply that thought to others, thinking that they’re not something that we should be indifferent to. Actually, their plight is something that we should be very concerned about. We’re very, very closely connected to all of these sentient beings. We’ve been connected to them in every possible way in all our previous lifetimes, over the course of all our previous lifetimes.
We’ve been their child again and again. They’ve been mother to us. We’re very involved with them whether we choose to be or not. So it’s not worthy to just ignore their plight but we should look at how we can help them. Our means of helping them at the moment are very, very limited.
We can’t really do much at all we can’t even bring real lasting happiness for ourselves at present so we have to follow the path and find this means of everlasting happiness and thinking not only of the welfare of ourselves individually but of all others and thinking this way we also understand that we have to set our goal as the state of fully accomplished Buddhahood enlightenment so as to be able to have the very powerful means that enlightened beings have for helping others so with this thought we’re going to engage in this practice of studying the teachings today So this is on the topic of the medium scope. We’ve been going through the small and medium scopes for quite some time now, and we’ve contemplated on how to attain the attitude of renunciation. Do you remember which scope that belongs to? Medium. Right.
Medium scope. So we’ve been looking at how we develop this attitude of renunciation by looking at how all cyclic existence is bound up with suffering, all saṃsāra is bound up with suffering. And if we want to get free of it, first of all, we have to motivate ourselves strongly, not just to be caught up in worldly things, but to have our mind set on the goal of achieving liberation. And we do this by meditating on suffering. And this really starts with the small scope, because in the small scope we meditated on the suffering of the lower realms, and the importance of escaping rebirth in the suffering lower realms.
When we get to the medium scope, we add on to that the thought that not only the lower realms but the whole of saṃsāra is a state of suffering the suffering of the upper realms are lighter than the sufferings of the lower realms but all the realms have their sufferings there’s no place in saṃsāra that’s completely free from suffering and even when we’re in the fortunate realms, we’re likely to fall back again through getting slack in our practice, giving up the practice of virtue, and falling back into non virtuous ways again, then we’ll, if we do this, we’ll definitely fall into the lower realms, we’ll be creating more cause to fall into the lower realms. We’ve actually got we’ve got on our mind stream countless karmas to be reborn in the lower realms, from the non virtuous actions we’ve done, maybe in this life, certainly in previous lives. And we have to keep up the practice of purification, and accumulating merit and dedicating for fortunate rebirths and until we get out of cyclic existence altogether we won’t be safe from falling back into the lower rebirths so these are all reasons why we need to contemplate on the disadvantages of all the realms of saṃsāra and develop this renunciation very very strongly so the word renunciation doesn’t mean giving up everything what it means is working on giving up attachment to worldly things it’s not the objects themselves that are the problem and we it’s not enjoying them we can enjoy the good things that come along to us in saṃsāra but as long as we see these as being a real source of happiness and don’t understand that the real source of happiness lies within us and comes from Dharma practice then we’ll always be making a mistake of pursuing these things, seeing them as being an end in themselves we pursue external objects looking to them for happiness which they can’t give That’s not to say that these external objects are not connected with our happiness, they act as the object, and when the object and our karmic tendencies come together then we can experience either good or bad karma so when we experience good objects for instance a good meal and we have the karma to enjoy that good meal then we can have enjoyment but we all know that sometimes for some reason the meal is perfectly good, the food is perfectly good but we can’t enjoy it either because we’ve got a sick stomach or because we’re very emotionally upset or agitated or something there are circumstances where the karma isn’t there for us to enjoy that object.
So the happiness that comes to us comes from our karma, it doesn’t depend on the outside object, And if we want to experience these good things, have to work with karma. But as long as we’re just under the bondage of deluded mental states and karma, cycling in saṃsāra, we’re never going to find a truly happy situation free from all suffering. This is what we’re setting our sights on now with the medium scope. Last week we were looking at the suffering of the upper realms, looking at the suffering of the whole of Samsāra, and we were looking at so that’s the first noble truth, and we have to think about it because we tend to, although it’s a fact we can see it pretty clearly we tend to ignore this fact and think that we can find happiness through external objects and we don’t like to face the fact that that we’re not going to find happiness by pursuing these things we have to keep on reminding ourselves keep on meditating and so this is the first of the four noble truths that Buddha taught and this is the truth of suffering and the cause of suffering is how we continue to cycle in saṃsāra through being under bondage to karma and delusion, deluded mental states.
