2. Karma

Now I’d like to talk a little bit about karma. 

There are many different ways of explaining karma, such as the academic way, where there are multiple divisions, numerous analytical points of view and so forth.⁶ There are many ways you can explain it, but this time I’m going to keep it simple. 

Karma is action. Actions of body, speech and mind are karma.

For example, when we take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha we’re supposed to follow the Buddha’s teachings, but if we’re not conscious of the everyday actions of our body, speech and mind, it’s difficult to really be taking refuge. In other words, taking refuge can’t solve your problems if you’re not aware of your actions. 

You might believe, “Oh, Buddha is fantastic; Dharma is fantastic, pure; the Sangha are fantastic. There’s no question, they are perfect.” But simply saying that is not enough. It’s not enough to say, “I understand from meditation, books and lamas that Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are perfect, clean clear, and that this is my path.” If that’s the way you live rather than in awareness of your own actions, I don’t think refuge can solve your problems. 

The real way of taking refuge is to follow karma. If you act in a certain way with a certain motivation, the appropriate effect will ripen within you. That is karma. It can be positive, it can be negative, that is, moral or immoral, which is just another way of saying positive or negative. We call actions of body, speech or mind that bring positive reactions moral, and actions that result in confusion, restlessness, sorrow or suffering immoral. Therefore, try hard to understand what Lord Buddha taught regarding moral and immoral actions and the good and bad results they bring. Furthermore, try to integrate this understanding with your everyday life, always asking yourself, “If I think and act this way, what will result?” If you can do this, you will then think and act as positively as possible. It is very important to know all this. 

Also, karma is not something you just have to believe. Karma has imbued the energy of your entire being from the day you were born. Karma doesn’t depend on some people believing in it and others not. Say I get to the point where I’m saying, “I don’t believe anything. I certainly don’t believe that there’s such a thing as karma that determines whether I’ll be happy or unhappy.” No matter how much I refute the idea of karma, my entire being, everything I think and do, is karma. No matter how much I’m against Lord Buddha’s teaching on this, all of me, psychologically and physically, like a watch tick, tick, ticking away, minute by minute, is karma. Karma is just the energy of body, speech and mind. The human body, speech and mind are karma. 

The reason we call it karma, which literally means action, or cause and effect, is because all our physical and mental energy, every action of our body, speech and mind, reacts to produce another action, whether we believe it or not. 

Some Westerners think, “If I’m a Buddhist and believe what the Buddha taught, if I’m not careful in my actions, I create bad karma. But since I’m not a Buddhist and don’t believe, it doesn’t matter.” Many people think like this. I’ve had them tell me. But they’re wrong. Karma doesn’t depend on your believing it or not. No matter how much you reject the idea of it, it’s a scientific, natural law. How can you reject that? It’s not something that Lord Buddha just made up. 

Maybe it’s because karma is an Eastern word, Sanskrit terminology. Then people think, “Karma is Eastern stuff, an Eastern thing.” You can’t say that. Your entire being is karma. You are karma. You can’t escape it. Even if you follow another religion—Hinduism, Christianity, whatever—even if you’re a believer or a nonbeliever, you are completely immersed in and pervaded by karma. 

That’s why karma is very heavy. You can’t say, “I don’t believe that. I don’t believe in suffering.” It doesn’t matter whether you believe you are suffering or not. Anyway, you are suffering. Your suffering doesn’t depend on your believing it or not. That’s true, really.

Especially now that you’re at a meditation course, through your meditation, through your own experience, you can see how your mind is rushing in unstoppable circles, one thought after another, one thought after another, on and on. Phew! It’s incredible. That’s karma. You can’t control it. It’s running, running, running, like a ticking watch. If you don’t understand how the actions of your body, speech and mind arise and how positive and negative actions are generated, even though you might have tremendous faith, “Oh, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha are my way, the Dharma is my way,” you’re joking; it’s just a joke. The simple way to really practice Dharma in everyday life is to examine your body, speech and mind, to be aware of your actions and to direct that energy as much as you can into a positive direction. That is what we call practicing morality. 

In the West, the words morality and immorality have a sort of religious connotation and imply some kind of belief; something a religious leader made up. But morality is not some kind of psychological or philosophical religious idea based on fabricated reasoning. Morality is talking about nature. It’s as scientific as the things they teach in biology class at school, like human evolution, fish, monkeys and so forth. You’ve all learned that kind of thing. Lord Buddha’s scientific explanation of karma is quite close to that. In school they teach you first this happens, then this, then that, then this, in a sort of logical mathematical way. The explanation of karma is similar. If you’re aware of and understand the actions of your body, speech and mind and how they evolve through the course of each day, you can see the similarity with what you were taught when you were younger. 

