Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 98-minute teaching, Venerable Thubten Dondrub walks through the foundational stages of the Buddhist path with a structured, practical approach. He begins with a guided refuge visualization and establishes the core motivation: recognizing human rebirth as a precious opportunity to achieve enlightenment not only for oneself but for all sentient beings. The talk then explores the essential topics of Lamrim—the graduated path to enlightenment—covering how to abandon attachment to worldly concerns, recognize the reality of suffering across all realms, and develop genuine renunciation. Dondrub emphasizes the Buddhist understanding that all rebirths and realms arise from the mind and karma, not external creation. The teaching culminates in a detailed examination of the law of cause and effect: how intentional actions of body, speech, and mind generate karmic imprints that ripen as future experiences, and how the four determining factors—impulse, object, act, and completion—shape their strength. He explains the ten non-virtuous actions to avoid, introduces the concept of throwing and completing karmas, and offers practical guidance on purifying negative karma through the four opponent powers. Throughout, Dondrub invites reflection and question, grounding abstract doctrine in lived experience and contemporary concerns, making the material accessible to newcomers while offering depth for serious practitioners.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Presenting the path week 3.mp3
UUID: d59b5999-a453-44ac-a1ad-feed67a65093
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: DB Presenting the Path (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2018 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 98.2 minutes
Words: ~11,868
Each week actually, so I can only really do it very briefly just to give a quick overview of the path. But we can start with the, if people would like to join in, the traditional prayer, which is on page it’s on page that sounds good. Well it’s actually on page, eleven. So as we say this prayer it’s helpful to, especially if one feels connection with the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, to visualise Śākyamūni Buddha in front of us as the source of all these teachings, one can think of the Buddha as the embodiment of the Three Jewels of refuge, which is the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, And at the same time we try and think of ourselves surrounded by all sentient beings, starting with those that we’re most connected to in this life, so our mother on our left, father on our right, family, friends and helpers behind us, enemies in front, and then as much as possible all other sentient beings, and trying to have that awareness that I’m completely dependent on all of them, always have been, always will be. Whether I remain in saṃsāra, I depend on sentient beings to get out of cyclic existence.
I depend on sentient beings to achieve enlightenment, I will depend on sentient beings. And amazingly they help me as I expect as I depend on them, they provide that support in every conceivable way, especially the kindness of a mother life after life. So please try to have that awareness of the kindness of mother sentient beings, but also how each and every one of them is trapped in cyclic existence and most are experiencing the worst sufferings of cyclic existence right now and are completely helpless to do anything about it. So right now we have a very fortunate human rebirth, a precious human rebirth, the optimum chance to not only free ourselves from suffering, but the optimum chance to help everyone become free of suffering and to achieve peerless, everlasting happiness. So we really need to seize this opportunity and generate that bodhicitta mind, determined to realise our full potential, our Buddha nature, to achieve enlightenment, to be in a position to enlighten all Mother Sentient beings.
So please as much as possible, as much as you believe, try and generate at least that the effortful version of the bodhicitta motivation. 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’s pleased with our motivation, we imagine the Buddha comes to the crown of our head and then dissolves into blissful golden light so that that light can pour down into us, blessing our mind to be able to understand the teachings on the path, blessing our mind to be able to put them those teachings into practice correctly, and blessing our mind to be able to eventually gain the unmistaken transformative realisations of the stages of the path to enlightenment. So then we can reinforce that positive state of mind by briefly doing the nine round breathing exercise.
And as we do that, if you find it helpful, one can combine it with the visualisation of breathing in this very peaceful, soothing white light with the in breaths and with each out breath, breathing out all one’s disturbing thoughts, negative karmic imprints, obscurations and so on, fears and worries, confusion in the mind, breathing all of that out with each out breath in the form of this very thick, ugly, murky smoke. Okay. Thank you very much. So the Buddha emphasises, or the Mahāyāna teachings of the Buddha emphasise that each and every sentient being, ourselves included, possess at all times this Buddha potential, this Buddha nature, but it’s obscured. And the whole path to path of the Buddha’s teachings that is set out is about successively, progressively eliminating everything that obscures our mind so that we can achieve that enlightened state.
So to achieve enlightenment, we have to generate the mind of bodhicitta, the mind that is determined to eliminate, to face all the difficulties, to learn all the skills necessary to eliminate all that’s obscuring our mind. And so to be able to generate that mind of bodhicitta, the mind seeking enlightenment in order to benefit and repay all mother sentient beings without exception, the basis of being able to generate that is firstly we have to be able to recognise the nature of cyclic existence as suffering, that our cyclic existence, remember, is our mind controlled by delusion and karma. And we need to recognise that that mind is only while the mind is controlled by delusion and karma, we really only experience suffering. There is no escape from it. So while we remain controlled by delusion and karma, there is no escape from suffering.
So the more we realise that, we can generate this mind determined to renounce cyclic existence, to become free of it. So that one has to generate that mind in order to be able to generate bodhicitta, and one has to generate bodhicitta in order to become enlightened. But also to be able to generate the mind of renouncing cyclic existence, we first have to generate the mind renouncing our attachment, our attachments and obsession with the things of this life, basically focused, you know, our mind only focused on this life and thinking the good and bad things of this life are so incredibly important. So and that’s the state that most of us, actually if we’re honest, are in. We are stuck in this life, thinking mainly of this life, obsessed with the things of this life and giving them far, far, far more importance than they deserve.
You know, we worry about how we look, how other people think about us, we worry about our status in society and our possessions and fashions, the fashion of our possessions and how much money we’ve got, and all of these things, none of which are really going to benefit us in any way in the long run. But we are still obsessed with them, and being obsessed with them unknowingly, for most people, but when we meet the dharma we can start to begin to understand that our obsessions with the things of this life are really disturbing our mind, are causing suffering, we are it leads us to engage in all sorts of negative actions that are only going to result in more suffering. So this is the beginning of the spiritual path, is renouncing our attachments and obsessions with the things of this life. And this basically the way to do that, as it’s set out in the tradition, is that we need to rely on a qualified spiritual master and we need to recognise that we have the optimum chance to do that, that we have a precious human rebirth, the optimum chance to follow the spiritual path.