So we went through the six root delusions and looked at them in a little bit of detail and also we looked at how it’s possible to attain liberation, to attain nirvana, the state of everlasting happiness by cutting off the root of saṃsāra which is these delusions and also the process which that involves which we looked at very briefly in terms of the three higher trainings of conduct, concentration and wisdom so we looked at all those things last week, and some of you were here, of course, so you remember all this, of course. So last week we didn’t get around to talking about the twelve things, and that’s quite good really, because a topic that can take quite a lot of explanation so anyway, is the third and fourth noble truths the truth of cessation and the truth of the path to cessation does anybody have any questions about this up till now? No questions? So the practice of the medium scope or the section on the medium scope is divided into two sections two divisions. One is for the practice for a person of less mental faculties, and the second is for someone of greater mental faculties.
So what I was talking to up till now meditating on suffering developing the thought of renunciation of the whole of saṃsāra meditating on the on how our situation in saṃsāra is brought about by our bondage to delusion and karma which keep us cycling going from life to life. All this comes into the section of the person with lesser mental faculties. And the person with greater mental faculties has to not only meditate on that but also add to that the contemplation of the twelve links of dependent origination which is also sometimes called the wheel of life in actual fact in Sanskrit it’s called the saṃsāra chakra for those of you who are Sanskrit scholars pundits you know you’ll know that Samsāra means cyclic existence and chakra means wheel, so it’s the wheel of Samsāra so that’s a more literal meaning of what it means because it’s not just any kind of life but it’s particularly life which is caught up in cyclic existence, and there are other kinds of life which are out of cyclic existence that are not on this wheel so the I think that we’re all I like to think that we’re all beings of greater mental faculty and at least we can look at this topic and start to actually, it’s not an easy topic, it’s very technical and of course it has profundity and depth that you appreciate more and more as you study it more and more and meditate more and more and it’s probably one of these topics that you never understand fully until you attain liberation but anyway certainly we can start to study it and start to get a general idea of how it works.
So I like to say that this was the original flowchart. And because they hadn’t really started the art of flowchart chart making very much in those days, it doesn’t perhaps always work quite the way you might expect a flowchart to do. But basically, it it’s functioning like a flowchart, and it explains the process, and it explains the different parts of the process and how they lead to one another. But some parts of it perhaps don’t necessarily lead in quite the logical order that you might expect, so you need to understand how it all works and how it all ties together. It’s quite fantastic really because it contains so much in the one diagram.
So before we get onto the chart anyway, when we were looking at the death process, we saw how when we’re dying we go through certain experiences which relate to passing from one life to the next This was all talked about under the topic of death. Has everybody heard that explanation of the death process? Yes, the absorption. Right. And then they start collecting it when you’re about to take the birth.
Right, yes. Actually it wasn’t that long ago that I talked about it, but not everybody might have been here, but anyway you would have all, if you’ve been coming through, you would have heard this explanation at one time or another from somebody so, the first, it’s explained in terms of the person dying, and as they get weaker, generally the first thing that happens is that they experience a karmic vision and this vision seems to be taken as a sign that the person is starting to experience they’re finishing off with the karma of that particular life and they’re starting to experience the ripening of the karma of their next rebirth and as you often hear the karmic vision is very much related to the kind of rebirth it’s going to be it can be a really beautiful joyful vision if the person’s going to good rebirth or it can be a very unpleasant one for instance if the person has been a butcher who like a slaughter man who killed a lot of sheep there’s stories of men who’d had this sort of an occupation, had this vision of being trampled by flocks of sheep when they were at this stage of their dying process.
And this is a bad sign, it’s a sign that the person is heading for a lower rebirth. So then, just briefly, the person then goes on and experiences the various physical elements dissolving the earth, water, fire and air elements and each of those elements is associated with various different visions and then after that process is completed then the person experiences the coming together of the winds in the central channel and the visions associated with that the white, red and black visions and then when the winds are completely withdrawn into the central channel, the person experiences the clear light vision, and after that the consciousness leaves the body and goes and takes a rebirth in the Bardo, in the in between state. And during that in between state, they have a kind of subtle body, which is made of winds, and they experience various different experiences during their time in the Bardo. They have various psychic powers, such as being able to travel wherever they want to, just at the speed of thought, and being able to see and hear things clairvoyantly, and so on. But these powers aren’t terribly much used to them, and they’re very confused by the whole process.
Either after seven days, or any multiple of seven days up to forty nine days, at the end of one of those periods of seven days, the person, or the being will take the next life’s body. That’s explained if they’re going to be born as a human being or as an animal, then they have to go through the process of being conceived and they experience seeing their parents having sexual intercourse. While they’re in their Bardo body, they come to where their future parents are having sexual intercourse, and at that time they actually become conjoined with the fertilized egg, or the egg is explained in the scriptural text from the traditional text, it’s the union of the blood and semen. And in that situation, they then just go on to develop the next life’s body. There are other kinds of rebirth also, which happen spontaneously.