When you understand karma, you can see how even a small action can bring a great result. To explain this, Lord Buddha gave the example of the bodhi tree seed. The seed is tiny but the tree that grows from it, like the one at Bodhgaya, can be so enormous that five hundred chariots could fit beneath it. Tiny seeds can produce huge plants. Karmic seeds are exactly like that, except that the psychological effects can be even greater than the external ones.

Some Western people think that through meditation you can experience a kind of high. They consider that to be profound, unusual, fantastic and a source of real happiness. But the lamrim teachings do not regard such experiences as important. From the lamrim point of view, what’s important is awareness of your daily actions and making sure that you put them into the right channel. If you do that, even from the start you will experience incredible effects.

It also seems that Western people are interested in meditation as a source of power. Not that they meditated, but in Germany, Hitler had power and killed millions of people. In China, Mao had power and was also responsible for millions of deaths. So people who want to achieve psychic power through meditation are mistaken. They should, instead, act in a realistic way. Perhaps you think, “I’m high! As long as I’m happy and high, that’s all that matters. It doesn’t affect me; let those millions die. I’m high!” That’s absolutely wrong.

I tell you, people like Mao are compassion objects. We should feel much compassion for them. Because of his power, Mao caused maybe a billion people to suffer, and in death he has had to deal with the consequences of his actions. So rather than being angry at him for doing those terrible things, we should pray for him as he experiences the ripening of his dreadful karma. 

One time in Tibet, in the middle of the night, Atisha started calling out to his attendants, “Get up! Get up! Make tormas;⁷we have to make offerings.” They asked, “What’s going on? It’s the middle of the night. What are you saying, Atisha?” He replied, “Horrible things are happening in the world. In India, one of the great tantric yogi meditators has turned into an incredibly powerful angry spirit and is on his way to Tibet, so we have to make him these offerings and request him not to come.” 

This Indian yogi was a good example of not meditating with complete purity of motivation, of not meditating with bodhicitta, of meditating in the quest for power. You can get some kind of power through meditation, but it’s uncontrolled. You have not yet conquered your anger and attachment, so what is the good of that? As long as you have ego, which is the constantly running central energy generator of your mind and life, you are automatically and continually creating karma. To completely release that egotistic mind, strong concentration and blissful feelings are not enough. What you need is bodhicitta, the ultimate manifestation of universal compassion. 

When you understand how the cause and effect of karma works, that’s when you start wanting to follow the path to liberation. Every action you create has an effect. Many beginning meditators say, “I don’t feel my meditation is progressing. I don’t think I’m any better than I was last year.” Some of my students have told me this. It’s true; that’s how they feel. My reply is that they are not acting enough. When you act enough, it’s impossible that you won’t experience progress. If you don’t act enough, yes, you’re going to say, “I’m not sure I’m on the right path. It’s difficult. I don’t feel that I’m going anywhere.” It’s because they’re not acting. For sure, if you act, you’ll experience progress. If you don’t, you won’t. 

Take, for example, Nepalese mountain people who have never tasted chocolate. You say to them, “Chocolate is really good. Where can I get some?” They have no interest in it because they have no experience of it. They’ve never had the chocolate feeling. They prefer potatoes. 

Similarly, when you begin to have meditation experiences, instead of becoming arrogant and grasping at power or higher states of consciousness, just try to act as much as possible in accordance with your understanding of karma. Some religious people and philosophers feel themselves to be special and seek recognition and power. That’s not right. In fact, the energy of our body, speech and mind itself is power. In fact, all existent phenomena contain some kind of power. It’s not something that is produced out of nowhere. It’s inherently there. In the same way, the power of your body, speech and mind means that you yourself are power. 

Also, when you make your mental and physical daily actions positive, that becomes purification as well. You purify your neurotic mind. Acting in that way, keeping your actions clean clear, you become psychologically healthy and reach beyond neurosis and mental disorder. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Westerner or an Easterner or where in the world you come from; it doesn’t matter if you’re a believer or a nonbeliever, confusion, guilt and restlessness are there. That’s karma, whether you accept it or not. 

