ACI 5 «Как работает карма», занятие 9

Class Nine: Five Heinous Deeds
November 17, 1994
transcribed by: Mira Prabha

What did we do last class? [laughter] Oh yeah, this is worse, okay? Tonight is
worse. But anyway, I thought you should know the bad ones. At least you can
avoid them. This is {sum me na}, these are the five worst bad deeds, I don’t how
to pronounce it, heinous?

[student: Heinous.]

{sum} here means “interim”. And {me} means “no interim”. And what it means
is that if you do one of these five in this life, you will be reborn in hell and you
won’t have any other births in between, you must go to hell your very next life
and there’s no other possibility.

[student: How do you get out of hell?]

You wear out the bad deeds. You just suffer and the bad deeds, the {bakchaks},
flower. And then they finish and sooner or later you stop seeing hell and you
start seeing another birth.

[student: What leads to that?]

It just wears out. There’s a priority system, right? So whichever ones were
stronger, whichever {bakchaks} were stronger, and whichever were toward a
more holy object, those get worn out first... they assert themselves earliest
because they’re stronger. And then as those wear out, the ones waiting behind
them in queue start to assert themselves. Finally you don’t have any more
{bakchaks} to experience in life because you’ve worn them out. But you can die
in those hells and be beaten to death and then just wake up again and they keep
beating you until you die and wake you again...

[student: In the last class you talked about why anger was so much more
powerful than virtue. You said you’d answer it today.]

Today? [laughter]. I don’t know. John, you were there in Arizona, maybe you
remember? [laughs]

[student: I actually asked the question, why doesn’t one moment of anger
destroy one moment of virtue. He just said you can’t understand the subtle
workings of karma.]

[laughs] You can’t understand the subtle workings of karma.

[laughter]

[student: I’ll ask it again eventually.]

I’ll check, I will check, I forgot the answer. But I should ask Rinpoche. There’s a
long thing in the Madhyamika scriptures because it’s so extraordinary.
Shantideva’s statement that you lose a hundred kalpas for one second of anger is
so extraordinary that they do discuss this [unclear].

[student: Could you say something about the meanings of merit and virtue?
Are you using that interchangeably with {bakchaks}?]

I’m using them interchangeably. Technically merit and virtue, {sem men} and
{gewa}, are a little bit different.

[student: When people say, you know, you’re accumulating merit...]

You can think of good karma, which is {bakchaks}.

[student: So you’ve got to accumulate a lot of a certain kind of {bakchak} is all
they’re saying.

Yeah.

[student: [unclear]]

Not the kind of {bakchak} that creates a {namen}, a ripening, result, technically, a
result of temporary pleasure or temporary pain.

[student: It’s only [unclear] so in a certain sense...]

Well, no, you must collect virtue, because those virtues allow you... the definition
of virtue was what? In the short run blah blah blah... in the long run there is that
goodness. You do have to create jillions of {bakchaks} to see yourself as a
Buddha. That’s true. And then while you’re being a Buddha they feed on each
other, you achieve fusion? You know, where the fuel creates more energy
than...the result [unclear] than the fuel. And that’s what it’s doing. Okay. {sam
me na}. {sam} means “intermediate birth.” {me} means none, {na} means “five”.
So we call them the five immediate misdeeds, five immediate bad deeds.
“Immediate” means there’s no medium between them. You do it in this life... in
the life in which you collect the karma, you must experience hell as—which of
those three—do you remember the three experiences?

[student: Immediate... it makes...]

Yeah. One kind of karma you have experiences in this life, one kind of karma
you have experiences in beyond the next life and then this is that middle one.
{ken yin yong [unclear]}. You must experience it in the next life, immediately,
with no intermediate life. Is there no bardo? No, there is a bardo. Some
Buddhist scholars have said that means there’s no bardo but that’s not true, they
don’t accept that. Immediate means in the next rebirth life. They don’t count
bardo in that category.

[student: So it’s not just an experiencing of the result in the next life, it also
produces the next life?]

It is a {penjay ki lay}. It must be. But we’ll get into that.

[student: Michael, if Maitreya makes his presence known, does that have any
effect on...]

You couldn’t see him.

[student: If you were in hell?]

No, I mean... people who do these and people who {gesa che}, you know, who
cut that root virtue, they have...they create what are called {jepas} and {jepas} are
like {bakchaks}. They’re a kind of energy that stays in your mental stream and
they obstruct you from seeing those beings, you couldn’t see them. You’d go to
see the Dalai Lama and you’d get into a car accident. [laughs] You couldn’t see
them. There was a monk named Mekar, who served the Buddha for twelve
years and he said “I never saw any worthwhile quality that he had.” [laughs]
The quote is in the sutras. “He has this little halo around his head, otherwise I’ve
never seen anything extraordinary. I’ve served him for twelve years and I
haven’t seen anything unusual about him at all.” So it’s possible. {sam men ga}.
So I’ll give you the five... they’re very important to know, obviously. It’s a big
subject in the Abidharma and it’s accepted by all schools. Say {maa} [repeat]
{sepa} [repeat] {maa} [repeat] {sepa} [repeat]. What do you think {maa} means?
[laughs] {maa} means mother, {sepa} means “to kill.” To kill your mother.
That’s the first in the list. By the way, the first in the list doesn’t mean the most
serious. We’re going to get into that later. This list is in the traditional order but
it’s not in order of any severity. So {maa sepa} is the first one. You’ll see a
debate in your reading, I thought you’d find it interesting so I threw it in there
since I have time now that I’m not working. It’s this—what if a woman conceives
a child, and then the embryo is transferred to the womb of another woman?
Which woman does he have to kill to get a {maa sepa}? [laughs]. [laughter] After
he’s born and grows up. And they say the one who conceived him. Even if he
spent all eight months or something in another woman’s womb.

[student: What if the woman dies in childbirth? [unclear]]

There are four ways of being born and it’s covered in the first chapter I think, or
the second chapter. There’s a list. There’s four ways. You can be born from an
egg, from a womb, from heat and wetness and then you can be born complete,
like Padmasambhava was born complete just as the hellbeings are born
complete. They just show up there, all ready to suffer. They don’t go through a
childhood. And they say those births are rated by preference and the womb
birth is rated low because it hurts the mother so much. But I don’t think... there’s
no intention, right? There’s no identification, there’s no undertaking, the only
thing you have is the completion. So probably some karma. By the way, the
whole point of talking about those four elements, and then the three elements
inside the second element, was that you can decide yourself on what is a good
deed. It’s not a full karmic path, but you know there was a completion if she did
have the pain. Then there’s this debate about, if your father changes sexes
[laughter] and then you kill him, is it still a killing of your father? And they say
yes, when he contributed his part he was a man. There is a lot of that in these
books.

[student: So is one considered worse than the other?]

I’m going to talk about it.
[student: Just in case we have the urge.] [laughter]

[student: We need to know.]

I think you can get close. I was close. My mother asked me to help kill her when
she had cancer. And then I also... I told her to take Tibetan medicine and not to
do her radiation treatment. You have to be careful about it. You can, out of
carelessness, you can contribute.

[student: So if you’d said yes and you went ahead and gave them permission
and they pulled the plug right before she would have died anyway and you
didn’t know the difference, it wouldn’t have been a complete karma?]

