Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 113-minute talk, Ven Thubten Dondrub continues a five-part series on karma by grounding the entire Buddhist path in the law of cause and effect. He opens with the proper motivation for listening—bodhicitta, the wish to achieve enlightenment to benefit all sentient beings—then establishes why karma is called “very hidden phenomena” that only the Buddha perceives fully. He explains the four essential factors that create complete karma: the basis (the object), intention (recognition, motive, and delusion), the act itself, and completion (including the state of mind afterward). The bulk of the teaching systematically covers the ten non-virtuous actions—three of body (killing, stealing, sexual misconduct), four of speech (lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, gossip), and three of mind (covetousness, harmful intent, wrong views)—with concrete examples, tough questions from the audience about soldiers and suicide, and discussion of how each action ripens into four results: rebirth in the lower realms, a short or troubled human life, a predisposition to repeat the action, and rebirth in an unfavorable environment. Ven Thubten emphasizes that understanding karma is not fatalistic but empowering: we can purify negative imprints and create the causes for happiness through virtuous action. The teaching is dense, practical, and candid about how difficult Buddhist ethics can be, pitched at serious practitioners willing to examine their own complicity in harm.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2015 09 22 DB All about Karma Week 2 22-09-15.mp3
UUID: 13eb9044-2661-41e7-928e-e988c201da5c
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB All about Karma (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2015-09-22
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 113.0 minutes
Words: ~11,459
I’d like to welcome everyone to our second talk of Well, I’ll be giving five talks in this course on all about karma. To make this time as beneficial as possible, then it’s really important from our own side, when we listen to the teachings, to try and listen with the best motivation, to have a strong motivation, a clear motivation in our mind, and to make our motivation the best possible. So the whole idea of this itself is connected with the law of cause and effect, that depending on the nature of the cause, that determines the nature of the effect. So if one wants to get the best result from listening to the dharma, one will get that by having the best motivation one that needs proper motivation, and one needs to make one’s motivation strong and clear and as virtuous as possible, and then one will get the best result. And the best motivation that we can possibly have is called bodhicitta.
This is the wish to realize the full potential of our mind, to achieve the state of enlightenment, to be in a position Well, when we achieve enlightenment, we achieve what we are always seeking, unconsciously, unconsciously, which is to be free of all suffering and to achieve and to experience peerless, everlasting happiness. So achieving enlightenment achieves our own purpose, but it also enables us to repay the kindness of sentient beings in a perfect, lasting way. And the reason to repay the kindness of sentient beings is because they have been immensely kind to us, that our existence in every conceivable way arises depending directly and indirectly on all sentient beings. We particularly depend on their kindness, and we do receive this from every sentient being. We have received every kind of imaginable kindness from all sentient beings countless times in beginningless saṃsāra.
We’re often not aware of this because we’re caught up in our little own self-cherishing bubble. So caught up in that, we don’t often recognize the support and help that we receive from others, but it’s definitely there. And particularly, most important of all, we depend on the kindness of a mother, and we’ve received that from every sentient being countless times in beginningless saṃsāra. Because our mind beginningless, we’ve had an infinite number of previous rebirths. For most of those rebirths, not all of them, but most of them we’ve needed a mother.
According to the Buddha, there has been time in beginningless saṃsāra for every sentient being to have been our mother, not just one time, but many times. And all these kind beings are trapped in cyclic existence, having minds controlled by delusion and karma, which means they are suffering. And in their suffering, being completely helpless without any real understanding of their situation. Sentient beings trying to be free of suffering are in reality much of the time actually creating the cause for more suffering to just simply perpetuate their saṃsāra to move from one suffering realm to the next over and over again. So the more we come to understand this, the more we come to be aware of it and allow ourselves to feel this situation, it can become completely unbearable until we reach a point where, we can’t bear it any longer and we come to the conclusion that we just can’t waste our life just doing ordinary things, chasing after ordinary pleasures, depending on the suffering of others to do so, that it’s not even valid just to practice the Dharma to get a good rebirth for ourselves while sentient beings are suffering, it’s not even valid to Well, maybe that’s not the right word.
What’s the right word? I can’t think of the right word. It’s not correct to work for our own nirvana, because to achieve that state, the only way we can achieve it is depending on other suffering sentient beings. But how can we just achieve this state of bliss bliss depending on suffering sentient beings and leave them to suffer. How can we do that?
This is the Mahāyāna view. We have to achieve enlightenment. We have to put ourselves in a position where we can perfectly repay the kindness of sentient beings. The only way to do that is to help them to become completely free of all causes of suffering, and to achieve all the causes that will lead to peerless, everlasting happiness. That wish to achieve enlightenment in order to perfectly repay the kindness of sentient beings is bodhicitta.
So please, as much as one possibly can, try and generate that thought right now to help you do that, if you wish to. There’s the traditional prayer composed by the great Indian master, Lama Atisha. This is on page twelve. And as we recite this prayer, the tradition is, especially for those who have already taken refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, to visualize the Buddha in front of oneself as the embodiment of those Three Jewels of refuge. One can also think of the Buddha as the embodiment of all perfect teachers of the path, present and future.
One can think of the Buddha appearing directly in front of us to remind us of our Buddha nature and to think that the Buddha is appearing to inspire us to realize our Buddha potential. And at the same time we try and think of all sentient beings surrounding us, starting with our mother of this life on our left, our father on our right, and then behind us the rest of our family, then our friends and helpers. In front we think of those who may dislike us or who have harmed us. And then as much as possible we try and think of all the other beings of cyclic existence, all the different beings of the different realms, and think of the different sufferings that they are experiencing. So in order to achieve enlightenment, that involves doing many things, and the very basis of practicing the Dharma that will lead to enlightenment is observing the law of cause and effect, avoiding all forms of negative actions, trying to engage in every possible kind of virtuous action.
This is the very basis of all Dharma practice. So for this reason I will study this subject. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By the merits I create through listening to the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. Thinking the Buddha is very pleased with your motivation, you can imagine that the Buddha in front of you now comes towards you, and when directly above the crown of your head, you can imagine that the Buddha then dissolves into blissful golden light so that the light can then pour down into you, blessing your mind to be able to understand the teachings on the law of cause and effect, blessing your mind to be able to put these teachings into practice correctly, and blessing your mind to be able to eventually gain a complete realization of the truth of all aspects of the law of cause and effect.
