ACI 5 «Как работает карма», занятие 7

Class Seven: Black and White Karma: Karmic Path
November 10, 1994
transcribed by: Mira Prabha



All the Abidharma is coming from where?          What are the sources for the
Abidharma?

[student: Seven.]

Yeah, right, the seven Abidharma ancients. What are the sources for them? The
sutras. I mean, basically Vasubandhu is... it almost seems a little unorganized
when you’re young and you’re studying. He’s taking different words from
every different sutra to describe karma. And this is one very useful division he
makes. {Napur le} is black karma. And black karma is non-virtue. If you divide
the world into the three realms, which are what?

[student: Desire, form and formless realms.]

Yeah. Desire, form and formless realms. Okay? What’s the desire realm?

[student: Samsara?]

No. Samsara covers all three realms. We’re in the desire realm. And the first
Dalai Lama says it’s because our main interests are food and sex. Okay. And
that’s why it’s called the desire realm. And then we have the form Realm and
the formless Realms. How many of the six beings on the Wheel of Life Tanka are
in the desire realm?

[student: All six.]

All six, okay? [laughs] [laughter] Desire realm includes everything from hells,
hungry ghosts, humans, demi-gods and gods. All those are in the desire realm.
And in the last one, what you call the gods—I like to call them pleasure beings—
they are also living in the form and formless realms. So you’ve only got one of
the six types of beings existing in the two higher realms. And then in the lowest
of the three divisions you have all six types of beings. And the people in the...the
beings in the two higher realms you cannot see. Your mind can go to that realm
and it has to go to that realm. For example, to perceive emptiness directly your
mind has to be in the form realm. Those beings can’t commit bad deeds. They
don’t commit bad deeds mainly because they’re in deep states of meditation.
Like the formless realm beings. They too are just in a state of pretty much deep
meditation. They don’t commit bad deeds per se. They have a lot of bad deeds
left over from their last lives and when they die they usually go down to hell
because they don’t perform any new good deeds in the formless realm.

[student: [unclear]]

Pleasure beings that have no bodies. Out of the five heaps, they have only four.
They don’t have any physical bodies. They’re just [unclear].

[student: Like Buddhas?]

Buddhas are out of all three realms, please. Okay. All those three realms are
suffering. One of them has all three kinds of suffering and two of them only
have {kep [unclear]}. Anyway, so black karma is really referring to our realm.
We’re the ones who are good at collecting black karma. And the first Dalai Lama
says: why do they call it black karma? He says it’s essence is black and its result
is black. It’s essence is black means it has to do with mental afflictions. It doesn’t
mean it is a mental affliction, but it’s afflicted. It’s in that... of the four noble
truths it’s related to the first two noble truths. It’s either causing suffering or it is
suffering. And then.... the result is black because of what? By definition it’s
what?

[student: [unclear]

No.

[student: Suffering?]

Suffering. Unpleasantly suffering. Okay? So why is it called black karma?
Because the result is black and the essence is black. The essence is tied up with
samsara and the result is suffering. Unpleasant. {karpu lay}... {karpu} means
what?

[student: White.]
White. White karma. And they explain that as virtuous karma in the form
realm. Not in our realm. Virtuous karma of the form realm is white karma.
Why? Because the essence is...the result is white, obviously. What’s the result?
Pleasure. But then the essence is what? The essence is this—a person who has
done this karma, in his mental continuum, is full of suffering. I’m sorry. Let go
of that. He’s not suffering—we’re talking form realm—he’s not suffering
outright. He has only the third type of suffering. What’s that? We talked about
it a lot on Friday night. Yeah, pervasive suffering, which means he has to get old
and die. And he doesn’t have outright suffering. They don’t have any
experience of outright suffering. They don’t normally go through...they all have
{[unclear] ki lay}. So they don’t have the kind of gross suffering that we have.
And then on the...then there’s a third kind of karma. What do you think it is?

[student: Black and white?]

[laughs] We call it {karnak depa}. Say {karnak}. [repeat] {depa} [repeat].
{karnak} [repeat] {depa} [repeat]. {kar} means what? White. {nak} means black
and {depa} means mixed together. And that refers to virtue in the desire realm.
It’s result is white or black?

[student: Mixed.]

[laughs] No, it’s white, virtue is always white. It’s a good sensation. There’s no
difference between the result of what virtue you collect in this realm or virtue
collected in another one. But the black part is different. Black means in this case,
when you’re talking about black and white karma mixed together, it refers to
the being who’s doing it, he’s got suffering, he has suffering in his mindstream.
So the person... if you look at it as a stream, the person who experiences the
whiteness of the result and the person who did the deed and had suffering in
him, it’s black and white mixed together.

[student: So they talk about...]

Our good karma. We can only do black karma. We can’t do white karma in this
realm.

[student: Are you saying we can only do mixed karma?]

Yeah. Or black. There’s a fourth choice, though. On your homework there
might be only those three. [laughs].

[student: Why is it possible to [unclear] virtue?]

This is only in the form realm because it refers to a person who doesn’t have
outright suffering in his mental continuum and it’s also...he’s doing a good deed
and he’s going to experience a white result.

[student: Is this a....]

So this is how the sutra explains it. It’s only one way of dividing it. There are
dozens of ways. It’s just one that you might hear. Somebody says black karma,
white karma. And it might sound like good deeds and bad deeds. It’s not that.
It refers to not only the result, which is obviously black or white, but to the
nature of the person doing the deed. If he has some outright suffering in his
being, then it’s black and white mixed. It’s not referring to the result.

[student: So the blackness refers to the person causing it?]

He’s got suffering in his mental continuum.

[student: Blackness and [unclear], do you know?]

Well, he’s got virtue by having done a good deed but they’re not [unclear]. The
whiteness here refers to the result. You did a good deed... we can do a good
deed in this realm and it’s going to have a good result. That’s white. But the fact
that the person doing the deed has suffering, his mental continuum is all
suffering, outright suffering, he’s also black. Does it produce a result which is
black and white? In a way, because, as long as you’re still in samsara, even those
pleasures, as you heard in the Friday night class, are really just different forms of
suffering.

[silence]

Say {sag me ki} [repeat] {lay} [repeat]. {sag me ki} [repeat] {lay} [repeat]. {sag
me} means “unstained”. Not stained. And {lay} means “karma”. {ki} is just an
adjective. Unstained karma, all right? This is the kind of karma you do,
according to Abidharma, which doesn’t have a white result or a black result. In
fact, it’s function is to remove the black karma. So these are, in their school... like
the direct perception of selflessness, would be a {sag me ki lay}. Okay? Some
kind of pure karma that wipes out the bad karma.

[student: It’s nothing to do with neutral karma?]

No. The fact is that it does not give a black or a white {namen}.          What’s a
{namen}?

[student: Karmic result.]

Karmic result, ripening karmic result. And here I have to make a point, okay?
When they talk about the Buddha...I mean, {namen} seems to be like a samsaric
thing. Like the karmic result which is experienced in samsara. They don’t talk
about the Buddha collecting good karma. He collects the good results. He
collects wisdom and merit, but they don’t talk of.. this whole karma system in
general, they don’t talk about much about the Buddha in terms of him collecting
good karma, white karma or black karma. If anything, he’s doing {sag me ki
lay}, but I... you just don’t see him referred to with the words {namen}. {Namen}
is perceived to be describing samsaric karmic results.
[student: Buddha still collects karma?]

Well, it’s a long debate and I don’t know, what would make him collect karma? I
don’t know.

[student: [unclear] the whole cycle of...]