Yeah. Right. But luckily I didn’t make the decision. Okay. Say {da chemba
sempa}. [repeat]. What’s {da chemba}? Arhat, okay? {da} means “enemy”.
What’s your big enemy?

[student: Ignorance.]

Mainly ignorance, but the other five major afflictions, you know, pride, anger,
hatred..... {da} is “enemy,” {jo} means “to destroy,” {arhat} means “foe
destroyer”. Sometimes you see it translated as “foe destroyer.” And if you
remove those permanently, you achieve nirvana. So you could have done it this
afternoon, you could do it tonight.

[student: {sepa} means “to kill”?]

Yeah. {sepa} means to kill, so to kill an arhat. Say {gendin kyi} [repeat] {yen
chepa} [repeat]. {gendin kyi} [repeat] {yen chepa} [repeat]. {gendin} means
what? Do you know? The first Dalai Lama’s name. {gendin} means “sangha,”
the sangha, the community of monks. It has to be...technically, when, you study
Vinaya, it has to be four monks or more. You don’t have a {gendin}, it’s like a
quorum of monks. A single monk is not called a {gendin}. You say {gen long}.
And then four monks or more is a {gendin}. So {yen} means “to divide,” or “to
split up”. {chepa} means “to do that”. So this means to cause a schism among the
monks. To split up the monks. {gendin kyi yen chepa}.

[student: In the previous one, did we have to have proper identification? In the
last class you....]
That’s a good question.

[student: You said the motivation didn’t matter.]

Well, they said it was less important in the case of that extraordinary object, in
the case of a Boddhisattva. I don’t believe you have to. I think it’s from the
point of view of their being such an extraordinary object and not to do with your
motivation. I don’t think you have to know that they’re a {drachoma} to get that
karma. In fact I can think of an example. Uddiyana was killed by his son and I
don’t believe he had any idea he was the Maharaja’s son. I don’t remember any
mention that the son cared or knew about him.

[student: You can get bad karma just for thinking badly or speaking badly to an
arhat whether you know that’s what they are or not, according to what the
Buddha taught us in the last class. Because you don’t know.]

You get a full karmic path... you know, it would seem like you’d have to know
to collect a full karma.      Would it still be a {sam me} if you didn’t have
identification? I believe it is. Just from the extraordinary nature of the object.
Last one. It’s a long one. Say {deshe la} [repeat] {nyen sem kye} [repeat] {chag
jimba} [repeat]. {desheg} means a “Buddha”, {deshe shepa}, {sugatha}, those
who’ve gone to heaven. {la} “to him”, {nyen sem kye}, {nyen sem} means “with
evil intention.” And it means that you really wanted to kill him. It means you
were really intending to kill him. {chag jimba}... {chag} means “blood” and
{jimba} means to draw, to draw the blood of a Buddha with evil intentions. This
is Abidharma system, right? Because a Buddha can’t suffer, obviously. But there
is a story in the Hinayana scriptures, well, it’s in the scriptures, that the Buddha’s
halfbrother, who was insanely jealous of the Buddha throughout his whole life,
you know, prepared... and several people tried to murder him... people invited
him to dinner and tried to murder him. It wasn’t like....nothing worked. His
brother made a catapult, and waited for him, shot the catapult, it hit the Buddha’s
leg and made a small cut on his foot. In the Mahayana way, the Buddha was just
allowing him to do it and pretending to bleed, but the Buddha can’t....technically
a Buddha can’t suffer. But the Abidharma position is just to even try to do it is
the bad deed.

[student: So to try to kill?]

It means to try to kill a Buddha, but it does say that to draw blood from a
Buddha with evil intention. Those five can get you to hell directly. [unclear]
Yeah?

[student: Michael, number four, to cause a schism? In a very clear situation, for
instance if you have a [unclear] when you have a teacher who isn’t that great?]
[laughs] [laughter] No, no, no, I didn’t say that...]

We’re going to go into it very deeply. We’re going to spend a lot of time on it.
By the way, now that you’ve mentioned it, number four of all of them will
always cause you to be born in the lowest hell. It’s called a {vichi}. Hell where
you have absolutely not a second’s respite. Not a second...there isn’t a single
moment where you’re not experiencing the pain which is beyond any pain that
any one can feel in this realm.

[student: Why is that?]

We’re going to talk about it.

[student: We discussed this in a previous course and you emphasized on several
different occasions that it’s impossible technically to...]

We’re going to talk about it. I know. [laughs] I know. [laughs] Trust me, trust
me. So the other four, you have to go to hell but not necessarily to the lowest
hell. All right? Number four, {gendin kyi yen che}, to split up the sangha, for
that you must go to the lowest hell and you must stay there for one {parkel}.
{parkel}...there’s a beautiful thing in the Abidharma third chapter. It describes
how the universe forms over the period of.. I think it’s sixty kalpas. I tried to
figure out what a kalpa... a kalpa is very difficult. Guten Rinpoche back in the
1300’s tried to calculate it. The definition of a kalpa is something like that. The
first people on this planet lived in a paradise, like a garden of Eden. Their
lifespan is up to 80,000 years long. They lived to 80,000. And then they start to
mess up. And there’s a beautiful story. It’s very similar to the Garden of Eden
story. And they start to commit non-virtues. And then eventually, because of
that, generation after generation, they reach a point where people live only ten
years. So to calculate the length of an eon, of a kalpa, you have to do this
mathematically. I haven’t got this straight. It’s many many zeroes, sixty zeroes
or something like that.

[student: Is this in the Abidharma?]

It’s accepted in all schools.
[student: No, but I mean the story.]

It’s in the third chapter. It’s at the end. I can give it to you sometime.

[student: Is every world system like that or...]

Every world system follows the same pattern. So that’s one called the {parkel}.
And there’s sixty of those cycles. Then the people start...it’s like a nuclear war,
it’s very similar to a nuclear war and only the people living out in the wilderness
survive and then they meet in the towns that are ruined and destroyed and the
people are all dead and they say, look, this is terrible, we should really follow the
ten virtues. So they all decide to follow them and then the lifespan starts to
increase. So there’s this huge thing. That’s a {parkel}. The time it takes to 80,000
years of life spans in one generation down to ten again. That’s a {parkel}. Sixty
of those make a great eon. And a great eon has the formation of the world, that
takes a kalpa, and then the destruction of the world by one of several means,
one of which is like an atomic fire, one is like the sun supernovas and destroys
the planet. And it’s beautiful. It’s in the Abidharma. So a kalpa is a helluva long
time, no pun intended, and you have to stay a {parkel} in the lowest hell.

[student: [parkel} is....]

{parkel} is one of those loops.

[student: One-sixtieth of...]

I don’t even want to guess, but it’s trillions of years. Yeah?

[student: What happens if someone causes a schism in the sangha from the laity,
in the non-clergy? Is that...?]

We’ll talk about it. Okay.

[student: Causes a schism in the sangha, or in the community of monks? Where
do you mean? Aryas or...]

We’ll talk about it. Everything we’re talking about tonight is this {sam me}, this
is a very specific deed and I’m going to talk more about it. By the way, when I
say “sangha,” I mean ordained monks, I don’t mean... he’s talking about literal
sangha. Literal sangha is anyone who’s seen emptiness directly. Once you’ve
seen emptiness directly you’re sangha, you’re the real sangha, and we’re the
figurative sangha, people who wear robes are not the real sangha.

