Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 97-minute session of the Discovering Buddhism karma course, Ven Thubten Dondrub clarifies persistent student misconceptions before diving into the practical results of the ten non-virtues. He distinguishes between throwing karma (which determines rebirth at death) and completing karma (which ripens during a life), then explains how the four karmic results—ripening, result similar to the cause, habit, and environmental—manifest differently depending on the strength of past actions. The teaching addresses difficult questions head-on: why karmic effects may not appear immediately in this life, why the Buddha doesn’t explain every subtle mechanism of cause and effect, and why rebirth timing isn’t designed to make learning convenient. Moving through each non-virtue, Dondrub walks through concrete examples—a cup of hot coffee from a past grudge, the karma of meat-eating in modern society, the precise mental factors that complete actions like covetousness and ill-will—before exploring the three ways karma is created (doing, encouraging, and rejoicing). He emphasizes the habit result as the most insidious, then closes by contrasting each non-virtue with its opposite and “super-virtue”—not merely avoiding killing, but actively saving and nurturing life; not simply refraining from lying, but using speech to bring harmony. Pitched at serious practitioners working through assigned homework and ready to examine their own experience honestly.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Karma week 3.mp3
UUID: ca1376cb-2e68-47b0-bcb6-b0ddbe536a53
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Karma (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2018 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 97.2 minutes
Words: ~11,756
So welcome everyone to our Discovering Buddhism course on all about karma. It should be called Something About karma rather than All About karma. Anyway, so there’s still I’m behind of course, So usually I spend a lot of time giving the motivation. So I try and avoid that tonight. So hopefully everyone knows what the motivation we can try and have is, the bodhicitta motivation.
So please try and generate that as much as possible. The wish to achieve enlightenment, to be in a position to repay the kindness of all suffering mother sentsentient beings who have been so kind to us in every possible way. So as we say this prayer, if you’d like to join in for those people who, if you see any benefit in doing this, then as we say this prayer to make it more meaningful, we try to think of the Buddha in front of us as our source of refuge, inspiration and guidance. This is page twelve. And at the same time, so that’s inspiring us to practice and motivating us.
We try and think of all these beings, the kind mothers and beings surrounding us starting with our parents on either side. So we do twice in Tibetan, one time in English. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, Dharma, and the Supreme Assembly. By the merits I create through teaching the Dharma, may I become a Buddha in order to benefit all sentient beings. So thinking the Buddha is pleased with our motivation, we imagine the Buddha shows this by coming to the crown of our heads and then when directly above our crown the Buddha dissolves 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 karma correctly, blessing our mind to be able to put them into practice, and blessing our mind to be able to eventually gain the undeclining realisation of the truth of the law of cause and effect.
So then we can reinforce this positive state of mind by just briefly doing the nine round breathing exercise just to let our mind become a little bit more calm, clear, concentrated, so that we can use that state of mind to listen to and think about the Buddha’s teachings tonight. K. Thank you. So just before carrying on with the topic, there’s just a couple of things I’d like to say in relation to, what I’ve read in people’s homework is that, This so happens every time I say this. I’ll learn to be able to explain this probably after maybe in another ten years if I’m still around.
But, I did try to say that, in general, that the karmic results that we experience from any action, good or bad, are generally not experienced in this life. It doesn’t mean that karmic results are are not experienced in this life. They can be and are, but but in general but it’s only the it’s only, no, I can’t say only, but again in general, it is the minor karmic effects of an action that are experienced in this life. Because of course, there’s always some effect of anything we do in this life. So of course you can say that is a karmic effect, that is the result of an action.
So everything we do has an effect in this life, there’s no question about that yeah, in some way or another. But in addition to all that, there are the karmic imprints, right? And those imprints, of course, they can ripen to some extent in this life, but the main results come in future lives. Right? Even though we may think a very huge karmic result may come in this life, it is nothing compared to the karmic results in future lives.
Nothing compared, yeah, generally speaking, again, right? Yeah. So then another thing is, well I did talk about this last week, well I talked about it every week I think but, so the questions in the homework, you know, I covered some of them to some extent in the last talk but anyway, still there’s the question about why does karma expand, why is the karmic result greater and I can’t explain that. So what I put on one person’s homework, which I hope they don’t take as insulting because it may have read that way, but it wasn’t meant to be, it was just that simply I asked the question, do you know, when an atom is split, it creates, it releases this gigantic, from this minute atom, an enormous, enormous amount of energy is released. So is there an explanation scientific explanation of that?
I don’t know. Is there? And even if there is, would we, would we understand it? Maybe some of you I wouldn’t, some of you might understand, but I wouldn’t understand the explanation. I don’t understand how iPhone work.
I have not the slightest idea or the, you know, the Internet, you know, where is it? What it is? And you can say various things, but really I absolutely understanding how these things work whatsoever. Or even how this little lady’s voice tells you what street to drive down from those things. How does she know that?
How does that work so instantly? I have no idea what, anyway. So how can we expect, well maybe you’re a lot smarter than me but you know, if these things are very difficult to understand, how do we possibly expect, and these are physical things that to some extent can be measured and seen in some way but this is explaining the mind, how can we expect that we, you know, there’s a very concrete explanation that we could easily understand. And the point I’m saying that is also that, you know, the Buddha’s one, I probably said it many times, but along the lines that the Buddha has said that what I teach is nothing compared to what I know. What I teach is all you need to become free of suffering.
You know, I don’t explain all these things that are just information that are unnecessary. I’ve explained what you need to know to get liberated and also enlightened. Yeah? And of course, you know, maybe this is starting like it sounds like a Christian priest who says you don’t have to understand just blinding belief but the teachings on karma are the most subtle, you know, very difficult, you know, the teachings on emptiness are very complicated and subtle etc etc but they are accessible to understand and experience but only a Buddha can fully perceive how the law of cause and effect works. But what the Buddha has explained, we don’t have to completely blindly believe it, there are reasons I think why we can, you know, put our trust in it but we don’t have to know every icky picky thing how it actually works.
