The Karma of Harming Others

The Karma of Harming Others

Date of Advice:
January 2017
Date Posted:
March 2019

A student was experiencing many obstacles, was dealing with angry people and had debilitating depression. Rinpoche gave this advice.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche writing cards at Buddha Amitabha Pure Land, USA, October 2016. Photo: Holly Ansett.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your letter and offerings. According to my observation you should recite the “mantra without attachment” from the Golden Light Sutra. Recite this with bodhicitta motivation, to have a most beneficial life and to achieve the three principal aspects of the path and the two stages, on the basis of correctly following the virtuous friend, having the stable realization that all your gurus are the Buddha. This doesn’t mean every single guru; it means all the gurus that you have a Dharma connection with.

I checked and it is very important that you do Lion-face Dakini practice. Usually this is done if there is some black magic. Please do Lion-face Dakini practice every day if you can.

One old student, a nun who started her own nunnery in USA, had black magic, so she asked me what to do because one-by-one all the students there became negative and then left and didn’t come back. Even the main person, the manager, became negative and left, so there was nobody helping her. I told her to do the Lion-face Dakini practice, I don’t remember how long she did it for, one or two months, and then after that gradually all the people came back. This is very clear proof that Lion-face Dakini practice helped and I also have other examples.

Please remember, the Kadampa geshe said:

Whatever small suffering you experience now, by experiencing all the problems and difficulties now, it finishes all your past negative karma and there will be happiness in the future, like the sun shining. Therefore, rejoice in this suffering, thinking of it as good and positive, and not as negative.

Also please especially do the practice of tonglen. Take other sentient beings’ sufferings and all the causes and conditions [of that suffering] into your heart. Think that the self-cherishing thought, the root of samsara, ignorance—where all the sufferings  and all the obstacles to practicing Dharma come from—is destroyed. Then with loving kindness give away all your possessions, your merits and your body, visualizing it as a wish-fulfilling jewel. Give away all your three-time merits up to enlightenment to all beings.

Please remember it is just about one time that we have received this most precious human rebirth, where we can stop being reborn in the lower realms forever and we are able to achieve all the happiness; the future lives’ happiness up to enlightenment. This is by having a perfect human rebirth and then not only that, you have met the Dharma, the teachings and the method, so that you can be free from all the sufferings forever and achieve all the happiness up to full enlightenment, and you can free the oceans of samsaric beings from all the sufferings and bring them to enlightenment.

So first, really rely on and take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. This is what protects you from [negative] karma. Abandon the ten nonvirtuous actions such as killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, telling lies and so forth. This is what protects you and is the cause of [rebirth as a] deva or as a human being, where you can then achieve ultimate happiness. Then there is Highest Yoga Tantra practice, which is the means for you to achieve enlightenment in one brief lifetime on the basis of generating compassion to all sentient beings and bodhicitta, and by practicing the six paramitas. Please practice like this as much as one can.

Please recite the Celestial Mansion mantra for success. Recite this with bodhicitta motivation to benefit all sentient beings.

It is extremely good that you have done nyung näs; please continue to do them when you can. Nyung nä is an extremely powerful practice to purify negative karma and obscurations collected since beginningless rebirth and a very powerful way to collect extensive merits and particularly if you do the practice with bodhicitta then you collect more than skies of merits. This is what causes you to achieve full enlightenment for all sentient beings. Recite OM MANI PADME HUM and the long dharani, and do prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas. This also creates the karma to be reborn in a pure land; that is if you don’t become enlightened in this life.

There is one puja you need to have done called che trul.

Lion-face Dakini is very important for you to do. It definitely sounds like black magic, but please remember that black magic comes from your own negative karma, from the self-cherishing thought, from having harmed others in the past. So this is the result. What you experience now is the result of having done harm to others in the past.

It is said by the great bodhisattva Shantideva in the Guide to a Bodhisattva’s Way of Life:

Because my karma persuaded them, I have received this harm from others.
Therefore, didn’t I create the cause for this sentient being to be reborn in the hole of hell?

What you are experiencing is the result of your karma, having caused suffering to others, having given harm, so now they are harming you, and because of this they are creating the karma to suffer and be born in the hell realms in the future.

You are experiencing the result of your past karma of having hatred to others, and in order to not experience that again, it is important to not get angry at others who are angry with you. Therefore practice not getting angry, which otherwise would be the cause of future suffering. On top of that practice compassion, in order to help them not be reborn in the hell realms. At least practice patience and then dedicate your merits for them to not be reborn in the hell realms.

Thank you very much.

With much love and prayers ...