Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 35-minute teaching, Venerable Margaret McAndrew maps the mental states that generate karma and bind us to saṃsāra. She opens with attachment and aversion, showing how we exaggerate the good qualities of desired objects and bad qualities of unwanted ones, then cling or reject accordingly. She systematically walks through eleven virtuous mental factors and the six primary afflictions—ignorance, attachment, anger, pride, doubt, and distorted views—before detailing secondary factors like jealousy, laziness, and mental wandering. The teaching ties these together: disturbing emotions drive non-virtuous actions, creating karma that forces rebirth and suffering. She emphasises the practical importance of setting virtuous motivation each morning and dedicating merit at night, so ordinary actions become supports for liberation. For practicing Buddhists exploring mental causation.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 04 4NT 1999 07 08.mp3
UUID: c4b958cf-de9c-43b1-b20c-2fa04d7ab37a
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: The Four Noble Truths (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-07-08
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 35.0 minutes
Words: ~3,785
A state of mind that exaggerates or inflates the good qualities of the object. Aversion or hatred is a state of mind that exaggerates the ugly or unattractive qualities of the object, the bad qualities. So it’s in actual fact you could say that the object does have some good qualities in the sense that it’s a suitable object for us to regard in that way. You know, as something that is good, useful, attractive or whatever or something which is ugly or painful or undesirable. The object does have qualities on which we can place those qualities, but we exaggerate.
We see it as being much worse or much better than it really is. We exaggerate the amount of good that the attractive object can bring us and the amount of harm that the bad object can bring us and we have emotional reactions because of that. So for example, a beautiful well, let’s say a piece of cake or a beautiful object that we might want to buy. Let’s say an expensive car, you know. You might think that it’s something really fantastic and you’ll be so happy when you get this wonderful car or if you eat that piece of cake, it’s going to taste so good, you’re to have so much pleasure, you know.
And you really build up this strong sort of story in your mind about it and you feel that you can’t be happy without it and your mind’s clinging to it. There’s this really keen sort of result that comes from building up this object in your mind. And this is through this exaggeration factor. So what we’re trying to do is to just see these things as they are clearly without this confusion. Non attached so so yeah.
So anyway, the question if you come back to can you eat can you be attached to the other practice or can you attached to Buddha? So, if you use the term attachment in this technical sense, not in the loose way that we use it in English, but in this technical sense that I’ve just explained, then in that sense, you can’t you can’t say that you can be attached to these kinds of objects because these are objects whose good qualities are infinite and therefore cannot be exaggerated. So whereas the things around us have very limited good qualities qualities and we can easily exaggerate their good qualities. In fact, we can’t even begin to comprehend the good qualities of Buddha or of Dharma. This definition of attachment doesn’t apply.
In the same way, we can’t we can’t really have hatred towards non virtue. Not in that sense because it its bad qualities can’t be exaggerated. Yes. Because non virtue has been keeping us in some suffering since beginning of this time and it will continue if we don’t get rid of it. So it has an infinite amount of harm that it causes us.
So, we have to So what am I up to? Non attachment. So the next one is non hatred. So that is lack of intention to harm. Intention to harm.
And then number six is non confusion. And this is in relation to virtuous objects. So it doesn’t matter if we’re a little bit confused about the theory of relativity. That’s okay. In fact, when we become enlightened, we’ll understand all these things anyway better than Einstein.
But in the meantime, we’re allowed to have a bit of ignorance about these matters, but we need to be clear about what is virtue, what is non virtue, how to practice virtue, how to avoid non virtue, how to purify our non virtuous imprints and all this kind of thing. So we have to acquire this through making effort. Actually, it can be inborn in some people, but for most of us we haven’t made that effort before so we have to acquire it. And the seventh one The seventh virtuous mental factor is effort and This is the mental factor that delights in virtue. So we’re talking about virtuous effort here, not the effort that you might put out in finding out what’s the best pub in Adelaide or whatever.
So all of these I wasn’t looking at you Jane. Okay. Thanks. We’ll we’ll remember that if we want a good place to go out. So effort.
Anyway, this is talking about virtuous effort because actually if you look at the non virtuous secondary non virtuous mental factors, find that when we get to laziness that putting a lot of energy into worldly things is a form of laziness. So, number eight is suppleness. And, this is physical and mental suppleness which is, related to the practice of Samatha. It’s the suppleness that comes, I didn’t do my research very properly. Did this in a hurry, so I can’t remember which state, but I think it’s the ninth or the actually might actually follow the ninth stage when we’re doing the practice of Samatha.
