Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 110-minute talk, Ven Thubten Dondrub unpacks the law of cause and effect—the foundation of all Buddhist practice—by establishing why understanding karma matters and how it operates in daily life. He begins with motivation, guiding listeners to generate bodhicitta by recognizing their dependence on all sentient beings and the potential within their mind to achieve enlightenment for their benefit. He then moves systematically through the ten non-virtuous actions (killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and divisive, harsh, or idle speech; covetousness, ill will, and wrong view), explaining how these naturally negative actions ripen into suffering, and introduces the four determining factors that make karmic actions “complete.” Rather than treating karma as unfair punishment, he reframes it as the mind’s natural law, observed (not invented) by the Buddha—contrasting it with theistic and materialist worldviews. He addresses objections head-on: why terrible things happen to innocent people, whether group karma can be shared, and what it means that worlds themselves are collective karmic results. Crucially, he then pivots to the positive, walking through the ten virtuous actions and their powerful counterparts (saving animal lives, generosity, ethical conduct, truthful speech, compassion), and emphasizes the transformative role of vows—particularly the five lay precepts and eight Mahāyāna precepts—in building mindfulness and merit. He closes with concrete encouragement to meditate on these teachings, not merely read about them. Pitched at newcomers and serious practitioners alike, though those unfamiliar with Buddhist philosophy will find him patient and direct.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 2015 10 13 DB All about Karma Week 3 13-10-15.mp3
UUID: 9bf5386d-61dd-4b91-9538-c0f8fdc1fe71
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB All about Karma (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2015-10-13
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 109.9 minutes
Words: ~12,707
So welcome everyone to our Tuesday night Discovering Buddhism program. It seems a very long time since this has been happening. I’m very sorry about this disruption. This normally doesn’t happen we try to avoid this, but somehow this time it wasn’t really possible. So this is my third talk here.
So, yes. Our topic is all about karma, or it should be called something about karma, not all about karma. So this really is one of the most important subjects in the Buddhadharma. Really, everything that the Buddha taught, all the practices are connected with understanding the law of cause and effect. So it’s really important if one wants to get some idea of what Buddhism is really about, if one wants to discover what Buddhism is, to really try to understand the law of cause and effect.
And what is emphasised, as I’ve tried to emphasise in all the talks I’ve given, according to the tradition, and this is connected to an understanding of the law of cause and effect, Therefore, the teachings themselves, to have the greatest effect on our mind, it depends on how we listen to them. So the way we listen is creating the cause for the effect of the teachings. So there is the teaching, and but for that teaching to or the Buddhist teachings to have the strongest, best effect on our mind, that really depends on, from our side, having the right motivation, listening in the right way. And the best motivation we can have for listening to the teachings is the bodhicitta motivation, which comes from understanding we have a mind, our mind is the source of all our experience, and our mind has Buddha nature, has this potential within it to achieve the state of complete omniscience where one is knowing everything, and that knowing is pervaded by that mind that is knowing everything is absent of all negative qualities completely, totally absent of all negative qualities in a way that they can never return and possesses all good qualities that are fully active all the time, never declining.
And so we have that potential within us, and the reason to activate this potential, to work to achieve to liberate that potential and achieve enlightenment comes not only from realising this is the way to accomplish what we always seek, which is to be free of suffering and to achieve perfect happiness. But especially it’s the way to reach a point where we can be of lasting benefit to others, to be able to repay their kindness. It’s the way to be able to perfectly repay their kindness by helping them to become free of suffering and to achieve help them to realise their Buddha nature. So why should we repay The mind wanting to repay that kindness arises from allowing ourselves to understand that we have received kindness from others, and in fact, our existence totally depends directly and indirectly on all sentient beings, and especially the kindness that we’ve received from them in countless ways. So I won’t elaborate on that because it could take too long to explain, but hopefully if you use your intelligence, you can work out that even to have something to wear, something to eat, that depends on so many sentient beings directly and indirectly.
All the good experiences we’ve had, from the smallest to the greatest, to the most ordinary to the most sublime Hopefully, I don’t know if you’ve had any sublime experiences, and great spiritual experiences. All of these can only come about depending on others, the kindness of others. And all our knowledge, all our skills, all our qualities, all of this can only come about depending on the kindness of others, and especially the kindness of mothers. And we’ve received this because our mind is beginningless, we’ve had infinite previous rebirths. Every sentient being has been our mother countless times, also our father countless times.
So it’s really unimaginable how much kindness we’ve received. One can’t really measure how much we owe sentient beings, really. But if we allow ourselves to think about that, then the mind wanting to repay that kindness can develop. And especially when we understand that all these beings are suffering in saṃsāra because their mind, like ourselves, is controlled by ignorance, delusion and karma, then it means no matter what outer appearances people may have, sentient beings may have, they are suffering and they have the potential to go on suffering. And unfortunately, in their confusion, sentient beings keep creating the causes of suffering, perpetuating their own cyclic existence.
So if we think about this, it can become really unbearable in the sense that we make this decision, ‘I have to do something about it, ‘ and the only thing to do is to achieve enlightenment. Because only as an enlightened being can we really repay this immeasurable kindness that we’ve received. So please try and generate that bodhicitta motivation as much as possible. And what helps is to think of the Buddha in front of you as the possible source of refuge, inspiration and guidance, because the more we have refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, this will enable us to develop a deeper faith in our own Buddha nature. And if we develop faith in the Buddha’s teachings, then we can see that they contain the methods whereby we can not only free ourselves from suffering, but achieve the state of enlightenment and help all others do the same.
So it’s very helpful to visualise the Buddha in front of us as the embodiment of the Three Jewels of refuge and all the wonderful qualities, and at the same time thinking of all sentient beings surrounding us, starting with our mother of this life on our left, father on our right, then our family, friends and helpers behind us, enemies in front, and then as much as possible trying to think of all the beings of the different realms of cyclic existence. So I think in order to achieve enlightenment, to benefit all these sentient beings, then I need to really understand the law of cause and effect, because this is really the most fundamental teaching of the Buddha. All the other teachings that enable me to get a good rebirth, to become free of saṃsāra, to achieve enlightenment are all connected to understanding and practising the law of cause and effect. So for this reason, I’ll study this subject. So if you’d like to join in the traditional prayer, it’s on page twelve of the student material.
I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By my merits, I achieve through listening to the Dharma. May I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings? So we can imagine the Buddha pleased with our motivation, and because of this the Buddha now comes to the crown of our head. And then when directly above our crown we imagine the Buddha dissolving into blissful golden light, so that that light can then pour down into us, blessing our mind to be able to understand the teachings on the law of cause and effect, blessing our mind to be able to put them into practice, blessing our mind to eventually gain the realisation 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 let our mind become a little bit more calm, clear, 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. Right. So when I was last here we were talking about the ten non virtuous actions.
