December 8, 1997
THE FOUR ASPECTS OF KARMA: EXPERIENCING THE RESULT SIMILAR TO THE CAUSE
[The beginning of the recording is missing] When we create good karma by living in morality, abstaining from negativity, this results in happiness. We can experience it like that.
Then, there is the completed negative karma of committing heresy, which has four suffering results. The ripening aspect result is rebirth in the lower realms, and then there are the three other suffering results we will have to experience when we take rebirth in the human realm.
With experiencing the result similar to the cause, we have no interest following the virtuous friend, no interest in following the right path. On the other hand, we are attracted to following nonvirtuous friends, wrong guides. We like evil friends, nonvirtuous friends. Instead of being attracted to the right view, we like wrong views, such as believing that there is no reincarnation or no karma. The mind becomes so stubborn, clinging on to wrong views, no matter how totally wrong they are, not making any sense at all, even though they give so much suffering to other sentient beings, such as the practice of sacrificing animals or human beings. For many of the followers of other religions, this is a path, a way of worshipping. Engaging in such heavy negative karma gives so much harm to them and to other beings.
This is just an example; there are many things like that which don’t make any sense at all, but somehow people can be so stubborn and nothing can help them change. The mind is so strong, so fixed in its ideas, believing that this is the right path, no matter how much suffering it causes others, even though it is totally wrong. Many people have strong faith in wrong paths, so fixed and unchangeable. This is the result of the past karma. When the past karma ripens, it’s like that, the mind believing so strongly in something that is totally wrong, and not only is it very hard to change, it is also very hard to understand that it is wrong.
Then there is creating the result similar to the cause, where again we engage in heresy, and then the possessed result, the environment we live in in the human realm. For instance, where we live, before many precious things were produced like gold or oil, but then, in our time, these completely stop. We have hallucinations, such as seeing dirty places as clean. We cannot find a place to live or we have many difficulties because we cannot find a guide, we cannot find refuge, somebody to help us, somebody we can rely on. This is the possessed result of the negative karma of heresy.
If we commit the complete negative karma of heresy today, as long as it’s not purified, as long as we don’t live in vow abstaining from that, we will have to experience four suffering results, one of which is creating the result similar to the cause. That then brings the other four suffering results again. Then it goes on and on, like this. So, this one negative action makes us experience endless suffering.
THE FOUR ASPECTS OF KARMA: KARMA IS DEFINITE AND IT EXPANDS
Not only is karma expandable, karma definitely brings its own result. Having committed one negative karma, we have to experience the suffering result of that so many times in this one life, for so many years, and for so many lifetimes—hundreds of lifetimes, thousands of lifetimes. We have to experience the suffering result of that one negative karma so many times for an incredible length of time, not only in one life but in hundreds or even thousands of lifetimes.
It is mentioned in Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand that if somebody with a negative mind makes a comment to a monk saying he resembles a monkey or he eats like a dog, the person who said that has to be born as a monkey for five hundred lifetimes. There are many stories like this, showing how we experience the suffering result of one negative karma for so many lifetimes. It is mentioned in Aryadeva’s Four Hundred Stanzas … Sorry, I made a mistake! I think it is in Nagarjuna’s teachings, Letter to a Friend, his advice to the king, where he mentioned that if we cheat a sentient being just once, we have to experience the result of this one negative karma by being cheated by others for one thousand lifetimes. Cheating a sentient being once results in being cheated by others for a thousand lifetimes. This is how karma is expandable. For one negative karma, we have to experience the result again and again, for such a long time. There are many other stories about how karma is expandable.
Another aspect of karma is that we cannot experience the result if we have not created the cause. Another is that the karma we have created never gets wasted, it never gets lost. Even though it takes hundreds of eons, it doesn’t get lost. Whenever the conditions come together, we will have to experience that karma, no matter how long it takes.
THE SEVERITY OF BREAKING VOWS
For those of us who have taken the pratimoksha, bodhisattva or tantric vows or who have taken full ordination, for example, as a fully ordained monk, there are five types of downfall we can experience. Each one causes us to be reborn in the hot hell realm. The heavier the downfall we commit, the greater the suffering in the hot hell realm.
