Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 79-minute talk, Ven Thubten Gyatso explores karma’s mechanics in detail, building from the ten natural non-virtues and their four branches to the four types of karmic result—throwing, completing, similar to cause, and environmental. He anchors the discussion in concrete examples: a monk struck blind for lying to his guru, the ripening of illness, how desire can drive rebirth in hell realms despite being an affliction of the desire realm. A central theme is that karma ripens only in a mind of similar quality to its creation—virtuous karma cannot manifest in a non-virtuous mind—and he emphasizes prevention, purification, and generating virtue as three Buddhist responses to karma, explicitly warning against fatalistic and magical misinterpretations common in India and contemporary New Age circles. The teaching moves into the six realms of rebirth, explaining why beings in the form and formless realms eventually fall, and closes with Buddhist presentation of mind and body’s relationship: how the most subtle consciousness—the clear light awareness at the heart chakra—carries karmic imprints through death into the bardo and the next life. Addressed to practitioners with basic Lamrim familiarity.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 02 W o L 2010.mp3
UUID: fc97b87c-b933-4882-b6eb-de212f9a51b1
Teacher: Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman
Collection: Wheel of LIfe (Ven Thubten Gyatso aka Adrian Feldman)
Date: 2010 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 79.7 minutes
Words: ~8,272
At this point we briefly mentioned the Lam Rim subject of the ten non virtuous actions which I’m sure you’ve all heard about before and taught in detail. Just to very briefly mention these: these ten actions three physical, four verbal and three mental actions which are non virtuous from their own side. They are naturally non virtuous actions. It doesn’t matter what principles we may believe in, or what religion or philosophy we may hold. Whatever, if we engage in any of these ten actions, we will create naturally, we will create negative karma.
So they’re called natural non virtues, as opposed to the non virtue of breaking vows, like in general just drinking alcohol, for example, is not in its by its own nature negative karma. But if one has a vow to not drink alcohol and one deliberately breaks that vow, then the drinking of the alcohol becomes negative karma. So that is a negative karma which is not a natural result of the action, but it is breaking one’s own inner precept, one’s determination to avoid potentially destructive behaviour, so then it becomes negative. Of course, drinking alcohol with a deliberate purpose to make oneself completely stupid and blotto, you know, to wipe out one’s thoughts, drown one’s sorrows or whatever, that is negative karma because the intention is to deliberately make oneself stupid and so that thought behind the drinking of the alcohol then it becomes negative karma. But if it’s just a simple glass for relaxation of alcohol then it’s not negative karma But the killing, stealing, sexual misconduct are always negative karma when we engage in these actions.
Lying, harsh speech, divisive speech and idle gossip are always negative karma. Covetousness, maliciousness and wrong views are by nature negative karma. So, the Lam Rim goes into detail on the ten non virtues, it briefly mentions the ten virtuous actions which are the opposites of these. Through understanding then deliberately, consciously avoiding killing or avoiding stealing. Maybe the situation may begin to arise where there’s an opportunity to kill or steal or commit sexual misconduct or to lie, abuse others, etc.
And one deliberately, consciously avoids doing that action. One maintains one’s mind in equanimity and ideally we direct it towards virtuous action of saving lives, speaking very kindly and very honestly, etc. But the virtuous side of these is the actual mental restraint, when the situation or the potential situation is there to kill, steal, lie and so on. So, as I’m sure you’ve heard, in order to create the full karma there need to be four branches present in terms of the karma of killing. Object branch is another sentient being and the motivation branch is clear recognition of the sentient being you intend to kill, there has to be one of the three poisons within the motivation anger, attachment or ignorance.
Then there’s the action branch, where one either does the action oneself or orders someone else to kill for you. Either way, the action branch is complete. And then there’s the completion branch where the sentient being dies as a result of the action that you have done or ordered somebody else to do. So, those four branches are complete, the full karma of killing has been created. When we talk about a full karma, we are referring potential of this karmic seed.
It can cause a throwing result which is a rebirth result. At death it has the power to throw life or the mind stream into a future life. We call that the throwing result or the throwing karma. Through any one karma, one action, there can be one throwing result or there can be multiple rebirth results. And the other way around, many throwing karmas can lead to one rebirth result or to many rebirth results.
It all depends upon the different weight, heaviness of the karma and so on. Also, the full karma, it has the potential to give rise to completing results. So, karma refers to the experience that we have in some other life, like it may even occur in the very life where we create the karma. You know, before the throwing or the rebirth result happens, know, through any karma we can experience results. Now, particularly very heavy ones can occur in this life where, you know, there’s a story of a meditator who I think he was a monk and his teacher was a layperson and the stories are told in different ways, but anyway the monk appeared in a village with his retinue of disciples and he was a little bit proud and overbearing and he saw his teacher who may been herding a group of pigs or something and normally the tradition is normally when you see your teacher after being away or at any time, you do three prostrations.
