Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 105-minute session, Ven Thubten Dondrub teaches the karmic effects of the ten non-virtues, grounding his explanation in the broader Buddhist framework of dependent arising, renunciation, bodhicitta, and the pursuit of wisdom. He begins by reframing renunciation—often misunderstood as rejecting happiness—as the development of genuine self-compassion and love, showing how it naturally leads to observing the law of cause and effect. He then traces how each of the ten destructive actions (killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, idle gossip, covetousness, ill will, and wrong views) produces four distinct karmic results: rebirth in lower realms, results similar to the cause in human rebirth, habitual tendencies, and environmental circumstances. Throughout, he emphasizes concrete examples—the friend who repeatedly had possessions stolen, the woman suffering paranoia as a result of cultivated ill will, the power of pure speech in realized teachers—and invites students to recognize these patterns in their own lives. He concludes by encouraging practitioners to contemplate the opposite virtues and their beneficial results, and to see that every virtuous action in the present moment—including coming to teachings with good motivation—creates positive imprints for future happiness. Pitched at serious practitioners working through a systematic study of karma.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2013 03 19 Week 4.mp3
UUID: fcc92652-abd0-462a-8cab-bfd76c761e75
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB All about Karma (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2013-03-19
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 104.7 minutes
Words: ~11,807
Pete, Peter, in in the back room. Oh, no. Not suited. Okay. Could be.
Maybe that’s why I brought this in. Yes. Okay. Welcome to our fourth class of something about karma, sometimes called all about karma, but let’s call it something about karma. So initially, the the reason to, if we have any faith in the Buddha and Buddha’s teachings, the reason to study the teachings on karma is to help protect us from suffering in this life and to help us avoid a suffering rebirth.
At deeper level, reason to study and observe the law of cause and effect is to help us achieve liberation from all suffering to get out of cyclic existence. Lamas say, including His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, that you can’t achieve the realization of emptiness without faith in the law of cause and effect and practicing it. And the way to realize emptiness is, which is about the nature of reality, is to understand dependent arising. And the law of cause and effect is an integral, vital aspect of dependent arising. And one can’t realize emptiness while one’s creating negative karma. So, anyway, I got carried away there a bit.
So it really is the most important teaching of the Buddha. It’s the central teaching. It is the essential refuge. The law of cause and effect. So try and generate a good motivation for studying it, thinking about it. So if you find it helpful, please join in the traditional prayer.
And as we do that, to make that prayer as meaningful as possible, we think of the Buddha in front of us as the very embodiment of all perfect qualities, free of all faults, our source of refuge, inspiration, and guidance, and at the same time, we think of all kind suffering mother sentient beings surrounding us. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, supreme assembly. By the merits I create through teaching the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings? So then if you find it helpful, imagine the Buddha very pleased with your motivation and showing this by now coming to the crown of your head. And then when directly above the crown, imagine that the Buddha dissolves into blissful golden light, and that light pours down into you, blessing your mind.
So then we can enhance that positive state of mind by doing the nine round breathing exercise just for a short time and strengthening that by, doing a visualization of of breathing in with each in breath of the cycle, a very calming, blissful white light. And with each out breath of the cycle, imagine breathing out all one’s agitation, disturbing thoughts, suffering negative imprints in the form of black smoke. Okay. Thank you very much. So tonight I’d like to talk about the the the effects of the ten non virtues.
You have it all actually set out, and it was the the homework for the last class. So so you should be familiar with it all by now. But anyway, it’s important. I’m I’m sorry I didn’t go through the all the ten non virtues properly, but I’d to talk about the the results. But before doing that, since I made this point that everything is connected to all of the Buddhist teachings are connected through the law of cause and effect.
I’d just like to illustrate that or explain that a little bit. So all of the Buddhist teachings can be condensed into three major topics and and which bring about three major qualities in our mind. So the Buddhist teachings can be condensed into the teachings about developing renunciation, developing bodhicitta, and developing wisdom. There is nothing else in the Buddha’s teachings other than those three topics. Everything the Buddha taught was related to one or all of one, two, or all three of those topics.
And so these are called the three principal paths in the system of teachings that’s very much emphasized in the Gelugpa tradition that we follow here. The Lamrim teachings, the graduated path teachings, the graduated path teachings to enlightenment are set out first. You the very first thing we have to develop is renunciation. Then one can develop wisdom or bodhicitta. One has a choice there.
But in the lam rim system, the normal way it’s set out is firstly renunciation is first, then bodhicitta is encouraged, and then wisdom. And so so and there are two kinds of renunciation. There’s the basic renunciation of renouncing attachment to this life, and then renouncing attachment to saṃsāra. Many people don’t like renunciation. I think this in everyone’s interested in every other aspect of Buddhism except renunciation because everyone thinks renunciation is about giving up happiness.
But what one actually renounces is the is suffering and its causes. The trouble is we think some of this suffering is happiness. But anyway, what I think what is important to really understand that what renunciation is really about, if you think about it, it is actually about developing at least the first level no. Both types of renunciation are really about developing love and compassion for oneself. Yeah.
But because by renouncing attachment to this life, we’re starting to develop real compassion for ourselves, not wanting to suffer and particularly fall into the lower realms. And we’re starting to develop genuine love for ourselves by wanting to have more genuine peace and happiness, especially in the future. Yeah. So if one starts to develop genuine love and compassion for oneself, one is actually developing renunciation. And what does that mean?
That means if one is really developing real compassion for one self, meaning the mind that does not want to suffer and particularly avoiding the causes of it, then that means we will observe the law of cause and effect. We will stop engaging in negative actions because we realize these are only going to apart from causing suffering to others, they’re going to bring suffering to me in this and future lives. So if one has real compassion for oneself, we think we have compassion for ourselves and love, but actually what we have is self-cherishing, which is a a totally different kettle of fish, whatever a kettle of fish is. I don’t know what a kettle of it, it’s a totally different kettle of fish. Yeah?
But so when we start to replace self-cherishing with genuine compassion, we really start to avoid negative actions. And when we start to replace self-cherishing with genuine love for ourselves, we will start engaging in virtuous actions more and more because we see these are what bring genuine happiness and peace and contentment. And if we develop even greater love and compassion for ourselves, we will not only develop this little renunciation of this life, but of all cyclic existence, realizing that all cyclic existence is just miserable. It may look okay on the surface but it is just in the nature of suffering. So to develop renunciation for ourselves, which is a fundamental aspect of the Buddhadharma, it totally depends on developing faith in and then observing the law of cause and effect.