So this is the If one develops some understanding of the law and faith in the law of cause and effect, then the most important thing to do is to be aware of the main negative actions and to avoid them, because it is by engaging in these negative actions that especially with the four determining factors, if all of those four determining factors are present and strongly present, then these create complete karmas or throwing karmas that, if they ripen at the time of death, can bring rebirths in the lower realms. So there’s lots of things to believe in, I know, especially if some people are new to the Buddhadharma here. But if one checks one’s own mind just in this life, our mind in this life can give rise to so many different kinds of experiences. Our mind can be extremely happy and extremely depressed. Just our own mind, but then you can look at the minds of other human beings, some people who are extremely happy, some become extremely depressed, even though they may have lots of stuck possessions and everything else seems to look Okay in their life, they have loving families, successful, but the mind is so unhappy and can give rise to so much suffering.
Also people one can see that the mind amazingly can project such things onto other people and onto life in general. Some really extreme projections, hallucinations, even as a human being. So I think this can suggest as a basis that the possibility that the mind can give rise not just to the experience of being a human being, but to being an animal, to experience the suffering of the preta realms and the hell realms. And so this is all due to our karma, our actions. Remember, the word karma just simply means action.
That’s all it means, our behaviour. It just refers to our behaviour or the activity of our mind. That’s what karma is. It’s nothing no big deal. It’s just referring to the activity of our mind.
And our mind is active all the time. It particularly refers to the intentional activity of our mind. And so our mind is intentionally acting, working all the time, pretty much non stop. And some of that intentional activity is virtuous, it’s a reflection of our Buddha nature, but unfortunately some of it, or possibly a lot of it, comes from our obscured mind, our mind obscured by ignorance and self-cherishing and disturbing thoughts, and that creates these leads to generating negative imprints. So these are the things we have to be particularly concerned about, because no matter how many positive actions and positive imprints we generate that can lead to good results, so much of that is undermined by the ripening of our negative imprints and just generally our negative behaviour.
Also I think some people in the homework that I just looked at, and thank you for people doing the homework, And some people wrote lots of stuff, which is good in one way, although it takes a long time to read. If everyone wrote lots of stuff, it would be But I don’t want to It’s good if people do write things, it’s great. But some people often make the comment that the results of karma seem unfair. It’s unfair that people have so much suffering. Maybe this is not what is intended, and maybe it’s not even conscious, but when you say that, it sort of implies that somehow the Buddha has made up these punishments for people.
But this is not how it works, you know? It’s not Yeah. The Buddha didn’t create the law of cause and effect. Buddha just simply perceived that this is how our mind works and explained it and called it the law of cause and effect, I suppose. I don’t if the Buddha ever actually did call it the law of cause and effect, but that’s what we call it now.
So he didn’t really make up the law, just like Newton didn’t make up the law of whatever it is gravity and all those other things. He just observed it, you know, the law existed. And he observed it and maybe called it the law of gravity, but he didn’t actually the law was something occurring naturally. And the way our mind works, it just works naturally. We have a mind and it works in a particular way.
And the Buddha just perceived that unmistakenly in its totality. Know, to say it’s unfair, I think, is not fair to the Buddha or the Buddha Dharma, in a sense. And it sort of implies that somehow we could make it, we could arrange things in a different way, but we can’t. Or only in the sense that we can purify our mind, we can escape the law of cause and effect, we can get out of cyclic existence, then we’re no longer under the control of the law of cause and effect once we’re free of delusion and karma. Because the law of cause and effect is what occurs because the mind is obscured.
But once the mind is unobscured, then the law of cause and effect doesn’t operate, in a sense. Yeah. And another thing, sometimes people feel overwhelmed by some aspects of the law of cause and effect, one has to go back to asking oneself. There’s only three explanations of why things happen. Because especially when people think about what happens to little children, all the terrible things that small, innocent children experience.
But there’s only three explanations. One is the most common one until recent times, fairly recent times, the most pervasive until recent times is that it’s all due to the workings of a creator god. Yeah? So why little children suffer and why horrible things happen to very nice people is all part of god’s plan, which is not really possible to understand, but it’s part of God’s plan. So this may be true.
But of course, in Buddhism, the idea of a creator god does there there are reasons, logical reasons to believe such a being doesn’t exist. It’s you know yeah, anyway. But that’s one explanation, that there is this greater God or maybe several greater gods or something that have this big plan and that suffering is part of this God’s strange intentions, unknown intentions that we have to suffer. So that may be true, but also it doesn’t leave us with much to do except suffer when God wants us to and not suffer when he doesn’t want us to. The other explanation, which has existed even in ancient times but wasn’t very popular, is much more popular now, is the materialist view, is that, you know, things happen.
There’s no real reason, there’s just a physical explanation. That’s all. Which means there’s not much purpose to life at all. And that explanation also may be true, but it’s a very depressing one. And again, it doesn’t leave one with much possibility to do anything.
And then there is the Buddha’s explanation that things happen because there are causes for them. And what happens to us is because we have created the cause for them. The good things happen because we create the good causes, the bad things happen because we create non virtuous negative causes for them. That’s it. And there’s there’s many good reasons to believe this view.
And, of course, this view also gives us shows says that we can take control of our lives and our situation so that we ourselves, with the help of the Buddhas, the bodhisattvas and great practitioners and ordinary Dharma friends, we can work with our mind to become free of the causes of suffering. And when we eliminate those, it’s impossible to suffer. And then we can experience the true nature of our mind. Right. So, of course, it all comes down to having some feeling for whether one has a mind or not, and how our mind not only gives rise to everything, but also just the mere existence of things, but also on top of the way our mind giving rise to, for us individually, the mere existence of things.
You know, this vase of flowers, from a Buddhist point of view, it just simply can’t exist for me without my mind. Yeah? No mind, no flowers. No mind, no body. No mind, no me.
But also, so only does my mind give rise to the mere existence of these flowers, but how I experience these flowers depends on my mind. I could experience these flowers as just like almost nothing. There’s just these things in a glass of water. Who cares? Or I can think for some reason that they’re really ugly and stupid, or I can think, oh, they’re so beautiful, so wonderful, I’m so happy, make me so happy.
It completely depends on your mind. You know, some yeah. Completely depends on our mind. Totally, our mind, how we experience things, how much happiness, joy or whatever we get from things, really depends on our mind. And why the mind reacts in that way from the Buddha’s point of view is due to our karma, the imprints we’ve generated.
Also, how much our mind is obscured, how much our mind is not obscured. And that’s also due to karmic imprints, the negative imprints that are obscuring our mind. So, yeah. Before I keep roving on ranting on, are there some questions you would like to ask me? Because some people do ask questions in the homework, but sometimes I can’t read the writing, I can’t the question understand the questions.
Even when I can read the writing, sometimes I don’t understand the questions. And even when I do, sometimes it’s just too difficult to answer them on a piece of paper. So anyway, Yes, I Okay. Yes, Vance. In a nice loud voice.
How can we repent for the kinds of negative things we have done in the past? Right, yes. Okay. Yes, how can we We can, because one can logically infer that we have engaged in negative actions in past lives. Could you give us an example?
