Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 67-minute meditation on karma from day three of a retreat, Venerable Thubten Dondrub teaches the law of cause and effect through direct reflection and visualization. He begins with refuge and bodhicitta practice, then guides students into contemplation of how our moment-to-moment mental movements—driven by delusion, attachment, aversion, or virtuous intention—create karmic imprints that determine all experience. Using concrete examples (a ball thrown in the air, seeds producing fruit, a car accident), he shows how effects arise only when causes and conditions converge, and how even a single instant of virtue or anger can produce consequences spanning lifetimes. He emphasizes four key principles: karma is definite; no cause means no result; created causes inevitably produce results; and results vastly exceed the initial action. The teaching closes with visualization of the Buddha dissolving into golden light, blessing the mind to gain stable realization of this truth. Suited for retreat practitioners or those new to Buddhist cause-and-effect philosophy.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 16. Day 3 Meditation Karma.mp3
UUID: d4691534-75c0-409c-bbc1-96213f6ec216
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: KI Retreat (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2005 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 66.7 minutes
Words: ~3,839
Of karma, how it works, how the law of cause and effect works, which means how our mind works. So I think we’ll revert back to The Foundation of All Good Qualities because the Three Principal Aspects, especially that translation, is quite complex. It’s wonderful but it’s quite complex. The three principal paths is actually a letter that Lama Tsongkhapa wrote to one of his disciples who had written to him asking for some advice. And that was the letter the disciple got back.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to receive a letter like that in the post or an email one day? So page twenty five of the morning prayers and then if you can mark the I think what page is it? Page twenty seven is the no. Seventeen. Thanks.
Page seventeen of the Lamrim prayers. Begin by sitting comfortably in the correct posture as much as possible. And then checking your posture by placing your awareness at the crown of your head and moving it down through your body, fine tuning your posture and just checking for tension, allowing that to disperse, dispel. And then prepare the mind correctly by doing the nine round breathing exercise and combining that with visualising with each in breath of the cycle, breathing in the blessings of the Buddhas in the form of white light, breathing out with each out breath all the obstacles in the form of black smoke. So now cultivate a very virtuous mind, generating a mind of refuge by recognising on the one hand the potential for suffering that we have but also the great potential for pure happiness.
So wishing to be free of one and to cultivate the other, we need the perfect method and this is why we take refuge. And recognising the great potential for suffering of all sentient beings and also their potential for pure happiness, we take refuge for their sake. So think of it, although the Buddha mind is always present, is omniscient and omnipresent, our obscured mind is usually not aware of that. So it’s important to try to cultivate that awareness of the ever present nature of Buddha mind all around us. And so we do that by visualising the Buddha in front of us right now, very clearly, vividly present, seated on magnificent lion throne, lotus sun and moon with this incredibly powerful beautiful body of golden transparent radiating light, the very embodiment of complete perfect compassion and wisdom and all other qualities.
So we try to open our mind to the enlightened qualities of the Buddha by visualizing that form in front of us, directing our mind to that appearance. So as we cultivate that virtuous mind of refuge, at the same time combine it with the strong bodhicitta mind, really wishing to achieve enlightenment, not only for one’s own sake, but especially for the benefit of others. Wishing to free them of every kind of suffering and its causes, but more than that, to be able to lead every sentient being to achieve their own enlightenment. So this is the perfect way to repay the kindness that we’ve experienced life after life from every sentient being. Really feel this is not good enough just to stop harming others.
It’s not good enough just to be kind to others. It’s not good enough just to be generous to them. We have to ensure that they become completely free of suffering and experience perfect happiness. So we have to become Buddhas in order to do that. To achieve Buddhahood, we have to train the path to enlightenment.
So this meditation is part of that whole training process. So we visualise all the sentient beings of the different realms surrounding us, starting with our parents on either side. I go for refuge until I’m enlightened to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Supreme Assembly. By my practice of giving and other perfections, may I become a Buddha to benefit all sentient beings. Reverently, I prostrate with my body, speech and mind.
I present clouds of every type of offering, actual and I declare all my negative actions accumulated since beginningless time and rejoice in the merit of all holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until the end of cyclic existence and turn the wheel of dharma for living beings. I dedicate my own merits and those of all others to the great enlightenment. The foundation of all good qualities is the kind and venerable guru. Correct devotion to him is the root of the path.