And then then the at the at the heart of the Mahāyāna, of course, is bodhicitta. And bodhicitta is this wish to achieve to achieve enlightenment in order to enlighten all sentient beings. The basis of bodhicitta is great compassion for all sentient beings and all their suffering. And the basis of compassion and loving kindness for others is first, first, we have to develop real love and real compassion for ourselves. One can’t develop real compassion and love for others if we don’t love ourselves, if we don’t have compassion for ourselves.
And the more compassion we have for others, the more we will not want to hurt them, so we will stop engaging in negative actions. We will observe the law of cause and effect more and more. And the more we develop compassion, the more we will develop loving kindness, which wants sentient beings to be happy, so we will engage in more and more virtuous actions so that we can make them happy or help them. We can’t make anyone happy, unfortunately, but we can create the conditions around sentient beings whereby they can begin to achieve more happiness and contentment. Yeah.
So the basis of bodhicitta is observing the law of cause and effect. Because, you know, apart from anything else, while we’re suffering, we can’t make others happy. We can’t help them. And we are suffering because we are, you know, creating the causes of it. So we to benefit others, we first have to put ourselves in a good position by stopping creating the causes of suffering to ourselves and creating the causes of happiness for ourselves.
Right? Right. One could have been a bit more enthusiastic there about that. Yay. Yes.
And okay. So then, as I was saying a little bit earlier, then actually, I don’t know if you ever thought of this. It took me many, many years to come to this understanding because I am very thick and not very bright. But probably most people, if asked, would say, what is the you know, if what do one what does one need to stop the suffering of others? And most probably people would say, what what stops the suffering or what stops suffering is compassion.
But it doesn’t. Compassion doesn’t stop the suffering of oneself or other people. That is not the antidote to suffering. What is the antidote to suffering is realizing emptiness. This is what the Buddha discovered.
Because the cause of all suffering is the ripening of negative karma, which is and negative karma is created by delusion, and the cause of delusion is ignorance. Ignorance is the source of all suffering, every kind of suffering individual, cosmic, tiny suffering, huge suffering, every kind of sneezing, headaches, old age sickness, death, atomic wars, cancer, the whole kit and caboodle, kettle of fish. The origin is ignorance. Yeah? And the antidote is wisdom.
Yeah. So the only way to well, one cannot so wisdom is the mind that sees the true nature of self and phenomena. One cannot do that with, you know, that mind, that agitated mind. Utterly impossible. And why is the mind agitated?
It is agitated by delusion and negative karma. And when we create negative karma, we put the these these negative potencies obscure the mind. You know, the Buddha came to tell us that we are actually Buddhas. We are but the trouble is we’re obscured Buddhas. You know?
We could be totally omniscient right now, but we’re not. Why? Because we are obscured. And what obscures us is ignorance, delusion, and negative karmic imprints. And yeah.
And one can’t meditate while a person who can while we continue to create negative karma, our meditation will never develop properly. Yeah. It just won’t. We’re just fooling ourselves. And and why do we create negative karma is because, you know, we follow our delusions of particularly attachment.
The worst delusion isn’t anger and hatred. It’s actually attachment. The reason anger exists because of attachment. You can’t get angry without being attached to something. And what does attachment tell us?
Attachment says, this beautiful object is really beautiful. It’s inherently, existingly beautiful from its own side. We follow every time we follow our delusions, anger, pride, jealousy, and especially attachment because it’s the main one, our the the attach the our delusions reinforce the ignorance that tells us or creates the illusion that things are really like that. I am really like this. That is really like that.
I really need that to be really happy, and that is the real source of real happiness. All that is a total fantasy and the source of all suffering. So by stopping negative karma, we don’t reinforce our delusions, which doesn’t reinforce ignorance. So everything is depend all the Buddha’s teachings are about the law of cause and effect. It’s absolutely vital to understand it and live by it.
And, of course, to realize emptiness, one has to have mountains of merit, skies of merit. Not not just just meditating. Not one one has to have the correct understanding of emptiness. One has to meditate on it. One has to have a spiritual guide to help one.
Not some spirit being, a guru, a flesh and blood one. But apart from all of those things, one needs skies of merit. Skies of merit. This is one thing that most people especially Westerners don’t get. We need skies of merit.
This is what my my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, talks about mostly these days, how we need merit. The weekend that Rinpoche in Kuala Lumpur, Rinpoche was teaching at, Rinpoche had been asked to teach on a text called the eight verses of mind training or something another text. Rinpoche didn’t teach either of those. He taught about the Medicine Buddha practice, how you can make skies of merit by making offerings to the Medicine Buddha. Why would one do that?
Yeah. It’s so easy to create merit, but no one bothers. But I think I gave this I did give this analogy here, but it might have been in the Thursday night class. But I’ll I’m sorry. I’ll bore you all now, and I’ll never get on to the topic.
But anyway, think this is all important because merit is intricately connected. Well, it’s actually a topic in this course because merit is about right. You know? Tell me if I’ve I’ve gone through this before, but it’s it’s it’s a bit like if you take the analogy of or the example of a of a high level athlete. Right?
So for a high level athlete to, you know, win whatever sport they’re in, they they have to have skill in that sport. Right? They have to have real talent skill in that sport. And so that the in the analogy, that comes through studying the teachings, receiving teachings, and and meditating on them. Right?
But also, even even a high level athlete who who has a kind of even a natural talent for some sport, still, they all have coaches. So that’s why you need a guru. You need the guru. You have to have a qualified guru. The better the coach, the more chance you’re going to win the race or whatever it is.
Get there first. You have to have the guru. And then even if you’ve got, you know, the best coach and you’ve got this natural, incredible talent or you’ve developed by start, you know, by training, which in in our analogy is listening to the teachings, meditating on them. Still, you have to be really fit. Hold on.
Where’s my analogy going? I forgot. Yes, you have to be really fit physically top fitness. So this comes in the analogy by avoiding negative actions. Yeah.
Because that brings all kinds of problems and sicknesses and weakness and whatever. But even if you’re fit, you also have to be really healthy or strong. Oh, no. I think I’m mixing up my other anyway, there’s the other one. You can be fit and but you also need to be yeah.