For instance, If you go to the hells, you don’t have to have parents to be born in the hells, it’s quite easy, you just arrive there. In the god realms, I think you can be born out of lotuses. How can you find me in the last verse? Yes, it would be rather nice, wouldn’t it? Much pleasanter than the human process.
Anyway, it didn’t help us much, because we’ve all been in these kinds of rebirths before, we didn’t get out of saṃsāra. So now that we’re in human rebirth, we’re able to take the first steps towards that. So anyway, this whole process of what happens to us is involved with the twelve links, which explains technically how it all comes about. Well, this can happen if it happens in a natural death that’s happening due to sickness or happening slowly, then it can take a number of days. There’s no fixed period.
Could be weeks as well. I think that’s possible. It is if the person is dying very slowly. I’m not sure the I’ve never heard it stated that there’s any absolute limit, but it can happen over a fairly extended period of time. What about the confusion if you suddenly hit by a bus or something, and you’re dead?
Yes. The same thing the same visions happen, but they happen very quickly in a flash. In fact, there are people who remember things like it seems to happen it seems to be just built into us to have this sort of experience, and people remember having this happen to them even when they, for instance, have an accident and get thrown of the car and land safely, but while they’re in the air and expecting to die, or they trip over the edge of a cliff or something and then land, instead of falling to the bottom, they land a few feet down and get rescued. Or, say, somebody pulls a knife on them and they think the person’s going stab them, but it doesn’t happen, or something like that. Know, there’s a case of even people having these sorts of experiences then, and in particular, there’s one stage where you see experiences from your past life that seems to be related to the karmic vision, and a lot of people report that.
And quite often, of course, often it happens in near death experiences. When I was young, they used to say drowning people remember their life, see their whole life passing in front of them. Well, in those days, drowning was usually the only situation where people got resuscitated after a near death experience, but nowadays it happens in all sorts of situations, and a lot of people do experience these things in near death experiences, hospitals, and even in the kind of cases where I’ve mentioned where they’re not physically harmed, but just thought they were going to die, it seems to trigger off the experience sometimes. So that is at least the karmic vision stage, and it could be that some of these people go deeper into it. But anyway, we’re always a little bit dubious when the people when the person doesn’t actually die, you can never say for sure how much of their experience was a real death process experience.
But anyway, certainly, say that we even go through these visions when we fall asleep and wake up again. When we wake up, we go through them in reverse. And it all happens in a flash, and it only happens in a very light sort of a way, not in the very powerful way that it happens at the death time, because when we fall asleep, the winds don’t really fully enter the central channel, they only partially enter the central channel. At the death time, the whole thing absorbs. So anyway, when the person’s dying, the karmic seed that’s going to bring about the next rebirth has been ripened and fertilised by craving and grasping, and it becomes strong enough to produce a rebirth.
And that seems to be where the karmic vision comes in. It doesn’t say that exactly clearly, but that to be that is what the lama is saying is happening here with this karmic vision. So we go on into this process, and it just continues over either several lives, either we lay down the karma in one life, experience it ripening at the end of that life, and then go on to the next life. Or sometimes, after having laid down the karmic imprint, it can go on for it can just remain latent for many lives, perhaps. And then eventually, some for some reason, that particular karma will be the one that brings a rebirth.
If you remember, when we were talking about karma, one of the ways of looking at karma is to divide it into the two kinds of karma: projecting karma and ripening karma. And projecting karma is a karma that brings about a rebirth, and ripening karma is karma that’s experienced during the course of the life. We have many different ripening karmas, but it only takes one projecting karma to bring about a rebirth. So what we’re talking about here is the projecting karma. Well, it’s generally a stronger karma.
There are various factors that make it stronger. We talked about these in the topic on karma. One is habituation. That’s why the slaughter man had such a strong vision and such a strong karmic result, because having done that action day after day for years of his life, it became very, very powerful. There are many other factors that can also make it more or less powerful.
Oh yes, that’s an example. I came across that in a book by Joseph Goldstein. I remember the book. It’s a history of the past, what sort of needed Yes, I must look that book up again and check it out, because I thought it was a bit I have heard it explain that there are these different factors that make it stronger, but he explained it in terms of cows in a barn, which is a very good analogy that makes it easy to remember. And I think the first one is like, if if you have a group of cows or or cattle shut up in a barn, and then you open the door, which one’s going to go out first? This is like which calmer is going to bring the rebirth.
