Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute teaching, Ven Robina Courtin unpacks the four-step Buddhist process for transforming past harmful actions: regret, reliance on the Buddha as a doctor, practicing an antidote visualization, and determination never to repeat the harm. She illustrates through vivid examples: two prisoners with starkly opposite mental responses to their violence, a practitioner named Harry whose cultivated compassion spontaneously saved him from a fatal mountain fall, and a fishing community’s healing through karma-based prayer. She explains how changing your mind—taking responsibility for past actions—directly affects your future, clarifies that you purify yourself by changing your mind, and responds to questions about karma, suffering, and how even a child harmed by circumstance holds the power to grow from pain. For practitioners serious about transforming their own minds.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 08 Unknown.mp3
UUID: 051aa0c6-cd26-4ea8-b157-96394f5043d9
Teacher: Ven Robina Courtin
Collection: y Unknown 1988 9 Cassettes (Ven Robina Courtin)
Date: 1988 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.1 minutes
Words: ~9,457
In a sense, it’s got nothing to do with Buddha. It’s your own business. You know? You use Buddha as a doctor, not as the person who says, now you’re forgiven. It’s quite different, okay?
It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t forgive, it’s fantastic to forgive, but that’s not what purifies somebody. What purifies us is our own mind doing it. Regret is the first step. Then the second one is strong reliance upon the Buddha as the doctor, and the second part of reliance is actually where you develop strong compassion for others. In a sense, you’re relying upon the presence of other beings whom in the past you’ve harmed, but now whom you wish to not harm and to actually benefit.
So a strong sense of, they call this, reliance. Second one. Third one is where you take the medicine. It’s called the power of the antidote, the medicine itself. You do a certain practice.
And in Buddhism, we’ve got a whole kind of medicine cabinet full of medicines, you know? And there’s one particular which we’ll do tonight. A particular practice that’s recommended by all the Tibetan lamas. It’s said to be most strong. A particular The third step is a visualization and saying a certain mantra.
It’s said to be a very excellent medicine, if you wish, very strong purification. And the fourth one, in a way the most important, is called the power of the promise, which is really simply the determination not to do again. So just obvious, eating the poison, oh my god, whom can I turn to? You take the medicine, and you say, I will never eat that poison again. It’s sort of logical, you know.
It’s really logic, it’s psychological steps. And as Lama Yeshe says, it’s the power of regret, and the power of the reliance, and the power of the antidote, and the power of the promise. That is what purification is. That is what purifies your past. The past negative karmas in your mind purifies your mind and encourages you and allows you the space to grow the virtues, you know, the flowers.
So it’s a psychological process and it’s not, as I said, to do with being forgiven by somebody. It’s not what purifies you. It’s you who purify yourself by simply changing your mind. And again, it’s a process we understand, you know. So okay, regret purifies specifically, they all purify altogether everything, but specifically regret purifies the kind of karma called experiences similar to the cause, which is all the stuff that happens to you that’s called suffering, okay?
Regret purifies that in the long term. So this is kind of interesting. You check this one, already it’s outrageous. It shows really, I mean, to actually think in this way is pretty amazing, you think. Let’s say someone steals from you.
Now the usual response to this is how dare they steal from me, are you gonna sue them and steal from them or whatever, you understand my point, the usual one. Because of course it’s not fair, you haven’t stolen from them, they’re suddenly stealing from you. But if you have the view of karma and you’re really working with it strongly as part of your practice, the first response would be, oh gosh, my karma coming back, you know? And then if you’re really skilful, instead of being angry and pointing fingers and how dare they and all that, what you would do at that moment, you’d have strong regret for the stealing that you have done in the past to this person. Do you see my point?
And already, this is the point Buddhism is saying, cause everything’s so interdependent. By you changing your mind, by you taking responsibility, already you are affecting what will happen to you. Cause what you’re gonna do is by having this strong regret, even this, you purify being stolen from. So don’t be surprised if you have huge regret for past stealing, because that’s one of the cooperative causes for your being stolen from now, that you stop people stealing from you. Your karma finishes.
Don’t be surprised, know. It’s kind of an interesting view. It’s a very brave one because it’s not how we see it. It’s usually me here, innocent, how dare you do that? And then we wonder why it keeps happening.
But if you have strong regret, you specifically purify that one. And we’re talking of course future life but it can even start happening now, know. Very interesting. The second one, they say reliance purifies environmental karma. That one I don’t quite understand, but they say that so I’m just telling you what they say.
The Buddha’s teachings. The third one, doing the actual medicine, practicing the antidote, doing the practice, that purifies the throwing karma, the lower realm suffering. The fourth one, like I said, in a way the most important and it’s so logical, that if you’ve got the habit to steal, you know, if you’ve, let’s say, got the habit to kill or steal or whatever it is, you know, negative one, then your determination, let’s say you can say to yourself, I will never kill again with intention, which is amazing, that’s the best way. If you can say that, then don’t be surprised. What happens?
Don’t be surprised, you stop killing for God’s sake. It’s so obvious, you just said I won’t kill again, that’s what do you think? So it’s your own mind, as Lama Zopa says, by your determination to do this, not do this, do this, do this, that is the main cause for the change in your behavior, the change in your own mind. It’s your own mind that changes you, you know. You can mold your mind, Lama Zopa says, into any shape you like.