And so he felt to do prostrations, but then the thought arose that my students might lose faith in me if I prostrate to the swineherd. So he avoided going near his teacher and went down a side street and later that evening he went to the teacher and he made three prostrations and the teacher said, Why didn’t you prostrate to me when you saw me this afternoon? A lie came to his mind I didn’t see you and because one’s Guru is such a powerful object of karma he instantly went blind. So that is an example of a completing karma ripening even before the throwing result of lying to the Guru has happened. So, the completing karma can happen in this life or it can happen during the thrown rebirth of that particular karma or it can happen way after, you know, like the throwing result of killing might be rebirth in the hells many times and then after a long time, as a result of some future, some other virtuous karma, when one is eventually reborn as human, still that karma, the completing results of that karma are not exhausted and so during that human life one can have a short life, one can be killed or the situation we mentioned before, one could be born in an environment where the medicines are not available to cure a particular sickness and so we die.
So that’s the environmental result. We call these completing karmas because they sort of complete the throwing result. So, rebirth as a human is the result of virtuous karma, it is the throwing result of virtuous karma, but within that human life, every moment we’re experiencing a whole succession of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. So, are all the completing karma which are determining whether we experience it. And they can be different karmas.
Well, to experience an illness it depends upon various conditions. Well, as I was saying before, the negative karma has ripened. You’ve got leukemia or whatever. That is the ripening result. That karma is finished.
Whether you meet a meditation instructor or get the right medicine, that is ripening of virtuous karma. That’s a completing virtuous karma. Well, the Dalai Lama said that. He said the sufferings that Tibetans have experienced is a result of their ripening karma.
What’s the difference between the absolute and the relative truth of the matter? That’s the relative truth. Because, I mean, again I’ll take it to a more prosaic example. If you’re thinking.
We are most definitely not saying that the correct approach is to shrug one’s shoulders and say, Oh this is reality, this is just karma. But look, it’s definitely not. The teaching is trying to recognize. Don’t divide it up into absolute and relative truth, that’s irrelevant. Absolute truth is referring to emptiness of reality.
The simple truth is that behind every pleasant and every unpleasant experience is an underlying causal factor resulting from a past behavior. Right? And the compassion in teaching this reality is to try and get people to recognize that their behavior is the primary condition behind their suffering and their happiness. And if they can modify their behavior, they will get the happiness they want, they will avoid the unhappiness that they don’t want. So there can be nothing more purely compassionate than the teaching of karma.
Now, undoubtedly, individuals and society in general, people get misconceptions and they understand it in their own distorted way and that is definitely to be avoided. Indeed it’s prevalent. In India where they accept the teachings of karma, they’re totally fatalistic and they will just lay down and say, I’ll shrug the shoulder and say it’s my karma, nothing can be done, but Buddha said something can be done. First preventative, don’t create the negative karma. Secondly, you can purify it.
There’s a method to purify negative karma that’s being created. Thirdly, stop, create virtuous karma, cause of happiness. Yeah, it’s like in the new age belief system there’s this concept of purification but a lot of people have a totally stupid way of approaching it. I know one young woman, a friend actually I knew her, this is before the Buddhist days so I didn’t know anything about karma or anything. She had a leg ulcer which was producing a lot of pus and she thought this is great, the more pus that came out the better, this is purification.
You know, the visual flow of pus was purification. She said, No treatment, definitely no antibiotics. Heavens no, I’m not going to harm my body with antibiotics. And she ended up with osteomyelitis of the leg, you know, because she believed this was karmic purification. Hindus have all sorts of weird practices, you know, self mutilation, extreme ascetic practices, they’ve got all this purification of karma.
Buddha said, You’re barking up the wrong tree. This is so stupid. It’s not purifying negative karma. So indeed individuals are going to make misinterpretation of these teachings. So we should avoid that and also we should not be fatalistic and accept, Oh, it’s my karma and do nothing about it.
It is karma. Do something about it is really the message that’s coming across. But also, I mean, you know, if we lose a leg, one of the underlying causes is karma. And there is no point in worrying about having lost a leg. I mean, the karma has ripened, it cannot be reversed.
It’s happened. And to get on with it and make life worthwhile rather than falling into the well of self pity and anger and resentment that can occur when things go bad, that self pity and anger is useless. If we understand it was karma, okay, and then that can be a real motivating factor to accumulate more positive and purify negative karma. Alright, so in terms of the results, there’s the throwing result completing results. So, these complete a thrown karma and the completing results can be similar to the cause in terms of our habitual behaviour, like one of the completing results of killing is the karmic tendency to kill again in a future life.