Well, okay. I don’t feel that I haven’t done the five most Extreme negative actions. Yeah, well, you don’t feel like that, but the point is that negative actions are We engage in negative actions because, on the one hand, we have within us negative thoughts. We have these disturbing thoughts, the potential of disturbing thoughts. And when the conditions for those disturbing thoughts to arise, then those disturbing thoughts can arise and, depending on the conditions, you know, react.
Like right now, we’re all amongst nice people, being nice. We all want to have good behaviour, hopefully, when we’re in this gompa, when we come to this place, and we behave nicely. So it’s very easy, because everyone else is being nice, to be nice and not get blah blah. But if you’re in a bunch of people who are really scary and nasty and whatever and threatening, it’s very easy for one’s self-cherishing to arise very strongly and to do negative things. Unbelievably negative.
You read in the newspapers more and more or hear on television, so many people murdering each other in this country over the smallest things, the strangest things, because of the self-cherishing thought. So, you know yeah. So it follows logically, because our mind is beginning less, there has been time to be in really terrible situations, really all sorts of situations, that we therefore did every possible negative action at some point, including the extreme negative actions. Of course we can’t remember them, but it follows logically that all of us here did these incredible negative actions in the past. We have killed people, raped people, tortured people.
We have. Because other human Not that I’ve met. I’ve actually seen the Snowtown murderer, the guy who chopped all those people up. I’ve seen him in prison. He’s a big, tough looking guy, but not particularly He doesn’t look like, oh, this person would obviously murder these I don’t know how many he did.
People who do horrific things don’t necessarily look particularly horrific. I don’t know what I’m trying to say there. I think you yeah. Yeah. I heard a radio interview with a woman somewhere from South America who had been horrendously tortured in jail by them, you know.
And she made this point that probably her torturer, when he went home, he would stop off at the local shop and buy his little daughter some little thing for her ballet class and go home, Yeah. And then come back and torture her the next day. Yeah. So we’ve done those things. Yeah.
Because somehow, if you have delusions and you have conditions, you end up doing we can do anything. We would like to think we’re all sweet and lovely. Yeah. We are when the conditions are there to be sweet and lovely. But when they’re not, you know, people kill their wives and husbands and they kill their children, that we do everything.
And the point I was trying to make is we’re no different than those people, ultimately. Yeah? The the people who do monstrous things are not monsters in a sense. They’re just human beings with very obscured minds. And the way to develop regret is by knowing that this action is simply to recognise this action is negative, it is negative, and it’s going to bring suffering.
So I’ve done those things in the past, because I have self-cherishing now. I certainly had it in the past, so I’ve certainly acted on it when the conditions were there. And I’ve done these terrible things which, not purified the imprints not purified, are just going to bring a whole lot of suffering to myself. So I regret that. That’s bummer.
That’s horrible. That’s really unfortunate. Sorry, long answer. Questions? Please, anything if I can try to explain.
Yeah? I sort of need a picture in my mind of the mind versus the body. Is my body like a vessel that this mind has popped into? If this mind popped into Jesse or anybody else here, it would still be that particular mind, not my mind. What?
Say that bit again? If it popped into Jesse, it would still be your mind. Yeah. So is the body just like a vessel? Yes.
We could say that. Yeah. Which mind is inhabiting. Yes. So this can sort of be separated just for the purpose of thinking about it.
Well, it ultimately is quite different from the body. Yeah. Especially the very subtle, yeah, the very subtle body mind, sorry, doesn’t need this body at all. My physical body doesn’t have any particular impact on my mind. That’s No, it does, because there’s the different levels of mind.
There’s the subtle there’s a very subtle, subtle and the gross level of mind. So what we’re operating through now is the gross level of mind, the coarsest level of consciousness, and that definitely depends on this body and is affected by this body because it depends on the nervous system. So when this body is sick, our mind doesn’t work so well. For an ordinary person, an untrained person, like some advanced meditator, they are not so affected or not affected at all in some cases. But the ordinary person, when your body is not functioning well, your mind isn’t working so well.
Right. So there is a sort of Yes. Yeah. But when we die Yeah. Then the mind is completely separate from the body.
Yes. Yes. Yeah. But that’s not the gross mind, that’s the very subtle mind that leaves the body. That’s what’s meant by the subtle mind.
Yeah. Yeah. If you study the teachings, it talks about there’s a very precise explanation of the death process, and what happens is that the gross mind shuts down after a certain stage of body kind of this sort of shutting down, and then the subtle mind becomes sort of manifest, and then that shuts down as the death proceeds. And then finally, what is left at the very end of the death process is this very, very subtle level the most subtle level of mind, but that very quickly leaves the body, and that’s when death occurs. When we were talking about before, say, could group karma be more it seems like when people get into a group, it seems like they can do horrible things.
Can group karma like, you see people in other countries, and there’s, you know, huge rioting and all the things like that. When people seem to get together, people’s negative karma can sort of connect with each other and then explode, if that makes sense? Oh, yeah, sure, sure. Yeah. And then there also yes.
As a result of karma in the past, a whole lot of people get together, somehow come together, can be born in a country, at the same time or in a particular place at the same time, do some things and create the cause to again experience some result as a group in the future. Yeah, definitely. You were you said, Geshe-la, in the first week, this world is the karmic result of good karma from deluded sentient being. Right. So is this everything around us?
The whole shebang. Everything in the world. Yeah. Yes. In a nutshell yeah.
In a very simple way, because I don’t really understand. It’s too complicated to understand. But, yeah, this world, human world is is the result, the karmic result of the of the karma mostly I should have said mostly the good karma of sentient beings, because there is some bad stuff in this world. Okay. That’s the word.
Okay. So everything that we’re we’re doing now Mhmm. Is that sort of creating more stuff in of worlds to come? Possibly. Somehow.
Yeah. So in the in the other realms, like the the preta realm Mhmm. And the animal realms Mhmm. And the hell realms Mhmm. And even the higher realms.
Mhmm. Everything those beings do is creating all the karmic results for those realms. All those people what they’re doing like all the realms. The the are creating all the karma for that realm. Well, they’ve already created the karma to be in that realm.
Love it. But all of the Not just this human world, but from what I understand, all the different realms are the collective karma of all sentient beings. So that it gets a little bit cold. Could I help? Could I help?
Go on. Yes, please. According to some that it depends on what would be in your eyes. He gives an example that as a hungry ghost, even if you live in this world, because of five senses, the senses are made up of a common consequence. And use using the five senses of the of the hungry ghost, you would view even the clean water as a bunch of fire.
They will come and drink the fire. Yeah. Sure. And that’s how that’s how it links to the this was the collective karma of our human beings. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. But that that he’s talking also about preters who can actually some preters have the karma to see the human realm, but most preters aren’t in the human realm at all. They exist in their own realm. So what I was trying to say is that all the realms are the collective result of all sentient beings’ activity.
Not just the ones in that realm, but it’s yeah. So this world is the collective result of the good karma, especially the good karma of all sentient beings, not just the ones in this realm. But to experience this realm, you have to create the cause for it. But it’s not just the people in the real in this realm that have created this realm. It’s the collective result of all sentient beings.