Just like you don’t have to understand how iPhones work or what do you call them, you know, smartphones to work, you know, actually how they work, you just know how to turn them on and press the buttons, you know, and it’s okay. As long as you know that bit, you can use it. So we and the same with the law of cause and effect, we can’t possibly know all the itty bitty bits of how it actually totally one hundred percent logically functions but we all of the teachings are guidelines that can help us avoid negative actions, engage in, you know, skillful actions, beneficial actions. That’s what we need to focus on, you know, I mean in general. Of course we should ask questions and try to understand not blindly believe definitely but it’s true, I know, that there are some things it’s just not really possible to explain how happens or even why it happens.
But one, as I’ve said before, you know, one can see similar things happening in the physical world. So why not karmically? Since the physical world is also, you know, is connected to our mind. It’s not as it appears a totally separate reality. It is totally dependent on our mind.
Okay, so the other thing is, so someone made this point, oh yeah, I was going to the first point I made about why does the karmic result have to happen, especially of suffering, happen in future lives? And the person said, Wouldn’t it make more sense if the result of actions, especially suffering, came in this life so we could learn from them, learn from the suffering results. Well that’s a fair enough point except this is, you know, this is really in a sense a very like, theistic point of view that, and it’s also a bit of a New Age y kind of view, which is not the Buddhist view that somehow, you know, certain New Age kind of views are that we are reborn in order to learn something. So this is not the Buddhist view at all. We are reborn simply because the mind goes on, and how we’re reborn is because of what karma we’ve created, good or bad, because this kind of new age view that we’re born to learn something implies that there’s someone controlling it.
If you think about it, which may be true, maybe there is a God controlling everything, but this is not the Buddhist view, it’s not what I understand, what I believe, but it’s certainly not what the Buddha taught. And he didn’t teach that not just to be nasty and contradict religions because it all comes down to the four noble truths. First one, there is suffering. Why is the suffering? Why is there suffering?
This is, you know, at the heart of everything. Why is there suffering? No one wants suffering, but we’ve got it. So why is it there? Is it because of a god or gods?
Is it because actually there’s no reason whatsoever? Or is there because there is a cause? And this is what the Buddha discovered, the enlightened mind perceives that there is a cause for things. So that question, I mean, is implying that some something or someone is controlling our rebirths or giving us suffering so we can learn from it, but this is not the Buddhist view. Yeah.
Of course we can learn from our suffering. That’s what the Buddha’s teachings are trying to point out that we can learn if we want, if we don’t want suffering, don’t create the cause. If we want happiness, have to and we have to create the appropriate causes, not what we think are the causes or what our culture tells us, but we have to know the actual causes. All right. So of course, you know, you’re completely, as you know, free to believe what you like.
I’m just trying to present as best as I can the Buddhist views so you can decide whether that is makes some sense. But to somehow imply, you know, even the Buddha is not sort of, you know, giving us arranging our rebirth so we will learn something. The Buddha doesn’t do that. The Buddha can’t do that. The Buddha didn’t invent suffering and, you know, the lower realm.
Some, you know, the Buddha is the the enlightened minder simply sees things, and also sees how things works. So the Buddha says, you know, there’s all these horrible existences and they exist because of this, if you don’t want that, don’t create the cause for it. It’s very simple, really. The Buddhist teachings, now I’m getting carried away, we’ll never get onto the topic. So before I get onto the topic, are there any questions that you’d like to ask now before we go on?
Because the whole point is, in my opinion in trying to teach these courses, is my opinion because I know some people maybe get upset that I never finish the course, I never teach any course, I mean to do it. But my point of view is, even if I can explain one thing properly, that’s it. Rather than giving some, you know, simplistic, you know, thing of whatever, if people really understand one bit, I’ve explained one bit properly, which I’ve never have anyway, but that would be good. So what I was trying to say there is actually there’s no point in me blabbing away if people haven’t understood and you just sit there politely and think I haven’t got a clue what he’s talking about and why does he say that and what’s that word mean? So please ask me if, you know, and debate.
Oh, remembering an event? Yeah, and you get angry remembering it or Well, the mere remembering wouldn’t be creating karma, but sure, if your memories generate more negative thoughts that would be some kind of, yeah, some, yeah, to some extent, yes, that’s true. Everyone is, yeah. Another comment that somebody made, which many people make about this point is that when one starts to hear the teachings on karma, it just seems so overwhelming and it seems like all we do is create negative karma. So how are we ever going to get out of this mess?
But all suffering comes basically from ignorance, so many levels of ignorance, and not knowing what is the cause of suffering. So it’s really through understanding the law of cause and effect, and therefore hopefully developing some faith in it, belief in it, that we actually can get out of suffering. The Buddha didn’t appear in the world to teach this stuff simply to inform us about it if there was no hope, that we could, you know, that we were doomed to suffer. The Buddha came, appeared in the world because it was possible to understand the teachings teachings and therefore to become free of all this. Right?
And people are doing it all the time. Have been ever since the Buddha appeared in the world, there have been people putting it into practice and getting amazing results. So please don’t, yeah, at one level this stuff is very depressing. From the ordinary worldly ego point of view, a lot of this stuff is Buddhist teachings is very hard. Buddhism unfortunately I don’t think will ever be super popular anywhere.
It’ll always be a minority thing because talks about suffering and most people just simply don’t want to hear about suffering. Especially that oneself has created a cause for it, that we can’t blame other other people. So the Buddha but if one just opens one’s mind to it and lets it sink in, it is very liberating to know all these things if one believes them. And all of it is something we can work with. We can do something about it, all of it.
You know, to think about that we’re all going to die and we could die at any moment, again, is also very depressing but it’s also extremely helpful and liberating. So any other questions before I carry on? You’re all very polite, so polite. Okay. So one thing I’d like to try and clarify about, I’ve been talking about throwing and completing karma, so one thing I never got around to try to explain is that, you know, there were the four factors necessary to create a complete karmic imprint or to, you know, to complete, to create a complete karmic action and therefore a complete karmic imprint that will bring the greatest result.
So when you have all the four factors strongly present, that creates a throwing karma. And throwing karmas are only, only ripen at the time of death. Yeah? Only ripen at the time of death. Because that’s why they’re called throwing karmas because they have the power when they ripen to determine the general nature of the next rebirth.