So it’s up to us, this is the point. And it’s very, and I know going to prison, especially in America where a lot people are on death row and a lot of guys in for killing, right? Many of the guys who are gangsters, they’re not even in for murder but you know since their lifestyles, since they’re little boys, they go on drive bys all the time. Drive bys where they kill people, just go by shooting, know, boom boom boom, all have guns, you know. So of course people are dying all the time, you know.
So you know in their heart you feel this sense of this burden, and some of the guys I know who are becoming Buddhist, there’s a real burden in their mind about the killing they’ve done. So when they all hear about purification, the one I know, they love, I mean you can hear them just drinking it up, know. Because the usual view is you’re an evil person, you’re so bad, you kill people and nothing, know, you’re not worthy of being forgiven. But here, it’s by your own mind changing. It’s very empowering actually, you know.
Very interesting. And it’s also the difference between guilt and shame. Know, guilt and sorry, regret. There’s these two people I can think of, just two examples. Both of them in prison and one is a young guy, a Chinese guy who’s been in prison about twenty years.
He was killed one person when he was seventeen. He was the son of one of the Chinese gangsters in San Francisco. And he killed one person. He’s a really good guy, nice man you know. And he spent his whole life in prison trying to be a good person, helping younger guys, setting up programs, but he’s got this kind of guilt.
He identifies himself as a bad person. You can see he hasn’t, in that way, even though he’s done many good things, he hasn’t used that to help himself develop a better sense of himself. He identifies with being a bad person, I’m a murderer. So he’s really kinda stuck in himself and he’s very suffering, you know. There was another guy I know, a gangster, Mexican.
Outrageous guy, he’s killed three people in prison just from gang wars, you know. He’s covered in tats, like they are, the gangsters, Mexicans especially. They’ll have gang names. And his gang name is Silent Death. His name’s Richie, actually, but his name is Silent Death.
Why his name? He said, Robina, I’m called that because, he said, I’m really laid back. But when I’m angry, he said, I’m really angry. Anyway, with him, it’s interesting that he doesn’t have so much kind of guilt in this neurotic way, he has a lot of deep regret, wholesome regret. So even though he’s a very heavy life, quite heavy, unless it’s people he’s been arrested for, he’s probably killed many more outside that he hasn’t been caught for.
So he has this deep regret for the harm he’s done and he really wants to purify and he understands he can purify. And so he has this courage and self respect that allows him to see himself as something worthy beginning to develop, you know. It’s very interesting. Even though he’s done more heavy actions than another guy, he’s more kind of proactive about it, more taking responsibility. It’s kind of interesting.
And even actually it’s interesting too, he’s got, like a lot of these guys in prison, he’s got hepatitis C. And he’s dying basically, you know, quicker than normal. Quicker than us. Well you never know. So he’s got this hep C and he’s started just, now they’re just in prison, they just started to give him medicine.
And he was really worried about this because he said, he wrote me and he wanted my advice, he said, you know, I don’t want it, he said, I’ve just realized I’m gonna get better, if it helps me get better it’ll prolong my life, but maybe, he said, I want to purify all my negative karma. And I don’t want to not purify my karma and then die with all this negative karma in my mind and suffer in the future. I’d rather give up the medicine, get sick and purify my karma by the sickness and then die young. So please advise me what’s the best thing to do, you know. I mean that’s amazing isn’t it?
What did I say? I’ve got him to decide, so what I said was, you know, a question of your motivation, it seems to me there are many ways you can really benefit people in prison, there’s many many guys who really need help and who trust you because you’ve been a gangster before, you know, and there’s many ways, so if you have a pure motivation to take the medicine, you want to benefit others, but if you really feel it’s better to purify it, also do it for the sake of others, then stop taking it. So I’ve got him to decide. I think he’s still taking it. Yeah, I think so.
So anyway, that’s the purification process. Those four steps. So yeah, I said them all four, didn’t I? Told you all four. So does that make sense everybody?
So you want to ask questions now about it? Oh, okay. Go on Richard. Yeah. Let me repeat you bit by bit.
Apart from the environmental one, relates to whom? To the individual. Purifying their own karma. Yes, yes, that’s right. Okay.
Pilots? Mother. The mother. Oh, see. By the way, wasn’t Lamazo.
Was another Lama. That’s fine. But the story about the Lama and the fisherman. The mother of the fisherman, yes. And then what Lama Zopa said about reciting a mantra over the fish.
Which one is this? The fish one? It doesn’t suggest the purification of someone else’s coming, it suggests That one is, yes, that is definitely the power of prayer. That suggests the power of prayer, yes, that’s exactly right. Yes, good.
Oh okay, very good. Oh I see, absolutely, I understand. Very good, that was the final part of the story. That was the final part of the story. What’s your question?
Go on. Mantra over the fish suggests that there is a course of action you can take even though the consciousness is gone. So that, yes, this indicates something very interesting about prayer that I could say more of, which I’ll explain. And the first one about the mother, the final part of the story was when she heard this about her son, she said, what can I do for him? And the lama kind of laughed but out of such kindness, he laughed and he said, what do you mean for him?