So it’s not concerned with ordinary consciousness, it’s concerned with consciousness of the state of Samatha, of single pointed concentration, which is acquired by yogis. So when you have attained this really single pointed concentration, the first thing is that there are nine different stages. So when we sit down and try to meditate, our mind runs all over the place. I think it’s at round about the fifth stage that your mind remains unwaveringly fixed on the object, you still haven’t attained the full state of Samatha so you have to keep on developing deeper and deeper concentration until you get to the ninth stage and then you’ve attained the single-pointed concentration, but you still have to continue the practice of concentration until you achieve this physical and mental suppleness which is associated with a sensation of ecstasy. And this is When you attain this then you, I think, have actually attained the state of Samatha.
So, anyway, it’s something that doesn’t have to concern us very much in the present, but it could be very important in the future. So the ninth one is Conscientiousness and this is very very relevant and important because it’s the mental factor that keeps the mind from non virtuous activities. So the tenth one is equanimity. And this is also a particular mental factor involved with Samatha meditation. It’s not talking about the ordinary equanimity that we try to cultivate.
For instance, with the four immeasurables. We have immeasurable love, immeasurable compassion, immeasurable joy, immeasurable equanimity. Which is and there’s also the ordinary equanimity which is the mind abiding free of anger and attachment. So this is a positive thing that we have to acquire, but it’s not referring to this mental factor here. So this is the equanimity that is attained in one’s meditation when you overcome mental laxity and excitement.
If you study the teachings of Samatha, you know these are the two major obstacles that we have to overcome. So it’s concerned with one of the stages I forget which stage, but one of the stages of meditative stabilization. So, eleventh one is non harmfulness. And this is a mental factor which is acquired through removing hatred. So it’s important to understand that when we’re talking about these things, non harmfulness, non hatred, non confusion, non attachment, we’re talking about positive mental factors that are the opposite to these harmful mental states.
It’s not just a neutral mental state which hasn’t got which doesn’t happen to have one of these harmful mental factors. It’s talking about a positive antidote idote to these harmful mental factors. It’s a very positive attitude and it’s an attitude which produces virtue. No. It’s the same in Sanskrit.
It just says non this and non that. But no. But the understanding is that we’re talking about something positive. It’s not just a neutral state. So then we have to look at our deluded mental states.
And so the the main or the primary non virtues are ignorance, desire or attachment, anger or hatred, pride, doubt and distorted views. So these are the main problems that we have to be aware of when we’re avoiding the non virtuous mental factors. The actions that we do under the influence of these non virtuous mental factors will be negative actions that create negative karma. So, yes. So the first one is ignorance, particularly ignorance of virtue and non virtue.
So there are many different kinds of ignorance. There’s the more subtle kind of ignorance which is the ignorance of the absolute truth. But this is particularly the kind of ignorance that leads us into non virtuous actions and that’s ignorance of karma. And then we’ve got attachment, anger and hatred, pride, doubt, which is doubting what is true. And particularly in terms of Dharma, of of the teachings of Dharma, such things as the qualities of the Three Jewels of refuge and the the teachings on on virtue and non virtue and so on.
If we have doubts about these things, then we can’t put these things into practice. So we might start off with having doubts and we have to resolve our doubts by examination and checking. So not all doubt is non virtuous. There’s three kinds of doubt actually. And there’s doubt which tends towards the truth.
There’s doubt which is indecisive, which goes both directions and there’s doubt which is tending towards falsity. So a doubt tending towards the truth is positive because through further examination it can be transformed into conviction, into faith. So then there are twenty non virtuous factors, secondary non virtuous factors. And these secondary factors can either, they belong to of the three poisons that we already mentioned, attachment, aversion and ignorance, they can either belong to some of them belong to one of those categories. Some of them fit into both categories and some fit in to all three.
So I won’t go into that. I’ll just mention it. So these include so so false views, anyway, that’s another one. We have to understand what false views are. There’s actually five different cap categories of false views, but I think the main ones that concern us are grasping the self as being permanent and self existent.
Number six. This is number six, distorted views or false views. So one of those Now I see the false place. Yes. So grasping the self as being permanent and self existent is one of the harmful distorted views.