In oh, yeah. So so you can say that, like, all the different realms are all saṃsāra? Yes. So it’s like parts of a whole, in a sense? Yeah, but you have to remember saṃsāra is referring to your mind.
There’s not just one saṃsāra. saṃsāra refers to each person’s own mind is saṃsāra. Your mind controlled by delusion and karma is saṃsāra. Because of that, your mind gives rise to this at the moment. All of us, the most our mind can give rise to at the moment is this experience, because our mind is so obscured that this is what we can see.
If we obscure our mind more, we will experience this world, because we share this realm with the animals, but the animals are in another realm, so they experience this world in a different way. So if we obscure our mind more, then we will experience this world as an animal experience it, because we’ll be in an animal body. If we obscure our mind even more, then one has the preta realm experience where you don’t see this realm at all, you see something else, which is pretty horrible. This is like a vast desert. Some pretas can see human beings a bit from time to time.
Then if you totally obscure your mind, you have the experience of the hell realms. And some of the hell realms, like the upper hell realms, which are pretty gruesome, are are actually like this where you share it with other beings. But the lower hell realms are just the creation of your own mind only, even though your own mind gives rise to an experience that is exactly the same as many others. But it’s unique. This realm depends on our mind, but it exists.
It is not just a creation of one’s own mind. It depends on one’s To experience this, you know, it depends on one’s mind, but it has been brought into existence due to the karma of all sentient beings. Whereas some of the lower hell realms, that is a unique experience of that particular mind, that particular sentient being, the very lowest hell realms. I’ve got read some accounts of those hell realms Mhmm. Different types of them, and they’re quite distinct and gruesome.
Each one is a different type of I suppose you could call it torture Mhmm. Or experience. Yes. So the people who are who are experiencing that has to be pretty, pretty young, really demoted, like, obscured Yes. Yes.
Okay. And you can get out of that, can you? Yep. It’s been a long term. Very difficult.
That’s why we have to avoid the ten non virtues, that’s the whole point. Because once you fall into the lower realms, as I was trying to say to Vance, then the conditions are there to keep engaging in negative actions. It’s like just a simple example in our world. If you break the law and you end up in jail, then because when you get out of jail, you’re treated badly. You know, people, oh, this guy’s been in prison, and ordinary people tend not to want to mix with you, so you end up mixing with ex crims, and you probably end up, you know Well, you don’t have a job, you don’t have any money, blah blah blah, so you probably end up breaking the law again and then end up in jail again, and it just spirals and spirals.
So somebody who ended up in jail for some small thing can end up doing worse and worse things and spending their whole life like that. It’s really sad, but that’s what happens. And it’s difficult to get out of that, because also, well, I think the police tend to label people something, and then they’ll treat you that way, they won’t give you Whereas if you’re another person, they wouldn’t treat you that way. If put lines in a dress, it’s easier to find. And it just goes around and around.
So like that, once you fall into those situations, it’s very difficult to get out. Harder to get out than get in? Harder to get out than get in? Yes, very easy to get in, very hard to get out. Yeah.
What is a preto? A preto is the Sanskrit term for a hungry ghost. There’s many just like in all the different realms there’s many levels of them, you know, just like human beings. You have super rich, very happy people, very poor, very miserable people, very sick people, people sick all their life, people who are healthy all their life, incredibly intelligent human beings, people who have very extremely low IQs. So in the different realms of animals, you know, like dogs who are fed steak every day and caviar every day and have little fluffy shampoo things and God knows what.
And then there are animals who have just horrendous lives. And so in the preta realms it’s true, preta realms, there are So there are ghosts. I don’t know if you believe in ghosts or have seen them. If you’re Irish, every Irishman knows that ghosts exist and leprechauns and all those things. But most societies talk about ghosts, and of course it’s not fashionable to believe in ghosts now.
So that’s the least suffering of the preta realm. But the preta realm is described as a realm where you are born with a huge body, which is very skinny and a huge stomach, and your whole environment is like just a vast desert. There’s nothing nice there. It’s all ugly and dry and barren and hot, and you have no energy, so just walking is unbelievably excruciating. And you’re starving all the time and thirsty, but there’s nothing to eat or drink your entire life.
But you don’t die because that’s your karma. And you’re just tortured by and you see, you have hallucinations of food, and you go towards it, and just as you get close, it disappears. So you’re tormented like that for hundreds and hundreds of years. So that’s the karma of being, following lots of attachment and miserliness mainly. There’s wonderful descriptions in the sutras of the lower realms.
Anyway, we’ve got a little bit off the topic. Oh, sorry. Can I ask you a question? Yes. Okay.
The stories in the homework from the reading, they seem very extreme and very far fetched and over the top. I mean, that’s my view. But You haven’t read anything yet. But in but in saying that, are they designed or written that way to have that impact of overstatement to or are they something that really did happen that they just don’t know? Well, I’m not quite sure what did happen.
Well, those stories that were in the homework. I can’t be specific, but just from the reading of some of the descriptions of the karmas that people created. Right. Just seem very straight. Straight heads and things like that.
Yeah. Did that really happen? I wasn’t the imagination to have that kind of it just blows my mind. Yeah. I know.
To be honest, it’s very hard to believe some of these things, but they are presented in the sutras, which are supposed to have been spoken by the Buddha who doesn’t lie. It is possible some of them are presented as moral fables too, but the descriptions of the realms are horrendous, and they are meant to be understood as being like that. That’s not just to scare you. I mean, the Buddha’s a compassionate being. He doesn’t scare you for no purpose.
The mind If you look at what’s in this world, truly horrendous. I guess it’s trying to relate those stories to being in this world and identifying with them, those actions. But it’s not saying that there’s just this world. This is the point. There are these other realms.
Believe this, that the mind can give rise to these other realms. I mean, because they’re animals. I believe animals are like us. They have minds like us, more obscured, but yeah. And I’ve never seen a ghost, but I’ve met people who have you know, whom I consider to be normal, balanced people who’ve had experiences seeing ghosts.
I believe it. And there’s so many stories, so many things, so many. So why not the other realms? Yeah, but it is true. Some of the stories and things are I mean, Tibetan Buddhism is full of unbelievable stories.
Mind boggling. So is the Bible, yes. We’ve got okay. How much more time have we got before the break? Ten minutes.
Okay. So I think I haven’t talked I asked you to do it, but I’d like to talk a little bit about myself just to try and get into a positive area so people don’t freak out too much. So it’s important to understand that negative actions bring these incredible results. Just like even in this life, a small mistake can lead to so many suffering consequences for the person who engages in that action. They get angry in one moment, do something, and their whole life becomes a complete disaster because of that.
So in a similar way, our mind creates these karmic imprints, and those imprints the Buddha said, not because he wanted to terrify us but because the Buddha perceived this, says, These imprints, when they ripen, bring incredible results that can last for a huge amount of time and bring incredible suffering but also incredible happiness. So I’d just like to talk a little bit about the ten virtuous actions. So there are two kinds of ten virtuous actions. There are the ten virtuous actions which are merely avoiding the ten non virtuous actions. By consciously avoiding any of the ten non virtues, one is engaging in a virtuous action.