[student: So this refers to the real or the figurative?]

The figurative.

[student: The figurative, okay.]

Okay. We have another profile, a profile of the person who commits this. And
then you get into...you see, this deed, the {sam me}, the immediate mis-deed of
this, has to be done, luckily, while the Buddha is on the planet, while the
historical Buddha is on the planet, because it’s dividing his direct followers.

[student: Oh, so it’s only his monks.]

We can’t do this. We cannot commit this crime. It has to be done while the
Buddha is present, on the planet.

[student: Is this number five?]

No, number four again. The splitting up of the monks has to be done on this
planet, and it’s a historical event, it’s a historical pattern that reoccurs on each
planet and there’s a lot of details about when it can take place. But basically...I
better give you all the details. [laughs] The monk who does the split, the monk
who incites the split, first of all, he’s a monk, he’s a full monk, he’s a bhikshu. He
has to be a full monk. Secondly, he has a very good morality, he keeps his
morality very well. Thirdly, he’s very intelligent, he’s the intellectual type. They
say he has to be pretty attractive, he has to be charismatic, because he has to
break up the followers of the Buddha, so he’s not a dumbhead, well, he’s an
ultimate dumbhead, [laughs] but he knows his stuff, he can recite all the
scriptures, he’s a...what do you call it? His reputation is good, he’s a good monk
and then he sets forth a list of five things to achieve nirvana and they don’t have
anything to do with... you can’t eat [unclear}, you shouldn’t wear these robes
with the patches on them, things like that. It’s a list. Don’t eat meat.

[student: They say this is the case with all world systems or just this one...?]

It seems to be that the Abidharma is saying that this is a pattern in world
systems. But there’s always... you can read it in your reading, but there’s a limit
of time. It can only happen twelve years after the Buddha has first started
teaching. During the first twelve years of the Buddha’s teaching everyone is so
happy and so into it that they have this special unity, and it can’t happen. And
it’s like a dharma center. You know, when you’re first learning everything it’s
very fresh, very interesting. Sooner or later I’ll run out of interesting new things
to tell you and then it’s just whether you practice them or not, you know. Right
now it’s kind of interesting not only because you’re practicing but because it’s
the first time you’ve heard a lot of this. There will come a time when you will
have heard everything and I can get up here and repeat it but then it’s just a
question of whether you’ve practiced it or not, and then it’s not as fresh, it’s not
as interesting, I can tell you. And it’s a very dangerous stage to reach, they
describe it in the scriptures, it’s called butter on leather, like if you keep buttering
the leather pouch, then sooner or later the pouch gets saturated and starts to
crack and can’t absorb any more butter. And that’s a danger, it’s a spiritual
danger, that you reach a point when you’ve heard all these things, and what
you’re really attracted is more information and not practicing it. [laughs] That’s
a very dangerous point. So anyway, it can’t happen right after the Buddha’s... it
doesn’t happen also right after the Buddha starts teaching. Everyone is so
happy. The twelve-year thing is that after the Buddha starts teaching, and as his
followers spread out over that country or that planet, they start to introduce
corruption into the teachings. And the last page of the Abidharma is very sad,
you cry when you read it, you know, you spend two, three, four years studying
Abidharma, you get to the last page and the Buddha describes how these
teachings will die. He goes long descriptions of how they will die and when they
will and why they will die. His own teachings, he sees they will die out.

[student: The Abidharma was written by the Buddha?]

No, but Vasubandhu...it’s pretty much a compendium from the sutras. So he
quotes the... and if you get to read the sutras eventually, they’re quite nice, you
see everything. Yesterday I found a lot of quotations. They say that the Tibetan
Buddhists made up all these things about lama devotion but the sutras are even
more radical. I was reading one yesterday, it’s a thousand pages long, very
powerful. So... it can’t happen right after the Buddha starts teaching. It cannot
happen in the first twelve years. It cannot happen at the end of his life. We call it
when he reaches his final nirvana. I always used to be confused about that
expression. You hear it in Hinayana a lot, you know, the Buddha reached his
final nirvana. I said—what’s the difference between his final nirvana and his
original nirvana? Is it really nirvana because he achieved nirvana a long time
before that? He got rid of his bad thought? I always used to confuse it. That
nirvana has nothing to do with the normal nirvana. It just means for the Buddha
to withdraw his emanation from this planet. So when they say the Buddha
reaches his parinirvana, it has nothing to do with nirvana, it’s just the act of
withdrawing his emanation from this planet. According to Mahayana, he
doesn’t die, obviously he doesn’t die. He just decides to withdraw... he doesn’t
even decide. It’s an automatic process when there’s not enough people on the
planet to benefit, it’s like Sodom and Gomorrah, if there’s not one good person
on the planet, the emanation is withdrawn automatically. He appears to die.

[student: Is the point of teaching four and five now, when that’s not an issue, is
to keep that line pure so that information keeps...]

That’s one, and then we’re going to talk more about it. There’s what we call the
{nyu way tambe}, the “close to the five”. There’s five that are close to the five.
They also lead to the hell realms. Definitely. What else? It cannot occur before
the two major students appear, that’s Shariputra and Maudgalayana. You want
their names? These are called the supreme pair, they’re called the pair, and the
only other place where the word pair is used is in the secret teachings for a
special [unclear]. It involves the [unclear] in tantric enlightenment. But anyway,
that supreme pair must be on the planet for the schism to occur because they
patch it up within 24 hours. One of them brings the monks back together within
24 hours.

[student: You mean this is a pattern that takes place every time....]

It seems to be a pattern that happens.. it seems like that. That’s the meaning you
get when you translate it, yeah.

[student: This is so strangely detailed.]

Yeah, it is. It can’t happen after the Buddha... I’m sorry, the reason it couldn’t
happen right after he passed away is that everyone is too sad. There’s a unity
brought about by the depression of the students. They’re so upset, they’re so
mutually and communally upset that they can’t think to have a schism. And
you’ll see the others in your reading. Yeah?

[student: Are you describing something that inevitably happens every time a
Buddha appears, or if it’s going to happen while a Buddha appears....?]
I can’t... I don’t know for sure. The Abidharmas say that this particular Buddha,
Shakyamuni, by the way, there are thousands of Buddhas. If you read the
scriptures, then you’ll see. Shakyamuni was not the first, he’s not the last.
There’s a thousand in just this eon, just in this world there’ll be a thousand. On
other planets there have been many others. And the Abidharma says that when
he was a Boddhisattva in a previous life, he caused dissension between the
followers of another Buddha and as a karmic result, he has to go through this
thing. But that would be a kind of suffering. It’s not acceptable in the higher
school. But there is a process by which for 24 hours a certain monk... and it also
can’t take place in the direct presence of the Budda. He goes out for a while to
another place, and then there’s a troublemaker who splits up the monks during
that time. It all sounds very... once you put it in a nice historical perspective, you
get sort of this relief that you can’t do it nowadays. But the reason I want to
spend so much time on it is that you know and I know that most dharma centers
have some dissension. It’s not the exception, it’s almost the rule. Tibetans would
say that it stems from the goodness of the activity, that it attracts obstacles, that
the practice of trying to improve your spiritual life attracts demons. And if
you’ve never met a demon you think they don’t exist. The day you meet a
demon you’ll know. The day you really recognize a demon. There is such a
thing. There are demons.