Another is in terms of our personal experience, we can be killed, we can have a short life or, you know, conditions to support life can be absent or we might be born in a very dangerous country where there’s a lot of war and killing etc. Sorry, that’s more the environmental result. The dangerous country where there’s war and killing or earthquakes, tidal waves, you know, the so-called natural phenomena which can take life. So, that’s the environmental result of killing. There’s brief mention in these notes of other types of result, but I won’t go into those in detail.
I’m sure you’ve had them before. For each of these ten non virtues there are the four types of result: the throwing result, then completing karma there’s results similar to the cause in terms of our habitual behaviour, results similar to the cause in terms of our experience and the environmental result. So, literally that’s called the possessed result. It’s like in that life we possess the environment. So, all the things in our life are associated with karmic ripening.
Is karma dependent arising? Yes. Everything, whatever exists, even emptiness, is a dependent arising. If that’s the case, the effect of karma is that dependent upon our own mind and how we see our actions? The effect of karma?
The result of the karma, is that a dependent arising as well? Whatever exists is a dependent arising. So, the severity of the result would depend upon the state of our mind? Well, the result itself depends upon the state of mind. If we have a negative karma for stealing, then that in terms of the completing result where people can steal from us, if our mind is in a state of virtue, nobody can ever steal from us.
Because for a negative karma to ripen it has to ripen in a mind that is similar to the state it was in when the karma was created. So, if we have desire, you know, and the desire leads us to steal, then as long as in the future we don’t allow desire and acquisitiveness, you know, wanting selfishly to the point of stealing, if we don’t allow that to abide in our mind, the ripening effect of losing things to thieves cannot happen. So, when you leave home, instead of locking the door, you should lock your mind and always have a virtuous mind and thieves won’t enter your house. But it’s easier said than done. You just have to loosen a little bit of desire attachment and then your house is wide open, the thieves will get in.
But then I’ve heard that actually if you do that, it’s like you leave some money lying around or something, you’re actually creating an Well, yeah, but if you do it consciously, you’re expecting it to be taken, so But if you left your house unlocked, wouldn’t have that consciously? I was sort of Well, unless you’re like me and forgetting to lock it, you know, just forget. The point is that negative karma cannot ripen in a virtuous mind. So, if the mind is always virtuous, you can’t have any problems. But her mind is not always virtuous, it is so hard.
It’s so difficult. Mean, we can make, you know, we come to meditation and we make the bodhicitta motivation, Sang gyé chö dang tsog kyi chog nam la, you know, I’m gonna meditate for the benefit of all sentient beings. Then after two seconds somebody fidgets and we get angry. Yeah? After bodhicitta motivation, so difficult.
But the fundamental thing about karma is virtuous karma can only ripen in a virtuous mind. Non virtuous karma can only ripen in a non virtuous mind. So, if we so it’s imperative that we always maintain our mind in virtue and the minute non virtue arises, cut it, cut it and turn the mind towards virtue. So going back to George’s question, this is the first factor in the determining dependent arising — the ripening of karma — is the state of mind. Now, the karmic ripening may be an illness, negative karma, an illness.
So, that’s happened. But of course, we can have the karma to suffer tuberculosis but if we never come in contact with a tuberculosis bacterium, that karma can’t manifest. So, you need the external conditions as well. It’s not going to create TB out of the sky, there has to be external conditions as well. So, the karmic ripening is a dependent arising, not just on the karma but other conditions.
Isn’t there a story about the Buddha in one of his lives where he was meditating in the forest and a king came along and thought that he had been having an affair with his wife so he chopped off the monk’s limbs or something? Probably. It’s a common occurrence. There’s an end to that story and the end to the story was that, well this is what heard. And the end to that story was the Buddha was talking to Subhuti and he said, because I didn’t think it was happening to me, this solid self, I could see that it was the result of karma, then I didn’t have a negative affliction.
So I was very impressed with that story, but when I broke my toe I kept thinking this is not having Nāgārjuna there to take my toes, it was quite hard. Because the my toe included in it the self-grasping conception. That’s an example of using understanding of emptiness to not allow karmic ripenings to give rise to anger or you know further negative minds to maintain the mind in equanimity. Is there such a thing as a group karma? Group karma.
We talk about collective karma and individual karma. It’s like this world, the earth is the result of the collective karma of all the sentient beings who live in the world, the humans and the animals and the hungry ghosts. Beings who experience this Earth, their collective karma experiences a thing in common. So, in general we say that’s the experience in common. But each individual sentient being has his or her or its specific experience of the world.
And that is personal karma that is related to the individual. Related to the individual. And His Holiness, Dalai Lama, has said that karmic cause and effect is not the only cause and effect sequence or activity happening in the world. He said, like, collectively our karma gave rise to this world, you know, condensed from gas and circling around the sun and so on. It was like a collective result.