And you do that by recognising this is a harmful action, this is a non virtuous action, I believe that, and it can only bring suffering, so I will not engage in it. Even if there are the conditions whereby one could engage in that action, one makes the conscious decision not to do so. And one does that with the conscious motivated, but instead of the three poisonous minds, one needs to be motivated out of love and compassion, and instead of ignorance, out of some wisdom, or the wisdom that recognises this is harmful and it can only bring suffering. So this is what we should, as much as possible, try to put our effort into in this life, of avoiding those ten non virtuous actions. And we can motivate ourselves to do that by seeing the benefits of the karmic results of avoiding those ten non virtues.
So if we avoid those ten non virtues with all the four factors, we’re consciously recognising the object, we have that conscious motivation not to do it, and we avoid it carefully, and we’re happy that we’ve avoided that action and so on, then we create these really strong, complete, virtuous throwing karmas, which means that when they ripen, we will not be born in the lower realms, but we will be born in one of the upper realms, either as a human being or in the god realms. So that’s good for a start. But also we get the karmic result of having a long life. We don’t have a lot of sickness, we have a strong body, like a lot of energy in our body to do things, we have the habit of not killing. Also, maybe before going on, there is the basic virtue of avoiding the ten non virtues, but then there is what we should really try to encourage ourselves to do as much as possible, is to go the step further of engaging in the very virtuous actions, of simply not just avoiding the non virtue, but doing the extra virtue.
So instead of avoiding killing, we can engage in saving lives, protecting lives, nurturing life as much as possible. So this is definitely creating the cause for a good rebirth, it’s creating the cause to have a long life, a very healthy life, and to have the habit of saving life. So remember, Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, In the case of engaging in non virtue, this is the worst karmic result, because by having the habit of engaging in a negative action, you do it again and again and again, and you get all the suffering results over and over again. But if one starts engaging in virtuous actions of not killing and you start engaging in the even better action of saving life and protecting it and nurturing it, then one is developing that habit to save life and to not kill and therefore to have good rebirths, creating the cause, to have good rebirths again and again, to have long lives, healthy lives, and so on. One of the really nice practices one can do, which we haven’t done here really since I’ve been at Buddha House, unfortunately, did we?
No, we did it once, didn’t we? No, we didn’t. We haven’t. No, we haven’t done it at all. What are we talking about?
Saving animals’ lives, animals that are going to be killed. This is a really wonderful thing. When I was in We have done that again, not with you. Right, a long, long time.
While I was away. What did you save? Crickets. Crickets. Crickets.
Crickets. Right. And we had done not stuff being killed, but just animal blessing, prayers were done. Yeah, well, that’s not a big deal. But, yeah, saving animals that are going to be killed is a really fantastic thing to do.
It’s a really enjoyable thing to do. It’s a very, very powerful karma. It’s something that’s recommended, especially if you have a lot of sickness, especially if you have very strange sicknesses that are hard to cure. Sometimes what can really help in those cases is saving the lives of animals, because all sickness is due to taking life or injuring sentient beings, harming one gets sort of sickness. So by saving lives of animals that are about Well, if you can save the life of human beings, that’s even better, but that’s much more difficult.
But there are lots of animals that are always about to be killed for meat and so on. So to save the lives of such animals is really, really powerful, good karma. And so it can have an instant well, not a bad I shouldn’t say instant, but a definite result, even in this life, of overcoming sickness and so on. There are many good stories about this. If you belong to Animals Australia and you donate and you participate in different things that they do, because they save lots of animals’ lives here in Australia, they save animals from going overseas to be slaughtered.
They save pigs from being put into cages. They save chickens, all sorts of people. Would that Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yeah. Even if you were just donating and being a member or yeah. Because you’d be enabling them to do that. Yeah, yeah, That’s fantastic. If you can actually personally do it, it’s even better, of course.
I mean, the more effort you put into it, yeah. I’m very proud that when I was at Atisha Centre, we started this we saved sheep from being sent off to slaughter. Because often what happens is people save them and just dump animals somewhere, often they die because they’re not looked after. And it’s very interesting that animals who are about to be killed the karma is so strong that often it’s very difficult to actually save their lives. That often they die even when you save them, they die very quickly afterwards in some cases.
But what we did in Harcourt is we found these people who owned a farm, and we put these sheep on their farm and they looked after them. And we paid for the animals to be fed and to be shorn and everything, so they had really nice lives and could just die naturally, which some of them promptly well, not promptly went and did, which is what we knew, doing what comes naturally. So yeah, it was great. So we have a herd of about thirty or more sheep on this farm at the moment. So it’d be great if we could sort of save more than just crickets here and put a But the trouble is finding places to put them, you know.
Freedom Hill Sanctuary. Sorry? Freedom Hill Sanctuary. Freedom Hill Sanctuary, yeah. Right.
But can you take stuff there and Right. Freedom. I’m sure what to do. Like, I would think if an animal was gonna be slaughtered, that it wasn’t gonna be replaced with another animal. You know, if you save that animal, if there’s a quota of number of animals that they There’s not much you can do about that.
If they’re buying and selling things to eat, of course, the the next thousand will still come. But those are the that we’re doing. Yeah. Yeah, are saving some, yeah. Just a strange question, but is there any sharing aspect of karma?
For example, if I was ill and you said there was benefit in saving animals for illnesses. If I was to save animals and you were ill, for example, is there a sharing karma aspect to it? Like, by me saving animals, can I help your illness? Me personally. In theory there should be, because you dedicate the merit to the other person.
Because I mean there are many practices where you just do prayers for other people for their sickness, and they work, it So definitely saving animals for other people could help. But of course, if you do it yourself, you know, it’s more direct. But yeah, sure, it should be. And of course, finally, one is born in a peaceful environment, really nice environment, such as Australia, such as Adelaide. I didn’t think you could actually change someone else’s karma.
It’s all really a mental exercise. It’s a anything I don’t know if you can’t change it as such, but I think you can modify it. You can modify it. Is there a difference between the word modifying and change then? Or is it a bit like Well, definitely this is what does.
Rinpoche spends most of his money that people offer him doing pujas for other people, gigantic poojas for people who are sick and this and that, and dedicating. And there’s so many stories of people having prayers done for them that it has an effect, and quite quickly in some But of course, you know, catch-twenty two, it depends on your karma. So got this bad karma ripening as some sickness or some problem in your life, but if you do a puja, that puja being done well, but depending on some other good karma you have, then this problem can be modified. The sickness can be overcome to some extent or even completely. I think it’s just probably more complicated than we are analyzing, because if you think about the karma that you would contact Lama Zopa, that he would know about your illness, that the puja would be done.
Mean, all those things have karmic kind of causes. There’s just thousands of causes and effects in it. Yeah. But, you know, as I’ve tried to say before, a car is an imprint that is ripening, and for it to ripen it requires the conditions. So the seed is there.