So then briefly we can do the nine round breathing exercise just to allow our mind to become a little bit more calm, clear and concentrated, so that we can use that more subtle level of mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. Okay. Thank you. Sorry about last week. Got a bit sick.
So we’re a bit behind, sorry. So we’re kind of trying to catch up. Last week’s and this week’s all in one. Don’t know if this will happen, but we’ll try. As I was trying to say the week before, last, and just now, if one wants to follow the Buddha’s teachings, follow the Buddha, consider oneself a student of the Buddha, some kind of Buddhist or a Dharma student, then the very basis of all practice is the law of cause and effect.
This is the fundamental thing to practice, and in order to practice it more and more, of course, one needs to understand it more and more. But actually the law of cause and effect is one of the most complicated subjects of all in the Buddhadharma. There are said to be, I think, are three kinds of phenomena. There are I don’t know the exact technical terms now but there obvious phenomena, things that one can see directly. Then there’s what is called hidden phenomena.
And an example of hidden phenomena is the true nature of all things, the emptiness nature, the shunyata nature of all things. So this is said to be a hidden phenomena. But of course, to understand the empty nature of all phenomena is the most difficult thing in the Buddhadharma. Then there are said to be very hidden phenomena, and the example of very hidden phenomena is the workings of the law of cause and effect. Only the Buddha can actually see, perceive directly how the law of cause and effect works in all its profundity.
So we can’t expect to understand it. This is like trying to understand Einstein’s theory of relativity in five minutes, or even twenty years. I don’t know how many people in this world understand Einstein’s theory of relativity, or any of his other theories. And as I was trying to say in the first week, the law of cause and effect is also intimately connected with understanding the teachings on the nature of mind according to the Buddha’s view, and the nature of reality, on emptiness. The more one understands something about the nature of mind and also the nature of emptiness, then the law of cause and effect makes much more sense.
But basically, in trying to understand life and what is going on, there’s been only three basic explanations. The most pervasive one, until recently, has been the view of the theists that there is some kind of creator God existing who has created everything. To make sense of all of this strange stuff that is going on around us, people have argued that there is this Creator being. But there’s no explanation of why the Creator exists, of course. You’re stuck with, Why does the Creator exist?
That’s explaining why all this strange stuff exists, but then, well, because there’s this amazing being who’s created it all, but then, well, of course, nothing created God, but anyway. But, you see, the more one understands the teachings on the nature of reality according to Buddhism, that things exist. The naive, realistic view that we all have is that things really are out there. They really are out there. Right?
Because you can touch them. There they are. So proof it’s really there. It’s not an hallucination, it’s really, really there, isn’t it? It’s all really out there.
But many people have argued for a long time that just because things appear out there like that, it doesn’t mean they really are. Lots of philosophers have been arguing this for a long time. So many philosophers or not many, some philosophers’ views have come quite close to the Buddhist view about emptiness. Because the Buddha discovered that although things appear to be existing out there from their own side, they don’t exist that way at all. They appear to, there is that definite appearance of things very solidly out there existing from their own side, but in reality things not only don’t exist that way, they can’t exist that way.
And in fact, they arise dependently on many causes and conditions, on many parts, but most importantly, they arise depending on the mind. So this is the really important thing, that things actually exist arising depending on our minds. On all our minds together, but also on our own individual mind. For us to experience the world and to experience it in a particular way, it totally depends on our mind. Things don’t appear that way, but in fact, that’s the way they exist.
This is what the Buddha discovered. And so they depend on our mind, not our brain, but our mind. They depend on our mind. So the law of cause and effect is explaining basically how our mind works. To give rise to different experiences, and with each experience there is a feeling of pleasantness or suffering, happiness or pain, and so on.
Very briefly, as we mentioned in the first week, the four basic factors of the law of cause and effect is that there is a definite relationship between the nature of the cause and the nature of the effect. The nature of the cause determines the nature of the effect. There has to be the second factor is that there has to be a cause to experience an effect. If there’s no cause, there’s no effect. And once the cause is created, then the karmic seed is generated, and that karmic seed just doesn’t fizzle away.
The energy of it remains there, and in fact, it’s constantly expanding the potential of that karmic seed, so that when it ripens, the result is much more powerful and long lasting than the energy that went into creating that seed. An imprint, a karmic imprint, positive or negative, can be generated in just a moment. But when that imprint ripens, the result can last for just an incredibly long period of time. So we need to know those things and try to understand them as much as possible in order to avoid engaging in negative actions that can only definitely bring suffering. And so we will engage more and more in virtuous actions that will only bring happiness to ourself and enable us to be of benefit to others.
So basically we have to ask ourselves, when things happen to us, why do they happen? There are really only three explanations: there’s this creator controlling things, or the second explanation, which I never got around to, is basically the materialist one, that there’s no real cause for anything, things just basically happen. There were some expressions I could use, but maybe not so appropriate amongst the quote. But there is one about something, you know, things happen, you know, there’s a certain word that you can put there, stuff happens. It does, that’s for sure.
The materialistic thing is that two physical things collide into each other, and it’s all simply due to physical laws, because there’s nothing beyond physical phenomena. But the point is, from a Buddhist point of view, if both of these phenomena could be human beings colliding with each other in some way, contacting each other in some way, but even if only one of these phenomena is a sentient being coming in contact with just physical matter, The point is, when that sentient being comes in contact with physical matter, that sentient being, of course, his or her body is physical, but when that physical body somehow connects with some other physical thing, another human being, or a tree, or the sky, or food, or music, or something, there’s an experience. There is a mind experiencing it. Yeah. So why is that mind experiencing that?
Yeah. You know, just to get a bit gory, but sorry, there are children who are born with all, like in the womb, they are born with all sorts of physical what’s the correct word to say? Defects, deformities, abnormalities or whatever. The scientific, physical materialist explanation is all genetic, blah blah blah blah blah blah. It’s all this physical explanation.
Sure, Buddhism doesn’t deny that, that there’s all these physical explanations of why this child has this particular physical deficiency problem, whatever, whatever. Maybe because of some medicine that the mother took or the mother smoked too much or ate the wrong thing or a combination of many, didn’t eat enough or blah blah blah or drank too much or whatever. All these many many physical physical factors, sure, or genetic factors, yes. But that only explains why a body is like that. But that body is connected to a mind.