Does he have {sempa}? Does he have that movement of the mind?

[student: Yeah.]

According to Abidharma, he must have it. It’s one of the omnipresent mental
functions. But you get into the higher schools, like we study the [bk: Nirang
Kepa] on Friday nights, this book about tantric karma. And they say it has to be
motivated by a bad thought. It’s {sempa} but it’s {sempa} motivated by a bad
thought. So that’s the difference, that’s the [unclear]. We’ll talk about it a little
bit more. So {sag me ki lay}. And you’re going to read in your reading about
how to bring all these karmas to an end, white and black. It talks about bringing
white karma to an end and bringing black karma to an end. And when I studied
that, and when I translated it, I didn’t quite catch it, I didn’t see why you’d want
to bring white karma to an end. I thought maybe it had to do with something
like seeing your karma as self-existent and stopping that tendency to see it as
self-existent and then I read a passage recently in a scripture which says, what it
means when it says to bring white karma to an end, it means to purify it by
seeing its selflessness. So that’s pretty close.

[student: So this is [unclear]?]

You purify the desire for it. The impure desire for it. [laughs]

[student: To do white karma to bring about good results?]

Yeah. There may be some desire to do that, which is still related to these three
realms. And supposedly they’re the last level of the last realm...it’s very hard to
get over the desire to still want to be there. I still think there must be something
[unclear] there, and there’s a long story, it’s in your reading. You have to go
through... the Abidharmas say that the path of seeing and the beginning of the
path of meditation, habituation, only takes sixteen seconds or so. The whole
thing happens like in a few seconds. And they say that...they say that you would
have to go on... that those sixteen seconds or whatever remove the desire to
take a birth anywhere in any of the realms. It’s some kind of subtle thing where
you wouldn’t want... you recognize the faults of even a pleasant experience and
[unclear]. And that’s what they mean when they say to end even your white
karma. You lose the desire to do anything that would even give you a good
result in this life. What would it be in the [bk: Lam Rim]? There are three levels
in the [bk: Lam Rim]. It’s called the lesser person, the medium person and the
greater person. And the lesser person wants to keep himself where?

[student: He wants to stay out of the...]

He wants to stay out of the three lower realms. He doesn’t want to be a hell
being, animal or hungry ghost. And the medium person?

[student: Wants to get out of samsara.]

He wants to get his rear end out of samsara. [laughs] [laughter] And then the
highest person?

[student: Wants to get all others...]

He wants to get himself and all everyone else out at the same time. So I guess
you would say that in the Abidharma system, when you get to the point of the
medium person, you’ve finished your black and white karma. You’re not
interested anymore in collecting a karma that’s going to give you a nice result in
samsara. Yeah?

[student: It seems to me that this is cultural in the sense that... I mean, if you
know the difference between samsara and liberation, why would it, if you know
it, you believe it, why would anybody want to fool around, flirt with finding
some interesting thing in samsara any more?]

It’s hard to recognize the difference, you know. It’s hard to recognize that... it’s
very hard to recognize samsara. It’s very hard for any of us to recognize
samsara.

[student: But I mean, the Western problem is the other way around. They think
there’s that nothing but that, I mean, so, thinking there’s nothing but that and to
seek some good form of it is one thing, but to know that there is something
beyond that...]

By the way, I often say renunciation and removing desire for this life is not
beyond us, you know, it’s just intelligent. It’s just the normal recognition of a
thinking person by the time he’s thirty, say, or thirty-five. You’re lucky if it’s at
twenty-five that you see that it’s not going to work, nothing works here. You
don’t want... I often say I enjoy pleasure and I’ve always enjoyed pleasure, I just
want to get better ones. [laughs] And I think you just recognize at some point
that these pleasures don’t...it’s not that they’re not pleasant. They have a
pleasant quality about them but they don’t last. And they always change into
something bad. So they’re not...it’s just a matter of recognizing that and then
you don’t want to [unclear]. It’s just a natural thinking person’s desire to get out
of pleasures which go sour. That’s all. I don’t think it takes a genius...if you look
at it that way, I think you can get renunciation pretty easily. But you know,
during the day...the reason you did most of your actions today, if you’re like me,
is that you hoped for some temporarily pleasant result. That’s why we get up,
that’s why we go to work, that’s why we go home, that’s why we come home,
that’s why...that’s basically why we move at all. So, you just have to...at some
point.... it’s not like you have to give up something nice. It’s not nice. It’s not
like you’re losing anything. It’s hard though. It’s hard to recognize it. Okay, so
that’s {sag me ki lay}.

[student: Michael, does this unstained karma wipe out both? Wipes out black
karma and purifies white karma?]
Yeah. No. It mainly purifies black karma. That’s how it’s described, as purifying
black karma. But then I started talking about how it’s also... I wasn’t meaning
to... it is true that there’s a relation to that and white karma and it’s in your
reading.      I didn’t want you to get to the reading and think to yourself,
Abidharma says I shouldn’t do good deeds anymore, or that somehow some
kind of attachment still.... it’s not like that. You don’t want to get rid of the white
karma until you see that it’s still causing you suffering.

[student: Can you give an example?]

Excuse me?



[student: Can you give an example?]

Well, let’s say that you really could get to a point where you realize correctly that
you could design your future lives. Theoretically people who study Lam Rim
and study karma carefully figure out how to design their future lives. They want
to be rich, they want to be healthy, they want to be handsome, and you know,
you can undertake deeds to set that up. Pabongka says when most people make
a prayer to be born into a Buddha’s paradise, they’re normally mistaking the
desire for something like happiness in samsara, what their real intention is some
kind of selfish desire and they get what they asked for [laughs] which is some
kind of pleasure in this life, which just ends.          So there’s two ways to
get...according to Abidharma and it’s a very useful idea...how to remove your
desire. While we’re on the subject of desire for this life, which really motivates
us all day long. It’s not until you get old and you kind of give up. You meet
people. They get to a certain age and they give up on this life. There’s a very
distinct point at which they kind of give up. Bush kind of did that. I saw him on
TV the other night. He kind of gave up on his political....[laughs]...he doesn’t
think he’s going to be coming back. Or Reagan or people like that, they kind of
gave up on it, you know, they say well that’s over now. There’s two ways
according to the Abidharma on how to remove your desire for samsara. One is
called {jig de pe lam}. Say {jig de} [repeat] {pe lam} [repeat] {jig de pe lam}
[repeat]. You know {jig de}, I think. You had it, no? It’s the name of the third
chapter in the Abidharmakosha.

[student: [unclear]]
Yeah, the world, okay? {jig de pe lam}... {lam} means what? Path. So {jig de pe
lam} means “the worldly path”. “The worldly path”. This is a very interesting
concept. This is where you get into deep states of meditation and you move up
from the desire realm into each of the four levels of the form realm and then you
move through each of the levels of the formless realm. So your meditation gets
more and more and more subtle.

[student: What do you mean...]

What do I mean by form realm and ...? You know, there’s a causal form realm
and there’s a resulting form realm. You’ve got to know the difference. There’s a
form realm you can go to right now. Then there’s a form realm you can be born
in. And that’s a big difference and it’s very confusing. It’s really confusing.
Some Mongolian lama explained it to me many years ago. The point is that you
can do meditation now in this life where your body stays in the desire realm and
you’re in meditation posture, but your mind starts moving up to the form realm
and the formless realm levels. They are very much deeper levels of meditation.
You go up slowly through four levels of form realm, then you go up through
four levels of formless realm. Your mind gets more and more subtle. Your
meditation gets more and more subtle. Based on which one of those realms
you’ve practiced in mostly, you take a birth in that realm. So the meditation is a
causal form realm. You’re visiting the form realm of your mind and then as a
result of that you’re born into that level of formless realm.