Okay. Fit. Fit and healthy. That’s so you avoid negative karma. And the other thing is you have to be actually really quite strong.
You have to have a lot of power in your body and endurance, and that comes from merit in the analogy. Yeah. Merit, positive negative karma weakens us. You know? If if you really check your life, if if you’re in a period where you do lots of negative things, it the the the the mind that has a natural tendency to engage in virtue will get weakened.
Your interest in virtue, for example, in the Buddhadharma and meditating and studying and coming to teachings will decline because the mind gets obscured. But if if one engages in virtue, the effect will be that the mind that is inclined to virtue will increase. You will enjoy it more and more. It becomes easier, and you take a we take a greater interest in it. Because merit, the the the positive imprints from doing virtue empowers the mind, whereas negative karma weakens the mind, weakens the virtuous mind.
It may empower the negative mind, but it weakens our natural Buddha quality, at least temporarily. Just if you you know? Right? Am I making some sense? Yeah.
This is what people don’t get. So many people make all these silly comments about brow you know, getting brownie points and, you know, getting merit to be a goody goody. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with that. One needs merit, yeah, to empower the mind. And why do we want to empower the mind?
To benefit others. To benefit others. So all all of the Buddha’s teachings are, yeah, about the law of cause and effect connected to it. It’s vital. And it’s the essential refuge.
What is you know, ultimately, the Buddha is the the is our refuge. But, you know, we can’t see the Buddha. We talk to the Buddha. We can’t get direct guidance from the Buddha. So what is the actual refuge?
What protects us and guides us is the teachings. The Buddha himself said when he passed away and all the many of the arhats were crying and so on. And they said we are lost. You know, who who is going to guide us when you leave us? And the Buddha said the the Dharma will be your guide.
The Dharma is your guide. The Dharma is your teacher. And then if you look within all the the the many many teachings of the Buddha, what is the essential refuge, the essential protection? That is the law of cause and effect. So anyway so then and then within within that, avoiding the ten non virtues is the is the really essential thing in this life.
That’s the very basic thing. Because those non virtues, if we engage in them with all the four factors strongly present, the Buddha said that these could only result in bad rebirths. Can’t bring a human rebirth. But by avoiding them, consciously avoiding those non virtues with the understanding of the suffering results, that becomes the cause of good rebirths. It brings benefit.
We don’t harm others in this life, which itself is wonderful. It brings benefit to ourselves in this life, and it will benefit us benefit us in future and put us in a position to be able to follow the path of ever increasing benefit to others. So what really helps us to avoid engaging in non virtuous actions is understanding the results that come from negative actions. And we have to understand that there would always be a result from every single thing we do. Everything brings some effect.
But but the more we understand the effects of our negative actions, then that becomes a motivating force. It creates this wisdom energy that will hold us back from engaging in negative actions because we have this natural inclination for happiness. That is there is no natural wish to suffer. Right? So when we start to understand that certain actions actually bring suffering, not happiness, then if we listen to that, the trouble is just knowing it doesn’t stop us because there is that huge energy from many lives to engage in negative actions, to follow the self-cherishing thought.
But we have to cut that self-cherishing thought with this wisdom energy that understands what are the consequences of our behavior. And we have to kind of think about that deeply so it becomes a reality, not just empty words. So, anyway, that’s what gonna try and do in the remaining time. Well, we’re in trouble because I don’t even have a clock to has someone got a clock to is someone in charge of is is there a you are? Alright.
Okay. But I okay. I’ve got a few minutes left. Okay, so please remember I try and explain. I hope maybe you’ve all got it clear, but I’ll just repeat in.
If we create a throwing karma, a throwing karma depends on having all the four factors strongly present. And so if we create a negative throwing karma, that that that one action produces a karmic imprint, a throwing imprint that has four distinct results. One result, which is the the one that happens as soon as that karmic imprint starts to ripen, is that one has a suffering rebirth, a bad rebirth. Right? Because remember the throwing karma ripens or the first part of it ripens at the time of death.
And so that the the first aspect is brings forces the mind to experience, you know, one of the really bad kinds of rebirths. But that rebirth eventually ceases and one may have another bad rebirth because of other bad throwing karmas. But eventually, even if we’re thrown into the lower realms, we do get out of them because of positive throwing karma’s ripening. But when we’re reborn in the human realm again, then the the three other results of that one karmic imprint ripen. Because those other three results only occur in the human realm, not in the other realms.
And those results are the result similar to the cause. There’s the habit and the environmental result. Alright. So as it says here, in killing what is called the ripened result is that one is reborn in one of the lower realms. So depending who one has killed, how one has killed, and so on, one could be reborn as an animal, as a as a hungry ghost, or in the hell realms of which there are eight hot hells and eight cold hells and various other varieties.
Then when one is reborn a human being again, one experiences the results similar to the cause. So, for example, one will be killed in that as a human being. One will be murdered or killed in a war or something somehow one is killed. Or so that’s that’s the obvious kind of result, but other types of results along the same line that as the result of killing is that one could have an extremely short life or a life where one experiences a lot of sickness, a great deal of sickness, and having a very weak body and so on. So these are all the results of of killing, the karmic results of killing.
And then there’s the habit of having a tendency to kill for no particular reason, you know, or even enjoying killing sentient beings of various kinds. And then there is the environmental result. So the environmental result of killing is that one is born in a place where there is a lot of violence such as wars, but, you know, like in in other places where there’s lots of wars oh, sorry. Violence, you know, like gang violence or something like that, brutality. But also, as I mentioned before, born in a place where there’s a lot of disease, but also where the food has very little nutrients and even the medicine doesn’t work very well.
So one could be born in a place where all of those things come together or depending on how strong the karma is, you know, it could be one of those factors. And my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, says that of all those results, the worst one is in fact the habit because because, you know, you you kill and then you’re when you’re reborn a human being again, you you have the tendency to kill. And so then one create, you know, you kill again. And so then you get the four results again of being reborn in the lower realms, having, you know, having a short suffering life, born in a horrible environment, and you kill again. And so the habit goes on and on and on.
And this is how one way that saṃsāra, the wheel of rebirth, goes on. Yeah? The habit of engaging in negative actions that just produce more horrible rebirths. Just before going on, the law of cause and effect can sound like it’s just of course, many people all of Buddhism is just made up. All religion is made up to scare people to make them do good so the government can control them.