By clearly seeing this and applying great effort, please bless me to rely upon him with great respect. Understanding that the precious freedom of this rebirth is found only once is greatly meaningful and is difficult to find again. Please bless me to generate the mind that unceasingly, day and night, takes its essence. This life is as impermanent as a water bubble. Remember how quickly it decays and death comes.
After death, just like a shadow follows the body, the results of black and white karma follow. Finding firm and definite conviction in this, please bless me always to be careful to abandon even the slightest negativities and accomplish all virtuous deeds. Seeking samsaric pleasures is the door to all suffering. They are uncertain and cannot be relied upon. Recognizing these shortcomings, please bless me to generate the strong wish for the bliss of liberation.
Led by this pure thought, mindfulness, alertness, and great caution arise. The root of the teachings is keeping the Prātimokṣa vows. Please bless me to accomplish this essential practice. Just as I have fallen into the sea of saṃsāra, so have all mother migratory beings. Please bless me to see this, train in supreme bodhicitta, and bear the responsibility of freeing migratory beings.
Even if I develop only bodhicitta, but I don’t practice the three types of morality, I will not achieve enlightenment. With my clear recognition of this, please bless me to practice the bodhisattva vows with great energy. Once I had pacified distractions to wrong objects and correctly analyzed the meaning of reality, please blessed me to generate quickly within my mind stream the unified path of calm abiding and special insight. Having become a pure vessel by training in the general path, please bless me to enter the holy gateway of the fortunate ones, the supreme vajra vehicle. At that time, the basis of accomplishing the two attainments is keeping pure vows and samaya.
As I have become firmly convinced of this, please bless me to protect these vows and pledges like my life. Then having realised the importance of the two stages, the essence of the vajrayana, by practising with great energy, never giving up the four sessions, please bless me to realise the teachings of the holy Guru. Like that, may the Gurus who show the noble path and the spiritual friends who practice it have long lives. Please place me to pacify completely all outer and inner hindrances. In all my lives, never separated from perfect gurus, may I enjoy the magnificent Dharma.
By completing the qualities of the stages and paths, may I quickly attain the state of vajradhara. So we directed those requests to Guru Śākyamūni in front of us to think that the Buddha is now very pleased with us and manifest that by firstly absorbing the lion throne into light which absorbs up into the lotus sun moon. And then the Buddha comes to the crown of our head, seated on those cushions, turns around facing in the same direction as ourselves. So then we make a strong heartfelt request to the Guru Buddha for our mind to be completely free of all hindrances, all obstacles that prevent us meditating correctly and gaining the realization of the truth of the law of cause and effect. Think the Guru Buddha happily responds to this request by sending a continuous stream of blissful white light and nectar into us through the crown of our head, and this washes away all those obstacles that take the form of very thick black liquid that leaves from the lower part of our body, completely dissipates, and becomes nonexistent.
Then a continuous stream of blissful golden light and nectar comes from the Buddha into us, blessing our mind to be able to meditate correctly and gain the complete, stable realization of the truth of the law of cause and effect. Having prepared our mind correctly in this way, we can now direct our mind to reflecting, contemplating on the law of cause and effect, really trying to keep our mind focused only on this subject, not allowing our mind to become dull or sleepy on the one hand or distracted in any way. As soon as any of those obstacles arise we should recognise them with mindfulness and let go of them, if possible, applying the correct antidotes to them. And when that’s done, bring the mind back to the topic and just keep doing that. Really don’t let the mind wander.
So we can begin by doing general reflection, how we have this human rebirth, this human life, and every day different experiences happen to things happen to us. Good things happen, unpleasant things happen, neutral things happen, the mind changes constantly. Even when we do a retreat where there is a kind of quite strong discipline, the same things happening, to a sense, the structure of our day. Nevertheless, every day is different. It can be quite radically different.
Why is this? Is there no reason whatsoever? Is something completely arbitrary? Is there something controlling our life? Some external force manipulating our life so that these things happen?
Or is there a cause, a definite cause? So if if our existence and what happens within us in our life was something that hadn’t was completely arbitrary just due to fate, luck, chance and so on, Something completely random. If if this was true, then then anything could happen at at any moment for no reason. That we could throw a ball up in the air and it would stay there. Why not if there’s no reason for things happening in a particular way?