He said, for everybody. So obviously for her, it was very good to hear because they rarely talk like this, especially to a mother, know, rarely say that. But obviously it was very good for her to hear this, enabled her to open her heart up and realize this is the suffering of all sentient beings. Know, that was the point about that one. So she had to have been ready for it because they never do this normally.
Then as for the fish one, the point there has got nothing to do with purifying karma. What that has to do with is what they call Okay, that’s to do with compassion. To do something for the creature. So why this is said to be so powerful? Why even though the consciousness has gone as God knows where it is now, could be six months old, that fish.
But they say that because of the karmic connection, the strong karmic connection between the flesh and the being who owned it as a body once, and then second, because of the power of prayer, which I’ll talk about, that can have benefit for that consciousness no matter where it is. And that’s why they say even when people die, one of the most important things for the person’s consciousness’s sake is to make sure, for example, you give all their things away and you create much merit with that person’s things for that person. Because that can affect their mind, it can affect their karma because of the karmic relationship. Just for the forty nine days or the forty nine days? No, even more than that.
I think even more than that. Especially for the forty nine days, but even beyond that. It can benefit the person. So you know, let’s say your mom died ten years ago and she’s got this beautiful thing and you think it’d be nice to offer the Dalai Lama, your mom’s consciousness gets definite benefit from that, wherever she is. Pardon?
Okay, this is the point too, without any good motivation, and this is a very interesting point. When it comes to creating karma, like I said before, in general, the main determining factor for the karmic result to oneself of whatever we do, good or bad, is the motivation for it. Except, beg your pardon, another burp, except in relation to what they call, this is where it gets religious, okay, and we have to think about this because it might sound like superstition. Accept the actions we do in relation to what they call these potent objects. Object in the sense of their being the object of an action.
So that is to say, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, monastery, holy being, all these things. Because they say they represent so much powerful energy, they’ve got so much powerful energy in and of themselves, that any action we do in relation to them, even without, let’s say, good action, even without good motivation, the power of the object is so strong, we get good karmic result. This is why, you know, in the Buddhist tradition, especially the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, there’s this huge kind of tradition of building huge statues and huge stupas and you you see the monasteries full of things. It’s not just because they like good art, The reasoning in the Mahāyāna tradition especially is because any sentient, like I said before, any sentient being who sees or hears about anything that’s very powerful like that leaves a strong karmic imprint in their mind with that, so there’s a guarantee that they’ll meet it in the future. That’s how they talk.
They say that certain phenomena are very powerful. So by the power of the object, they say, but our actions in relation to them bring great benefit to oneself. That’s how they say it. So the power of prayer is interesting. Oh.
Yeah. Okay. Well, it’s meant to be sort of a karmic logic to it so we have to think about it. It’s interesting, isn’t it? And the power of prayer is very interesting.
Very very interesting here. Generally speaking in Buddhism, since everything is explainable. Buddha would say everything is knowable. There’s nothing that isn’t knowable. By whom, by what?
By mind. By whose mind? My mind, eventually. This the logic in Buddhism. By definition, that which exists is that which can be known by mind.
So that which can be known by mind is necessarily that which exists. It goes without saying, in Buddhist terms, it’s kind of interesting. And this is why Buddha would say we can all become omniscient, become a Buddha. There isn’t such a thing in Buddhism as mystery, no one ever knows, no one will ever find the answer. Buddhism would say that’s ignorance with great respect.
So it’s kind of an interesting point. So everything can be explained because it’s just a question of understanding it. Which is very much a scientific view, know. Kind of interesting. So this one, even about the way karma works, or you know, the power of prayer, is said to be, it’s like logical because of the power, you know.
So there’s two stories I wanna tell. One is I remember hearing about this thing about prayer and then a few years ago when I was the editor of our magazine, Mandala Magazine, one of our students in North Carolina wrote a short story for us, a very brief report of a particular, and I never think of the right words. When you’re doing this special study about sick people, do you do? Blind, all this, all that stuff. What do you call those things?
Double blind. Yeah, but what’s the word you use? What is that thing, a study? A who? A clinical trial.
Thank you, they’re the words. A clinical trial. And it was one hundred people all with the same kind of heart disease, okay? And somebody had set it up in Duke University in North Carolina. And there were four groups of people and they each got some different kind of treatment and one group, without without their knowing it, were being prayed for by our monks at Kopan, by some group of people in Israel and by a bunch of Christian nuns.
And the group that showed by far the most progress in their health was the group that they’re being prayed for. And it was so effective that the people at Duke were so surprised and delighted by this, they’ve actually now got a really full on fifteen hundred people serious clinical study that’s been written up in the medical magazines and things. So that’s interesting, isn’t it? So then the other story I wanna tell is this is again the power of virtue in the mind and how it can really affect karma. It’s very interesting.
Even in what we call quotes a miracle. It’s all Buddhism saying, it’s all logical. So there’s a story, this friend of ours called Harry. Who everybody always says, wow Harry’s a bodhisattva. Bodhisattva is just like a person, b o d h i, Bodhisattva.
He’s a person on the way to becoming a Buddha, who’s very developed in both wings, especially the compassion wing, okay? So Harry was always a very nice guy, I couldn’t see much about it, he’s a very nice guy, I remember that. So he told me, I heard the story of a person who was with him and then I verified it with Harry and he told me a couple of extra things which then tell me for sure I think he’s a bodhisattva. So okay, he was going to go up the mountains. Lama Zopa is a Sherpa, okay?