So they throw the consciousness into the next rebirth state. So they have to be very powerful which means they need all the four factors fully present. Whereas a completing karma has either all of the four factors present but not very strongly, or some of them aren’t very strong, or one or some of the factors are missing. And so they create an imprint, but it’s not as strong, so it’s not strong enough to throw consciousness into a new rebirth state, but it does ripen during a life, yeah. Once the once a life is established or a new rebirth is established, then these different completing karmas ripen at that time.
So, you know, and remember a karmic imprint, a full throwing karmic imprint has four results, well I always say four, technically it’s three but one of those results has two aspects, so I can never remember the name. So there’s the ripening result, which is rebirth in a particular realm. So if it’s a negative throwing karma, it’s rebirth in one of the lower realms. If it’s a virtuous throwing karma, it’s rebirth in the human realm or in some of the lower god realms. And then there is the result similar to the cause, which has the result of, you know, the effects similar to the cause and the habit, and then there is the environmental result.
So those are the, can I call the four results? It’s much easier I think. There’s the ripening result, which is the actual type of rebirth, and then there is the results similar to the cause, the habit and the environment. So those are the four results that come with a throwing karma. But if it’s a completing karma, you don’t get the ripening result of being reborn in a new place because you were already reborn, right?
But you can have the other three results of the environment, the habit, and the results similar to the cause. So for example, did that make sense? I mean, I’m not asking you to believe it, just this is alright. Well, actually, I am asking you, I hope you do believe it, because I am trying to convert you, by the way, I don’t know if you realise that, but no I am, I hope I couldn’t convert you, but because I think it would be but I’m, you know, I’m blah blah. So for example in this life, someone pours a hot cup of coffee over you because they’re angry with you.
That could be so that that could be the result similar to the cause that in a past life, you know, oneself did a similar action, some unpleasant action to a person. So in this result, in this life, one gets that experience. So it could be part of a complete, of a throwing karma, because remember the throwing karma throws you, you know, if it’s a negative one it throws you into a bad rebirth When one becomes a human being, again as a result of a good throwing karma, you get the other three results because the conditions are there. So you get the results similar to the cause of having the hot coffee poured on you. Or it could be just a completing, yeah, a completing karma.
And it could be something, a completing karma you created created in a past life or it could be a completing karma created in this life that has ripened in this life. But we can’t tell. One would have to be very highly advanced to be able to tell, you know, what, when and how this particular karma was created. The most important thing to understand is if something unpleasant happens to us, we created the cause. That’s the main thing to understand.
And it’s all a teaching reminding us, don’t do this. If I don’t want hot cups of hot coffee thrown over me, be nice to people. Alright. So that’s one thing. Did that make some sense?
Alright. Okay. So there are three ways that we can create actions, engage in actions, good or bad. So the obvious one is we can do it ourselves, right? So we can kill someone ourselves or we can save the life of someone by ourselves.
So that’s one way that one creates karma. Another way is that we can encourage other people to do something. We can hire someone to kill someone for us, or we could pay someone to save the life of someone, you know, we’re not capable of doing it. You know, someone’s drowning but we can’t swim, so we could say, Oh look, go, I’ll give you, you know, a hundred dollars, a thousand dollars to go out and save this person, so the person goes out, yeah. So they get the good karma, the person who swam out gets the good karma of saving the life but also we get the good karma of encouraging them to do it.
Yeah. So we can do that with good karma, bad, you know, good actions, bad actions. Right? And then the third way of creating karma and therefore the imprints that go with them is rejoicing in actions. So we can do a good action and if we rejoice, we are really happy that we’ve done that action, it makes it more powerful.
So if we do a good action and we rejoice, it makes it a more powerful good action. If we engage in overt negative action, and we’re happy that we’ve done this negative action, that makes it that much more, that increases the negative karma. So that of course is the easiest way to create karma is to rejoice. This is why, maybe I shouldn’t say some of these things freak people out, but a friend of mine was telling me once that she at Kopan Monastery, which is where Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe started this whole organisation that has spread around the world and now there are over a hundred centres around I’ve lost track of how many centres there are in the FPMT, there’s two publishing houses and many, many other things. It’s a wonderful organisation, it started up from scratch from almost nothing.
So at Kopan Monastery there was this great Lama called Geshe Lama Kanchog who was a, Geshe Lama Kanchog who was a close friend of Lama Yeshe, they’d studied together at Sera Monastery in Tibet. So he once told this friend of mine that when she was watching the television, she should always recite OM MANI PADME HUM, oh no, sorry, when she was watching the news on TV, you know, all the horrible disasters and things, always recite OM MANI PADME HUM, otherwise you’re just creating negative karma watching all this, you’re just sitting there, being entertained by the suffering of others. He was a very heavy dude by the way, Geshe Lama Kanchok. When he died he left all these amazing relics which various Lamas of different traditions including his tulku said was a sign he’d become a Buddha. So I don’t know.
So, yeah, not someone to ignore, like Geshe Lama Kanchog. He was quite an amazing being. He spent a year living I think I’ve told you about this before spent a year, I think was over a year, living under a tree in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal, in a place called Sung, way up, way up, under a tree, not in a house open under a tree, not eating anything. Nothing. Nada.
Very special being. Yeah, so when he says things like that, you have to kind of pay attention. Also, okay. So the easiest way to create negative karma is to rejoice in one’s own negativities and especially the negativities of others when people one has to be really careful when some really, you know, conventionally nasty person, something happens to them, like famous people you don’t like. And you think, I’m glad that person died or I’m glad you know, got beaten up.
That is creating negative karma. They may be a terrible person but they are a sentient being. We should never, we don’t have to agree and encourage in anything the negative actions of people. But to rejoice in the suffering of others is not so good. It’s very easy to do, definitely easy to do, but we have to be careful.
But also the good thing is, the good news is it’s the easiest way to create good karma. It’s one of my teacher Geshe Sonam Rinchen’s favorite teachings to do, which he encourages his students to do, is to rejoice in the good actions of others. There’s even a formula, which I can’t remember, it’s like if someone’s more highly realized than you, then you get half their merits, if you rejoice and if the person is less realised than you, I think you get twice their merits or something like that. I don’t take, to be honest, I don’t have a great deal of faith in those kind of things, but I think the general idea is good. That is true, is valid.
