Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 109-minute opening session of the Discovering Buddhism karma module, Ven Thubten Dondrub establishes the foundations of Buddhist understanding of cause and effect. After explaining the program structure—homework sheets, discussion groups, and the importance of motivation—he guides students through the preliminary practice of cultivating bodhicitta, the wish to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. He then introduces the four fundamental principles of karma: that the relationship between action and result is definite and never changes; that every experience has a cause within the mind, not external circumstances; that karmic imprints ripen gradually over lifetimes, often taking years or eons to mature; and that results vastly exceed the energy invested in creating them. He explains how negative and positive karmic imprints are generated, the two exceptions—that positive imprints can be destroyed by anger and negative ones purified through specific practices—and distinguishes between throwing karmas, which determine rebirth, and completing karmas, which shape the details of each life. The teaching includes the four determining factors that strengthen karmic imprints: impulse (especially the three poisons of ignorance, desire, and anger), the object toward whom the action is directed, the act itself, and its completion. Suitable for newcomers and serious practitioners beginning their formal study of Buddhist cause and effect.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Karma week 1.mp3
UUID: 6d3b78e4-05f2-4923-a7ab-e0d9f37f3db5
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Karma (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2018 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 109.0 minutes
Words: ~13,568
The Discovering Buddhism program, welcome. There’s maybe just a Oh, and Happy New Year everyone. So maybe there’s just a couple of practical things I’ll get out of the way first before we properly start. So firstly, there’s a few homeworks left over from last year that people could collect, which I’ll put over there. And for those people who are not familiar with the Discovering Buddhism program, it’s designed I don’t know if it works or not but it’s designed to encourage people to get involved in studying the Dharma, not just coming here and listening to talks, but really trying to put it into practice.
That’s if you feel that it’s worthwhile doing so. So for this reason, there is homework that is just a homework sheet that is provided that you collect over here. And so it gives some reading to do from the Discovering Buddhism what do you call this book that everyone is provided with. And also some meditations to do each day and a little bit of mindfulness practice to practice throughout the week. And so people are I would really encourage people to do that homework.
The more you do it, the more you’ll benefit from it. Yeah. So the two things are meant to go together doing these talks and the discussions that go with them and doing the homework. So on the homework sheet, there’s some space provided where people can ask questions or make comments. So I really encourage people to ask questions and make comments because it’s helpful for me, because often I can see from the questions that people haven’t understood or misunderstood what I’ve said or because I haven’t explained it properly, people have got a completely wrong idea.
So it’s very helpful to get that kind of feedback. And I can try to answer the question either by writing an answer on the piece of paper if it’s fairly easy to answer, or I can try and answer in the next session in the classroom. So that’s something to be aware of. Also, people have complained that some of the reading in this book is quite difficult to understand, and I agree, especially for the newer people. So don’t get too upset by that.
Don’t try to understand it all, because some of these the articles most of the articles are from spoken teaching. They’re transcripts of spoken teachings, especially from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, where Rinpoche covers a whole range of subjects in a talk. But in that talk, there’s something about the topic of this program, so that’s why it’s included. But there may be mention of many other things more advanced or unrelated to the topic, so it may get confusing, especially for new people. So don’t worry about that stuff.
Yeah. Another thing I’d just like to mention before we start is since some of the homework and some of the stuff that I comment on stuff. Excuse me. Some of the things I say aren’t in the written material. I would encourage people to take some notes.
You don’t have to, but I would encourage people to take notes on, you know, just some points that come up. Because actually one of the parts of the home work is to review the class. So if you can’t remember anything from the class, it’s not very helpful. So one way to help remember is to take some notes. Yes, so the idea is each week to put your homework first thing when you come in to leave your homework there, collect the next week’s homework so you’ve got it.
Because if there’s time, I’ll try to explain any things about the homework at the end of the class. And also because we have discussion groups each session, there won’t be a discussion group tonight because I just need to introduce get the whole topic going and everything, so there’s no discussion in the first class of each module. But every other class so there’s five classes to this module, so the next four classes there’ll be a discussion group in each session. So there’ll be some questions or suggested topics to discuss. So each person gets one of these little bits of paper, So you collect them also over there at the beginning of the class.
And everyone will be divided into, not physically, into groups, discussion groups. So those lists of the discussion groups will be posted up next week, so probably on the door here and a few other places. Please check those out so you know which discussion group you’re in. There’ll probably only be maybe only two, but maximum three discussion groups. So please check next week which discussion group you’re in, Okay?
I think they’re the main practical things I wanted to talk about, introductory things. Maybe just there’s a few people here, think, a couple of people here who didn’t Each module is meant to be a separate module, but of course if you’ve done the previous modules, especially if you’re fairly new to Buddhism, it’s very helpful because they do tend to follow in some kind of logical sequence. So the first module, which we started last year, was on mind and its potential. So from that, this topic of karma comes very naturally. So if you haven’t attended that module, it’ll be good if you can read up a little bit about the Buddhist view of the mind, which if you’re not familiar with it.
Anyway, okay, so As I always say, one of the things that all my teachers have emphasised is that it’s really important that whatever we do, especially when we’re practising the Buddhadharma, is that we try and do it with a very clear motivation, a very strong motivation, a very genuine motivation and a very good motivation. And we should try to make our motivation as best as possible. So this is, at the beginning of teachings, it’s always emphasised to spend a little time cultivating one’s motivation, just firstly clearing one’s mind, checking one’s motivation for being here and trying to make it as best as possible. And in the Mahāyāna tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, sorry, in the tradition of Buddhism that we follow here, all the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism follow the Mahāyāna tradition. So in that tradition, what is emphasised as the very best motivation possible is called bodhicitta.
And this is the wish to achieve enlightenment. bodhicitta is the word, Chitta is the word for mind, Bodhi is enlightenment, so it’s the mind seeking enlightenment. And the reason to seek enlightenment, the obvious reason to seek enlightenment, of course, that state where our mind is free of all delusions, permanently free of all delusions, a state of mind where all our positive potentials are fully awakened and operating undecliningly all the time. The obvious reason to achieve that state is for our own benefit. Because in that state, we’re permanently free of all suffering and are only experiencing continuous joy, happiness, bliss and all good things.
So that’s very obvious. But the actual reason to achieve enlightenment is not for that. I mean, it is for that, but that’s not the main reason. The main reason to achieve enlightenment, to wish to achieve enlightenment that is encouraged by all the Buddhas and all our teachers, is that when we achieve enlightenment, when we become a Buddha, we’re in a perfect position to benefit sentient beings, all other living beings. And why should we do that?
It’s because there are many, many reasons, but the obvious one is because all sentient beings, whether we’re aware of it or not now, have been immensely kind to us. Without going into, I try to avoid going I’ll have to talk a bit about this now, I’ll try and keep my motivation shorter during the rest of the course, but if you think about it, if you check up, just to survive today, for example, just to have a piece of toast at breakfast time, this involves countless living beings, sentient beings. The people who grew the wheat, transported it, turned it into flour, turned it into bread, took it to the shops, sold it in the shops, packaged it, all the people who made the machinery so that the wheat could be grown. And before there was machinery or mechanical machine, what, engine driven machinery, there was horse drawn machinery going back and back and back. So just to have a piece of toast in the morning, it depends on thousands, just directly and indirectly thousands, possibly millions of beings, just immediately right now.