All the monks and nuns and evil priests can get all their money. And to some extent, that’s true in some situations. But I don’t think this is true of the Buddha and everything. But I to really understand and appreciate the law of cause and effect, it’s a bit of a catch twenty two, but to really get some feeling of how profound the law of cause and effect is is to to get some understanding of the most profound teaching of the Buddha, which is about the nature of reality, of emptiness, how everything is empty of true existence. You know, we live our life experiencing everything as being very solid and concrete and real, that it’s really there.
You know, even the word real, what does that mean? It’s very interesting to meditate on just what does the word real mean because we use it all the time. I really like you. This is really good. Oh, this is terrific.
This is really good. What does that mean? What does it mean? It’s very interesting. But real means it’s it’s it’s unquestionably like that.
It’s real. It’s there as it appears. And the Buddha discovered there’s nothing like that. There’s nothing there as it appears from its own side. And we live like that our body, we live our life.
I’m having a real problem here at the moment. As these things. Anyway, that we have a real body and there’s this real world. It’s out there. It’s it’s exactly it exists exactly the way it exists.
It’s it’s there solid. You know? You it’s I know it’s solid because, you know, tonight’s a disaster. Everything is going thanks. Thanks.
Yeah. But the Buddha discovered that nothing is like that. It’s not the way it appears. It’s completely empty of existing the way it appears. And and many philosophers have not discovered the profound I don’t think exactly the the depths of what the Buddha discovered, but many Western philosophers came to similar conclusions about how things don’t exist the way they appear.
I I don’t know if you’ve well, I’ve tried to read some of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s writings. There’s only apparently about three people in the world at any one time can understand even two sentences of his philosophy. But anyway, some of his ideas are very similar to the Buddhist teachings on emptiness. And then if you, you know at least I know a few words about the quantum physicists of the nineteen twenties who discovered that, you know, when you look at go deeper and deeper into the behavior of atomic particles and things that it’s not like it appears and that they it really things actually depend very much on how you look at them. It’s it’s really quite amazing.
All of which fits in with the Buddha’s teachings on emptiness, but don’t go as far as what the Buddha discovered. But if if if one has the concrete fixed belief that the world is which we do, which is that the world is out there totally separate from us, then this teaching is is just rubbish. It’s childish nonsense. But if you start to see, even get some intellectual idea that in fact this world out which which appears to be totally out there isn’t out there, but it actually totally depends on our mind. It cannot exist without our mind.
It just can’t exist by itself separate from our mind. It simply can’t. If you start to see that, then you can start to see that everything is the working of the law of cause and effect. And that’s why we’re never gonna get any yeah. We are getting somewhere.
I think one of the most profound things I’ve read about karma, and someone thought it was nonsense, but they’re they’re they’re fine, is this quote which I always quote from a novel by Doris Lessing. I’ve read this. I never finished the novel. I got bored with the novel. But this paragraph, I think, is just truly simple, profound where she says she’s talking about a war because that that makes it very clear, but it applies to everything.
So she says, a war begins into a peacetime life comes an announcement, a threat. A bomb drops somewhere. Potential traitors are whisked off to hot prison. And for some time, days, months, years perhaps, life has a peacetime quality into which warlike events intrude. But when a war has been going on for a long time, life is all war.
Every event has the quality of war. Nothing of peace remains. Now now comes the next line, which is just really amazing, where she says, events and the life in which they are embedded have the same quality. You can’t separate the things that happen in your life from you and your life. Your life is the events that make up your a life is what is labeled on the things that happen.
But and so she goes on to say, but since it is not possible that events are not part of the life they occur in, it is not possible that a bomb should explode into a texture of life foreign to it. And we can’t say, oh, you know, these terrorists, you know, blowing themselves up has got nothing to do with my life. This is our life that we live in a world where that is happening. That is our karma. People lived in this world where people didn’t blow themselves up.
We lived in this world at it earlier when people didn’t blow themselves up, but now we do. So that that’s our calm. We can’t say this is not my life. This has got nothing to do with my it’s far away, and it it’s much more real for many people, unfortunately. But it it it impinges on us.
And we can’t say this is something foreign to me. It’s got nothing to do with my life. It it has. It’s part of our lives now. It’s part of our experience.
It’s not something separate at all. It’s an effect. We’re it’s an effect. So it has a cause. We’re experiencing the effect.
Our mind created the cause. Can’t be any other way. Oh, which is not to say we have to blame ourselves that I created all the terrorists in the world, and the god is not saying that. But we created the cause to live in a world where that’s where, you know, that that happens. Fortunately, we created the cause not to be too affected yet.
But like it says, first one bomb drops, and then and it’s just kind of very rare. But then at some point, life becomes just all war. And it could and, of course, it can be the other way. A shanti bomb drops, peace bomb drops, which is very rare, but then slowly, everything becomes peaceful and wonderful. Everything becomes a pure land.
But whatever is happening, it’s our life. So then to be born in a particular environment, that what we’re we’re seeing experience is coming from our mind. Depends on our mind. Like I said, the the simplest way for me to understand this is when I die, this world this world, this particular place will cease for me, but it’s not gonna cease for everyone else. But my human mind, my karma to have a human mind that experienced this stops, and that’s it.
It’s finished. But then another karma starts. But but the point is that shows for me that this world, which seems so separate and out there and real, totally depends on my mind. But then that mind ceases. And then another another within that continuum of mind, the, you know, another mind or that same continuum of mind gives rise to something else.
You know, I think we we we’ve all read about at least, or we may even know people experiencing some kind of horrible suffering in their life due to, you know, violence and things and and, you know, domestic violence and whatever or something like that. And you think, why doesn’t the person just leave? Why don’t they just go away, Run away? But many of the people caught up in those situations can’t because of their mind, not because they physically can’t, because it is a karmic situation that doesn’t in their mind, there is no way they can go. And then at some point, it can change.
The karma runs out. And then people say, oh, I I I’ve got this other possibility. But no matter how much you can explain to someone, could do this, this, this, this, and this. It’s it’s not possible because people are trapped in a it’s a mind state which is karma, the ripening of karma. So with yeah.
So with stealing, There’s the ripen result of being reborn in the lower realms. At least when you think about this and meditate on it, it’s very I know it’s very difficult to try and consider being reborn, know, that the lower realms exist and one could be reborn in them. But it’s very helpful to meditate on the other three results and also try and see how the how your own suffering relates to these things. Like the experience of the the karmic result of stealing when one is reborn reborn again as a human being is you get things stolen from you. So some people, you know, hardly ever have anything stolen or never.