Yeah. So if one rejoices in the amazing things someone like His Holiness Dalai Lama does, and it doesn’t have to be a holy being either, but you rejoice in the good things that other people do, then this is creating positive energy, it’s creating imprints, merit. And we need this as much as possible. We do need lots of good imprints. Because those good imprints, maybe I’m getting carried on, I’ll never get to the topic again.
But many people complain about how, oh you know, this thing about engaging in virtuous actions and getting merit is, you know, just about being a goody goody and like browning, getting brownie points or being, you know, all that, you know, Boy Scout stuff. But really this is absolutely vital to in following the spiritual path of accumulating merit. Merit, you know, enlightenment is achieved from two, three to achieve enlightenment you have to develop, create the causes for the body of a Buddha, which is not a physical body, but still it’s called a body, and the mind of a Buddha. So the cause of the mind, the enlightened mind of the Buddha is developing the wisdom that directly perceives reality. But to achieve the enlightened body of a Buddha, the cause of that is merit.
But also to develop wisdom you have to have, on these positive imprints in the mind. And the more we have, the more easy it is. Like in order to understand the teachings one needs merit to gain, to realise the teachings you have to have merit. And the more one has, the easier it is for the, the easier and quicker it is for these things to happen. So also just briefly, there four kinds of karmic imprints that we can create.
There’s the obvious ones of positive karmic imprints, negative karmic imprints. There are what are called indifferent karmic imprints, is basically neutral where something is neither a positive action or a negative action where maybe you’re just walking down the street. So that is not creating positive karma or negative karma. If you’re walking down the street to kill someone, that’s creating some negative karma, it’s part of all the actions involved in killing. If you’re walking down the street to come Buddha House with that motivation, you’re creating some good karma as you come along.
But if it’s, know, there’s no particular motivation in the mind, it’s just something indifferent, it’s not having any real effect. And then there is another quite important kind of karma one can create, which takes a little bit of time to explain, but don’t worry about it, which is called unchangeable karma. So when we talk about saṃsāra, there are three sort of realms of saṃsāra and we are in the desire realm. And the desire realm itself has six levels or six realms within the desire realm. From the bottom upwards, there are the hell realms, the preta realms, the animal realms, the human realms, and the demi god realms and the god realms, right?
And then there is the desire realm which is like a god realm which has various levels and then there is the Formless Realm, which also has four levels. So the beings in the form and formless realms are also referred to as gods. So there are the Desire Realm gods, Form Realm gods and formless realm gods. So to be reborn as a desire realm god, that depends on good karma, practicing virtue, basically. To get a good rebirth, the fundamental cause is practicing, you have to have a lot of merit.
Yeah. But to be reborn in the, as a form or formless realm, this doesn’t depend on just ordinary merit, good actions, it requires something very specific, which is developing very high levels of meditative concentration. So some of you may know there is something, a state of concentration or meditation state, which is called Samādhi or single pointed concentration. This is very, you know, especially these days, but it always has been pretty difficult to achieve. There are some people who think they’ve achieved it but actually they’re a long way from it.
But anyway, so this is when the mind is able to effortlessly stay on the object of meditation for virtually as long as you like, weeks, months. When one is in that state, one’s ordinary breathing stops. It looks like, you know, but whatever and you can sit in that state for, you know, very long periods of time. And the mind is just completely one pointed on the chosen object of meditation. So, and then on the basis of that, there are higher levels concentration and these correspond to the states of mind that the beings in the form and formless realm are experiencing, but they experiencing them, they experience them for immensely long periods of time.
But anyway, if one in this life develops these concentrations with a worldly motivation just simply to experience the bliss that comes with concentrations. When one dies, one enters into the God realm that approximate, that is equivalent to the state of the level of concentration you achieved as a human being, right? So if we achieve those concentrations as a human being in this life, we will be reborn in the form or formless realms. But that’s not a problem because from a Buddhist point of view there’s really no point to be reborn in them anyway, except they’re very blissful and they last for billions of years, where you experience experience this incredible bliss for millions and millions and millions of years. But it’s just a rebirth state and it comes to an end and plonk, you fall down, you could be reborn as a human being again or as an animal or you could fall straight from the God realms down into the hell realms.
But anyway, the karma that is created by developing these concentrations just with the worldly motivation to experience the bliss of that state, that is called unchangeable karma because when you die, there’s no choice, you get reborn in those God realms. Any questions? So the only way to create this unchanging karma is through meditative concentration? Yes. Yep.
Yep. Only way. Yeah. So in the form realm, these are called the Jhanas, there’s the Sanskrit term, the Jhanas. There are the four Jhanas.
So if you achieve one of those in this life, like you get the first, second, third and fourth, so for example in this life you manage to achieve the first Jhana, then when you die, you get reborn as a god or something, god Goddess, in that first level of the form realm. Yeah. Okay. So back to the ten non virtues, If we go to page twenty I hope everyone’s been reading this and anyway you’re supposed to have meditated on it during the week. So as so as I mentioned before, the how much time have I got left?
Half an hour. Half an hour. So why we need to pay particular attention to these is because it’s so easy to engage in them. And if if we engage in any of these ten nonvirtues with all of the four factors present, the basis, the intention, the deed and the completion, then that creates a total complete throwing karma. And if they’re not purified, then at some point that throwing karma will ripen and it can only bring rebirth in the lower realms.
And, yeah, depending on what particular action it is and how strong it was done and so on, then this could bring the very worst suffering results. So do you have any questions, maybe because there’s not so much time, I really did want to go through it but if there are just some questions came up about that, yes, yes. I would say no. I mean it it varies. In our society, I would tend to say no.
I the way, I am vegetarian and I would encourage people to do so, but by buying meat in our society you’re not creating the negative karma of killing, right? You would be creating the, you know, adding to the condition for the animal to kill, but the very fact that all the animals that are killed for meat, for human beings to consume, is because the real cause why they are being killed is not because there’s a market for meat, it’s because those animals in a past life killed, you know, when they killed something, someone, and therefore they’re now experiencing the results similar to the cause of being killed themselves. But of course, for them to be killed, there has to be the condition which is the market, there is a market for people to eat, you know, animals’ bodies. And, yeah, so there’s a huge, just let me explain first and then you can go in. So one may be adding in a very tiny, tiny way to that market, that condition, but one is not creating the karma of killing for sure, because some people argue that and that’s completely wrong.
