Серия ежедневной практики, курс 06 — Четыре силы для устранения негативной кармы (1999, Институт Ваджрапани, Калифорния), занятие 5

[Speaker 2]
Session five. Satsang with Mooji Tiruvannamalai, India Satsang with Mooji Tiruvannamalai, India Satsang with Mooji Tiruvannamalai, India Satsang with Mooji Tiruvannamalai, India Okay, we'll start.

[Speaker 1]
Sorry to start so late. We promised to talk about the mechanics. You know, how does it really work?

And there are a lot of... How do the four powers actually stop bad karma? And I think Westerners are of the...

You know, being fresh Buddhists and not having had first grade teachers who were Buddhists, we want to know how it works. Or we don't try. We won't try it.

You know what I mean? So what is the logic for how these things work? And I'm going to go through a couple of proofs for it, all right?

A couple of descriptions of the mechanics of karma. I think the first one... Hello?

Hello? Hello? Now it's okay, right?

Okay, to understand how to short-circuit karma, you have to get a... That's not cause and effect, is it? You have to understand how karma works.

You have to have a little crash course in how karma works, okay? You have to understand how karmic seeds give their results, okay? So, first there's this recording mechanism.

You see yourself doing something wrong, okay? You're aware. Just by being aware, the karma is planted, okay?

I used to think that karma, that you did something bad, like you stepped on a bug and this cosmic boomerang started off towards Pluto, and then it came back in ten years and hit you in the side of the head, and you're like, where'd that come from? You see what I mean? It's not like that.

By being aware of doing it, or thinking it, or saying it, you plant it, okay? And the stronger the intention is, the stronger the planting is, okay? The more conscious you are of hurting someone, the stronger the planting of the karma is.

And there are a bunch of factors like that to determine how strong the karma is. Sri Sampajora Tattva, you know? Do you understand who you're doing it towards?

How strong is your mental affliction? How much was it premeditated, or not? Did you actually undertake it, or did you quit before you picked up the knife, you know?

After you stuck the knife in, did the person die or not, okay? Like that. All of those things determine how strong the karma is.

And then karma comes back to you in four different ways, and that's what I want to concentrate on this evening, okay? Four different ways in which karma comes back to you. And each one of the four powers addresses one of those four different ways, get it?

So, there's four karmic results that come to you from any bad deed you do, and then each one of the four powers has its particular responsibility to knock out that karmic result, okay? So, that's all we need. There's going to be four powers, four karmic results, and there's going to be a...

each one is going to knock out one of the other, okay? So here we go, four karmic results, okay? Say, dak te.

[Speaker 2]
Dak te.

[Speaker 1]
Dak te. Dak means the self, or something like that. Te means result, because translators have struggled with this word.

Let's just call it environmental result, and it's pretty clear, right? Environmental result. And for this, you have to understand what we call the correlations.

And I think in... is that spelled right? I think in Western Buddhism this has to become a big deal, the correlations, okay?

Meaning what? For example, if you take the ten bad deeds, right? Killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, etc.

The dak te of killing is that if you happen to be reborn as a human, or even in this life as a human, the potency of things like food and medicine becomes less where you live, okay? Like if you've ever been to India and tried to take penicillin, or you've eaten the same kind of rice that you eat here, it just doesn't do the same thing for you. You lose weight, you know, and you're eating more and more, and it's...

there's something about the potency of the food, or the nutritious... the nutritional value of the same food in different places seems to be different, you see what I mean? And that's like a karmic pocket, you see what I mean?

You just crossed into another zone, right, of karmic potency. And so things like food doesn't work as well, medicine doesn't work as well, things like that. There's something wrong with the environment, okay?

There's something wrong with the potency of the things in the world that you live in, okay? And that's a thing of the environment. Some books say that you have dangers in your environment, like you live in a city in which there are more muggers.

You know, you live in a city where it's more dangerous to walk around at night, and things like that. Those are what we call environmental results of a karma, okay? The point of going through these four is that by the time we get done with it, it's supposed to dawn on you that every detail of your life is determined by your past karma, you know?

People tend to only relate to one or two of the karmic results. Like, if you break your toe, you think you must have broken somebody's toe. But you don't think about why was the rock there in the first place.

That's also a result of having broken someone's toe, you see what I mean? You created all the rocks around you. You created all the trees around you.

This one is important. You created the city and the quality of the city that you live in, okay? If the crime rate in New York has dropped by 50% in the last few years, it's due to keeping your book.

And don't doubt it. You see what I mean? That's real cause and effect, okay?

It's because more people are keeping their book or something like that, okay? Is everybody keeping their book? No.

Who's in the 50% who's still getting mugged? People who didn't keep their book, okay? I'm not kidding, okay?

