Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 72-minute teaching on the Wheel of Life, Venerable Thubten Gyatso traces the diagram’s origins to Śākyamūni Buddha, who prescribed it for display at temple entrances as a visual guide to saṃsāra. He walks through the structure systematically: the three root poisons (ignorance, attachment, hatred) at the center symbolized by pig, snake, and pigeon; the surrounding ring showing karma ripening into six realms of rebirth; and the outer ring depicting the twelve links of dependent origination, which detail how karmic actions create and perpetuate rebirth. Thubten Gyatso explains that the diagram is not an external cosmic map but a mirror of our own minds—we have inhabited all these realms countless times. He opens with the historical origin story of two kings and closes with detailed analysis of the first three links: ignorance as blind motivation, karmic formation as the potent imprint created by intention, and consciousness as the karmic stream bearing that imprint across lifetimes until it ripens. The teaching is grounded in logic and observation, addressing skepticism about hungry ghosts with eyewitness accounts and philosophical arguments on mind-body continuity. Pitched at practitioners with some Buddhist familiarity seeking to understand the mechanics of karma and rebirth.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 09 W o L 2010.mp3
UUID: a05d369d-49b7-424b-9ffe-8f214da594c7
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: 72.4 minutes
Words: ~7,641
So now we have reached the point where we discuss the line drawing of the Wheel of Life. I think you all have copies. So the story of this diagram began at the time of Śākyamūni Buddha when there were two kings in northern India and they had the habit of presenting each other with gifts and one king would receive a gift and then he would have to reciprocate with a gift of better value and so they had this swapping of more and more, I guess, expensive and beautiful gifts. And one king received a very fine gift, I can’t remember what it was, and he was wondering what on earth he could do to go one up and to make a better gift back to the other king who had given it to him and he consulted some of Śākyamūni Buddha’s Sangha, who I think may have asked Śākyamūni Buddha himself, who said he should get an artist to paint the Wheel of Life and he described how to arrange it in this way. So this comes the story of this diagram is not a Tibetan invention, it goes all the way back to Śākyamūni Buddha.
And the king had this painted, drawn up, and he offered it to the other king who wasn’t a Buddhist, but he was intrigued by the beautiful illustration and he asked what’s it about. And so one of Śākyamūni Buddha’s Sangha explained the meaning and that king then became a Buddhist and great things happened. Śākyamūni Buddha told his Sangha that this diagram should be painted either on the wall or painting and should be near the entrance of all the temples and monasteries and there should always be a monk or a nun nearby who can explain to visitors, pilgrims, the meaning of the Wheel of Life. So the diagram is not to be worshipped. It’s not to be put on the altar and worshipped and prostrated to it, I mean it’s the wheel of life caused by karma and delusion, this is what we want to destroy.
See, we don’t put it in the center of the altar. Normally we do prostrate, don’t we, too? Samsāra. And so it contains in this pictorial way the illustration of all the things we’ve been talking about, particularly how beings are trapped in the wheel of life under the control of karma and afflictions. So in the very center there’s a picture of three animals: a pig, a snake, and it’s a pigeon, it should be a type of pigeon for some reason.
Looks a bit more like a rooster here, but And properly, the tails of the snake and the pigeon should be held in the mouth of the pig. And that’s because the pig symbolizes ignorance, the root self grasping ignorance, which is not simply the ignorance of reality, you know, the way things are, but it is the ignorance which grasps at the wrong conception of self. So, within the general ignorance of reality of how things exist, we have the wrong conception of me, I, to exist as an independent entity in my own right, you know, some inherently existing self who owns this body and mind, who exists somewhere within the body and mind. And we grasp at that sense of self true, to be real as it appears to our mind. And because of imprints from past lives, we automatically our mind has this wrong conception Even when we’re asleep or dreaming or awake, we have this self grasping ignorance.
So, that’s the root of both attachment and hatred or anger because whenever there is pleasure we become attached. We project the object of pleasure to exist inherently in its own right, whether it’s a person or some other object, and we don’t want to separate from it. So, have clinging, longing desire to experience that object or to have that object, to experience that pleasure associated with that object. And so that’s attachment symbolized by the pigeon. And if anything threatens our sense of self, our self identity, or that which you consider mine, you know, my body, my face, my reputation, my family, my friends.