But it’s still, it is in the Sutras it says, is, because the Buddha said in some cases is okay to eat meat, like for monks to eat meat if they, or there are certain situations when you cannot, if you know that the food has been, the meat has been killed for you, you cannot eat it. Definitely if someone kills an animal to cook it for you specifically, you cannot eat it. Things like that. Or if you ask for it, you ask for it to be killed, and things like that, a couple of other factors which I should know, out of my mind at the moment. But in the sutras it says that eating obstacle to generating compassion.
Yeah. I didn’t say that, and I wouldn’t I don’t think I would. Yeah. Yeah, so it hasn’t. But there are situations, I was just saying this to someone yesterday, I don’t know where back when I was here or something because someone asked exactly that same question yesterday or the day before, is that it really does, like if you were in India, usually if you go, you can see all around India, there’s these little stalls, not in the big cities but in like where I used to hang out in India and in Bodh Gaya and places, there’d be these little, know, daggy little stalls where people could buy meat And of course, if you looked around behind the store, there was a poor three or four little goats waiting to be killed.
And of course, when the guy ran out of meat, he would just go around the back slit the, you know, chop the head off the goat or the chicken and bring it out. And so in those cases when you’re buying meat, you are definitely having a strong connection, you know, the market is so small that you are definitely, getting closer to being a more active condition for that animal to be killed. While I think of it, there are some people here planning to take refuge, go to the refuge ceremony, no, precept ceremony. There are also people who’ve taken refuge, I always forget to explain this point, but having taken refuge, there’s no foul, no obligation to stop eating meat, but it is a good thing to do, but there’s no obligation to do it. But having taken refuge, and especially if you take the, and with it the lay precept of not killing, you can’t order lobsters anymore in restaurants or oysters, you can’t eat oysters because you’re directly killing them.
To order a lobster they get boiled alive. It’s not being killed, it’s being tortured, that’s horrendous. Yes, yes, yes. This is quite tricky, three negative actions of mind are quite tricky because covetous, you know, three of them, well, covetousness and harmful, ill will, well, covetousness looks just like at first sight, it looks like attachment, but attachment attachment is a delusion, it is not an action, a karmic action. And of course the obvious motivation for covetousness is attachment but you could also be covetous because of anger or pride or jealousy or whatever, you want some, but the point, yeah anyway, covetousness is just, is more than just being attached or desiring something, it’s like, because this is just a simple presentation, for covetousness to be present there are I think six factors that have to be involved.
But it has to be, for example, very strong desire or very strong anger or ignorance, and it’s really involved with, like wanting something that I’ve read people saying covetousness, you know, is like when you go window shopping and you see something and you think, oh I’d like that, but you know, oh I’d really like that. But that is not covetousness, that is desire to some extent, but it’s not covetousness because covetousness, which is quite difficult for me to pronounce, is really about wanting something that someone else has got, you know, that they personally possess. You know, why has that creep got that? I deserve that. I should have that.
I’m a much better person than them, you know, why have they got that? It’s like this really nasty mind that wants something mainly because someone else has got it. Not because I just would like it, but oh, I deserve that, I should have that. And that could be because of attachment, but because I hate that person, I don’t want them to have that thing, so I want it and I’m going to get it from them. Yeah.
So the completion of that is when you think, I’m going to get that, I’m going to, by hook or by crook, I’m going to get that thing. And so as a result, it can act as a motivation to steal, but even if you don’t steal the thing, you’ve created the complete, when generate the mind, I will definitely get it, no matter what, that’s when you’ve completed the action of covetousness. And the same with ill will, you can have anger, but that can be the motivation for ill will, but ill will is when you decide I will really hurt them, you know, I’ll really thump them, or I’ll really kill them, or torture them, or I will really make them miserable. I will definitely do it. You may not do it, but the moment the mind comes to that state where you’re determined to hurt the person, that is when the completion of ill will occurs.
So with wrong views, anyway ill will can be also due not just from anger but also it can be due to attachment and so on. So wrong views again is not just having a wrong view, but it’s real again, it’s on top of that, it’s really holding on to that wrong view and believing it is right simply because it’s my view. Something like that. And I will never change this view no matter what people say. No matter what people try and prove, this is it.
I don’t care what they say, how harmful it might be, this is it, I believe it. But again, all of these things, especially wrong views, it’s not like having a wrong view that I believe the capital of Australia is Melbourne and I’ll never change that view, that’s not creating negative karma, right? It is about things that have significance, you know, to one’s mind, you know, holding, you know, you have a wrong view about something exists in a particular way and you have a view opposite to that and you hold onto that really, really strongly. A wrong view about something of reality that is significant in like what is the cause of suffering and this and that. It’s not just believing, sort of having wrong ideas about who’s the best football team or something.
Although that may be quite important. So were there any questions about that, any other questions about the four results of karma? So in meditating on these things, what I’d just like to, I mentioned but say again, is that it’s really important to think of, you know, have I killed anything and, you know, what was the basis, who, what was it, what was the intention, you know, and how was it done, How did I feel when it was done? Did I steal? Did I engage in sexual misconduct?
Any questions on that one? That’s a very tricky topic. Because each of these, you know, actions can be done in so many ways, or the four factors can vary so much. Okay. Just then on page twenty nine, I don’t know if people have been reading this section yet, but it talks about the results of the ten non virtues.
So killing, if all the four factors are present, then the ripening result is definitely rebirth in one of the lower realms because a negative action, especially a complete negative action is a throwing karma, so if it’s not purified, at some point it will ripen to determine the next, you know, the coming rebirth. So it can never ripen ripen to bring a good rebirth, it’s just impossible. So it can only bring a lower rebirth. So I know most people, many people find it very difficult to believe in the existence of pretas and no one wants to believe in hell realms but most societies talk about these things. My basic point is if one can see that animals have consciousness and I would highly recommend everyone watch this video on that gorilla Coco which due to Margaret’s kindness I have a copy of and I would be very happy to lend it to you.