[student: You mean a person who....?]

There are people who are demons. They do do things like that. And you will
know it. The day you meet one you’ll say, oh, there really are demons. It wasn’t
just a thing....and it’s very dangerous, it’s very dangerous.

[student: Is this guy supposed to be a demon? No?]

No. We cannot commit this one. He’s worse than a demon. If you need a
demon, that’s a demon.

[student: I don’t know what you mean by a demon. A person...]

I mean that you will meet a being who looks like a person that you have known
and who you thought was a regular human being and he’ll, in a very mild way,
suggest that you do something, you know, try to sway you toward a certain
action, and at that moment, he truly is a demon, he is a spirit who’s not a human
being, an evil spirit who wants to harm you.
[student: Why isn’t he just a human being trying to harm you?]

[laughs]

[student: No, but you know, all the time humans are trying to introduce you to
things that are not virtuous.]

I know. Not that. It will come at a very important time, at the most important
time, at a very crucial time, like when if you made a mistake you could make a
whole lifetime [unclear]. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that... I just want to
anticipate it. As this group gets larger, or as this group goes on longer, [unclear],
you will meet the person in this group who irritates you. It’s always happens.
And it happened to me. I confess it. I found people in my life that I disliked the
strongest of anybody. And it took me many years... what I say is don’t give in
to it, and don’t believe it. It’s a very evil thing, it’s a very bad thing, dirty thing,
and it’ll happen. You will meet someone in this study that you really don’t like,
or you will start to draw judgements about other traditions of Buddhism. Just
don’t do it. Be happy, study on your own, do your best not to feel that way. If
you can’t overcome it, avoid the person, but don’t ever let it reach a point where
you’re sure that you’re right. You’re wrong. And don’t believe yourself.
[laughs] And it will come, it will come. And I will hate to see it, I know it will
come some day. You know, I’ve seen students leave dharma centers because of
the politics in the dharma centers, people grabbing for power and they can’t
agree with each other. It will come, the longer we go, the better we do, the
more serious, something will come. There have been horrible divisions in major
centers and I want to anticipate it, and I want to say that, when the day comes—
maybe it already happened that you met that person who really bothers you—
[laughs]—you say: I don’t believe that this person could do this to me. It’s
probably you. [laughter] Don’t give in to it. Fight it, it’s a demon, and it’s a real
bad thing, and it’s not a {tambe kyi lay}, you don’t collect a karma which must
take you to the lowest hell in the very next life, but I assure you it’s close, I’m
sure it takes you to hell, to cause any kind of disunity among dharma students, I
think it’s very very very bad. With other centers, and other lamas and other
traditions... I don’t say you have to believe them, because I correctly believe, I
believe, that some of them are flatly wrong, and I think the scriptures show it,
and I wouldn’t follow those people and I think the longer you study, the more
educated you become as a Buddhist and you know, because these are the
scriptures, and it makes sense, but you do not criticize them, and you do not
criticize their followers. The Dalai Lama is very good in that way. He’s very
good... you know, the questions come, and he... [laughs]...like jumps out of the
way. He’s very good. There’s a lot of things a Buddhist scholar like him could
say to blow away Christians, and then, on the other hand, he just takes great
pains to make sure that everyone feels good and that he respects the good
points of each religion. I just anticipate it and I say that when the day comes,
you’re in this class, you go over there to have tea, somebody says something,
you really hate this person, don’t believe it, stop it at the root, stop it at the
beginning. We don’t have it now, we will have it probably. Stop it as it comes
up. It is a very horrible bad deed and we’ll see why. The reason why... well,
we’ll do it later.

[student: Can I ask you a pragmatic question?]

Yeah.

[student: What if you are associated with a dharma center, [unclear] sitting on a
governing board and you have to make certain decisions, and you either have to
get rid of people, and a teacher. What about that? [unclear]]

I’ve had this problem and there’s another thing, it happens in a monastery. One
monk has...he’s dishonored the robes, or something he’s done, which is flatly...
it’s in the Vinaya, the process for removing that person from the monastery is in
the Vinaya and it’s required. You’re required to remove the person from the
monastery, depending on whether he confesses, or gives up his viewpoints, or
depending on what he does. He can stay in the monastery and take a lower
position, or you are required to ask him to leave. But it’s very delicate... the
territory there is very delicate. In the Boddhisattva vows, you’re (not? -- unclear)
allowed to kick out certain people from the monastery, you know. Because
they’re not meditating enough, or they’re not studying enough, they’re
concentrating on one of the others. And this is very delicate. I think you have to
be very careful and if the person has dishonored the... you know, if the person is
truly an evil influence, you have to get the person out of there. And it’s a very
hard decision, it’s a very very difficult thing to do, and you have to... I think the
general thing to do is to think of them as your mother. [laughs] If he was your
mother, would you do that? And in some cases, you would. To protect the
group. So it’s a very delicate question, a very difficult question. I’ve been
involved with that among the monks. We had that kind of a.... it’s very delicate.
You have to be very very compassionate and you have to make sure that it’s
really hurting the spiritual progress of the monks. That’s a big decision. The
Buddha used to leave those decisions to Shariputra because he could read
people’s minds. [laughs] [laughter] One day he made a mistake and the Buddha
called the person back. [laughter] He was [unclear]. All right. So that’s {gendin
kyi yen che}. By the way, this is also called the “breaking of the wheel”. Which
wheel do you guess?

[student: What’s it called?]

It’s called “breaking the wheel of the dharma”. I’m concentrating now on the
schism. It’s also called the “breaking of the wheel of the dharma.” Especially in
the Abidharma system, the true wheel of the dharma is the understandings of
selflessness, and during this 24 hour period, no one in the world can perceive
emptiness directly. It’s the nature of that disruption of the harmony of the
whole world. No one can achieve a new path, a new realization. People’s study
is disrupted, people can’t think straight, people can’t recite scriptures, all these...
you’ll read it in your reading. It’s very... you get the feeling that it’s such a
horrible deed, it’s such a terrible thing, that it disrupts the vibrations of the entire
planet. People cannot enter into deep meditation during that 24 hours, and it’s
very disruptive. It’s also in a dharma center, you know that, you’ve seen centers
like that, you know, when it went rotten it disrupted everyone’s practice.

[student: Did you say it has a similar planetary effect on a lesser scale?]

Yeah, I would say so. I think I’ve seen that. So that’s also called “breaking the
wheel of the teachings.” You know that {dharmachaya}, eight-spoked wheel of
the teachings. I think we’ll take a break.

[student: Can we get the English for number five [unclear]?]

Killing your mother...

[student: No, that last one, you didn’t do it in translation.]

Oh, I’m sorry.

[student: I did the Tibetan [unclear].]