You got to think like that. There's no such thing as odds as far as Mr. Karma is concerned. Statistics is irrelevant in the study of karma, okay?

If you're in the 10th of 1% that's going to get mugged, you will be there, okay? If you did something. Correlations means connections, like between events in your life, thoughts that you have, problems in your body, and which karma is it that caused it in the past.

We call that a correlation. There are certain books that are great on the correlations. The Crown of Knives lojong text that we're going to do later in the week is beautiful.

It's a huge text of correlations. You can figure out everything from depression, anxiety, low self-esteem. He covers all of it.

Lousy bosses, lousy co-workers, not being able to get the job you want. It's all there, okay? The Lama Rimchen was pretty good on it.

And we have given you in the reading that's not translated yet, a list of correlations from Chan Khyer Rinpoche. He was a teacher of the Emperor of China, and was later reborn as Pabongka Rinpoche. So he has this beautiful book of correlations.

We put the whole thing in there, okay? And so you can see the basic correlations. It's important to know the correlations.

The Vinaya scriptures and all the birth stories of the Buddha, they weren't written down to entertain children. They were written down to present the correlations. They were written down so people could figure out what's causing their backache, or what caused their boss, or what caused the pollution in their particular city.

You see, I mean, they're not just there for entertainment. They're there as a way of teaching people who didn't have to watch TV that they had the time to read them, the correlations. You see, I mean, between what you must have done in the past to get what you're having now.

It's like 16 volumes out of the 100 volumes of the Kangyur are devoted to those stories. And they're not just stories, they're true stories that Lord Buddha told so that people would figure out what they must have done in the past to get the lousy stuff they're undergoing now, so they could fix it. By the way, who's usually the bad guy in those stories?

Lord Buddha in a past life. The schmuck in each story is... The guy who makes the big mistake is always Lord Buddha.

And he's like saying, Guess who that was? And his disciples go, You? And he says, Yeah, I took 500 births as a dog because of that one.

And then, you know, no, he says that. He says stuff like that. And then he says, you know, I'm speaking from experience, so please don't do it.

Okay? So those are... That's dak je.

Now, there's a certain one of the powers that addresses this one, and that's the power of the foundation. Okay? Which has two parts.

What? Taking refuge and bodhicitta. Okay?

So somehow, if you have a problem with your environment, if there's something wrong with your environment, let's say your environment is dangerous, or there's a problem that, you know, physically around you, like food and things like that are hard to get, or they don't work right, or medicines don't work right, or there's no treatment for certain things, or there's not a hospital nearby, or things like that, or things that threaten your life in general, in your environment, are caused by floods, rains, whatever, lack of rain, are all caused by this particular result of karma, and the way you get rid of it is to concentrate on the foundation power. Okay? The power of the foundation.

On bodhicitta and taking refuge. Okay. Second one.

Say nyongwa.

[Speaker 2]
Gyutun. Nyongwa. Gyutun.

[Speaker 1]
I translated this one as a similar experience. Okay, nyongwa means experience. Gyutun means similar to what you did.

You see what I mean? An experience similar to what you did. An example would be in the act of killing, the nyongwa gyutun is, you get sick a lot, your life is short, things like that.

Experiences that you experience, that are similar to what you did. As opposed, like inner experiences, rather than outer experiences, okay? Outer environment.

And the power that addresses this one is the destruction power. Okay? The power of destruction.

The intelligent regret of a well-educated Buddhist. There's this advertisement for coats in New York. Sims department store or something.

You know, what is it? Educated consumers are best customers or something. I mean, we like customers who know quality when they see it, because then they'll be attracted to our store.

And this one refers to, if you really understand karma, you would feel like really dumb every time you do something bad. You know? Like you'll get that intelligent regret afterwards.

Not guilt, but intelligent regret. Okay? And that counteracts, mostly, okay?

What does mostly mean in Tibetan? I mean, how do you say it? Tso war, okay?

How do you protect your rear end in the debate ground anytime you give an answer? Mostly, generally speaking. You see what I mean?

And then if the guy comes up with some exception, you say, yeah, that was the exception I meant when I said that. Mainly. Okay.

So, mainly, of course you have to have all four powers complete to wipe out any one of these results. But we're talking about which one of the four powers is most important in addressing this particular karmic result. So these are experiences within yourself, okay, relating to any particular karma.

Say chepa.

[Speaker 2]
Chepa. Gyutun. Gyutun.

[Speaker 1]
Chepa gyutun. Chepa gyutun means... Gyutun is the same, right?

It means similar. Chepa, in this case, means a habit. Similar habit.

And a lot of the texts say that the nastiest karmic result of all is this one. What is it? It's like you're attracted to killing.

You know? And I always give the example, when I was growing up in Phoenix, we had a neighbor, this kid, and he was just cruel, you know? At ten years old, he was already cruel.