And another is the views that all phenomena inherently exist. And another one is the belief that there is no karma, rebirth or cause and effect. So this is what is particularly important to our daily practice because if we have false views about this then we can’t do virtuous practice. Whereas if we hold to wrong views about the nature of the phenomena and the self, then this will prevent us from attaining liberation. So we have all these so anyway, just to mention some of the secondary non virtues.
The first one is the flare-up of anger, then there’s grudge holding. There’s action which results from anger. There’s intention to harm others. There’s jealousy. There’s hiding our faults in order to obtain something we want.
It’s good to read through these because they’re really getting down to the nitty-gritty, aren’t they? There’s pretending that we’re virtuous, wise, etcetera in order to impress others. There’s self-directed shamelessness, other-directed shamelessness, trying to hide our faults, our deluded mental states from others. It’s best to speak of them, bring them out in the open and to repent. Avarice, pride, I’m only giving you the main divisions too because there are subdivisions of these.
There’s pride — eighty-four thousand here. Pride concerning such things as health, wealth or education. There’s lack of faith, or taking no joy in performing virtuous deeds. Laziness or reluctance to follow virtuous conduct. There’s carelessness, being carefree and inattentive.
Not caring whether you do virtuous or non virtuous karma. There’s forgetfulness, which is particularly concerned with meditation, unclearness and dullness during meditation. Is non virtuous. Mind you, some of these are more subtle than others. There’s lack of alertness, particularly concerning the rise of delusions in our mind.
There’s depression and dullness. If we allow this to overtake our minds, it’s non virtuous. I like the Tibetan word for this, it’s called Mug pa. And the Tibetan for laziness is Lelo. So, then there’s mental agitation concerning an object of desire making it impossible to concentrate on another object.
These things particularly disturb our meditation. And then there’s mental wandering or the inability to control our mind. So then we have to understand that all these things are concerned with our karma. So under the influence of virtuous mental factors, create actions which are positive, actions of body, speech and mind. So karma is particularly concerned with the actions of body and speech, but they’re performed through the actions of mind.
So we have good actions which are the cause of happiness. But we don’t escape from Samsāra just by creating good actions. But in order to achieve liberation, have to acquire a collection of virtuous actions. Accumulating virtue is very important because it supports us on the path. And we need to direct, It’s not just enough to casually perform some good actions, but we have to consciously direct them in the path by setting our motivation and by dedicating our merits.
Otherwise, without this, our good actions will simply result in some sort of brief temporal happiness, some sort of good result which will pass. So by directing them in the path, they become support for our practice towards liberation. Or if we’re following Mahāyāna practice, we direct them towards enlightenment and they support our practice towards enlightenment. So this is very very important and we need to do it not only at the beginning of our virtuous actions such as meditation, but every morning set our motivation and at night dedicate our merits. First thing in the morning when you wake up, then your whole day tends to be involved in this motivation and even your ordinary neutral actions that would otherwise be just neutral or meaningless become virtuous.
For instance, getting your meals and eating and cleaning your house and so on. All these things become virtuous through setting a virtuous motivation at the beginning of the day. So there’s a lot that could be said about karma and I’ll be talking about that when we get to the graduated path teachings on karma. And I’m not going to go into that, but essentially the non virtuous actions create what we consider to be suffering. Our what we understand in a normal sense to be suffering.
And this is the gross suffering of Samsāra. And so we particularly need to avoid non virtuous actions, but we have to understand that even while we’re experiencing results of virtuous actions in Samsāra, while we’re experiencing good results, we’re still experiencing subtle form of suffering. We went into that last week. And karma is also very important in that it brings about our rebirth. So our rebirths can be brought about either by bad or good karma.
The good karma brings about upper rebirth, fortunate rebirth, and the bad karmas can bring about lower rebirth in the suffering realms. So this is the worst kind of karma and the kind that we particularly have to purify and avoid so that we can attain fortunate rebirth in the future and continue our progress on the path. But all of our karma is created under the influence of ignorance. Even our good karma is done under the influence of ignorance of the ultimate truth. But if we can avoid those disturbing emotions emotions that create the motivation for bad karma, then we can avoid these kinds of karmas that create suffering and unfortunate rebirth.
And through going on to study and practice meditation, we can gradually gain the understanding that we need to cut off the root of Samsāra, to cut off the root of the disturbing emotions. So we’ll be talking about that next week. We’ll be talking about the cessation of suffering and the following week the path. So next week there’ll be a bit more about nirvana and so on. So the things that we like to hear about.