For example, there are many people in the West who don’t believe in religion, morality, immorality and so forth but still, they often harbor feelings of guilt. Are you communicating with me? These are people who say they are not religious and don’t believe in morality or spiritual growth, yet through acting under the influence of their unclear, foggy mind they finish up feeling full of guilt. I’m talking about nonreligious people. Do you think it’s possible that nonreligious people could be guilt-­ridden? Guilty and psychologically sick? It doesn’t matter whether someone’s a believer or a nonbeliever; they can definitely feel guilty.

So that’s their karma, even though they may not believe in it. Not only that. Even small creatures like ants, birds and so forth may look happy from the outside, but they’re all still living under karmically determined conditions. Whether you believe it or not, karmic energy, reactions and effects are completely one with you. As long as you’re under the control of your ego, it’s as if your body is emitting the magnetic energy that attracts karmic consequences. But when you reach beyond ego, all that uncontrollable reacting, reacting, reacting stops and you are forever free from creating immoral actions.

Karma is really a psychological thing. Even tiny thoughts bring results but it’s very difficult to know exactly what they are. Karma is a much deeper topic than emptiness. Emptiness is the complete unity of absolute nature, but the minuscule karmic results of small, short, tiny thoughts are extremely difficult to perceive. It’s only through meditation that we can penetrate deeper into our mind than the gross level. Then we can observe at the subtle or unconscious levels of mind the sorts of reaction these small movements of thought result in. There are many physical things that we’re not aware of. The world of consciousness, or mind, is incredibly more extensive and profound than the physical world. But through deep meditation we can see all the different karmically interdependent phenomena that exist. 

Our Western mind is incredibly curious. We like excitement and exciting things. Even though something might be complete garbage, if it’s funny and stimulates excitement, we like it. This is important. When we find something like that interesting, it has a tremendous effect on our consciousness; it produces a completely hallucinated, deluded painting in our mind. It’s incredibly effective. 

You might counter that with, “But there are good things, too. There are good things everywhere. There’s no such thing that’s absolutely bad.” Yes, there are good things, and yes, there’s nothing that’s absolutely bad. As I mentioned before, Hitler killed millions of people, but his followers thought it was good. Similarly, Mao and his policies also killed millions, but some people thought there was a positive side to it because these days there are far fewer Chinese living in poverty. In this world, every philosophy, doctrine, religion, any trip you can think of, has both a negative and a positive side. But most of the time we’re caught by the negative part and create negative karma, even though we don’t realize what’s happening.

Sometimes when you’re meditating some random picture pops into your mind and you think, “What is this? Where did it come from? I’ve never seen this before in my life.” You might think you’ve never seen it before, but you’ve been looking at things through the garbage environment of your mind for your whole life, and at some point you unconsciously took a mental picture of it, imprinting it into your consciousness. In other words, your mind is a library of all kinds of garbage impressions, so when something pops up as some kind of involuntary recollection, you don’t know what it is or where it came from. Our curious mind is unknowingly collecting all these heavy karmic imprints as we put ourselves into different situations. It’s incredible. But it’s not right. So knowing, as we now do, that putting ourselves into certain situations can later affect our conscious mind in this way, we need to be careful, very careful.

We often use the word “obsessed.” Well, we are obsessed. When we meditate, unforgettable objects come into our mind, even when we don’t want them to. We don’t want random thoughts to come into our mind when we’re trying to concentrate, do we? Certain thoughts arise in this way and we can’t get rid of them, which means that at this particular moment we are obsessed with that object. When we say obsessed by an object, it doesn’t necessarily refer to some external thing. An idea can be an object of obsession. Ideas are not external; they’re something created by your mind, either in pictures or words. Much of the time they can be fantasies. Sometimes you can’t sleep because of them. That’s your karma making that fantasy unforgettable, difficult to get rid of. It keeps you awake. The next morning you’re dead tired because of the all-­night fantasy. This is karma. You can see how incredible human thought is. The conscious world and its phenomena are much more profound, much more expansive than the external world. We think that supermarkets are so great, fantastic. But if you compare the external supermarket with the internal one, the latter is much more profound, has many more things in it than the outer one. 

With respect to the ripening of karma, some people think their present life is the result of their previous life and that the results of karma created in this life will manifest in the next. But karma can ripen years, years, eons, eons after it was created. But karma created in the morning can also ripen the same afternoon. So, it can ripen soon or ripen after a long, long time. There’s also the idea that I’ve done this, I’ve done that, but I don’t see any result coming from those actions, so I doubt there’s such a thing as karma. As we’ve seen, that’s not true. Karma can be a long-­term arrangement. 