He would come with us out in the palm tree fields and he would take a BB gun and he'd sit there and wait next to a nest until the mother landed and shoot the mother and then break all her eggs or something. And we were like, you know, this guy's gross. Why are some people attracted to killing even at a very young age?

That's chepa gyutun, okay? It's the... It's an attraction to the same kind of deeds because you did it a lot in your last life.

And that accounts for predilections among children. Some children already seem cruel. Some children already seem sharing.

And that's chepa gyutun gyudrebu. That's a karmic result of... that's similar to what they were doing a lot in their past lives, okay?

What's the power that knocks this one out? It is the power of stopping. Landopetong.

The power of deciding you're not going to do something anymore. And I guess that would be, you know, this is supposed to be the nastiest karmic result because it tends to perpetuate things. Then in your next life you're attracted to killing and then in your next life you're attracted to killing and you keep having miserable lives.

Okay?

[Speaker 2]
Is the reason of being like that is reborn as a human is because they've had some extraordinary experiment that keeps reborn as a human?

[Speaker 1]
The texts always say, if by some chance he was reborn as a human, then they'd have the same habit. You see what I mean? A lot of times it has that phrase before.

[Speaker 2]
Would you also say that they would be reborn as an animal that has... Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Even an animal that was attracted to killing. Say namin. Namin.

Namin. Namin in the Abhidharma literature is used to refer to any karmic result, but in the Lamrim literature and Mahayana literature it's more the rebirth result. I would call it a rebirth result.

It means if you did a serious act of killing during this life, a typical result would be a hell realm rebirth. If you did medium acts of killing it would be hungry ghost or yidak, preta. And then if you did light kinds of killing or light motivation it would be more like an animal rebirth.

But this refers to which of the three lower realms you might go to if you did that on a regular basis. And the fix here is the antidote power. The power of the antidote.

Mostly. Mainly. Then I wanted to give you...

I mean, there's a couple of issues. I wanted to give you four... Chankya Rinpoche also mentions four ways that are going to help determine whether or not your purification is successful.

Okay? So, a lot of the lamas in the text, they say, look, some purifications are better than others. And it seems like some people succeed more at it than other people.

Some people do purification and they get a headache and then they're happy for the rest of their lives. And then some people keep doing it over and over again and it doesn't seem to work. And they list four factors that seem to affect how the purification goes.

First one is whether or not you used all four of the powers. Okay? Like if you just do one of them, it doesn't work as well.

Almost every text, open or secret, that talks about purification says you have to have all four powers there for it to work well. Okay? By the way, at the end of the fifth reading there's something called Dessert from the Tantras.

And those are some comments from tantras about the four powers. And they talk about the four powers and they talk about the need to have the four powers. Like when you do a Vajrasattva purification, you must be thinking of the four powers for it to work.

And I thought to just throw in some of those statements so you'd believe it. You know what I mean? There are many texts in the tantras that say when you do a Tantric purification you still have to have the four powers there.

That's what makes it work. Second one. How sincere are you on your four powers?

How heartfelt is it? Those of you who have been keeping a book know that once you get over the hurdle of trying to keep it, then you have to overcome the hurdle of not doing it very sincerely. Not really thinking about it much.

And there's this spiritual obstacle of not really digging into your heart and admitting the most important one. I often call it the people write down the second most important one because they don't want to face the most important one. And personally I find myself if I try to concentrate on the most important fault I have my mind consciously wants to avoid it.

It wants to go to something minor. You know, like you've totally ruined someone's life today but what you write in your book is ate some ice cream. You know what I mean?

There's something in your mind that doesn't want to think about your own worst qualities in an honest way, in a straight way. And that determines the level of purification. If you're not really searching sincerely and seriously for what you really have a problem with which is the hardest thing to see, right?

Knowing yourself is the hardest thing of all. You might want to ask the people right around you. They probably are inundated with it all day.

But to find it is hard and then to keep working on it is hard because you kind of don't want to admit it. It's painful to admit it. But whether or not you're able to overcome that hesitance to look at your own worst faults is going to determine how good the purification works.

Third one. How long or how many times you do the practice of the Four Powers. Do you keep it up over an extended period or did you do one little fire offering when you lit that cigarette and that was enough?

You know? By the way, somebody asked me to go over in a brief way how you do an actual meditation based on the Four Powers. So we'll do that after the break here.

Lastly, this is mentioned in Pabongka Rinpoche's rehash of Canggye Rinpoche's work which is like 200 years later, 250 years later. Which is funny. He's rehashing his own work of his own past life and he adds one more.

Which is how spiritually powerful the person is who's doing the purification. Are you already got some good realizations of Lamrim in your mind? Are you already doing pretty well on bodhicitta and renunciation and your understanding of emptiness?