But the chemical and physical cause and effect processes within the environment are not karma. He says like it’s karma, collective karma for an oak tree to exist. You know, an oak tree wouldn’t have existed, wouldn’t have appeared purely out of the chemical and physical activity of the elements. But whether this leaf falls before that leaf has nothing to do with karma. That’s due to the chemical and physical cause and effect of matter.
So, he calls this natural cause and effect, the chemical and physical forces of the elements and there’s karmic cause and effect. And he does definitely distinguish between those two. So, that happens, you can’t say, is karma. But if a branch falls off a tree, it’s not karma, but if it falls on your head, it’s karma. That’s your karma.
Would it be right to say then that karma is experienced only by sentient beings, the mental continuum in which to carry the Well, it depends on what you mean by a sentient being. What’s your definition of a sentient being? Too hard. Well, it’s not too hard. I understand a sentient being could have mind, a clearly knowing mind.
Well, Buddhas have mind. Are they sentient beings? I would have thought so. No. It’s a matter of definition.
They’re persons, they have mind. The definition of a sentient being is any being who has mind which is contaminated by either the obscurations to liberation or the subtle obscurations to omniscience. Obscurations to omniscience or knowledge obscurations. So, beings are sentient beings. So, every being from, you know, the lowest hell being to the highest divine being to the Ārya Bodhisattva on the tenth ground are sentient beings because their minds still have the contamination either the gross contamination of the afflictions or the subtle contamination of the imprint of the afflictions.
So, that’s what we call sentient beings. A Buddha is a being whose mind is totally purified of all gross and subtle contamination. Therefore, we don’t refer to Buddhas as sentient beings. Of course they’re sentient, they have feeling, they have the five ever present mental factors. So, one of those is feeling.
Their feeling is bliss. Bliss, unimaginable bliss, that’s their feeling. No, because I mentioned the law, you know, in the second paragraph, the law of karma is that whatever ignorant beings do say or think etc, etc. So karma is only in the minds of beings whose minds are contaminated by ignorance. Buddhas have gone, they themselves have gone beyond karma, but that doesn’t mean that they can change our karma, they can’t.
I was thinking more of things that aren’t sentient beings in the sense of trees and things like that, that they don’t have karma. No, sentient beings are in the mind and plants don’t have mind and rocks don’t have mind or consciousness. So you can’t talk about non-sentient things having karma. You can talk about non-sentient things being the manifestation of karma like the world. The oceans, the mountains, the rivers, the rocks and trees are a manifestation of the collective karma of the sentient beings in this world.
Alright? They are karma from that point of view. They come ripening. Alright. Now, on that first page, page there’s just a list just to explain maybe for those who are new the different realms of rebirth.
In general we talk about the three realms of rebirth, the desire realm, the form realm and the formless realm. The desire realm refers, as its name implies, realms of rebirth where the dominant affliction is desire for sensory pleasure, pleasure of the five senses. So, types of rebirth in the desire realm, the most suffering are the hell beings and there are different types of hell rebirth, hot hells, cold hells, neighboring hells, occasional hells which are explained in the Lamrim teachings. Then there’s the hungry ghost rebirth, the pretas, then there’s animal rebirth, human rebirth, the demigods or asuras rebirth and the God, the desire realm gods or the desire realm divas. So, there are different levels of desire realm devas.
Some who share the, you know, the world with us but karmically they experience something very different to what we So, the hungry ghosts share this environment with us but through their karma. What we see as nice fertile land with fruit trees and rivers and etc. Their karma sees a very barren, dry, ugly, horrible environment. So, the devas, they see it far more better than we do. They see it as like an incredibly blissful paradise.
The Devas who live on the earth and then there are Devas whose environment is not on the ground but celestial environment. I don’t know whether you say it’s in the sky but it’s celestial and their pleasures are more and more refined and so they’re all desire realm gods or desire dominant affliction in their minds is attachment to sensory pleasure. So you may ask the question, how come anyone would ever be reborn in the hells? How on earth would attachment lead to rebirth in the hot hells? Well, if we have the karma, you know, maybe through killing or whatever, to be reborn in the hells, then that karma can be nurtured or is nurtured by a non virtuous mind.
And, for example, we may be very attached to heat, to warmth, you know, always complaining about the cold and always wanting to be warm, etc. So, this desire comes up very strongly during death because during the death process the body starts to go very cold and there is a lot of craving for craving for heat. And so that strong craving for heat can ripen the karma to be reborn in the hot hells. But then we go unconscious and we die and we wake up in the intermediate state, the Bardo between this life and the next. And through the ripening of that karma and the craving for heat, there is Bardo being projects like or it’s a warm fire, a glow of heat and there is attraction.