And Lama Zopa is our fellow Lama, me and Harry. And many people here, some people here. And then Lama Zopa had this dream that Harry would die going up the mountains. Was gonna go up, up, up the mountains, out of Kathmandu, up to the Sherpa country to go to a cave to meditate. And he was gonna leave the next day and he had a dream he’d die, but somehow it was too late to get the message to him.
So lamas over, had my lamas pray for him and so on. So anyway Harry was up there, he told me with his big pack, a twenty kilo pack, and there’s another nun, a friend of mine with him. And they were walking up the mountain, very, very steep, steep, steep, very narrow, whatever you call it, big ravine there, big mountain here. And then down the road Harry sees, Sarah’s behind him, and he sees these four Sherpas, know, they’re big things like this, packs walking down the mountain, very concentrated. And he realized, his first thought was, and this I’ll talk about when we talk about the compassion wing tomorrow, there’s all these meditations we do about learning to really cherish others more than yourself.
And one of the whole approaches we use is that others are more important than you. That if there’s two people, two is more than one, so therefore they’re more important. Which sort of sounds, it’s good logic, but we don’t like it of course. But anyway, Harry’s first thought was, four of them, one of me, okay, I’ll step to the side. Straight away.
So that indicates he’s meditated and practiced this to the point where it was just spontaneous. Now you know what we’re like in the West, say, well instinct for survival says immediately you’re gonna go, oh my God, panic, panic, I’m gonna go to the mountain, if they fall down, what can I do, you know, it’s not my fault? I mean, whatever, you understand. He would panic about it, but he didn’t panic, he just stepped to the side, close to the ravine. Then as they were coming closer, he realized, because they were so intent in everything, you know, that they might even knock him by accident.
So his next thought was, if they knock me, I will not hold onto them. Meaning he won’t drag him down to his death along with him. Do you see my point? I mean they’re outrageous thoughts, know. Obviously a person’s meditated and really developed those qualities by truly deeply thinking about it all.
So what happened was this, they did in fact knock him by accident, the first guy. So there he is falling, with his big twenty kilo pack pulling him back, right? He’s falling and he’s literally falling down the mountain. I mean his feet are still on the ground, he’s falling backwards. Hasn’t, feet haven’t let the mountain yet, he’s falling.
Nothing to save him, right? And then he said he had an entire psychic vision of the whole fall, he saw his own body go crashing down. He’s still on the mountain, falling, but he saw the whole thing happen. And then all of a sudden, halfway through the fall and his feet are on the mountain, everybody saw it in shock, he reversed direction and slammed into the mountain, you know. So I mean, that’s called a miracle, right?
Well according to Buddhism, that’s because of his enormous past virtue as karma. And secondly, and this is how good karma can actually catalyze good things to happen. Just like bad karma, bad actions can catalyze bad karma to ripen. His powerful virtue of enormous compassion to only think of others and even give his life for others, catalyzed this incredible virtue to actually have what we call a miracle happen, to be saved, know? Do you see?
Interesting point. Interesting, isn’t it? Anyway, yes. Before we talk about animals, you said that they generate even more negative karma, I would think of your instinct. Cause the habit, yeah, the habit is so strong.
Instinct is the habit of having done it so often, that’s all instinct is. Good to Buddhism. I assumed that that meant that that was for positive or negative actions. You’ve got your intentions there. Oh absolutely, if you’ve the instinct to be loving and kind and compassionate, inconceivable good karma.
Absolutely, because the power of the mind just goes running towards virtue. Unbelievable, unbelievable. A Buddha is a person who’s got the instinct to only do good things. Why? Cause they’ve practiced it, they’ve perfected goodness.
It’s just their instinct now. I thought before you meant that instinct was better than intention. Well no, you can say intention’s there, but intention is there. Don’t tell me lion doesn’t have the intention to kill that buffalo, they’re single pointedly on the intention. They only have the intention to kill all the time, that’s why they do it.
But they’ve got the habit as well which gives it the power. To the person who’s virtuous, only their intention, their mind is oneness with the wish to only benefit others and their mind is never free of it. And because of the powerful habit, it’s just completely instinctive now. So it is in fact intention. There’s nothing else but the intention to harm for a lion and there’s nothing else but the intention benefit for a holy being.
Because they practiced it. And that’s what makes it so powerful. Do you see my point? In other words, the intention, even with our own habits, we don’t even think there’s intention anymore. It’s all so quick, isn’t it?
Just go to it. But what you have to do when you see your mind is you slow it down, almost like slow motion. And of course you get to see there’s definite intention there. It doesn’t feel like it. Yes, Harry.
Yes, yes. He what? He had to have the intention to give his life to be happy. Clearly has to be the mind engaged. He didn’t do it without thinking, did he?
His mind engaged in the intention to step to the side in order to not harm those people. Would you agree? That was what he did, wasn’t it? He said I’m happy to step to the side basically because I don’t want them to die. Even if I die, doesn’t matter.
That was his intention. No, and why, so it wasn’t always an instinct she’s saying, so why would you think was instinctive with him? Why did it happen automatically in his mind for him? Precisely, because he’s practiced, that’s the whole point. Yeah.