In the East, where people believe in karma, their misunderstanding of it can be dangerous. They think it’s fixed. “I was born to eat rice and dal, so that’s all I can eat. I can’t have chocolate. This is my karma.” This is a small example, but they strongly believe this kind of thing. There are lots of misconceptions in the East. People there might accept their own religion and its teachings on karma, but their mistaken understanding can lead them to think things like, “I can’t change for the better because this is the life my karma determined for me. I’ll have to remain like this until I die. I’m confused, unhappy and living in bad conditions and have to be satisfied with only rice to eat because this is my karma until I die.” That’s not true. You can change your karma. 

Of course, there are also unchangeable karmic results, such as the body you’re born into. You might not like your nose, your legs, your arms or whatever and want to radically change them, but those are karmic results that cannot be changed. A dog might want to be like a human but it can’t. Animals have to remain unintelligent their entire life. They can’t have human intelligence until they’re born human. That is their karma. 

However, any karma can be changed, or reversed, before its result has ripened. Once it has ripened, it’s fixed. You can’t change it. If you’re born a monkey or into some other kind of ugly body, change is not possible. Still, and this is common in the West, if someone doesn’t like some aspect of their body, they can try to change it surgically. But even if they do, the resultant beauty is only temporary. Sometimes, karmically, plastic surgery can shorten a person’s life by perhaps ten years. That is possible. It’s karma. 

But if you’re too extreme in your acceptance of karma, thinking, “I created the cause of this result and since it’s karma it must be unchangeable and I have to accept it,” that may not necessarily be true. Depending on what it is, you may well be able to change it. 

The great Tibetan yogi Milarepa is a good example. Earlier in his life he killed many people, but later he was able to purify that karma and attain enlightenment. It can be the same for us. We might have done horrible things when we were younger, but by changing our mental attitude, directing the energy of our body, speech and mind in a positive direction and practicing meditation, we can purify negative karma created over countless past lives. That’s why, as it says at the beginning of the lamrim teachings, our human potential is very great. We can choose whatever we want to do. Weak people tend to think, “Oh, I can’t do it. I have no choice.” They’re completely depressed and devalue their own ability, but they’re wrong. People can often do whatever they set their mind to.

So, to be able to understand karma, you need to study Lord Buddha’s teachings on it as well as your own everyday life actions. Then you’ll be able to understand karma. Lord Buddha’s teachings are incredibly deep. Many people find it difficult to have faith in Dharma. When you actualize karma, when you realize your understanding of the karma created by your own body, speech and mind, you can see what a powerful teaching Lord Buddha has revealed. Through understanding, you gain faith; without it, you don’t. “Maybe what Lord Buddha said is right; maybe it’s wrong.” You’re full of doubt: “Maybe, maybe, maybe. . . .” “Maybe” meditation can be a good thing; perhaps not. If you are full of “maybe,” it can bring you down, down, down: “Maybe meditation is good; maybe I can do whatever I want.” Thinking like that can be dangerous.

Regarding doing whatever your mind wants to do reminds me of a story one of our monks related during his public exam. Despite his family owning a well-­known and successful restaurant, he was in the local supermarket one day when he had a sudden impulse to steal a piece of cheese. So he did. But someone saw him and he got caught and charged by the police. This is the sort of shortcoming you experience when you blindly follow your desire. 

We always pray for the Dharma to guide us. Dharma is the real, actual path to liberation. Dharma is our actual leader, and the real Dharma is within us. Dharma is our vehicle; Dharma is the boat that carries us across the ocean of samsara to the far shore of everlasting, peaceful liberation. In other words, our everyday actions, the karma we create, are themselves the vehicle that brings us to our destination, wherever we want to go. 

Lord Buddha’s teaching is really simple. It’s our mind that’s complicated, that’s all. Lord Buddha’s simple teaching shows us exactly what we have to do. He said, “If you don’t want confusion, suffering, misery and restlessness, cut the root cause: ego and attachment.” If we do that, everything unwanted vanishes. Isn’t that simple? Those are his actual teachings. 