An elephant could suddenly appear in this room floating in the air. But if we check carefully we can see that many of the things that happen to us do have some kind of cause, some physical cause that we can see, understand. Many things don’t seem to from an ordinary point of view, they don’t seem to have a cause. Others do. But if think about it, it’s not really possible for some things to be completely independent, separate, unconnected to everything else that’s happening in our life.
So if some things have causes that we can see and if everything is really interconnected, nothing can stand apart independently. It really means that everything has causes. And for us most of the time with our ordinary confused minds, the world seems something completely external to us. When we don’t think about it, the world appears to be something out there independently, of us, separate, unconnected, and it just impinges on us, either good or bad. But even if the world did exist independently out there, the only way we experience it is through our mind, depending on our mind.
Whether things appear whether things are experienced as good or bad actually depends on our mind. If our mind doesn’t experience something as good or bad, it can’t appear to our mind in any other way. We believe that things are beautiful out there from their own side. Things are really bad out there from their own side. But in fact, in reality, It’s our mind that creates the appearance, the belief, the label of beauty and the good and bad.
And then experiences things that way. So everything that happens to us happens within our mind, dependent on our mind. And everything that happens to us, we can see, we can understand as being an effect, a result, a fruit. So it must have a cause whether we can see it or not. Where does that cause come from?
If we just take an ordinary example in the in the external world, if we want to experience the effect of of having some hot water, then if we have some cold water and we want to experience the effect of hot water, then we have to apply an appropriate cause. That is heat. We have to apply heat to the water. That’s the only thing that will make the water hot. So to have a particular effect, you have to have a cause of the same nature.
If you have hot water and you want to make it cold, you have to apply coldness to the water. And also, more than that, there has to be a direct relationship between the cause and the effect. You can’t have the heat in one place and the water in another place. You have to have the two connected continuously. To apply that to our existence, if we were experiencing an effect, that effect is being experienced in our mind, with our mind.
That means the cause has to be coming from our mind. The cause has to be connected continuously with the effect. So the root cause, the actual reason why we experience anything, is not coming from the external world but from our own mind. So karma is just the movement of the mind, the activity of the mind. Every time the mind moves towards something, that action is karma.
And the mind moves towards something either because of some delusion, ignorance, attachment or hatred or because of some virtuous thought, because of some good intention. And every time the mind moves, these karmic imprints are generated. These are the causes that produce the effect. If it’s a positive cause, a positive movement, a positive intention then there has to be a similar effect. A sweet seed produces a sweet result, a sweet fruit.
A bitter seed has to produce a bitter result. This is definite. This is the way the mind works. It is a natural law of the mind. It doesn’t depend on belief.
It doesn’t depend on us knowing this is happening. It’s just simply the way our mind works. The only thing our disturbing thoughts can cause is a suffering effect. The only thing our virtuous thoughts can cause is a positive effect. That is definite, that never changes.
So it’s important to understand in relation to the law of cause and effect that what defines a positive movement of the mind or a negative movement of the mind, what is a virtuous act of the mind, a negative act, is not something arbitrary that changes with time or culture or anything like that. It’s completely related to the nature of our mind. Those thoughts which are by their nature disturbing can only produce suffering. And those thoughts which are a reflection of the true nature of our mind, such as love and compassion and generosity, they can only produce the result of happiness. We can believe that anger is good.
We can believe that killing insects is okay. But our belief doesn’t change the fact that these negative actions coming from disturbing thoughts. So they can only have suffering results. And it’s important to reflect that if we haven’t created a particular kind of cause, then we can never experience the appropriate effect. If we are experiencing a particular effect, it means have created the cause.
We in the sense that our mind at some point, either in this life or before this life, has created the cause. If our mind is experiencing the result, it is our mind that has created the cause. If our mind isn’t experiencing a particular effect, it means our mind hasn’t created the cause. If we experience a car accident, of course that depends on the outer factors But these are just the conditions. For our mind to encounter those conditions and to experience the suffering of an accident, There has to be the inner cause.
So if we wish to experience happiness we have to create the cause for it. If we wish to be free of suffering we have to stop creating the cause of it. So it’s important to understand that actually we are creating karma every moment, meaning that the mind is moving moment by moment. It is moving towards different objects moment by moment with a particular motivation. Always there, either positive or negative.
The eye consciousness moves towards beautiful or ugly objects with aversion or attachment. The ear consciousness moves to pleasant or unpleasant sounds with attachment or aversion. The taste consciousness moves to its objects. The body consciousness, the tangible consciousness moves to its objects, good and bad. Moment by moment, the mental consciousness itself moves towards the objects of its own thoughts, good and bad, with attachment and aversion.