I’m using the word instinct, I don’t use that term in Tibetan at all, in Buddhism. I’m using it for us because we use it and we tend to concretize it as something that just is there, that we have no control over. Oh, just instinct, we say. But this is my point, Buddha is saying why we do things instinctively is only because we have done them so often that now we do them automatically. The intention is still there definitely.
Although it feels like one split second we’re just doing everything. Do you see? Yeah. So really you could say, what we’re trying to do is develop the instinct to do virtuous things only. When we become a Buddha, it is totally intention, there’s nothing, your mind is suffused with the wish only to benefit, there’s not even a choice because you’ve practiced it so powerfully.
So with Harry, obviously, to have those thoughts arise immediately in his mind without any effort, He obviously has practiced those things very strongly. No way in the world you can have that type of attitude, know, without having practiced it. Isn’t it? Yeah. What is the savior?
I beg your pardon? What’s that, Harry? What’s who? Who’s the savior? Who’s the savior?
What? The savior. Oh I see, you could say that was the lamas’ prayers, he has the power to do that. The holy beings have the power, the Buddhas have the power to do that, but we have to have the karma to be, have it happen to us. They have the power to do that to all beings.
Beings. But we have to have the karma to be saved. So you can say to be saved, you can tell it to be done practice. Well, that’s the point. In analysis, yes it is yourself that does it, that’s right.
But there’s cooperative cause. So you can say, let’s say you’re walking across the road and someone sees you’re gonna be run over and they grab you. You created the cause by your past virtue to be saved, and you created the cause therefore to have that person there right at the right time. So it’s the same as an ordinary person helps you. Same thing, you really created the cause for that, definitely.
And that’s why the emphasis here is on us. A Buddha is a being who has all the perfect qualities, who’s capable of doing whatever needs to be done for any living being perfectly. But unless we’ve got the karma from our own practice to be there and see them and recognize it and get the benefit from them, that’s up to us. It’s just like if you’re a perfect doctor. You could be the perfect person, you could be the most amazing doctor who could heal everybody.
But if I just, even if I just don’t like you, already I’ve cut myself off from you healing me, haven’t I? So we’ve all got different karma, we might never meet you, we might not like you when we see you, we might not trust you, a whole bunch of reasons. That’s because we don’t have the karma to be healed by you. Do you see? Just like that.
Yes? You said Lambs had a dream that Harry would die, yes. To pray also, yes. I’m sure that’s all part of it. All that’s part of the whole deal.
The other lama is praying for him, absolutely, yes. Yes, that’s right. Okay, I understand. I wanted a tick. Does what’s the other person have their hand up down the back there?
Yes. Okay darling, please talk about it. Get it out. Yes, come on, that’s a good one. Please, please.
I understand, I understand. So what happens to the little girl who blows off her foot? She doesn’t know anything about karma. Okay, this is the point about karma. First of all, she had a certain kind of karma called experience similar to the cause, okay?
So she had a little foot blown off. So the very fact that she had that karma means she’s already purified the karma. I mean it’s brutal, but she’s just finished that karma. By her having that suffering, she finished that karma. Then according to what her little mind is like, she might have a very compassionate mind, she might have a very kind mind, she might be able to bear this suffering and put up with it and learn how to really walk well and benefit others and I mean, depending on what her mind is like, her own self, is what she will do with that.
So we all know, whether you think about karma or not, we all know that when we have suffering in our life, it really helps us deepen our kindness and compassion to others if we’re fortunate. I mean, we we know that, we don’t need be Buddhist to know So we can all see there’s a lot of side benefits from suffering. Every Tibetan worth their salt will tell you, from their own practice point of view, it was the best thing that ever happened to them. Because that pain and suffering, that loss, we all know in our own lives, as soon as a bad thing happens, we either get mad and angry and get miserable and bitter, and That could very easily be the mind of that little girl, because we all know you don’t have to be a little girl, you don’t have be innocent to be a little girl. You don’t have to be, you’re not necessarily mean, Hitler was a child once, for God’s sake.
All the imprints of Hitler were right there in that little kid, right? So depending on that little girl’s mind is how she deals with it. So we can see ourselves, like I said, we can deal with our own lives and it can be very powerful for us and just by having the suffering and dealing with it and bearing it and even if forgiving others or whatever, all that’s incredible purification, all that’s incredible karma, you know. I understand, that’s already a fantastic step. Even if we do think, many of us do if we don’t like the view of karma, I accept that, that things could be random but it’s what we do with them.
Well, okay, Buddhist view, as you know, is he says it’s not random, but absolutely. There are two levels of practice, you know. In Buddhist terms, it’s in relation to the two levels of suffering, there are two causes of suffering, which we should be getting onto now for the third scope, second scope. Four till five thirty, that’s now. What’s the next break?
Okay, let’s okay, we’ll talk about the next scope in a minute. We’re leading into it by talking about suffering. The second scope is yeah, I’ll talk about it. Okay, oh here, I lost the plot again. Oh my god, I’m getting old, I tell you.
Thank you very much, really is a sign of old age isn’t it? Definitely true. Two causes of suffering, okay? One is, like I said already, this is the Buddhist view, the past karma that you did that created the cause for you to be in that situation, be born in Afghanistan, be that little girl to walk on that mine. Because not everybody did, your girlfriend walked past it, she didn’t get the mine.