So the answer is that if there’s one particular cow that’s the leader of the herd, then that cow will go out first and the others will all follow it. So that’s the case of habituation. It’s like it’s the habitual leader. So, this is a particularly strong karma that’s been created again and again. And then, the second one is that if there’s no cow there that’s the habitual leader, if it’s just a group of cows that don’t recognise a particular leader, then the strongest bull in the group will shove its way out first and shoulder all the others aside.
So that’s a karma that’s been created with very strong impulse, such as very strong anger, for example, creating an act of, say, killing it’s a very bad action, it’s created with a very strong impulse. And then there’s other things like I can’t remember all the other examples. And the final one is that if there’s no other factor operating at all, then the one that will go out first will be simply random whichever one happens to be nearest. That’s right, so then it will have to be whichever one is nearest, That’s got something to do with close karma. I forget exactly what close karma means.
And then if that doesn’t if the cows aren’t anywhere near the door, if none of the cows are near the door, then it will just be just by chance, you know, one of them will go out first. It comes a bit like that anyway. But I must really look up that, I can’t remember the title of it. Joseph Goldstein. I think it’s something like the practice of mindfulness or it has something to do with mindfulness.
It used to be a very well known book, but I think it might be out of print now because you never see it around. So, all that has to do with the topic of karma, really, and it’s relevant to the topic of twelve links, but it’s not really explained in this section. It’s explained in the karma section, which comes into the small scope. But getting on to the twelve links, first of all, you see the chap who’s holding the whole thing, that’s the Lord of Death. And Yama?
Yes. Yama, or the Tibetans call him Shinji. So it just translates as the lord of death. So, anyway, that means that while we’re in saṃsāra, we’re we’re we’re subject to death. Death controls the whole thing.
We have to die again and again. We’re really under Yama’s power all the time. If he doesn’t come to get us today, then he’ll come to get us another time. Then in the middle, you’ve got the energy that keeps the whole thing turning. So does anybody want to say what that is?
That’s right. Yes. Rooster. Yes. So the the rooster’s attachment, the pig’s ignorance, the snake’s anger.
So those are the three primary delusions. Last week we were looking at the six root delusions, so you could summarize those in the three. When we looked at the six, there were some others added in. They weren’t different. They were you could regard them as being subdivisions of the others.
There was pride, I think it was doubt, and wrong views. So, it’s because we have these deluded mental states that we create karmas, and because we create karmas we experience death and rebirth, and experience the events of a life and then die again and keep on cycling in saṃsāra. And during our lifetime, because of the karmic imprints, we create more actions which strengthen our delusions. We create deluded actions which strengthen our deluded mental states, and we create more karmic actions, more karmic actions, more delusions. And it just they these two are reinforcing each other.
That’s why why they say that the the root of saṃsāra is delusion and karma. So some of our karma is good, some of it’s bad, but it’s all cause of saṃsāra, because even our good karma is created under the influence of ignorance, at least of the ignorance of of the of thinking that we have a truly existent self. There’s actually two kinds of ignorance two main kinds that we’re concerned with. One is ignorance of karma, and the other one is ignorance of the absolute nature of things. So if we are ignorant of karma, then we’re going to create bad karma and suffer experience suffering in various realms of saṃsāra.
If we understand karma and create good karma and purify about bad karma, still, as long as we’re under the influence of that other kind of ignorance, the ignorance of the true nature of existence, then we’re still going to be cycling in saṃsāra. And even if we experience good conditions in saṃsāra, we won’t be free. So this is something that’s very, very difficult to overcome, but we have to to work on it. So then in the next ring outwards, you have one side is colored black and one side is colored white. On the white side, have well dressed people walking up, and on the black side, have I think it’s naked, pathetic looking people falling, sort of tumbling down.
So that indicates that while we’re cycling in saṃsāra under the bondage of saṃsāra and delusion, we go from we continually rise up to the upper realms and then fall back to the lower realms again and again, so we don’t find any lasting resting place in a good situation. Then, the next one around is little pictures, six divisions illustrating the, the beings of the six realms. And these the the three lower realms, the hell hells, the hungry ghosts, and the animals. And then you’ve got the the human beings. I think that’s the human beings.
The demigods, who are very warlike, and the Devas. And you’ve also got the Form and Formless Realms, which you can’t see you actually can’t see the beings at the because they don’t have bodies. But all these beings are still within still within Samsāra. And then around the outside, the very outer circle, you’ve got the the twelve links. And that’s what we’re particularly concerned with here, looking at how these twelve links keep on going.