Because the more powerful you are spiritually the better the purification will go. There's a saying in the text, I think you might have seen it. There's something like kepe dikpa chi yang yang lunpa dikpa yang yang chi which means, it's a joke in Tibetan because yang means even though and yang means light.

So, kepe dikpa chi yang yang means if really good, spiritually good-hearted people make a mistake in their vows even if it's a heavy one, it comes out light. And then lunpa dikpa yang yang chi people who don't already have a good spiritual life if they commit even a minor bad deed it becomes heavy. I mean, it's a joke on the word yang yang.

Okay, not funny. All right. This Rinpoche gives an example of he's trying to support the idea that you could short-circuit karmic seeds.

That you could have karmic seeds in your mind and they would never go off. You see what I mean? And that's a lot of the theory here is that you don't really remove the potential from your mind.

You just create conditions which don't allow it to flower. And they talk about different reasons for that. So you have to think of that.

The main thing is to think of that. You're not really removing karmic seeds. They're still there, but they will never go off.

You have to think of karma ripening is like planes waiting on a runway to take off. And there's this prioritization. You know, the more serious karmas get to go ahead and the lesser karmas have to wait behind.

And every once in a while the control tower will call and say, okay, the last plane in the line gets to go to the front due to this extraordinary motivation they had. By the way, that's the principle of Tantra. The whole principle of Tantra is tong gyur gyi le.

You want to get all the karmas that you did in the past to back up in line. And you want to get all the karmas you did with your tantric practice to go up to the head of the line. And you want them to take off constantly and leave the other ones on the runway forever.

You see, that's the idea. That's the real idea of purification. You're trying to change the prioritization process, okay?

Apparently you don't really destroy the actual potential in your mind. Arhats have the potential for bad karma in their minds. But it never goes off.

It never is triggered, okay? And the idea is to... It's a couple of concepts here.

One is to create a lack of contributing factors, okay? Like, you create a lack of conditions necessary for the karma to go off, purposely. Which means, you know, you have a seed that could grow, but you purposely don't give it water.

So the seed is sitting there on the asphalt, you know, forever, not growing. And it could be there for a long time, but if it doesn't get any water, it won't go off. And His Holiness, if you went to the Kalachakra, he talked about it.

It's the difference between what we call nyipa duje kyi le, which is immature karma, and then chupa sipa, in the Wheel of Life teaching. Link number two and link number ten. Link number two is fresh karma, seeds in your mind.

Link number ten is karma that's about to go off, because you moistened it with the water of mental afflictions and wrong view, okay? So you've got to really have good wrong views going, and you've got to have other mental afflictions going, for karmas to have the right... What do you call it?

Like circumstances to go off, okay? So the idea is to create a problem in the circumstances, so that the karma can't go off on time, and in fact never goes off, okay? That's the part of the idea.

So in this book he says, what example is there from scripture to support this idea? And he says, take your good deeds. Consider your good deeds, your good karmas.

Is there any way to keep them from going off? Those of you who studied Bodhisattva Trivetime? Huh?

What's a good way to ruin like ten thousand good karmas in a minute? Yeah, anger. Anger at a bodhisattva, okay?

So remember always to be angry at people who aren't bodhisattvas, okay? And then the next question is, who's that? How do you decide?

Oh no, the mean people are not bodhisattvas. And the nice people are all bodhisattvas. Right?

No, I mean, if this guy is omniscient, right? If he's been waiting ten thousand years for you to show up at Vajrapani so he can sit next to you and irritate you. You know?

They're very patient. And they're very good at acting. You know what I mean?

And they'll sit there for... They'll sit on a subway station for three days waiting for you. Just so they can jostle you.

You know, that's no big deal for an omniscient being. At all. Don't doubt it.

I mean, get your mind up to what it's like to be an omniscient being. They're going to last forever. They can emanate bodies at will.

And they're waiting for you. Maybe a thousand years on that subway platform. Or someone could purposely emanate as your brother or sister and for an entire lifetime wait for a chance to do something to you.

And then it comes. Five minutes, it comes. After twenty years, there's a five minute episode.

And you're meant to learn something from that. They do that kind of stuff all the time, no problem. To them, time is nothing.

Isn't that like God making us suffer? Why don't they go find us on the subway the same day and jostle us? No, they have someone there too.

[Speaker 2]
That's no problem. Isn't that why you say, God, why we suffer?

[Speaker 1]
Well, this is a different thing. This is where... I would distinguish between suffering you can learn from and suffering you can't learn from.

You know, personally. You know what I mean? I mean, I'm just off the top of my head.

You know, I can't see any reason to give a baby AIDS and let them die in a crib, you know. But I could see a reason to emanate... Lord Buddha himself emanated death to get us to get serious about our lives.