But if you think that all of these beings depended on other people and other situations going back and back into history, then it really depended on everyone who’s been on this planet, just for one piece of bread, one time, just for one little bit of kindness. But then so yeah. So everything we depend on is like that. Everything we depend on, from small to incredibly important, we depend on the help and support and kindness of other sentient beings. And every good thing that happens to us, whether it’s an ordinary good thing or a spiritual good thing, depends on the kindness of others, just their existence.
And every good quality and skill that we develop, whether it’s an ordinary quality or skill or a spiritual quality or skill, we can only do it depending on the existence and the kindness of others, in fact all others, because who we directly depend on, they depend on others, who depend on others going back and back and back. So since this is true of this life, it’s true for all our previous lives and will be true for all our future lives. And of course for those who’ve looked into the Buddha’s view of mind, since our mind is beginningless and we’ve had infinite rebirths, inconceivable number of rebirths, an uncountable number of rebirths, we’ve had an inconceivable number of mothers. In fact, the Buddha’s teachings say that every sentient being that exists has been our mother has been our mother many, many times. Everyone’s been our father, brother, sister, has been immensely kind to us.
But the sad fact is all these beings are suffering. We are suffering, we ourselves here are trapped in cyclic existence, our mind controlled by delusion and karma, whether we like it or not, and so we suffer and we create the causes of suffering. But at least if we’ve met the Buddhadharma and have some faith in it, we’re in a position to learn the method to become free of cyclic existence, to become free of suffering and to actually create the causes of genuine, lasting, peerless, everlasting happiness. You’re supposed to be in Sydney. Anyway, that’s okay.
No, no, it’s okay. No, I lost what was my point? What was I saying? Do you remember what was no, what was I saying, was anyone listening? Oh yes, so when we meet the Buddhadharma we’ve met the method whereby we can be free of suffering and achieve perfect happiness.
We’ve met the method that enables us to understand our mind and how it works so that we don’t create the causes of suffering and so that we can start creating the causes of happiness. But the vast majority of sentient beings who are suffering have not met a method, a valid method whereby they can understand their mind and the vital importance of the mind and how it is the cause of all suffering and the cause of all happiness. And because of that, the vast majority of sentient beings, most of the time unknowingly, uncontrollably, are creating the cause of suffering, perpetuating, to use Buddha’s jargon, their own saṃsāra, perpetuating the state of being controlled by delusion and karma. So the more we think about that, we can generate this wish to repay the kindness of sentient beings by helping them become free of suffering and its causes and to help them to achieve peerless, everlasting happiness. And the only way we can do that is for ourselves to be free of suffering and to achieve, to awaken all our positive qualities and achieve the enlightened state.
And that’s bodhicitta, the wish to do that. Not just for some people, not just for the nice people, but even for all the terrible people, especially for the terrible people, because the terrible people create so much suffering. If all the terrible people could be happy, could be enlightened, everyone else would be much better off. So bodhicitta is the wish to help everyone to repay because all those terrible people have been very kind to us in past lives. Those terrible people, at some future time, will also be kind to us.
So bodhicitta isn’t limited anyway. So anyway, this is bodhicitta And this is It is an immensely difficult state of mind to generate, but the very best one to generate. And even trying to direct our mind in that way is incredibly beneficial for ourself and others. So this is why we’re encouraged to listen to the teachings with that bodhicitta motivation as much as possible, because that will make the teachings so much more effective. They’ll be yeah, The teachings will be able to penetrate our mind more if we have that open, really wonderful motivation.
And since I am just such a dodo little teacher, you need I don’t have much power to penetrate your mind, so you need to generate a really good motivation. I do too, of course. So to help us do that, there is a traditional prayer which we do, which is on page twelve of your student material. And we do this prayer. It was composed by this great Indian master who lived in the tenth century, Acharya Atisha, who went to Tibet and taught there for a number of years.
So we can recite this if you’d like to join in, twice in Tibetan, one time in English. And to make it more effective, we try and visualise or think of Śākyamūni Buddha, the historical Buddha, directly in front of us as the embodiment of everything we wish to achieve, the enlightened state, the very embodiment of the Three Jewels of refuge, the Buddha, the Dharma, which is the Buddha’s teachings, and the Sangha, which are the realised practitioners, the highly realised practitioners of the Buddha’s teachings. So we visualise the Buddha in front of us and to inspire us and then to motivate us, we try and think of all sentient beings surrounding us. So at least we try and think of those people that we’re most connected to in this life. So we think our mother on our left, father on our right, then the rest of our family and all our friends and helpers behind us.
We think of our enemies, the people we dislike or who dislike us in front of us, not to generate negative thoughts to them, but to help us realise, to confront the fact that these beings are suffering, these beings need my help, these beings have been kind to me. Just like my mother and father and friends and family and so on of this life, they have been kind to me. They deserve my compassion, not my aversion. So at least we try and think of that group of people, but as much as possible, we try to open our hearts and minds to an awareness and concern for all sentient beings, at least the human beings of this world. But the more one understands and believes in the different kinds of sentient beings that exist, we try and hold them in our hearts as well.
I go for refuge until I am 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. So then we can imagine that the Buddha is very pleased with our motivation and shows this by now coming to towards the crown of our head. And then when the Buddha is directly above our crown, we can imagine that the Buddha then dissolves into blissful golden light and then that light pours down into us, blessing our mind. So imagine the mind becomes very calm and clear, very peaceful.
So then just for a short time, just do some simple breathing meditation, particularly the nine round breathing meditation, if you’re familiar with that, just to let the mind become a little bit more calm and 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. Again, just before we actually get into the topic, one thing I’d just like to explain for the newer people, so I’m not sure if you’re familiar with this, but on page fourteen and fifteen in the student material, in the student book, is a section called the eight point Vipashyana Meditation Posture. So I won’t go through the posture.
I think that’s pretty self explanatory. But I’d just briefly like to go through, on page fifteen, point eight of the posture, which is not something physical, but which is called the nine round breathing exercise. So this is something that we do at the beginning of each session, so it’s good that everyone knows it, is familiar with it. And also I ask people to do this at the beginning of each meditation, which is part of the daily the homework that is set. So I just like make sure people are clear how to do it.
So, and it’s only meant to be done for a couple of rounds. It’s not like a complete meditation practice in itself. It’s just something to calm the gross agitation in the mind so that one can then do whatever other meditation, main meditation that one wants to do. So one is, as it says here, one is breathing through both nostrils all the time, but one starts the exercise as the breath is coming in both nostrils by firstly being aware, focusing on the breath coming in your left nostril, and then you focus when you exhale on the breath coming out your right nostril. Of course it’s coming in both and going out both all the time, but for the first three breaths in the cycle, you focus on, when you breathe in, you focus on the breath coming in your right nostril and when you breathe out, you focus just on your breath going out the right nostril.
So coming in the left, out the right, in the left, out the right, in the left, out the right. Okay? First three breaths. So then for the next three breaths, you change it, and when you breathe in, focus on the breath coming in your right nostril, and when you breathe out, you focus on it going out the left nostril. So in the right, out the left, in the right, out the left, in the right, out the left.