[student: You have to do that on your way to the perception of emptiness, as
well, right?]

To see emptiness directly, you must be in {sam dem yo po nendo nich cho me}.
It’s a special level inside the preliminary level inside the first level of the form
level. And it’s not like you have to look for that place. You’ll get there if you
meditate like more than 45 minutes a day. Your mind eventually reaches that
point comfortably. You can do that, your mind is at that point. What’s
happened, do you think, to your attraction to the objects of the desire realm,
which are mostly sense objects, by the time you reach the form realm? And then
when you’re in deep meditation do you feel like ice-cream?

[laughter]

[student: Once you get to deep meditation, you don’t [unclear]]
No, they don’t. In fact you can’t get to the first level of the form realm in your
meditation without giving up the attraction to those objects. So it doesn’t mean
you can never eat ice-cream again. It means that when you reach that level, you
don’t have any attraction any more... you cannot see anything attractive, you’re
not hearing, you’re not tasting, your mind is withdrawn from the objects of the
senses, and that’s called {shira ke nam bo chen}. {shira ke nam bo chen} in this
school means you’re moving from a less subtle level to a more subtle level and if
you keep doing that, you get used to the first level of the form realm, then you
get a taste of the second level and the first level starts to look bad, so you move
up to the second level, then you get a taste of the third level and then the second
level doesn’t look so... it looks very rough and ...it doesn’t seem as deep, so then
you try to move up into the third level. And by doing that you slowly give up
all the levels. You keep getting tired of the level that you’re in and moving up to
the next level. It’s like pay at work. When I first went to work they gave me $7
an hour and I was very happy. Then I got $8 and I thought $7 looks bad. Then I
got $9 and I thought $8 looked bad. Then I got $100,000 a year and then $60,000
looked bad. Like that. Know what I mean. It’s like you move up through these
levels. That’s the worldly path. That’s how to give up desire. Is it permanent?
Is it desirable? No. And it’s very common for westerners to mistake that for
some kind of losing desire. They think that because they don’t have the desire to
eat so much any more, or they gave up desire for going to movies, they think
they are making spiritual progress. It’s very dangerous because you don’t give
up the desires. You move beyond them until such time as your mind slips back
down, But it’s not a permanent method. It doesn’t work permanently. And
you’ll see that. If you go into retreat, you stay there a month, you come out
with some sort of glow and for a while you don’t feel like eating, you don’t feel
like pigging out any more, you don’t feel like going to movies any more. In the
morning you can study real well and meditate, and slowly you come back into
reality and you end up the same as you were before basically. That’s {shira ke
nam bo chen}. It’s called “the worldly path”. It’s in the [bk: Abidharma Kosha].
It doesn’t stay. It doesn’t stay.

[student: Does it require subsequently more and more meditation to continue to
advance up the realms? Is it just like an hour, two hours, three hours, four
hours....?]

Yeah, yeah, no, I think if you made it your goal, you could do it with an hour or
two a day.

[student: When you say it doesn’t work in the end, does it mean you never
ultimately attain anything except elimination of desire?]

Yeah, it doesn’t get you anything... it doesn’t get you out of samsara.

[student: So what’s your focus when you’re doing the meditation?]

You mistake the increasing subtlety of your mental state for some kind of
liberation.

[student: But we’d still be doing single-pointed concentration, for example....]

Yeah, by the time you reach the third and fourth... I mean, you’re always
concentrating.    When you sleep, you go into meditation.            Your sleep is
meditation, and like that. But it doesn’t... you and I know that it doesn’t remove
your {kleshas}. It doesn’t remove your bad thoughts. It’s kind of a high, it’s
kind of... your mind is getting more and more subtle and it’s attractive and it’s
nice, and in a way you give up the objects of the senses because now you’re
attached to the objects of your pleasant meditations, and it gets more and more
subtle and it doesn’t...ultimately it cannot remove your bad thoughts. Only one
thing can remove your bad thoughts.

[student: Only what?]

Only one thing can remove your bad thoughts. Only one state of mind is in total
contradiction to your bad thoughts. Only one state of mind is such that when I
focus on you, if I think of that state of mind, it’s impossible for me to have a bad
thought, and that’s understanding your selflessness.
[student: And that would happen in this kind of meditation?]

And that’s {jig de me lek pe la}. That’s number two. {jig de me lek pe la} means
the path which is beyond the world. {lek de pa} means beyond. You could call
it... there’s a Sanskrit word... “transcendental.” [laughs} You can say transcend
the world, okay? {lek de pa} is the path which transcends the world. That’s why
you don’t give up the desire realm or the form realm just because you’re
moving up into more subtle levels of meditation. But you give it up because you
understand its selflessness. You’re able to remove your desire for an object
because you understand its emptiness.

[student: But, I mean, in order to get to that level...]
You must have good meditation.

[student: No, what I’m saying is that this thing with subtle, more subtle and
more subtle, you’re not going to get to...]

No, no, no, not necessarily at all. Not necessarily at all. There are non-Buddhists
who have reached the highest levels and stayed there for thousands of years and
no benefit.

[student: So it’s really the goal that you have in mind when you start the
meditation?]

Well, there is a level, especially in the first level of the form realm, where your
mind is bright, sharp, clear, focussed, a powerful telescope. Now what you use it
for is a different matter. Some people use it for black magic, you know. That’s
just a tool.

[student: So these are Buddhists and non-Buddhists?]

A non-Buddhist can use this one.

[student: The second one is Buddhist?]

Has to be Buddhist. A non-Buddhist can use this by mistake or by not knowing
enough or...it’s very common to be attracted to that. But those people always
end up dying, unfortunately. [laughs] So it didn’t work. [laughs]

[student: Michael, there’s this point... when you get to the first level of the
formless realm, when you have this window of seeing emptiness directly...]

You have the tool, but now if you have the other knowledge to focus it in the
right direction, yeah.

[student: So if someone’s doing calm-abiding meditation and they, you know,
they by-pass this and keep concentrating on the image of the Buddha or
whatever, then they missed their opportunity?]

Yeah, in a way.

[student: So how do you know when to focus on emptiness?]
As soon as you’re capable...the reason to meditate on a Buddha image mainly is
that it’s so virtuous that you can attain the deeper state of consciousness that you
need to perceive emptiness.

[student: Is the idea that you have to attain, like, ninth level of calm-abiding, and
calm-abiding before shifting over to emptiness?]

There’s a thing called...

[student: Alternating?]

Alternating. Basically, to see emptiness directly, you have to have that.

[student: [unclear] part of the school do we talk about emptiness?]

Well, [unclear] selflessness. I started off by saying selflessness, but I want to
make sure you understand that. So {jig de me lek pe la}. If you really want to
remove desire, you need that one. And when they say... why did this all come
up? Because {jig de me lek pe la} refers to the different stages within which path,
do you guess? Which of the five paths are {jig de me lek pe la}? Which of the
five paths are beyond the world? Which of the five paths can remove your bad
thoughts?

[student: The path of seeing.]

The path of seeing. And then the path of habituation. Because that’s where you
start...that’s where you’re a stream-enterer. You’re on your way out. So this
one relates mostly to that, and this one, {sag me ki lay}, this pure karma of the
Abidharma school, refers to that also. They’re all referring to understandings of
selflessness, which is the only way to remove your desire, and even your desire
to collect good karma, to have a good result in this life. We don’t even have that.
None of us goes home and says I’ll be nice to my husband or wife because if I
do, in my next life, they’ll be loyal to me. [laughs] I mean, we haven’t even
reached that and he’s talking about how to remove that. We haven’t got that
far.

