Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 40-minute teaching, Ven Margaret McAndrew grounds karma theory in concrete situations: forgetting to pay for library books, borrowing the center phone without leaving money, misusing offerings meant for the Three Jewels. She explains why actions with holy objects carry extraordinary weight through the power of what we’re acting toward, not intention alone, and unpacks three karmic results: the realm into which we’re born, the tendency to repeat similar actions, and the environments we attract. Drawing on the Wheel of Sharp Weapons and stories of animals around monasteries, she shows how understanding these mechanics helps recognize results you’re experiencing and shift habitual patterns. She closes with Tonglen practice — taking on others’ suffering — as a direct way to work with what karma teaches. For practitioners navigating vows and Dharma center life.
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File metadata (for organising)
File: 16 SW 1999 03 25.mp3
UUID: 3cce1c58-3600-4c0e-ac48-9e8d62b9b9cd
Teacher: Ven Margaret McAndrew
Collection: The Wheel of Sharp Weapons (Ven Margaret McAndrew)
Date: 1999-03-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 40.2 minutes
Words: ~4,559
This is quite a heavy form of karma because of the heaviness of the object. So, generally, it’s explained in the graduated path teaching or in the teachings on karma that intention is the determining factor. But here, we’re concerned with very powerful objects, then there can be an effect from the side of the object. And so even if we’ve unconsciously used something that belonged to the Three Jewels of refuge taking it for ourselves, we may not have been aware of what we were doing. Even so it can be something that brings us a bad karmic result because of the power of the object.
So we need to be very, very careful, particularly in relation to the threefold diversity, to the kind of actions we do in relation to the Three Jewels. Perhaps before we became involved with the Dharma teachings and the Dharma centers that we might not have had so much opportunity for doing this kind of wrong action in this life. But now because you’re involved with Buddha House, it’s easy to accidentally create bad karma. Heavy karma at this time. So for instance, not returning what the house library loans.
So or perhaps not paying for using the phone or the photocopy of your personal use. So if you forget to put the money in the jar, then this could be bad karma and I’m sure that I’ve got some of this karma so. So in actual fact, Buddha House is naturally a center from Nālānda’s stock but it’s related in a lesser way because it is a Dharma center and the people here are Dharma brothers and sisters. So we create a lot of strong karma by making mistakes with our karma in relation to the center. Does that make sense?
Generally, it’s our intention that determines whether we create a negative action and how strong the negative action is. But with holy objects or with very strong objects such as our mum and dad, we can create extra strong karma even without intention, thoughtless, but without under or without knowing. For instance, if we were to make use of something that that we shouldn’t have made use of. This is an example of a story about somebody who says a lot of bad karmic results from having been present at through this he he was a monk and he was present at a dinner that was given by somebody who paid for the dinner by having sold Dharma texts, which is an easy thing to sell Dharma texts to use that money for worldly purposes. So he ate some of this food and he didn’t know where it came from, where the meal was paid for, but he still had to experience bad karmic results from it.
That’s right. So the person who actually the person who sold the texts would have gone to hell. So this chap had to put up with a stomachache. Yes. So what we always do at Buddha House is keep the bookshop money in a separate account and keep very careful.
So now you’re understanding why we do that. Yes. Yes. That’s right. Yes.
And so we want to keep track of what and that that can be used for things like buying more books or buying Buddhist statues or sponsoring the printing of books or sponsoring painting of thangkas. This kind of thing you have to be very careful how you use it, perhaps for the upkeep of the library or the upkeep of the house or so on, but Well, problem is that these people don’t understand those things. On the other hand, if they haven’t taken refuge, you know, they do the refuge thing for them. It’s not such a heavy thing. But there’s still some negativity there, which they don’t understand about.
On the other hand, there’s some benefit there because they’re making these books accessible to the public. So it might be six of one and half a dozen of the other. I don’t know. That’s difficult to say. No, there’s nothing wrong with us buying it.
Yes. No. It’s the people who are selling it who are in a dodgy position. But it’s the generally the lamas seem to think that it’s quite okay to encourage general book shops to stock Dharma books. So they must feel that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.