Some people think, “I want to study Dharma but I have to read all these huge texts, attend a meditation course every year, do this, do that. There’s so much to learn, like the prajnaparamita and so forth. It’s all too much.” Actually, it’s much simpler than that. All you have to do is examine your own actions of body, speech and mind; just try to understand the nature of your body, the nature of your speech, the nature of your mind. If you do this, you’re learning Dharma; if you don’t, you can’t put your body, speech and mind into the right channel and you won’t experience any positive effects. 

Most of us know Western Buddhist professors. I’m not criticizing or putting them down, but they sometimes blow my mind. If I show them some kind of Tibetan scripture, they say, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” They read, “Da, da, da, da, da,” like that. Then I say, “Please translate this” and they translate it right away: “Da, da, da, da; da, da, da; da, da, da, da. . . .” I’m surprised. They translate it pretty well. Really, Western Buddhist professors. Their translations are very good. And if you ask them what the text means, they also explain it pretty well. But when they do, it’s all very kind of far off. Academically, they say, “Buddhists think this; Buddhists think that,” and the way they put it is very detached, as if it has nothing whatsoever to do with them. They speak very convincingly but their actions are not in accord with what they say. Next time you’re at the university, ask the Buddhist professor some questions. They can explain, but they don’t act. It’s true; I can say that. Of course, you should never judge, but I can say certain things that are true.⁸

So, professors can expound on karma, too, but they never relate what they’re talking about to their own actions. They say something like, “In Eastern philosophy they talk about karma, which means that in a previous life you created the karma to be born into this one.” They don’t believe it, and it can be difficult to believe, but that’s the end of their discourse on karma. In one way, you can’t reject what they say about karma, but it takes time to really gain a deep understanding of karma. 

However, as I keep saying, it’s very simple. As the energy of your body, speech and mind reacts to previous actions, it continuously creates further reactions. That kind of interdependent relationship between phenomena is karma. 

Of course, when you practice Dharma, you study and meditate on the teachings. That’s good, but your principal activity should be watching your own body, speech and mind as much as possible. That’s enough. I mean, we’re all responsible for our own actions and for putting our body, speech and mind into the right channel. 

Nevertheless, putting our mind into the right channel is extremely difficult. Let’s say our mind has an incredibly strong desire for chocolate. Visions of chocolate arise one after the other as you sit here thinking about it: “I want chocolate. If I get some I’ll be really satisfied.” You keep obsessing over having chocolate and how good it will be until the strong desire for it leads you to rush out to buy some. 

That’s all. It’s so simple. The human problem is that we make our own problems. Just look at your life. You have all these problems, right? Check up. Most of the time it’s because you’ve put yourself into a problematic situation. If you hadn’t put yourself there, you wouldn’t have those problems. Check up on your own life. You put yourself into some kind of neurotic situation and you become neurotic. If, instead, you were to put yourself into a clean-­clear situation with a good visualization, there’s no way that confusion and disorder would come into your mind. It’s very important that you put your life together rather than creating a situation of mental disorder. 

It’s good that Western psychology uses the term mental disorder. I think it’s quite appropriate. We create an environment of mental disorder within ourselves and then become restless. It’s good to recognize that and to then try to correct the actions of our body, speech and mind and make the right kind of connections with the outside world. Psychologically, there are billions of connections we can make with the external world, and since we have a choice in the way we do that, we have to ensure we make a good arrangement. 

If we find ourselves in a confused situation, it’s of our own making. We create a confused situation and then get confused. God didn’t create our confusion; neither did the planet earth or the supermarket. We created supermarkets. We erected these huge buildings and filled them with stuff from all over the world. We create confused situations in the same way. If instead we created clean-­clear environments there’s no way we’d have to experience the restless effects of a confused situation. 

We are all conditioned. We have not reached beyond conditions. If we were to reach beyond conditions it wouldn’t matter what situation we found ourselves in, but we have not. At the moment, we are conditioned. Check up right now to see if you are conditioned or not. You can see—you are conditioned. We have not transcended conditions; we’re not spaced out somewhere. We have not yet reached the absolute, so be careful. 

It’s all quite simple, but I think that’s enough about karma for now. My interpretation of karma is that if you are aware of the energy of your body, speech and mind, that’s a pretty good way to study karma. 

The human mind is incredible. Each human mind is like a universal ocean, a universal consciousness, ours included. To really know how karma operates within our mind is almost too much. It’s like trying to figure out how many waves there are in the ocean and how they move. The energy within our consciousness is a bit like that. 