I could see that. You know what I mean? But it doesn't hurt him.

Something like that. But to do us some kind of permanent harmful damage or something, you know, with no reason, no possible benefit from that, I don't know.

[Speaker 2]
If I get angry...

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. So they don't do it too hard. I mean, I think emanations are supposed to work at your level, you know.

I think they're supposed to challenge you at a level which is good for you. You know what I mean? Then you get over it.

Yeah, I think that. And I think if it's not that, it's maybe not an emanation. How's that?

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
That's hard to tell, though. And then, so it's anger and wrong view. He gives the example.

Wrong views can destroy a lot of good karma. In other words, you've collected a good karma, you have the seed for a good karma in your mind, but the emotions of anger somehow short-circuit the karma and make it unable to give its result. So the idea is to deprive karmic seeds of what they need to go off.

Okay. Did you have a question? Yeah, I thought that emanations were not premeditated.

They're not. They're really not. I was joking.

Okay. She made a good point. Emanations are sungidrupa.

True emanations are sungidrupa. Sungidrupa means automatic. Like, Lord Buddha doesn't think, it's six o'clock, time to emanate down at Vajrapani, you know, so I can have dinner or something.

They don't have to... There's no premeditation in an emanation. It happens by spontaneous way of things.

Okay? Like that. As soon as someone's ready to have an emanation come to them and jostle them, it's there.

And the Buddha doesn't have to think, oh, someone needs to be jostled, it's time. He doesn't have to set his alarm clock or anything like that. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
So that emanation then is a karmic consequence when all the...

[Speaker 1]
Really, you've created the emanation. Yeah, you've created the emanation. There's a big discussion of it in the First Dalai Lama's Abhidharmakosha commentary.

You know, they say, why doesn't the Buddha come to everybody and teach them? And they say, oh, you know, the sun can rise, but if the lotus is not ripe, it's not going to open. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. By the way, excuse me, what's the opposite of...

If anger at a bodhisattva and wrong views are the best ways to short-circuit good karmas, ruin your old good karmas, then what's the best way to short-circuit bad karmas? Yeah, it would be bodhichitta and correct view of emptiness. You see what I mean?

And those were the two that he spoke about when he was talking really about refuge and bodhichitta. The basis of refuge is emptiness, right? And that's what he was talking about.

And I didn't give you that example. It was really beautiful. He said, you can have a room that's been dark for a hundred thousand years, but if you bring a lamp into it, the darkness goes away, the same as if the darkness has only been there for five minutes.

And I guess he's talking about our own mind state. Like, if you get one minute of bodhichitta in your mind, or one minute of ultimate bodhichitta in your mind, either one, it doesn't matter if you've been a schmuck for a hundred thousand years. Dark karma is removed the same.

You see what I mean? And he gives the example of a room that's been dark for a hundred thousand years. It doesn't matter.

You just bring a light in, and it's just gone, like that. Okay?

[Speaker 2]
Who were you talking about?

[Speaker 1]
There's a quotation from Sutra in your readings. And it's in there twice or three times. I like it.

It's very pretty. Oh, I had another thing I forgot. Then I'll answer your question.

Remember the thing about, if you can't restrain yourself completely, at least make a time limit? So I got to the end of the translation in the last break, and Pabongka Rinpoche says, do a year. Do a month.

Do a day. Do an hour. And then at the end he says, and hey, if you can't do anything, make a prayer that you'd be able to do it in the future.

I thought that was kind of good. I don't know, sometimes I just get overwhelmed. Like I know I'm going to get overwhelmed in five minutes.

I know I can't stop it. I just know it. So, you know, when you're in the midst of one of those MAC attacks, you know, just say, well, I wish I had the power to restrain myself for at least five minutes or so.

You know, just make a prayer. Okay, I can't stop this malefliction. It's like a train.

It's running me over. And at least I make a prayer as I go down.

[Speaker 2]
You know. You know.

[Speaker 1]
I'm praying that in the future I'd be able to resist you for another five minutes. You know. Or something like that.

Okay. Did you have a question?

[Speaker 2]
I have a question whether direct perception of emptiness through acid counts.

[Speaker 1]
I don't think you could see it directly during an acid trip. I doubt it. Yeah.

I think almost impossible. Okay. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
I was just curious if the antidote is seen to be the most important of the powers.

[Speaker 1]
For what purpose? Oh, you mean in general.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I know, I know. Yeah.

I don't know. I think from the fixed point of view, it's the most effective to stop the view that's the root of all of it. You see what I mean?

I think that's the point. And from the messed up point of view, the fact that bad karma perpetuates itself is the most horrible thing about the messed up side. You see what I mean?