You can’t do much about that as such, the imprint is there. But it seems you can change the conditions, and doing poojas and prayers, saving animals and whatever, is changing the conditions. So by changing the conditions, maybe it is more difficult for the karmic seed to ripen or to continue to ripen or to ripen so strongly. Maybe that’s what happens. That’s my understanding.
I don’t know if it’s correct. But that makes some sense to me. That could be why medicine works. It could simply be changing the karma. Medicine Because cause and effect has to involve the physical world as well.
Yes, of course. Yeah, yeah. Tea break. Thank you. Quickly, if we could go through the the ten virtuous actions and the ten very virtuous actions.
So instead of engaging in stealing, we avoid stealing, and if more than that, can try and practice engaging in generosity of giving away things, giving things to others. So again this is creating the cause for a higher rebirth, and the karmic result similar to the cause of practising generosity and not stealing is to have resources. We think that working is the cause to make money. You know, if you have a good job, blah blah blah, this is the cause of making money. But from a Buddhist point of view, it’s not.
It’s the condition. But the cause is practicing generosity. If one hasn’t practiced generosity in the past, one’s efforts to make money and all the things that help one keep alive just don’t come. But if one’s practiced a lot of generosity in past lives, then one will have all sorts of resources in this life. And if one is engaged in stealing in past lives, then one doesn’t have anything in this life, or what one has gets easily lost and damaged and you’re not able to enjoy it properly.
But by avoiding stealing, especially practising generosity, one is creating the cause to have all the sorts of not just money, but all the necessary resources for life. So this is really important practice. And of course, if one dedicates it properly, with that practice dedicating the merit, it becomes you have the resources, not just worldly resources for just worldly pleasure, but the resources that are necessary to practise the Dharma, which is so vital. What do you mean? The fact that they’ve been to become very wealthy and Yes, I would say so, yeah.
Even though, you know, extreme Yeah, Many things are operating, so as a result of practising generosity in a past life, you get born For example, you get born into a very rich family where, just by being born into that rich family, you have huge resources, lots of staff. There is an ethic amongst from my reading, that there seems to be an ethic amongst most rich people to give a portion of their in the business sense, there’s an ethic of the wealthy to give a portion of their income to those less fortunate or to the charity or by giving back to others because they have received there seems to be that ethic. I’m not sure if there is, actually. I think there is. In the business, never a room in the business world for the most wealthy.
Yeah. There seems to be. There are some extremely rich people who don’t give anything. Yeah, but the philanthropists Oh, yeah, of course. Yes, that’s different than saying the rich in general have an ethic of giving.
I don’t think that is necessarily the case at all. There’s some extremely generous rich people and some extremely ungenerous. I wouldn’t say it’s an ethic that you apply across the board. But also it’s very common you ask anyone who goes collecting money, the people who give the most money are the poor. You get the most money from the poorer people.
And especially percentage wise, because what the rich So anyway But those rich who are being generous, of course, are creating the cause to be rich in the future. So you can think about the karma of it is to be the Queen of England, to be born in that kind of situation. Very interesting, Because you have to create the cause for that. But there’s got some downsides. I didn’t say it didn’t.
I’m just saying it has very interesting karma for that kind of situation. Anyway, where am I? We’ve only got to the second one. Yes. So this also means we have all these resources, we don’t have things stolen from us, we don’t lose things, we’re able to really enjoy what we have.
Also we’re born into a place where it’s easy to survive, for things to succeed that are necessary for life. And then one has the habit of being generous, and therefore to have all these resources life after life. So instead of engaging in sexual misconduct, one can avoid engaging in sexual misconduct, and more than that, train the mind in developing contentment and even practising what’s the word? Chastity to some extent, even if only temporarily, such as by taking the eight Mahāyāna precepts, which is a wonderful practice. I don’t know how many people Sorry?
You mean celibacy, sure. Yes, celibacy. Chastity, same. Yeah, similar. So there is the practice of taking what are called the Eight Mahāyāna precepts for twenty four hours.
So this is a practice that Lama Zopa Rinpoche encourages a great deal. It’s not actually, for some reason, emphasised a lot in the Gelugpa tradition it’s very common in some of the other Tibetan traditions of Buddhism. But in the FPMT, it’s encouraged a lot because of the kindness of Lama Zopa Rinpoche to take the eight Mahāyāna precepts, which you take twenty four hours, which is not to kill, steal, avoid sexual misconduct for the day, not to lie, only to eat once one meal during the day at lunchtime, to avoid singing, dancing, playing music, sitting on high expensive beds, and Wearing jewelry. Wearing perfumes, jewellery and ornaments. So this is these are the eight Mahāyāna precepts.
You take them with a bodhicitta motivation and keep them for twenty four hours. So it’s a great vehicle to purify the mind and accumulate vast merit. Highly recommended. And traditionally one does it on the full and new moons. This is the best days because, as I said, there’s some special energy that affects the mind at those days, so That’s today for a new moon.
Is it? Is that what the full moon today? New today. Right. We missed it.
We missed the opportunity. But we can take them ourselves, can we? Well, ideally I mean, to take them properly, completely, you should have refuge. And then on the basis of refuge, you can take these vows, and to take them completely, you have to receive them in a ceremony from someone who has the lineage. And once you’ve done that, then you can take them by yourself any time.
So anyway, this is one thing one can do. Then sort of maybe I’ll just do a little, I think, a segue, they call it, at this point, which means I probably won’t finish the ten non virtues. But what I would like to emphasise as part of this talk is that So in understanding If we develop some understanding, some belief, some faith in the law of cause and effect, then it’s so important to avoid negative actions, to know what negative actions are and to avoid them. And what is very powerful in this process is the taking of vows. So this is a very If one wants to follow the Buddhist tradition to any serious extent, the taking of vows is very important.
vows, as I tried to mention with the eight Mahāyāna precepts, has to be done on the basis of having refuge, that you take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, which means you’re making that acknowledgment that you believe in the Buddhas, and therefore what the Buddhas teach, and therefore you want to live your life according to those teachings, because this will protect you from suffering and lead you towards greater and greater happiness until enlightenment is achieved. And the very essence of taking refuge is believing in the law of cause and effect. You’re acknowledging that that is the essential teaching of the Buddha. Because when you take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, the essential refuge is the Buddha’s teachings, because And you’re saying, I’m going to practise these teachings as much as possible because these teachings or the methods contained in them are what are going to protect my mind from suffering and help me achieve happiness and to be of benefit to others. And so the Dharma is the essential refuge, and then within the Dharma teachings, these most essential teachings is the law of cause and effect.
Everything is connected to that. Absolutely all the teachings of the Buddha are connected to the law of cause and effect. So you’re acknowledging that I believe in the law of cause and effect, that I have to avoid negative actions because of the suffering results, that I need to engage in virtuous actions because these are going to bring me a good rebirth and every kind of happiness. So on the basis of that belief, then you have the basis to take vows, because you recognise that there are certain things which are naturally negative, such as killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying. All the ten non virtues are naturally negative actions, according to the Buddha.