So from a Buddhist point of view, the question arises: Why is that mind having to experience that body? That is the point. That is the point. Some people born incredibly beautiful. There are, from conventional point of view, very beautiful people, and there are conventionally very ugly people.
People could be around and say, oh, you’re a Buddhist monk, you know, Buddhists wouldn’t talk about beautiful and ugly, we’re all blah blah blah’. Conventionally, this is how things human beings conceive of things as being beaut, whether this is a good thing to do or not, that’s totally irrelevant. People see people as being beautiful and ugly, desirable, undesirable, lovable, unlovable, blah blah blah. And there are people who have very nice bodies, very nice faces, very nice skin, very nice hair, very nice teeth, very nice eyes, and what? Very nice bones, very nice nails.
Everything’s nice. And there are other people whose all of those things just don’t come out very nice at all. Why? And there’s a person that experiences that. There’s a person that experiences that.
It’s not just a body, it’s not just a thing, it is a person, there is a mind that is experiencing all of that. So why is that mind experiencing that and not that? Why is this mind experiencing a dog’s body and not a human body? And this is where the law of cause and effect comes in, because one has created the cause. And if one creates the cause, you get the result.
The mind gets the result with this body and this experience. I don’t know if I mentioned this, and I don’t want to go into it too much. I’m going to put my toenail in it and quickly withdraw because it gets very complicated and tricky. But just the mere fact that you are born with a male body or a female body in this world now, we experience the world in different ways. Completely different not completely differently, but quite differently.
Why one’s created the cause? It gets even more complicated that you get born in a female body in one country and you experience the world like the world in the West. It’s pretty good. You get born in a female body in some other parts of the world, it’s pretty gruesome. You’re born white in a white country, it’s quite good.
If you’re born white in a black country, it’s not so good. If you’re born black in a black country, it’s okay. If you get born black in a white country, but dominantly white country, it’s really not such a good deal at all. Why? One has created the cause.
One’s created the cause, and you get the result. This is the Buddhist view. But this is what we always have to ask Why is this happening to me? Why? And of course, for many things that happen, maybe even most of the things that happen to us, there doesn’t seem to be any reason now why this is happening to me.
But if we look from this very broad perspective that the Buddha’s teachings give, that it’s our mind experiencing that, the answer is always: Whatever is happening to me, good or bad, what seems justified or totally unjust, it a karmic result. Nothing can happen accidentally or by mistake. The mind doesn’t make mistakes. The mind does. Yeah, I was waiting for that.
But you know what I mean, don’t you? Of course, our intellect can make mistakes. But the law of cause, in a way, this fundamental way the mind works, that never makes mistakes. The past, the mind engaged in some action, the imprint is there, so the result comes. It’s not as though bad things happen simply because we’re being evil and punished.
It’s not like that at all. It’s just simply one engages in an action, and the result will come. I always give this I can never think of any more intelligent or just different examples. For example, If you lie out in the sun, you with your clothes off in the midday, you know, the summer sun in Australia for hours on a stretch, you’re going to get sunburnt. This is not the sun punishing you.
It’s not God punishing you. It’s not the Buddha punishing you. It’s not your parents or the government or anyone punishing you. It’s just what happens. If you do that to your skin, this is what happens to your skin, just naturally.
And you may end up with some skin cancer result even later down the track. Again, it’s not you’re being punished, this is just what happens. If we do things to our mind, then the result comes. It’s that simple. We’re not being punished, it’s just this is what happens, This is how the mind works.
If you obscure the mind, the mind suffers. If you unobscure, for want of a better word, or don’t obscure the mind, let the positive qualities manifest as much as possible, then the result is happiness. It’s that simple. And you put the imprint there, and it’s going to ripen. It has no choice, unless we purify it or we destroy it with all our nasty, disturbing thoughts.
So, if we want less suffering in this life, and especially we want better lives in the future, especially if we want to get out of cyclic existence, if we want to achieve enlightenment, then the very basis is we have to avoid negative actions as much as possible, because they bring suffering and they cannot bring good rebirths. They just can’t. So if we want happiness in this life and so on, and we want to get a good rebirth, then we have to engage in virtuous actions. It’s that simple. And of course, if we don’t want to harm other sentient beings, we should avoid negative actions and also engage in virtuous actions.
But the main thing to remember with the law of cause and effect is that in engaging in negative actions, our negative actions harm others. All the teachings should be understood from the point of view of the Buddha talking to me, just me. This is how your mind works, and if you do this, this is what will happen to you. If we engage in negative actions, our negative behaviour has a harmful affect on others, but the effect is on ourself. The negative imprint is generated in our mind and ripens in our mind to bring suffering to our self.
This is what we have to be concerned about at first. Also, from a Mahāyāna point of view, we need to be concerned about improving our own situation first, but always the context is so that eventually we can benefit others. The point is, while we are suffering and causing suffering to ourselves, there’s no way we can benefit others in any vast way. So to benefit others, we have to stop harming ourselves. Observing the law of cause and effect is the very heart of the Buddhist teachings and Buddhist practice.
All the Buddha’s teachings are connected with the law of cause and effect. All of the Buddha’s teachings are about developing renunciation, wisdom, and bodhicitta, and they’re all dependent on understanding and practicing the law of cause and effect. There are four schools of Tibetan Buddhism, and the last one to develop is the Gelugpa tradition, started by the glorious sublime Lama Tsongkhapa, who we don’t have a large picture of, which we should. We’ve got a tiny little statue over there of Lama Tsongkhapa. We have to get a big one.
That’s Lama Yeshe, who is Lama Tsongkhapa. What? All around. Behind you, though. Where?
On the level of the barrel, but behind the floor, yes. Oh yes, that tiny one. That’s slumming on carpet. Anyway, we have to get a big statue of Lama Tsongkhapa or a Thangka. That’s a really big mistake.
But not of Lama Tsongkhapa. Big. Clear. Anyway, he is the founder of the Gelugpa tradition. The Gelugpa tradition means the virtuous tradition, Geluk, Gewa’i Lugpa, the virtuous tradition, because Lama Tsongkhapa emphasized how vital it was in order to follow the spiritual path as set out by the Buddha, that the very basis is observing the law of cause and effect, engaging in living a moral life, a virtuous life.