Also, you’ve got the problem like, for instance, the people in Western publications were well they’re thrown into the position that they had to support themselves from the profit on the Wisdom Publications books and otherwise they would have had no roof over their heads or anything to eat. So, basically, they had to pay themselves a minimal salary out of the proceeds. And, of course, they were devoting themselves, you know, for them it wasn’t just a job, but they were devoting themselves in their spare time as well as their work hours and all sorts of things. Really, it wasn’t as if they were just regarding it as a means of livelihood. They could have gone and worked for somebody else and had better pay and better working conditions and less work hours.
They just had to check the purity of their dedication to the cause, but they did have to work out how they stood in relation to that. And no doubt they talked to their lamas about it and so on, but it just wasn’t possible for them to earn their living somewhere else and still manage to keep Wisdom Publications going because had to be a professionally run concern. These things have to be worked out but it’s something that we have to keep in mind. And for instance, people earn everything by accepting sponsorships with painting thangkas, but they have to consider how they’re doing it. In Tibet they used to accept commissions to paint thangkas, so the person would support the thangka painter and the thangka painter would paint the thangka and then they wouldn’t ask for a price on the thangka, but they would expect to be supported and they would expect to have a generous offering.
But they wouldn’t think of themselves as doing that for the money. So painting thangkas for sale during a short time was fine. Where they actually paint thangkas for sale and put a price on it is becoming much more dicey. And that seems to be the way it’s going a bit more in the modern world nowadays. There are less painters who are able to always find commissions and they’ll sometimes I think have to paint stuff and then find a buyer for it, which puts them in a much more dicey position.
So if we don’t want to have to experience gout in our future lives Yes, I guess, tendinitis is probably very related. So if we don’t want to have to experience these kinds of things, we know that we have to avoid these kinds of actions, so we make a determination not to do these actions in the future and instead to do the opposite thing by being conscientious about our moral conduct, about using things that don’t belong to us, about taking things that don’t belong to us, about how we act in connection with the Three Jewels of Refuge. And we’ll contemplate on that a little bit, making that firm determination and then we’ll go on then to do the Tonglen practice taking on this suffering of gout. So we’ve got a couple of people present who we can think of in terms of gout and tendinitis and other sort of pains in the body. And a lot of other people who perhaps haven’t told us that they are experiencing pain in their body also and many many other beings who experience these kinds of pain so we can take on that sort of pain.
So I’ll just ring the gong in two or three minutes time and in the meantime we can do that practice of Tonglen. So, by the way, when we’re learning about these, karmic results that we’re experiencing and this is what the Wheel of Sharp Weapons, the karmic results that it’s mentioning are the results that are being experienced in this human life. So with a serious karma, we would only be experiencing the tail end of that result in this human life, and before that we might have experienced all sorts of horrific results in the lower realms. So we might have had a number of lives in the lower realms using up the worst of the karma, using up the bulk of it. And then when we finished up the karma that was keeping us in the lower realms and when we get a human rebirth, we might still have the last traces of this karma to work off as human beings.
And in the graduated path it explains that there are various different kinds of karmic results. And from one karma we can experience different kinds of results and that can be explained as being either three results or four results. It’s just the same because if the explanation is three results then the second result is subdivided into two subdivisions or that can be counted as four. So this is all explained in detail in Liberation in the Palm of your Hand. If you want to check that out and get a detailed understanding of it, read that section on page fifty four of Liberation in the Palm of the Hand.
But just in brief, there are three results which you can call the ripened results, the results congruent with the cause and the environmental results. So the results, the ripened results are experienced in some specific realms. So if it’s a bad karma then that could send us to the lower realms. If it’s another of the teachings in karma explains that some karmas are complete and some karmas are incomplete and we need the various factors which Helena already kindly explained to us that we need in order to have a complete karma. And so we know what that is.