But some people have things stolen from them all of the time. Oh, not not all the time. Regularly. I I have a I have a very good friend who was a monk. He’s disrobed.
But when he was a monk, he was always having things stolen from him. He had the karma also for people to give him. He was very you know, he had no money as a monk, which is very good because one’s not supposed to. And people were always looking at giving him things so he could survive. But he was always having things stolen from him.
I once went on a trip with him somewhere in India and we were at a railway station talking and he had his his money stolen from just as we were standing there. Just like that. Bingo. He would get some money and it would get stolen. Just like that.
Or you lose things. Some people keep losing stuff all the time. Or another aspect of the karma of the karmic result of stealing is that whatever you have breaks easily, quickly. You’ve got something not really nice and, like, within, you know, short time it breaks, you damage it, you know, burn hold in a brand new piece of clothing, gets dirty. But, like, regularly, you know, there’s a regular some people have this kind of regular thing happening.
Another karmic result of stealing is, like, you you could inherit a fortune, like, you but you never get the money because you’re caught up in huge legal battles. So in theory, you you you you’re a millionaire, but you you you but it’s sitting up somebody’s bank and you never get the money. So it it’s like you have things, but you can’t enjoy them. You know, you you get a nice new car and it gets damaged straight away, or you buy a nice dress or piece of clothing and, you know, get cigarette burn on it or something straight away. So you’ve got something, but you you can never really enjoy it as it could be.
This is the karmic result of stealing or one of them. Also, another karmic result is you just don’t have stuff at all. And then the environmental result is to be born in a very barren place. Because it’s I I think it’s it’s like when you steal, you you’re you’re so you’re you’re you’re you’re you’re creating this impression in your mind where you are depriving other people of enjoyment. So you’re putting that kind of imprint in your mind so that when that imprint ripens, you don’t have enjoyment.
You don’t have the things that bring just even worldly enjoyment. So you you’re born in a a barren place where there isn’t nice things and stuff to support you. Okay. Yes. But we have that.
No. You can every every bad thing can be transformed by looking at it in a different way. That’s another thing. But the the act itself is the result of negative karma. Yeah.
I mean, personally, to be to be born rich, this is to have lots of wealth, this is the result of good karma of giving of giving things. To be poor is the karmic result of taking. Yeah. But so from a world and karma works in in this purely, you know, samsaric way that if you practice generosity a lot, the karmic result is you have a lot. You end up with a lot of stuff, resources, and blah blah blah, which is said to be good karma.
But from a Dharma point of view, having a lot of wealth can be quite bad because it can become a basis of pride and all sorts of things. So good karma like in the past, you know, it can be interpreted like that if if you’re and of course in the past, probably still do, wealth is often seen as seal of approval from God that, you know, if you’re rich, you are a virtuous good person. That’s proof of it. I mean and this yeah. And poor people are poor because they’re bad people.
I mean, this is certainly the belief in the nineteenth century. The peep, you know, poor people are bad, rich people are good. You know, that’s how God makes everything. But it’s it’s not like that at all. I mean, you’re rich because you did some good things in the past, but it doesn’t mean when when you’re rich, you’re good.
It can actually that one’s wealth can be a core you know, a condition to act very badly and create lots of negative karma. And the fact that one is poor is the result of negative actions done in the past. But as a poor person, you don’t have being poor can actually be a better situation to practice Dharma than being rich. So it’s very tricky. Anyway, I think we should take a break.
If there’s one or two questions beforehand? Yes? Well, is possible that I am but in the tradition at the moment at the state of translating Dharma words into English this word has been used. And this is what I did try and point out at the beginning of each DB module that one has to try to realize that there are Dharma words to have a word meaning in in Buddhism that they don’t have, and generally they don’t have in the normal sense. So normally people think of attachment as a good thing and associate it with affection and whatever.
But here it has a very specific meaning. It’s related to afflicted desire which exaggerates the good quality of things, and attachment becomes dependent on something. Yes. It’s yeah. Or ego is definitely always involved.
Yeah. Not not just thinking it’s yours, but you it’s it’s where you, you know, because you desire that things thinking it’s really beautiful, it’s real happiness, blah blah blah, then the attachment becomes dependent on that thing, person, situation, belief, and can’t separate from it. Well Yeah. But that’s certainly we’re not talking about what people in general think. We’re trying to talk about from a dharma point of view.
There is a there is a state of mind, a mental factor that no. I can’t even think of the Tibetan or Sanskrit word for it. Attachment. Yes. Anyway, which the only word we’ve got in English to translate, to use, is attachment.
Because the word attachment has that idea of being stuck. Just like, you know, it’s painful when you, you know, something’s stuck and you, you know yeah. And you don’t want to separate from it. You don’t and you can’t bear to be away from physically or mentally from that thing. And that is suffering and produces suffering.
Yeah. No. But that is kind. It’s still kind. Yes.
Yes. It’s very kind of him to do that. Just like it’s you know everything. If go into a shop the the person behind the counter is being paid to be behind there. But still it’s very kind when they say, what would you like?
It’s very kind and helpful. It’s kind that there are people who take our garbage away once a week. It’s very kind of them. Even though they’re being paid to do it, a lot of people wouldn’t do it. They do it.
It’s very kind of them because we would be really stuck if they didn’t. It’s very kind of them. It’s very kind of people to grow wheat for us even if they make a lot of money out of it or or whatever. It’s very kind of them. I really benefit from it.
It’s very kind that there are police people, policemen, and everything. It’s kind of them. No. It’s it’s used deliberately to actually see it is kind of them. Not to think, oh, you know, it’s gotten you know, it’s actually kind.
It’s a kindness that we we need. We live off it. We need it. It’s very kind. It’s just kind that there are sentient beings.
If we were the only sentient being, it would be really depressing. You know, you remember those cartoons with the little the tiny little island and the little guy under the one tree? Wow, that would be miserable. It is very kind that there are other sentient beings. Just that is kind that they’re around.
Right? It is designed it’s emphasized to realize, to brings the mind that appreciates and and and yeah. And wants to repay that. It’s kind. You have to meditate on it.
Think about it. But it’s a good point, though. It’s a very good point. Good. Oh, yes.