Right? And so for the last three breaths of the nine round breaths of the cycle, you focus on the breath coming in both nostrils and out both. So breathing in focusing on the breath coming in, they’re both out both, in both out both, in both out both. So that completes one cycle of the nine round breathing exercise. So one can do that for two or three cycles at the beginning of the session.
So this is something we’ll do at the beginning of each teaching, each class, but also hopefully if you’re doing the homework completely and do each meditation session, then that’s a good way to start. That’s one of the traditional ways in the Tibetan tradition. So that’s the basic thing. This is a simplified version of a little bit more complicated technique, which is based on the tantric teachings of the Buddha. So to make it a bit more effective, if like, when you’re doing the in breaths, you can imagine you’re breathing in white light and can imagine that that white light is coming from the Buddha, if you have any faith in the Buddha, or if you’re not at that stage, you can think that this light is coming in from some very positive source, you know, something universal goodness that’s existing or whatever you however you relate to things, you imagine there is this white light you breathe in.
So that makes and you imagine that brings great clarity and peace quietness into your mind. And with each out breath in the cycle, you imagine you breathe out all the garbage in your mind, all your negative thoughts, any agitation, fears, worries, stress, anxiety, negative thoughts that are existing in the present, or karmic negative imprints, if you believe in those, all your disturbing thoughts, imagine all of that rubbish and negativity one breathes out the form of this really disgusting thick black smoke. So the idea is to try and do it really kind of vividly, you know, really feel that you’re doing that and that that blackness just completely disappears. So when you go doing in, out, in, out, starting there, it’s a white light, black, white, black, white, black, then white, black, white, black, white, black, and then white, black, white, black, white, black. I hope you understood all.
Any questions? I will try to save time also for questions. If something is really bothering you as I’m talking, you can put up your hand and ask questions and if it’s suitable I’ll answer. Generally it’s not so good because it destroys the train of thought and as you can see my train of thought is very easily destroyed. But also please asking questions is really good.
Do not be shy about asking questions or thinking, Oh, this is too stupid or too simple to ask. Usually those questions are the most important ones anyway and it doesn’t, you know, and probably half the people in the room want to ask the same question but don’t do it. So please ask questions, please. Whether I can answer them probably is another matter, but please don’t think you have to sit there quietly and agree with them. I hope you do sit there quietly and agree, but you don’t have to.
Right. Okay. Right. So our topic is karma, the Law of Cause and Effect. Just very briefly, the last module we taught, which was the first in this series of Discovering Buddhism, was about the mind.
So all of Buddhism is about the mind. It is the central thing. So very briefly, the mind I’m details now, but just very briefly especially for the newer people here, the mind in like Western culture and probably many cultures these days now equates the mind with the brain, that the mind is the brain or something produced by the brain is some kind of electrical, you know, chemical reaction produced by the mind that can all be measured physically and so on. This may be true, but this is not what the Buddhist view is at all. From Buddhist point of view what the Buddha teaches is that our mind is something completely non physical, it is formless, It is not produced by, it has evolved from physical matter, it’s not something formless that is evolved or produced by the brain, it is something quite separate, it is something formless.
And what it does, the mind is, it does this unique thing that nothing else does, has done or will do, only the mind can do this and the mind is that which knows things, experience things and feels. The mind is what gives rise to all experience, good and bad. All happiness is a state of mind. All suffering is a state of mind. Everything is coming from our mind.
This world that we experience is arising depending on our mind. It could not exist without our mind. And we all have separate minds, we’re not part of one big mind. Our minds have the same characteristics, all minds are the same, but they are not one. They operate, they work in basically the same way, we all have the same delusions, but, you know, and we’re all obscured, but some people are more obscured than others, some people are more spiritually advanced than others, but the nature of our mind is the same.
We all have the same potential. Our minds are pure and perfect in their nature, they possess every good quality, every mind possesses every good quality. And the very nature of the mind is bliss ful. Our mind possesses this Buddha potential, every mind possesses this Buddha potential. But every sentient being, by definition, their mind, this Buddha quality, this Buddha potential is obscured.
And what obscures our mind is our disturbing thoughts. We have this fundamental obscuration called ignorance that prevents our mind experiencing ourself and all phenomena as they actually are, and because of that fundamental ignorance that creates this illusion that we believe, which we grasp at as reality, Right now everything we’re experiencing is false in a very subtle way. We think we’re seeing things as they really are, but we’re not. Even the most intelligent people, even Einstein, all those guys, everybody, we all perceive things in a false way and we’re completely unaware of it. And because of that we suffer.
Because of that ignorance we have all these other disturbing thoughts. We have afflicted desire, attachment, anger, pride, jealousy and many other disturbing thoughts that are sort of combinations of the three fundamental delusions existing in our mind which are ignorance, desire and anger. Various recipes of those three delusions produce all sorts of other disturbing thoughts. And the whole aim of the Buddhist practice is to overcome those disturbing thoughts, firstly to subdue them so that we can eventually eliminate them, so that we can become free of suffering because all our suffering comes from those disturbing thoughts. Those disturbing thoughts are suffering.
They obscure, those disturbing thoughts obscure our mind and in the moment they arise they excuse, here I go they disturb. Our mind in a sense is like this, well imagine this is still perfectly clear water, that is the state of enlightenment which, and when water is perfectly clear and still, it is able to reflect things in it, like the moon in a lake or something like that. But when the mind is like that, it can’t do that, it distorts everything. And as soon as a disturbing thought of ignorance, attachment, afflicted desire, anger, jealousy, pride and all these other things arise in the mind, it disturbs the mind. So it prevents us seeing ourselves as we really are, it prevents us seeing others as they really are, it prevents us seeing everything as it really is and it is actually painful.
It disturbs us, it is suffering. Anger is suffering, desire is suffering, attachment is suffering, ignorance is suffering, jealousy is suffering, pride is suffering, fear and worry is suffering. Right? So the aim is to get rid of them so that we’ll be free of suffering and when all of that is gone we can experience the true nature of the mind where all the positive potentials of our mind love, compassion, etc, can be experienced. And the Buddha also discovered that our mind is in its very nature blissful.
That bliss or the potential of bliss and joy is there all the time, but we can’t experience it because the mind is like that. But when it calms down, when we let it calm down, our mind, when it is calmer, has less suffering, less confusion, there is more peace, contentment, well-being, joy. A brief reflection of the true blissful nature of our mind. So the word karma is a very simple run of the mill Sanskrit word that was used in the good old days in India and it just simply means action or activity. But in a spiritual context, because of course it’s used in Hindu traditions as well, Hindu religious traditions, but here we’ll just talk about Buddhism.
So in the Buddhadharma the term karma is used not just for ordinary actions, ordinary physical activity and so on, it is particularly referring to the activity of the mind. When we talk, so we have this kind of jargon expression in Buddhism which sometimes drives me slightly crazy where we say, we go around creating karma, we create good karma and bad karma. But basically what we’re saying, we’re just engaging in good and negative actions, yeah, originating with the mind. Especially what we need to understand when talk about karma and we use the word karma, we’re also not when we are referring to the actions that we do in the moment, but more importantly what karma is really referring to is is the fact, well, maybe it’s not a fact, but this is from a Buddhist point, it’s a fact. Whether you believe it’s a fact fact or not, that’s up to you to come to some decision about.