And then the specific ways to really lead our mind away from the things of this life so that we can really take care of our mind, which is the essential thing, because it is our mind which is the actual source of all our happiness and suffering, and and our state of mind is going to determine what kind of death and rebirth we’re going to have. So then what helps us to renounce this life and put everything in perspective and give us the energy to practise the dharma, taking care of our mind, is recognising how everything that we are obsessed with is impermanent, is changing and decaying moment by moment, and also we need to recognise that this is true for ourself, our body is impermanent, we are therefore definitely going to die, we could die at any time, And the only thing that’s going to help when we die is really what state of mind we have, whether we’ve got a positive state of mind because we’ve trained in developing that throughout our life, or we haven’t. Right? And there’s only and and there are only two kinds of rebirth we can have, a good one or a bad one, a rebirth a good one as a human being or in the god realms, or a bad rebirth as an animal or a hungry ghost or in the hell realms.
And although a human rebirth is listed as a good rebirth, many human rebirths are still pretty, pretty horrible. So we need to at least get a good human rebirth, but what we need is not just a good human rebirth, but a precious human rebirth, the one that has the eight freedoms and ten endowments, the leisure and freedom and interest to practice the Dharma. Yeah, so understanding that we can only have a good or bad rebirth, we need to think about the suffering of the lower realms to realise that potential for those realms exists in our mind. Those realms aren’t just like this realm is not created by some external force. This realm, this experience that we’re undergoing now is coming fundamentally from our mind, is totally dependent on our mind.
This isn’t something created for us by some special being. This world hasn’t been created by something external to us. It is actually the karmic result of all sentient beings, but and and we have to have created the cause to have this body and for this body be in this world at a particular time, at a particular place, meeting particular things. Alright? And just as that’s true well, this is what the Buddha says, for this life, it’s true and this realm, it’s true for all the other realms.
These aren’t something created by some god to either reward us or punish us, they are products of our mind. Right? We create them or or we don’t create them. We, you know, we create oh, we create the causes for them or we don’t create the causes for them. And that’s our choice.
This is what the Buddha came to tell us. We have the choice not to create the causes for terrible rebirths. We can create, we have the possibility to create the causes for good rebirths, and eventually not to take rebirth at all, but to experience the deathless state of peerless, everlasting happiness and or of enlightenment. So we need to think about these sufferings to, you know, make them real, that those sufferings are a real potential of our mind. And if we’re not careful, you know, we can experience those.
We’ve experienced them in the past, and it’s so easy to create the causes for these terrible rebirths. Because one thing one mistake is to think that the suffering to create the causes of the suffering of the lower realms, you have to do really, really terrible things. That’s not the case. It’s just by doing lots of small negative things that negatively, you know, accumulates and becomes the cause of the lower realms. I mean, for the really horrendous sufferings of the lower realms, have to do some pretty horrible things, but many of the sufferings of the lower realm, which we couldn’t bear now anyway, is very easy to create the cause for.
We don’t have to be some kind of monster to do it, unfortunately. Right. Okay, so that’s what we’ve covered so far. Does anyone have any questions from what I’ve said now or last week or what you read or thought about or meditated on or struggle to get this idea that there are up to sixteen or eighteen or a large number of different relatives. If I look around the world, there is enough suffering to go around anyway.
Yes, yes. That’s true. And that’s what I said. You can see examples of the different realms in the human realm, but and you can use if that’s if you find it difficult to believe in the other realms, I think the suffering of the human realm is enough motivation generally to practise the Dharma. But if you accept that there is one other kind of living being on this planet we share, you know, and that those are animals.
And then you have to look, do they have a mind or not? Yeah. And if you can start to see that they have a mind, then it becomes very difficult, I think, to say their mind is somehow inherently different than our mind, that it’s exactly the same, it’s definitely more obscured. So then if there’s that realm, I mean, why are those minds not in human bodies but they’re in those bodies? And then if that if they are sentient beings, then maybe by creating other kinds of actions, one can be in the spirit realm, the hungry ghost realm.
And, you know, there are many stories in many cultures, including our own, of spirits and ghosts, and people see them all the time. And you can dismiss that these are crazy people, and some of them are, but they are very, very sane people who have had some, you know, very interesting experiences. Yeah. And this happens all the time, everywhere. Yeah.
And so and then there’s then if that’s possible, maybe possible, then, unfortunately, maybe the hell realms are possible. And then also the god realms, you know. Anything is possible if I can go back. Would love to think that the realms were limited to the ones that we can see. Yes.
Yeah, so would I. I’m not at all interested in falling into the lower realms. Yes. It’d be terrific. But, I mean, this comes into our our next topic, which is refuge, which is, you know As a Buddhist, one takes refuge in the Buddha a sublime being whose mind is completely without fault, and all the good qualities that we have the potential for are fully functioning in the enlightened mind all the time.
They’re never they’re always operating at one hundred percent intensity. And that mind is completely unmistaken, and that mind has said, has perceived and therefore taught that these realms exist and has taught many, many things that we as ordinary people don’t want to believe and accept. But then if you say, well, the Buddha’s wrong, then, you know, that’s not possible, or the Buddha lied, or if you say that’s not possible, or you’re saying that Buddhahood doesn’t exist because this enlightened being has said that. Well, of course it is, but I don’t think it’s valid and people do that, but it’s not how it’s taught. And one problem with that is if what the Buddha taught is that there are these other realms .and that people have experiences of, you know, seeing Of course, a lot of scientists will dismiss this and psychologists as fantasies of the mind, but often how they do that is very unscientific.
But there are people who have experiences of just ordinary people who see things, you know, from I don’t, but I’ve because I was my teacher, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, he’s attendant for three years, then people tell him all sorts of things, yeah, of what they see. Yeah. You’d be surprised what people see in their lives and experience. And then you also have to deny that many great practitioners are lying or they themselves, which we’ve labelled great practitioners are schizophrenics, because they see things and believe things and know things. And also, you then have to say, because if what the Buddha taught is true to some extent that there are these different realms, but you only believe and of course this is your choice, being that I’m that’s okay that there’s only human beings or human beings and animals, then your compassion is limited and you will never be able to become a Buddha and benefit sentient beings.
You’ll never be able to generate bodhicitta, because bodhicitta is a mind that has you know, encompasses every sentient being. But if you say, you know, spirit beings and the hell beings and the god beings don’t exist, then you can’t have compassion for them, and therefore your compassion will never develop. You know, it will develop a bit. You’ll be able to develop compassion for human beings, maybe for animals if you accept this, animal beings, but your compassion will still be obscured, it will still be repressed, and therefore one won’t be able to generate bodhicitta, one won’t be able to become a Buddha, etc, etc. So that’s the big flaw of not accepting, you know.
