Understanding Karma

My most dear, most kind, most precious wish-fulfilling one,

I would just like to inform you of a most important subject. When we die, the mind continues and the body separates. The consciousness continues or migrates in two ways. There is not a third way.

If the virtue collected is strong, the result is rebirth as a human or as one of the worldly gods, or rebirth in the pure land of a buddha, which has everything which is incredible, incredible and most beautiful. There we receive teachings from the Buddha and we see the Buddha. There it is zillions and trillions of times more beautiful than the beach, that people find beautiful in the world. It’s amazing, incredible. Once we are born there, for example in Amitabha’s pure realm, we are never again born in hell, or in the hungry ghost or animal realms. In some pure realms we become a buddha, having complete cessation and all realizations, peerless happiness. That’s the most perfect, peerless happiness. If we’re really looking for happiness and wish to cause numberless beings to achieve this peerless happiness, with higher wisdom we can achieve this.

The other way is if negative karma is stronger, we are born in the lower realms, the evil-gone realms. If there is the cause then we are born in hell, or as a hungry ghost or an animal. It is called “evil-gone” because “evil” is the cause and “gone” is the result. If we are born in the lower realms the suffering is most unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable. That result and why it is such a heavy result is because of karma, which is a Sanskrit word. The cause is a heavy negative action. For example, to give an idea, even if all the human beings’ fire is put together, a tiny fire spark of hell is sixty-six times hotter. Compared to one fire spark of hell, all the human fire put together is like an air conditioner, or a snowflake.

What is called karma in Sanskrit, is translated as action in Tibetan. There are the six principle consciousnesses of body and mind, and then there are secondary mental factors. There are four changeable, eleven virtuous, six root afflictions, twenty secondary negativities, five object-determining factors and five kun dro—meaning “all-following the principal consciousness”[five omnipresent mental factors]. These five are feeling, discrimination, intention, contact and mental engagement.

What is called action from these five; what follows the principal consciousness is intention, which causes the principal consciousness to act, to focus on the object. Therefore karma is a mental factor. To give you some more examples about karma, when the action of killing is done with the self-cherishing thought, the action becomes negative. That action becomes a complete karma when it has four things:

• the motivation;
• the base—a sentient being, having mind;
• the action—it can be violent while externally looking peaceful, and
• the goal—in the case of killing, the being dies before you die.

Motivation, you can see, comes from the mind, hence we create negative karma which results in suffering.

A complete negative karma has four suffering results. One result is rebirth in the lower realms, suffering for an incredible length of time. Then there are the three results in the human realm. The possessed result is to do with the place. The place is totally dusty and depressed, or the food, like fruit and so on, is somehow defective and the medicine is no good. The medicine is correct but it has a side effect, though not for everyone, just for some people. Like that.

Experiencing the result similar to the cause is, for example, when we have harmed others in the past, we get harmed in this life. For example, [extremists] kill Westerners by cutting the throat slowly with a knife. There is so much pain and dying is not immediate. This is what they did in past lives to others. Whatever suffering we experience in this life is always the result of past karma, the harm that we did to others or  to ourselves. Whatever happiness or harm, everything has a reason to prove its existence if we know karma.

Buddha knows every single phenomenon of the past, what will happen in the future and also the present. His knowing is unmixed and he can directly read others’ minds, he can know countless universes and countless beings, for example, countless ants, while reading their minds at the same time.  Buddha knows the hell beings, animals and gods, suras and asuras at the same time. Buddha also sees their intelligence and their karmic capacity and he sees every method that fits them. He gradually frees them from suffering by freeing them from the cause of suffering and guiding them to achieve everlasting happiness—the total elimination of negativity and total realization.

Using another example, in America, one man killed so many people in a theatre. People thought he was crazy but actually he was normal with a normal job. Only on that day he had a different thought, a thought to kill, because he had created the cause in past lives, zillions of lives before or just a few past lives before. I’m not sure. That karma became strong and suddenly it happened, and people were killed.

If we practice Dharma, that is how we can purify all those past lives’ karma, thus we don’t have to experience the result. Without Dharma it is not purified. Similarly, as a human, if we have met Dharma, our negativity can be purified. If not, then we cannot purify.

The CNN presenter, Anderson Cooper, enquired why things happen because normally people don’t have an answer. He knew that, but he wanted to ask anyway. Most people in the world don’t know why these things happen because they don’t know karma and they don’t know past lives, so they can’t answer or explain that. Even the scientists can’t explain it. One day the mind is normal then it changes. It is difficult for the scientists to answer, so they just leave it.