But the Buddha taught that every time we engage in an action, whether it’s good or bad, whether it’s a physical action or a verbal action or a directly mental action, those activities generate an imprint in the mind. So just going back, when we, you know, like I’m waving my hand around, but when we engage in physical actions, all our physical actions ultimately are motivated by our mind either consciously or unconsciously. Right? If you think about it, if you check. And what we say is motivated by our mind.
So everything comes down to, you know, when we talk about we can talk about physical karma or bodily karma, body karma, verbal speech karma and mental karma, but ultimately it’s all mental karma because it’s all motivated by the mind. So everything we do is karma, it is activity and all of that activity, good or bad, creates an imprint in the consciousness, a karmic imprint. This is basically what the law of cause and effect is about. Everything we Of course there are also neutral actions, there are virtuous, non virtuous and neutral actions. And it’s important to understand that a neutral action is not a mixture of a good and bad action, it’s something separate.
There are good actions, virtuous, non virtuous and neutral. So you get positive imprints, negative imprints and neutral imprints. We do not have to fortunately worry about the neutral imprints because they have a neutral result. Maybe before going on, I should like to say that of all the Buddhist teachings, the teaching on the law of cause and effect is probably the most profound and requires the most faith because it’s not something you can see. I mean, think there are logical reasons, some logical reasons for believing in it, developing faith in it, but like for example it says, Even even an arhat, someone who has removed all obscurations from their mind, they’re not enlightened but their mind all the obscurations have been removed from their mind.
Even in our heart is not able to see, understand or directly perceive all the workings of karma. Only a Buddha can do that because it is so incredibly profound and complex and subtle. Right? And also this course is just an introduction to the basic things. And I can’t prove it all.
You have to prove it or not or disprove it. It’s up to you whether you believe this or not. Right. So the basic fact or the basic teaching about the law of cause and effect is that every action we engage motivated by our mind and every time we engage in an action, whether we’re conscious of it or not, it generates whether we believe it or not, it generates these imprints in our consciousness. And so a negative action always and only generates a positive, did I say that?
A virtuous action only generates a positive imprint. And a negative action always generates a negative imprint. And so a positive imprint will always ripen, it will flower, it will bring the fruit, the result of what we can roughly label happiness. Something that we want, something good, something beneficial. Either something worldly beneficial, worldly happiness or it can result in some incredible spiritual happiness depending on the nature of that good cause.
But a good cause always produces a good result and a negative action generates a negative imprint and that can only ripen as suffering. Alright. That is the fundamental teaching. So before going on with that, I’d just like to talk a little bit briefly about because the law of cause and effect is always talking about good and bad, right and wrong, virtue and non virtue, Meaningful, meaningless, skilful, unskilful, good and bad. So the question arises what is good or bad or how can we determine what is good and bad.
So this, course, I mean, some great philosophers could talk about this for months and years and I’m not capable of doing that, so this is going to be two minutes. And the point is, even in any culture, our own culture, what is considered good or virtuous at one time can be considered non virtuous at another time and vice versa. What is considered non virtuous at some time is considered okay at another time. And what one culture thinks is good, another culture can think is really bad and vice versa. So is there any so how can we talk about the law of cause and effect?
What is the basis for talking about right and wrong, virtue and non virtue? So in Buddhism the basis is the mind and everyone has a mind. From the Buddhist point of view, the law of cause effect is a universal truth that applies to all sentient beings all the time. Doesn’t good and bad doesn’t change because of history and changes in culture and what human beings decide is good or bad. It’s good and bad, virtue and non virtue, is based on what happens to our mind.
And if it’s true that as the Buddha perceived that the nature of our mind is pure and perfect and blissful, it tends to follow, it seems to me logical, maybe not to you, but it seems logical to me, that if there is some truth to that, that that is the nature of our mind, anything that obscures that mind is negative. If our mind is actually in its nature blissful and our mind naturally tends towards kindness and compassion and love and tolerance and generosity, things which if you experience them are good states to be in, things that prevent that are negating our mind, our potential for bliss and joy, etcetera, etcetera. And that’s what our disturbing thoughts do. So that’s why they are labelled negative, because also if you start to check, and especially not with a really agitated mind, but if you wait until or create the causes for the mind to become a little bit calmer and clearer, and then you check what feels like when anger arises in the mind, when desire and jealousy and pride arise in the mind, you can start to discover, I think, maybe I’m prejudicing you, but I think one can discover they’re painful.
These are painful states of mind to be in. So the Buddha discovered that painful states of mind do not lead to happiness. They are not the cause of happiness. They are not a direct link to happiness. What are they?
They are the direct link to more suffering. This is the law of cause and effect. This is what the Buddha taught. In the Buddhist tradition, things are labelled as non virtuous and negative because the state of mind associated with them itself is painful, and if one checks, the result is painful. Even in this life when we follow, one can see that the results of following those disturbing thoughts leads to all sorts of problems and suffering for ourselves and others.
But the Buddha has an unobscured mind that is able to see the results, not just in this life but in future lives. So there are things, negative things we do in this life that may not seem to have any suffering result in this life. They may even look as though doing certain negative things bring, from a worldly point of view, a good result. But the Buddha’s unobscured mind can see that this action ultimately leads to horrendous suffering. That’s why the Buddha labels that action negative.
It is naturally negative because it will naturally, whether we want it or not, believe it or not, it will lead to suffering. And virtuous actions, which are motivated by the true nature of our mind, love, compassion, generosity of spirit and so on, those actions lead to happiness, peace of mind, contentment, joy and so on. Things that we happiness meaning things that we want, you know, that are really what we want deep down. So the law of and operates for all beings all the time, not just human beings but all sentient beings. Because the law of cause and effect is talking about how all minds work when they’re under the control of delusion.
It’s not talking about how the Buddhist mind works but how sentient beings’ minds work. Buddhists don’t create karma. They’ve gone beyond that. What they create is what is called in Tibetan Chinlé, which is enlightened activity, not karma. Anyone want to ask anything, disagree, have an argument?
Alright. Right. Oh my gosh. I’ve got so much to talk about. This course is much shorter than it should be and I’ve already when do I have to stop talking?
Yes. Do I have to go through to have us at eight? Oh, at least, yeah. Or after Are we having a break? Yeah, we’ll have a break, yeah.
At least eight thirty, yeah. After that, twenty five to nine. Know, maybe we’ll take eight thirty is enough of the time. We’ll take a fifteen minute break, not a yeah, because there’s no discussion, right? Or you can discuss quietly.
So where am I? So if you go to Page twenty of your student material, which is section two. The first part of section two is called Subjects of karma. So this is what I want to talk about, some of the first part of this. There are what I’ve called here the four aspects or the four principles of karma.