Why are these so bad? What’s so bad about it? Why is it just those five and no
other deeds? All right? And there’s an explanation. Things that make it so... I
guess we could say four. [laughter] No, because there’s two combinations of
two. Say {pembe shi}[repeat] {pembe shi} [repeat]. {pembe} means “assistance”
or “help”. {pemba shi} means “an object of assistance.” And what it means is
this... you had it in the study of the four parts in the deed. It was the object
towards which you did the deed? So that’s here. The {shi} means “basis”, but it
means the object towards whom you do the deed. How many of them are
killing? What’s the nature of those five deed? Three of them are murder, then...
nature of the bad deed of the schism is not the schism itself, it’s the lie that the
monk has to do to produce the schism, he proposes this new route to Nirvana
and he gives you these five things and that’s a lie.

[student: So you’re presupposing he’s intentionally doing it and not just...]

No, he does.

[student: He knows better, and he just wants to divide the sangha.]

He’s lying.

[student: It’s not out of ignorance that he thinks he knows a better way...]

Apparently not. It’s a {du ma}, it’s a lie.

[student: Can you explain how, in one or two sentences, a person could want to
kill a Buddha, divide a sangha or cause evil?]

It’s pretty... by the way, the last one is attempted murder. So we’ve got three
murders, one attempted murder and one lie. I don’t know. Why does anyone
do a bad deed? Why did the Germans kill the Jews? You get into a milieu in
which even a good person gets swept away, you know that, you know that
we’re very capable of very horrible things if we get into the wrong
circumstances. Any one of us. We’re lucky that we’re not hungry, that we don’t
need a place to stay, or that we don’t need money for a habit, that we’re
fortunate human beings. I remember when the oil crisis happened. I used to be
so proud of Americans because they weren’t like the Indians who beat each
other to get on a bus... but then all these fights broke out and all these people
shot each other. I remember that. And then it occurred to me that we’re all the
same. It’s not that we’re better, it’s just that we didn’t need it. It can happen to
anybody. {pembe shi}. So {pembe shi} means help, and two of those objects
qualify here. What are they? There are five objects involved in those five bad
deeds. Two of them are special because they have helped you?

[student: Buddha and the arhat, or your mother?]
Or your parents. I mean, specifically, material help in this life. Your mother and
your father.

[student: Oh, the {pembe shi}?]

Yeah. They are an extraordinary object. When you kill them, as opposed to
killing anyone else, it qualifies as an immediate misdeed, as one of the five big
ones, because of the benefit they have given you. And I studied that last night.
It’s very interesting. Nowhere did I see much mention of gestating you or
feeding you or taking care of you, or you know, if was all, every mention of
them, was that they gave you a body to reach Nirvana and Buddhahood, they
gave you a life with which you could achieve enlightenment. So it doesn’t
matter whether they’re a good mommy or a bad mommy or a nice daddy or a
lousy daddy...

[student: They gave you life.]

They gave you life. Once you have a life, you can practice Buddhism, you can
reach ultimate goals. That in itself, without anything else, without any good
attitude on their side... I have a lot of Americans say, well, my mother’s lousy.
[laughs] Just the suffering... she probably put out more suffering for you than
anybody else ever will in this life, but the main thing is that... no one can deny
that they have given you a life which you can use to practice, you can use to
reach the ultimate goals. I’ll do two modes...one is...

[student: Michael, {pembe shi}, so far you say that means “help.”]

Yeah, “object of help”. It means that two of the five fall into here mainly. Two
modes of thinking going on here that also are... when you talk about what
makes the deed an immediate deed, what makes it so bad? There’s these two
attitudes towards the {pembe shi}. One is the rejection of them, one is to say...
mentally, before you can kill your parents, you are rejecting the idea, you are
almost rejecting the idea of your own Buddhahood. It’s some kind of rejection
of the benefit they are giving you. There’s an attitude of rejection.

[student: Why do you say it’s like rejecting your own Buddhahood?]

You’re like... you have no recognition of what they are. You’re rejecting that
concept. You’re rejecting the idea that they have given you this benefit. So the
first part of the attitude is that you’re rejecting your parents.

[student:    Could you also say by extension you’re rejecting, because of
emptiness, you’re rejecting, it’s your projection, you’re seeing your stuff, not
really your parents, and it’s your own karma?]

Ultimately, if there’s anything bad about your parents, it’s you. And the day that
you recognize that you’ll be close to arhatship because then you won’t do
violence against this illusion. Okay. Rejection and elimination. Elimination
means you actually take steps to kill them. The sutra says you create conditions
for the non-continuation of their life-force. [laughs]. You kill them. You
eliminate them. Those are two attitudes going on. One is sort of a rejection, it’s
like an estrangement, this thing I don’t need, this is garbage...Say {yunden kyi
shi} [repeat] {yunden kyi shi} [repeat]. {shi} is the object and {yunden} means an
extraordinarily good personal quality. What would you call it? Fine qualities?
Extraordinary qualities? And that applies to the last three. What was those?

[student: Killing the Buddha, killing the arhat, and sangha.]

Yeah, right, arhat, sangha and Buddha. In that order, actually. They are just
extraordinary... and we talked about it with the Boddhisattva. It doesn’t matter
what your intention is much. It doesn’t matter much how you undertake it.
Even the completion is not so important. It’s just that they are just so holy that
anything you do towards them is magnified. I always tell people, if somebody
had the last bottle of the only cure for AIDS, you know, if that were possible, if
there could be a vaccine or elixir that would fix people with AIDS, which doesn’t
exist now, and if one person had the only...

[cut]

other than all the AIDS vaccines that were ever invented. It’s more important,
and more rare, in the world, more valuable. So that person becomes a {yunden
kyi shi}. Anyone who holds that bottle is a {yunden kyi shi}. You reject them
and you eliminate them in two cases, you reject the arhat and you eliminate him.
You reject the concept of the unity of the sangha and you break it. What about
the Buddha?

[student: You try to eliminate him.]

[laughs]   Yeah, yeah, you don’t eliminate him.          So they say, when you’re
debating, yeah, the elimination doesn’t exist on the fifth one.

[student: But they try to.]

You try. You reject. Mentally you reject a Buddha. Apparently that rejection
has a lot to do with the badness of the deed, the fact that you don’t care
anymore, or that you have no reverence or no feeling. You really believe this
thing is garbage and you undertake to kill it. The mental rejection of what he
stands for is what gives the deed a lot of its power. And the same with the unity
of a dharma group. It’s very very common. A person takes his own interests or
his own opinions to be more important than the unity of the group, and that’s
not true, that’s not correct. There’s times when you have to, and it’s hard for me
—I’m a very stubborn and individualist person. [laughs] You know, there’s
times when you have to, when you must keep your mind on the importance of
the unity of that group, even if it’s not exactly what you want. That’s more
important than your personal feelings in the matter. Yeah?

[student: Does that go along with the wrong view, because the majority of the
group really thinks it’s true? Or...]

Well, then you could...

[student: Is it divisive if you set them straight or attempted to?]

I think normally what happens with a schism is that the person who’s creating
the schism really does believe they’re correct.            And normally, it’s a
misconception. The other people can see that the person is just being assertive,
you know, or they’re just being stubborn, or they’re just hung up on what they
want. You know, I’m not talking about these extraordinary cases where
suddenly everybody in the dharma group believes that abortion is okay and
then you have to leave that group because you don’t want to be a part of that.
But that’s a different thing. I’m talking.... the normal schisms that happen are
personal differences between people and they’re not philosophical usually.
Know what I mean? [laughs]. I wish they were.