So, within the thought my is strong I-grasping. So, when ever there’s any threat to me or my pleasure, my possessions, there is aggression, wanting to eliminate, push away that perceived threat to what I want. So that evolves into hatred and anger and all of the various disturbing emotions associated with aversion. So those are the three root poisons of ignorance, anger and attachment, which are the very core, the very center of the wheel of life. Those are the fundamental motivators which create the wheel of life.
Then the ring around them. This shows that through acting through behavior and acting out of ignorance, self grasping ignorance, anger and attachment, we create all sorts of karmic imprints upon our mind, which and these karmic imprints at the time of death are nurtured by a virtue or non virtuous state of mind. And so, when the mind is virtuous during time of death, a virtuous karmic imprint will be nurtured and that will ripen to eventually throw us into a happy rebirth. So, this ring indicates the Bardo beings and on the left there are forms of humans and demigods and devas. So they’re the three happy types of rebirth which are determined by the ripening of virtuous karma.
Often this ring around the central circle has a white background on the left and a black background on the right. And that indicates white is the ripening of virtuous karma leading to a happy rebirth and then on the right side there is black karma leading to an unhappy rebirth. So if our mind is non virtuousblackat the time of deathit will nurture a non virtuous karmic imprint, throwing karmawhich will ripen to eventually throw us into the three lower realms: the animal, hungry ghost, and hell realms. So it shows these beings being dragged by the hell demon being dragged downwards towards the lower realms. Often you may see depicted a human shape, an animal shape, and a hell being, and they depict the hell beings and the hungry ghosts.
Sorry, not a human shape, humans on the other side. You see an animal shape, a hungry ghost shape and a hell being. In the depictions, I’ll just Just a minute, just a just a minute. In the depictions, the hungry ghosts and hell beings are depicted with human like forms. That’s just so that we can understand, we can gain some idea of what it’s like there.
They don’t necessarily have human like shapes at all, but that’s just to give us a rough idea of what experience may be like in those adverse states. Yeah? I was trying to work out what you described. Your description matches the outer part. It’s like So what are you talking about?
This ring here? The ring around us. They all look like people to me. Yeah, know. I’m just saying that the artist has liberty to draw how he or she wants.
And I’m trying to say that other artists, you’ll see there will be an animal, a hungry ghost and a hell being on the right side with a black background. And they’re not chasing each other, they’re being dragged down by the rope. This demon is dragging them down into the three lower realms. And On the left, they’re voluntarily ascending to the happy realms. There’s a human, a demigod and a deva.
So, you know, different artists have their own license to do it how they like, but basically I’m just trying to explain what is illustrated there, okay? Don’t be hum up if it doesn’t match exactly the way I describe it. So, that ring explains the Bardo and the ripening of throwing karma created through the three poisons. Alright? Are there any other questions?
So, now the next segments outside that show the six general levels of rebirth. The three lower realms are depicted, so three o’clock, nine o’clock, and six o’clock, so those three big segments. On the left you can see there are various types of animals and birds and animals in the ocean, in the waters, being reborn as a result of animal karma ripening at the time of death. On the right is the hungry ghost realm. So you can see these figures experiencing mainly the sufferings of hunger and thirst, extreme environmental barrenness and harshness.
They also hungry ghosts can hallucinate demons like they can see water but they hallucinate a demon who drives them away from the water and they can’t drink it, they’re so thirsty. Sometimes they do manage to find something to drink, it turns to fire when they swallow food or drink. There are many outer and inner karmic obstacles to satisfying their hunger and thirst. And they fight amongst each other also, this shows some fighting. Then the lower segment is the hell realms and there’s the various hot hells and cold hells, some sort of depictions there, showing the various sufferings which are usually explained in terms of us imagining a human body in such a state, but it’s not necessarily so that their bodies are human shaped at all.
Can be vast and very different shapes. Then up from twelve o’clock through to two o’clock, there’s humans humans in various activities, plowing the fields. There’s a sick person being visited by a doctor. There’s a dead person being taken to the cemetery or the charnel ground, just illustrating that during human life there’s so much work involved in just trying to feed ourselves, to house ourselves and protect ourselves from the elements, and we suffer the sufferings of birth sickness, old age and death. And there’s also, I think at the top there’s a teacher teaching some students, so we also, as humans, we have the opportunity to receive the teachings and to practice the teachings and actually do something about our personal wheel of life.
So we shouldn’t think that this is some external representation, this is us. You know, we’ve been born in all of those realms countless times, we’ve been going round and round and round. We have the pig, the snake and the rooster in our mind. We’ve experienced all the Bardo states and so on. On the left, in that segment, the lower part shows the demigods, it’s hard to see, but there are the jealous, martial asuras who are jealous of the pleasures enjoyed by the desire realm gods who abide in surface of the land, of the earth.