The very basis of that is avoiding the ten non virtuous actions. Because there are infinite numbers of non virtuous actions, but the Buddha narrowed it down to ten main ones. We need to avoid these. The main reason to avoid them is because if we engage in any of these non virtues with all of the four determining factors Good. If we engage in any of those ten non virtues with the four determining factors present and strongly present, these create the cause to have a non human suffering rebirth.
To create what is called a throwing karma. Do we talk about that? Throwing and completing karmas? Right. And so the conscious avoiding of these ten non virtuous actions, understanding that they are non virtuous and can only bring suffering, the conscious avoiding of any of those ten non virtuous actions is itself a virtuous action.
There are the non virtues and the avoiding of them, which is a virtuous action. This is what we’re going to talk about now. This is the main point of tonight’s exercise. This is all set out very nicely for you in your student material starting on page twenty five. Firstly it talks about the four factors that are involved in creating those ten non virtues, and then it goes on to talk about the results of the ten non virtues.
So just to remind you briefly, as it mentions here, the four factors that need to be present to create a complete throwing karma is having the basis, which is the object of the action There’s the intention, which is that conscious intention to do a particular thing, which has three aspects: the recognition, the motive, and the delusion. And then there’s the act itself, the performing of the act, and then there’s the completion or the completion or non completion of the act. These are the four factors. And remember that the the final the completion of the act has this, well, has two aspects: the actual completion and the state of mind you’re in when you complete it, whether you’re happy that you’ve done this action or you regret it. Do you remember all that from the first week?
So there are three non virtues of the body. These are the main ones. Is killing, so the basis has to be a living being other than yourself. So suicide is a non virtuous act, but it is not as bad as killing another sentient being. It’s not as though killing yourself is not killing, it is definitely killing.
Something definitely discouraged in the Buddhist tradition. The main reason people kill themselves is one of the disturbing thoughts, either one’s attachment or aversion or ignorance, thinking there’s nothing wrong with it. But also, one kills oneself because one is in an unhappy state of mind. Normally people don’t kill themselves because their life is going well and they’re happy and contented. People kill themselves thinking this is going to stop all that suffering.
But you kill yourself in a negative state of mind which almost guarantees that a negative throwing karma will ripen and one will have a terrible rebirth. So suicide isn’t ending your suffering, it’s just perpetuating and actually probably making it far, far worse. So there’s no point from a Buddhist point of view in committing suicide. It’s not going to achieve what you think it’s going to achieve. Anyway, that’s a side issue.
Because I think most people commit suicide believing that there’s only this life. Because this is going to stop everything, everything’s just going to stop. But this is not what, from a Buddhist point of view, what happens at all. Things don’t stop. So then the second factor is the intention.
So that has the recognition that you you there’s a particular person or sentient being you’re to kill. You have an intention to kill. You want to kill that person, and then the reason you want to kill that person is mixed up with one of the delusions. Either you want to kill that person out of anger for that person, or it could be you’re angry with someone, you hate someone else, and that someone else likes that person, so you decide to kill that person to make that person you hate more unhappy. Or you kill the person out of attachment because you love them and they don’t love you, so you kill them.
This is the way you love them, so you kill them. Yes, wonderful. Which shows that your love is not love but attachment. But of course we laugh but this happens all the time. This happens all this is the staple of most novels, songs and movies.
We wouldn’t television if it wasn’t for this. There’s practically nothing else on television other than cooking shows and people killing each other. Probably the cooking shows will degenerate into that soon. And then they will cook the person they have killed with a lovely side sauce. Also one can kill out of anger, certainly with animals, hunting and so on has done that, so not out of anger.
Out of ignorance, believing killing animals is not a negative thing at all. So anyway, there has to be one of the disturbing thoughts present, and then there’s the action, the carrying out of the killing in all sorts of ways, and you can do it yourself, you can get someone else to do it, or yes. Of course, someone in a war who orders, like a captain in an army, tells all his soldiers, Charge! And one hundred soldiers, Charge off and go killing, according to the law of cause and effect, then you get all However many Your guys kill so many people, you get the karma. Because you told them to do it.
What about the actual soldiers themselves that do that killing under the command of the army or I should never have said this. In the Lamrim teachings I think there are some slightly different versions, because there are examples where you could argue all of these things but they say, If you’re forced to do something, you don’t accumulate the karma. So if you’re forced to kill, you have no intention to kill, but you’re forced to kill, you don’t accumulate the karma. Would that be, for Yeah. It sounds like that could be the case, but the thing is, in one sense people don’t have a choice, but in another sense they do.
That’s true. Sorry, what was that last bit? So, even one, suppose Yes, I would agree. I think this is all very debatable, some of the examples. Other people experience lots of suffering in their life because they refuse to kill, which is extremely difficult to do, to avoid.
I would say in general, a soldier killing in a war is killing. No matter what the social reason, the conventional reason is. This is why His Holiness told his people not to fight. And of course they didn’t listen to him. It was all completely understandable, because their country was being wiped out, their culture was being destroyed, people were being tortured.
It’s a very human response. It’s very complicated. Observing the law of cause and effect in some cases is extremely difficult. Extremely difficult. What about suicide for nuns and monks?
His Holiness is completely against interesting because it’s not motivated by the usual reasons. No, but the thing is, the trouble is, some of these things on the outside can look very noble, but often it’s sometimes and the people themselves think it’s very noble, but actually they themselves may be very unhappy about something, and this becomes like an unconscious cover to glorify their life in I probably shouldn’t have mentioned this, but I didn’t want to go that. No. Well, it could be, but no. Cheryl, that’s not very generous.
It’s also in the same way with so many young people who are joining this horrendous ISIS group. They’re transforming some misery in their lives into they’re glamorizing it that they’re going off to fight this religious war against the infidels, and blah blah blah, and it’s just a huge projection. Think. Surely anyone who, for example, joined the army today in Australia would know that they may well be asked to go and shoot and kill. Well, would say any soldier at any time knows that.
Yes. But, yes, but first of all, if today you go into the army, you do it by choice, and you know that may be one of the things you may be asking as opposed to wartime when you’re conscripted and then told to go and shoot the enemy. There actually is a difference there in my mind. Quite clearly different. One is following orders or who he’ll be court martialed and whatever else.