So that’s due to karma, let’s say. So then, in terms of future suffering, so that’s a long term goal, the past cause is why you did this action now. Then the second one is how you respond to that. So So say this little girl, and it’s perfectly feasible, we all know little girls who get angry, we understand that, you don’t have be innocent, like I said before, to be a little girl. It’s clear.
You’re gonna have a very angry mind, very resentful and very bitter and pointing fingers and full of rage and wanting to kill everybody. Mean, especially in that scenario where everybody feels that way just about. So that is the second reason why she suffers. Because her mind is angry and bitter and resentful. Now, you know, we think, well, excuse me, of course she’s angry, bitter and resentful, but excuse me, that’s not true.
We always know examples of little girls, older people who get harmed and who have forgiveness and love and kindness and gratitude for this because they’ve learned something. We read about it every day in the newspapers. So that’s the point that Buddha is reiterating about karma, that I’m reiterating here, that just because you are harmed doesn’t mean you get angry, it depends on your mind. So depending on that little girl, if she had an angry, resentful, bitter mind because she had those imprints, then the second reason she suffers is because she’s angry and bitter and resentful, so she’s gonna increase her negative karma. But if she’s a little girl who’s got a very compassionate mind, which we all know people have, we know so many stories, then that means she purifies hugely, and can grow from that, like every one of us in this room knows examples of that in our own lives.
We’ve learned to deal with pain and suffering, we’ve gotten over it, we’ve gotten better, we’ve grown stronger as a result. That’s the most marvelous way to practice, every one of us, given that we can’t guarantee, we won’t get suffering, you know? So like you said, how you deal with it is incredible, that’s the in your face, day to day level of suffering, which is amazing. Like you said, even we think things are random, this level of suffering, accepting it and working with it, is already fantastic. The Buddha’s view of karma is simply to give an explanation of how come, which for some people’s minds can work, you know.
So yes, you’re absolutely right, how you deal with it is amazing. And that’s the short term way, because we can’t guarantee suffering won’t come now. We can be as happy as we like today, we all know we can’t guarantee that Adelaide won’t be blown up tomorrow, excuse me, you told those people that they were gonna be blown up, they would have laughed in your face on September eleventh, but sure enough it happened, you know? So we can’t say it won’t, we’re living in a fantasy land if we do. So therefore, dealing with the pain and suffering that comes, you know, is the fantastic way to practise.
Right, let’s move on to the third scope. So this first scope, basically, just stripping it down again, are those few preliminary points that are really helpful to contemplate as a basis for wanting to even practice, which is really thinking about our Buddha nature, really thinking about the importance of finding a teacher to lead us on the path, and then thinking about this perfect human rebirth. Then we actually start the practice of the practice of the first scope by beginning to think about impermanence, specifically in relation to death, and the point here is to energize it, not waste its life, which is already coming from having a precious human rebirth, increase it. Then we think about the suffering of the lower realms, to increase our wish not to suffer in the future, and then to increase our wish to use this life, then we think about to turn to Buddha for refuge, and then we do what Buddha says, take his advice, abide by the laws of karma, by thinking about it. And the basic level of karma here is to abide by the laws of karma in terms of not harming others, and to benefit not even benefiting others yet, it’s not even a proactive way of compassion, that comes in the third scope.
The first level of creating morality at this first scope is to play safe. Don’t kill, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t gossip, don’t bad mouth, don’t do this, don’t do that, not to scare you, but to protect you. Don’t burn in the fire, don’t drive fast. Mum isn’t trying to make your life miserable, she’s giving you good, intelligent advice. So the first level of practice is at that level, and the reason for your own benefit, Do not underestimate this, as showing great self respect.
Then Buddha says, if and when you die, when you die, you’re gonna guarantee you’ll get another reasonable life, and you can keep on bopping on your spiritual practice. How convenient! You know, it’s up to us. Now the second level, we start to look more deeply, we start to really become our own therapists. We go more deeply into the whole psychology of being a Buddhist, more deeply into even seeing how this life is suffering.
So if we’re looking at the first one, the context here is that you’d rather play safe by being a nice person because you don’t want to get born as a dog. Simply speaking, you know? Don’t think it’s just some dumb idea, it’s kind of interesting. The second scope is you start to look at even this life, which is preferable in terms of a dog’s, sometimes you don’t think so, and to start to see that even this life is suffering, in a bigger context now, and this is where it’s a bit hard for our minds, the broader context here is Buddha’s view that we can be free of suffering altogether. So basically this is the meaning of nirvana, being in a state of mind, it’s a state of mind, right?
Whether it’s in this body or not is not the point, it’s a state of mind, that is actually a state of mind that’s utterly blissful, utterly joyful and completely free of suffering. Buddha is saying that that is possible, psychologically. Which, like I said yesterday, is quite a radical statement, we don’t ever think that in psychological terms in our Western culture, ever. We actually think it is good to have some anger, some pride, some jealousy, as long as it’s not out of control. We say we can’t even conceive of a person who’s got none of that, we think it’s dumb, right?
Mean, Buddha says don’t be ridiculous, it’s like saying water has to have a bit of pollution to give it some kind of body, you know? Excuse me, how insane. Because we have no reference point for this, we have no kind of examples to look at who say, in any models that talk about it, psychological models say you can be free of suffering altogether, and of course we don’t think it’s possible. The Buddha happens to be saying that it is possible, you know, and all Buddhist teachings are presenting what this is. So if it’s true, and this is why we talk about the so called Four Noble Truths, there’s nothing other package that sort of Buddha’s teachings that present his teachings.