So the first of the four principles of the law of cause and effect is that karma, action, is definite, meaning that there is a definite relationship between cause and effect that never ever changes, which I’ve already mentioned that if an action is motivated by a virtuous thought of love, compassion, generosity, etcetera, etcetera, then it will always produce a positive, it will produce a positive karmic imprint which will always ripen as happiness or the conditions for happiness, right. That is definite, that never ever ever ever ever changes for anyone at any time in any situation. If one does a good action, it will definitely at some point, maybe not immediately unfortunately, but it will definitely have a good result. And if we engage in a negative action, whether we know it or not, whether we and our society may say this action is good to do, but if it’s a naturally negative action motivated by hatred or afflicted desire, etc, etc, it will definitely, sooner or later, have a suffering result. It will create this negative imprint that will bring this suffering result.
That is definite, it never ever changes. Sorry, I just need to go back and make another point, is that when we’re talking about the law of cause and effect, it’s not just talking about what happens in this life because it doesn’t need a Buddha to come to this world and say that if you rob a bank you’re likely to be caught by the police and go to jail. That’s cause and effect, but we don’t need an enlightened being to explain that to us. But since we can’t see our mind, we don’t know how our mind works, we do need a Buddha to come to talk about the law of cause and effect that operates at a very, very subtle level. And so when we’re talking about the law of cause and effect, the Buddha is saying that when we do an action, positive or negative, it creates a positive or negative karmic imprint and then at some point when the conditions come together, that imprint ripens.
Alright. So one thing to understand is that this ripening of the karmic imprint usually but not always, but generally most of the time these karmic imprints do not ripen in this life. The result, ripening of the imprint occurs in another life. It could be the immediate life after or it could be many, many millions of lives after. But when the conditions ripen, they come together then the imprint ripens.
So just to try and clarify that a little bit, of course, you know, for example if I rob a bank in this life, there will be effects, bad effects in this life, right? Yeah, sure. But they are not the real karmic effects, they’re the, well you could, yeah, they’re the effects of karma in the sense they’re the effect of an action, but when we’re talking about the effects of karma, we’re talking about the ripening of the karmic imprint. So if I rob a bank, I get arrested and thrown in jail, so there’s that suffering result. But by robbing the bank I have created some negative imprint in my mind and that cannot ripen until future lives.
And then the real suffering occurs. Right? It’s not really talking so much, yeah, because especially in the case of doing really strong, very powerful, hold it, it gets very complicated, but especially in the case of engaging in really negative actions, the karmic result can’t be experienced in this life. And I’ll explain later because the karmic result is so horrid it cannot be experienced in this life. But also if you think, like for example, if you buy a packet of I’m sorry if I always explain karma in relation to tomato seeds but if you buy a packet of tomato seeds tomorrow and then you put the seeds in some really nice soil tomorrow afternoon, water it and blah blah blah and then the next day you can say, Oh, where are my tomatoes?
I mean that’s not really bright. You know, the tomatoes won’t grow one day after you’ve planted the seeds. It takes time for the seed to produce its result. Fortunately with tomatoes they grow fairly quickly, but if you plant the seed of a, what is it, a Sequoia tree, Yeah, it might take a few hundred years to get the result. Yeah, so that’s something we can see in this world.
Same with our karmic imprints, they’re generated instantly, instantly. Right now we’re creating karma, hopefully some good karma, hopefully because Buddhadharma is a virtuous object, hopefully one is listening with a good motivation and not thinking, ‘When is this guy going to stop?’ But anyway, so one’s generating some positive imprint in the mind. And of course that will hopefully have some, that will have some effect in this life. Either you run away thinking I’m never having anything to do with Buddhism, or you think, Oh, this is worth thinking about some more, so it has some effect. But that’s not the karmic effect.
The karmic effect, there is a karmic imprint in the mind mind and that ripens later. And in the case of especially doing really negative actions, because the karmic result is so bad, so horrible, it can’t be experienced in this life, among other reasons. So just because we do bad things in this life and there doesn’t seem to be any bad result, think, Oh, Buddhists are rubbish, they don’t know what they’re talking about, it doesn’t work, I got away with it. You can never get away with karma. The imprint is there, just waiting.
And the other very important thing to understand is just like the tomato seed, if you were to plant a tomato seed in, I don’t know, a pile of plastic, it won’t grow. Right? It just won’t grow if you put it in a pile of, you know, just or even in some pure sand, deep sand, it won’t grow. You have to have some really good soil or reasonably good soil with all sorts of nutrients in it and that’s not enough, you need some water And that’s not enough, you need some sunshine. You can’t have too much water, too much sunshine.
You can’t even have too much good stuff. You have to have just enough nutrients, just enough sun, just enough water at the right time. In other words, you need all the conditions to come together and if they don’t, the seed doesn’t ripen, you don’t get your tomato or you get very miserable little tomato. So one creates the negative, you know, positive and negative imprint that you need the conditions as well for it to ripen. And since we exist forever, the conditions, there’s time for the conditions to come together sooner or later.
Our mind can we don’t this body, this life doesn’t last, but our mind never ceases because it’s formless, it’s not the brain, it’s not something produced by the brain. So the mind goes on forever and ever and so there is time for all the conditions to come together. If you think of some of the freakish things that happen in the world, you can think, how could that ever have happened? But it took probably millions of years for it to come together, and then this really weird freakish thing happens. It may have taken us lifetimes to meet the Buddhadharma, But we did.
If the imprint’s there, so there has to be the imprint and the conditions and bingo, the result comes. And it’s definite that the result matches the nature of the cause. It never changes. Oh this is taking too long, sorry, I can’t help myself. So second one is that they’re always, for a result to occur, for us to experience something and everything, for there to be a result, a fruit, and you can think of everything as a result of fruit, for that to happen, for us to experience something, there has to be a cause.
This is really one of the fundamental aspects of the Buddha’s teachings. There are only three explanations of basically why things are existing and happening. One, you know, is the theistic view that God created everything and controls everything. This may be true, but anyway, from a Buddhist point of view, there are reasons not to believe that. I don’t want to go into that because some people here, I don’t know, may have such views.
I’m not trying to insult other religions. My job is to try and present the Buddhist view as best I can. But I think many people find it difficult, why would a loving God create suffering and so many causes of suffering? But anyway, but of course from a Buddhist point of view, a a created God doesn’t exist anyway. And there are many strong reasons for believing that, because that is actually at the very heart of the Buddhist teachings.
Why we are suffering is because we’re ignorant of how things actually exist. And when one comes to understand the Buddhist teachings about the way things actually exist, it refutes that if the Buddhist teachings are correct about the way things do exist, then it means there cannot be a creator God. Anyway, that’s one thing. The other is more or less along the lines of what is existing now amongst scientific materialism because basically it seems to me it comes down to scientific materialism is saying there is no cause for things, like there was a big bang, whang, or many big bangs, now they’re saying, and everything popped into existence and things happen. But ultimately no real cause for things.
Things just happen. We talk about good and bad luck. When you really look into that, what does that mean? He, she’s got a lot of good luck or a bad luck. It doesn’t really mean anything.
It just means bad thing, this person, a lot of bad things happened to this person for no reason, they’ve got a lot of bad luck. Where did they get this bad luck? What does this bad luck look like? Or how do you get a lot of good luck? Who gives it to you?
What gives it to you? Where does it come from? What does it mean? Does it mean anything? And then there’s the Buddhist view is that there is a cause for everything.