I mean, it’s all our choice how much we believe in these things, but I’m just saying that’s what it’s all about. Great compassion is about bodhicitta’s based on great compassion, and great compassion, you know, is open to wanting every sentient being to not just every sentient I believe exists, but every sentient being that does exist, to be free of suffering. I know, sure, the lower realms are horrible, of course it can be dismissed as a lot of modern people do, that this is just, you know, a power game to gain control over people’s minds and with lots of fear and blah blah blah. But then if you study, look at what the quality of the enlightened mind, the enlightened mind, you know, this this is a being of great compassion. He didn’t make up stuff to terrify us.
That’s not the that’s not the quality of an an enlightened being, Is it? What’s the point of making if there is someone who has great compassion, there’s no point in scaring people about things that don’t exist. There is a point in making people fear things that do exist that one should fear in a wise way, not in a neurotic way. But like I said, there are things we should have a genuine concern. Maybe you don’t want we don’t want to use the word fear.
I don’t mind the I’m not afraid of the word fear. I wish I had a whole lot more fear of things that one needs to be afraid of. But there is a wise fear, a skilful fear, things that are really harmful. So it’s very compassionate to encourage people, just like a parent guides their children to be careful of this, that and the other because they don’t want them to suffer. But a good parent doesn’t say, ‘Be terrified of, you know, a chair, ‘ you know, or be terrified of flowers, you should be terrified of flowers because flowers aren’t gonna hurt you.
So why would a parent make their child, you know, imbue their child with a fear of something that’s not there’s no reason to be afraid of, but it is helpful for parent to be, you know, encourage their child to be careful around certain things. Right? That’s what the Buddha’s doing. Be afraid of that. You don’t have to be afraid.
You don’t have to be afraid about what people think of you. The Buddha doesn’t teach us to be afraid of what people think of us and what we look like, whether we’re fashionable or rich or good looking or sexy. But that’s what we’re afraid of, that we’re not these things. We have this ridiculous fear about things that are pointless to be afraid of, and we’re not afraid of the things we should be. And that’s the Buddha’s saying, that’s what you should be worried about.
Sorry. Now I’ve used up all my time. No, but I do appreciate your point. I mean, yeah. Many people think this way, but yeah.
Oh, we really should watch that video of Coco the gorilla. That’s really you have to watch Coco the gorilla. I should bring it next week, shouldn’t we? And watch it. Coco is a is a human is she’s now, what, four she might be dead now, isn’t she?
But she lived to be forty something, and she has a vocabulary, a hand sign language vocabulary of over a thousand words now, I think. And then they interview scientists and say, oh, no, she can’t talk. This is all just so completely unscientifically ridiculous. It’s but they just cannot admit anything that doesn’t fit into their paradigm. Yeah.
Anyway, if you see, then you know that and and, of course, if one gorilla has a mind, all gorillas have minds. Yeah. Anyway, I’ve got to give my So next up yes, sure. It’s on YouTube. Isn’t it that on YouTube?
Yes. Yes. Or some of that. I’m not this I’m not sure of this particular one that I’ve got, but there is stuff there’s something with Robin Williams, when Robin Williams went to meet her, and she loved Robin Williams. Yeah.
She loved him. Yeah. So anyway, so first topic is refuge. So when we think about the possibility of the suffering we could experience, then that leads to the topic of refuge in Buddhism, of taking refuge. What can we take refuge in?
Because actually, all the time, whether we’re Buddhist or not, we are taking refuge in things, because we all recognise there are unpleasant, painful, suffering things in life, and we try to find some refuge from them. And when we’re a little kid, it’s our mum, usually our mother, and she usually remains our refuge for really quite a long time, even when we’re quite old. But, you know, as we get older, we take refuge in friends and having a family or having lots of money or power or influence or status, things like that. And our refuge just really depends on how much we understand, how much we are susceptible to suffering. And the Buddha’s message, unfortunately, is that we are susceptible to a horrendous amount of suffering, not just the suffering of the human world, That the worst suffering that you can imagine that we could call, you know, hell like suffering of human beings is nothing compared to what one can experience in the lower realms.
So if that is true, then we need a really, really special refuge. And if we start to understand that all of this suffering, whether it’s just in the human realm or it is in these other realms, is actually all coming from our mind, not it’s not imposed on us by some external force, but it is actually just the play of our own mind, then we start to understand that to be free to escape this suffering, we have to change our mind. And, you know, we don’t even understand our body, which is something, you know, we can see and touch and feel everything, but I don’t know about you, but I hardly know anything. I don’t even know where my the bits inside my body are. I’m not quite sure where my liver is or my bladder or all these things.
Don’t know where they are. Generally, I think my heart’s there, and I’ve got that one. So but these are things you can see. But our mind, you know, most of us don’t even accept we’ve got one, let alone even if we do, we can’t see it, we don’t know. We’ve known so little about our own mind and how it really works.
So we need someone, and if our mind is what is the problem and the answer, we need to find someone who really knows about the mind, not just intellectually but has a deep, total experience of it. We need a refuge that is complete, perfect and as my teacher Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, is unbetraying. It will never betray you, you know, ever in any way. And such a perfect refuge, well, so that refuge has to be perfect. That perfect protection has to come from a perfect source, which we as Buddhists believe is the enlightened mind, that that is the mind that is free of all obscurations, all imperfections, all negativities, totally free of them in a way that they can never appear again.
And if we can start to understand our mind actually, or any mind possesses every good quality, has the potential for every good quality. There’s no mind that is missing some quality. You know, they talk about, what is it, sociopaths and something, you know, really are lacking in compassion and ability to empathise. That’s true, but that’s only at a temporal level right now. But the actual potential at a deeper level, everyone, even the most horrendous people, have the potential for love, compassion, generosity and wisdom, etcetera, etcetera, because these are what make up the mind.
These are all ways of knowing and the mind is what knows and compassion and kindness and generosity, etcetera, are ways of knowing and experiencing the world and what what is what the world is made up of. So, you know, every mind has these qualities, these potentials, but they’re obscured right now. But the enlightened mind, those qualities are fully functioning all the time. The Tibetan term for Buddha is sangge. So Sang means completely purified, and gye means, you know, having all the good qualities, fully functioning.
So and there’s nothing the mind has been completely purified so that there is nothing that can obscure the mind again, start the mind to be you have to limit the mind again. So that’s what we take refuge in, that mind which is completely all knowing, omniscient, and that omniscient mind is perceiving all things as they are, all the time, unmistakenly, directly, and that mind that is seeing all things as they are unmistakenly is always pervaded by great compassion, great love, generosity, etcetera, etcetera. That’s our that is the Buddhist argument is that is the only thing we should take refuge in. Nothing else is going to fully protect us. There are beings that will protect us for a long time, but if they’re imperfect, their imperfect imperfections and mistakes will eventually cause us to make mistakes and suffer.