So if we have these complete karmas that can send us to the lower realms or if it’s a good karma, it can send us to a good rebirth such as a human rebirth. And so these kinds of karmic results can then, in the case of a non virtuous action, send us to the states where we will have to experience all the different sufferings of that various realms such as being in the hells or being an animal, then having experienced that, then getting born as a human being, we still have to experience the other two kinds of results. And these include the results congruent with the cause and the environmental results. So the results congruent with the cause involves two subdivisions and that is the experience congruent with the cause and action congruent with the cause. So the result congruent with the cause means that we have to experience something that’s similar to the action that we did to others.
So whatever we did to others, we had to get it back again. So that’s pretty simple and that’s the kind of thing that the Wheel of Sharp Weapons is telling us about quite a lot. And so for instance, if we’ve killed others, killed other beings, would have to experience a short life span and perhaps being killed by others and perhaps having sudden illnesses and so on. So these are similar to the harm that we did to others. And the action congruent with the cause is very important because this means that we have a tendency to get drawn into doing actions of the same type again.
This is a very important karmic aspect that has a strong effect on future. And so it means that if, for instance, if we’ve engaged in killing, then we’ll have a tendency to to react with wanting to kill. Instance, if we’re killed out of anger, then if we get angry again, our first thought will be wanting to kill somebody or kill that being. Or if we’ve killed animals out of attachment to eating their meat, then we’ll have a strong tendency to want to engage in hunting or other actions of killing animals in order to satisfy our appetite or our attachment. And also, that will come from within ourselves, that tendency, and also from our external situation.
We also tend to find ourselves getting drawn into situations where we’ll naturally be led into doing these kinds of actions such as being conscripted to go off to war or being among people who will lead us in the way of killing. And so that’s the action congruent with the cause. And this is very, important because it leads us to this chain of cause and results in future lives so that there will be more killing, more bad karma, more killing. And of course we’ll have experience the other bad karmic results such as experiencing suffering from that in life after life. So that’s where we have to step in and try to overcome this karmic cause and result by not letting ourselves be led on by this action congruent with the result, with the cause.
And then the third one, the environmental cause, means that we have to experience an environment which is related to our actions. So bad actions relate to having to experience bad environments. So the example that the Bodhisattva uses in Wheel of Sharp Weapons, it’s interesting for us in this age, soil erosion. He said that the soil used to be good and then it was becoming eroded into gullies and that kind of thing. So we can see that there’s a lot of this happening in our country at present and this is an environmental result of our bad karma.
So here anyway we’re dealing with the last three of these causes, if you look at it as being four. So we don’t know what sort of karmic results we might have already experienced in the lower realms, but we’re seeing the experiences that we’re having to deal with in the present in our human life. Also, of course, certain karmas are not strong enough to bring about a rebirth, these are called completing karmas because they’re not projecting karmas that bring about a rebirth, but they’re throwing karmas which bring about a result during the course of our lifetime. So we could be experiencing these ripening karmas from some of our lighter non virtues also, as well as the finishing off of these complete karmas that I just talked about. So is this clear?
Uh-huh. So Well, Buddhists don’t have to experience karma. So that’s the they Buddhas create what’s called Trinlé, which it translates as cloud of action. The word lé, action, can be translated it’s actually karma. Means action.
karma means action too. So it’s a different translation. So it’s a particular kind of action. They don’t have to experience cause and effect. They simply do these virtuous actions.
They’ve already got the result. There’s no more result for the Buddha. They’ve got everything so there’s no more to attain. So they simply engage in these virtuous actions for others. And they have this fantastic, you know, powers and abilities.
But their own virtuous actions are ceaseless and infinite. But it’s not karma in the samsaric sense. Samsaric beings we start to work with karma and to make it work for us instead of against us. Particularly in terms of purifying our bad actions and accumulating merit. So we have to have this vast accumulation of merit.
And if you’ve heard about the teachings on this, know that we have to have two collections of merit and wisdom. So wisdom is a particular kind of karmic result associated with the practice of wisdom, of understanding emptiness and meditating on emptiness. And the rest of it goes into the basket of merit. So our practices of virtue and generosity and so on. All of these things go into merit.