So those gods, first of all, they experience the great pleasure of this special tree. You can see there’s a tree with its roots. There’s a trunk in the middle there. So its roots are in the asura realm, but the fruit is up in the god realm and it’s supposed to be extremely delicious. I think it’s probably a mango tree.
So that symbolizes that the desire realm gods have great pleasures which the asuras are very jealous of. And they’re very comicallyI think they’re very close. They’re not really different realms because theyI mean, they fight with each other, they can breed with each other. So really they’re just two races of the one species if you look at it from that point of view. But the asuras with their martial jealous thoughts are always going to war and they don’t have the power of the gods and so they usually get beaten.
But there are times when they can be winning. They haven’t won but they can be sort of dominating the suras. It’s said at that time the collective karma on this world is that when the asuras are winning there is conflict in human society. So probably during the last century with the two world wars, the asuras have been dominant in their wars with the devas. And when there’s times of peace and harmony in human society there is equivalent time of domination of the devas over the asuras.
They are sort of winning. So there’s this constant battle coming and going between the asuras and the devas. It just goes on and on. Then, remember there are four desire realm devas who are born above the, you know, in the celestial sphere sphere. So the first of these is the heaven of No Combat.
So that implies that the two lower heavens are the heaven of four great kings and the heaven of thirty three, which is the heaven of Indra, and Indra surrounded by his thirty three commanders or whatever. So, the heaven of the four great kings and the heaven of thirty three are those heavens associated on the ground, and then above that there’s a heaven of no combat. Where those divas aren’t bothered by the pleasures are much more refined and they’re sort of beyond the worldly, godly battles that the others engage in. And then there’s Tuśita heaven, a heaven of blissful heaven, then there’s the heaven of enjoying one’s own emanations and the heaven of enjoying others’ emanations. So those heavens the emanations, like the psychic powers, of their pleasure is just derived from their clairvoyant powers.
And I don’t know what they do. Maybe they play with each other’s auras or something, I don’t know. Of course, then there’sabove them still there’s the Form and Formless Realm Gods, which I’m not sure if they’re actually depicted here or not, but they also belong in that segment, the upper left segment, the Form and Formless Realm beings. So, that’s all the various realms of rebirth are depicted there. Then, the outer ring around the periphery, these twelve illustrations depict or symbolize the twelve links of interdependent origination.
So, these show in detail how throwing karma works, how it brings about rebirth in these various states. So that’s what we’re going to discuss in detail. The entire Wheel of Life is held by this demonic looking being who really, you know, it’s the Grim Reaper, really. This is symbolic of death, the personification of death. His Holiness the Dalai Lama said we really should have a skeleton up there which more symbolizes death.
The five skulls and the tiger skin loincloth, everything, is a bit of a Tibetan elaboration. But just Mara, the symbolic personification of death. So, Mara holding the wheel of life with his hands and feet indicates that sentient beings are trapped by the two things: karma and disturbing emotions. Or we say it’s disturbing emotions which come first and the karma created by them. And with his teeth holding it in his fangs indicates that wherever you’re born, even in the highest deva realm, you are not free from death.
You will die when your karma is exhausted. Whether you’re in the highest deva realm or whether you’re in the hells, you will die and that existence will cease. So there’s no permanent hell, there’s no permanent deva realm within the wheel of life. Everything is dominated by death and so when your karma is exhausted you will die and new karmas or other karmas that you’ve accumulated will throw you into a different realm of rebirth according to the individual state of mind. So it’s not that we progress sequentially around the circle.
We go up and down, across, back, time after time, or we can stay being reborn in the hells for many eons of time. It’s dependent upon each individual’s karma. Then outside the wheel of life, on the right is Śākyamūni Buddha and he is pointing to the new moon which is being held up there by a little clip. The full moon is where all the darkness has totally gone and so that symbolizes the total eradication of ignorance and the attainment of nirvana. And so the Buddha is pointing to nirvana and that inscription there in Tibetan is saying something like: This is the wheel of life under the domination of karma and delusions.
You should destroy your Samsāra, destroy your wheel of life like an elephant destroys a grass hut. Now you can imagine what an elephant can do to a grass hut so with your wisdom you can do the same to your saṃsāra. And so that’s his exhortation to us. So we should identify with this as me. Alright?