It’s like, I want to go there. And one will feel very cold in the Bardo and so one is strongly attracted to this warmth and heat and that impulse of attraction to heat, attachment to heat, warmth is what brings about an end to the intermediate state being’s existence and spontaneously, immediately they are reborn in the hot hell. So, that’s how desire gives rise to rebirth in these very suffering states, which if we knew what we were doing, we would definitely not want to go there. Well, the Lam Rim teachings say that our permanent address is the three lower realms. We’re only in this human realm extremely temporarily.
You know, it’s like a flash of lightning in a long dark night. The twelve twelve hours of darkness is the time we spend in the lower realms. The flash of lightning, the momentary flash of light is the time we spend in the upper realms. So, yeah, mostly through our attachment we’re headed downhill. Okay, now, the form and formless realms, these are two divine realms or diva realms where the karma to be reborn there is created through attachment to the meditative states of single pointed concentration.
So it’s only when you achieve Samādhi and concentration has many levels are I guess the grosser levels are when the experience goes beyond desire for sensory pleasure, it’s purely a mental experience. Mental experience of bliss or just equanimity. And when we become attached to that and that attachment creates the cause to be born in a state when we die, if that karma ripens, where one is in that state of mental pleasure or equanimity to which we are attached. And so, there are eighteen levels of form realm rebirth and then the highest is the formless realm where there is a subtle body that the Devas in the form realm possess. It’s not gross, atoms and molecules like our bodies.
But there is a physical support for the mind. In the formless realm there is no environment, there is no gross physical body at all, not even a subtle physical body. The only support for the mind in the formless realm according to Tantra is the extremely subtle wind, the extremely subtle wind energy which is inseparable from the mind. So, in the general sutras it says that there is just mind and there are four levels of absorption with rebirth in the formless realms. So the mind is just you die and then directly you don’t even go through a Bardo, don’t go through intermediate state.
One’s mind is just instantly transported into this absorption of infinite space or infinite consciousness or infinite nothingness. So, and you desired that when you were meditating, liked that and so you can be born and you stay for a long time. No sinking, no mental conceptualization, just spaced literally out. And then, after a long time, the karma finishes and previously collected karmas start to ripen and you can be reborn down again, according to the individual’s karma. So this is just a very brief description of the realms of rebirth.
Is that okay? Can you experience the conditions of the lower realms as a human? Well, we can have hell like experiences, you know, like one of the hells, the lightest hot hell. You’re spontaneously born on this vast red hot plane and there are other beings around and you instantly hate each other and you see everybody’s your enemy and you pick up weapons and start fighting, certainly on and on. You know, one could say that if someone is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, their mind projects everybody as their enemy and there’s a lot of fear and turmoil, hallucinations, like the demons in hell are hallucinations, they’re not sentient beings.
One hallucinates demons who torture oneself but they’re totally projections of one’s own mind, but one believes them to be real. So, the same with, you know, schizophrenic hallucinations, one completely believes them to be real, not coming from one’s mind. So, one can say that’s a hell like experience. It’s not a hell experience, but it’s a hell like experience. The occasional hells, it’s difficult to imagine, imagine, but there are in the Lam Rim there are descriptions of people who look like humans and they maybe during the day they experience so much pleasure pleasure and happiness and riches but at night it’s reversed and they experience terror and horrible hell experience.
So that’s called an occasional hell. They’re actually hell beings, they’re not humans. So, I think it’s like that, you can’t, you don’t get a mixed bag. We’re humans, we can have human experience. But the thing about human life is that we do, we are capable of the whole spectrum.
You know, I mean we can experience great bliss maybe approaching the bliss of the gods. We can experience great misery approaching the misery of the hells. And that’s good that we can experience the ups and downs of feelings because then we can make decision. We have the intelligence to recognize that it is indeed possible. Like the Devas, for them they don’t experience the regular suffering and disappointments that humans have and even though intellectually they Buddhas can go and teach them about karma, etc.
They’re not strongly motivated to do anything about it. Like maybe a lot of people wanted to come to Buddha house today but oh no, it’s a weekend, pleasure time, you know. And so, they go, much more interested in even though they may have taken refuge important to meditate on Dharma, reflect, talk about Dharma, something else comes up as more important for now. I’ll do it later, I’ll do it next time. So they put it off.
So the gods are like that, they keep putting it off. Can they be reborn in the formless realm after the karma has expired and they go back down to lower rebirths? Yes, they can go back to any other realm according to their individual karma. They carry the karma to be reborn in those other realms from previous lives. They don’t create karma in that life because they’re just spaced out.
