ACI 5 «Как работает карма», занятие 1

CI 5, Class 1—INCOMPLETE TYPING

[prayer: short mandala]
[prayer: refuge]

I, I’ll go through the course really fast with you and then we’ll, ya know, then
we’ll start in serious. This is basically a course in Abhidharma, this is your first
course in Abhidharma.. We studied five great books in the monastery. The plan
of the five year course is that you spend a year on each but, but maybe one
course each year on each. So you have done, ah, higher Madhyamika school
twice already, you’ve done the lower Madhyamika school and you’ve done, the,
ah, sutra school. Okay, you’ve done the, the logic school already. You’ve been
introduced to those three. Abhidharma is a new school for you. Ah, normally in
the monastery, in my monastery we don’t do it till our fifteenth or sixteenth
year. Ah, we had a real rare opportunity, with Rinpoche started in 1974 or ‘75 to
teach Abhidharma and he taught it for ten years. And, ah, we went through the
whole text, ah, very, some people memorized it and ah, I was lucky, I go the
whole thing and memorized about half of it. And ah, we translated the, the, the
translat... the commentary by the first Dalai Lama. Which was one of the things
that made him famous and then after he died, they decided to make him the first
Dalai Lama. He was a student of Tsongkapa, Je Tsongkapa. So that, that’s, I love
Abhidharma, it’s , it’s very dear to my heart and um, this is your first, ah,
introduction to Abhidharma. We’re gonna the fourth chapter which is dedicated
to karma. And it is probably the best, ah, presentation of karma if you don’t
count Je Tsongkapa’s:

[b:Lam Rim Chemo]

So we’re going to spice it up with a little bit of :

[b:Lam Rim Chemo]

So, ah, the first class is, be an introduction to Abhidharma, ya know everyone
throws around the word Abhidharma and nobody knows what it is. Ah,
there’re a lot of strange books out called Abhidharma that have nothing to do
with Abhidharma and, ah, you’ll know that after you finish tonight’s class, and
then a little bit about the school where it comes from, the school of philosophy
that [unclear]. The second class will be ah, a little bit about what is karma. Ya
know, we spoke, we’ve spoken about it before, about how a movement of the
mind is the basic kind of karma and we’ll talk about it. And then the detailists,
and they’re the Abhidharma school, they, they believe in a certain kind of special
colors and shapes form, I should say physical matter, that you can’t see, that, ah,
has to do with ethics or your morality and we’ll talk about that. It’s a very
special idea of their school. Ah, number three we’ll talk about the different kinds
of deeds, bad deeds, good deeds, what makes a good deed, what makes a bad
deed, and what is motivation, how does motivation affect it. Ah, number four is,
we’re gonna talk about karma and what you get back. You know, what kinds of
results do you get from certain kinds of karma. And, ah, we’re going to use Je
Tsongkapa mostly for that and then we’ll also refer to the first Dalai Lama. Ah, I
felt like, ah, the Abhidharma doesn’t really explain how karma is carried with
you until it comes back to you. Ah, it is not very detailed on that. So, I , I have
found ah, Je Tsongkapa presented the mind only school in his, in his, ah
masterpiece on ah emptiness called [unclear to me.] And there’s a beautiful
section in there about how karma is carried, the, the way in which karma is
carried and that’s ah presented by the mind only school. And that’s actually
accepted by the higher school’s, we accept their presentation of the mind, of
how, of how karma is carried. We also by the way accept, even the higher
school’s accept the Abhidharma presentation of karma, well, almost everything,
okay? So ah, we’re gonna talk, I, I think it’s important for a westerner to, to hear
a decent explanation of how karma is actually carried otherwise it is hard to
accept it, for me. Ah, and I, I was just, I love that explanation, it’s a really good
explanation of how karma stays with you. Ah, number six, is even more
interesting, which is, ah, what’s the relation, relationship between karma and
emptiness and why does there have to be emptiness for karma to work and, ah,
why was it’s Tsongkapa’s, ah, whad’ya call it, ah, fixation, where he was fanatic
about the fact that (portion of tape is repeated here) karma and emptiness are
inter-related.
That morality and emptiness, are, are dependent on each other, that they are
closely intertwined and, and, he felt that most schools were either emphasizing
one or the other and missed the whole point that they are interrelated. So we’re
gonna cover that from the monastic texts of Sera Mey which are the best ones.
Ah, class number seven is ah, the, there’s a thing called black karama, white
karma, and there’s a very important concept called path of karma or path of
action. And then we’re gonna get into the ten root nonvirtues, okay, and we’ll
talk about those. Class number eight, ah, there’s a concept called most basic
virtue, which means the, the, storehouse of virtue within your consciousness,
within your mental stream. And there’s a way with certain mistaken actions that
you can destroy that. And I thought we’d better get into that [laughs], okay. Ah,
that’s very important [unclear] and I thought we’d better get into that, [laughs],
okay. Ah, that’s a very important concept the Abhidharma takes a lotta time to
explain it and I think we’d better know about it. Um, and then there’s the
distinction between projecting energy and finishing energy. Ah, Karma has two
different ways of producing it’s result and we’re gonna study those two different
ways, the two different kinds of energy karma has. Ah, class number nine is the
five immediate, immediate misdeeds means immediate bad deeds, means after
you commit one of these in your life and if you leave it unconfessed and
unpurified, then right after you die you go to hell, the lowest hell, ah, that’s why
they’re called immediate, there’s no ah, there’s no other birth between that and
hell. You go through a bardo but then you go straight to hell. Ah, there’s no
other birth between that and, that life and the next life in hell, the lowest hell. So
we’d better know what those five are. And then the idea of a schism. Schism
means, uh, the, one of the most serious, maybe the most serious bad deed you
can do, of the five, is to split up the sanga, to ah, cause a division among
practitioners of Buddhism.         Ah, so we, ya know, that’s something that
technically we can’t do, it has to be done during the time of the Buddha. It has to
be, there’re a lot of things that you should know about that. But we can do
what’s called {je tumba}, you know, we can do something similar. And, and
we’re very close to that, I know I am. Ya know I live with monks, it’s very easy
for me to critize one monk to another monk, or even just fellow students. And
that, in the higher teachings, that’s a very serious, ah, ah, infraction of the vows.
So I think we’ll spend some time on the idea of being careful not to split up the
sanga. Ah, and then number ten, is, ah, what, what bad deeds are, are, more
serious than other ones and what makes the same bad deed more or less serious,
okay. And what, what makes a good deed very good, okay. So we’ll study
that. Ya know you can’t do all the good deeds, that are possible, and it’s
important to prioritize them, ya know. So we’ll talk about them. So that’s a
                                                                                  th
quick look at the syllabus. It’s my intention to finish, finish, by December 4 or
  th
5 or something like that. I mean I don’t intend to go overseas and I don’t
intend to miss any classes except what’s on here. So, ya know, we’ll try to finish
in time for Christmas and holidays and whatever, ya know, you have to go and
be with your families and I want to finish well before the holiday season. So I
will do the best I can to, I don’t see any problems, but,ya know, karma will tell
[laughs][laughter]. All right, we’ll get into Abhidharama. Any questions?