That’s just a general picture, any questions on that? Yeah? Right, so you’re saying within human experience there are parallels of all the different states described. So the question is, is this just a depiction of Well, yeah, I mean, when I first heard the description of the Realms of Rebirth, the only way I could accept it was to see it as metaphor for human psychology. Because we do, as humans, we seem to be able to experience the whole spectrum.
And it took me a long time. Of course, we can accept the reality of animals because we can see them. And we can see that animals have consciousness, have different experiences and so on. So at least there are two realms which we can validly accept from our own observation. It may be hungry ghosts, and I was very skeptical, probably many of you know the story of when I first became ordained and I started living at Kopan Monastery in Nepal and I started the People’s Clinic.
And people used to come to me, you with physical and also their story, their life stories. And there’s a huge Bodhi tree at Kopan and still there and the Hindus actually had a little shrine there, they used to worship worship it. The first person said that whenever she had been seeing ghosts or whatever since she was young, and in that was the description of hungry Ghosts and what attracted her to Buddhism. She was a psychologist and sort of not into any religion or anything, but she couldn’t deny what she’d been seeing and so she wanted to sort it out. And she said that each evening she saw this round black figure, very furry with big saucer like eyes around that bodhi tree, you can see it in the evenings and I just took note.
Maybe a year later somebody else told me the same story, he was from South America, no connection and there certainly wasn’t a rumor going around. And then a third event happened where a guy came at the end of a meditation course, he’d been trekking while his girlfriend had been doing the course, so he came at the end of the course and the final night he was out in a tent and we were meditating and we heard these terrifying screams and he’d just been in his tent and he described the same figure came into his tent, because he had no indoctrination, no Buddhist talk about spirits, just somehow So I thought it was significant that three completely different individuals described the same appearance. Well, something which to me, being observer, here’s an objective experience and there’s been no common indoctrination of their minds into saying, Oh, there’s a big furry ghost at Kopan. They came totally independently. So from my point of view, I began to, well, maybe they’re right, there are spirits and I used to avoid that tree at night.
Well that’s right. I mean, as the Dalai Lama says, he says, if empirical observation contradicts the Scriptures, you have to follow empirical observation. Yeah. But then, more to it. So that’s one avenue of getting to recognize these other realms of rebirth.
Another avenue is where does your mind come from and where does it go? So going back to the presentation of mind as being the continuum presentation of mind as being the continuum of clarity and awareness, these defining characteristics of mind are not possessed by physical matter. So, we do have mind, we do have clarity and awareness, and the present moment of clarity and awareness is necessarily the continuity of the previous moment in time. And then the present moment of clarity and awareness will be the cause of the next moment of clarity and awareness. So you have this continuum of clarity and awareness, just as the body has its continuity of energy.
As clarity and awareness are not physical properties at all, they can’t have been created by the nervous system or the mind. There’s no similarity in any physical matter of clarity and awareness. Matter can’t give rise to clarity and awareness, and clarity and awareness can’t give rise to mind. But we have mind. So where did the first moment of clarity and awareness of this life come from?
It has to be the continuity of previous clarity and awareness. And the most likely or the most logical answer is it came from a previous life. And when we die, it won’t cease, so it will continue on to a future life. And then you can see that, yes, the human similarities in terms of human experience, even in dreams, we can have even more vivid, hell like experiences in dreams and hungry ghost like experiences in dreams. We can mean animals in dreams.
And we totally believe that we’re in that dream body, that that is us, even though it’s not real. The experience is there, it’s created by the mind. So it’s not a huge leap in logic to if there is a continuity of mind and that we can that our mind can exist in an animal body and so on in the future. So there’s a logical sequence there. The view of which?
I missed that. What’s the word? I have no idea. Is it a Tibetan word? Mahāmudrā, that’s got nothing to do with what we’re talking about.
That’s just a method of meditation on the mind. Okay. Yeah, it’s not related to this. Okay. Thank you.
Alright. So we’re going to discuss in detail then the twelve links. And you can see that the first we just talk about each link and then we’ll talk about how they interconnect in detail. So, as I explained, these illustrate the way in which throwing karma is created and the way in which it ripens and what it gives rise to and so continuity of rebirth under the control of throwing karma. So we’re talking about throwing karma, so it means a fully performed karma.