[student: The first one—isn’t it possible that [unclear]. Why would it matter
whether [unclear]]
They both require deep meditation. They both require at least the first level of
the form realm. This one is a process by which you are getting attached to,
really, an increasing subtlety of your own meditation. And you mistake that lack
of desire that you achieve for a real lack of desire, for a permanent lack of desire.
You think you’ve gone beyond desire for this realm just because now you’re
attached to the higher sort of meditation, deeper sort of meditation. In other
words, you’re attached to the feeling of the meditation and not to the purpose of
the meditation. You start mistaking the means for the goal. Something like that.

[student: Could you go over causal and resultant? You started...]

Form, right? Yeah. In the form...how do you get to the form realm? How do
you get born in the form realm? In this life you spend a lot of your time
meditating on one of those form realms, you know, in one of those states of
deep meditation. And then because of that, you’re born in that realm.

[student: Isn’t this one of the examples that’s used about what people believe,
that you just meditate on nothingness, you know, that you blank your mind out.
I know some people who know about dharma, you know, say zen or
something, who say that the object is to sit there and to blank your mind out and
think about nothingness. This could be the result of that, right?

There’s a level of the formless realm called {gian we}. {Gian} means “nothing at
all.” And it’s where your mind is not focussed on anything at all. And it’s the
rebirth that you take because in this life you did a meditation on trying to just
empty your mind, and that’s a samsaric rebirth that doesn’t have any benefit.
And there was a great debate in Tibet, there’s still records of it, between
Hoshang and Kamalashila, and that viewpoint was eventually... you know, the
idea that you should just try to empty your mind was eventually... they were
asked to leave Tibet. [laughs] [laughter] But it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t
calm your mind down for the purposes of breathing meditation which first
appears in the Abidharma and you can study it someday. The purpose of that
practice which is so popular in Hinayana countries is {unclear} is that you want to
put your mind into a neutral state so that then you can focus on a virtuous
object, and that putting your mind into a neutral state is the function of
breathing meditation and to reach that neutral state is great. That is a worthy
goal. That’s not the same as trying to think about nothing.

[student: I’m really not clear about, and it feels really important to me, the idea
of alternating between single-point concentration and meditation on emptiness.
How do you know when to switch? I thought the idea of calm-abiding was that
you stayed with it until you attain calm-abiding, not that you’re switching back
and forth while you’re doing calm-abiding.]

It’s not part of Abidharma teachings. Well, there’s a thing called {pelgom}, but
it’s in the sixth chapter.

[student: Well, could you just say, for the sake of understanding, how the
meditation works?]

Well, I would say that you’re trying to move up your ability to concentrate, and
then you’re trying to move up the object to which you’re concentrating on. And
then sometimes you concentrate on understanding the emptiness more, and
then sometimes you concentrate on moving your concentration to a deeper
level, and then you alternate between those. But when you perceive emptiness
there’s no question of alternating. They’re both happening at the same time.

[student: I thought that the biggest enemy of calm-abiding was changing your
options. Switching...]

That’s a long story. But yeah, it would be.

[student: So... what do you do?] [laughs]

You concentrate on one till you get tired. Yeah?

[student: I understand that it would not be desirable to be reborn out of the
human realm because all those guys keep falling off. Wouldn’t it be better to
take an enormous, I mean, thousands and thousands of hours to study the
[unclear] so we can be reborn as [unclear]]

Well, but if you don’t meditate, this won’t help you at all. And if you don’t apply
it to your life, it definitely won’t help you at all. You’ll think you know more,
and you’re going to be a worse person, and that’s even worse than if you never
studied. You know, if you don’t actively apply this...if you haven’t changed a lot
in the last six months, and then you’ve collected more knowledge, that’s a very
dangerous situation to be in, I don’t envy that. It’s very dangerous to think you
know more and not to have changed your personal life at all. It’s just ruining
yourself. I’m worried about that, with myself too. You just... you’ve got to be
real careful about that. Ultimately, you’ve got to meditate a couple of hours a
day too. You must. Otherwise you cannot move between paths except in the
deep state of meditation. You cannot progress as far as your realizations unless
you’re in a deep state of meditation. If you don’t study deeply, you’ll never
know what to do when you get there, but they both have to come together.
And then you’ve got to be virtuous too. Tsongkhapa ... I’m studying his life
stories, all these secret biographies. Great. But he’s spending half his life praying
for wisdom. A lot of his activity was spent in caves just praying to understand
more. It’s strange how many hours he spent doing that.

[student: I mean, this is what I just don’t get at all. Praying. It doesn’t make any
sense. What are you praying to? There’s no omniscient god that’s going to give
it to you. The Buddhas can’t help you.]

Oh, Manjushri or... I think it’s the virtue of asking them to inspire you.

[student: Even though they can’t?]

Well, when you ask them, the virtue of asking brings inspiration. Seriously.
Seriously. That’s how it is possible. It does work. It really does work.

[student: When you talk about your meditation getting more subtle, but if you
haven’t gone anywheres near seeing emptiness directly, but you do feel there’s
more subtlety than there was before, are you still in this realm?]

Oh, yeah.

[student: Also there’s lots of [unclear]]

Oh, a lot. When you hit the form realm, you’ll know it. [laughter] Actually,
you’ll get some physical sensations, rising into [unclear]...

[student: Ten miles...]

[laughter]

[student: So you’re saying that the desire realm [unclear] and get different
[unclear]]

[student: What did you say about the physical sensations?]
Some sensation of rising. You come out and there’s some sensation of coming
out.

[student: Michael, in the last class, you said that Aryas no longer collect karma.
Bad karma. And you never explained that. So now that we’re in karma, can we
talk about it.] [laughter]

Why they don’t collect bad karma? Well, I’ll tell you...

[student: I know they’re not collecting it as long as they’re perceiving emptiness
directly, but when they come out of meditation...]

Hold on a sec and I’ll tell you.

[silence]

I’ll answer your question very briefly. You missed the last two classes. The
answer is in those classes. Try to get the notes from the last class. Because we
went through six steps, the process by which a lack of understanding of
emptiness forces you to collect karma. So, ergo, if you could understand
emptiness, you wouldn’t collect karma. You have to read that. It’s involved
with misperception. But to put it very simply, if I look at the person... I’m trying
to think of... someone bothered me today...] [laughter]

[student: Only today?] [laughter]

It was on the plane. But I was looking at the person and I was thinking...no, in
fact it was last night.... I was looking at the person and I was starting to get
angry, but then when I looked at the object and I said... see, if you understand
it’s emptiness, then all you have to remember is that it’s empty. Because that
makes you think well, what does empty mean? Well empty means that person
is a blank screen and I’m seeing this person as bad because of my own karma.
Now what shall I do? That’s the whole process. And you just grin and bear it.

[student: What do you do? I mean, I can see where that modifies the way you
act, physically act, but you have said a number of times over the past few
months that, for example, just because you understand the girl across the street
is empty doesn’t...]

Oh no, I said if you’re jealous...
[student: Doesn’t get rid of your desire.]

It does. Absolutely, it does. I said all those other series of emptiness that people
presented to me didn’t satisfy me for many years. Didn’t help. And I really tried
to use them, you know, tried to see a pretty girl as a pile of atoms, or Shantideva
says, you know...

[student: Look at her as a skeleton or...]