The other one chose to join the army, and he may well be asked, as our Australian army are now, or air force or whatever they are, bombing people in in Syria and that place. They chose to do it. They didn’t choose to kill. They chose to join an occupation where people would be asked to do it. This is the point that with each example, the karmic imprint could vary so much because a whole group of people may be doing the same thing, but those factors, like the intention and what is motivating that intention could be very different.
What one person is doing out of absolute fear and terror, is doing out really very happily and whatever, So the karmic imprint would vary a great deal as well. The trouble is, the person engaging in it may not be conscious of any of that at the time, but the mind is registering all whether they know it or not, is just something that has come from their karma, from their past life. To some extent, the way you think and a particular way to choose this or that. There’s layers of karma. Layers and layers.
I think you might be wrong. Yes. You check your page twenty four, the last quote by Jamgon Kongtrul, one of the great Lamas, I think, of the late nineteenth century, who says, The the acts or activity of a person are none other than the nature of that person, and the results are that same person. That’s talking about your personality. Your personality is, you know, you have all these characteristics, that’s all calmer results, in a sense.
Isn’t it? Your interests and tastes and whatever tendencies, habits, which make up our so called personality. So a lot of that is from past imprints. We’re not going to get anywhere. We’ve done one and we’ve got twenty.
Oh, should say ‘unmistakenly’. Twenty five, first one, ‘intention, killing’. Because in the next one it says ‘unmistakenly’. You recognise unmistakenly. Because it gets very tricky.
For example, I decide to shoot I forgot. Jesse. I take aim at him and I shoot you and kill you, so I don’t get the karma of killing Jesse. Because I’ve got the wrong one. You’ve still killed someone else.
I’ve still killed someone else. So if you step on an insect, it is said there is some karmic imprint, because you’ve killed an sentient being. But most of the factors aren’t present, because there was no intention and there was no recognition of the object, for a start. Although you’ve engaged in the act and you’ve completed the act, but there’s no rejoicing at all. Does it cause karma?
Yes, I just mentioned that there is some karmic imprint, they say. That’s the main factor. What if it is a poisonous insect? You don’t have to kill it. This is the thing Don’t look too worried.
For three what? Minutes? Three metres! One thing we have to understand is we are all in cyclic existence. cyclic existence is in its nature suffering, and it’s imperfect.
What I’m trying to say is, one of the features of being in saṃsāra is that we’re in a position where just to keep alive other sentient beings die. Even if you’re a vegetarian, sentient beings die with what you eat. Everyone has to eat, and it involves sentient beings dying. It is impossible. There’s no intention for them to die, but they will die.
We’re in a situation where there’s all sorts of situations where death can come about, like, yeah, saving your children from diseases and blah blah blah. And we all benefit from many kinds of medicines, but those medicines have been produced by killing thousands and thousands and millions of laboratory animals. And that will continue. It’s very difficult to avoid these things, but the idea is to avoid it as much as possible. There are situations where certain people are born, or types groups of people or communities of people who are born in situations where it’s almost impossible not to kill sentient beings to stay alive.
There’s communities that live on fishing, and there’s nothing else. Or hunting communities. In the past, but even to some extent there are people, even these days, live that’s their culture, to live by hunting. And there’s almost nothing, but it’s still creating negative karma. Whereas other people don’t have to do that.
But one has to understand, you make a choice. And if you make this choice, there will be certain consequences. So is it worth getting those consequences or not? If one has to do something negative, how can I reduce how negative it is? Also think, to purify possible, to compensate as much as possible.
Not buy one’s way out of it, but to purify and compensate in some way. I was going to to ask a similar thing that you just explained: does it help to say certain prayers to help with one’s to mitigate some of the noise that might happen throughout the definitely. We will talk about purifying the mind at some point. Next week, I think we’re doing that, or the week after. Not next week, because I’m not on holidays, on the retreat, but when I come back.
That way. Yeah. But one can try to do it as perfectly as possible. Sorry, what? Ill will and wrong views.
Yeah. No. It’s not anger. Sorry. No.
No. No. I thought it’s anger. In my version, it’s anger. Where’s your version?
Somewhere else. No, that’s completely wrong. Anger is a delusion, it’s not a non virtuous act. For example, out of anger. All of the non virtues are done, they have to have one of the three poisonous minds motivating them.
Wait, don’t jump. Don’t jump. Because actually, anyway There’s not going to be time for me to go through all of this. You can read it all. It’s important not only to read it, but study it and think about it.
Stealing. Stealing is a very important topic, because it’s very easy to steal. Most of us don’t go around killing, but stealing, especially these days, there’s things like copying things, like DVDs. You want to follow the Buddhist path, don’t do this. Do not do this.
Also pay your taxes. This is very important. But photocopying books, and making copies of music DVDs, and movies, and all of this stuff, this is definitely non virtuous action. This is stealing. This is because people have copyright on these things, and this is how they earn their money.
There he says, you see, if they don’t get their money, people don’t create things. Of course, some people make a lot of money out of these things, The argument is, well, they’re very rich, so it doesn’t matter. But this is not how This is the self-cherishing thought. You could argue, well, they should be happy with this. They’ve got that much money, they don’t need more.
They’re just being greedy. This is all irrelevant. The mind wanting that for me, myself, I deserve that, to have that free, that is the self-cherishing thought that is the source of all suffering. Of course, if we were the copyright owner of these things, we wouldn’t want people to take our stuff. So this is very, very important to be very careful about that, because it is so easy to do this, and so many people do it, and it looks perfectly acceptable.
But from a Dharma, you know, yeah. Because this is what the teaching is saying, is that just from a very small act, this imprint is generated, and it’s there in your mind, and it’s going to produce a result. Our self-cherishing tells us, This is okay. There’s nothing wrong with this. So many things we can do.
Why? Because I’m doing it. When other people do it, it’s outrageously terrible and disgusting. But when it comes to me doing it, it’s okay. Our self-cherishing thought completely tells us, It’s okay for me to do this, whatever it is.
But the Buddha is saying, It’s not, it’s not. It’s naturally negative, it is naturally negative. It’s not something that we have to believe in or not, it’s just naturally negative. So then there’s sexual misconduct. This gets very it upsets a lot of people, this one.