It’s not, you know, a karma which has all four branches complete: the object, the motivation, the action, and the completion of the action. And so, it’s a total karma. So, it begins with the first link of ignorance and the ignorance is depicted by, you can see there’s a blind man who’s walking with a stick. So he’s blind, he can’t see where he’s going. So the blindness symbolizes the root ignorance and the ignorance of the twelve links refers to the self grasping ignorance, the ignorance of reality.
Within ignorance of reality there is the wrong appearance of the self, of a self to exist in its own right. Grasping at that wrong appearance to be true is the self grasping ignorance. So that’s the actual ignorance link itself. So this is number one, comes at the beginning. Now there can be various aspects of ignorance.
There’s also ignorance of cause and effect, of karma, karmic cause and effect, which is not simply not knowing about karma, it is an ignorant mind which rejects karma, which denies karma, which denies that there is a long term result of my immediate actions in life. Know, that there is any fault. Actions in life. You know, denying that there is any fault, any long term fault or harm received by killing animals, for example. The ignorant belief that the animals are on the world for our use, for us to kill, and there is nothing wrong in killing animals or killing humans or killing enemies.
And going ahead and killing convinced that one is doing an okay thing is the ignorance of cause and effect. So you know, ignorance is non virtuous. It is very heavy ignorance because obviously through that ignorance we engage in unskillful actions in life. The self grasping ignorance is not non virtuous. Buddha didn’t say it was either virtuous or non virtuous, it’s just very bland ignorance.
It itself doesn’t create non virtue, but it can lead to non virtuous mental factors. So, when we’re talking about this first link, we’re talking about the direct motivation for karmic actions. Now, we know that there can be virtuous karma and non virtuous karma. Both of them have to be preceded by the first link, which is the ignorance of reality. So for a karma to be virtuous, the mind at the time of the action has to be in a virtuous state.
So you cannot have the ignorance of cause and effect manifesting at the same time as the virtue of creating the karma arises. Because moment the mind can’t be mixed virtue and non virtue. At any one moment the mind is either totally virtuous, totally non virtuous or totally neutral. There’s no such thing as at any one moment manifest hatred and manifest love. Those are completely contradictory and they can’t appear at the same time.
So the question arises in the motivation: when does this link ignorance now note the terminology: the link ignorance. I’m not talking about ignorance in general, I’m talking about the specific first link ignorance. That has to be there as part of motivation for a karma. Both a virtuous and a non virtuous karma has to have some space for linked ignorance to manifest. Right?
So when does it It doesn’t manifest at the actual time of the action because that will be either a virtuous or non virtuous mind. It’s taught that we talk about any action because actions aren’t instantaneous the things we do, whether it’s killing, stealing, lying occur over a period of time. And the beginning of the period of time that is called the initial motivation, that’s when the link ignorance arises, self grasping ignorance. So the mind is abiding in a sense of, you know, for example, sense of clinging at one’s own self to exist in its own right, and there’s somebody else. Our mind ignorantly clings to them to exist in their own right.
So it’s manifesting. Now within that ignorance then that person does something to hurt us. So then our mind becomes angry. And anger is non virtuous and so we abuse that person with explicit intention to say hurtful words that will hurt them. So that’s the action of harsh speech.
And that mind, in expressing those hurtful words, is totally non virtue. Now it came from the self grasping ignorance which was neutral. But then something happened and we exploded in anger and we abused them. So then our mind became totally non virtuous. And at that moment we created a non virtuous karmic imprint in our mind, a non virtuous karmic act, which when that act ceased, a non virtuous karmic imprint established on our mind stream.
Alright? So, the action, the karmic action of abusing that person, that is the second link. That is the link of karmic formation. And when we talk about karmic formation, we’re talking about the formation of the imprint or the karmic potential on our mind stream. In terms of a virtuous karma, the same sequence would occur.
The primary at the beginning of the motivation of virtuous act there is a self grasping ignorance self grasping ignorance referring to the self of the other person. Manifest and within that self grasping ignorance a virtuous mind arises to do something to help, to please that other person. So we do some kind act where we speak nice words, make them feel happy and right now out of compassion they’re sad so we say soothing words and with that virtuous mind we create a virtuous karmic imprint on our mind and that creates a throwing karma for a happy rebirth. So that’s how shows the ignorance link in relationship to creating karma. You won’t have the ignorance of cause and effect in this virtuous action because ignorance of cause and effect is non virtue.