As a monk, I have two fifty three vows to keep. Most of these vows are not naturally negative actions. They are negative because one takes the vow to or one has taken the vow to do certain things, so if you don’t, you break the vow, and that becomes a negative action. But those vows exist to help keep These extra vows are to help preserve the four main vows of monks and nuns, which are naturally negative, which is about killing, stealing, lying and sexual misconduct, or sexual conduct of any kind. Anyway, the ten non virtues are naturally negative.
It applies for everyone all the time. Killing is always negative. It’s not just applies to Buddhists, it applies to everyone. So by taking a vow So to not kill is a fantastic thing. To consciously decide not to kill, that is a very good thing.
But if you take the vow, it’s even more powerful, more effective, because by taking the vow, if you break the vow, you’ve done two things: you’ve done something which is naturally negative, for example killing or stealing, but then you’ve made a vow to the Buddhas not to do that, and you’ve broken it, so that makes it infinitely worse. Therefore, by taking vows in order to keep them, it forces you to be very mindful. And of course, the more you believe in the law of cause and effect, that what you do has consequences, then by taking the vow it forces you to be really mindful in order not to break the vow. So that is incredibly helpful. What about Yes, we haven’t got to that yet, have we?
Yes. But anyway, that is a good point, that when one engages in a naturally negative action or you break a vow, you can purify it and I’ll talk about this next week by applying the four opponent powers. But without being too heavy and grim, one shouldn’t think that you can just purify easily. It is very difficult to actually purify, especially vows, because it’s much heavier. And I think that will become obvious when I talk about it next week.
One shouldn’t sort of think, Oh, doesn’t matter if I’ve done this bad thing, because I can purify it. But it’s very difficult to purify. Yes, the teachings say even the most extreme negative actions can be purified, but it takes a lot of hard work to purify them. You can’t just do it like that. What sort of calmer do you get from eating meat?
Could we leave that for a little while? Just let me finish my little talk on vows. Taking vows is extremely helpful in avoiding negative actions. Also it helps you to be more and more mindful, and the more mindful one is, then that helps one to be really aware of what one is doing, and therefore to avoid negative actions. Because if we don’t remember what actions are negative, then it’s very easy to engage in them and not even know it.
So we need to be mindful as much as possible. The more mindful we are, then the more we’re able to really put the teachings into practice. Mindfulness is one of the key practices in Buddhism. Mindfulness is that ability to remember what is virtuous and what is non virtuous, what is meaningful, what is not meaningful. Remember what you’ve decided to do because this is virtuous and beneficial, what you’ve decided not to do because it’s not so beneficial.
A lot of mindfulness practice, which has become very popular these days, is not actually mindfulness because true mindfulness has a moral dimension to it. It is knowing what is virtuous and non virtuous. Where am I? So vows are really, really important because they help us to be mindful, to force us, in a sense, to remember what we’ve promised to do, what we know is good to do, what is not good to do. So that’s really helpful.
And also, by sort of forcing us, in a sense, to be more mindful, it also helps our mind to become more sensitive to what we are doing to our own mind, whether we’re harming it or benefiting it. So there are three levels of vows within Tibetan Buddhism. The basic level of vows are called the pratimoksha vows, and pratimoksha is the Sanskrit word that means liberation, and praty just means individual. So these are the vowels of individual liberation. So it is said that in order to liberate oneself from saṃsāra, from cyclic existence, from suffering, one has to at some point take the pratimoksha vows.
So the basic pratimoksha vows are the five lay precepts, which is to avoid killing, to avoid stealing, to avoid sexual misconduct, to avoid lying, and to avoid intoxicants. So these are the five lay precepts which are the very basis of Buddhist practice and life. Even if you don’t take the vows, it’s very good to live one’s life according to those five precepts of avoiding killing any sentient being, stealing anything that’s not freely offered, taking anything that’s freely offered, avoiding sexual misconduct, avoiding lying and intoxicants, which also includes cigarettes. So you can take all five at once or in one ceremony, or you can take just one at a time. You you can just take one of these vows two, three, four, five.
Highly recommend this to consider of taking the five precepts. But also the eight Mahāyāna precepts, which are taken for just one day, are also incredibly good practice, a great vehicle to purify the mind, accumulate lots of merit just in a short time. Okay, what is the karma of eating meat? I don’t think there is any negative karma in eating meat as such. Eating meat as such is not a negative action, it is not a negative karma, and therefore it doesn’t create negative imprints, generally speaking.
But in the teachings it does say that it is a great obstacle to developing compassion. All right? But this is a huge debate, because some people argue that by eating meat you’re the you know, you’re creating the karma of killing the animal. But why any animal or any being is killed is because they have created the cause for it. So the fact of people eating meat, it creates a market for meat.
So that market is the condition for that animal’s negative karma of having killed in the past to ripen. So of course by eating meat, you are part of that, you become part of that market. So as I was trying to explain in our great retreat on Kangaroo Island a few days ago A few days ago? Yes. Yeah, was only a few days ago.
If the market is very small, which is often the case, for example, if you live in a village in India, and you go to the local little meat shop, and there’ll be lumps of meat on this little table, and you ask for a piece, but sometimes the guy runs out or you ask for a piece of something that is not on the table. He will just go around to the back of the tent, and there’s the goat on the thing and chop. So you sort of directly ask for that animal to be killed. So in those cases where the market is very small, there’s just a few people involved, then you’re more directly creating the cause for that animal, or you’re much more directly involved in the conditions for that animal to die. Whereas in the West, where it’s a huge market, you’re much more removed.
One would probably have to say there’s a tiny karmic If you think about it, which most people don’t want to think about, and I don’t want to go moralising about this because I personally am vegetarian, and I think it’s great if people didn’t eat meat, that would be great. But when you’re eating meat, whether you’re conscious of it or not, in a sense you are rejoicing that the animal died, because if he didn’t, she didn’t, you wouldn’t have this meat to eat. So in a sense you are happy that the animal died, this is not good for the mind. Even though you’re not very conscious of it. But this is the case.
Because actually whatever we eat, we’re happy, we’ve got it. Oh, I’m so glad this exists, even if you’re not necessarily you don’t consciously think that. What about the small market where it goes round the back and kills the animal? What about if you’re ignorant of that and don’t realise that’s what they’re doing. But this is a very good question, because the way karma works is you need to be ignorant.
There’s many levels of ignorance, but just because you don’t know something is happening, if you’re creating the cause for it, you are. I mean, if you know, it makes it worse. But just because you don’t know something is negative or is being done, but you’ve created the cause, there’s karma involved. Like many people who hunt and fish and think there’s nothing wrong with it. They don’t know it’s naturally negative, but they are engaging in a naturally negative action, and so they are accumulating karma.