And also our meditation practice, if it’s meditating on things like impermanence, love and compassion so on. On the conventional side of it, that all goes into the basket of merit and then the basket of wisdom is concerned with the practice of emptiness. So it includes meditation on emptiness and some some of the well, I have understand that some of our concentration practice also goes into that, but mostly emptiness practice. Practice. So we have a lot of that to accumulate.
And Bodhisattvas who get to the eighth level, eighth level Bodhisattvas, they’re also not accumulating worldly karma. They’ve gone beyond karma. So they’re also accumulating this kind transcendental action. But they still they still have to accumulate a lot more before they can get enlightened. So so I think that’s yeah.
So here we’re anyway, we’re dealing with kind of karma these karmic results. And so what we need is to be determined to overcome particularly this kind of tendency to follow this habitual habitual inclination towards non virtue. So when we understand this teaching on karma, we understand why it is so easy to go in the path of non virtue and why it’s so difficult to go in the path of virtue. And that’s because we’ve created created so many non virtues in the past and we have this kind of karmic result coming to us. Because we haven’t created such a lot of virtue in the past, we haven’t got the kind of results that makes it easy and natural for us to go in the path of virtue.
So it’s just a question of changing this and not letting ourselves follow this tendency towards non virtue but instead creating virtuous imprints. And if we understand this then it gives us the incentive and we need to be very determined about overcoming this harmful habitual tendency and the Wheel of Sharp Weapons by teaching us about these karmic results is very helpful for us to bring this about. So stanza twenty seven. Michael. Somebody might have an association of vows and commitments with Tantric practices.
Usually when we come across this kind of expression we think of it as referring to Tantra, Tantric Vows and Commitments. So, anyway, here, any kind of spiritual commitment such as the Upāsaka vows, the layperson’s vows, is included in this in this kind of karma. So for instance, if you’ve at some time taken the five Upāsaka vows, somebody wants to tell us what five Upāsaka vows are or layperson vows. Okay. What did you say about this?
No. Improper. Right. So yes. That’s right.
Yes. Yeah. Think so. So that’s right. So a person who’s taken these five has taken a commitment to keep them, and then if they break them, so for instance if they then go and steal something or they tell serious lies that are covered by this vow or if you’ve taken a vow not to take intoxicants and then you go and take these intoxicants, then if you break these and then if it’s not purified then you’ve acquired a serious negativity.
And this is much worse than if you actually engage in these actions without having taken these vows. It’s the fact that you’re breaking the vows that makes it so serious. Course, sick killing is a serious action anyway. It becomes infinitely worse if you’ve taken a vow. The taking of intoxicants generally is regarded as being negative in itself, but it’s a dangerous activity to engage in because it destroys our mindfulness and causes us to engage in negativity.
And so it is given to us as a vow and if we break it, then because we’re breaking the vow then we’re acquiring the negativity of breaking the vow which is a strong negativity. So we need to be very conscientious about these things. Also there are other vows such as the Bodhisattva vows. So if we’ve taken the Bodhisattva vows then we have quite a lot of those which we need to observe. And if we take the attitude that these vows don’t matter and if we break them carelessly then this becomes a serious negativity which is much worse than the breaking of the Prātimokṣa vows, for example.
So then it helps us to keep in mind the importance of maintaining our vows if we do keep in mind the karmic results. And it mentions here strokes and sudden diseases striking without warning. Whether we’ve had these results or not at the present, there’s we can never feel safe that we won’t have to experience them in the future. So does anybody understand anything about this? Really?
Is there a medical explanation? Or is it just a diagnosis? You think it’s lifestyle? Of course, if we have a lifestyle that brings on stress, that’s a chronic result too. So it’s all related.