And this, to really understand the law, to get a deeper appreciation of the law of cause and effect, like everything in Buddhism, it really helps to understand the mind and emptiness because the teachings are saying that everything we experience is coming from our mind, right? Everything we’re experiencing is coming from our mind. And our mind is changing moment by moment, different experiences and with that there’s different feelings, you know, happiness, sadness, neutral feelings occurring within us, changing, changing, changing. Why? Why do we have this good experience, then a bad experience, and then a neutral experience, and then this experience, and that experience?
There’s a cause. And although of course, you know, it looks like there’s the external cause, what the Buddhist teachings are saying is that why we experience something is because our, why our mind changes to have this new experience, for this new experience to arise in our world, for our world to actually change in a new way, good or bad, is that our mind is forced to have that experience, good or bad, because something within the mind is doing that, which is the karmic imprint is ripening. The mind is being affected by this karmic imprint which was created by the mind anyway when it did something good or bad in the past. So what the law of cause and effect is saying is that ultimately someone can come along and chop our head off or torture us and run us over and steal everything and blah blah blah and we say, That person is bad and they made me suffer. But why did we meet that person?
Why did we have that experience? Why did they chop my head off and not that person’s head off? And the Buddha is saying, It’s because I created the cause. It cannot happen without. The mind cannot give rise to a good or bad experience without there being a cause.
Right? This is a pot, and here’s some water. Right. This is a saucepan of water. I would like to have a cup of tea, so I’d like some hot water to make the cup of tea.
So I will pray, please become hot, please become hot, please become hot. It won’t work. This is not the cause to make hot water. You have to have an appropriate cause. If you want a result, a hot result, you have to have the appropriate cause, which is hot, something really really hot.
If I put this on something really really hot, this water will become hot. You have to have a hot cause to get a hot result. Right? If I put this on some ice, this will not become hot. Or if I put this on something lukewarm, it won’t become really really hot.
You have to have a really hot cause to produce a really hot result. Right? Simple. But, if for example, this is a really hot cause over here, a nice gas or electric or solar energy we have to have solar energy these can’t have gas heating device and I put the water here and wait for it to boil, am I going to get hot water? No.
Everyone agree? No? Right. You have to have a connection between the hot cause to get, there has to be a direct connection. In other words, if I am suffering, there is a cause and there has to be a direct cause, yeah, within my mind.
When you plant a tomato seed, the tomato plant emerges from the seed. It doesn’t come just around the seed, it emerges out of the seed. So of course a karmic seed, a karmic imprint is not something physical, but the karmic imprint is generated by my mind. Yeah, or my mind is experiencing something, what’s caused it to experience it, that the only thing that has that direct connection is something associated with my mind, this karmic imprint, not the Fred out there who chopped my head off. I know that sounds incredibly bizarre, one way, crazy, but another way, if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.
There are many stories, know, good and it’s always easy, unfortunately, to talk about the bad side of things, but there are cases where, you know, situations where someone comes into a group of people, shoots madly at everyone, some people get killed, some people get wounded, some people are completely untouched. And of course, one could say this is due to God or it’s just a fluke, some people had bad luck, some people had good luck. The Buddhist view is that the people who were killed created the cause. Of course not in this, and it’s not because they were bad evil people, it’s not saying only bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people. Was not so simple as that because all of us have positive and negative imprints.
We’ve all done good and bad things in this and in past lives. And the conditions slowly come together or sometimes quickly come together. Right? Even when we’re being good, the conditions can come together for our negative imprints to ripen. When we’re being bad, the conditions can come together from some of our positive imprints to ripen.
So it looks like good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people, but it’s the same principle working. It’s exactly that, it’s not a contradiction at all. If one looks into the nature of mind and also apart from the teachings on the law of course, in fact the most complicated teaching in Buddhism of course is the nature of reality, wisdom teachings of the Buddha about the nature of reality. But actually many years ago His Holiness advised one one lama that the best way to introduce the Buddha’s teachings to anyone is to talk about emptiness first, which is the most difficult topic. Because the more you understand that, the more one will understand everything about the Buddhadharma, especially karma.
Oh, have I lost it? Oh, maybe it hasn’t recorded. Yeah, sorry. So I really can’t go into this, it’s very complicated. One of the modules of Discovering Buddhism is about emptiness.
But the teachings on emptiness, like we experience the world as though there is an external world out there separate from us, because that’s the way it appears and it’s really got nothing to do with me. There’s this external world of stuff and people and this and that, and it’s just out there separate from me. But the Buddha taught, and one can study the Buddha’s teachings about this and start and get some, you know, it’s very difficult, but one can begin to get some idea of what the Buddha was saying, that in reality things do not exist that way, that actually things cannot exist without depending on our mind. Things are not separate from our consciousness the way they appear. But in reality, depend on our mind.
That’s the only way they can exist, depending on our mind. You know, as I mentioned, just Anyway, we all sit in this room thinking we’re sitting in the same room and at one level, in one way of speaking, from an ordinary point of view, we are sitting in the same room together, but in another way we’re not. We’re not sitting in the same room together. We’re each sitting in a room that is created and arising depending on our mind. So we all have our own unique experience of this room, which we think, we assume, is the same as what everyone else is having.
Or another example is you’re all, I I am saying something for a couple of hours. I’m giving this one talk for several hours and all of you are listening hopefully, but what you hear and understand will be different. You will agree on some things, but it’ll be different because you’re hearing it. Your mind is hearing this talk. So everything depends on our mind.
And what we’re experiencing depends on how our mind is being influenced. And what influences our mind are these imprints. Our imprints, our karmic imprints that our mind created, is creating. Oh, there is so much more to talk about tonight. Oh, dear.
I’ve done it again. I’m in trouble. Please take a break. A cup of tea, self-service cup of tea, coffee. There might even be a few biscuits lying around.
Not on the floor, you know, in boxes and things. Thank you. So no. What was my point? I lost my point.
No, no, no. The virtue I was talking about living a long time. Yeah. Oh, yes, so our life is laden with many experiences. But why was I saying that?
In spite of unhealthy practices. No, no, no, that was We have many experiences, so each of those is due to good and bad karma ripening. Oh yes, so we’ve created the karma to live a certain period of time. Of course, we don’t know how long we’re going to live, but we’ve created the cause already to live a certain amount of time. So that means within that time a whole lot of karmic imprints are going to ripen.
So there’s, in a sense, there’s no space for newly created karmic imprints to ripen because there’s a whole lot, figuratively speaking, lined up to ripen tomorrow, the next day, the day after that, like that. Even so, still some very positive negative imprints can ripen, created in this life, some small negative imprints can ripen in this life. But in general, the karmic imprints we’re creating in this life will more likely ripen in future times. But of course also the action there will be results of our actions, good and bad, in this life as well. So there’s the general rule that once a karmic imprint is created, it will sooner or later bring its result, it won’t just disappear.
So there are two exceptions to that. One is that unfortunately our positive karmic imprints can be destroyed before they produce the result. And what destroys our positive imprints is especially the arising of our disturbing thoughts arising very, very strongly, particularly anger. Every time we get angry, there’s many bad results. One of them, one of the worst in a sense, is that it destroys, according to the teachings, it destroys many of our positive imprints.