So that can’t manifest. Not saying we don’t have the seed of it, we do, but it’s not manifest in the mind at the time we do the virtuous action. It’s an important point to understand that our mind at any one moment in time is either totally virtuous, totally non virtuous or totally neutral. And of course because, you know, the mind changes every split second the mind changes, the Abhidharma says sixty times and other texts say three hundred times or something like that. So there are many moments of possible change in the mind and this is why our mind can fluctuate mind rapidly between virtue and non virtue.
And it’s up to us to try and make as many moments of time to maintain our mind in the state of virtue as much as we can. Initially it takes effort to put the mind in virtue. After a while it becomes spontaneous without effort. That’s what we should be working towards, to not having contrived virtue but having spontaneous virtue. And that’s possible.
It’s always possible to be always mindful. That’s what mindfulness is all about. Watching the mind. Is my mind in state of virtue or non virtue? If it’s in a state of non virtue, ring the alarm bell, stop the car, get out.
Atisha, the great Indian practitioner who reestablished the dharma in Tibet about a thousand years ago. He used to always, you see, he’s depicted carrying a stupa with him and whenever he recognized in his mind a non virtuous thought, He would instantly get off the horse or stop what he was doing, place the stupa in a high place and do three prostrations and apply the four opponent powers. So if a Atisha had to do that, we should carry several stupas with us. Be mindful of the need to place the mind in virtue. And this is why it’s so good to have holy images, stupas and Buddha images around, everywhere.
So they remind us to place a mind in virtue. Wherever you go in Kathmandu, it’s like that. There are stupas and holy images everywhere. And if you watch him in the car, he’s always looking out the window and he’s got his hands like this prostrating to the stupa or Swayambhu stupa, whichever stupa happens to be appearing at that time, he’s always holding his mind in virtue. We’re all idly gossiping in the car about the food at the restaurant where we’re going to.
Lama Zopa’s keeping his mind in virtue. So it’s just you know, it’s something we have to really be mindful of and a useful method to keep our mind in virtue. So essential. Alright, so the second link is the link of karmic formation and that is illustrated by a potter who’s making pots and vessels of various shapes and sizes. So the different shapes and sizes represent the different types of rebirth that are created through karmic formation.
You know, happy rebirth, unhappy rebirth. We talk about meritorious karma, which brings about happy rebirth in the desire realm, or meritorious karma in its unwavering aspect brings about rebirth in the formless realms. We call these rebirth in the form and formless realms unwavering because when that karma ripens we go straight from this life to the or formless realm. There’s no bado, no intermediate state, straight into the rebirth and form or formless realm. And it can’t be changed, it won’t fluctuate.
Whereas ordinary meritorious karma for rebirth in the desire realm as a human, a demigod, or a desire realm deva, those can fluctuate. They can change. We canand also the nonmeritorious karmas can fluctuate. They don’t have to bring about rebirth in a particular state. Like, for example, we can diminish the power of rebirth as desire realm deva through some action and we’ll be reborn as a human instead.
And the same thing we may have the karma to be reborn as an animal, but through applying the Four Opponent Powers we can change the direction so that that karma will just ripen as some unpleasant experience as a human being. So they’re fluctuating, changing. But the karma to be born in the formless realms don’t change like that. If you create the karma to be born in the form realm and if that karma ripens at death, well you’ll go there. It won’t change.
So there’s this classification of karma into meritorious, bringing happy rebirth and desire realm or form or formless realm, non meritorious bringing rebirth in animal hungry ghosts and hell realms. And within the meritorious there’s the particular form and formless realms which are unfluctuating. So I’ve said that the second link is a karmic path which has all four branches complete. Now we can talk about contaminated karma. You’ll hear this: contaminated karma and uncontaminated karma.
Contaminated karma refers to the intention in an ignorant mental continuum, right? So, contaminated karma refers to the karmas in the twelve links, which bring about rebirth in those various states. When you read in the text a mention of uncontaminated karma, this is just using the term karma. It’s not strictly karma in the sense of an ignorant mental continuum because something which arises only in the minds of very high beings. Like when one follows the Hīnayāna path and one becomes an arhat, one destroys one’s personal saṃsāra and one attains nirvana.
And the Hīnayāna arhats remain absorbed in the bliss of nirvana for eons of time. But eventually, when the time is right, the Buddhas will wake them from their Samādhi and they will say, they will tell, they will point out that although your saṃsāra has come to an end, suffering still exists in the world. And hearing those words and with their vast power of perception, they will just instantly see the suffering that’s still happening in the world and they will generate bodhicitta, the great compassion, to rescue all beings from suffering. So then in order to actualize the bodhicitta, you know, to bring to full Buddhahood, they need to go to the pure lands. And the pure lands are places where only ārya bodhisattvas, which means this is the supreme pure lands, the aryabodhisattvas are those who have bodhicitta and have wisdom directly realizing emptiness.