[student:] Do you have any idea when the ...... start....?

I would guess around March. In February I will be in retreat and in January I
have to go to the debates although that might be moved up, I’m almost sure it
will be March. And we’re gonna try try to send out an announcement about a
month ahead of time. Anne-la is very good at [unclear] Margie..[laughs] we’re
getting more organized, alright, a little bit. Abhidharma is a sanskrit word, the
Tibetan equivalent is {chu ngunpa}. Please say {chu}[repeat], {ngunpa}[repeat],
{chu ngunpa}[repeat]{chu ngungpa}[repeat]. Alright, we’ll get into what it means
later, alright? Ah, its one of the very first forms of buddhism that came in India.
Normally its around the third council of, of early buddhism so it is one of the
first forms of buddhism, it’s a Hinayana form of buddhism. Some people call it
Teravadan or Hinayana. And Hinayana basically means, in, in Tibetan, its
explained as a school were people are working mostly for their own liberation,
to become a Buddha, but not mainly, they cannot, they cannot, really, relate to
teachings where you’re supposed to do this for the sake of all sentient beings. It
Tibetan, the word Hinayana means low capacity, small vehicular capacity. The
word {tekpa} means vehicular, how much a truck can carry, how much a wall
can hold up, okay, so it’s a Hinayana school. And just, you don’t have to know
it, but we’re studying the [unclear]tradition. There were eighteen divisions of it,
long story, okay. The main book, this you have to know, that all Tibetan
monasteries use, for the study of Abhidharma and, and, basically, most of the
great scholars of each of the sects, you know, whether of the traditions, Sakaya,
Gelugpa, Kagu or Nyngma, most of the great scholars have used this root text,
that’s called the [b:Abhidharmakosha]. It’s a, it’s a long word, in Sanskrit there’s
no dividers between words, I mean the whole, the sentence just goes on without
any spaces between the words. And when two words like have an “a” that
meet, meets together, it forms a new long “a” and then, you can’t break it up for
people, it’s difficult to make it convenient to people, you just have to write it out
in this long string.       Say Abhidharma[repeat] kosha [repeat] Abhidharma
[repeat]kosha. In Tibetan, it’s {chu} [repeat] {ngunpa} [repeat] {dzu}[repeat];
{chu} [repeat]{ngunpa}[repeat]{dzu}[repeat]. That’s the main root text that we
will use and that’s the main text used in all Tibetan monasteries. It’s about, it’s
about one hundred fifty pages, it’s a long story to memorize, [laughs], but it’s a
nice, nice thing to know. Okay, this is the author’s name, Vasubandhu, say
Vasubandhu, [repeat], and in Tibetan is{Loppon}[repeat]{Yiknyen}is{Loppon}
[repeat]{Yiknyen}. The Tibetans translated most of the Sanskrit names, into
Tibetan, by syllable, which is why Tibetan is so famous for, for translating
buddhism accurately ‘cause they were fanatical about translating every single
syllable, even though it didn’t make any, didn’t have any meaning in some cases,
ya know, {unclear}, nobody knows what the words mean but have to translate
it. It basically means “wealth of the earth” or something but didn’t have
anything to do with, it wasn’t a descriptive name that I know of. He was the
author of it, what’s his brother’s name, half brother? [student: Asanga]. Asanga,
he was the half-brother of Asanga. You know the story, their mother was a nun.
She, she, she had clairvoyance, she saw that if she had children, she saw that
Buddhism was declining in her time. And she saw that if she had children, they
would become some of the greatest masters of Buddhism that every lived. So
she purposely disrobed, she had one son by a king, one son by a brahmin. And,
they became, thosetwo became the two greatest scholars of Buddhism ever, if
you don’t include Nagarjuna and Je Tsongkapa, probably. They, they, wrote
most of the books we study in the monastery. They wrote the whole, Asanga
went and with Maitreya wrote the great five books of Maitreya and Yiknyen
was responsible for the Abhidharma. Was he a Hinayana follower?

16.09
COURSE V : HOW KARMA WORKS                                          October 1994