Breaking the bodhisattva vows is much heavier than breaking the pratimoksha vows, the vows of individual liberation. Then there are the tantric vows. Besides [the fourteen root downfalls] there are eight secondary downfalls that are considered heavy, called bompo. For example, by eating food without blessing it, we receive a bompo. Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo explained that breaking a bompo is a hundred thousand times heavier than breaking a bodhisattva vow. However, when Holiness Zong Rinpoche was giving the instruction to the monks at Ganden Shartse on how to do the Yamantaka retreat, he explained that if we eat or drink without blessing it after having taken a Highest Yoga Tantra initiation, then we receive a bompo, and I think His Holiness mentioned it was seven times heavier than breaking one of the four pratimoksha root vows.
With the bodhisattva vows, there are eighteen root downfalls and forty-six secondary vices we must abstain from. With the tantric vows there are fourteen root downfalls as well as the secondary vices such as the eight bompos that we must abstain from.
The great enlightened Pabongka Rinpoche explained in his lamrim teachings that if an ordained person, somebody living in ordination, carelessly breaks a vow, thinking it doesn’t matter, they collect heavier negative karma than a lay person who kills a hundred horses and a hundred human beings. This is how heavy the negative karma an ordained person collects. I don’t remember a hundred percent, but more or less it is the same as a lay person killing a hundred horses and a hundred human beings—heavier or the same, that part I don’t specifically remember.
THE BENEFITS OF DOING VAJRASATTVA PRACTICE
Even though many of us have taken vows and are living in the vows, we can still collect very heavy negative karmas [if we break the vows], therefore, we should always examine our motivation. For example today, when we get up in the morning, while we are dressing, we should ask ourselves what is our motivation for dressing. For a person like me, with attachment, clinging to this life, the act of dressing becomes total negative karma. When we wash, what is our motivation? What is the attitude at that time? Again, generally there’s nothing special, just attachment, clinging to this life and so, again, washing becomes negative karma.
Normally it is like that in everything in our daily life. When we go to work to do our job, what is our motivation at that time? What is the motivation for doing our job, for beginning in the morning and working for those seven or eight hours? Again, generally there’s nothing special, only the attachment, clinging to this life, and so, again, all those hours of working become negative karma. Then, at night, going to sleep, the last action of the day, what is our motivation at that time? Generally, there’s nothing special there, just ordinary attachment, clinging to this life, seeking comfort for this life. So again, all those hours of sleeping become negative karma.
When we examine any action we do during the day—talking, walking, sitting, whatever activity—we will see that either everything becomes negative karma or most of it does. Even somebody who is trying to practice Dharma, who intends to practice Dharma, most of the actions done during the day become negative karma.
If we check every activity, most become negative karma because they are done with attachment, clinging to this life, which is a nonvirtuous motivation. Here, we’re talking about just one day, but when we consider weeks, months, years, we can see how much negative karma we create during our life—and not just in this life, but for beginningless samsaric rebirths. There is so much negative karma that has already ripened and we have experienced the suffering result, but there’s so much not yet ripened from beginningless rebirths that we have yet to experience.
It is said in the teachings that the only positive quality that negative karma has is that it can be purified. As Manjushri explained, in order to have realizations of the path to enlightenment, it is crucial to do the practice of purification. This was also the advice of the great meditator Gen Jampa Wangdu, whose story I mentioned yesterday. He said that in our daily life we should mainly attempt to purify. This advice comes from his own experience and he is somebody who actualized the three principal aspects of the path and the generation and completion stages of highest tantra. I think that has great meaning. We should mainly attempt to practice purification, so our negative karma is purified and there are no obstacles to realizations.