I don’t know if I ever want to go into this. Every time we lose twenty five percent, fifty percent of potential Buddhists this way. Basically, to be quite honest, from a very traditional point, practically all sexual behaviour is sexual misconduct, to be quite honest. Better become a monk or nun. Sorry.
Oh dear. So the basis of sexual misconduct is improper orifices. According to the Buddhist tradition, the only correct orifice for sexual contact is the meeting of the two sex organs. That’s it. That’s it.
Nothing else. Then there’s the improper time. The improper time for sex is when For example, if you take the twenty four hour eight Mahāyāna precepts, so you avoid sex for one day, so you’ve got that vow for the day, and if you have sex during that time, that’s an improper time. It was also said that when a woman is pregnant is an improper time to have sex, because it can affect the fetus. Else?
During the day or something? Yes, I mean some of that is cultural, that is definitely cultural I would say. I think that there are some of the main times. There’s the improper place, the main improper place is to have sex in front of holy images. So you shouldn’t have images of Buddhas and so on in your bedroom.
What if I only have one bedroom? Well, if you don’t have sex in your bedroom, it’s perfectly okay. Or if you have sex in the kitchen, or if you just don’t have sex, that’s fine. That anything is normal these days, but people normally have sex in the bedroom, so that’s why I mentioned not to have images in the bedroom. Improper place, that’s the main thing.
Also in public, right. Improper partner is someone who is, of course, most obvious one is another person’s partner, whether married or not, because in Buddhism being married or not is not an important thing, it’s just a social convention. Yeah. Also people who underage, people who are what do you call it, wards? Wards is that the word?
A ward under the protection of another person. This is the main example of improper partner. There’s also the improper number of times I think it becomes improper after five times in a row it’s improper I don’t think most people have a problem with that one So with lying, as it mentions here, although it comes under the non virtuous speech, to engage in lying you don’t have to speak. It doesn’t involve saying something untrue. It can be you can lie by not saying anything, or you can lie by moving your body in a particular way, or giving a particular facial expression, or something like that, in order to convey an idea to the other person.
Of course, the worst kinds of lying are spiritual lying. Is the really worst kind, where you make a claim to have a spiritual realization that you know you don’t have. So if someone says to you, Oh, do you have bodhicitta? And you just kind of try and look highly spiritual, and the person from that wonderful benign look you give thinks, Oh, they do have bodhicitta. So then, once theyyou know, that’s it.
You’ve lied. And you’ve created the worst kind of lie. So that’s really super heavy karma. Okay. We’ll take a break.
Yeah. Just very quickly. On the switch from the conduct one, there there seems to be quite a lot and I realise that this is explained with respect to the four component powers but looking at a broad overreach, could we say that something is considered sexual misconduct if it results in the suffering of a being, whether it be Oh, yeah, apart from anything else. Yes, definitely. Yourself or a person that you’re involved with or people that today or other sensitive beings generally.
Could it be that it’s misconduct by virtue of it resulting ultimately in the suffering? Not even ultimately, yes. Even if it’s with a partner, you engage in some act that physically or mentally harms that person, then of course that’s sexual misconduct. Even if it’s usually acceptable, ordinary sexual activity, but the person doesn’t want it, even if it’s your partner, married husband, wife, or whatever, and you force them, then this is sexual misconduct, definitely. I’ll have a coffee, thank you.
Yes, please. What happened to my Oh, she’s got the Hey, that’s mine. This is the big one. I didn’t hear it ring at all. No, that I heard at the beginning of the session to start.
Okay, maybe we can leave the four factors. The three non virtues of mind covetousness is basically a type, of course strongly associated with attachment. But covetousness, well, all of the three non virtues of mind are extremely, what’s the word, you know, really heavy, heavy states of mind, right? So covetousness is not just wanting something, like going window shopping and seeing something in a shop window and wanting it. Covetousness is a mind that is wanting something that belongs to another person for a start.
And it involves It’s mind that thinks It’s this really nasty mind that thinks, ‘That person shouldn’t have that, I should have that.’ It’s a really nasty mind that has got a lot of competitiveness and jealousy and resentment about it, and thinks, That person doesn’t deserve to have that thing. That should belong to me.’ This is something really nice. I should have that, not that person. I’m better than that person. I deserve to have that thing.’ And it’s a mind that is really determined to get that thing no matter what.
And so it’s a state of mind that is thinking, I want this, I’m going to get that. And so the completion of the act is not getting the thing, but it’s deciding, I will get it no matter what. Whether you end up getting the thing by hook or by crook, that’s another act altogether, whether you decide to steal it or whatever from the person, that’s something else. The imprint of covetousness or the non virtue of covetous ness is created, and completed the moment you think, I will definitely get that thing. So similarly, with harmful intent, it again is a really, really nasty mind that really has a lot of sense of revenge and wanting to harm someone with a very, very bitter mind.
And the completion of the act of the non virtuous the non virtue of the mental non virtue of harmful intent or ill will is completed when you get the thought, when generate the thought, I will harm that person. First you think about, Oh, I’d really like to, but I’d really like to make them miserable. Wouldn’t it be great if I could, if they could squirm and blah blah. And then you then you finally, you know, make the decision, yes, I will. I will do it.
I will make them suffer. About one sues another person a court? Sorry, what? What about if one sues another person in a court, then is this considered as harmful intent? No.
It depends on why you’re suing it. If Person A has done Person B wrong and then Person B decides to sue Person A in court. Person A does lots of harm. Then you decide to sue them because they’ve hurt you.
But suing isn’t harmful. Harmful intent is meaning you’re going to physically harm someone. Just Well, it could also mean that. Suing them? Yes.
Yes. Well, you have you have to check. You have to check. There’s the basis, then there’s the intention. What is your intention?
To stop them from doing the negative acts, to do the harm. If it’s just that, that’s not ill will. Ill will is when you want to do some negative thing to another person, not necessarily for any reason. It could be for a reason, but it could be done out of attachment, ill will, attachment, or anger or ignorance So you could say, I’m going to take this person to court and bleed them dry to make them suffer’ That could be, sure anyway, the completion of the act of ill will is when you decide to do the action that you think will bring them a great deal of harm. So then with wrong views, again it gives the example of holding wrong views about things which are true, such as the law of cause and effect, the four noble truths, future lives, blah blah blah.