[student: They make them sound as if they were.]

No, if they were truly philosophical...

[student: Look what’s happening with the Kagyus...]
Well, I can’t judge it, I don’t know, it’s a terrible thing, very terrible thing. It
could happen to anybody. It could happen to us too. I just don’t want it...
there’ll come a time when you feel like that. There’ll come a time when you
really don’t like somebody. And there’ll come a time when maybe you even
think you have a conviction that this thing is wrong. But examine it very
carefully and try as hard as you can... the unity of the dharma is very important.
It’s really important. You just have to look at that. Now I’ll give you the real
thing—that unity is the dharma body of the Buddha. That’s what the scriptures
say.

[student: What?]

The Dharmakaya.

[student: Is the unity of the group?]

Unity of a group of Buddhist followers is the Dharmakaya. That’s the instant
expression of the Dharmakaya. That’s how heavy it is. And we’ll talk more
about it.

[student: So how could you break the Dharmakaya even if you wanted to?]

[laughs]

[student: So can you say a little more about that?]

I will, I will. I will say more about it. So that’s what makes it...I’ll say it in the
next thing I’m going to present, and I’m going to finish on time. Which of them
is least... should I say that? Which do you think is the worst one of the five. I’m
going to give you the five in order of badness. What’s the worst of the five?

[student: The schism.]

Is it worse than trying to kill a Buddha?

[student: You can’t kill him.]

Try, I said.
[student: But you could really break up a group.]

No, but the bad deed is not to kill, the bad deed is to try to kill.

[student: But you can’t kill, so it’s not as bad as...]

[laughs] No, the bad deed is to try. The attempted murder of a Buddha is the
bad deed that’s defined. Not the killing. Attempted murder...

[student: What’s bad for you personally?              As opposed to dividing up the
sangha. Well, if it only lasts for 24 hours, then... [unclear]]

[laughs] [laughter]

Basically they say that the schism is the worst from the point of view of the
results especially. It must have a result of one eon in the lowest hell. It must....

[student: Of, if the result is bad for you, then you...]

As far as the result. Also they say from the point of view of damage to the
universe. You know, attempting to kill a Buddha is in a sense trying to hurt the
form body, right? A schism is an attack on the Dharma body.

[student: So the idea is that there are many form bodies and one dharma body?]

That’s true. Is it technically the dharma body? Yeah, it is.

[student: So it’s an aspect or a manifestation of the dharma body.]

It is, it’s an expression of his omniscience. It is his omniscience. Anyway, you
can read it in the reading. It’s an attack on the dharma body. It’s an attack on
the body of the Dharma. And it’s worse than an attack on his personal body.

[student: Michael, I understand that the extreme of it is actively trying to break
up the sangha, but what if when you don’t know any better, you make some
bitchy comments...]

[laughs] [laughter] You know, it’s good that you wonder because it’s probably
motivated by that you did it. [laughter] Our practice is the practice of concentric
circles. I heard a monk...{Dobum Tulku} explained it to me one time. He was the
Dalai Lama’s assistant. A monk is not supposed to have sex with a woman, so he
has to stay in this little circle here. And outside of that he can’t touch a woman,
and outside of that he can’t look, and outside of that he can’t spend too much
with women, and like that, like that... eventually you get to this outside circle. If
I never go within this circle, I’ll never go within this circle. It just cannot happen.
So with morality it’s the same. You stay... you stay out here. Don’t let yourself
say anything bad about your fellow dharma students. If you don’t... don’t let
yourself think anything bad about them. If you don’t, then you won’t get to say
anything bad, if you don’t, you won’t get to say anything that splits them up, if
you don’t split them up... you know what I mean? The idea of morality is to
keep yourself away... when we do our confessions, we say {samba chepa dam
[unclear]}. You know, we confess the deed, the bad deed, then we confess the
preparation for the deed, then we confess the preparation for the preparation for
the deed, then we think, then we confess the thought to get ready to prepare to
do the deed. [laughs] When you’re doing your monk confessions. So you have
to stay that far away, stay outside. It’s just a.... your morality is like that. You’re
not going to kill somebody. You’re not going to kill this modest little dharma
center. But you would... you have to stay in that last circle. Stay outside of that
last circle. Don’t even let yourself think it. If you don’t think it, you’ll never do
it. It’s very important, it’s really really very important. There will come a day
when it’s important. Think about it now. Keep it in mind now. It’s a big bad
deed.

[student: You said earlier that as the group progresses, that’s there more of a
chance that that would happen. Why...]

Not necessarily. You can have groups that get sweeter and sweeter, right? But I
think it’s still a little bit near [unclear]. Like the group out in New Jersey, we’ve
been there for twenty years. And...

[student: There’s never been anything like that there.]

No, there’s never been anything like that, we’re very lucky. But what I mean is...
I mean in the sense of getting hardened to the sweetness of the dharma. Once
you’ve heard what I’m saying a few times, the third time you hear me explain
this thing, it won’t be fresh, and you’ll be thinking, I wish he’d tell us something
new tonight. That’s a very bad attitude. I go to Rinpoche’s classes, still go to all
these beginning classes. It’s just supposed to get deeper and deeper and sweeter
and sweeter. What I’m saying is that it could reach a point where you get more
and more hardened to it because you didn’t take steps when you first started to
do something. So it’s very important for the first few years of your dharma
study, this is very crucial, because you won’t be as open to it later. [laughs] And
it’s crucial to actually carry it out, to actually start changing if you can. Because
later you won’t. There’ s nothing different about the second time you hear it
that’s going to make you change if the first time you didn’t. Okay. What’s the
second worst one?

[student: Buddha.]

Yeah, attack on a Buddha. Third?

[student: Arhat?]

Yeah, that’s right. Fourth?

[student: Ma.]

Ma, right. And the poor guy is always getting [unclear]]. [laughs] [laughter] All
right? Those are the order of severity.

[student: Boddhisattva’s not in there.]

[student: Wasn’t the Boddhisattva...]

Now that you mention it...

[student: Mahayana...]

No, they did. They do have Boddhisattvas in the Abidharma. I used to get real
confused. I’ll give you the five near-ones, there’s a second five. They’re called
the close ones. And they say they’re close because they’re close to the five
immediate. It’s not on your homework. I just thought you’d like to know. The
first one is to.. I don’t know the situational order, I don’t know about severity.
The first one is to rape your mother who is also an arhat.

[laughter]

[student: Is she your mother or an arhat?]

No, she’s both. She’s both your mother and an arhat. [laughter] That’s pretty
terrible. Second one is to kill a Boddhisattva who is called a Boddhisattva of
certainty, and certainty in this case means he only has a hundred kalpas to go.
[laughter] It says...

[student: Only 160,000 years or so....]

No, trillions of years.

[student: How many kalpas?]

Hundred kalpas. To kill any one of the seven high practitioners.

[student: Who are?]

I don’t know, but I believe it’s people who’ve achieved the path of seeing. And
to steal the property of the sangha. That’s something I can do, we can do.
[laughter] And what’s the last one? Oh, the last one they say is the one which is
parallel to trying to harm the Buddha, and that’s to... out of a feeling of anger,
hatred, etcetera, so I guess it’s any one of those things, to destroy images or
altars or temples. So those are the five. Keeping the finances of the dharma
center... I keep them pretty creatively, but anyway. [laughter]

[student: For these you’ll also go to hell?]