You can. You just have to let your mind change slowly, slowly due to dependent arising, which comes from by meditating on it due to dependent arising, your mind will change. Because your mind that can’t accept kindness doesn’t truly exist. That mind doesn’t truly exist. Because it doesn’t truly exist, it can change and one day you’ll find farmers very kind.
No I know that’s no they’re not but it’s still kind of them to do it. Good yes yes right Okay. Tea break. Okay. Yes.
So it says the the environmental result of stealing is, for example, to be born in a place where there are shortages of food, the bitter frosts and hail which destroys crops and things. Of course this is taught in the context that where for most of human history agriculture was the livelihood of the vast majority of people. But one can think of modern examples, but it also does mention where business ventures fail. And one could see this, there are people who work so hard to start some kind of business venture, you know, from something small to something great, and they never succeed and other people just so easy easily succeed. Whatever they they turn to, it’s an incredible success.
And other people they work so hard but nothing nothing works. Just doesn’t happen. So then the results sexual misconduct is again there’s the ripening result of being reborn in the lower realms. Due to good karma the results of good karma, one is reborn a human being, but then there’s the possibility that the other results of that negative karma of sexual misconduct can ripen. So there’s the results similar to the cause, which is it becomes very difficult to keep good relationships with other people.
And this doesn’t mean only like a sexual relationships, but just any kind of good relationship with others. So one tends to be separated from people that you care about. It doesn’t mean every time you get separated from someone that’s a result of negative sexual misconduct but especially if you see some sort of pattern in your life like this where certain things happen a lot, that’s probably suggesting that this is probably some that that kind of karma, you know, result. Yeah. Of course, then there’s the habit to engage in, to be unfaithful and so on.
And then there’s the environmental result of living in a muddy, smelly, dirty place. Normally it says, you know, you get reborn in that. So that’s where it’s the the karmic result is very strong. But also it can mean and and what that is implying is that you’re not only reborn there, but it’s like you’re stuck there for some time. That’s the karmic thing that people in situation where they can’t get out of.
And then that karma finishes and then suddenly, you know, you can get away from it. But it can also mean that not just being reborn in such a place, and this applies to all of the ten non virtues, but for some period in your life, and it may even be a short period, one is in a stuck in a particular kind of environment. And yeah. So this yeah. Yeah.
Pleasant environment. Many years ago, a group of students went with with Lama Zopa Rinpoche to Tibet, and there was about forty of us went with Rinpoche. We were there for two months. And the the couple of days we or or the very the the very day that we when we crossed the border into Nepal, well, there there was incredible rainfall and torrential there had been horrendous rain for days and days, so the road between Tibet and Nepal was washed away. And we had to walk for something like twenty four hours.
We had to walk in the rain and everything across this. It was amazing, amazing experience, especially doing it with Lama Zopa Rinpoche. And we had walked through an awful lot of mud. And at one point, I was walking alongside Rinpoche with a couple of other people. He sort of joked, I think we’re experiencing the result of sexual misconduct.
So so then with lying, the karmic results that we can experience in the human realm is that even when we speak the truth, you know, people don’t believe us, don’t listen to us. We have the tendency to lie and deceive others, And one is born or has to experience at least for some time an environment where it is difficult, you know, it’s difficult to find people that you can trust, where people are very dishonest and so on. So one one should also think how much suffering that and difficulty that produces. You can just say the word one doesn’t sound so bad. One’s born in a place where you can’t trust people.
But if you think about that, that produces a really where you can’t trust people, it’s pretty scary and horrible. There’s not much enjoyment in life if you’re surrounded by people that you just can’t trust, especially if it’s a lot of people, if it’s just a few people that you can manage. But if you live in a place where there’s almost no one you can trust, it would be really horrible. Yeah. It’s so easy to lie.
You know, of all the non virtues, the ones with speech are the easiest to engage in, you know, like regularly. So, you know, we can lie. But and and honest is such a vital thing in life for just general well-being between two individuals, between within a family, in a community that you have there’s there’s trust and honesty. It’s it’s so vital. And of course yeah.
And in teach in in practicing the Dharma, one wants one’s speech to be believed. And this is this is one of the why it is so vital to take teachings from realized or, you know, great practitioners, realized beings, because their speech is pure. They haven’t lied for a very long time. So their speech is incredibly powerful, such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama who at least Apart from this life, could say, I think for many lifetimes has led apart from being a Buddha, let’s leave this it’s easy to say His Holiness is a Buddha, but has probably been a Bodhisattva for many lifetimes and lived lived a very pure life. So his speech, his holiness speech is very pure.
So when someone like his holiness speaks and you hear it, it has a very powerful impact on the mind. Whereas someone whose speech you know, people who live, like, a life where they are lying a lot, their speech has no power to to to bring benefit. It may have power like Hitler to bring harm, but it doesn’t have power to benefit. So that’s so why it’s so important to to have good speech, not to lie, to tell the truth. Because when you hear realized being you know, this is the point that just through the power of hearing them, you can gain realizations.
You know, I I think I’ve already mentioned that in the life story of the Buddha, his first disciples became arhats simply by hearing the Buddha. They didn’t go off and meditate for days, weeks, months, years, years, and lifetimes. They just heard the Buddha speak the four noble truths, and they got it. They realized through the by their own good karma and the power of the Buddha’s speech. I always tell a story.
Was just these things operating when I I can remember when I was a little kid. Actually here in good old Adelaide. I was a little kid here in Adelaide. Now I’m an old little kid back in Adelaide. Where was it?
Richmond Primary School. Was it Richmond? No. At Goodwood Primary School when I was a little little kid. And we used to play something called Red Rover.
And I can remember one time when we were playing this, I think we stopped. We ran out of energy and we were thinking of something else to play. So there’s a whole bunch of us all, you know, yelling about what to do. And I said I was yelling out doing let’s do I can’t remember what this this. And no one paid any attention.
And then some other kid said the same thing. And as soon as they said it, they said, yes. Let’s do that. And I can still remember how I felt like I didn’t exist. It was really horrible feeling that, you know, where am I?
I’ve been saying that ten times, and no one no one even heard. They didn’t say no. They didn’t take any notice. It was a really horrible experience. I think that was the karma, you know, karma ripening there.
No one listens. Oh, yes. Sorry. I hope so. It’s meant to.
Yeah. You listen to lamas over Rinpoche, that’ll bring up some stuff in you. Rinpoche will go on and on and on for hours until it comes up. Yeah. Yeah.