Like that, or see her poop, or realize that you’re just attracted to the clothes and
the hair and the jewelry and the perfume and not to the girl. That doesn’t help
me much. So I know, if I understand the emptiness of the person, and I
understand that if I desire anything, if I do anything to the point of an improper
desire, I’ll never meet such a person again. That I can buy. And I’ll be good.

[student: I guess, what I’m saying is... okay, I can see how you’d be able to
modify your typical actions...]

Your response. Your response.

[student:    And you’d be able to make some change in your emotional
response....

Oh, absolutely.

[student: But it’s the thinking that...]

No, you can’t...well, we did the whole thing in the last two classes. Get some
tapes. You cannot entertain the thought of desire or hatred if you understand
that object’s emptiness at the same time. You cannot entertain... it will not stay in
the same light...]

[student: But what if you’re out of meditation?]

I’m talking out of meditation. I’m talking when someone’s in a corner punching
your head or something...

[student: But after achieving {tonglang} you come back out of the meditation
and that was Ariel’s point—those people still see things that way.]
Oh, you still see it as self-existent. I’m talking about...

[student: They have an intellectual understanding, but they’re actually seeing,
that’s like involuntary...]

An intellectual understanding does wonders to prevent you from collecting bad
karma. I’m talking about intellectual understanding. I’m not talking about a
direct perception of emptiness. Of course, of course, you couldn’t look at a
pretty girl and understand her emptiness and do anything more than
understand her emptiness intellectually. You couldn’t perceive her if.... [unclear]
direct perception of emptiness. Leave it. We’ll never finish on time. Okay. Four
parts of a karma, of a {lay ke la}.
[silence]

Sometimes called a {lay la}. You know it by now. What’s a {lay ke la}?

[student: Path of karma?]

Yeah, karmic path, path of karma. Sometimes it’s called a path of action.
Sometimes you get confused and call it both. Okay, {lay ke la}. There are ten
{lay ke las} and the ten non-virtues are {lay ke las}. Those are karmic paths.
Later we’ll get into the distinction between karma and karmic paths. A karmic
path’s going to have these elements to it. What is a {chi}? {Chi} means “the
object involved”. And these are all important concepts, and I’ve put them into
your reading from the [bk: Lam Rim Chenmo] from Jetsun Kampa, because he
explained it so well. I kind of regret that we didn’t go through the [bk: Lam Rim
Chenmo]. [laughs] I want you to see some Abidharma. I hope you live long
enough to study the other [unclear]. [laughs]. So {chi} is the... what do you think
the object involved is for the first {Lam Rim}? What’s the object involved?

[student: Person? A being?]

A living being. That’s all. {chi}. The object involved for the act, for the {lay ki la}
of killing is a living being.

[student: I have a question about [unclear]. When they say object, do they mean
the actual thing that’s out there, or do they mean the perception of emptiness
[unclear]?]
Which school?

[student: The object of mind. {Lam Rim}. [unclear]

Oh. The problem is that there’s not even a word in English for all the Sanskrit
and Tibetan. So we’re using object to mean “thing,”, we’re using object to mean
“as opposed to subject”, see what I mean?

[student: What I’m saying is, is it the object of the mind?]

We’re using it here to mean the stuff involved. When you talk about karmic
path, you’re talking about the stuff involved. Why? Well, what’s the {chi} for
stealing? It’s not the person you’re stealing from. It’s something which is owned
by another person. See what I mean? So that’s a tough word to translate. In
Tibetan it means “basis”. Some people translate it as “basis”, but I don’t know, it
doesn’t quite get me. Anyway, what would it be for... like wrong view?

[student: [unclear]]

The laws of karma. The stuff involved that you’re going to do the bad deed
about are the laws of karma. You’re going to deny them. What about for
{unclear}?

[student: [unclear]]

Yeah, other peoples’ good qualities, other peoples’ wealth or other... you know,
their good personal qualities, their intelligence, stuff like that. So that’s a {chi}.
{Sampa} means the thinking, not thinking, involved. Mainly intention. We’re
going to talk more about that one shortly. Mainly intention.

[student: Is it motivation?]

You can call it motivation also but we’re going to get deeper into that. We’re
going to discuss number two later on. Okay? {jor wa} is the undertaking of the
deed. That’s where, for example...lot of people say preparation, but it’s not
really preparation. It does mean preparation in some cases. But this is where
you actually take a knife and go for the person. This is the deed. You’re
undertaking the deed.

[student: Doing the deed.]
Doing the deed, but you need {tatook}. It needs to be separate. {tatook} means
the finalization of the deed, completion of the deed. When is the deed complete
in the first {unclear}? When he dies. It could either be at the time that you
stabbed him, or it could be as the result of his wounds six months later. So you
could have a {jorwa} without a {tatook}. It could go on for six months. You’ve
undertaken the deed to kill the person, but he was in the hospital and finally he
dies, six months later. You didn’t collect the {tatook} until six months later.

[student: Wouldn’t it be something you collected just from the act of stabbing...]

We’ll talk about it. In fact it comes up next in the Abidharma. But these are the
things that really make the karma a karma. And when you’ve got these four
complete, it’s a great karma. And you can see how one could be incomplete.
Like you could {jorwa} a person. Attempted murder, right? Attempted murder
means the guy didn’t manage to {tatook}. {Sampa} means, for example, he
wanted to kill somebody, the person was out... I told you about the guys... you
see a lump in the bed and you shoot him with a machine gun, the guy died of a
heart attack a half-hour earlier already, there’s no {jorwa} there, I mean, there’s
no {sampa}, in the sense of recognition of what he is. And we’ll get into that.

[student: In case of the [bk: Lam Rim Chenmo], [unclear]]

They talk about it like that sometimes. They say: “I’m glad I did that”.
Sometimes they describe it and in the Abidharma it’s called {jook} and it’s a
different... it’s not called {tatook} in the Abidharma. It’s the finalization and
means, oh, I’m glad I did it, or they did a good job. But that’s not how
Tsongkhapa, in this section, explains it. By the way, these four come from
Asanga ultimately, they come from Maitreya. And you’re going to see how. It’s
in your reading. That’s where these four basically come from.

[student: Michael, these refer also to good karma?]

Absolutely. But the main point is, and you can see it, when you have all four
there, it’s powerful.
[student: Why are parents [unclear]]

Parents have... the reason why they’re {shing ki jepa che}, the reason why
they’re extraordinary objects is on the basis of the benefit they have given you,
the extreme dedication of the early part of your life at least. Had they left you
for more than a day or so you’d be dead, period. And that dedication of a good
parent or a lousy parent or any parent and the process of being pregnant and
nine months of suffering and all that, that’s a special bond. And they talk about
it...you know, if there’s two women...if one gave her egg for you, and the other
one gestated you, and you shoot them both, which one was the killing the real
mother? And there’s a big debate about it because the woman who gestated
you actually gave more of herself to benefit you. There’s a big debate about it in
the Abidharma. Okay, so that’s {du che}.

[student: So they had artificial insemination?]

Apparently they had something like that because they discuss it. They discuss
what if one woman’s egg is put into another woman and then which one is the
real mother. It’s in this....

[silence]

[student: [unclear]]

Who says what’s the [unclear]?

[laughter]

Say {yo myo}. [repeat] {yo myo} and {duk sum}. What’s {duk sum}? {yo mo}
means bad thought. {duk sum} means what? Three poisons. Which are liking,
disliking and ignorance. Liking, disliking and ignorance. You will read in your
reading that certain of the bad deeds can have all three motivate them, while
certain of the bad deeds can have only one. Normally harsh words, for example,
are what?