So most people don’t believe in these things. But that doesn’t mean that most people have created the non virtuous the mental non virtue of wrong view, because the mental non virtue of wrong view is more than just not believing something which is true, but it’s really holding to that wrong view in a very, very sort of aggressive and very narrow minded, of nasty way. All of these things aren’t true. Why? Because I don’t believe them.
I don’t believe them. They’re rubbish. They couldn’t possibly be true because I don’t believe them. I’ve never heard about future lives. This is rubbish.
So it’s not simply just not knowing those things or even not believing them, but holding to that belief in a very, very hard and nasty kind of way. And the conclusion of that thought is again where you come to the conclusion that you would definitely reject that belief. So anyway, these are the ten non virtuous acts which we should avoid as much as possible, especially when avoiding all the four having all four factors present and strongly present. If some of those factors are present, would still create negative imprints, but they’re not as strong, but they will still ripen as suffering. So if we can just jump a little bit to the results of the ten non virtues on page twenty nine.
This is really important to reflect on regularly. What is important to understand is that if we engage in any of the ten non virtues with all the four factors present and strongly present, that creates a complete throwing karma. A throwing karma ripens at the time of death to determine the nature of our rebirth. If it’s one of those ten non virtues throwing karmas then it brings Each one of those negative actions with all the four factors creates an imprint, a throwing karmic imprint, that when it ripens brings four different results. And those four results can occur over many lifetimes.
The first result that one is reborn in one of the lower realms. This is called the ripening result. This is the first result that comes, because the throwing karma ripens at the time of death, and the ripening result is that immediately after that, one is reborn in one of the lower realms, depending on how strong the throwing karma was. For example, if it’s the throwing karma of killing and one’s killed a human being, and killed that human being very nastily and with no regret, then you could end up in one of the hell realms. We have talked about the lower realms, haven’t we?
Bit? Yeah. Just briefly. Yes, we have. Yeah.
We won’t go into them too much. You found redemption during life, you know, you’re honestly remorseful of killing somebody, does that lessen it? Yes, one can purify these imprints. I’ll talk about that in the next class, which will be after the retreat. This is where you apply what are called the four opponent powers.
But to be able to complete, if the karma is really heavy, it requires a lot of effort to purify. With any of those ten non virtues, if it’s complete, the karmic result is firstly to be born in one of the lower realms, depending on how strong that karmic imprint is. At some point, having fallen into the lower realms, one will be reborn as a human being again due to some good throwing karma. When we were born in the human realm again, there are the conditions in the human realm for the three other results of that one negative throwing karma to bring their results. So one of the results is, so in the case of killing, the result congruent with the cause is that when one is reborn as a human being, one has either a short life, a lot of sickness, many troubles, no success in one’s activities, and it doesn’t actually say here, ‘One gets killed.’ You’ve killed someone, then the karmic result is to be killed oneself, or to have a very short life.
Are beings that die in the womb, for example. Maybe they have the karma they’ve created enough karma to take a human rebirth just in the womb, but not to be reborn. Or they come out of the womb and live just a very short time. Because there’s not enough karma to stay alive for very long. If person A chooses person B, in the next life, if person A still has some good karma together, does person A also would be killed by the same person B?
No, not necessarily. It’s not so cute as that. No, not necessarily. No, cute is not the right word. Neat as that?
No. Although possible, that’s possible. It wouldn’t be in the next life. That would be highly unlikely. You haven’t been given a precious human rebirth?
A precious human rebirth. You’re in the womb, and It’s not taken away. It ends, it runs out. Not really. What?
The person that is in the womb and dies. They’ll be reborn again? Or it could be reborn, depending on the next karma that ripens. Sorry? The throwing karma of a being that dies in the womb or dies shortly after, the throwing karma couldn’t be all that good, could it?
I think you can say. You couldn’t say. Let’s not try to get so nitty picky. The idea is to get some general idea of how karma works. If you try and get down to such nitty picky things, you lose the plot Life is tragic.
Life is a tragedy. But it’s all calmer. Some people get very short lives, some people get very long lives, some people get lots of suffering, but it’s all the result of actions. That’s what the teachings are saying. Don’t want to embarrass you, but it’s very interesting, the expressions you used, that you particularly used.
This is your choice, because if one wants to follow the Buddhist path, we have to start thinking in a particular way. Many people talk about, and people here, I hear this all the time, say things like, ‘There was some particular Dharma event, or I couldn’t make it, or it wasn’t meant to be. It wasn’t meant to be. This is not a Buddhist way of thinking. To say it was meant to be implies there’s someone plotting it all, arranging it, or God or something up there is planning for you to get to this thing or not to get to this thing, or for you to meet this person or not to meet this.
This is not how it is at all. I’m not trying to criticize you, I’m just trying to point out something in general for people. That’s almost deterministic. Yes, is, Which is not what Buddhism and not what the law of cause and effect is saying. The law of cause and effect is saying, of course, if something doesn’t happen, it does mean that one didn’t have the karma for it, but it didn’t mean that it wasn’t meant to be.
Because if we create more good karma, it will happen. This is what the law of cause and effect is saying: that we have to do stuff. If we want some things to happen, we have to make them happen. Otherwise they won’t. If you want something to happen in your life, you just can’t sit there and wait for it to happen.
One’s got to go out there and make it happen. What am I trying to say? There are ways of making things happen. There are the correct causes. You don’t make things happen by spending lots of money.
It looks like it does, but that’s not the way to make things happen. You have to create the karmic causes, the appropriate karmic causes. Get rid of obstacles, purify the mind. Purify the mind, accumulate merit. That’s the thing.
Yes, sure, definitely. The point is Sorry. Point is we have all created negative karma. Tons and tons of Not that karma, actually, you can weigh it. But tons of negative karma, kilos of negative karma that doesn’t sound as impressive tons of negative karma this doesn’t mean that we will have to experience the result.
If we don’t do anything about it, the result will come. But we can do things about it. This is why the Buddha appeared in the world to tell us. He came here and said, You’ve created tons of negative karma, folks. You don’t know it, but I know it.
If you understand the law of cause and effect, you can work with the law of cause and effect so that one doesn’t get the results. This is why we need to understand the law of cause and effect. Very quickly we’ve finished! So the results that occur in the human life, these are the ones that are very interesting to think about, because we can recognise these. We can’t remember experiencing the suffering of the lower realms, but we can recognise that maybe we’ve had these experiences of having a lot of sickness in our life, lots of troubles, or we have the tendency to kill and harm others.
