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Karma - Cause and Effect

• It is not enough to know about karma. We must stop harming.
• Look at your own faults. Don’t take someone else’s inventory.
• Consider yourself lucky if you know positive actions bring happiness and negative actions bring suffering. Feel compassion for those who don’t have this faith.
• Pain and suffering is paying the karmic debt.
• When you encounter difficulties, you are exhausting debt. More intense the suffering, more rapid the exhaustion.
• Karma manifests like illusion. This is relative truth.
• How to transform bad condition into path? Drive all blame into oneself. “I don’t blame you.”
• Whether things go as planned or not depends on karma.
• Causality is reality, whether you believe it or not.
• Flower comes from causes and conditions. The situations we experience come from causes and conditions.
• “We accumulate bad karma” means we accumulate self-grasping.
• Outwardly give up ten non-virtuous deeds. Inwardly give up negative emotions.
• Words can shatter people’s hearts.
• Concealed actions grow larger. Revealed actions grow weaker.
• We cannot experience the effects of actions we have not done. Be content.
• The quality of non-virtuous deed is that it can be cleansed. When you have a very strong feeling of remorse then all kinds of negative deeds can be purified. Milarepa is an example of that.
• If you rejoice in virtue, you get the same fruition. If you rejoice in non-virtue, you get the same fruition.
• The more you engage in positive actions, the more you build yourself a path.
• The cause of happiness is bodhicitta. Generate love and compassion to accomplish welfare of sentient beings.
• The important thing is to engage in virtue, whether you get what you want or not.
• “If I do this, it is right. If I do this, it is wrong.” Everyone has this mindfulness. It is just stronger or weaker.
• Actions - there are four factors. If intention is involved, it brings the worst consequence. Antidote is to burn the seed before it ripens.
• Divisive speech is words that breaks relationship, creates disharmony.
• Coveteousness refers to more than attachment – we actually want it for ourselves. There is no ‘completion’ of actually getting.
• Five heinous crimes, Five secondary actions, Four heavy actions, Eight perverse acts – I have spoken about these because we have done them in the past. So confess them.
• Whether we accomplish our goal or not, mainly depends on karma. Expecting obscures the mind, and it has nothing to do with getting.
• Cause and effect is the relative view. Afflictions is cause. Suffering is effect. Path is to abandon afflictions. Fruition is self-liberation.
• Until we realize ‘no-self’ we will continue to operate under the law of cause and effect.
• Refuge purifies karma accumulated in reference to holy biengs. Bodhicitta purifies karma accumulated in reference to sentient beings.
• We can see actions. But we cannot see their intention.
• Harsh speech is words that disturbs other people’s mind, points out their faults.
• The only way to get someone to yell at you is to yell back.
• We have some peace and happiness in the higher realms, this is the result of past merit.
• Why are the ten naturally negative actions negative? Because they cause harm to others.
• Idle chatter is speech motivated by attachment and aversion. ‘Completed’ means we interrupt someone’s virtuous activity.
• Bodhicitta mind can transform non-virtuous actions into path.
• Virtuous deeds done without bodhicitta mind is like a tree that gives fruit only once.
• Each karma gives rise to four effects – this is the unmistaken speech of the buddhas: Body, experience of happiness/suffering, environment, duration/time.
• Fear negative deeds. They have consequences.
• Talking too much can lead to more trouble than eating too much.
• Result of killing is short life and sickness.
• Disagreeable circumstances - I have created them. I have to pay my debts.
• ‘Virtuous deeds’ is like currency we carry into the next life.
• Whatever we familiarize, it becomes easy. We have habituated to negative deeds, so they are easy.
• Contaminated virtue – it brings benefit and exhausts.
• Uncontaminated virtue – we do practice for all sentient beings – this brings enlightenment.
• Each aggregate is a temporary appearance, like an illusion. It does not have self-nature. But we treat as real. Then we have attachment and aversion. This leads to karma.
• The antidote to gossip is to recite mantras.
• Cultivate positive thoughts. Rejoice in positive actions.
• Abandon negative, transform neutral, enhance positive.
• Unvirtuous thoughts destroy positive actions.
• Lying has the intention to deceive.
• Harmfulness is the wish to harm - wish to see someone suffer, or rejoicing in their misfortune.
• Wrong View is believing in results without causes. View that opposes the inclination to do virtue.
• Our experience depends on karma.
• Strength of karma [good or bad] depends on a) Frequency, b) Clarity of intention, c) Secrecy, d) Not regreting. e) Rejoicing, f) Number of people, g) Special times and places, h) Making a vow.
• There are two types of similar results. Similar in experience and similar in habit-energy.
• Actions condition our environment.
• Even minor actions have effects.
• Small action can bring large result.
• Do even small positive actions. Abandon even small negative actions.
• Result is definite. Positive action brings happiness, negative action brings suffering.
• Results of positive actions can be destroyed.
• Results of negative actions can be purified.
• We cannot experience the result of actions we have not done.
• Actions done will not go to waste. Karma does not vanish, even after a long time.
• Thoughts have results. Thoughts are mental actions.
• Actions leave imprints, the tendency to do similar actions.
• Negative actions remain dormant until cause and condition manifest, or they are confessed. Confession requires intention not to repeat.
• Contaminated karma – karma accumulated with concept-bound actions based on duality [‘self’] of subject and object.
• Uncontaminated karma – actions of those who experience true nature.
• Result does not depend on believing in karma or not.
• Result comes to person doing the action, not someone else.
• Accumulation of causes is not enough, need conditions to experience result.
• Actions bring “similar” result. If plant rice seed, get rice.
• Apparent transgression - a bad action with a good result. For example, killing one to save many lives.
• Apparent non-transgression – a good action with a bad result. For example, giving cattle to slaughterhouse.
• Vows are part of Karma. To receive vow, one has to be human, male or female. By taking vows, one possesses them, even when asleep, distracted, or in meditation. Once you take vow, there is great benefit. If you don’t take vow, there is no benefit, but also no risk. If you keep vows, that is good. If break vows, that is bad. The essence of pratimoksha vows is to give up harm. Focus is on body and speech. The essence of bodhisattva vows is to benefit. Focus is on mind.
• With Shravakayana vows, you eat whatever is offered, as long as you did not ask to kill, did not see animal being killed, did not hear. With Mahayana vows, you have to be vegetarian. With Vajrayana vows, you can eat meat, but transform it into nectar with pure view.
• The bread we eat today is the result of past actions.

• We don’t see future sufferings because our vision is limited.

Six doors of negative actions:

• a) Time - since beginningless time until now
• b) Intention/motivation - five poisons (committed through desire, anger, ignorance), or unintentionally
• c) Subject/Container - through body, speech, mind
• d) Object - Buddhas and sentient beings, parents who benefited. The ‘weight’ of an action depends on object.
• e) Essence/ Nature / Result / Consequence – the result of which is suffering
• f) Action - negative actions that are causes, both naturally negative and breakage of vows/samaya.