They don’t create any new karma. So when they are in hell, how they cannot meditate anyway in their hell realms? You can’t meditate in the hell realms. They can’t go back then to the formless realm while they go back to the It’s called the wheel of Life because you go round and round. Top, bottom.
It’s not sequential but it’s a Wheel of Life in the we’ve been there. We’ve been in the Form Realms. We’ve been in the Hell Realms. Up and down according to individual action. It’s not the presentation of different roles of rebirth is not talking about a progressive ascent, you know, from bad to good.
A lot of people believe that, that we’re reborn here for a purpose to continue my spiritual practice, that’s rubbish. We’re born here to indulge in pleasure, that’s why we’ve got this body. Unless we’re Bodhisattvas and we came here out of compassion, maybe not this one, but there may well be Bodhisattvas in the audience who chose to be born as humans in order to continue their practice of love and compassion and so on. But, in general, the underlying fundamental reason why we have this human body is because we’re attached to the pleasures that our bodies can afford us. So, we have the sense organs and we play.
We play with seeing things, listening, smelling, tasting and touch. There is nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that? What’s wrong with it is that through ignorance we become attached to the pleasure. And through that attachment attachment we create negative karma.
We start to steal, we start to kill, we start to lie in order to get more pleasure. Like this poor man who was murdered in Melbourne, the multi millionaire, not enough. He had to join the swingers group or something and he lost his life. Not enough. That’s attachment.
And then anger, when we don’t get what we want, anger. And pride and jealousy that they’ve got more than me, etc, etc, that’s the problem. Oh, we’ve got so much to talk about. I’ll get onto what we have here. So, these notes I’ve put together in order to lead us to understand how a form a mind which is non physical can interact with a body which is physical.
Rejection of the duality of body and mind of being separate entities, especially mind being non physical. Because in general scientific terms something which has no physical properties whatsoever is incapable of producing an effect upon the physical body. So, you know, the term a and also in a derogatory sense has been proposed or the term, you know, the ghost in the machine, that the machine is the body and the mind is like a ghost. How can the ghost influence the machine? So, therefore, in a very gross way science rejects any discussion of mind of being different entity to the body.
Therefore, they say, mind is brain, or mind is the electrochemical activity of the brain, or mind is what we call an epiphenomenon. It comes as a result of the complexity of the neurological system and the functioning of our nervous system. And so, if you’re going to talk about mind you have to talk about nervous impulses, hormones, nervous pathways, all of the physical aspects which we know are clearly associated with consciousness and there is nothing other than the physical side. Buddhism says no. Mind is as we’ve talked many times, mind is defined as mere clarity and awareness and clarity means mind is non physical.
Alright, how does the mind interact, how does this non physical mind interact with the physical body? This page, page two, I’ve tried to establish the foundation of how that can be understood. So, in the Buddhist Abhidharma, matter is first presented and then mind. And matter, the physical world, is said to be composed of tiny atoms, not visible to the sense mental consciousness. When you have the accumulation or the aggregation of many atoms you have gross matter.
And the physical objects have four properties which are called — not to confuse the term element with element as we understand scientifically — the term element refers to specific atoms of a like nature with so many protons, so many neutrons, are different to any other element and when you get them together you get a piece of carbon or gas of oxygen or gold or whatever element we’re talking about. The four elements are not referring to any specific stuff or thing in the world. They’re just talking about the qualities of matter in general. So earth element is the function of hardness that supports or obstructs other physical objects. Hardness like there’s a lot of earth element in the tabletop because it supports the things that are placed upon it.
There is less earth element manifesting in the air because if I let my glass go it’ll drop to the ground. But the less air has earth element because it supports birds and planes. It is the very supportive property of air which enables birds to fly. But it’s obviously a lot less powerful than the supportive function of earth element in the tabletop. Water element is the function of dampness and moistening or cohesion sticking together.
So, water element, you know, in matter of fact we can see see a piece of dry earth is a very crumbly, it doesn’t stick together. If we add water then we can make a mud pie or whatever, it sticks together, you know, that’s adding a different element of water itself to the earth. But where we have cohesion and dampness, there is the presence of water element. Fire element is the function of warmth and so where there is heat, there is fire element and burning or ripening the presence chemical activity, this is the activity of fire element. Wind element is the function of lightness and motion.
So, where this movement indicates wind element or air element, if you like. So, that’s what we’re referring to when we’re referring to the four elements and these exist in any type of matter. These different functions can be manifest to different degrees. And that’s what we’re referring to in terms of the four elements. So, as I’ve said, every physical thing has all four functions manifesting in various varying degrees and the way in which these manifest is associated with the karma of living beings.