And so if one can start to see develop some belief, some intelligent belief, not just neurotic blind belief, but some intelligent belief that such mind, enlightened mind is possible. If we can believe that our own mind exists, and although we have negative qualities, we do have these positive qualities, And if these negative qualities could be removed, then all the positive qualities nothing would stop them from functioning all the time. That’s an enlightenment. And the question is, could those negative minds, qualities that we have now, be removed? And the Buddhist answer is yes, they can.
Why? Is that because although they do exist, they don’t inherently exist. They don’t exist as somehow independent entities. They exist as dependent entities. They arise depending on many factors.
So if we change those factors or actually eliminate them, if we don’t perpetuate them, those qualities of anger and attachment and pride and jealousy simply cannot exist. They can’t. And they’re all based on ignorance, this this this fundamental obscuration in the mind that creates a false illusion of our own existence and all other things, that is the basis of everything else. But that ignorance itself doesn’t truly exist, it can be removed from the mind. Why it keeps going on is because we are unaware of it.
We’re unaware that we’re ignorant, we are unaware of what ignorance does. But as soon as we start to become aware of it, that itself is starting to diminish that ignorance. But especially if we study the wisdom teachings of the Buddha about what ignorance is, how it functions, how it works, we can then begin to recognize that that’s what my mind is doing, and we can change. And then the ignorance can’t remain. Ignorance thrives in ignorance.
So anyway, all of these topics are very huge things. So anyway, if Buddha mind is possible, then it is pure and perfect and unmistaken. One of the epithets of the enlightened mind, which sounds very boring but in many ways is the most meaningful and most potent, is that the Buddha is only valid knower. Buddha mind is the only mind that is actually knowing things completely, unmistakenly as they are. No other mind is doing that.
And it is that unmistaken mind that we can put our trust in. And therefore we can trust the teachings that come from that mind because they what the enlightened mind teaches is unmistaken. Has to be. It has no lies, no faults to it. And also the Sangha, those beings who are practising at a very, very high level the Buddha’s teachings, we can also rely on them.
So the Buddha is said to be like the doctor, the perfect doctor, the Dharma is like the perfect medicine, and the Sangha are like the nurses, the perfect nurses, who encourage us to take the medicine and inspire us to keep taking the medicine, and who themselves are they’re not perfect, but they are far more advanced than ourselves and showing us the way that that, you know, they are showing that we can accomplish because they’ve accomplished that they are accomplishing what the Buddha has totally accomplished, and that is showing us that we can do that as well. So the reasons for taking refuge are really the basic one is fearing, having a really bad rebirth, fearing the suffering of the lower realms. At a deeper level, as we progress in our understanding of the Buddhist teachings, we can develop a deeper level, stronger level or stronger form of refuge, which is taking refuge to protect us from the sufferings of all of cyclic existence. And then finally, the most powerful, wonderful kind of refuge is when we take refuge in the Buddhist teachings, not just to protect ourselves from suffering, but we start to realise and understand that everyone is suffering like ourselves.
And in fact, most beings are suffering much more than myself and have far less ability at the moment to do anything about their suffering. They are completely helpless. So one takes refuge firstly, one takes refuge fearing oneself falling into the lower realms, then one takes refuge fearing being reborn in saṃsāra again and again and again. But finally, the deepest, most wonderful kind of refuge is when we take refuge because we fear that all these kind sentient beings are suffering. We, you know, we fear for them that they are going to continue to suffer helplessly, so one takes refuge in order to practice, in order to become a Buddha.
So that’s On the one hand, there’s that reason for taking refuge, and then the other aspect of taking refuge is trusting, believing, developing faith that the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are the perfect, the best refuge, because and it all comes down to developing faith that the Buddhas exist and Buddha mind is perfect, unmistaken, omniscient, and pervaded by compassion and loving kindness. So there’s a little bit in your handout on refuge. There’s just not enough time to go through it all, but hopefully if you reflect on it a bit, it’ll make some sense. But maybe this will encourage you to study this subject much more. Just very briefly, so there is the handout on refuge, if you want to have a look at it, that the Buddha there are four reasons given why the Buddha is the suitable refuge: because he is fearless, because he’s all knowing, he’s completely fearless, he doesn’t fear anything for himself, he has nothing to fear, He is and so because he has nothing to fear, he can be completely compassionate, completely tolerant, patient, kind, generous, beneficial to others.
He is skilled in the means to free others from danger, because his mind knows the minds of every other sentient being, so knows exactly how to guide them away from suffering. The Buddha’s mind is pervaded by incredible equanimous compassion, great compassion for everyone, whether they believe in him or not, respect him or not, are kind to the Buddha or not, that’s completely irrelevant, because the, you know, the Buddha is completely free of all judgment based on attachment and aversion and, you know, a wrong view of self, you know, any sense of ego. There’s none of that. He has no fears of, you know, being not loved or fears of enemies or strangers, so there’s this incredible compassion for every being. And also that mind has endless energy, you know, our mind, especially the good energy of our mind associated with love and compassion, runs out pretty quickly.
We can get we can be kind and generous and patient and all understanding with people for some time, and then another person comes along and we can be kind and compassionate to that, and then another one and another one and another one, and then finally we say, that’s it. I can’t cope anymore. Bye bye. I can’t talk to you. I don’t wanna know about your your problems too much, you know.
But the Buddha, there’s nothing like that, because Buddha has no ego, the Buddha has just endless mental energy to benefit. There’s nothing there to say, oh, I don’t want to know you. Your problems are too big for me. I can’t cope with this. I have to take a holiday.
I need to watch TV. Know, the bottom line is, you know, there’s nothing like that. And you could say, well, if that’s the case, why isn’t the Buddha helping me more in my life? And the answer is because maybe the Buddha is doing all sorts of extravagantly amazing things, but we, our minds, are incredibly obscured. And we just don’t get it, we just don’t perceive what’s happening around us.
But of course, one of the benefits of taking refuge is when we do take refuge, then our mind starts to open up to the blessings of the Buddhas. And the more we take, you know, really take refuge, the more our mind is able to receive the blessings of the Buddhas. Yeah. It’s here. It’s right here.
It’s always here. And what it it would not even form. No. But but a mission to awareness is here right now. Mission to awareness is all pervasive, all pervasive.