It is just amazing and if you don’t believe this being has consciousness and feelings, then I don’t know, then I think you’re not ient being. Because it’s just incredible. So if one can see that animals have consciousness, and that there’s only one kind of consciousness, there are not different kinds of consciousness, there’s just mine, mind knows. For a mind which is basically the same as ours to end up in a different body, a completely different body where the mind isn’t able to, although that being Coco is quite intelligent, is not able to function the way a human being can. So why is that mind trapped in that body and have to suffer that life?
And then one could imagine, due to more negative karma, one could experience the suffering of the preta realms or the hell realms. I was just listening to a program programme on the radio yesterday, think it was, or day before, about the belief of fairies in Ireland. So of course many Irish people, there’s no question that there are fairies and goblins, you know, and they’re right, because there’s all sorts of beings existing. So unfortunately, maybe fortunately, I’ve never had the experience of seeing beings from other realms, but I have some friends who have and I believe these friends of mine are quite normal, very stable people, seeing ghosts and things. Many people are seeing ghosts, so they’re a kind of preta being.
And of course many of these stories may be, I know that people have vivid imaginations, I don’t dismiss that, but when you hear particular people that you know talk about things, yeah, it’s very interesting. So of course, if one so with killing, if it’s not too bad, one gets reborn as an animal, if it’s worse, one gets reborn in the preta realms, if it’s the worst kind of killing, one ends up in the hell realms. Then when one is reborn as a human being due to some good throwing karma, then in that situation one experiences the other results from that one act of killing, which is the result similar to the cause. So as a human being, one could have a short life, a lot of ill health, lots of troubles, lots of problems in one’s activities, no success. One could kill oneself.
Or one could experience all of those things, have a short life, be murdered, even in one’s short life have all sorts of incredible illnesses and so on. Then there’s the environmental result of one is born in a place where there’s a lot of violence, war problems, where food and drink is either very difficult to get, very scarce or has not, and also even medicine has very little potency. So there countries like that or places within countries like that where the food is very poor, the medicine is very bad and corrupt and whatever. So one could experience those results depending on the intensity of what’s ripe and what the original action was, one could experience all those three results in the one life, you know, continuously for the whole of one’s life or maybe just for a short period, you know. So there’s so many, many possibilities.
So again when meditating on these, it’s really helpful, like firstly in general to know this and maybe develop some faith in it so that the point is by understanding the horrible results, it encourages us to avoid the action. Because if we this where we are generating what I talked about the wise fear, because if we don’t fear this, that what is going to stop us doing negative actions? But also, what is really important to try and do in meditating on these things regularly is to see if, you know, if one can recognize, oh I’ve had that experience like of lots of sickness that doesn’t seem to make any sense, you know, and maybe not, maybe comes clear in some of the others because hopefully most of us aren’t experiencing too much karma of killing in this life. The thing is to sort of check all the environment or the results similar to the cause or the habit of someone. When I used to go to Goodwood Primary School when I was a little kid here, this is a very embarrassing story, I sometimes tell it, sometimes I feel too shy, but I remember that one day there was this corridor, there was school rooms on one side and there was this long corridor, anyway I can’t remember vaguely but then there were these cupboards and one day this cupboard was open and there was this whole shelves of boxes of chalk, coloured chalks, white chalks, and I thought how wonderful it would be to have a box of this chalk.
And one day I stole the box, just like that. I put it in my little bag, went home into my bedroom, sitting on the bed and my mother caught me immediately and dad took me back to the school and it was closed so we just had to leave the box of chalks on the thing. But I never ever ever thought of wanting chalk before or since. But just in that moment I absolutely had to have that box of chalk. It was very bizarre.
So I think that was a bit of that karma of the habit of just, you know, coming out the last bit of one one karma of stealing. But, yeah. So then with with killing, the, you know, there’s the habit, the action congruent with the cause, which is to have the desire to kill and harm. And this can be particularly when there’s absolutely no reason to do so. Of course there’s situations where there’s wish to kill because of a very obvious reason, I mean from a Buddhist point of view it’s still not good, but from a normal worldly point of view there’s reasons to want to kill something or someone or whatever.
But if there’s some strong killing karma there, one can develop that wish just to kill for no real reason whatsoever and actually enjoying killing, really enjoying it a lot. And as I mentioned, this is what my teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, is the worst karmic result is the habit. It doesn’t look like it, it itself is not the particularly most immediately painful, but it leads us to engage in the negative action again, where we get all the four results including the habit again, so the habit gets stronger and stronger and this is how saṃsāra, one of the ways saṃsāra perpetuates itself. We just, you know, keep going and creating the causes of suffering over and over and over again. And I hope you’ve read it, but there’s a very wonderful quote I think from Eric Fromm on page twenty three-twenty four about that.
From the Heart of Man. Our capacity to choose changes constantly with our practice of life. The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens. The more often we make the right decisions, the more our heart softens or comes alive. Each step in life which increases my self confidence, my integrity, my courage, my conviction, also increases my capacity to choose the desirable alternative, until eventually, this is the best bit, it becomes more difficult for me to choose the undesirable rather than the desirable action.
On the other hand, each act of surrender and cowardice weakens me, opens the path for more acts of surrender and eventually freedom is lost. Between the extreme where I can no longer do a wrong act and the extreme where I’ve lost my freedom to right action, there are innumerable degrees of freedom of choice. This is the answer to the question about, oh karma looks like life is completely predetermined. And the point to understand is, for those who did the last course, we talked briefly about the precious human rebirth and the teaching on the precious human rebirth is making the point that this is where we have the greatest freedom. We have the greatest freedom to make the right choice, especially because we have the Dharma which tells us what is the right choice or helps us make the right choice.
You know, when you’re born an animal, when you’re born a cat, even if you’ve just eaten a tin of the best food and a little mouse runs by, you have to chase it because the habit is so strong. You’ve just got to chase it and kill it. We don’t have to do that. We have the greatest freedom right now that we need to recognise. And the more we use that freedom, the freer we become by making the right choices, observing the law of cause and effect.