The last [of the four ripening results] is [the action of] creating the result similar to the cause. This is like the man who suddenly changes his mind and kills others. Due to the past habit of his mind he kills again. Or like knowing that stealing is bad but the force of habit makes us do it again, even if we know it’s bad. This is from our past lives’ habit.

Here’s another karma story. If we kill one insect, as is mentioned in the teachings of the kind, compassionate Buddha, then for five hundred lives we are born as an insect. Depending on how we kill, it can be more than that. So we have to be really careful not to harm others. We must abandon harming others as much as possible. Refuge in Buddha has as its basis not harming others and on top of that we should benefit others.

 Also, if we cheat one sentient being then in the future we are cheated for one thousand lifetimes. The continuity of cheating someone remains due to taking rebirth. Therefore practicing Buddhadharma really means to stop harming others.

The essence of the Buddha’s teaching, both Hinayana and Mahayana, is to stop harming others. On the basis of that, in Mahayana sutra, comes the focus of benefiting others. On top of that comes the practice of Mahayana tantra, the quickest way to bring all beings to peerless happiness, buddhahood.

Using another example, sexual misconduct done in a complete way becomes negative karma because it is motivated by the self-cherishing thought. The basis is another sentient being; someone who doesn’t belong to you but belongs to another. The action, roughly speaking, even it’s your own husband or wife, is through his or her mouth, like that. Of course there are more details. The ripening aspect result is rebirth in the lower realms and if the action is heavy, then the rebirth in the hells is for an incredible length of time.

From sexual misconduct, there are three suffering results as a human. For the possessed result, the place is incredibly dirty, excrement-filled and smelly. Even that experience for five minutes comes from a past life’s karma of sexual misconduct.

Now we are in a beautiful place, with gardens, flowers and countryside. This is the result of past morality and also prayer, dedicated for a beautiful environment, a clean place. We can see the result of practicing the morality of not harming others.

As for experiencing the result similar to the cause, in this life we are abused by others. Without choice, we are forced into sex or dictated to. Totally, what we experience is the result of harming others. So totally, there’s no need to harm back. Harming back has no end and brings only suffering from life to life without end.

The basis of Buddhism is not to harm others, by taking refuge in Buddhadharma. Buddha is unbelievably wise. In Mahayana we take the loss and defeat, when it exists, upon ourselves. We give it to the self-cherishing thought from where it came and then we offer the victory to others. By doing this one time, then one hundred times, one thousand times, from life to life, we have unbelievable success, like sunshine. It is not just for one life. Wow! Amazing! We have this from life to life, up to full enlightenment.

When we accept defeat and offer the victory to others, though for ordinary people who don’t know Dharma it looks foolish, in reality it is unbelievably wise. We don’t want to suffer, tomorrow or in the next lives, up to enlightenment. Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! What the Buddha taught is unbelievably wise. Only those knowing Mahayana Dharma know this. It is a very wise and interesting practice.

Regarding the action similar to the cause, what we did before we will do again. As with sexual misconduct, we do it again and we get the result again. These are only some examples.

In the five lay precepts the last one is not drinking alcohol and to just say a few words about it, the mind becomes uncontrolled even though  we are usually shy and feel ashamed by nature. We become disgraceful, tell secrets and say bad things and then we fight outside and inside the family. We destroy all the things gathered through effort, education and by collecting wealth. From drinking, car accidents happen which destroy things and destroy lives. Many people can’t control themselves and are kicked out of the house and family. They can’t stay there. Even if we have education from school and university, we become a mess and can’t help the family and on top of that, we create worries and fears for them.

With regards to spiritual development, alcohol is a big obstacle. It pollutes the channels and drops that are used for practicing Vajrayana Buddhism, the means to quickly attain enlightenment and bring all sentient beings to peerless happiness, enlightenment.

Regarding smoking, these days even non-believers stop and now you find, for example at airports, only specific rooms for smoking. Doctors recognize that smoking causes some diseases and contributes to others. They are just talking about this life.

By drinking alcohol and giving it to others, we are born in the crying and great crying hells. Suddenly we are born there and in that house we are constantly burned but we don’t die. Then outside that house there is another. We suffer like that. Spiritual development needs the body and mind to be healthy. So we cannot smoke and drink. There are many shortcomings, even in this life.

To become a nun, to take vows, the basis is not to harm others. And as Buddha did, you wear robes and cut the hair to cut your attachment. You need to abandon attachment, anger and ignorance. The greatest is attachment to this life, which brings all the problems and the expenses in the world.