But once you See, this is I should warn you now, you’ve come to this course on karma, now you know what is right and wrong. So once we know and we continue to do negative actions, it’s much worse. The karma is much worse. Or to be more accurate, the karmic imprints we’re creating are worse. Well, also the action, the karma, is worse because I know this is negative and I’m doing it.
If you don’t know it’s negative and you do it, of course it’s nowhere near as bad. And then, for example, if you accept the law of cause and effect and you do a negative action and you’ve taken the vow not to do it, it’s even worse. Yeah. But the only way to be free of suffering is to know what are the causes of it. So it’s very good to know these things, because ignorance isn’t bliss, ignorance is suffering.
It is knowing that is what is liberating. It is knowledge, especially in its deeper sense of really experiencing something as right and wrong, really knowing this, that’s what liberates us. Time. About eight minutes. What?
Eight minutes. Roughly. You’re right. This slow. Right, eight minutes.
Then I quickly sat through the virtues again. Any questions, though? Anything? Yeah, you were going through There were three levels of vows. Oh, sorry, quickly.
Yes. So the basic ones are the pratimoksha vows, which are so the simplest form of those are the five lay vows, the five lay vows that lay Buddhists have, and then there are the vows that monks and nuns have. These are also the pratamoksha vows. So there are different levels. There are the novice vows, and then there are the vows of fully ordained monks and nuns.
So those are what help us achieve freedom from saṃsāra, and then there are the bodhisattva vows which help us achieve enlightenment. So these are even more karmically potent. So if you break the bodhisattva I should go back, sorry. By keeping the pratamoksha vows, skies of merit. So for example, can Most people don’t go around killing animals and whatever, but because they don’t have the so they’re not creating the negative karma of killing animals, but because they don’t have the vow not to kill, they’re not accumulating merit by not killing.
Whereas a person who has a vow, that vow helps them to not kill when, you know I mean, that’s the whole point of having vows, is to when the situation is there, you hold back from doing it. But also, by keeping the vow, you’re accumulating, you’re making this merit of keeping the vow, which a person who doesn’t have the vow but is not killing just doesn’t have. So this is another reason for taking vows. It protects you from negativity and it accumulates lots and lots of merit. So similarly, when you take the bodhisattva vows, the karma of breaking them is even worse than breaking the pratimoksha vows it’s just another level altogether.
But the karma keeping them is also enormous. And then finally, the highest level of vow are the tantric vows, the tantric samayas, which enable us to achieve enlightenment very quickly. So by keeping those, just unbelievable. If you break them, they’re unbelievable, heavy, heavy. I was with someone today who was discussing their interest in euthanasia.
Where does that come under? Right, euthanasia. Wanting to be euthanasia if they got to a particular the same with, you know, you’ve got sick pets and Sick pets. Yeah, we also discussed this on Kangaroo Island, didn’t we? No, no, no.
This is valid to discuss on karma course. If you check, the non virtue of killing is killing someone other than yourself. That creates the complete karma of killing. But also it is considered that killing yourself is negative karma. It’s definitely a negative action because in order to kill Normally, people commit suicide because they are very unhappy, the mind is depressed.
And so in that depressed state, you’re not going to have a good If you die in that depressed state, it’s very unlikely to have a good rebirth. That’s kind of the condition for one of the negative throwing karmas to ripen. And similarly, with euthanasia, the person doesn’t want to live because they have aversion to the quality of their life. And so I it could vary, but in general it’s probably not a good state to die in, generally. Because you want to die in a peaceful, virtuous state.
Person. Say that again? So somebody who’s not a Buddhist who wants to be euthanized Yes. And they’re asking someone who is to help them do that. Yeah.
That no. It’s very difficult. I personally think of people who have a lot of suffering, and they want to they don’t want well, maybe I shouldn’t say that. I would have thought that if someone is having so much suffering and they are able to access something that would enable them to die, then they would think that that’s gonna relieve that suffering. Their state of mind is probably quite positive at that point.
But this is not this is not killing yourself out of depression and and unhappiness. No. No. You’re you’re trying to avoid the pain, but but at the point at which you’re able to start to to access a way of dying that gives you some dignity, I think that would probably lead to a a positive state mind. But it’s so many drugs.
So cherished to give the pain. So many drugs that they help you with the pain, so you don’t need to Not always. Yeah. Not always. No.
No. No. There’s no. You can’t yeah. No.
Isn’t isn’t that self-cherishing? I mean, I I I don’t know if it Yes. It is. Yeah. Yeah.
It’s certainly a kind of self-cherishing. Yeah. Is certainly a kind of self-cherishing. Oh, yeah. I just don’t think you’d necessarily be in such a negative state of mind.
No, no, yeah, I can imagine, yeah. I’d like to put that on to somebody else and go back to some of That’s still a deluded state of mind, though. Isn’t it? Oh, we’re all deluded. Yeah, I know.
To be continued next week, something very important to talk about. Because as we’re all living much longer, then you reach a point where life becomes really quite horrible. Even in hospital. I’ll end up another jolly, I can’t help it, can I? Just quickly, Kenla.
We don’t we’re not going necessarily through the full results, but could we just go quickly through the virtuous and very virtuous steps for the rest of them so that we can probably do the homework. Oh, very virtuous. Yes, okay. Quick. Sorry, now we’re going over time.
You’ll stop me when we were So there was Avoiding lying. Yeah, lying, so speaking the truth, avoiding exaggerating. Instead of divisive speech, using one’s speech to create harmony, reconciliation. Instead of harsh speech, pleasant speech, speech that is encouraging and uplifting and supportive. And instead of meaningless idle gossip, trying to keep one’s speech meaningful and to the point.
That means I have to stop blabbing. And instead of covetousness, there’s non attachment, developing non attachment instead of ill will, developing love and compassion and instead of wrong views, developing faith. Just lastly, on those three, during the meditations, during the week, and looking at the opposite kind of state, the opposite of covetousness and ill will and ignorance. I see a kind of nice connection with renunciation, bodhicitta, and the wisdom realising emptiness as also being the virtues that are opposite to covetousness. Oh, well, that’s super, super Yeah.
That’s very high level. Very, very virtuous. Yeah, that’s very, very, very, very, very virtuous. Great, thank you. So we have done something very, very virtuous tonight, we can rejoice, which increases the positive imprints, so we can dedicate this, in the best way, so that it becomes part of the process of achieving enlightenment for the benefit not only of ourselves but all sentient beings.
Page twelve. Due to the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of the 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. Okay, thank you. To remind you to collect your homework you’ve put in, collect the next set of homework.
But also, I did notice that a lot of people who did fill something in the homework didn’t do many of the meditations. So I would really encourage people to try and do the meditations, even a little bit, you know, because it really helps to integrate if you really start to just quietly think about, you know, think about the thing rather than intellectualise it by reading it and this and that. But just to spend a little quiet time just preparing your mind by sitting in this posture and consciously generating the motivation, then thinking about the subject just a little bit, you know, five, ten, fifteen minutes at most, and then dedicating that. Especially if you do it regular, if you get into this rhythm of doing that, can be very, very will be, not can be, will be very, very helpful.