If we have that, then we should realise, Oh! Then we’ve also got And there’s the environmental result of being born in a place where there’s lots of violence, many problems, where medicine and even the food doesn’t sustain life very well. Lama Zopa Rinpoche makes the point, which I think you’ve heard me mention many times before, or some of you wouldn’t have. Anyway, that of all those four results, the worst result in many ways is the habit. Because by having the tendency to engage in a particular negative action, one tends to engage in it again.
Because one’s engaged in it, you get the four results again. You get thrown into the lower realms, eventually come back as a human being, but then you have the tendency to do the same action again. You get the four results all over again. This is how saṃsāra goes on and on and on. So if one recognizes that one has even the tiniest habit of doing these things, this is something we really have to try and avoid, these negative habits as much as possible.
And you can see in there, a very extreme example of this are what do you call them? Serial killers. People who kill lots of people and people they don’t know for no particular reason. They just see someone and they have to kill them. They are kind of karmically drawn, and to kill them in particular ways, sometimes in kind of strange ritualistic ways.
So there are people who do that. Or there are kleptomaniacs who steal. They have no real reason to steal. One can say there’s all these psychological reasons in this life why they do it, but often that doesn’t necessarily explain it at all. But there’s some kind of habit, urge to steal.
Can animals be born into a human? Yes, of course. So that explains why some human people, they kill like that? Maybe, maybe. But maybe not.
Maybe the ones who eat the people they kill, but That’s true. Or there are some who do that. We can actually rejoice, all of us here, in being able to say that because we’re here today, we have not, in previous lives, done any of the ten non virtues, or we would have been born into a lower realm? Not quite, no. No, Greg.
Unfortunately, doesn’t work. It means that right now we are experiencing the karmic result of engaging in a very good throwing karma. The logical conclusion to that is that you haven’t actually stated, there’s a whole batch of karmas building up from past lives, and we work our way through them. Yes. Have As opposed to one karmic lump.
No, we have many karmic imprints, positive and negative. We have many good throwing karmas, but many negative throwing karmas, and also many other little positive and negative karmas. Yes, in one way. In one way, can be very overwhelming and depressing. But If we didn’t know about any of this, there’s the expression that ignorance is bliss.
One could feel very happy that life goes on, but in that ignorant state, one is creating lots of negative karma. And so the process just goes on. So finding out all of this can be very overwhelming in one way and very depressing, but we are learning the method to be free of karma. Because karma operates in ignorance. The basis of it is ignorance, of not knowing in every sense of the word.
But it’s through knowing, starting to know, that we can become free of all of this suffering. We have to know about the law of cause and effect. We have to know what is negative, what is virtuous. Our society says that there are many things which the Buddha says are naturally non virtuous, naturally harmful to ourselves, that our society says is perfectly okay to do. We have to decide whether the Buddha is right or society is right.
Next time around we’ll four bad throwing karmas. So what? Next time around we’d get the whole gamut going. Four bad throwing karmas? Next time around?
Yeah. And our next rebirth. Things happening? For results. Because of imprints from the past, even though we’re here now.
Right. At the end of this life, If we don’t take care of our mind during this life, then at the end of this life, we could die in a negative state of mind, and that’s the breeding ground, the best kind of nourishment for one of these negative throwing karmas to ripen. And that will bring all of this suffering in the next life. This is the point. The idea is to use this life to avoid the ten non virtues as much as possible, to engage in their opposite as much as possible, so that we habituate our To do that, we have to avoid the disturbing thoughts of anger, attachment, pride, jealousy as much as possible.
During this life, our positive minds of love, compassion, kindness, patience, tolerance, openness, and generosity as much as possible. If we work on that, hopefully throughout this life, at the time of death, can die in a positive state of mind, a good throwing karma will ripen, and we will have another good rebirth where we can continue to work on our mind. That’s the message. It is a big job, but it’s a necessary job. And it’s something that we can do.
I’ve run out of time. We’re now already over time. The homework is set out. Please, if you can put your completed homework in the blue folder, collect next to it the homework for the following week or so. There’s a couple of weeks I’ve only given you one week’s homework, so you’ve got at least two weeks to do it.
The homework is to meditate on, firstly, hopefully it makes some sense. Tomorrow you meditate on the three non virtues of the body, the four aspects of what creates a throwing karma, relating to the three non virtues of body, then the next day to think about the four results that you will get if you engage in such a negative action like that. The last day is I didn’t have time to talk about it tonight, but I would like you to use your intelligence to work out there are the ten non virtues and the four factors that go into creating the ten non virtues, one can think about the four factors that would go into creating the ten virtuous actions. There’s killing, which is a non virtue then there’s not killing, avoiding killing, which is a virtue And then there’s the even more virtuous action of saving life, protecting life. There’s killing a chook, not killing a chook, and then maybe taking care of a chook.
An old chook, you know? Letting an old chook live out its life happily, even though it’s not laying eggs anymore. You don’t kill it, boil it, you just let it have a happy life. Think of the four factors that would go into nurturing that chook’s life. Then you can think, what would be the four karmic results of looking after that chook?
That you would have a long life, a healthy life, you would be born into a very nice environment, etc, just by looking after a chook. True. That’s how karma works. What happens if look after a hundred chooks? Well, even more.
Not really. I’m all in favour. When Buddha House moves to its new giant property, we might have a hundred chook rescue place At Hahndorf, we have a flock of over thirty sheep we saved. Including two pregnant mums, which I’m very proud of. Sheep.
Yeah. Right. So we have created some good throwing karma tonight, because we have the right good motivation, hopefully. The best object, which is the dharma. Then you listened very nicely and stayed to the bitter end and glad you did.
So that created a complete positive imprint in your mind. We can dedicate that imprint to protect it from being destroyed by any remote possibility of generating some negative disturbing thoughts later on tonight, tomorrow, or so on. And we can dedicate it in the best possible way to enlightenment. Just very quickly, if you would like to join in, the traditional prayer on page thirteen. Or 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 bodhicitta mind not yet born arise and grow. May that born have no decline but increase forevermore. Okay, thank you. For those who feel comfortable to do so, we finish with three prostrations to the triple gem.