Yeah. And they say what the difference is. They say it’s a little bit lighter.
There’s a big debate about it. The result is also to go to hell for these secondary
five.

[student: In the next life?]

It’s not very clear to me, I’ll tell you the truth. It seems to be in the next life, and
they say it’s a little bit lighter, then they say that’s what the Abidharmas say
[unclear]. I didn’t spend much time on it. Somebody in the reading... you’ll see,
they come up and they debate him. They say didn’t the Buddha say that the
most serious bad deeds were the mental ones? And then they say, yes, he did
say that. And they say that was only with regard to the three passage ways.
What are the three passage ways?

[student: Body, speech and mind.]
Yes. Body, speech and mind. So the first three of the ten.... he said when the
Buddha said that he was talking about the ten bad deeds, the first three are
physical, the next four are verbal, the last two are mental. So of those three
divisions, the mental ones are the most powerful, are the worst. And then
somebody says, wouldn’t killing be worse than having a wrong view? And he
gives the example of this meditator who murdered people with his
concentration. [laughs] Anyway, not a Buddhist... [laughs] The mental ones are
much worse. And then they say, which of the five... then they quote another
scripture that says {lok tha}, that wrong view is the worse, and they say, that’s
not even in those five. And he says no, when they say wrong view is the worst,
they’re referring to the five wrong deeds, bad deeds, and wrong view is the
worst one.

[student: What bad views?]

There are five bad views.

[student: What is that?]

It’s not part of the lesson tonight but just if you want to know, it’ll take you to
9:05 if you don’t mind, and I won’t do them in order, all right? One is called
{tsam dinki tawa}, that means to believe that everything exists the way it looks
to you. And on the other hand, to think that if it didn’t exist the way it looks to
you today, it doesn’t exist at all, that nothing matters. So those are called
“extreme view”. You can see how you can flock[?] them one to the other. We
live in the one. The minute someone talks us out of it, we slip to the other one.
That’s what.... [jigso la tawa} is to take you and what belongs to you as being
self-existent. That’s actually the nature of the first link of the wheel of life.
{sutrim [unclear] tawa} means to practice mistaken kinds of morality and
asceticism and think that that’s a great thing. The examples are... there was a
school in India that said you should meditate for years and years, then plant a
spear face up, a trident, and then you should be standing on a chair, and you
should jump down on it, and it goes exactly through here, and through here, and
if you have the right motivation, you achieve Nirvana at that moment. You’ve
seen things where people beat themselves... and I’ve seen people in Buddhist
centers who were told to do a certain number of prostrations. They did it, it got
to the point where it hurt them physically, handicapped them, they were told to
go on, and now they can’t walk straight, they can’t walk, they use a cane.
That’s... you have to use common sense. Your body is very precious. You have
to take care of it. You can’t hurt yourself. Just going and being hungry or being
cold or being hot is no big shakes. If you go into meditation you want to be
very comfortable. I stock up on only the kind of food I want [laughter]. It’s
important. Quiet, happy, comfortable, healthy, bright, you know, concentrating,
that’s the idea, it’s not to hurt yourself. And then there’s {tawa chong dzin},
which means to think that your wrong views are great. [laughs] That’s another
kind of wrong view. This is really good. By the way, when I say that, it doesn’t
mean that if you do your retreats, you [unclear]. It’s a four, five, six week thing
and it hurts a lot. There are times when it really hurts. That’s a different thing.
Then you gotta have guts and keep going. I’m talking about damaging yourself
permanently. And also if your mind starts to get crazy, you have to stop. But to
stick it out when it gets unpleasant is a different thing. You have to do that.
Okay, last wrong view tonight.

[student: [unclear]]

Oh. Extreme view, view of me and myself, which is called “view of the
perishables”, what was the other one?

[student: Being glad.... [unclear]]

That was four... that was three. And four, {lok tha}. Did we miss one?

[student: Yeah.

Sure?

[student: Yeah. Five.}

Is it the one about being glad you didn’t go through wrong view?

[student: No.]

Did we do.... thinking their views are the best, and then wrong view, backwards
view. Do we have five yet?

[student: Thinking your views are great and then wrong view.]

We can say extreme view. And then [unclear] you [unclear] perishables, you
know. And then you have mistaken morality, and then practicing that. Meaning
it’s extreme, extremism. And then, you know, thinking your views are best.
And then, the classic wrong view. Which is where you say, karma does not exist,
if I do my bad deeds in private and no one ever finds out, then everything’s
okay, I’m fine.

[student: You made a point of saying the presentation was Abidharma. Any
difference between Mahayana and...]

In these five deeds? No.

[student: No, the other five.]

No. Basically Mahayana accepts almost all the details of the {sam me}, of the five
bad deeds. There are a few details... what do you think, I mean, for example, an
Abidharmist would say that you get an aura from a {sam me}, from an
immediate bad deed. What happens if you commit two? What if you do two in
one life?

[student: You get an aura from a bad deed?]

Oh, sure. Any powerful karmic deed.

[student: I thought that was only from a good deed.]

You take a vow to serve in the army.

[student: You do two?]

They say your aura gets heavier, brighter, something like that. And then there’s
a big argument about, you know, well, does the second one ripen in the very
next life. Then what? Both of them ripen in the next life? Or does it ripen in the
life after? Does it have to wait in line to ripen in the next... then its not an
immediate. You can imagine... Okay. So be happy. Just to talk about this makes
a difference.

[student: [unclear] [laughter]]

[student: In the Madhyamika Prasangika, can you describe for me the whole
progression of creating karma? What happens, the deed, the {bakchak}...?]

Everything’s the same, except where it stays. And they say it just stays [unclear].
[student: So you do a deed, at the end of the deed a {bakchak} results, stays in
the simple me, has the potential...]

You’ll be [unclear] to your mind in its own right. They go...

[student: Okay. It has the potential to bring pain or pleasure in the future when
it arises. The thing that I would like clarification on is the aspect of how this
{bakchak} arises as a perception, and ultimately when you collect enough
{bakchaks}, how that arises as your projection of enlightenment, Buddhahood.

[laughs] That’s all, you just said it.

[student: I don’t get it, I don’t get...]

Oh, oh, it’s just this. There is death, there is outside death. And then you
[unclear]. There is this wet-flowingness in the universe and the way the
{bakchaks operate is that they create an impression from that, creates your
interpretation of that. And you don’t have a choice. You’re forced to have that
interpretation. I think that’s where most people fall down. First it’s nihilism.
You have one of those rare teachers that gets to the point of explaining how the
{bakchak} works, then the student swings to this extreme of thinking they could
knowingly control it.

[student: You can program your perceptions through patterning, essentially.]

You’re talking about....

[student: What perceptual pattern, is what I’m talking about.]

We’re talking attitude... [unclear]. If it happens, certain things happen in that
way, because it’s actually a karma.

[student: You mean as a result of it?]

That’s by the way why [unclear] nothing works in the world, you know. You
decide to take a risk in business, and you know, it works out in more cases than
not, and it’s also karmic ... the pattern is governed by karma.