So it’s like a chain because each set of twelve links leads to the creation of another set of twelve links, and it just goes on and on like that. And so we get born and live and die and get born again, and again and again. So anyway, I’m making my next sort trying to look around at that, but there’s a little diagram here. Yes, so that would be very helpful, I think. So anyway, right up at the top, you’ve got a blind person, and that’s the first link.
Oh, no, that’s okay. That’s fine, thanks. Can you all still see that? You can’t see it very clearly anyway, unless you have binoculars. But that’s the first link.
That shows a blind person with a stick walking, and that’s ignorance. Obviously, blindness is a good analogy for ignorance. And that relates to the two kinds of ignorance I already mentioned. In particular, the the ignorance of the true nature of things or suchness as Thubten Gyatso Rinpoche calls it, is the underlying ignorance that keeps us suffering in saṃsāra, and the the ignorance of cause and effect keeps us suffering. And then the next one is a potter.
You can’t see it very clearly, but he’s sitting under a tree making pots the way they do in India. They have a little wheel, and they turn the wheel. I think they turn it with their feet, if I remember rightly. It’s just got a little piece of string around it that keeps it turning, and they’re quite amazing the way they do it. And this is compositional factors.
So this is the effect of the of karma being producing its effect, or rather, karma being created. It’s related to karma. It’s actually in some translations, it’s called karma, or throwing karma. But it relates to this process by which karma is through our actions, our volitional actions, karma is laid down on the consciousness. This creates imprints or latencies.
And this latency then remains in our consciousness until it’s due to ripen. So this is the compositional factors. So you’ll see that these don’t necessarily go in a time sequence, because ignorance is always with us. Some of these links just appear and then disappear, they pass on to the next one, but ignorance, for example, is the underlying factor all the time. It’s underlying all the twelve links, but it’s included here because it’s because of ignorance that we have all these other links happening.
So it acts as a causative factor. But you can’t necessarily see these causative factors happening in a time sequence, but you can say that when a particular karma is being created, then a particular moment of ignorance is involved, and this particular moment of ignorance is acting as a particular link. And then the ignorance continues, and continues to be causative factors for other karmas, but we’re finished with it as far as this particular karma is concerned. And then you’ve got the compositional factors, the action which creates the karmic imprint the karmic latency. And then the next step is that you’ve got consciousness.
This carries the karmic latency, and it carries it from the time it’s created up to the time it ripens. That could be at the end of that life, or it could be at the end of some other future life. We’re talking about a propulsive karma here, we’re not talking about other kinds of karma. Of course, all the kinds of karma are carried on the consciousness until they ripen, But here we’re talking about a karma that’s going to produce a rebirth. Is this picture two?
No, this is picture three. And that’s a monkey jumping from one tree to another. So that indicates that the consciousness can go from life to life and carry the propulsive the imprints of the propulsive karma, which at this stage is just the latency, and that’s carried on the consciousness. So, in actual fact, although the consciousness is here on the as the third link between the other things, of course we always have the continuity of our consciousness, and the continuity of our consciousness is always carrying karmas, But as far as this particular series of events is concerned, it acts as the third link just for this period of time between the laying down of the karmic impression and the time when it ripens. Yes, then there’s a time lapse where it just remains as a latency.
So that’s the significance of the link? Yes. It’s carried on the well, the significance of this thing is that it’s carried on the consciousness, so this latency is there. At the present it’s not doing anything, it’s just a latency. And that’s the consciousness.
Could you give us an example of that? Well, for instance, say you kill an insect, and say you kill the insect now, and you don’t get instant karma from that. Nothing happens. But you did it with anger, it’s got all the factors involved, you’re glad you did it, you wouldn’t of course, so I’m just using this as an example. So you feel happy, you don’t repent, You feel glad.
You feel good now. I’ve got rid of that annoying mosquito. And Okay, so you’ve got a complete karmic action, which is and you don’t purify it. You come to the point of view that it’s the wrong action. You leave it remains on your mind stream.
Now, it could be that at the end of this life, when you’re dying, that that karma is going to ripen and bring you a rebirth in the lower realms. Up until that time, when it ripens and brings its result, it’s just latency on the consciousness. It might not ripen at the end of this life. Some other karma might ripen at the end of this life and bring you a different rebirth. This is like a very small karma bug in a big picture.
But it grows? Yes, it grows. And also, let’s suppose you kill lots of insects in the same way and they all add up. So these other karmas could strengthen that particular one. You really have to have you mean, you’re about past lives or early this life?
Well, might require attaining single point of concentration, attaining Samatha, then you Oh, yes. But that wasn’t that was just