This is why we’re still stuck in saṃsāra, because we’ve engaged in many virtuous actions, practiced the Dharma before, just about to really progress in the spiritual path, and then we blow it. We destroy those imprints by getting really angry or doing something else extremely negative. But the good thing is, so that’s one exception, is that our positive karmic imprints can be destroyed. This is why in the teachings we’re encouraged to dedicate our, as soon as we can, virtuous actions. Like at the end of the teachings, we’re encouraged to dedicate the merit because that dedication has two, it is said, has two benefits.
One is that it protects the karmic imprint from being destroyed, and the other is that it directs that positive imprint to the best possible result. Well, depends how we dedicate but if we sincerely dedicate in a dharma way, then it will bring the very best result rather than just some kind of worldly happiness. So the other exception is fortunately, our negative imprints can also be eliminated or reduced by the practice of purification. So there is a specific practice there are specific practices that we can do to purify or reduce the potency of our negative imprints. So I’ll talk about that later on in the course, because that’s something really important to do.
Because all of the teaching there is a famous quote of the Buddha, I’m not there’s slightly different versions of it, which is something like, what does it say, avoid negative actions, engage in virtuous actions, purify the mind. This is the teaching of the Buddha. So this is what we should be doing, engaging in virtuous actions because they’re the cause of every kind of happiness avoid negative actions because they’re the source of every kind of suffering, but also what we need to do is purify the imprints generated by the negative actions we’ve already done. We need to try and reduce the negative actions we are doing, but also purify our mind of the negative imprints existing because of negative actions we’ve done in the past. So I’ll talk about that later on in the course.
But if we destroy our negative imprints or if we don’t purify our negative imprints and if we don’t destroy our positive imprints with anger and so on, the imprints will remain, and even for eons, and eventually bring their result. And then the fourth fundamental principal aspect of the law of cause and effect is that when the karmic imprint ripens, whether it’s a positive or a negative imprint, the result is far, far, far greater in duration and intensity than the energy that went into creating it, because karmic imprints are basically, you know, created in a flash. We get angry and while that’s happening, these imprints are being generated. We do something positive, just even a small kind act and in that moment, a positive imprint is generated. And the teachings say that the result, even of a very small negative action done in this life with a good motivation, especially if we’ve dedicated it sincerely, genuinely, the result can be a a whole lifetime of happiness.
And then a small negative action can can result I mean, especially with negative actions, we negative actions can be so incredibly destructive. And in a moment of anger, we can do all sorts of horrendous things including killing people. People are killed in domestic disputes and everything like that in a moment of anger, just one moment. So of course there’s all the suffering that occurs from doing that in this life, but then the karmic result is because the teachings say that our mind can give rise not just to being reborn as a human being, we can be reborn as an animal, as a hungry ghost in the hell realms. Or we can be reborn in the god realms and negative actions can never ever be the cause of a good rebirth.
So all of our negative actions that we do, big and small, accumulate to become the cause, you know, if we’re to fall really terrible rebirths, even there are many horrendous human rebirths we could experience, but we could, you know, our negative actions result in being reborn as an animal in the hell realms, which go on for eons, as a hungry ghost. Our negative actions can never ever become part of a cause to have a human rebirth or a higher rebirth. This is why our really negative actions cannot ripen in this life, because the result, which we’ll go into in gory detail later on, of really negative actions is to be reborn in the lower realms. So you can’t experience being reborn in the lower realms in this life. It’s impossible.
So, of course, we don’t like to believe this, that sounds too horrible that, Oh, surely, yes, there are negative actions, but surely they couldn’t result in such terrible suffering. But also on the other hand, our good actions can result in incredible happiness also for incredibly long periods of time. This is why we should try and do even the smallest virtuous actions, because they’ll have such good results and avoid even small negative actions because they can have really terrible results. And this is why we shouldn’t be upset that if we practice the Dharma, we don’t seem to get terrific results in this life. What we should have faith in and rejoice and be inspired by and motivated by is that we’re putting positive imprints in our mind.
And these will definitely, especially if we dedicate them properly, these will definitely have a result, a fantastic result. You know, we may spend our life trying to meditate and we can’t, from our own, you know, perspective can’t meditate properly for two seconds. But if we keep doing it all this life, we are putting these positive imprints in our mind. If we’re trying to do it with the right motivation, with some refuge and good motivation, we dedicate our efforts, which may not look terrific, they may look horrible to us, but we have created a positive imprint and for sure in future lives we’ll be terrific meditators at the very least, because we’ve put the imprint of meditating in our mind and the karmic result will definitely be, it will be so much easier. We will be interested in meditation the moment we pop out of the womb.
Maybe, maybe not. But we may be meditating in the womb, you know. But, yeah, and also in this world, just, you know, this simple example the Buddha himself gave is that, you know, you take a tiny little seed and you plant it, and it produces a gigantic tree, and that tree produces fruit again and again, enormous amount of fruit, again, year after year after year after year from that one tiny seed. So in the same way, one small karmic imprint, good and bad, can produce this enormous result that comes, you know, that goes on and on and on. So my teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, It’s incredibly beneficial, helpful to meditate, reflect on those four points again and again because if we develop some understanding of these and faith and see that there’s start to see in our own lives and other people’s lives some examples of how that may seem to be working.
The more we are mindful of these four factors, this will help us avoid engaging in negative actions and encourage us to engage in virtuous actions. Why do we engage in, you know, especially for those of us who are Buddhist and we still engage in negative actions, is because we’ve forgotten those four things, that this is going to have a result, it’s going to have a horrible result, it will definitely have a result, it will be horrible and it’s going to be unbearable. If we really remembered that, we wouldn’t do it. Well, we’d have far less energy to do it. And if we did it, we would then put some effort into purifying our mind if we couldn’t help ourselves and continue to do it.
So it’s really important to because why we engage in virtuous actions is because our self-cherishing tells us it’s okay. Even if we know it’s negative, our self-cherishing mind tells us, for so many reasons, it’s okay for me to do this. It’s not okay for other people, oh, they’re so disgusting and terrible if they do that, but me, I can do this, I’m justified in doing it. I can steal and engage in sexual misconduct, other people shameful if they do it, but if I do it, it’s okay. But what we need to tell ourselves is this, these things: that it’s definite, it doesn’t depend on who you are and who you think you are, It works for everyone all the time whether we want it to work or not, whether we believe in it or not, because it’s not if you become a Buddhist and suddenly karma starts working.
It’s not like that. Or it’s not like when, you know, the police pull you over for speeding and you say, Oh officer, I didn’t realise, I didn’t know, I’m so sorry. And the officer says, Oh okay, I’ll let you off this time. karma works because of ignorance. Yeah, because we don’t know.
Yeah. Very quickly. So there are two kinds of karmic well, there are positive and negative karmic imprints, that’s one way of looking at them, but also another way of looking at the imprints we create is that there are what are called throwing karmas, so there’s good and bad throwing karmas and there are good and bad completing karmas. Okay? So throwing karma this is not actually mentioned, don’t think, in the bit, but anyway.
This is a oh, good. Okay. So a throwing karma refers to a really strong positive or negative karma that has what are called the four all the four determining factors really strongly present. And a throwing karma is a karma that only ripens at the time of death. And it, in a sense, throws consciousness, it determines what kind of rebirth we will have.