It’s omnipresent. It’s omniscient and omnipresent. The Buddha is knowing you all the time. There has never been a moment, Maddy, when the Buddha wasn’t fully, you know, a hundred percent aware of you. It’s everything you did and said and thought.
Yeah. It can be, but that’s what we need to think about. But that omniscient, yeah, is there mind is there, and the Buddha has been helping you during beginningless time, but we we are very, very obscured. You know, I’ve been talking about this before in our Thursday night class, but, you know, the Buddhist can wait eons just to do one thing that will will really, truly change us. And but our mind is so, you know, resistant to things and unaware of what’s going on.
And like I was saying, many times up, you know, up on Dequetteville Terrace there’s the Cancer Council buildings where people stay to visit their relatives or if they’ve got cancer, and you always see people puffing away outside all the time. So these people with cancer keep smoking, you know. So even when a human being comes, you know, the doctor or nurse comes along and says, Don’t do this because it’s going to kill you, we don’t listen. We don’t listen. And actually we often take offence when people give us good advice, don’t you tell me what to do.
So it’s very hard, you know, if the Buddhas do all sorts of things, but we just don’t listen. Even when we have gurus, you know, who manifest and we think, oh, this is a wonderful person, you know, and we listen to them and then we forget. Walk out the door, have completely forgotten what they said. Or think, oh, that was very nice, but it’s really just very difficult to do, So, you know, that isn’t it? But the Buddhists don’t give up.
They never give up. That’s impossible. They’ve been working on us forever, and they will continue to work on us until we get enlightened. They will never give up, and they keep appearing in whatever way is possible to benefit us. Is that true?
Like, people like Dalai Lama as well? Yes. Yes. And Lama Zopa Rinpoche and other holy beings. Yeah.
How much time have I got? Twenty five minutes? Yes. Right. I’ve got to move on, right?
Okay. So the benefits of taking refuge. There are traditionally said to be eight benefits, have no time to talk about them. But one of them the first is one becomes a Buddhist. That sounds a bit strange, but what translation is you become an inner being.
When you take refuge, you’re accepting that you have a mind and that your mind is the source of all your happiness and suffering, and you’re accepting that you have to work with your mind and so you become an inner being. You recognise someone who is really taking refuge or doing refuge in their life is recognising that moment by moment, whatever is happening depends on my mind, and so the main thing I need to do in any moment is take care of my mind. And how do I do it? I the way to take care of my mind is to rely on the Buddha’s methods. Why?
Because the Buddha’s methods come from the Buddha, therefore they are complete, perfect, and they won’t betray me. Whereas methods coming from non enlightened mind may be very helpful in some ways for some time, but at some point, because they’re not coming from perfect, unmistaken, total awareness, they are not complete and things will go wrong at some point. And it’s also one benefit of taking refuge is it’s the basis of all vows, so like there are the Prātimokṣa vows, the five lay vows, and the vows of monks and nuns, and there are the Bodhisattva vows and the Tantric vows. So it’s the basis of all Buddhist practice is taking refuge. If you have refuge, then everything you do is so much more power any Buddhist practice you do is just so much more powerful and effective because you have the valid basis, you have the real belief in the teachings.
And basically, the benefits of taking refuge is that open yourself up to all the methods of working with the mind, these really reliable methods of being able to work with the mind, so that one can get a good rebirth, one can eventually become free of cyclic existence, and one can eventually become a Buddha. Because all the methods for that are contained within the Buddha’s teachings. And if we have refuge, we our mind is open to them. Like I think I said last week, I’m not sure if I said it here or on Thursday night, there are many academics who know an enormous amount about Buddhism and write learned doctoral theses about, you know, obscure topics of Buddhism, but they don’t believe it. You know, it’s just an academic interest.
It doesn’t transform their mind. Whereas when one takes refuge, you are developing this belief in the Buddha, the Buddha’s teachings, and therefore applying that belief to practising, and that is changing the mind, that is transforming the mind. So someone with very little intelligence, very little education, but has some belief in even a bit of the Buddhadharma, is in a far better position than some person with, you know, sixteen PhDs in Buddhist philosophy, who doesn’t believe it’s true, that it’s just an interesting theory, just like there are millions of interesting theories existing in the world. That leaves me a few minutes to talk about the most profound subject of the Buddha Dharma, is the law of karma, the law of cause and effect. So once one takes refuge, the essential refuge is practising the Dharma.
The actual refuge is the Buddha, but by taking refuge in the Buddha we commit ourselves to follow practising the Buddha’s teachings. And of all the Buddha’s teachings, one could say that the core, single most important teaching of the Buddha is the law of cause and effect, because all the other teachings of the Buddha are related to it. I think I mentioned earlier on in the course that all of the teachings of the Buddha about the path to enlightenment can be condensed into three qualities, developing three qualities, which is renunciation, wisdom and bodhicitta, and those three qualities are intimately connected with developing faith and practising the law of cause and effect. Because in renouncing this life, basically it involves avoiding negative actions. Because of our attachment to this life, we engage in lots of negative actions and don’t engage in many virtuous ones.
But when we start to develop refuge in the Buddhist teachings, we the very basis of the whole practice is observing the law of cause and effect, avoiding negative actions, engaging in virtuous actions. And to avoid negative actions we have to renounce certain things. We have to renounce that mind that demands instant satisfaction and instant solutions to our problems. Does that make sense? Yeah, right.
Don’t need to elaborate? Okay, good. Yeah. So it’s about, you know, and so with bodhicitta, bodhicitta is based on developing great compassion and great love, and that is also, that is based on developing love and compassion for ourselves, and one can understand observing the law of cause and effect as developing love and compassion for oneself. Because by avoiding negative actions, that is practicing compassion.
We’re avoiding creating the causes of suffering for ourselves. So if we have compassion for ourselves, that’s what we will do. And if we have love for our self, wanting to be happy, we will engage in virtuous actions of body, speech and mind, because they are the actual causes of genuine happiness. And if we have compassion, we will stop engaging in negative actions because they harm sentient beings, and we will engage in virtuous actions because they benefit sentient beings. So that’s practising love and compassion not only towards ourselves but to others.
Yeah. So that’s the basis of developing eventually developing bodhicitta. And observing the law of cause and effect is also being very wise, because it is the correct thing to do, and it’s leading to the highest wisdom because the highest wisdom is developed by understanding, dependent arising, that things don’t inherently exist. They don’t exist in and of themselves, by themselves, independently, separate from everything else. Everything that exists, that validly exists, can only exist arising dependently on many, many factors, on causes and conditions, parts, and especially our mind.