So clearly these arhats have just got their wisdom realizing emptiness and now they’ve generated bodhicitta. But to go to the Pure Land they need some movement in their mind. Now they’ve eliminated all of the obscurations, all of the afflictive obscurationsignorance, you know, the three animals and their subtle derivativesthey have eliminated it from their mind. They cannot create karma as we know it. There can be no movement of the mind in terms of karmic formation.
So they can never create the second link. And anyway, rebirth in the highest pure lands is not karmic ripening anyway, it is ripening, it is the accumulation of the uncontaminated accumulation of merit. So what they still have in their minds is that they have obscurations to knowledge, obscurations to omniscience. Even though they no longer have the ignorance grasping a true existence, still, because of the imprints of that ignorance in their minds in the past, there is the stain which is that things appear to their minds as existing inherently. They know this is false appearance.
They’re not trapped by that false appearance. They don’t grasp at that appearance to be true. But there is this false appearance and this appearance is an obscuration to omniscience. Omniscience is the state where one sees the ultimate and conventional truths simultaneously. It’s like one sees, an ordinary person and one sees their emptiness simultaneously.
That is the omniscient mind which is able to observe everything ultimate and relative to truth simultaneously. So, this wrong appearance obviously blocks that, so it’s called a knowledge obscuration. And they use that with their bodhicitta, they use this knowledge obscuration as a means to go from their state of blissful absorption in nirvana to the pure lands, where they’re born in this pure land, where they’re able to meet the Buddhas in the Sambhogakāya aspect and receive the teachings, and they can complete the Mahāyāna path in the pure land. So that movement is uncontaminated karma. Right?
So this is explaining when you read in the text the term uncontaminated karma. That’s what we’re talking about. It’s not karma according to the twelve links. Also, Ārya Bodhisattvas do the same thing. Ārya Bodhisattvas, through great compassion, they may not yet have attained nirvana, but they’ve destroyed the twelve links.
And through great compassion they have the thought to reborn again and again in the human realm to continue working for others, continue training their mind on the ten perfections. Ārya Bodhisattvas, through compassion, They can take rebirth as humans not through karma, not through the contaminated karma of the twelve links, but if they have yet to realize nirvana, they use whatever afflictive obscurations may exist in their minds or they can use the obscurations to omniscience as means as the method which causes some mental movement motivated by compassion to take a human life. So, like, Śākyamūni Buddha was born as a human being. So, isn’t this karma? No, it’s not karma.
It’s the, well, a Buddha manifesting as Nirmānakāya is different. It’s not even uncontaminated karma, it’s just a pure emanation. But a bodhisattva appearing in the world, taking a human body, definitely takes a human body, but they do so through this so-called uncontaminated karma. Okay? It’s a term which you will come across and it’s to be clear that we’re not talking about the twelve links.
So the third link is called, literally, it’s called the consciousness link. And as the intention coming from the first link, the self grasping ignorance link, does the karmic path, and we do the act, like the example I gave was speaking harsh words of abuse to somebody who we hate, then that when that act finishes, when it’s completed, when the person is hurt by the words we say and we know it and we rejoice in our words having the effect of reducing them to tears, then the action stopped. It’s completed. And the cessation of the karmic act doesn’t just disappear. The cessation of the act establishes on the mind stream the karmic potency or the potential or the propensity, whatever you want to call it, this karmic seed carried on the mind stream.
And that itself, that potency is an impermanent phenomenon, it’s a dependent arising, and it goes through sequence of disintegration giving rise to a similar potency disintegration giving rise to a similar potency through time. So it remains dormant, carried on the consciousness. So, the third link, consciousness, refers to the stream of consciousness from the time that specific karmic potential was created by the previous link, the karmic formation, so we call that the causal consciousness. So that consciousness link refers to the consciousness from that time it was created to whenever that specific karmic seed is nurtured and ripens ripens and gives rise to its result. So that means the causal consciousness stretches from the time we’re created, the karma, which may be many lifetimes, to the time it ripens and then the causal consciousness continues through to the Bardo experience until the end of the Bardo experience and the consciousness enters the womb of the future mother, then the causal consciousness stops and the resultant consciousness link is the first moment of consciousness in that new life that’s been thrown by that karma that was created by karmic formation.