Especially in the West, everybody watches what’s going on outside of themselves and whenever other people move, they seem to be so quick, as if they’re acting instinctively, or reflexively, purely physically, without thought. Everybody appears to be so busy, running around automatically, like, for example, in a busy street at rush hour. But all that busyness comes from the mind. The motivation for all this busy activity comes from the mind. Most people think it is all spontaneous, with no thought involved, but it’s not. First comes the thought; then comes the busy action. When you rush to buy chocolate, it’s not spontaneous. No. First you have the desire for chocolate, and that pushes you to run to the shops. It’s the same with any other action that you do. 

The conclusion is, no matter what movements of body, speech and mind you make, it’s all powered by a central source, like a house’s electricity is controlled by an electrical panel in the basement. The motivation in our mind is the force pushing us to act. That’s what’s behind any action we do. That’s what comes first, no matter how spontaneous an action appears to be. 

I’m sure you people think, “Oh, that can’t be.” But it is. It doesn’t matter how quickly an action follows another; there’s always mind behind it. But what that means is that you can cut that action by stopping the mind that’s motivating it. Before an action manifests physically, it starts at the conscious level. It’s like the sky, which is clear at first, but then come the clouds and rain. Before it starts to rain, the foggy cloud energy arises. The clouds are followed by the rain. Similarly, all our actions, no matter how quickly they arise, are preceded in the background by motivation, mental action. That is, there’s a process in the evolution of an action and there’s time to stop it. 

So you can see, the more you meditate, the more clearly you will understand how your mind begins to get cloudy and foggy and what causes that, and if you have skillful wisdom, you can release those causative conditions. For example, when you get angry, “I’m angry with her,” it starts with some kind of uncomfortable feeling and often some kind of illogical reason: “She didn’t look at me nicely,” “She didn’t laugh at my joke,” “She’s not nice to me.” Some small, illogical reason like that. Really. That’s what we’re like in our everyday life. Such small things make us angry. It’s incredible. Check up: with all these experiences of excitement, happiness, unhappiness, anger and so forth, the reason behind them is the most important thing. And the reasons are completely ridiculous—so tiny, so small—and when you discover that, you can release all those emotional reactions. 

However, if you rationalize your anger, say, by convincing yourself that the reasons for it are real, “I should be angry; she didn’t look at me nicely,” the more you think about it, the angrier you get. It builds and builds until you finally explode. On the basis of that tiny reason. Most of the time our anger is based on such small reasons; it’s incredible. And most of the time the reasons are false, unscientific; they’re not big reasons, but silly and small. As I said, when you discover that, you can release and control your emotional reactions. 

Of course, at the time, when you’re angry and feeling really justified in being so, it’s difficult to control the anger, but by training your mind through meditation you can stop the anger from developing by seeing early on how your mind starts to get foggy and how your reason for that is illogical. That way of controlling your anger is good. If you don’t stop the evolution and develop full-­blown anger, it’s too late. “Oh, I want to control my anger.” That’s impossible. You need to see the way you generate anger and interrupt that evolution at the beginning. That’s the wise thing to do. There’s always time between mind and action, so you can definitely learn to do it. 

In particular, actualizing karma helps us grow our bodhicitta, and actualizing bodhicitta and equilibrium, or equanimity, helps us understand karma. And, when we’re walking around, say, a supermarket, seeing reality helps our practice of karma and bodhicitta, so that’s very worthwhile too. 

However, if we’re completely deluded, if there are too many delusions occupying our mind, we start to question what we’ve been taught: “Maybe Lord Buddha’s teachings are right, maybe they’re not; maybe what Lama says is right, maybe it’s not. . . .” Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, until finally, “Oh, it’s impossible that these teachings are correct.” Then you think it’s impossible that you could develop spiritually. So be careful.

I mean, just the idea that you should not harm others, not harm any living being, can be difficult, can’t it? Perhaps you’ve already decided that at least, you don’t want to harm any other people. Perhaps most people feel that it is not good to harm others: “I want to be happy; why should I harm others?” Thinking in that way, perhaps you have already decided that for the rest of your life you don’t want to harm others. But now the question is, what does harming others mean? Does it mean simply beating them physically? It’s a big responsibility to determine not to harm others. I’m sure none of you want to harm others, but what exactly does that mean? 

Student. Do you want an answer?

Lama. Yes!

Student. Harming others is giving them the conditions where they would experience one of the three sufferings: suffering of suffering, changeable suffering and pervasive suffering.