That means there is incredible need for the Vajrasattva practice. It is mentioned that even if we break the root vows of a fully ordained monk or the highest tantric root vows, by reciting the Vajrasattva mantra a hundred thousand times we can completely purify all our broken vows, in fact all our pratimoksha, bodhisattva and tantric vows. Of all the vows, breaking the root vows of highest tantra is the heaviest karma, but even that is complete purified if we recite the Vajrasattva mantra a hundred thousand times.
A geshe in Tibet taught that it was better not to take tantric initiations, saying we don’t have to take all those high tantric vows, all those root and the secondary vows, because they are extremely difficult to protect. His view was that if we broke them we would create so much negative karma, therefore, it’s better not to take a highest tantric initiation.
I think Lama Atisha responded to that type of thinking, saying, “That is due to the mistake of not knowing that tantra has a special technique called Vajrasattva, which is like one stone that can chase away hundreds of birds.” Even though our highest tantric vows, even the secondary ones, are so difficult to keep that we break them so many times, meaning we collect so many vices or so many negative karmas, doing Vajrasattva practice allows us, in one practice, to purify all our negative karmas and broken tantric vows at the same time.
For example, after having taken a Highest Yoga Tantra initiation that involves vows, we are supposed to visualize our body as the pure deity’s holy body, the place as the pure appearance of the mandala and any object we see as having pure appearance. However many seconds we don’t maintain this pure view—we see our body, the place and things as ordinary rather than pure, as pure appearance—for that many seconds we collect vices with all these objects. It’s like having just cleaned our car but then we leave it in a very dusty environment; in a very short time the car will be completely covered in dust again. If we allow our mind to slip back into its ordinary view, seeing our body, the place and the things around us as ordinary, it becomes very difficult to continue with the practice.
Of course, after a long time, with mind training we will be able to keep our mind in that pure view all the time, but, as a beginner, without having achieved those realizations, it is so difficult to always look at everything as pure. This means if we have taken the vows, vices pour down like heavy rain. Lama Atisha said that with this special method called Vajrasattva, all those vices, all those negative karmas, are completely purified, all at once. So, we should not avoid taking a Highest Yoga Tantra initiation because we are afraid of breaking the vows. We have this incredibly powerful purification method.
As I often mention, unless we practice Vajrasattva at the end of each day, that day’s negative karma doubles on the following day and then triples the day after that, multiplying every day. The great enlightened being Pabongka Dechen Nyingpo mentioned that if we killed a tiny insect today but we don’t purify it with Vajrasattva, by dawn tomorrow this negative karma will have become double, and it will increase every day like that until after fifteen days that tiny negative karma will have become as heavy as having killed a human being. After eighteen days, this negative karma will have increased 131,072 times. Then, as the months and years go by, this one small negative karma keeps increasing day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month, year-by-year, until it becomes like a mountain. It becomes like the size of this earth.
Now, there is not only this negative karma. Over one day we collect so many negative karmas with our body, speech and mind. And each of these negative karmas keeps multiplying day-by-day unless it is purified, especially with a practice such as Vajrasattva. Over the months and years, each negative karma just from today becomes like a mountain, like the size of this earth. Then, when death comes, the amount of negative karma we have to carry with us into the next life becomes unbelievable.
However, reciting the long Vajrasattva mantra twenty-one times before going to sleep has the power to purify today’s negative karma and stop today’s negative karma increasing and becoming double tomorrow. If you cannot recite the long one, you can recite the short one, OM VAJRASATTVA HUM twenty-eight times. This also has the power to purify today’s negative karma and stop it increasing tomorrow. Not only that, reciting the Vajrasattva mantra purifies this life’s negative karma. Not only that, it purifies our past lives’ negative karma. So, it is incredibly beneficial to do the Vajrasattva practice.
I think it’s time to dream about the elephant!
Maybe we’ll stop here. Maybe it can be done tomorrow evening. Tomorrow evening? Is there anybody leaving tomorrow? [Response from the students suggests there is something planned for the next evening] That’s a smart answer! But I still think tomorrow. So, maybe have a good sleep. Maybe the initiation helps. No, you know I’m joking! Anyway, we’ll try again tomorrow.