Now, this is more subtle and more profound and His Holiness Dalai Lama says unfortunately the texts don’t go into detail in exactly how our karma interacts with the outside world, with the outside environment. And so, His Holiness to Dalai Lama says, well, we have to think about it and from what we are taught and what we do experience. So, His Holiness then in several teachings that he’s given, he talks about the evolution of the embryo as an indication of how there is interaction between the physical world and the mind. Alright, questions before we move on? We’re gonna have to break soon anyway, but we’ll just get into this subject.
Okay. So, mind is the continuum of mere clarity and awareness possessed by every sentient being. Also possessed by Buddhas but we don’t call Buddha sentient beings. It has no physical properties but is always supported by a subtle form of wind element. So this is a big statement that mind itself by definition is clear, non physical.
But mind is always supported by subtle wind element. There is an inseparable connection between awareness and the physical world. So, if we look at the most subtle mind, the most subtle mind is associated with what’s called the eternal drop. Now, in the presentation of the channels and chakras, know, in relation to our consciousness, there are certain areas within the body called chakras, wheels, which are very important for the Yogi to meditate upon, but also they’re very important for our everyday physiological functioning. So, these chakras are wheels composed of channels, they’re called wheels because radiating channels at each chakra, different numbers which branch and re branch and so on and spread throughout the entire body and this is the subtle body.
Within those channels there is subtle wind energy flowing and that subtle wind energy is always wherever it’s moving within the channels and chakras, this is associated with consciousness. So, if we go to the most subtle wind is at the center of the heart chakra that we call within the center of the heart chakra, we call this the indestructible drop. Drop just means tiny, tiny point. There you have this indestructible drop, one entity called indestructible drop. And this single entity has two functions.
One function is awareness and we label that mind. Right? We simply label that awareness mind. I mean that is part of the definition of mind awareness. The other function of this eternal drop is movement and we label that wind.
I see the wind element is the function of lightness and motion. So we just label that wind. So each of us has at the center of our heart chakra the most subtle wind energy and the most subtle mind. The awareness is the awareness of clear light which is extreme it’s the most subtle level of consciousness. For us, we cannot recognize the clear light awareness even when it manifests at death.
We won’t have the power to know that it’s happening, but it will happen. This entity, this indestructible drop, is changing moment by moment. It’s not eternal in the sense of being permanent. It’s always changing moment by moment and it abides at the heart chakra. Within the channels and the chakras that spread throughout the body there are more gross winds which are flowing particularly in relation to our nervous system and to our sense organs.
When we focus with our eyes upon a particular scene, we’re really walking, what am I seeing, really observing something, there is a lot of activity of the wind energy associated with visual consciousness and that supports visual consciousness itself. So the eye consciousness is active, alert, happening with this flowing of the wind in relation to the eye or the visual apparatus, which can include both the eye sense organ as well as the region in the brain associated with visual consciousness. So, there you have grosser winds associated with grosser consciousnesses. When we’re thinking, there’s more activity in the regions of the brain associated with thinking and the winds associated with mental consciousness are operative. And when we’re listening, the particular wind associated with hearing is active in the auditory apparatus and so on.
So, this is how the body is functioning in terms of the winds and the consciousness flowing with as it’s described, know, it’s just the description of the channels and chakras, from my point of view, doesn’t have to be taken literally. It is a map for the Yogi and Yoginis to meditate upon. So, there is this physiological body. And if we concentrate upon different chakras and different regions of the body, we can generate the results of what we intend to achieve through concentration on that chakra. And it is the simple diagram of channels and chakras makes it very easy for the Yogi and Yogini to meditate at that point.
So, again, I haven’t heard this spoken, but from my point of view, it doesn’t matter whether the physical description and there is a description of the location of these is literally true or just a means by which we can easily focus our mind in meditation. The point is that the effect, the result will occur if we can do the meditation properly. That’s not easy. And very powerfully result can arise. And so, I’ll just leave it aside for other people to sort out.
I mentioned the other night, to me there’s a fascinating correlation between the chakras and the endocrine glands which secrete hormones which have definite profound effects upon consciousness, upon the state of mind. So, that’s interesting. I haven’t taken any further than that. That’s up some other researchers. As it says here, the combination of wind and mind is said to be like a blind man carrying a legless person with good eye sight.
Separately, they can’t go anywhere. But together, if the blind man carries the legless man on his shoulders, they can go where they want. So, that’s just a rough analogy. It’s not perfect because the two persons are different individuals. When we’re talking about the indestructible drop we’re talking about one entity which has the two qualities of movement and consciousness.
And so the consciousness is like the person with good sight and the movement, the capacity to move, is like the person with legs. So, we label mind upon awareness, we label wind upon movement. Now, this is not the soul. Well, it might be the soul. I mean, I don’t know what the soul is.