How's that? Okay. Yeah.

Do the karmas get destroyed in the end or not? It's a good question. I'm standing here and I'm wondering about it myself.

I know with an arhat they say no. But I have a feeling with an enlightened being it's yes. Okay.

Yeah, I believe so. Do the non-activated bad karma seeds just stay there forever or when you get enlightened do they somehow get overcome? And I think the answer is they do get overcome.

Okay. I'm going to go over... By the way, we'll do question and answer tonight.

Okay? I'm going to go over... There's a beautiful book called Toge Baro, which means The Blaze of Reasoning.

It's by a Madhyamika master named Bhavya, which in Tibetan is Lek Denje. He's the bad guy in the monastic textbooks because he attacks Chandrakirti, or he and Chandrakirti have a punch-out. But on the question of karma he's right on.

And I wanted to quote that a lot. He actually goes through a lot of questions about the mechanics. So while we're on the question of questions, let's go through some of his questions.

Because what he does is he lets other people come and say, but what about that? And then he answers it. Okay?

So I've got about five or six of those. Let's go through those, and then I think we'll take a break. First issue he mentions is, what about that quotation from scripture that says, kyalpa gyal yang le ni chu mi sa, which is one of the four principles of karma.

Do you remember? le pel che wa, then what? le nge pa le pel che wa, ma che pel dang ma che pel, che pel dang chu mi sa wa.

Okay? What are the four principles of karma? What are they?

le nge pa, you cannot get a good thing from a bad act. If you lie for a green card, and you get a green card, there's no connection. Learn it.

Get used to it. Okay? The liar is going to create no green cards for a thousand kyalpas.

Getting the green card came from being honest to the immigration authorities for the last thousand kyalpas. Okay? But thinking that the green card came from the liar is foolish.

In Buddhism, that's wrong view. It didn't. They just happened to happen close to each other.

Okay? So, good can only lead to good, bad can only lead to bad. Get used to it.

If the world knew that, they wouldn't do bad deeds anymore. Okay? Second one, karma always exponentially increases, which you know from the Pabongka Rinpoche quotation, doubles every 24 hours.

Somebody said, what's it matter if you get your fire-offering kid a day late? I said, that's an important difference. You know, I wouldn't wait till LMB to do mine.

I would go to Boulder Creek and do it or something, you know. Anyway, third one, ne ma chepa, ne ma chepa. If you don't do a bad karma, you'll never get a bad result.

If you never do a good karma, you'll never get a good result. Fourth one is the one we're talking about here. Karma never just goes away.

Period. Stated all over the scriptures. Once you've committed a karma, it never just wanders away somehow.

Karma never goes away. So the first question to Master Bhavya is, hey, what about the scripture that says karma can stay in your mind stream for a hundred thousand years and not go away? You can wait all day, it's not just going to disappear.

He says, what about that quotation? Then he says, top shi ma cham, sama ma chen na, which means, if you don't do the four powers, that's true. Okay?

What Lord Buddha meant was, if you don't purify yourself of the karma, then you can count on it, it'll be there for as long as it takes for it to get up to the front of the runway. But it's not going to go away. Don't hope that karma is just going to go away somehow.

You have to proactively address the bad things you did in the past. Don't think something's going to just go away because it hasn't ripened yet. Okay?

You have to go back searching for in your life what you did actively. Okay? And search and destroy.

Okay, second question. Why do they say some karmas are definite and that you must experience them, and others you don't have to experience them? So what's that mean?

He says definite only if you didn't do the four powers. Okay? All right.

Now he addresses it. So then they say, what the hell does indefinite mean? Because then everything's indefinite.

Okay? And he says, no, no, there's karmas that, given certain factors, might not give a big result, even if you didn't do the four powers. Okay?

And those are called indefinite. Got it? Like karmas that maybe would have given you an erratic result anyway, even if you hadn't done purification.

You know, like kind of minor karmas where you have sort of a mixed motivation or something like that. Those are like not too definite anyway. So that's how he answers that.

Very galupa. Okay. Then there's a famous quotation in the scriptures where they say, yeah, you can purify even nyong-e, which means what?

You can purify even those karmas that are supposed to be sure to give you a bad result. Okay? The very opening sutra said that, right?

The Diamond Cutter said that. I'm sorry, the Four Power Sutra said that. But then there's many sutras that say, but not a namyon.

You know, not that fourth kind of karmic result. Not a ripened karmic result. So they say, what's that talking about?

If you can wipe out even the bad deed of killing your mother or something like that, then how come you can't get rid of a bad deed which is ripened from your past karma? Because that's what the sutra says. Okay?

And he says, that's talking about karmas which have already gone off. Okay? That's pretty easy, okay?