When the economy goes down, we think to steal and cheat others, creating so much negative karma. All good things that happen, like happiness and success, are the result of past good karma. To be human is good karma resulting from morality, from not harming and from benefiting others. All wealth comes from charity, done sincerely, and also from prayers done for this result. It’s from the past good karma or action of charity.

Practicing morality leads to happiness, a good rebirth and success in this and future lives, and not just for one life, but for many hundreds and thousands of lives, so much temporal happiness.

Regarding morality, precepts are taken with renunciation, a satisfied and content mind, understanding how samsara is in the nature of suffering. By living in this morality we make the mind positive, happy and healthy, and the body also becomes happy and healthy. Therefore it helps us to be free of the pain of birth, old age, sickness and death.

The second level of suffering is the suffering of change—all the samsaric pleasures that we cannot continue, for example, music and so forth, which by the first, second or third day, month or year degenerate to become the suffering of pain. They can’t increase.  By comparison, Dharma happiness increases and continues until buddhahood, and that comes from morality.

The first two sufferings come from pervasive, compounding suffering. This body and mind are under the control of karma and delusion, hence they are pervaded by suffering. Why? Because in past lives, we didn’t eliminate the cause of the oceans of samsaric suffering, delusion and karma and it’s root, ignorance, not knowing the I.

I’m not saying there is no I. There’s I merely labelled by mind. That exists but to our hallucinated mind, I appears to exist from its own side. In actuality it never existed that way since beginningless lives, since beginningless mind. It’s just that we trusted and believed it did. This is the root of experiencing all the sufferings of samsara—cancer, AIDS, depression, diarrhoea, stomach ache or headache, small or big—and any new disease in the world. We didn’t eliminate the root, ignorance, therefore karma and delusion again compound suffering and produce future suffering.

Living in pure morality helps to control the mind and the harmful actions of body and speech that come from that. By achieving shinä, calm abiding, perfect meditation, we are able to control the mind that creates hell, nirvana, samsara, everyday happiness and problems. This completely cuts the sinking thought and attachment thought, thereby achieving the greatest ecstasy of body and mind.

After achieving shinä, we realize emptiness only, the ultimate reality of the I, aggregates and so forth, then we can eliminate the root of suffering, ignorance. After that, we can do analysis on emptiness in our meditation, then we experience rapturous ecstasy of body and mind. We gain insight, the right-seeing path, directly realizing emptiness, the ultimate wisdom that ceases the seed of delusion, ignorance, which is the creator of the suffering and samsara. We cease the seed of ignorance and we cease delusion and karma, thus we can be free of the oceans of samsaric suffering, the six realms. We achieve nirvana, which is free from suffering forever and we never come back [to the experience of suffering] again. No matter how difficult it is to bear hardship for this, it is extremely worthwhile.

We can then actualize infinite compassion, by seeing how other beings suffer. We can  achieve bodhicitta and actualize enlightenment, seeing the unbelievable need of all the sentient beings, like our father and mother, who are caught in the fire. We can’t stand it, so we do everything for them in order to bring them to full enlightenment, buddhahood. In order to accomplish this, we need buddhahood ourself, free of obscurations and complete in all the realizations. The thought to achieve this comes, bodhicitta comes and then we engage in the six perfections, the five paths and the ten bhumis within Mahayana sutra or the stages of generation and completion in Mahayana tantra. All this comes from the power of morality.

The last thing to actualize is the total elimination of the two obscurations, whereby we do perfect work, not just free of obscurations but bringing with it all the qualities and realizations of enlightenment.

The purpose of becoming a nun is for this. Just thinking of this life, we can talk about AIDS, sexual problems, killing and anger due to attachment to others. As a nun, you become the subject of rejecting attachment and killing, which you do secretly.

These above-mentioned problems are great problems in the West and also in the East. They are unbelievable, unbelievable problems. After staying one, two or three weeks, months or years with someone, then life becomes more and more boring. First there’s unbelievable attachment, so much bliss and skies of happiness if we have a wished-for person. Then after living together and seeing more faults and mistakes, living together becomes like living in a fire.

Even scientists with high degrees from university but without Dharma knowledge don’t know all the levels of happiness up to enlightenment. They have a great university education but they don’t know of the great happiness up to enlightenment, based on pure morality.

Thank you very much.

If you can, do at least three recitations of the Vajra Cutter Sutra. Do more if you can. It seems this can bring a good result, but I’m not sure it will be completely what you want.