Sure. If I was more compassionate, I’d be or more skillful. Yeah. And that especially to meditate on it is meant to bring up stuff. Yeah.
Rapidly moving along. So then there’s divisive speech again. So the result similar to the cause is that we end up with experiencing the suffering of loneliness because of having few friends, you know, even getting difficult finding difficulty difficulty of people working for you, having good relationships. Then you have the habit of the to cause disunity. And then one is born in a rugged, uneven, inhospitable environment where communication is difficult.
Alright? Because with divisive speech, you’ve you’ve you know, you’ve you’ve you’ve you’ve made communication between people bad or worse. So then one once put that imprint where where you have to, at least for some time, endure an environment where you can it’s very difficult to communicate with people. Either either just because of the actual environment. You’re born in the desert or there’s giant mountains or something like that.
Or well, for example, like, you know, all of us I I don’t know if it’s I don’t know if this is actually true, but we all tend to live in an environment now where it’s very difficult to communicate with people. We don’t know our next door neighbors, don’t see them. You know, we we all live all close together, but we we hardly see each other. We don’t have communities. We live just all isolated lives, which is not so good for us.
Whereas there are other, you know, traditional communities that are looked down on as being poor and primitive, but they have these incredibly rich lives of peep you know, where everyone is very close and look after each other, and they all know each other and take care. But we don’t have that anymore. We did to some extent before, but that is really, you know, rapidly falling apart. And, of course, there’s obvious, you know, you know, external reasons one can point to, but, you know, there are the deeper causes as well. Then insulting words or harsh speech.
So when one is reborn as a human being, you know, one has to experience the results similar to the cause of people abusing us. And, for example, even sometimes when we when we try and say good things to people, they misunderstand us. Have you had that experience? Yes. So this is the point.
This is what Lama Zopa Rinpoche says. You check and you think, have I had these kind of experiences? Can you identify having these experiences and how unpleasant it was? If we don’t want to have that again, we have to avoid the cause because it can’t happen for no reason. This is what the teaching is saying.
Nothing happens for no reason. That it’s just a fluke. It’s just sheer chance. It just happens. Nothing just happens according to the Buddha’s perception of of how the universe is functioning.
Well, His Holiness does say things like it gets very complicated, but generally speaking, you know, whatever world you know, like the world we’re living in is the karmic result of all sentient beings and, like, this human world is generally the result of good karma. So and so one needs good karma to be born into this world where there is there is suffering, but there is happiness and beauty and good stuff, and the dharma is existing here. But his holiness says things like well, roughly condensing what his holiness is. So one could say that to have trees in our world, this is good karma. Trees are nice things.
They’re beautiful and pleasant and blah blah blah. So that is some kind of good karmic result. But as but then, like, the the mere self self perpetuating process of trees growing and dying and growing and dying, that isn’t any particular personal karma involved there. It’s just something that is a basic ordinary dependent arising. But if you’re walking through a forest and a a branch of a tree falls on you I mean, branches of trees fall down all the time.
You know, that’s just but when it falls on you, then that’s not just you just happen to be standing under the tree when it fell down. It’s not that the tree decided to fall down on you, but when you’re experiencing something, you know, there’s the outer condition. But for for to meet that outer condition, one has to have created the cause. Yes. Yes.
Definitely. That’s the ultimate thing is when when we directly perceive the way our self and things actually do exist. Once we’re having that experience, there is no delusion and there’s no karma. It’s all finished in that moment, in that very moment. It’s all gone.
Yeah. And no suffering. Yeah. And, of course, if we can have even some experience of that, the more we have some experience of that, then our delusions are less. We create less and therefore, we engage in less negative actions.
Yeah. So again, there’s the habit of using harsh speech of having the tendency to be critical and hurtful. And one is born in an environment where there are many tree stumps, brambles, nettles, sharp rocks, and thorns. In other words, things that prickle and, you know, just in the environment, there’s unpleasant things that, you know, stab you just like, you know, how harsh speech, you know, cause suffering to others. It comes back in the form that we’ve created an environment where just the environment is painful.
Actually, you think about Australian environment, it fits with practically all of the ten non virtues. Barren and lots of poisonous things and biting things and whatever. And then with idle gossip, one the karmic results when we reborn human again is the the results similar to the cause that people don’t take our speech seriously. They don’t listen to what we have to say. We have there’s the habit of tending to talk a lot.
You know, for no reason to and to there’s there can be the habit of gossiping, but also just the habit of just talking, the need to, you know, talk. Some people can’t bear silence, and they have to say something all the time. Thank you. Again, once upon in a difficult environment With covetousness so these are the really heavy ones, covetousness. These are the ones of mind.
So with covetousness, which is this, you know, this really heavy mind that is grasping and wanting things, thinking, oh, you know, I I deserve things far beyond what other people I deserve more than anyone else. I’m the most special. I have to have this. No one should have this. This is mine, and I should be able to get it no matter by any means and so on.
So with that mind, one creates the cause when one is reborn as a human being to, you know, to be basically to or to never achieve what one wants, to never get what one wants or what one when one gets it, it’s never what one thought it would be to be. And and so that one also has the the habit of constantly being dissatisfied and grasping. So which is the worst thing to have really, that that mindset. And as as a result of covetousness, the wants more and more and more and more, you end up being born in an environment where there’s nothing or very little that brings any kind of happiness. And then with harmful intent, ill will, when one is reborn human, one experiences a lot of fear and panic and and and paranoia.
One can see, I think, that many types of what are identified as mental disturbances are actually extreme forms of these karmic results. A lack of paranoia where people feel that everyone’s attacking them as against them. But, you know, there’s there’s nothing going on, but the person is absolutely sure that everyone hates them and is going to harm them. Yeah. So that’s an extreme form of this this mind of ill will, of following ill will that really has incredible hate and bitterness and a sense of revenge, always thinking like that.
So then you think people you you experience the karmic result that you think people are like that towards you. Many years ago, when I was in Bodhgaya for teachings with his holiness, the Dalai Lama, there’s a whole bunch of monks there, western monks. And some of us wish there was about eight or nine of us sharing a room, and there was this huge American monk who was actually really quite mentally disturbed. He should never have become a monk. But but we were all sitting in our room one night, one afternoon.