And this is what and the whole teaching of the law of cause and effect is about dependent arising. Suffering arises depending on creating the causes of it, happiness arises depending on creating the right causes for happiness. I and there’s many ways. I mean, there’s just maybe some simple points to illustrate how all of the teachings of the Buddha are connected to the law of cause and effect. There are many other things I could mention, but that’s just a few points at the moment.
Yeah. So What to say about the law of cause and effect? The law of cause and effect what it’s really talking about is how the mind works, and it’s particularly exciting that whenever we engage in any everything we do, everything we say and do and think, of course, is motivated by our mind. karma, the word karma literally means action, activity, and it’s referring to the activity of the mind, and particularly karma is referring to intentional activity of the mind. Intentional intentionally directed activity of the mind, of intentionally directed thoughts, speech and physical actions.
And so, what we think, say and do obviously has some effect in this life, we all know that, not just Buddhists, everyone accepts, you know, that what we say and do and think in this life has some effect in that life. This is obvious, maybe not always, but generally speaking. That’s why we do things, because we want an effect in this life. But that’s not really what the law of cause and effect is about. What the law of cause and effect is about is specifically, because only the Buddha can see this, we can’t see this in any way, is that when we engage in actions of body, speech and mind, Apart from the effect in this life, there are effects that come in the future, and this is because every time we engage in actions of body, speech and mind, they create these karmic potencies within the mind, these karmic seeds or potencies or latencies, and they ripen in the future.
Sometimes, to some extent, some of them ripen in this life, later in this life, but in many cases, possibly in most cases, these karmic latencies or potencies or seeds ripen in future lives. And when they ripen in future lives, the result is far, far greater, good or bad, than any result that comes in this life. If we kill someone in this life, there can be all sorts of horrible suffering consequences for our self in this life, but nothing compared to what happens in future lives. And the Buddha said that everything we experience, one can understand as being an effect, and every effect, every experience we have has to have a cause. Every good, bad experience we have, and everything is an experience, everything you can say is an experience.
You know, being able to drink a glass of water, even to see a glass of water is an experience, and then to be able to touch touch it. Oh, it’s nice and cool. And then you can drink it. All these experiences, for us, for our mind to experience them, there has to be a cause, and the cause has to come from the mind itself. Ultimately, eventually, ultimately.
Our mind, since our mind is experiencing something, our mind in the past created the cause for that experience to happen. This is what the Buddha taught, because this is what the Buddha perceives with that unobscured mind. Everything, absolutely everything we experience is coming from our mind. And I don’t mean necessarily our mind right now, but what our mind did in the past, what that what our mind did is registered with these potencies or latencies, and then they ripen. And the way they ripen depends on the way they were created.
So if they our actions of body, speech and mind were created by intentionally negative thoughts, the result is negative and suffering. If our actions of body, speech and mind were created by intentionally positive or virtuous thoughts, such as through love and compassion, etcetera, then the karmic result will be positive and bring happiness, etc, etc. And this is something definite, it never ever changes. Yes, yes, you can purify it, yes. Yes, and the sooner you purify it, the better.
On the last page, the four opponent powers, how to purify any kind of negative action, to apply the four opponent powers. And the most important one they’re all important to do but the most important one is to develop regret not guilt, but regret. Recognising that what one did was negative, it’s only going to bring a suffering result, so that’s really unfortunate, I wish I hadn’t have done it. And it also tends to lead to one of the other opponent powers of not wanting to do the action again. So just in thinking that you regret it and then perhaps meditating on that or Yes, yes.
And then there’s specific virtuous practices you can do to counteract the negative actions. Yeah. So there’s a lot to talk about there. This is just a very, very super brief introduction to it all. But there is a DB module on karma, which we have we already done it?
We’ve done we just sorry, my mind is falling apart. Oh, by the way, I have to make an apology that today, this afternoon I thought today was Thursday, so I prepared for Thursday’s class and not tonight’s, so I haven’t marked the homework. So you’ll get it next week. So Yes, idea is So I always give the oh no, maybe it’s too no, there’s not enough time, sorry. So there are four determining factors that determine the nature of the intensity of the result of an action.
So just very quickly, there’s the impulse. So impulse has to be Like in the case of The teachings are more of cause and effect, always easier to explain from creating negative karma, but one can understand logically that the opposite applies in creating positive actions with good karma. So in creating negative karma, this is done with the impulse, when the motivation of what you’re doing is motivated by one of the three poisonous minds, which refers to, of course, ignorance or afflicted desire or anger. And your impulse is directed towards an unmistaken object, you know, you’ve chosen your mind is directed to a specific thing, you have a particular motivation to do something, like, you know, I want to kill, you know, this lady here, not this one or you, but I want to kill you. Right?
So it’s an unmistaken object, and, you know, there is that impulse to do the action, and it’s motivated by, you know, the motivation to kill could be out of ignorance, thinking, you know, thinking there’s nothing wrong with killing this person, or it could be out of hatred or out of desire, because this person is interfering with something I want, so I will kill them, so something like that. So and there’s yeah. So then there’s the object. So of course, how strong the impulse is and how strong the negative thought is determines the result. Then also the object, so when you kill a human being it’s worse than killing an animal.
In general, these are all sort of general teachings to give us an idea. Of course, there could be many exceptions, but it’s worse to kill a human being than an animal because although animals have minds and Buddha nature like ourselves, the possibility of an animal as an animal doing anything virtuous and very beneficial is very limited, whereas a human being can much more beneficial in the world. And especially if you kill someone who is has got a precious human rebirth, it’s worse than killing someone who doesn’t. If this person is a dharma practitioner, it’s much worse killing someone who’s a very virtuous person. And if they’re highly realised, it’s even worse.
Of course, killing your parents or killing anyone or harming someone or stealing, you know, in any way harming someone who’s been kind to you is much worse than harming someone who hasn’t been kind to you. These are just sort of general factors one can understand of types of potencies that one can create. Of course, killing sanghas or harming the sangha is very nasty, so please don’t, you know, be nice to me. I’m not only a member of the sangha, I’m not the actual sangha. Right.
Then there’s the act itself, so, you know, you can kill people in a very quick, you know, way or you could deliberately make it worse, you know, really painful. Or you could do a virtuous action in a very nice way, but you could do a virtuous action in a not very nice way. Like, you know, a simple example of, like, with giving money to a beggar, you could give it in a very nice respectful way, or you could just kind of like throw it at them or something like and make them feel really, you know, that you’re treating them So in one way, you’re giving them something, but doing it in a very, you know, disrespectful way, or you could be really, you know, friendly and respectful giving that. So, you know, that’s creating different karmic imprints in the mind with therefore different results. And then there’s the completion.