This is the result of karma created in the past and now you have the result. It is really important to accept this and use it on the path to enlightenment. This is the very best result. In the past you took from her and now the karma is returning.

My very dear mother,
I heard that you had a very hard time when you were staying with __. I just want to remind you of two quotations from the great bodhisattva Shantideva. The first quotation is basically about accepting one’s own karma.

Think, “In the past I gave such a harm to sentient beings, therefore I deserve to receive this harm that sentient beings are giving me.” So, however we are treated by them, not only in the past, but also in the future, however we are treated—what we call harmed by them, so we should realize in this way and practice.

Another quotation that is extremely beneficial when we believe other people are harming us, is to transform that into developing compassion; use that as a means to develop compassion in our heart. That is what is of the most need for others, and turns the harm into benefit. Think, “I created the karma, therefore I will receive this harm from sentient beings. Didn’t I make sentient beings totally get lost?” This means in the beginning we harmed others, so we created karma which persuades those sentient beings to give harm to us this time. By that harm, it causes the person to be lost from the human realm and get reborn in the lower realm. So that’s why after harming us, the person dies, and that harm causes them to born in a hell realm, like a ground up on a mountain, the person fell down from a precipice into the hole of hell. That’s why here, the person is totally under the control of karma and delusion. The original cause of being born in the hole of hell is karma. So that person is only the object for arising our compassion. There is no choice at all— automatically, immediately we want to benefit that sentient being, to save him from the hell realm, instead of arising anger and harming him back again! So this should be kept and used; this is the most important practice.

Also protect oneself from arising anger, also heresy, because it endangers our life and it destroys merit—not only the merit created that day, that week, month or year; even past life merit. Any merit which is not dedicated to achieving enlightenment, and even the merit dedicated to enlightenment gets destroyed; it becomes smaller, just like a mountain where many trucks came and took stone away, but still the mountain is there. So without merit, there is no happiness to enjoy; without merit there is no realization, even more important, that means no enlightenment. That means we cannot liberate numberless sentient beings; we can’t enlighten numberless sentient beings. So you can see how unbelievably important it is to protect merit to develop compassion.

These two teachings from Shantideva’s advice are more precious than a billion, zillion dollars, mountains of gold and diamonds, even the wish-fulfilling jewels that fill the whole sky.

With much love and prayer for you dear mother. We don’t have much time to live, death can happen any day, any moment, so it is good to try to keep the mind more on Dharma, especially compassion to sentient beings and devotion to Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Then lots of virtuous activities will happen every day, every moment. Then other people who scold or harm us or are angry at us, then everybody has to say goodbye and go to a pure realm for a better rebirth, then they all have to ask us, “Can we meet again next time?” They might express this with tears.

With big love and prayer...

My very dear Elizabeth,
Regarding your comment about Buddhism failing you, this is just because you are thinking only about this life, so you are not thinking correctly. There are various karmas created in this life, without even mentioning previous lives.

For example, even killing a tiny insect creates karma that you will experience. Even if you don’t actually cause another person to have a fractured skull in this life, for example, what about your past lives? Karma we experience does not just relate to karma created with other human beings, it can be karma created with a tiny insect.

Then there is karma created by breaking samaya. For example, regarding the first geshe who was at the center, I am not sure if you took him as your guru. If you did then you would have created so much heavy karma, because if I remember correctly he brought a photo of one Rinpoche to the gompa, his root guru, and maybe you didn’t like that. There were other difficulties with that resident geshe. If you took him as your guru, then so much negative karma was created because you didn’t like him.

What has happened to you and your son is nothing if you think about hell. This is still liberation compared to the smallest suffering in hell.

You also need to remember that any action done with virtue can be destroyed or lessened by having anger, heresy, ill will, pride, etc. This lessens the virtue. If the virtue you have created was not dedicated to achieving enlightenment, then it can be completely destroyed. Even if the virtue was dedicated to enlightenment and performed with bodhicitta, it has to be sealed with the emptiness of the three circles of action, subject and object. Only then is it safe and cannot be harmed by heresy, anger, etc.

Even if you have collected merit, it doesn’t mean that you will experience the result of happiness. You have to remember how to make it safe. If you don’t know all the details of how to protect and preserve virtue, even if you have done many virtuous actions, it will be difficult for the virtue to last and also difficult to experience the result of the virtue. Especially if a person is very angry, heresy arises a lot, and there is a lot of ill will, etc, then even if that person does many virtuous actions, the virtue degenerates.

You also have to think about not just this life, but other lives, and the various negative karmas collected with your body, speech, and mind.