[student: Dislike.]

Because of dislike. I guess they’re always dislike. Sexual misconduct, adultery,
could be out of a desire for the other person or out of a wish to harm their
spouse. So it could be out of desire or out of...

[student: In New York City, harsh words are all around the place and it has
nothing to do with dislike, it’s just stressed out people with...]

[laughter]
[unclear] It’s normal to say...in my college dormitory we all had these nicknames
and it was very loving. No, that’s not harsh words. To say something sweet
when you want the person to go to hell and you know that they’ll take it that
way, that’s a harsh word. Okay. Third one is....

[student: What is {yo myo}?]

Bad thought. So is it disliking or liking or ignorance which is....? And there’s a
different {yo myo} going into it and a different {yo myo} coming out of it and
you’ll see that in your reading.

[student: Is that what “kleshas” means?]

Yeah. It’s the Tibetan word for “kleshas”.

[student: And is it “kleshas” here as well? I mean, you’ve never used the term
“kleshas”.]

I don’t use the word “klesha” much. Bad thought, I like bad thought. The
definition of a {yo myo} that we had in the Friday night class is very beautiful. It
says {unclear}.     “A bad thought which disturbs the tranquillity of mind.”
Westerners have a hard time translating “mental affliction”, “mental delusion.” I
don’t like “delusion.” It implies a misperception. They are based on a
misperception but they are not misperceptions necessarily. Say {kung lung}.
[repeat] {kung lung} is the motivation or the intention and this is where you get
into manslaughter. What’s manslaughter? This is where you hit somebody with
a car and you didn’t drive down the street thinking: “I’d like to hit the first
person who jumps out in front of my car”. And therefore {kung lung} is not
there. You didn’t get into your car hoping to kill somebody that day. And in the
courts... the courts and karma pretty much reflect each other. You know,
common sense tells you that that person is not as guilty as someone who gets
into his car and thinks “I’m going to hit the first pedestrian I see.” So if any one
of these is not present... what’s a {yo myo} like if you’re trying to benefit... like
euthanasia, the {yo myo} is very tricky. The {gurlung} is very tricky. {gurlung}
is virtuous. You get a virtue from the motivation. And then the {jorwa} is very
mistaken. So like that. Take a break. Please come back in ten minutes and I can
finish my duty. We’re going okay. We have one more question to do.

[student: Can I ask you a question?]
Yeah.

[student: It goes back to what I was asking before about the calm-abiding
meditation...one-pointed versus the alternating with analytical? You know, I
have a friend who has been trying to attain calmabiding meditation for some
time and I think that her experience has been that she continues to experience
more and more subtle levels of pleasure. So I think the training she’s received
has been strictly single-pointed concentration and nothing else.            Not
alternating...like the calm-abiding training.]

On what?

[student: Well, the first time she tried it she did it on her breath. Then she tried it
again using a Buddha image. Now she’s doing it again...this is like her third
[unclear]... so I sent her the tapes from the other classes and she’s very interested
in them and I think it would be really important for her to understand what the
subtle aspect of that balance is, or at what point to shift, you know, at what point
to start alternating to be aware of getting into that trap of passing up the
opportunity to concentrate on emptiness.]

[unclear]

[student: Calm-abiding meditation? But when you taught calm-abiding, you
said the biggest enemy to calm-abiding is changing your object.]

There’s some tricks about that, you know, the union of the two of them.

[student: Calm-abiding?]

Yeah.

[student: What does he say about the union of the two in calm-abiding?]

Well [unclear]. You know, the union of the two is [unclear]. Know what I mean?

[student: In terms of the technique of doing the calm-abiding meditation, the
way of doing analytical meditation on emptiness is single-pointed concentration
on the Buddha image?]
No, it’s not like that. It’s really not like that.

[student: So what is it like?]

It’s not like you... I mean, it’s not like you concentrate on a Buddha image and
try to get {shinay} on that and then skip over to emptiness and try to use it on
emptiness. It’s not like that.

[student: See the way it was explained...]

No, it’s not like that.

[student: The way {[unclear] Rinpoche} explained it to her is that because it’s so
hard to do calmabiding meditation on emptiness, it’s much better to do calm-
abiding meditation on virtuous objects, Buddha image. After you attain calm-
abiding on the Buddha image, then you switch over to emptiness meditation.]

That sounds correct.

[student: But what you’re saying though is...]

But it’s not that you would... that’s just to get the microscope of power....

[student: But what I was understanding you as saying though was when you get
further along with your calm-abiding meditation and this first level of formless
realm, you have this opportunity to see emptiness that you didn’t ....]

[unclear] if you didn’t use the Buddha image.

[student: If you did use the Buddha image?]

If you did not use the Buddha image.

[student: What if you were using the Buddha image?]

To get there, you need that.

[student: That’s what I’m saying... if you continue to use a virtuous....]

[unclear] a virtuous object
[student: My point is that if you continue to use a Buddha image, you still skip
over the opportunity to be concentrating on emptiness.]

Oh yeah, you could. Theoretically that’s possible.

[student: Is it not likely, or what’s the deal on this, you know? [unclear]]

[unclear] if you weren’t exposed....

[student:   If you didn’t know what to look for, when to switch, that kind of
thing?]

If you weren’t exposed to the proofs for emptiness, then it wouldn’t happen.

[student: What wouldn’t happen?]

You could reach that stage in the way that non-Buddhists reach it. It would be a
[unclear] and you wouldn’t.. you’d just stay there and you might go farther
along in those meditations. Take the meditation as your goal.

[student: You mean the first level of the form realm?]

Yeah.

[student: That’s when you’re saying you have to make the switch?]

No, I didn’t mean that. I mean you should develop the ability to get to that, and
then you should keep studying emptiness, and once you’ve developed the
[unclear]...

[student: You don’t want to get above that before you’ve shifted your object?]

[student: To emptiness?]

I don’t think you could get above that, yeah, you couldn’t get above that, yeah,
you could get above that, you could get hung up in that.

[student: So the idea is to be able to identify when you get to the first level of the
form realm so that you know you’re there, so that you know that it’s time to
move to emptiness.]

Exactly.

[student: And when you get to the first level of the form realm in your calm-
abiding meditation, you say, okay, I’m here, now I need to shift to emptiness.]

I doubt it would have to be one session like that.

[student: Well, I mean, there are a whole lot of sessions...]

Over a period of months you develop the ability to be there. And you would
know it. And then you start studying emptiness, you start studying the
scriptures on emptiness. And then every time you go into that meditation, you
start...

[student: ...doing the emptiness meditation?]

But I think the time, at the moment that you triggered that, you go into the path
of seeing. There’s a lot more going on in the few weeks before that than in the
moments....in the weeks before that, you are exposed to certain arguments for
emptiness and you start to think about them and they work on you
subconsciously and then...

[student: You mean in a supervised course....]

Oh, yes.

[student: In terms of doing calm-abiding meditation, does the first level of the
form realm come after attaining calm-abiding or before?]

Before.

[student: Oh, so you still have to attain calm-abiding before you can get to the
first level of the....oh! I thought it was before you attain calm-abiding. Oh, oh,
oh, oh. That’s what it is. Okay. That’s what it is. I got you.]

[student: So then this idea of a calm-abiding practice, switching back and forth,
you wouldn’t switch back-and-forth?]
No. You develop the ability to do it, and then you use it to....

[student: After you attain calm-abiding, then you switch? Okay.]

And then maybe a week later you start working on emptiness. You’re actually
doing both at the same time.

[student: Both what?]