So if you do a negative action and you complete the action, that’s worse than if you do a negative action but it doesn’t like you try and kill someone but they don’t actually die. So even though you tried to kill them and you wanted to kill them, the karmic imprint is not as bad, strong, as if the person actually dies. But another very important aspect of the completion of an action, good or bad, is how you feel or think. So if you do a negative action and you complete it and you’re really happy that you’ve done it, that makes it super bad. Where and but if you immediately regret it, then that immediately like weakens the negative imprint.
And again, if you do a good thing and you’re really happy, that makes a really powerful positive imprint. But you do something good, like you give some money to the beggar and then you think, oh, that was stupid, they they didn’t deserve it, then the imprint you’ve is not as strong. So there are many ways karma can work. Many, many factors. And then just very briefly, are two kinds of karmic imprints generated.
There are what are called throwing karmas. So these only ripen at the time of death. These are the very strongest good or negative karmic imprints that only ripen at the time of death and determine what kind of rebirth one has. And they ripen whether it’s a good or bad throwing karma that ripens in the time of death is basically determined by whether the mind, as we are dying, is in a good state or a bad state. So if the mind is in a good state, one of the good throwing karmas will ripen if we die in a bad state, then one of the negative throwing karmas will ripen.
And the other kind of karma is called completing karma, so that ripens during a lifetime, because in a sense it completes our life, because day by day our completing karma is ripening. Our life, if you think about it, any being’s life is made up of many, many, many experiences, good and bad, and all of those experiences are karma ripening, completing karma ripening. So if you have all of those four factors, the impulse, the object, the act and the completion, all present and they’re all very, like, strong, then these will tend to make throwing karmas, good and bad throwing karmas. But if some of those factors are missing or not very strong, then that will tend to make a completing karma. All right.
And although there are many kinds of virtuous and non virtuous actions, the Buddha especially emphasised avoiding what I call the ten non virtuous actions, because these are things that we can are very easy to create, but also and very commonly, possibly can be created very regularly. But also, we all have the ability to avoid these actions, and we need to, because any one of them can become the cause if all the four factors are present, to create throwing karmas that lead to rebirth in the lower realms. So this is avoiding killing, there’s the three negative actions of body, which is killing, stealing and sexual misconduct. There are four of speech, which is lying, divisive speech, where we use our speech to cause division and disharmony between people, either to create it or, if it’s already existing, to keep it going There’s harsh speech, where we just use our speech to upset people in various ways, like criticising them or just even making fun or just making unpleasant noises, knowing this is going to annoy the person, all that kind of thing. And then there’s meaningless gossip, which is said to be the least negative karma but the greatest waste of time.
And then the three of was that all before? Yes. Yes, I think. And then the three of mind are covetousness, ill will and wrong views. So the ten virtuous actions are the avoiding, the conscious avoiding of the ten non virtuous actions.
So if you consciously avoid killing or stealing or sexual misconduct or whatever, accepting this is a negative action, it will have a suffering result, I will not do it, then that is a virtuous action. And then on top of that, there are what I call, for want of a better word, like super virtuous action. So there’s the negative action of killing, there’s the virtuous action of abstaining from killing when it’s possible, you know, like, you know, the cockroach runs over your kitchen bench, then you could kill it, or you say, I won’t kill it, that’s a negative action. This is a sentient being who wants to be happy just like me. That little cockroach was my mother at some point, I will not kill it.
So that’s a virtuous action. And a super virtuous action is you could give it something to eat, or, you know, capture it and take it outside so it’s really safe. So that’s a super nice thing to do. So you can think of examples, you use one’s intelligence to think of examples like that. Actually saving the lives of animals or human beings that are about to be killed is a super virtuous action.
It’s a very tremendously good thing to do and it can be very it is so powerful it can help. If you have various kinds of sickness, it can actually cure them by saving because all sickness is due to having harmed sentient beings in previous lives or earlier in this life. So saving the lives of animals that are going to actually going to be killed is a very powerful purification of one’s that kind of karma. So it can be very helpful in healing, you know, sicknesses and strange diseases and so on. Many great stories of how that’s happened.
It’s also just a really nice thing to do. Anyway, that’s a little bit on karma. And then what was there? Oh, there was suffering. I haven’t got to suffering.
It’s a bit humbling, but we’ll have to stop. Yeah? Any other questions? Sorry I’ve drowned you in information once again. Say something.
Ask me a question. Well, in that case it wouldn’t be considered gossip if you were talking about something helpful. I don’t understand why the word meaningless Well, because it isn’t helpful speech. It’s talking about one definition of it’s not an exact definition, but description of it is discussing the joys of saṃsāra, which means one is perpetuate by talking about ordinary things, you are perpetuating the belief that they are okay and good and saṃsāra is okay. And what we’re trying to understand is saṃsāra is awful.
Well, lot of negativity happened. Sorry? Yeah. No, I also find this one a little difficult to understand some extent. I can see, like, there is some very nasty gossip, for sure.
And somehow it seems to me, as a limited person, that as human beings we need to talk to each other, and much of what we talk about with each other is not very meaningful at all. But again, I think it all comes down to motivation as well. When I was I lived for ten years in France at Nālānda Monastery, we have a monastery in France, and there was there is a well, no, doesn’t live there anymore, but there was this very wonderful French monk, his name is Charles, who is really quite a special person. He is an incredibly kind, compassionate person who is very renounced. All his teeth are falling out because he doesn’t look after himself.
He looks like death warmed up. But everyone loves him because he’s just such an amazingly kind person. And at the monastery at that time when he was there, there was this older Spanish monk who was not a very intelligent guy. He may not even been a monk, he may have just thought he was a monk and convinced everyone else he was. Anyway, his interests were not very monkish or dharmaish at all, and but he and this Charles used to work in the vegetable garden of the monastery.
And Charles would listen to and talk to him about all this nonsense that this guy was interested in. But of course, this monk, the French monk, he was not interested in any of this stuff. I mean, he was a real practitioner. I mean, a very, very serious, very renounced person, but he would spend hours listening to this guy go on about drivel, because he was a really compassionate person. And that’s all this monk talked about, and so they were working together.
So I don’t think in this case he was the French monk was engaging in gossip at all. Whereas, you can talk to teach talk about the Dharma to people, and that can be gossip. It can be negative karma when you just blab about it or try to impress people with your knowledge or so and so. And that can actually be, you know, it just it it becomes meaningless gossip. Whereas you could talk about, you know, how Brad Pitt does, you know, something to someone.