I mean Buddhism there’s no presentation of any third entity other than body and mind. But if people talk about a soul who goes from life to life or to heaven or hell, then maybe the indestructible drop, because when we die all of the gross winds contract towards the heart chakra and as they do so we lose eye consciousness, we lose ear consciousness, all the sensory consciousnesses stop during the death process and the winds become more and more subtle going from above and from below, they come absorb into the heart chakra. So, at the last moment of death there is only the most subtle wind and the most subtle mind. The clear light mind manifests. And that clear light mind bears all the karmic imprints, all of the positive, the seeds of the positive and negative emotions that have been, you know, accumulated or that have been activated in the past.
All memories, the seeds of memories from past lives, born in that most subtle consciousness which goes, separates with its subtle wind from the body and that’s the moment of death. Instantaneously, the next moment, like waking up in a dream, we’re in the Bardo, the intermediate state. The subtle body of the Bardo being, the direct cause is the subtle wind which becomes more coarse and the Bardo being’s mind, the direct cause is the clear light mind with all of the karma that it carries. The cooperative condition for the Bardo being’s body is the mind, the most subtle mind, because the karma ripens before we die. And the karma for the next life ripens.
So, if the karma to be born as a cow ripened as we were dying, the Bardo being will be in the shape of a cow. So, that’s coming from the mind. So, this subtle body, its actual form, is determined by the mind, the ripened karma that happened as we were dying. If the karma to be born human had ripened, the being’s body will be in the shape of a human, form of a human. Alright, so the primary cause for the being’s body is the continuity of the subtle wind.
The cooperative condition is the clear light mind. Then the mind of the Bardo being, the primary cause is the clear light mind, obviously, and the cooperative condition is the subtle wind, the most subtle wind, because the body of the Bardo being has sense organs. Its sense consciousnesses function, mental consciousness functions. It’s just like in a dream. In a dream we have sensory awareness, we have mental awareness even though the objects are not real, they are purely projections of our mind.
Nevertheless, the dream experience is real for the dreamer. Similarly, the Bardo experience is real for the Bardo being and it is So, they have this dream body or it’s called a mental body and eventually it will be attracted to its future life, the conditions where it will be reborn, and then it will experience a mini death where its mind goes back down to the clear light and the indestructible drop then enters the womb of the future mother and this is the third factor that’s necessary for conception to occur. Normally we just think, oh, I just need the sperm and the egg. Not enough. We need consciousness.
It’s the third factor for human conception to happen. Anyway, we’ll go into more detail with that after lunch. Alright, so a few things to think about over lunch. Before we die. The karma for the next life ripens before we die.
I’ll talk in detail about that after lunch. So the Bardo existence is a reflection of that ripened karma. It’s already ripened and it won’t change. Unless we are tantric practitioners, but not many can do that. How does what?
Yeah, very alien! Well, first we’ve got to hear them. And that’s what the whole weekend’s about. I’m trying to explain the picture. So, we’ve just got to relax and get the picture and then go away and think about it.
And See how it conforms to one’s experience and definitely look for any contradictions. Important to identify contradictions. And then after a while, it survives one’s intense analysis, it becomes acceptable. Do you experience something? Does one experience something?
Well, one of the three methods of investigation are listening getting the facts, then thinking about the meaning of the facts, and then meditating on the meaning of the facts. In meditation, you can indeed gain some profound insight into the meaning. I see. Yeah, we’ll talk about the actual death process, we’ll talk about it after lunch. And I think the answer to that will come out.
And the question is sudden death as opposed to a gradual slow death. And the way that we talk about here is a slow death. But actually It all depends how we relate to it. Like we know we’re being eaten by a shark. If we generate love and compassion thinking, I hope this shark enjoys its lunch, then we’ll ripen a virtuous karma and we’ll have a very happy rebirth.
Not easy but we can train our mind. I mean, Christ forgave his crucifiers, didn’t he? Mahatma Gandhi blessed and forgave his assassin as he was dying. You don’t have to be. The whole point is we don’t have to fall into habitual self preservation response.
Well that’s why the wisdom See, me, I’m being eaten, I’m being killed. What we’re grasping at there is the wrong conception of self. We want to preserve that self and this is the root of karma. Great, be great. We are good.
What if we wish the shark to have bad taste of indigestion? Or that we have compassion. Chew me well shark. My bones will stick in your throat. Anyway, embarking upon something radically different to the normal approach to life, alright, when we’re talking about working on our minds and karma. But not impossible as the examples of Christ and Mahatma Gandhi are, they can forgive and die with love and compassion.
So, if they can do it, they didn’t do it because they were special, were showing us what we have to work towards. And so it’s up to us. Well, there is instant karma. We’ll talk about that. I don’t know, John Lennon, he’s an interesting guy.
Anyway, let’s have lunch and