Yes. So that’s interesting because you wouldn’t think that the general you think that this is more likely a result that’s going to affect people who are practicing Dharma but in fact we’ve all had failed to discover even people who are not practicing Dharma have certainly encountered the Dharma and perhaps one reason why they are not encountering it in this lifetime is because they created the cause to be separated from it by breaking their vows with negative mind which could be a cause to not encounter. If you break your vows but don’t give rise to negative mind or wrong views about it then even if you have to experience lower realm rebirth you can come back to the dharma again And they say that the dogs around monasteries are often monks who have broken their vows in their past lifetime, but at least they didn’t give rise to negativity such as thinking it doesn’t matter or thinking the Dharma is all wrong anyway, it’s all mistaken teaching. If you give rise to that sort of thought then that creates a barrier to coming back to the Dharma. So these dogs are fortunate in the sense that they’re working off this bad karma, that they’re around the monastery and receiving good imprints and probably in their next lifetime, they’ll become monks again.
Yes. Lama Yeshe had a little dog, a little female Pekingese and she was obviously very lonely so she was being cared for by one of the nuns and she was lonely so this nun wrote a little letter in the dog’s words to Lama Yeshe while he was away saying, please, Lama Yeshe, I’m very lonely. Can you find me a husband? So Lama Yeshe found her a husband and she was very attached to him. And she was always trying to seduce him, but he just wouldn’t be seduced.
He was just hopefully hopefully uninterested, you know. And they got on well enough together, but but whenever she was really in the mood and was wrapping up against him and really trying to make him respond, then he’d get really fed up with her and he’d just sort of push off and go off by himself. No. So the lamas said that I must have been a a monk before. And so he was sort of like in the habit of maintaining at least the vow that he broke probably wasn’t that particular vow.
So or or at least at least whatever it was, was had a very strong imprint for not breaking it even as a dog. So that’s that’s interesting. And another monk told us about his monastery that there were a lot of dogs around the monastery and of course they did what dogs do and most of them. But there was one particular dog who was never engaged in sexual intercourse And not only that, but he whenever a a pair of dogs were engaged in sexual intercourse, he’d let all the other dogs in barking at them. As if he was telling them off.
So, you know, quite interesting, something story. I don’t know how I got up to all this. Yeah. Some of these things might sound a bit strange, but in actual fact, it seems to me sometimes to look at past lives and how sometimes people seem to do seem to experience things in this life than what they’ve done in past lives. Although, of course, looking at past is very unreliable because the causes can go way back beyond anything that can be seen in just a few lifetimes.
In fact, Buddha cautioned against that. He even cautioned his arhats they couldn’t always see the cause of certain results and they could see back a long time they had quite considerable psychic powers, but only Buddhas had the perfect psychic powers to go back no matter how many lifetimes, infinite lifetimes, and see karmic seeds from long, long, long ago, and how they could be resulting in the present. Present. But one story I came across was Edgar Cayce. You might have heard of Edgar Casey.
He used to give past life readings, and there was one story, for some reason, struck me of a young lad who had trouble wetting the bed. I mean he was way past the age at which somebody should have gained control of their bladder. So it was causing great distress and also his family were quite concerned about it. So his mother wrote off to Casey and then Casey said in his last lifetime or in one of his previous lifetimes, he lived in ancient Egypt and he was what in Australia we call the water bailiff and he was responsible for the irrigation, you know, who was getting irrigation water and he took bribes. And as a result, he’s sort of experiencing a kind of result of trouble with his waterworks.
So it seemed highly appropriate. He was advised to think his mother was to help him to think positive thoughts about it because basically he was subconsciously punishing himself for his long past so he had to put all that in the past and see himself as being a positive person in his lifetime in order to overcome the problem. So that very much relates to what we are doing here. So, we’ll just do a little meditation on that and then we’ll finish. Meditate on keeping we may not have those and commitments to keep in the present, but even so we might have in the future in this lifetime.
Certainly we could very well have broken the karma from broken commitments in the past on our mind streams. So we make our mind up to be conscientious in future about our vows and commitments and not to be unhappy if we have to experience these kinds of karmic results such as strokes and diseases, striking us without warning. When we can come to us, we’ll try to keep a positive attitude and we do the practice of giving and taking, taking these kinds of results from others and giving them happiness and good conditions, especially good health and physical conditions for their practice.