It is not only a matter of creating virtue, there is also the karma created by breaking the pratimoksha, bodhisattva, and tantric vows. This not only refers to breaking them in this life, but also past lives. Even if you practice purification, there is still negative karma collected during beginningless rebirths.

You also need to think that sooner or later we all have to die. Even Shakyamuni Buddha left his holy body. There is no-one who has been alive from the beginning of time, even from one hundred and fifty years ago, there is no-one who has not died. There is no-one from the very beginning of time who is still alive.

These problems and incredible hardships that happen remind us that we are in samsara. These problems, accidents, pains and the suffering of body and mind warn us that we should be liberated from samsara. They warn us to practice the path to liberation and enlightenment. That means we have to learn the path and actualize it.

The best thing is to use whatever has happened, what we recognize as bad, and transform it into the quickest support—a means to quickly achieve enlightenment for sentient beings. This is the greatest, most beneficial support to use on the path.

Think, “I have received all the sufferings of sentient beings. I have succeeded in my tonglen practice, which I have been praying for every day, for so many years, to receive sentient beings’ sufferings on me. Now I have succeeded. I am the most fortunate person, who will achieve enlightenment the quickest, by experiencing and receiving all the sufferings of sentient beings.” In this way, using it for tonglen practice, please do this a few times every day, as much as you can. Receive all the sufferings, and think, “I am experiencing all these sufferings on behalf of all sentient beings.”

You should not lose faith in Buddhism. Buddhism is not the thing that gives you trouble. Buddhism is to be practiced. You create the cause for happiness, to achieve the path, to cease wrong concepts, karma and delusion, and it is you who can achieve liberation, everlasting happiness, by ceasing the subtle defilements and achieving full enlightenment.

It is very important to think that many people in the world are in a much worse situation than you. There are many people suffering so much more, people who are not dead but can’t function, or who are suffering incredibly. It is not good to think you are the only one in the world who is like this. To think like that is a big mistake.

Please think about these things.

With much love and prayers... 

Karma becomes powerful when there are many people gathered together. For example, if one hundred people all gather together with the intention to kill a sheep and they kill a sheep, everyone receives the negative karma of killing that sheep.

This means if a government makes the decision to go to war and they are supported by the people of that country, then each person will receive the karma of killing, however many people die. If one human being is killed, they will all receive the karma of killing one human being. If a thousand people are killed, they will all receive the karma of having killed a thousand people.

Without the support of other people, if one person kills one sheep, then only that person receives the negative karma of having killed the sheep. Comparing which karma is more powerful, the previous instance, where so many people had the same intention and killed one sheep, is more powerful. Just one person killing a sheep is less powerful.

Similarly, if one hundred people build a stupa or just one person builds a stupa, the merit received is the same, but the first situation is more powerful than if only one person builds the stupa.

Similarly, the karma of one Sangha¹ reciting a sutra in a temple or room alone, compared to reciting a sutra with all the assembly of Sangha present, the latter one—reciting a sutra with all the Sangha—is much more powerful. This applies to reciting prayers like Lama Chöpa alone in one’s own room or in the temple, or practicing it with a group. Reciting in a group is more powerful.  The more people there are supporting the practice, the more powerful it becomes. 

When the karma is more powerful, the result comes more quickly, whether it’s a project or realization. This is not mentioned in all the lamrims, but it’s mentioned in the Kadampa thought transformation teachings.

Notes

¹ Literally gen-dun: “intending virtue”.

In some ways, you can say even just looking at flowers is an expression of your mind. In your view, you see so many different plants, leaves, and flowers of incredible designs and shapes, each having its own beauty. Anything that is beautiful, that you enjoy, that you find nice, comes from your good karma; it is a production of good karma, an expression of your mind, your positive thoughts. It is like the reflection of your face in a mirror. If your face has many pimples or cuts, or your nose is missing, that's what you see in the mirror. A clean, beautiful face reflects a clean, beautiful image. Another example is taking a picture: you put the imprint of people or a country on the negative roll of film using the camera, then after the roll is developed, the image appears from the paper as photos, a movie, a TV image, or a slide show.

In our lives, everything that appears to us – an enemy or a friend – is like that. Ugly, beautiful, indifferent, everything that appears is exactly like that – coming from our mind, a creation of our mind. We should understand, like looking at the flowers, that how a person thinks about you, talks to you, or behaves towards you, pleasantly or unpleasantly, liking you or not liking you, having pleasant or unpleasant feelings towards you – all comes from your mind and is a production or reflection of your negative or positive thoughts. They are productions or creations of karma.