And also this is what, you know, I say all the time, I’m very worrying, the Tibetan term for meditation is habituate because meditation is about creating virtuous habits and breaking down these bad habits that come from negative karma and following our delusions. So this particular meditation on the karmic results of non virtues especially human results because I don’t know about you but I can’t remember being born in the fortunately in the lower realms. So that’s unimaginable but we can see some of these experiences in this life of the other karmic results and that can encourage us if we think that, if we can recognise those, it shows us to some extent that possibly still have the habit to do these things. Even though we consciously, we don’t want to, we have a wish to follow a spiritual life, to be a good person, to be a kind person, we have the habits. And the point is when the condition is there, just like when the condition, we’re not angry all the time, we’re not full of desire or pride or jealousy or this or that all the time.
When do the delusions arise? They arise when the conditions are there. As soon as the conditions are there, when the object is there, bingo, bingo, you know. Some very sexy person walks into the room or who you think is sexy, other people may not, and then bingo, desire arises, someone you think is a really nasty person walks in, bingo, aversion arises, it wasn’t there before but as soon as the object is there, bang, without any control, without a moment’s thought, the delusion is there. So in a similar way, when the conditions are there, the habit also So so just briefly in conclusion, never got to go through these.
So it’s very good to go through these and try to be honest and recognise, oh that’s happened to me, this has happened to me. So it’s especially important to relate it to oneself in order to encourage oneself not to do these things again. But it’s also helpful, you know, in trying to develop some faith in the law of cause and effect if you can see, you know, also, oh I know someone or I’ve read about someone who this kind of thing happens to them, right? So maybe it’s because of this. The danger of that is that, you know, one of the the whole point of listening to the dharma is always to relate it to oneself.
That sounds egoistic, but it’s not that, it’s in order to change one’s mind, and why do we want to change our mind in the Mahāyāna tradition is so we stop harming others and so we can start benefiting others. But if we use the dharma to think, oh that person does all those things, then instead of developing compassion, we start, you know, putting people down. So we have to be careful how we relate, you know, rather than thinking, so it’s important to relate it to ourselves, it can be useful to relate it to other people, but we have to avoid the danger of then realising, oh this person, you know, labeling that person a bad person or something, but just simply using the example of other people as a way to develop our understanding of the law of cause and effect. Am I making sense there? Yeah?
Right. God, you’re very intelligent people because I don’t don’t explain things very sorry. Okay, thank you very much, break break time. So oh, so please if you like tea, coffee, water, whatever, get and group one and two. So group two should be here tonight and group one I think it should be like that in the student area.
I hope everyone knows what group they’re in, if they don’t it’s on the there just under the picture of Lama Zopa Rinpoche There’s also a copy on the table empowerments that Lama Zopa Rinpoche is offering in Bendigo soon? I did. I gave a talk about it very briefly. I missed it. When was that?
I can’t remember now. When was it? It was about it was a talk on retreat. Yeah, so I talked a little bit about it. But if you have some questions, I’m happy to answer.
Well, I’m wondering how relevant that would be for me. Well, there’s a of commitments. It’s really a lot of stuff. Mhmm. You still kill mice?
We gotta get stuck on number six. Number six. What was number six? The reverse. Yes.
The reverse. Right? So the the the result of not killing or, you know, being very nice to people would be or like saving the life of someone would the ripen result would be reborn as a human being. And then the experience congruent with the cause was that what one would have a long life, a very healthy life, etcetera. One one would have the habit to be, you know, not to kill, you know, to to to, like, really respect life, and one would be born in an extremely peaceful environment where where where all the resources to for oneself to have a strong healthy body would be there, the food and medicine and so on would be there.
And same with stealing and, you know, by avoiding stealing and actually, you know, being generous and whatever, you know, again, that creates the cause to be born a human being, you know, partly, and then there is then then one would experience wealth, you know, one would have lots of resources in this life. One would be able to enjoy all one’s one’s possessions to the to the fullest. One would be born in an environment where, you know, you would have all the resources that think know, there are countries where there are so many natural disasters where things are wiped out and whatever. So one would be born in in the opposite kind of place where where one is protected and doesn’t lose things and one would have the habit of being very respectful of other people’s property and not, you know, stealing it, blah blah blah, like that. Any other questions on any tricky topics?
The super virtues? Sorry? The super Oh, the because I was I was meant to talk about them, but I I mentioned this last week, you remember this again, someone in the homework mentioned something about why always the emphasis on talking about negative karma rather than in in talking about the law of cause and effect. Why not talk about positive karma all the time? But again, partly because it’s easier to give examples of about this, but in the dharma in general, the emphasis is on the the negative side of talking about that first because this is what we have to deal with first.
It’s a little bit like, for example, if you if you built built, you know, you had the money and you had to build a house and you import the very best bricks or whatever stones from all over the world to build your house and have all the best possible things to build your house, and you built it on a swamp. Yeah. It’s not gonna last. You know, despite you’ve got the fan you know, the best materials, the best workmen to whip it up, and you build it on the swamp. So first, you have to clean get rid of the swamp.
In other words, first, we have to stop engaging in negative actions, and then whatever positive actions we do really bear bear the greatest fruit, bring the greatest benefit. It’s like that. And the point is that avoiding negative actions is positive. You have to be in a positive state of well, not necessarily, but here, the situation, the reason for for avoiding negative actions is because one sees that they are negative. I do not want to do these negative actions.
Why? Because it’s firstly, it’s it’s directly harms me, and it leads me to to bring harm to others. So that is a positive thing. That’s building up a positive states of mind. So avoiding negative things is virtue.
The mere the mere and this is nothing to kill. You know? But if there was possibilities to kill things and you don’t, this is really virtuous. This is really good because it requires some effort. It it requires a particular mental state to do it.
You know, people like some people, you know, get so upset because there’s an ant on the kitchen sink. This is not the end of the world to have an ant on the kitchen sink or even streams of them. It’s annoying. It’s definitely annoying. Or cockroaches.
With with the bigger things, it starts to get more of a problem. But, you know, things are possible. But the the mere fact that one can restrain from doing that, especially if one started, you know, one couldn’t bear the side of a tiny insect and, you know, on your kitchen sink and then this is, you know, un unbearable, and then you stop doing that, that’s required some really something has happened in the mind. It’s really good. Yeah.