That's talking about karmas. When Lord Buddha said that, ripened doesn't mean about to ripen. Ripened karma means karma that's already produced a result.

And he gives the example of blindness or something like that. He's addressing blindness as if it were already a karmic result and it's too late to do anything about it. Okay?

Technically that's not true. Okay? Yeah, even blindness, you can cure by destroying the karmic seeds because you need more to be blind next year.

They're getting used up every minute you're blind. So if you could get rid of the ones that are still there, you would be the one person who's suddenly reverted. And in fact, that's the principle of tantra.

And that's what we're trying to pull off with tantra. I mean, if it were true that blindness is something that's already gone off and you can't do anything about it, then there's no hope for this body. How could you change your whole body into a body of light then?

You're in trouble. If that's true, you're in trouble. But he's a svatantrika anyway.

He's not a Prasangika. Okay. Remember that quotation that said, it was from Arya Nagarjuna's letter to a friend, and it said, even these three horrible guys, the one who killed 999 people because he met this guru who told him that if you kill a thousand people you reach nirvana, and then there's this other one who killed his father, who was also an arhat, and Udayana.

So things like that. They said, you say that those people did purification and saw the ultimate reality in this lifetime. Or they saw the truth.

That's what the quotation says. But I know that the scripture also says they went to the lowest hell. What's that all about?

And then he says, that's called the basketball theory. Okay. And it's in many scriptures.

It's called, fill up a leather bag with feathers and throw it on the ground or something. Meaning, they did go to hell, but they came back like a rubber ball. Okay.

And that's in the scriptures. And then he goes into this big debate about did they suffer in the hell? And they decide no, they didn't.

Like they had the karma to be there briefly and then come back up, and they didn't suffer there. Oh, that's a good question. She says, what kind of karma is that?

And then he says, it's the difference between the lack, in Tibetan it's the difference between me and min. Me means it's not there. Min means it's not.

Okay. It's the difference between it's not there and it's not. It's not there means the karma's seed is completely gone.

It's not means it's there, but it can't act like a bad karma should act. Okay. So, did they still have the seed?

Yes. Did it act like a bad karma should act? No.

Okay. That's all. They didn't get rid of the seed, but the seed, when it went off, didn't do what a bad karmic seed should do.

Like they didn't get burned in the hell realms. Okay. That's the distinction.

I'm getting too technical and it's a little late. Okay. Last one.

The very last argument in his book, and then we'll take a break, is... Well, then if it's true that the four powers work as well as you did, and now you've explained the mechanics of it, I understand it better. So, if it's true that the four powers work so great, then is there no difference between doing a bad deed and then purifying it and never having done it at all?

Okay. And you know the answer. The answer is big difference.

Okay. Can you wipe out all the effects of a bad karma that you did in the past? Yes.

So, why don't we just go out and do all the bad karmas we want to do, and just purify them every night? And then we talked about it the other day. Because you retard your positive progress.

Okay. And the example is, in Je Tsongkhapa's Shung Lam, Highway for Bodhisattvas, which is his commentary on the bodhisattva vows, which you studied extensively. Okay.

He said, it's okay, if you break this, you can take it over. Bodhisattva vows you can take over, right? So, somebody comes up to him and says, well, then why should I keep them if I can take them over every week?

You know what I mean? And he says, no, you don't understand. If you break a major bodhisattva vow, you cannot see emptiness directly in this life.

You see what I mean? There's no horrible karma. You know, you don't get some new suffering or something like that.

Satsang Meva means, no new disasters in your life. But it retards your progress. Like, it pushes off ten lifetimes understanding emptiness intellectually, properly.

And it pushes off seeing emptiness directly, okay? To another lifetime. You can't do it in this lifetime.

If you can't reach the first bodhisattva bhumi in this lifetime, okay? Now, if that's true, then it's hopeless for us because everybody knows the first bodhisattva vow, for example, is Dr. Shinma. Praise yourself and talk bad about others.

Oh, man. So, I'm not going to see emptiness for a million years, you know, if that's all it takes. This is a very bad deficiency in how it's taught in America, how it's explained in America.

That doesn't refer to saying something nice about yourself. It refers to specifically like major, evil-minded, what do you call it? Malicious.

Maliciously tearing down another Dharma center or another Mahayana teacher. When you're already a good teacher and you're maliciously going after another teacher because you want the money he's getting from his disciples. That's the vow, okay?

It's hard to break a major bodhisattva vow, okay? If you know what they mean, it's hard to break them. Dr. Shinma, chuno mitai shing. So, he's got to be dying for lack of five dollars and you refuse it. You see what I mean? It's got to be serious.

Those vows are serious. We're talking big time though. Okay?

You have to enjoy it. You have to be willing to do it again. You have to think there's nothing wrong with doing that.