And again, it sort of sounds religious, like capital letters, Four Noble Truths and all this, but again it’s just psychological, it’s just the ancient language, but it’s psychological. The third one is the point, this point about Buddha’s third one, is that there is a state of mind that is free of suffering. Now my feeling is that someone says, Robina, you can stop suffering, I think that that is a really good advice, I’d like that, please, yes, if it were possible, I would like it. And Buddha’s not saying it’s in a place called heaven, he’s not talking like that, okay? He’s saying it’s a state of mind.
Like I said, that state of mind could be in this body or another one, or not at all. That’s not the point. So there is this possibility to have a freedom from suffering. Now if so, okay, another way of looking at freedom from suffering, sounds a bit sort of negative, negating way of talking. But what is an affirmative way of saying that?
It means full of happiness, isn’t it? Free from suffering means full of happiness. We don’t go around saying I wanna be free of suffering, wanna be free of something, we say I want happiness, I want happiness, I want happiness, you know? So, Buddha says it’s possible. So if it’s true that we can be free of suffering then it’s very obvious we ought to know what the hell suffering is, just so we all know we’re on the same page, right?
That’s the first Noble Truth Buddha is saying there is suffering So if you hear the first one first, which is obvious because it’s the first one, you’d think kind of Buddha’s trying to rubbing your nose in it, we kind of know already, excuse me Buddha, kind of rubbing our nose in the fact that life is suffering, but he’s saying we ought to really look at it very deeply. And he talks about suffering in terms of three different packages of suffering, there are always these packages, okay? So there’s one package of describing what suffering is that has three levels, the first is the most gross, the second more subtle and the third most subtle. So let’s look at that one, okay? So the first level of suffering is sort of obvious, ordinary everyday common garden suffering headaches, old age, wrinkles, pain, you know, all this stuff, being harmed, that’s suffering, everybody gets it.
You can be the most handsome, gorgeous person on this earth, you’re gonna get some of that at some point, that’s clear to us. So don’t even talk about this, although we could happily talk about this one. Let’s talk about the second one. I like the second one better. The second is more subtle.
More subtle because, it sounds pretty cruel, Buddha is saying that actually, this level of suffering is what we call happiness. So it seems kinda cruel, know, oh my god, what chance have I got here? Know, I’ve gotta get rid of happiness? So basically, it helps to understand what this kind of suffering is when we look at what the cause of it is and the second noble truth is there are causes of suffering. So obviously if you think you can get free of suffering, you want to know what suffering is.
So the third one is that there is freedom from suffering. The first one is that there is suffering, we should know what it is, we can identify it, be accurate, because we want to be free of it, remember. The second one is there are causes of it. So not only do we want to cease the suffering, we want to cease the causes of suffering, don’t we? Not only do we want to pull out the pollution from the water, because Buddha is basically saying, using this analogy, that water can be free of pollution, if it can be free of pollution, you better identify the pollution precisely so you can remove the pollution.
But that’s not enough, you wanna know what the causes of pollution are so you stop creating more causes. Isn’t it? It’s very true, logical. So then the fourth noble truth is the job of doing it. Okay?
The actual path. The first one is, there is suffering. Within this, there is this package of suffering, one kind that we’re describing, there’s many ways. The first of the kind of three kinds of suffering is it’s the regular, ordinary, everyday suffering. The second one is what Buddha calls it the suffering of change, which sounds kind of innocuous, but it’s referring to what we mean by happiness.
So what I’m going get at here, what I’m just going to discuss, is that what we call happiness, the way to understand how it’s suffering is by understanding the cause of it. And the cause of what Buddha calls this particular suffering is what we call happiness, the cause of it is called attachment. So the second noble truth is when we start to get really more psychological, looking deeply into our mind, understanding, discriminating between what is virtue, what is positive, what is negative, what is non virtuous, all these different words, really identifying the causes of suffering. Why? Not to get you depressed, it’s so the hell you can be free of it.
And this is very interesting, know, and I say this quite often, think it’s so important to hear it. And you can hear already how it’s fairly precise, right? The precision and clarity that we use in our scientific investigation is exactly the precision and clarity that Buddha says we must use to know our own mind. Whereas when you think of knowing your own mind, we’ve got seventy thousand models of the mind, everybody’s got a different view, we think it’s kind of cool, it’s okay, I can have my own view, that’s fine, we can but it’s gotta be something that you work with, you know? And I mean, many of us who are Buddhists, who’ve been Buddhists for years, we don’t even know the difference between a virtue and a non virtue, we don’t even know the characteristics that cause one to be virtuous and one not to be non virtuous, we kinda just think it’s just something concrete, We don’t really have enough clarity to look into our minds, but we need to do this.