So but then on top of that, so the super what I call the super virtues is then, like, there’s killing, there’s not killing, and then there’s being, like, really saving life and nurturing life, you know, really taking care of it. Going out of the way to nurture life. You cannot kill an animal or you could really, like, rescue animal. Like I was talking a bit last week about saving animals that are about to be killed. This is a wonderful practice to do.
Really enjoy. It’s really good for the mind. I I think I mentioned that, like, when I was in Hyderabad Grove in Perth, when I was there, we organized to say we we bought sheep because there was two students who owned a farm, an organic olive farm, and they needed sheep to keep the grass down. So I said, we will we will supply sheep for you. If you just look after them, we’ll supply them.
So we we would we built fences and bought sheep. Now there’s a herd of about thirty or forty sheep there. And some have died naturally, but they died naturally because they will die. Two of the sheep gave birth. So there were pregnant moms about to be shipped off and killed, but they we didn’t know that they were pregnant, but they gave birth.
So that was super nice. But you can do things like that. You know? So there’s stealing, avoiding stealing, and then there’s being generous, like sharing what you have, giving away. There’s engaging in sexual misconduct, not engaging in sexual misconduct.
I’m not quite what the super virtue is. Maybe it’s being celibate. But anyway and then there’s lying, not lying, and then what’s the super virtue of not lying? Well, you know, there’s avoiding, you know, telling lies and then there’s being careful about, you know, speaking really truthfully. And then there’s divisive speech, avoiding it, and and then they’re avoiding using it.
But then there’s using one speech to create harmony between people, which is such a wonderful thing to do. Yeah. This is something so important to to use one speech to bring people together. And this is something very, very vital in a in a Buddhist community because all the teachers say, and it really makes a great so one of the extreme negative karmas is causing disunity among the Sangha. Fortunately, this can only be done at the time of the Buddha the actual extreme karma can only be done at the time of a Buddha, you know, manifesting on the earth, a founding Buddha.
But it it many times teachers say, you know, great lamas say that that is so important for a a like a spiritual community like this, you know, that we there is harmony between us because if there isn’t, there’s no benefit. There’s no real no benefit for one’s practice. Yeah. Years and years ago, I heard the story about people who went off and did a highest yoga tantra three year retreat. There was about four or five of these people.
And then they had a whole a meeting with His Holiness where they had all these big fancy questions about doing this special kind of retreat. And before they could answer, you know, get out of any of these questions, what His Holiness just said, were you nice to each other during the retreat? Something Something like that. Were you kind to each other? That was the most important thing, not doing these fancy, fancy retreats.
It was, you know, the basis was looking after each other in retreat. If you can’t do that, the rest is just rubbish. I don’t got carried away as going on about that. Yes. So, you know, using one’s speech to bring harmony and resolve conflicts and so on is incredibly virtuous.
Good. And instead of so instead of using insulting words, a harsh speech, then avoiding harsh speech, but then using one’s speech to say nice things and cut encouraging things rather than put using one speech to put people down and make them feel bad and inferior and this and that. One uses one speech. And and, again, not with the motivation that people will like me and blah blah blah, but for the you know, wanting to benefit the other. Yeah?
To, you know, help them to, you know, yeah, to praise people, to talk about their good qualities and to give them some hope and encouragement and support. Yeah. And again, instead of there’s there’s idle gossip, avoiding idle gossip, and then there’s just speaking meaningfully as much as possible. So like that. That’s what I call the super yeah.
Virtuous. Any more questions? I think we’re finished with tonight. There’s no I did want to go through these in detail, but I think it’s fairly clear, isn’t it, what’s set out here? But it’s good to, you know, think of one’s own examples from one’s own life.
Okay. So the homework is basically to go through the ten non virtues again, but this time from the point of view of the results. Last week, it was about, you know, the four factors in creating a complete non virtuous action. So it is to actually go through that section of the results of the ten non virtues, particularly from one’s own, you know, trying to relate it to experiences in one’s own life. And then the mindfulness practice is, again, like when when something happens, try and see whether this relates to any of the results of the ten non virtues.
If people don’t don’t listen to you, you know, you’re saying something and they just don’t listen to you. This this is the karmic result of of, you know, bad speech. It’s one of the one of the karmic results of bad people just don’t listen to you, especially if you’ve been lying, then the you one the power of one speech isn’t just weakened and people don’t listen to you, don’t believe you even if you are speaking the truth. So and this is such such an important thing with speech that like in in the teachings, it makes the point that the the most I’m carrying on again as usual. I know I don’t stop.
The the most powerful way the Buddha benefits sentient beings is actually teaching the Dharma. He can do all sorts of fancy miracles and things, but the most powerful way to benefit an individual’s mind is to teach the Dharma. And for that to happen, then for for what is said to affect the mind of another person, it depends on oh, this is bad, isn’t it? It depends on the pure speech of the person teaching. So when someone like His Holiness, the Dalai Lama teaches, who is a very pure holy being, then when he teaches and speaks, the effect on the mind is far more powerful than an ordinary being speaking.
So, you know, even if they’re saying exactly the same thing, the same truth. Is why even great lamas who teach things attend teachings by his holiness on the very things they teach. Because it can you you can gain realizations from hearing a realized being teach. I mean, that’s if you’ve purified your mind a bit and accumulated merit and meditated on the topic, but what can actually tip the balance so that, you know, the the actual realization comes is listening to the teaching. So that and so we want to be able to use our speech in a good way and and to benefit people with our speech.
And that means we have to purify, you know, use our speech more you know, avoid the non virtues of speech as much as possible and engage in the virtuous aspects of speech more and more because then our own speech will be become more powerful. On the other hand, you have people like Hitler who practiced in the opposite way. So his speech was also very powerful and very influential, but in a really negative way. Now I have now my little speech will stop and we can dedicate the merit. Because as I was saying last week, we’ve correct listening to the dharma with the right motivation in the right way is creating really positive imprints in our mind.
So we can increase the positive imprints by rejoicing that we’ve come here and done this. I hope you are reasonably happy that you you lasted the distance tonight. And so we can dedicate that. If I can find the page, page twelve, isn’t it? Thirteen.
Thirteen. Through the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of a guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May the precious body mind, not yet born, arise and grow. May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore. Thank you very much.
So those people who find it meaningful.