You’re doing your {shinay}, {shamatha}, and you’re studying emptiness during
the day. You can’t meditate all day long.

[student: During calm-abiding practice?]

No, I mean, practice meditation on different objects. I mean, whatever it
happens to be you’re using. And then you reach a stage of {shinay}, {shamatha}.

[student: And after you attain that stage...]

Well, it’s not like you stop and then you go back into emptiness meditation.
During that time, theoretically, during your breaks, you are reading about
emptiness.

[student: I thought during your {shinay} practice you’re not supposed to be
doing anything including read....]

If it’s a retreat, yeah.

That’s what I’m talking about. A retreat. A pure retreat.

Ideally you shouldn’t read any books.

[student: I’m thinking of the context my friend is doing this.]

Yeah, ideally you wouldn’t read any books. Except, personally, I fell into this
when I got very bad {lung}. Then a book brought me down and it was useful.
Generally you’re not supposed to read anything. If you do read anything it can
only be {Lam Rim} books. You’re not even supposed to read specialized books.
Definitely not magazines.
[laughter]

[student: Definitely not magazines.]

They’re really bad. They’re really destructive.

[student: Or novels, or fiction.]

Very bad. They’re very bad for your concentration.

[student: Even specialized Dharma books aren’t good, huh?]

Well, if you have to, [Lam Rim} or something. But not like a technical discussion
of...

[student: Emptiness.]

[laughs]. Well, you’re not supposed to sit down and study Vinaya rules or
something, know what I mean? Should be something relevant. But it can be a
distraction all the same. Better not to see anybody at all, better not to look
outside at all, have your windows closed, better not to see...absolutely better not
to speak a word to anyone.

[student: [unclear]]

The Abidharma has some discussions on morality, you know, about moral
conundrums. And one of them is... I just thought it was important so I stuck it in
there. They discuss...what about war? If you’re in a war, there’s a war effort...I
think we talked about this before. You’re not in the front lines, but you are
supporting the war effort, and someone on the front lines kills somebody. Do
you collect the karma of killing? This has big repercussions. This one question to
me has big implications. Because then this whole question of, if I work for
Andine(?) International and the company screws up somebody and I’m
contributing, am I responsible? Do I collect the karma of stealing?

[student: Like many people voted for Koch?] [laughter]

[laughs] Probably.

[student: Anybody could have capital punishment as part of their platform.]
That’s true, that’s actually true.

[student: He actually promised us capital punishment.]

So anyway, the conclusion of the Abidharma, I leave it to you to read. It’s not
my conclusion, I thought it was important to you, but it says he’s just as liable as
the person who pulled the trigger, he collects the karma all the same. It’s not
me, it’s Vasubandu.

[student: It just seems like a parallel to what you’re just suggesting, really.
[unclear]]

Well, one thing you should know. One principle of this is that for either you to
do it yourself or to appoint someone else to do it, is totally the same karma. If
you hire someone to go have adultery because you’re not handsome enough to
hurt the other guy [laughs], you know, if this other guy’s wife would be
attracted to you so you could hurt her husband, it’s exactly the same karma as if
you did it yourself. It says {rangi aur rangi korba}. You or someone you put up
to do it.

[student: So it’s the same karma to you [unclear]]

The argument I’ve heard about eating meat, and I don’t eat meat, is that when
you go to the store you’re buying meat, you’re not killing, you’re buying meat.
You don’t say I’m going to the food market to shoot an arrow.

[student: But you’re participating in the system and you know perfectly well
how it got there.]

I don’t eat meat. [laughs] Besides, I’ve heard this argument before. I believe
there is a distinction between buying meat and going to the slaughter house and
killing animals.

[student: Yeah, that’s why they get all the Muslims to do it.]

But I have to say...

[student: It’s the principle of karma, I mean, it’s not the [unclear]]
The Lotus Sutra says don’t eat pig meat, don’t eat cow meat, don’t eat fish meat,
don’t eat human’s meat, don’t eat any meat. So I don’t know. I leave it to you.
But it was not... and I don’t want to go against the very high lamas who have
said differently. They have other things to say about it. I just leave it like that. I
don’t eat meat. I can’t eat meat. I think you’re very lucky if you can stop eating
meat and I don’t... I think that with morals you kind of have to... you know the
rules, you know the principles, I think that then you have to apply it to the best
of your knowledge.

[student: [unclear]]

They do what?

[student: They dispense drugs to third world countries and all kinds of [unclear].
Is that also [unclear]]

Well, I don’t know. You take your own... you read the reading and see how it
applies in your mind. If it’s with the intent to harm the other people, and if
you’re contributing to it, then I guess you’d have to change jobs.

[student: Even if you make a lot of money.]

But that’s a little bit less. [laughs] The {kunlung}, the motivation, the intention, is
not directly to harm other people. I think that’s the distinction between mowing
the lawn and killing roaches. I mean, if you mow the lawn you’re going to kill
insects, but you didn’t say I’m going to go out today and kill bugs. You said I’m
going out to mow the lawn. There is a distinction. But I’ll tell you one thing and
I can’t help but go back to it in my mind. I remember Tom saying: “What shall
we do about the incompetent guy?” It’s been bothering me for a few days, you
know, at work. Do you fire him or not? I had to do this. Strictly speaking, the
only thing that can give you... you have to... it’s so obvious that we have missed
it our whole lives. The only thing that can give you a good result, absolutely,
positively, the only thing that can give you any kind of good result, is a kindness,
is a good deed. There’s nothing else possible that can give you a good deed.
Period. Nothing. It’s impossible. Doesn’t work that way.

[student: You just gave an example, let’s see if I can get this right, of what
sounded like lying, when you said that harsh words would include speaking in a
kind voice.]
That’s not what I called kindness. That’s not kind at all. Take your time. All
right.

[student: Let me think...okay, but the point is, whatever your feelings are,
you’re not acting out, you’re not acting out in an angry fashion that will harm
the other person even though you haven’t been able to get past the bad
feelings...]

Oh no, that’s a mental bad deed and not a verbal bad deed. But I want to go
back to this theme before you lose the sense of it. What I’m saying is...]

[student:   No, I was going to say, when you talked about the incompetent
guy....]

What I’m saying is this: I don’t want to get to that level. Come up to a different
level. I want to talk about a very deep level. Nothing in the world that’s good
can come from anything except a good deed. It’s impossible. There’s no such
thing. There’s no way to manipulate your world, and achieve anything good in
your world except by doing a good deed. And if you happen to take some
action and you get some goodness happening subsequent to that, it’s just
coincidence. It’s just factors involved. But what I’m saying is that if anything
good comes out of anything you ever do, it’s because of something good you
did before. It’s nothing to do with the actions of the moment. And you have to...
if you lived your life like that, your life would be radically different. You would
look like a fool or crazy or something. You’d be kind to everyone and as a
result, half the time, you’d be getting screwed, and it would look like a bad way
of life, and it would look like an unprofitable way of acting. It’s not true. It’s an
illusion. That’s all.

[student: There are situations where you have to.. you can’t be kind to
everyone. If you keep the incompetent person on, you’re unkind to the boss
who’s losing money. If you fire the...]

I want to say something... and I regretted not saying it. If the company’s losing
money because of this person, and if you remove the person and suddenly the
person makes more money, it has nothing to do with removing the incompetent
person.

[student: So let’s go out and hire all the incompetent people...]
[student: Wait a minute, wait a minute, Michael. Let’s take....]

[laughs] I’m not disagreeing with you. I’m just saying... I tell you, try it for a
while. Maybe something will happen. Whatever we did in the past didn’t work.