If that’s all the person can talk about, if that’s the level of mind that you have to communicate with them at that level, it’s okay. It really depends a lot. But you have to basically, we have to check up ourself, am I is my what I’m talking, you know, is it meaningless gossip? Is is it just kind of drivel and just yeah. Yeah.
Is it just trying to me to also not deal with things and blah blah blah, and is it just me trying to convince myself or others that life is wonderful when actually it’s not? Which it doesn’t mean, I don’t say, as a Buddhist, you have to go around telling people life is terrible. I don’t mean that either. But as a Buddhist, we’re to be understanding, you know, the real nature of life. And, you know, there’s fun things, but it’s just very temporary stuff, always replaced by other rubbish.
Sorry, is that getting too heavy? Oh, sorry. Will you keep asking questions? You ask complicated questions. So thank you very much for discussion tea break times.
So page it’s not called the Sūtra of the Four Noble Truths, but it’s got it’s called where is it? Why can’t I find anything when I’m sitting in front of people? I can never do this. That’s page eighteen and nineteen, isn’t it? It’s called Setting in Motion the Wheel of Truth.
So it’s actually the Sūtra and the Four Noble Truths. So the idea is just to use that as a meditation, just to reflectively read that and think about it, Okay? And then on day six, to go through the which I haven’t had time to do tonight, reflect, meditate on the we’ve anyway, just quickly, we’ve very briefly covered the topics, the meditation topics that help us develop this mind renouncing our obsession with this life. So particularly developing faith in the law of cause and effect and living our life according to that, right? So then in the presentation of the path to enlightenment, it goes on to the meditation topics about how to develop renunciation of cyclic existence altogether, because it really comes down to realising that even if one has good rebirths again and again, even in all these good rebirths, one will experience suffering, one can’t escape it.
So when we actually realise that, this will lead us to want to get out of cyclic existence. And when we realise that we’re not in a holiday camp but in a concentration camp, when we actually get that message, then we will think, ‘I have got to get out because I don’t want suffering.’ Yeah. So this is why we have to reflect on this on topic we don’t like to think about, but about the suffering of our existence. Not suffering in an abstract way, but the suffering of our own saṃsāra, the suffering of that we experience now, but we have the potential for because our mind’s controlled by delusion and karma. And this also acts as a preparation for being able to generate bodhicitta because the more we think about our own suffering saṃsāra, we realise that everyone has the same, whether they’re rich or poor, good looking, bad looking, famous or infamous, healthy or unhealthy, everyone has saṃsāra.
Everyone is suffering. So it is actually a very, very important thing to reflect on. So on day what is it? Day six is to go through the eight sufferings. So they’re fairly straightforward.
They don’t really need that much commentary, but the more you get, the better it is, actually. So then on day seven is to meditate on the six kinds of suffering. Unfortunately, they need a bit more commentary, but I don’t have time to go through it now. If you Yeah. But if you can try and make some sense of them, if it doesn’t make any sense, just simply on day six and seven No, we’re on day seven.
So just go back and meditate on the eight kinds of suffering. But if you know something, or heard about the six kinds of suffering before, then please reflect on them. Something with the three kinds of suffering, there’s no time to talk about that tonight, sorry. Maybe I can talk briefly about it next week. So basically, on days six and seven, meditate on the eight types of suffering.
And particularly when we meditate on I mean, sickness, old age and death, these are really good, very simple things but very effective to meditate on. The main point to think of is that if we remain in saṃsāra, if we don’t do anything about saṃsāra, if we keep following our delusions and perpetuating ignorance, saṃsāra will go on forever. It won’t stop. It’s not going to stop by itself. We have to create the causes for it to stop, but if we don’t, it will keep going on forever.
So if it goes on forever, means forever is a very long time that means there is time for us to experience every sickness possible. And not only every sickness, but every sickness from its mildest form to its most extreme form. Yeah. So you can think of every, you know, I I will definitely experience every sickness, and not just one time, but billions of times, and to try and get a sense of, ah, you know, how and there’s no reason for that to go on. I can stop it, especially now.
I can begin to stop this. And the saying, In the beginning was endless saṃsāra, I will experience all the sufferings of old age. I mean, sometimes growing old is not suffering, you know, some people, their last part of their life is much better than when they were young and blah blah blah. But sure. But there are many kinds of suffering of growing old.
You lose all your friends, family, you know, your body gets weaker and achier, and all these various things that quite a few of us here might be aware of, you know, all these things. So there’s extreme forms of that, and there’s time for us to experience we would definitely have this if we don’t put an end to our saṃsāra. Right? And again with death, there are good deaths for sure, which we will have, but there are horrible deaths to have, and we’ll have them, you know, getting eaten by sharks, crocodiles, bitten by horribly poisonous snakes, being murdered, tortured to death, run over by steamrollers. You every horrible death you could imagine, you know, like my favorite one is like falling out of a plane.
You know, this is what I dread every time I get on a plane that it’s going to just just go down. Or you get sucked out the window, you know, that one lady who just recently almost happened to her. But did she die? She died, yes, yes. Things you don’t imagine, but they happen.
So there is time for all of that to happen in saṃsāra, endless saṃsāra. So one way of thinking is like, that’s really a sick thing to do. Why would I wanna think about all these depressing things? But another way is that it’s actually a reality. This is what will happen.
It makes sense, if you think about it, it will happen if we if we don’t do anything about it, if we don’t work on our mind. Because if the delusions are there, you know, working on if we keep our delusions going, that means we’re creating the cause for these things to happen. Because all of these horrible things happen for a cause, and the cause is acting on our delusions of anger and attachment and jealousy and ignorance and so on. Okay, on that happy note. But the happy note is, you know, we have to know these unpleasant things to be able to know them and accept them.
This is the beginning of being free of them, to not think about them. So many people, ‘I don’t want to think about anything unpleasant.’ This is not the way to be happy, to be free. Okay, thank you very much. So we’ve created some good karma tonight, believe it or not. Some good karmic imprints, so we can dedicate these that they become a cause for our enlightenment.
So if you’d like to join in for the dedication, it’s on page eight, no thirteen, page thirteen or page eleven? Due to the merits of these virtuous actions, may I quickly attain the state of the Guru Buddha and lead all living beings without exception into that enlightened state. May May the precious bodhicitta not yet born arise and grow. May that born who have no decline but increase forevermore. May the precious bodhicitta not yet born arise and grow.
May that born have no decline, but increase forevermore. Okay, so I’d just like to remind people that because we’re having this big open