Okay? All those conditions have to be there. And then you can mess up the chance to see emptiness in this lifetime.

And it's very hard to really break them well. Okay? Yeah.

I think... She says except for wrong view. Now, wrong view is a different case.

I mean, wrong view, even in that case, has to be kind of active. You have to be going after the idea. If you doubt, you know, the Buddhist viewpoint about things...

You know, I heard Michael Rhodes say that, you know, if I wanted to get milkshakes in my future life, I'd have to give away... No. That you can't get a milkshake from Michael and Zoey's by paying for it.

Okay? And I've said that. Okay?

And that's true. You see? Paying for the milkshake is not the cause of the milkshake.

At all. Prove it. Sometimes you go there and they're closed.

You had the money. Okay? No, it's not a joke.

I'm not joking. You don't... The money doesn't make the milkshake.

Okay? You've got to get used to that. If you get a milkshake because you paid, it's not because you paid.

Okay? Are you saying that if you didn't pay, you'd get a milkshake? Yeah, I got two this afternoon.

Okay? From Rob. No, it is true.

Okay? It really is true. You've got to get used to thinking like that.

Now, to doubt it, or to be hesitant about it, or to feel funny about it, like queasy, you know, boy, the implications of that, I'd have to change my whole life around. I don't have time for that. You know, that's...

that's... that's not wrong view. It's to attack that idea.

It's to say, come on. You know, that's totally wrong. You know?

Go to work. Get a life. You know?

Okay? Stuff like that. Okay.

Anyway. By the way, you do have to have a right livelihood. That's also part of the Bodhicitta.

Secondary. No. Okay.

We'll stop there. And then, we'll do very briefly when we come back, a meditation, how to do the actual meditation, and then I think we're done. One point...

The mantra. Oh, you really want that mantra? Yeah.

Okay. Uh... That and...

Oh... You know, I lived in a Dharma Center for 20 years before this. Uh...

And, uh... And my teacher taught four or five hours a day for 20 years. You know?

Uh... He never asked for a penny. And still doesn't ask.

He's almost 80. Like, he tries to get out of his chair and teach once in a while. And...

And, uh... He still never asked for anything. You know, he's never asked us for anything at all.

You know? And, uh... But...

But having been the person at his side who was trying to pay the bills, it was very difficult. Okay? And we struggled, you know?

And... And you try to make it transparent, meaning you try not to let the students know how bad it is. Like, they come in and you give them all tea, and when they leave you don't have any milk for tea.

You know? And you're like, Uh... Okay, we'll have some tomorrow.

You know? And it's hard sometimes. It's really hard.

I mean, I'm speaking from real experience. You know? And that sometimes goes on for ten or fifteen years at a center before the students wake up.

You know? And, uh... So don't think all this stuff is self-existent, you know?

It takes, uh... It's actually quite hard for the people who live here and the people who... who organize these things.

They're always just scraping by. It looks like the notebooks got here okay. It looks like we got here okay.

You know, it looks like Vajrapani got here okay. But it's always like, uh... I'm speaking from personal experience.

It's always on the edge. And it's, uh... It feels bad.

You know, if I got up tonight and said, We're all going to the movies later. Who wants to come? I swear to God, twenty people, you know?

And then you say, Can people donate ten dollars to Vajrapani? And they're like, You know? So, uh...

Try to think about it, okay? This is much better than a movie. Uh...

I mean, except for The Matrix, okay? But, uh... Or Truman's World, okay?

But, uh... But anyway. There's a bowl.

Is that the bowl? Two jars on the front of the stoop. Put some money in it, for God's sake.

You know? Twenty bucks, something. Help out Vajrapani.

That's for Vajrapani Institute, okay? It's a beautiful, beautiful place. I go all around the world teaching.

This is one of the most beautiful places. And... A place like this for hundreds of miles.

You see what I mean? So it's very precious. And you have to take good care of this place.

Uh... And it has to stay. And it has to stay healthy.

Okay? So try to... Just forget it, you know?

You'll figure out where to get the money for your rent next week. Uh... Just throw a big bunch in there.

You know? Don't be... Just let go and do it, you know?

And it helps a lot, okay? It helps, uh... You gotta have places like this.

There's a very precious little pocket in that big, uh... bad world view. Okay?

And you gotta take good care of it. And there's more expenses than you imagine. That's always the case.

Okay? So... There's lots of expenses they're not asking you for that they're having.

So... So try. Try to help them, okay?

I still adamantly say that all Dharma teachings should be free. And... That's the way it should go.

That's the... The way it should be. They should be free and you should pay too much.

Okay? Alright? As much as you can, you know?

Within your means. Alright? Okay.

We'll do a... So I'm thinking you can do that during the break. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Okay. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. Okay. Okay.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. This is the end of Session 5.