Not so easy always to actually attain these things, but it’s very encouraging to know that they are there. Any questions? So essentially Somebody going to say something? A lot of them. Yes.
And it’s very useful to because sometimes you forget that some of these things are actually non virtuous and you don’t make much effort to overcome them. So it’s good to read through the list sometimes. So essentially yes? Well, actually, a lot of this I’m taking from the Tibetan tradition of mental development and also from other texts and other notes. Well, there’s actually a book on the four noble truths in there.
And of course, there are sections on it in a number of other teachings. Yes. So, yes. So this essentially comes from a a bit from the Abhidharma texts. And, it’s been I mean, it’s been presented in a fairly simple way, in some of these teachings so as to, give us a basic introduction to the idea.
And then when you actually go into these things, particularly the mental factors and so on, it can become very, very complex. So in the primary and secondary minds, if you wanna know about some of these things, there’s a bit more in Meditation on Emptiness also by Jeffrey Hopkins. He goes into more and and there’s some other books on Lorig and so on. We don’t have terribly much in our library here on these topics, but, there are books which go into a lot of detail on these things. So, karma and the disturbing mental states or delusions or afflictions work together.
Because we have these afflictions then we create karma and particularly our negative karmas create our suffering. And karma in general is the mechanism that keeps us cycling in saṃsāra because we create karmic causes for rebirth and then we get reborn. And it explains in the twelve links there. In particular, the links of craving and grasping cause us to take rebirth again and again and again. If we can cut off this craving and grasping, then we can cut off our bondage to saṃsāra and then karma will have no more power over us.
So we have to eradicate the disturbing emotions. And as Jane already mentioned, the underlying ignorance of the absolute truth is the thing that keeps us under the control of these emotions. So I’ll be talking about that next week. But at present, we’re in this mechanism where we have disturbing emotions, ignorance, attachment and aversion, hatred or aversion. And we act out of them.
And every time we act out of these things, we strengthen them. So every time we act out our anger, we we we have more and more anger. It comes up more and more easily. As a result of this, because we’ve been following anger for many many lifetimes and just harboring anger in our minds basically, then it allows anger to come up very easily. And so when we encounter an appropriate object, an unpleasant object, then it’s very easy for anger to arise.
And this is because we have been allowing this to happen throughout beginningless lifetimes. We’ve got a very strong imprint for it. And if we’ve been practicing patience more than anger, then we’d find that patience came up more easily than anger. If we find that patience isn’t as easy as anger, then it’s a sure sign that we haven’t practiced it very much yet. So the more we practice patience and other positive attitudes, the more we find they come up.
For instance, if we find that it’s easy to be compassionate, it’s because we practiced compassion before. Whereas if we find that we have anger and other negative attitudes towards living beings very easily, it’s because we develop these sorts of anger and hatred. And so these things keep on going from life to life and they cause us to create karma. And so as a result of that, we create karma which either brings about a rebirth or brings about the conditions that we experience during that life after we’ve been born. And all of these things arise because of our being under the bondage of disturbing emotions.
When we when we experience suffering results in particular, it comes about because of our having had these disturbing emotions and created wrong actions under their influence. And it just goes on and on. More disturbing emotions, more karma, more rebirth. Then our karma kicks in and causes us to not only experience suffering results but also to experience being born in circumstances which are likely to cause us to give rise to more actions of the same kind that brought us to that situation in the first place. So for instance, if we’ve been following hatred and and killing others, then we would have to experience possibly rebirth in the hells, and for a long time, we would suffer in the hells.
And then when we get born as human beings again, as well as still having various sufferings in the human realm to experience, we would also be born, for instance, in a war zone where we have to go and fight, where we’re told that it’s good to go and kill the enemy, and where everything encourages us to do this. So this kind of thing is because of the the sort of vicious circle aspect of karma, the the self continuing tendency of it. And so we have to make an effort to put a stop to these bad patterns and instead we have to create we have to create good patterns. So that’s about it. Do you want to do a very short meditation?
So we just spend a short time meditating on how delusion and karma create a bondage to saṃsāra and this bondage saṃsāra is going to continually bring us into suffering. So we have to overcome our non virtuous causes, the primary non virtues of ignorance, attachment, hatred, pride, doubt and distorted views. And also we need to cultivate virtuous mental factors so as to have positive actions which will support our development of the the understanding which will enable us to achieve liberation from Samsāra.