Lama. That’s right, yes. That’s a big responsibility, isn’t it? Most of the time we don’t harm others intentionally but unconsciously. Our old self-­cherishing is so deeply rooted in our mind that we harm others instinctively, or intuitively. We don’t mean to, but we damage other people’s minds unconsciously. 

You can harm others without having the explicit motivation, “I want to harm.” We harm them heedlessly while at the same time unconsciously cheating ourselves. We don’t intend to cheat ourselves or cause ourselves suffering; we don’t do it deliberately—I mean, we’re attached to ourselves, to our own freedom from suffering—but with our ignorant, incapable, foggy mind, we create situations where we ourselves become restless and confused. In other words, through ignorance, we unconsciously destroy our own peaceful mind—not understanding our own behavior, we harm others, thereby harming ourselves. In fact, in this way, it’s extremely difficult not to harm others. So I agree with what you said. That was a fantastic answer; really good. But the whole thing’s difficult, that’s all. 

Many of you have been to university, where you were taught all sorts of different philosophies. However, many philosophies are garbage and leave negative karmic imprints in your mind. As a result, you spread this garbage to others. That’s harming them, isn’t it? As I often say, when you cross borders you usually have to pass through customs, where they always want to check if you’re bringing drugs into the country. Doing that can be very dangerous, especially since certain countries impose the death penalty for doing it. Certainly you can be put in jail. But they never check to see what wrong conception garbage you’re bringing in—mistaken doctrines, wrong philosophies. 

So which is stronger, hashish or wrong philosophy? Which is more dangerous? In my opinion, it’s the latter. Wrong philosophies are much more dangerous than drugs. An acid trip or a marijuana high doesn’t last that long, maybe twenty-four hours max. Wrong conception views, wrong philosophies, can put you on an incredible trip that can take you in the wrong direction for lifetime after lifetime, because karmic imprints are deeply rooted in your consciousness. Therefore, it’s important that you recognize your own fixed ideas of what constitutes a good life or a bad one, what is good for you and what is not. It’s very important that you know all that. 

Many people think that philosophy is just something you learn at school. That’s not true. The wrong conception philosophy of self-­cherishing is within all of us, even birds, for example. Birds haven’t been to college or university, yet they already possess that wrong philosophy. Snakes are the same; all animals are. It’s an intuitive thing. If you learn how your mind works, the pictures it creates, what you think, your hallucinations and fantasies, you’re learning your own philosophy. 

Actually, I think I can say that all the various philosophies are already in your mind; your consciousness is like a library in which all the different philosophies can be found. Marxist philosophy, for example, is already in your mind. You think I’m crazy! But you have it. Check up; really check up. Similarly, Maoist philosophy, revolutionary philosophies, are also there, whether they manifest intellectually or not. 

It’s very interesting to look into your own mind. That’s why meditation is incredibly important. In meditation, you check your own mind, you watch your own mind. That’s why it is extremely important. When you practice meditation, you feel that what you’re doing is worthwhile, and it gives you a kind of warm feeling. On top of that, by discovering through meditation your own capability, your potential, you see that life is hopeful, life is truly meaningful.

Otherwise, you’re likely to believe that only the supermarket can make you happy. You’re afraid of changes in the economy and so forth and feel cold and empty inside. Therefore meditation is so worthwhile. External change is simply evolution: one civilization disappears; a new one comes. That is the nature of samsara. Instead of worrying about what’s going on in the outside world, you have enough to worry about with respect to the behavior of your own body, speech and mind. What you need to discover and understand is the nature of your mind. People who don’t understand how human beings and the world evolve get frightened when things change because they don’t accept that change is natural. 

When you have at least some understanding of your own mind, changes in the external world will worry you less. There’s no end to worrying about the external world. From the time you were born until the time you die there will always be problems on this earth. Worrying about them is ridiculous. You can’t solve them all. Anyway, growth and decay are in the nature of this civilization. It’s human nature; sentient beings’ nature. 

What you can do is to integrate yourself, get yourself together, and in this life keep yourself on the path to the everlasting, peaceful realizations of enlightenment as much as you possibly can. That is really worthwhile. And you will spread those peaceful vibrations to many mother sentient beings. That’s possible. 

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Notes

6. See Steps on the Path to Enlightenment, Volume 2: Karma. [Return to text]

7. Offering cakes used in tantric rituals. [Return to text]

8. Again, this is 1976. These days, many Buddhist professors are also practitioners. [Return to text]