So if a negative karma, throwing karma ripens at the time of death, we will have a bad rebirth, we will not be know, either if it’s not a very bad throwing karma, we may have a bad human rebirth with a lot of suffering and sickness and poverty and born in a horrible place or something. Or if it’s stronger, we get born as an animal or in the preta realms or in the hell realms. And if it’s a good throwing karma, we get reborn as a human being or maybe in one of the god realms. But still, you know, all within cyclic existence. And then the completing karmas are the karmas that ripen within a lifetime.
So we, in our previous life, when we were dying, a good throwing karma ripened and so we have this human rebirth. And during this, you know, so this is a good rebirth, So during this good rebirth, we we experience various good and bad things. The good things we experience are the result of good completing karmas, and the bad things we experience are the result of negative completing karmas. So these smaller, lesser karmas, these completing karmas complete the details of our life. Right?
Is that clear? Does that make sense? Yeah. So point two under the section the subjects of karma is the four determining factors. So if all four of these are present, so these determining factors determine the strength, the intensity of the karmic imprint which of course determines, you know, the strength of the result.
So if all those four determining factors which are the impulse, the object, the act itself and the completion of the act, if all those four factors are present and they’re all very strong, then that will create a throwing karma. If one several of those determining factors are missing or they may all be there but not very strong, then it will create a completing karma. Okay. And of all of those determining factors, the most important one is the first one, the impulse, So which has two aspects, of which the most important one so it’s always easier to talk about them in relation to creating negative karma, you just sort of the opposite is the case with creating positive karmic imprints. So a really powerful negative karma is created if the act is done motivated with one of the three poisonous minds, which is referring to ignorance, afflicted desire attachment and anger one of those.
So if we engage in an action motivated by either ignorance or afflicted desire and attachment or anger, then whether it’s something generated just by the mind itself or through our speech or through physical action, that tends to create a really strong negative imprint. And it has to be directed towards an unmistaken object. I think I’ll try and explain that a bit later on. I’ll just quickly go through these in two minutes. So the second factor is the object that we direct the impulse towards.
So, firstly, whether it’s a human if we direct a negative action towards a human, that’s worse than towards an animal. We ourselves can’t harm beings in the hell realms or in the preta realms or in the god realms because we don’t have the ability to be in contact with such beings, but we are in contact with animals, are sentient beings like ourselves, but harming it generally speaking. Again, one thing to mention is that all of the teachings of the Buddha, particularly something like the teaching on the laws of cause and effect, these are giving us general ideas. You know, they are general guidelines of how to behave and how to understand things. Because if you take any specific example, there could be so many or situations, there could be so there’s so many, many changeable factors, you know, but these are sort of general guidelines.
So in general, it is worse to harm a human being than an animal because as a human being we have more potential to engage in virtue and be of benefit to others, right, than an animal. Even though an animal has Buddha nature, because that mind with Buddha nature is trapped in an animal body, that being can’t do very much. Whereas a human being can do so much more. So to harm a human being in general is worse. And then it depends on the human being, where if that human being is a very virtuous person, it is much worse to harm such a harm a virtuous person than a non virtuous person.
It doesn’t mean it’s okay to harm non virtuous people, but it’s worse to harm someone who is doing really good things in the world. Especially if it’s a realised being, it’s much worse if it’s a really wholly realised being. If someone who has hurt, who has benefited you, it may be a completely ordinary person, it may even be a very bad person, but if that very bad person has personally helped you in a good way, not robbed a bank for you, but helped you and has been kind to you and you hurt them, it is much worse than harming someone you have no contact with. Right? It’s much worse harming your parents than people who aren’t your parents.
It’s much worse harming members of the than non members of the Sangha, so please don’t hurt me if you can. No rotten tomatoes, please, that you’ve grown when you bought those seeds. General guidelines like that. And of course, to harm one’s teacher, one’s spiritual master, that is in the Buddhist tradition, especially from the Tantric point of view, one’s spiritual master, one’s root teacher is the most karmically potent being on the planet, in the universe. So to benefit that person creates the greatest good karma and to harm that person in any way or go against that person whom you have chosen as your main spiritual guide in this life, spiritual master can be this is master, but this can be man or woman, that creates the worst, worst karmic imprints possible and most difficult to purify.
They can be purified but very difficult. So then the third aspect is the act itself. So can engage in a negative action like killing, but you could kill someone just very quickly, like by shooting them and they die very quickly, or you could kill them by sort of torturing them deliberately. And so the more suffering you create, the more suffering one creates to the other person, the more you’re creating the cause, you’re creating this incredibly heavy negative imprint that brings incredible suffering. On the other hand, you can do a good action with someone, but you do it in a not a very nice way.
So it doesn’t create such a strong imprint. You know, you could give a lot of money to someone but you do it in a very condescending way and make them feel really bad. You know, you’re such a hopeless person, here’s some money for you, you poor hopeless useless thing. So you make them feel really bad. So it was a good action but one didn’t do it in a nice way.
So there’s some positive imprint but not so strong. And then finally there is the completion of the action. So if the action isn’t if you want to kill, you know, you try to kill someone, you want to kill them, you have this and blah blah, all the other things, and you do it, but the person doesn’t die, then you haven’t created the negative action of killing, which is one of the worst negative actions. But one has still created a very negative imprint but not as negative as it could have been if the person died. So if the act isn’t completed, and there’s various ways that’s completed, you’ve completed it by like maybe pulling the trigger of the gun or something, but if the person doesn’t die, the result, the full result you want doesn’t come, then it’s not complete.
But the other aspect of the completion is not only that there is that kind of, for want of a better word, that obvious physical completion of the action, but the other very important aspect is the state of mind you’re in when you complete it. So for example, you kill someone, you really hated them and wanted them dead and you kill them and they die, or you try to kill them and they die, but the moment that happens you have this incredible regret. Then that reduces the negative, the potency of the of still this very negative imprint but it’s much less than if one hadn’t that regret. But if you’re really happy that you’ve killed them, you feel really satisfied, then that is really, you know, makes it super complete and very negative. And on the other hand, you can do a good action and you’re really happy, so that makes it a really positive virtuous action, or you do something really good and the moment you do it, you think, oh, I should never have done that.
God, that’s just what an idiot I was. So that makes it much less positive imprint. So there are many, many things within those four factors that can vary to bring that can create different intensities and natures of imprints. So many different things. But by being aware of these things we can try to reduce them.
If we have if we feel we have to do something negative, then at least we can try and regret it as much as possible, regret doing it. But, I mean, that can also be very dangerous because then one can, you know, just think, oh, I’ll do something terrible and I’ll regret it afterwards, bingo, it’s okay. So all of these things have to be done, you know, has to be very and genuine in what one’s doing. I think I’ve run out of time. I’ve gone over time.
I’m sorry. There wasn’t much time for questions. There’s so much to say. Anyway, we have created some good karma tonight so we don’t want to destroy that positive imprint so we can dedicate the merit and the best way to get the best result is to get dedicated to achieving enlightenment because that covers everything. So if you’d like to join in, there’s the traditional prayer that we can say in English on page thirteen.
Through 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.