So, when we’re talking about the twelve links, we’re talking about twelve events associated with every one karmic act. So our mind contains countless billions of karmic seeds. So we have countless billions of twelve links. Countless billions of twelve links that we’re experiencing. In this context we’re referring just to this specific karmic action, second link.
And the consciousness link is that which bears the karmic imprint and it is also when the karmic potency gives rise to its result, it ceases. Ceases. The result is the consciousness of the well no, the result is not consciousness of the next life. I’ll explain later when we come around to the other links what the result of that karmic imprint is. But the consciousness link, the third link, the causal consciousness and resultant consciousness.
The resultant consciousness is the first moment of consciousness in the new life thrown by that karma. And the depiction shows a monkey sort ofoften it’s going from tree to tree or running over a house. This can symbolize, from one point of view, that the consciousness goes from life to life, from one existence to another existence, like the monkey goes from tree to tree. Or it can be that the you can see it as the monkey represents the karmic imprint being born on the tree or the house, which represents the consciousness. Alright, so maybe that’s a good place to have a break because it’s sort of we talked about the first three links, the creation of the karmic potential, and then the next links we talk about how it ripens and what it gives rise to.
So any final questions about those three? Yeah? So these first three links for a particular action, is it right to say that for a particular expression of a karmic result? So the particular? Particular of a karmic result, like an imprint, would the first three links come from a previous life?
Is that what that’s about? It’ll come later. At the moment we’re just describing what the links are, then in terms of how they manifest in different lives we’ll talk about that later. I’m not getting what number three is at all. Number three is called the consciousness link.
So is that the way it’s carrying the It is the mind that carries the imprint. Consciousness and mind are synonyms. So the second link is karmic formation, right? We’ve created a karmic imprint. Where have we created?
On the the mind stream. And the consciousness link is the mind stream which bears that karmic imprint, that specific karmic imprint. And so the consciousness link is the consciousness from the time the karmic imprint was created by that second link right through to the consciousness, the first moment of consciousness in the life that is thrown by that particular karmic linkby that particular karmic imprint. So the consciousness link can include thousands of lifetimes. Because the karma doesn’t necessarily ripen at the end of that life.
It may not ripen for thousands of lifetimes. So, the consciousness link refers to the consciousness bearing that imprint over all those lifetimes. So, our consciousness now is bearing countless karmic imprints. So, for each karmic imprint it is the consciousness link for that specific karmic imprint. It’s also the consciousness link for other ones, but we’re only talking about one karma.
Sorry, what’s the question? Is it the consciousness goes to the first moment of consciousness of the life in which the karma is right? The consciousness link. You have to add link. We’re talking about specific links.
So this specific consciousness link of the prior karmic formation, the specific karma created by that second link, which is specific karma motivated by the first link, ignorance. Right? We’re talking about a specific action. The third, the consciousness link is the consciousness from the moment that karmic action ceased, right? When the karmic imprint was established, right through to the first moment of consciousness in the life that will be thrown by that karma.
We’re just talking about throwing karma. We’re talking about the life that’s thrown by that karma, we’re not talking about completing karma, we’re about throwing karma. Yeah, that’s right. The term consciousness link, the third link, can be divided into causal consciousness and resultant consciousness. So causal consciousness refers to the time from the moment the karmic seed was created right through until just prior.
So it will be the last moment of consciousness in the Bardo that gives rise when the new life is and so the resultant consciousness is just one moment. One onesixtieth of a second. One onesixtieth of a finger snap. The duration. So that’s the resultant consciousness.
That’s just one moment. But causal consciousness, many moments, many lifetimes. All of our thoughts influence our mind. All of our thoughts are Yes, because karma is intention and intention is an ever present mental factor. So we create sixty karmas every split second.
But they’re not all throwing karmas. Because we’re thinking all the time. We all thoughts. Yeah. That’s right.
It’s like continuous creation of karma. That’s right, but not necessarily throwing karma. To create throwing karma you have to have all four branches complete. It’s a big action. The reverse, so the twelve The rebirths are just talking about throwing karma.
We’re not talking about completing karma. The life forms, the type of rebirth, is a result of twelve linked karma, but the environment is They’re not what? They’re not part of throwing karma. Let’s go through the whole description, then you get some better idea. Alright, I think time Yeah, last one.
No, no. Oh, lunch.