Or also it can be with a virtuous intention. We direct our mind to thoughts of the Buddha, to thoughts of compassion and so on. Moment by moment, the mind is this is karma. And each moment, these karmic seeds, potentials are created instantly. Once these karmic potentials are created moment by moment, they remain in the mind, they remain with the mind, they are never lost.
So sooner or later, the conditions come about and they produce their result. That result may come later in this life, in our next life, in a hundred million lifetimes away. But sooner or later, the result has to come. The exceptions to that, of course, are if we purify our mind, if we put great effort into consciously purifying our mind of the negative imprints or unfortunately our anger and other strong disturbing thoughts destroy the positive imprints. But if neither of these things happens, all those imprints remain in the mind just like seeds in the ground.
And slowly, when all the right conditions come, the right amount of moisture, temperature, warmth, fertility, and so on. Then the seed sprouts. It’s for this reason that we should avoid even the smallest negative actions. If we don’t want any suffering now or in the future, we need to avoid creating these karmic seeds. If we want happiness now in the future, then we need to use this precious human rebirth to create as many positive karmic seeds as we possibly can.
Because nothing else is going to bring actual happiness, peace, contentment. And then it’s very important to be mindful in our daily life that Buddha taught that when our karmic seeds, these karmic potentials sprout, ripen, produce their effect, their result. The result, the fruit, good or bad, is far, far greater than the energy that went into creating the seed. So just a tiny moment of anger when that creates a karmic seed, that ripens, it can ripen as a whole lifetime of suffering, not in the human realm, but in the lower realms. One moment of virtue, one moment of virtue can produce a whole lifetime of happiness in the upper realms.
The Buddha gave the analogy that just as just as when you plant a tiny seed, it can produce an enormous tree with many flowers and fruit. In the same way, just one moment of mental energy can produce, can act as a cause for a whole lifetime of experience, in fact, even many lifetimes of happiness or suffering. It’s for this reason that we should put a lot of effort into creating even small virtuous actions because the final result will be very great. It’s for this reason that we should put a lot of effort into avoiding small negative actions. Because if we don’t and create negative actions, the suffering results are enormous.
It’s also important to reflect in relation to these four main aspects of how karma works, how the law of karma works, is that although anything we do in this life, good or bad, has some effect in this life, that’s very obvious. But what we need to understand is that apart from whatever effect we experience in this life, the real effect usually doesn’t come until future lives. If we meditate now, there is a positive effect in this life, that’s for sure. If we subdue our mind now in this life a little bit, there will be definitely a positive effect in this life. If we don’t subdue our mind, if we have a completely uncontrolled mind, don’t do anything about it, we will experience suffering results for sure in this life.
But what the law of cause and effect is really teaching us is that apart from the effects that come in this life from actions we do in this life, Every action that we do with body, speech and mind is creating a karmic imprint. And that karmic imprint, that seed, is probably not going to ripen in this life. It’s going to ripen in the future life. The reason for this is this life itself, the unfolding of this life is the result of causes that come before this life. So it’s not possible for most of the karma that we’ve created in this life to ripen in this life.
We meditate now, there is definitely an effect in this life, But as we meditate, we are creating these karmic imprints, and they won’t usually ripen until a future life. And when they ripen, the result will be far, far greater than any effect we experience from meditating in this life. So we bring this contemplation to an end by making a strong determination to be more and more mindful of these four factors of karma. That karma is definite, that if we haven’t created a cause, we can’t experience the result. Having created a cause, that result will come sooner or later.
And then when the result comes, it is far, far greater than the initial cause. If we can be mindful of these things in our daily life, this is what can really protect us from creating negative karma. This can help us practice patience to subdue anger which creates some of the worst, heaviest, strongest negative imprints. And this can encourage us to engage in virtue, meaningful actions of body, speech and mind more and more to benefit ourselves and others now but especially in the future. This is what I have to do with this precious human rebirth.
So then recall the Buddha at the crown of one’s head, think that the Buddha is extremely pleased with what we have meditated on. Because of that, the Buddha happily dissolves into light, that blissful golden light comes down through the crown of our head, pervading our whole being, blessing our body, speech and mind, especially blessing the mind to gain deep, a stable realisation of the truth of the law of cause and effect.