[student: Wait a minute, is it kind or honest to keep a person in a job...]

That’s a different...

[student: No! But that’s a very... that’s an issue.]

No. If you can do it with great holy kindness, it’s absolutely a good deed. I
never said that.

[student: Okay, but I’m just, you know...]

[student: It’s five to nine and we’ve a lot to finish. [laughs] Can we finish and
save this for...]

All right, all right, okay. But I just say that, I think it’s worth...we will finish on
time, okay? But that’s the whole guts of it. You have based your life so far on a
perception of what worked and didn’t work and it didn’t work. Life so far was
dysfunctional. And it doesn’t work that way. It’s not causation. It’s not...it
doesn’t follow the laws of causation. Why? It’s obvious, because it doesn’t work
all the time. If you had really followed the laws of causation, then the normal
things you do at work to remove a bad guy and get more profit would work all
the time, and they don’t. So that’s not really what’s happening. That’s all. Okay.
Last question. What’s the difference between a {lay} and a {lay ki la}?

[silence]

I had it the other day...we were trying to decide whether to send the dogs for a
flea bath. Apparently it would remove the fleas. No connection. Absolutely no
connection.

[student: I’m sorry? Say that again?]

If the dogs experience some result where they have no more fleas and they felt
much better, it’s got nothing to do with taking their fleas out, nothing! Sorry. I
collected a very bad deed, and the fact that suddenly they didn’t have fleas had
nothing to do with the flea-powder. Think about it.

[student: In the conventional world it does. [unclear]]

[student: [unclear] cleaning the center. Because it’s been cleaned has nothing to
do with our cleaning it, right?]

No, no! That’s a goodness. I did an evil. And I must get an evil result. If there’s
any pleasure that anyone got out of my deed, it had no relation to my deed. I’m
trying to say that. That’s profound. That has profound implications for your life.
It’s probably what you’re supposed to do to get out of samsara. [laughs] I don’t
know. Okay, {lay} and {lay ki la}. What’s the difference between karma and a
karmic path? I used to wonder about it all the time. I saw a very nice quotation
and I’ll read it to you. {nob sum suk ege sum chu chu} which means “let’s
consider the three bad deeds of life” which are what?

[student: We’ve only got two minutes to go!]

Craving.   Oh boy, what kind of Buddhists are you if you can’t even get the
three...

[student: Craving, aversion and ignorance?]

Yeah, craving, ill-will and wrong view. Coveting, ill will and wrong view. Okay?
He says let’s consider those three. They are a path of karma. They are a path of
action. Because they function to move the {sempa}, they motivate the {sempa},
they motivate the movement of the mind to move to its object. How’s that?
They are paths of action because they motivate the movement of the mind to
shift to its object.

[student: [unclear]]

[laughs] Okay, take those three, they are paths of action, paths of karma,
because they motivate the movement of the mind to shift to a new object. What
I’m trying to say since we started the {unclear} class is that those three things by
themselves...well I’m about to point that out...are not karma.

[student: They are not karma?]

No, I take it back, they are karma.
[student: They are the cause of karma, they are the source of karma.]

[student: They result in karma.]

Sorry, they are not the karma. They are the path of karma. They are the
example. You’ve got to think about it. They are the example of something
which is the path of karma but they’re not karma. They are not a karma.

[student: The movement of the mind is karma.]

They are not the {sempa}. They are not the movement of the mind. They
trigger the movement of the mind. And that’s very difficult to understand. You
have to cook it.

[student: So you’re saying the path of karma is what triggers the movement of
the mind essentially?]

You can have a ... those three states of mind are not karma.

[student: Right. I understand that. But they are what trigger the movement of
the mind.]

Yeah. They motivate the karma.

[student: So you’re saying the path of karma is what triggers the movement of
the mind?]

That’s how he’s defining it, yeah. That’s his proof for why they are a path of
karma.

[student: Because they cause the movement of the mind?]

Yeah. Because they motivate the movement of the mind. Okay. He says the
seven of body and speech.

[student: The what?]

The seven of body and speech, three of body and the four of speech, the seven
bad deeds, are not only paths of action or paths of karma but also what? Karma.
Because they provide an opportunity for the movement of the mind to act itself
out.

[student: [unclear]]

{sambe lay} and {sampe lay}.

[student: [unclear]]

If it’s nice. The seven are both.

[student: They include the both?]

Yeah. I’m sorry, no, they are the thought thing you do, they are not the
thinking itself. But because they provide an opportunity for the thought to act
itself out, we call them karma.

[student: But [unclear]]

No. Because it doesn’t provide an opportunity for the movement of the mind to
act itself out. You’ve got to cook it. I didn’t understand it until I.... what I’m
saying is that if somebody asks you whether the last three non-virtues are
karma, you’d have to say what?

[student: Yes.]

No. The movement of the mind involved... the movement of the mind which is
separate and distinct from them, which goes on with them, is the karma.

[student: [unclear]]

It’s not karma. And the movement of the mind which is going on together with
it is karma. It itself is not karma. Ignorance itself is not karma. [unclear] It
motivates karma.

[student: But karma is movement of the mind.]

Yes, but...

[student: So what if you’re in the midst of...]
Movement of the mind is distinct from the anger or distinct from the love or
distinct from the attachment or distinct from the [unclear] or distinct from
the...what I’m trying to say is that they’re two mental functions, separate mental
functions. Okay. By the way, he says, there’s a big argument about this, a lot of
the Abidharma school says it’s not true, they say it is karma, there is a heavy
argument. Obviously there would be, right? The last example, the last thing...
can you give me a taste of something that’s karma but is not a path of karma?

[student: Can I just ask a quick question? You said there are two mental
functions. Which one is karma and which one is not karma?]

The movement of the mind is the karma.            The anger, the attachment, the
coveting, the ill-will, those are not karma.

[student: They are a path of karma?]

They are a path of karma.

[student: A direct perception of emptiness...]

Well, I’ll give it to you since it’s five after. Anything which is karma but not a
path of karma. Those movements of the mind... movement of the mind.

[student: Any movement of the mind.]

They say {sempa}. They seem to be... the text seems to be referring to the ten.
The {sempa}’s going on and the ten are going on.

[student: So they’re not paths, they’re the real thing?]

They are karma itself, they are not paths of karma.

[student: I don’t understand the terminology in English. What is the concept?]

The thing is that those ten things, those ten bad deeds, are not a list of ten bad
karmas. And no Buddhist text says they are. Lots of teachers will go around and
tell you these are the ten bad karmas. The last three are not karmas. Well, we
just had all the possibilities, right? We found something which is karma but not a
path of karma.
[student: [unclear]]

Movement of the mind itself. What’s a path of karma but not a karma?

[student: Jealousy.]

Those three. The last three. What’s a path of karma and karma?

[student: [unclear]]

[unclear] Bye. You need the reading. You’ve got to think about it.

[student: So is the idea that the mental functions that follow behind the
movement of the mind don’t count as movement of the mind? Is that the idea?]

The moving of the mind, which is the shifting of the mind towards its object...

[student: Is only the primary mental function?]

It’s a separate mental function.

[student: And the stuff that trails behind that? Does it count?]

Trailing means {unclear}. Those are not karma.

[student: So whatever follows this primary... doesn’t count as karma, doesn’t
count as movement of the mind. So am I understanding this correctly?]

Well, what’s cool is... yeah, basically yeah. You could have a serious debate
about it all. We had it in the monastery. We said virtuous by...

[student: Association?]

Yeah. [unclear]

End
941114-1.aaa

HOW KARMA WORKS