[student:    So you have this matter, this substance, this wet-flowingness that
arises that you encounter for some reason and your {bakchaks}...]

Actually that’s also... when you focus on the wet, it’s also another interpretation
of more basic parts.

[student: Right, right, all the way down to the smallest parts. But the idea that
you have to encounter the wet, or whatever it is you’re calling wet. You have to
encounter the infinite smaller parts that you’re labeling as wet. So whatever it is
that arises in your encounter that you interact with and label and project on to,
your {bakchak} causes that arisal and encounter?

Yeah.

[student: And in the case of enlightenment, then you’ve done so many good
deeds, so many positive {bakchaks} that the stuff that arises can only be the raw
material, if you will? Positive interpretation, pleasurable interpretation?]

Ultimately pleasurable. Everything around you.

[student: So in the case that we... seeing myself as a Buddha when I become
enlightened. Not because I just fool myself into seeing myself as a Buddha then,
as Tom would say...]

You created the causes that force you to see you to see yourself.

[student: Where it confuses me is this aspect of tricking yourself into seeing
yourself a certain way.]

No, no, the point is...this is the whole point—it is only a projection. It is only a
projection.

[student: You’re trying hard. It’s not tricking yourself.]

It is only a projection. That’s all anything is.

[student: I understand that.]

Now is there a conscious thing you can do to pretend you’re [unclear]...

[student: That’s the issue. The issue is that we normally, as I normally think of
perception, it’s a learned behavior.]

Oh yeah, no, no, you will plant {bakchaks} that will cause you to have this
perception. Then there are practices that we can’t talk about in front of...

[student: I can just leave the room.]

[laughs]

[student: So the idea of this learned behavior, it’s not what we would normally
think of as like...]

Oh, oh, see, when you’re talking about that [unclear]... practice...

[student: I’m not talking about tantric practice. I’m just talking about like, if I sit
down here and I say everything’s empty, everything’s empty and intellectually
remind myself that everything’s empty, that’s a learned behavior.]

That’s true, yeah, oh yeah. In the beginning it’s learned.

[student: So does that learned pattern result in my experiencing... does my
sitting here saying “everything’s empty and oh yeah, I’m perceiving my
projections and these arisings and....” does that result in a pleasurable {bakchak}
being planted?]

Yeah, ultimately pleasurable.

[student: The results that arise later that I must see...]

If your intentions are noble, you know, it depends on your temperament... if
you’re studying emptiness for the purpose of getting pleasure for yourself and
from other people, and if you’re not...then the result would be Hinayana Arhat,
the perceptual result would be Hinayana, you know, no enlightened [unclear].
[laughs]

[student: So the idea is that the collection of merit, the idea of the collection of
merit is that it requires a vast number of {bakchaks} leading to pleasurable
perception.]

It’s a very cold and self-interested process.
[student: Yeah, yeah.]

You know, people object to that, and I don’t see it. I think Buddhism is a
method, it really is a method, and it should be seen as a transferable,
transmittable, cold scientific method. You just go—you do these things, you’ll
get that result. And you do it quite knowingly and self-interestedly and that’s...
there’s no problem with that. That’s what you do. And that will help you
prioritize your good deeds. There’s lots of good deeds you can do. And I think
when you get to a certain point you gotta change... you know, you only have a
few [unclear] left.

[student: So I’m setting out to do this collection of as much pleasurable and
positive {bakchaks} as possible and the idea is that my nirvana or my
enlightenment will be nothing but the ripening of pleasant {bakchaks}?]

Yeah, if they’re done with this knowledge. And that’s the whole meaning of
knowing this [unclear].
[student: So here’s the key for me... if I have a {bakchak} which is to bring me
pain, say, a past bad deed, and I have this intellectual understanding of
emptiness, and then this negative seed arises and somebody hits me on the head
and I go, well, karma, emptiness, I understand it, you know, it doesn’t really
bother me so much, but I still get hit on the head and it hurts, you know...]

It does hurt.

[student: Is this...how to say this? Is this {bakchak} that just arose and caused me
pain but not a full pain, you know? Are, in some way, these negative {bakchaks}
being mitigated and lessened by my overall patterning, you know? Does that
make sense?]

Yeah, that’s true.

[student: It does work that way?]

Yeah, it does work that way. By the way, what would be the practical result?
You would look like a fool, you wouldn’t respond when people, when ignorant
people, who are called infants in the scriptures, think you should respond, and
you would act in a different way. You’d act like Jesus or something. Jesus up
there, he had nails put into him...
[student: And he says, okay...] [laughs]

He’s actually doing an {ommen}, he’s praying for... you know, in the classical
interpretation, he’s using that suffering and wishing that it could represent the
suffering of all other beings. That’s the classic reaction to suffering... that would
be the most powerful reaction to anything you [unclear]. And they’re not going
to nail you to that cross. The guy’s going to come into your office and yell at
you. And that’ll be your chance. [laughs]

[student: In Madhyamika Prasangika, the idea that everything’s our perception,
I have a tendency...we talk about projecting on to a blank screen. I have a
tendency to see myself projecting outward on to things. And I think... tell me if
I’m right... and I think what it really is everything coming into me and being
interpreted internally, not me projecting myself and my perceptions outwards,
like a drawing in, essentially.]

I think that is a psychological... that’s a whole separate thing, from a separate
{bakchak}, that you might tend to project in a .... a psychological projection is
much different from a karmic projection. A psychological projection... when I go
into the bus, I look at the diamonds on women’s fingers. I can’t stop myself.
And they all look at me like... [laughs].

[student: And is that a psychological {bakchak}?]

No, no, I mean those people who sell shoes, they’re always looking at the shoes,
that’s some kind of psychological projection.

[student: But that’s not a projection, Michael, projection is when you change
something to accord with...]

[student: First of all, it’s your karma to look at rings.]

[unclear] that’s just... it’s not like everybody’s rings means anything to me...

[student: Projection is more like you...]

Or you see everybody as nasty because you’re nasty.

[student: Yeah, because you’re feeling...]
That’s ultimately a karmic result, it’s not the kind of projection I’m talking about.

[student: What I’m talking about, for example, I look around this room and I go,
yellow wall, white red table, statue, etcetera. And rather than me projecting
outward on to matter and stuff out there, I’m really taking all this stuff in to me
and it’s like in a way staying in me...]

It is staying...

[student: ...and processed in me and registering in me, and it’s almost like the
world is in me, happening, if that makes sense.]

The day that you perceive, not ultimately [unclear], the day that you perceive
relatively [unclear], which is a big deal, it happens the same day, when you catch
yourself doing what you’re doing, which has nothing to do with emptiness, it’s
the projection process. When you finally see yourself doing it, you do have the
sensation of it being inside your head and it’s all happening right behind you, at
the edge of your eyeball or something. See what I mean?

[student: Ummm.]

There is that. And the object that you’re looking at, the parts are external...

[student: So it’s solely the interpretation that’s internal?]

But the perfection, the perfect image of that saint is in your mind. And if all you
ever saw was that, all you ever reacted to was that...

[student: There’s definitely all this stuff out there, but it’s not...]

It’s there. [unclear]

[student: All the perfectionism...

Goodnight!

End
[student:
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HOW KARMA WORKS