We’re sitting on our beds doing various things, doing prayers or reading a book or someone’s reading a newspaper. And then all of a sudden, this this this monk sort of accused us all of, like, to you know, we were all out to get him. You know, every the room was dead silent. Everyone was just in their own little world. And then he he was huge guy with tattoos and the whole shebang.
He ended up in in prison for the criminally insane. But, you know, when I was living in a country I won’t name because I don’t want to identify anything, I I knew a a woman. I didn’t realize this at first because she was a very sweet lady, very nice. But then slowly I discovered from her husband that she suffered from this paranoia where she, you know, she would she would go to work and then someone in the office would do something or look at her and she knew that they were part of a plot against her. And and her paranoia kept increasing so that, like, not just the people in the the office but, you know, everyone.
So it spread to more and more. And people just had to, you know, do the tiniest thing. And and that was, you know, absolute proof that they were part of this giant plot to get her. So eventually, there was virtually no one that would that that was not part of this plot, including her husband. Yeah.
So I think this is that kind of thing, the karmic result. Because she was a very she was a very sweet lady in this life, but this is the karmic result of ill will, of, like, real hatred, like, really ugly, heavy, negative thoughts to others and cultivating those thoughts, you know, really thought you know, thinking those thoughts. The point about these ones of ill will is it is just a thought. You know? The negative karma of ill will is where you are you know, I hate you.
I’m I’m gonna get you. I’m gonna really get you. I’m gonna make your life miserable. And that you you you may never make that person’s life miserable. You never you may never say boo to them.
You may never get around to following all the plots in your mind. But just that way you decide, I’m going to get you, that completes the negative karma of ill will. It’s just it’s just, you know, an the activity of of thought. And the Buddha says this can create, you know, lifetimes of suffering. Of course, there’s the the the habit to harm again.
And, of course, the environmental result of living in really violent places where there is constant fighting and brutality and lots of disease. And just very quickly, sorry, and then we’ll finish. There’s wrong views. And this is not just having a wrong view of not not believing in something that’s true, but really holding on to that mind that I, you know, it couldn’t possibly be true. Why?
Because I don’t believe it. I don’t understand it. Therefore, it’s wrong. Totally wrong. You know, I’m really absolutely determined not to ever consider the possibility.
So this is in many ways the worst from a dharma point of view and becoming free of saṃsāra and suffering. This is the worst one because you you have the the karmic result similar to the cause that you find it very difficult to believe things which are true. That that and that you you have you have the habit of getting the wrong understanding and drawing wrong conclusions from things. People explain something and you come up with a completely wrong, you know, conclusion to it. So in other words, this means, you know, we we we we have the habit to become more and more ignorant to block ourselves off from what is really true and helpful.
And then there’s the environmental result of being born in a place or having to endure a place, at least for some time, where the the the basics of life are very difficult to find. And although it doesn’t mention here another because it often talks about just the mere physical environment, but it can include the sort of social environment. And here, it’s often explained that one is born in a place where there is nothing is held sacred, you know, is a little bit our world these days, where religious values aren’t valued very much anymore. The people who have religious values are considered primitive and silly and pathetic and laugh at, you know, like I said, that famous sticker. What is it?
Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go to go everywhere. So that’s considered really cool, but that’s really kind of sad when you think about it. But there are places, you know, maybe even whole countries, but places within countries where religious values and altruism and kindness are just hardly existent. And if they are, they’re not then things not admired and being honest and so on.
Pretty gruesome. One wouldn’t want to be born there, but people are born in these places. And there has to be a reason. There has to be a reason. Because when one’s born in something like that, you one experiences something, and the experience isn’t good.
The mind is experiencing something really unpleasant. So there has to be a cause. So conclusion, if we don’t want these horrible experiences, we have to avoid the causes, and we can. We have all the conditions to do so. And I didn’t put this in the homework, but, actually, you can do this and it’s well worth doing is you can think about the very opposite.
So like if if we create these non if so the opposite that there is the virtue of not killing. You know, there’s the non virtue of killing and all the horrible results. And then there’s the virtue of not killing. So that would produce the opposite effects of instead of having a short life and lots of sickness by not killing. And particularly there’s the super virtue of saving life.
Right? There’s the basic virtue of not killing, but then there’s the super virtue. I don’t know the technical term if there is one, like the super virtue of really nurturing life, saving it, protecting it. So then that’s even better. So then you have that creates the cause for long life, to have a really healthy life, to have a really strong body with lots of energy, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
And to be born in a, you know, an environment where everything nurtures life, if food is really There’s medicine. It’s peaceful, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah? And you have the tendency, the habit to save to to, you know, to appreciate life and nurture it. And not in the habit not to kill, etcetera etcetera.
So that just creates the cause for better and better rebirths. And then there’s the the the the of not stealing and the super virtue of sharing and generosity. So one can think just by engaging in the virtue, there’s the opposite effects. So you can imagine what the opposite effects would be and how desirable they would be. So if we want those, then we need to create the cause because it won’t happen any other way.
It really won’t. Because right now, all of us here, the very fact that we are here means that actually right now we do have a lot of karma. This doesn’t make us better than anyone else, that we are somehow special. But right now, we just happen to have access to a lot of good karma. But it’s also interesting to think, to realize that every time we have a good experience, like drinking a nice cup of tea from a nice cup, we’re using up some of our good karma.
You smell it or you look at a beautiful flower and you smell it, that’s using up some good karma. So if we don’t replace it, we’re in big trouble. It’s like, you know, people born rich, you know, you have inherent a million dollars and, you know, you spend it, spend it, spend it, but you don’t work. One day, empty bank. You can inherit a million dollars and spend the rest of your life spending or these days you can do it very quickly, but you know what I mean.
You know, spend don’t work. Spend have a nice life spending, but then nothing for the you know? You run out, nothing for the rest of your life. So we can use this life. We can have a nice life because we’ve it seems most of us have probably got access to a lot of good karma, but we use it up.
And if we don’t do anything worthwhile in this life next life maybe we have access to a whole lot of bad stuff. On that happy note, we’ll finish. But the happy note is we have actually created good karma by being here, right? Remember? We had good motivation, good object, there was good listening, and now we’re happy that we stayed and persevered and did it.
Extremely happy. Right? And we’re rejoicing that everyone else did. So this is really good positive imprint. So we can dedicate this if you’d like to join in.
Page twelve. Due to the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of a Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious bodhimind not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline but increase forevermore.