And that’s what being your own therapist means, knowing your own mind very deeply. Not just looking kind of at your navel and hoping for the best, but like, you know, to become a really good gardener, you just don’t go out there and start pulling things out all intuitively, you gotta go to boring old botany school first, don’t you? So you can be precise about what is a herb, and what is a weed, and what is this, and how do they grow together, and where you plant this one, I mean, it’s a highly complex job, you know? Well, the same with your mind, for goodness sake, it’s a highly complex job to garden this one to know what is virtue, is not, what is this, what is that, how do they work together, what causes it, why this, how that I mean, we have to really look deeply so it demands a lot of inner work, lot of clarity, a lot of precision. And of course, we’re using Buddha’s model here, you don’t have to accept this, you can use Jung or Jesus Christ as you wish, it’s your decision.
But this is the approach in Buddhism, you know. So okay, let’s look at still got plenty of time, twenty five minutes looking at suffering. Yeah, it’s been air conditioning for a while. Air conditioning time. So okay, let’s look at this second kind of suffering in group of three, in this first Noble Truth called there is suffering.
And why it is what we call happiness, and Buddha says it’s suffering. By looking at the cause of it, the second Noble Truth, which is attachment. So, in general, the point here, of course, in general, like I said already, Buddha is saying there are two causes of suffering, this is what you cover in the second noble truth, the causes of suffering, and this is where already it takes a lot of looking. You know, let’s just say Sandy punches me in the nose and someone says, Robina, what’s wrong? Why are you suffering?
Well, simple answer would be because Sandy punched me. Don’t look at anything else, do we? It’s Sandy’s fault, she punched me, she’s the cause of my suffering. It’s so simple for us, that’s the logic of Samsāra, Buddha says. Well Buddha says, when Buddha tells you what the cause of suffering are, he doesn’t even mention Sandy’s punch.
He says, Robina, the two causes of your suffering, one is your past karma, two is your neurotic delusions now, your anger. I mean, sounds pretty outrageous, right? He doesn’t even mention Sandy. Okay, he’s not denying that she’s not a part of it, but she’s only a secondary cause. You know?
Just in the same way, the main cause of the apple tree is the apple seed, the secondary cause is the water and the soil. So if we only obsessively get caught up with the water and the soil, we’ll completely forget that the seed is the point. Well, that’s what we do in our ordinary world. We never, it’s almost as if we think the main cause of the tree is my watering it. I mean, how idiotic, you know?
Or we think when we’ve got children and our kids turn out well, we think we did a really good job as a parent, we might have, but we forget that maybe the seeds of the karma in that kid as well, they had a big part to play with it. Which is why we find it so depressing when our kid turns out bad. Because then my mom got so depressed because she felt I’ve done a bad job, I’ve done a bad job, I’m a hopeless mom, I get so mad at her, and say it’s insulting us by saying that, excuse us, give us a space to know we’ve got the choices, and we’ve made our own choices, you didn’t do everything, we decided to do bad things, you didn’t. Do you understand my point? Do you?
Okay, good. Thank you very much. Am I making any sense here? Yeah. Okay.
Okay, so, the causes of our suffering Buddha says are the past action we did which sets us up to be in this situation, to meet this person called Sandy, who then punches me in the nose. I did that, okay, I set it up. Of course she’s part of the deal, there she is, staring at me, you know? So clearly that and the point of this karma one, or the one of trying to see the causes and all this stuff, isn’t to make us feel burdened and guilty, it’s to empower us to know that we can do something about it. That’s all, it’s empowering.
It’s not meant to make us guilty. Eventually, when we really understand this, we will see that Sandy is a major part. The conditions in the world outside us, called Sandy, whatever it is, play a major role in our karma. But we first have to have this sense of empowerment by really looking at our own minds, you know, that’s the point. So okay, if I can look at this, then I know there are two levels of practice.
One is to purify my this is where purification comes in, back to the other point, if I look at the two causes of suffering, the past karma I did in the present, delusions, this is why I’m suffering now, in response to the punch, then I can see there are two levels of practice. One is, like I said already, one is you purify the future karmas that haven’t ripened yet, that’s good to get, pull the seeds out before they grow, how intelligent. And but secondly, the real one day to day like we talked before, is to deal with what arises right now in front of me. This is my best practice every day, you know. As I said, we can’t guarantee when the punches and when the kisses come.
So we work with whatever comes. Really recognising the delusion inside our own mind. And this is where I’m saying you learn to be really your own therapist, you know. And this takes a lot of work to do, because right now the very way our minds work, we’re completely seduced by the outside objects. We’re totally seduced by the outside world.
We give all the power to the outside world, the beautiful things, the ugly things, the boring things. And this is the point about the ego grasping we have, the ego we have. We’re completely schizophrenically caught up in this powerful outside world. And the more miserable we are, Buddha says, is the more we are caught up in this view of life is all out there, I am it’s like saying I am nothing, it’s so bizarre in a way, you know? And the main energy this comes from is this this is now talking about the causes of suffering, okay?
The main causes of suffering, are our delusions. The root cause of suffering, Buddha says, is this primordial, profoundly deep, instinctive, wrong sense of self that we all possess. The Buddha says this is like the motor that causes us to go from moment to moment and life to life, it’s the main motor that propels us into suffering situations. This primordial sense, this instinctive sense of I, you know, profound one, very deep. And this is very, very difficult to observe.
It’s at the root of everything. It’s just like an absolute given, you know? Then on top of that, this gives rise to, like they say, the branch delusions, and these are the ones we all know. Attachment, anger, pride, jealousy, anxiety, you know, all these