Archive Result

Sound file : 20140427GRJHNLKA02

Section : 2/3

Transcriber : Cheng Lian ,Yap

Date : 2021-11-12

Ok. Now, we basically talked about karma. The word karma in Sanskrit, I believe is action. In Tibetan it is “LEI”, but it is sort of activity but almost, almost the same thing. (Dutch translation) So, now the question comes, is that mental or action? So, you should know the answer. (Dutch translation)

Vasubandhu has said in his Abhidharmakosa, the text: LEH NA SAM PA TANG TE CHEK, SEM PEH YI KI LE YEN DI, TEK GI NA LA TA YI LE. He said it is a mental as well as action. (Dutch translation) Mental in the sense, you have the mind and mental faculty. We called it mental faculty or sometimes secondary mind but whatever you may call it, what do you call? Mental factor. Everybody will have his own little thing. So, mental factor, mental faculty, in Tibetan we call it SEM JUNG which means consequence, result of, something coming out of mind. So, when we say the mental, it means one of those mental faculties, called SEM BA.

So, it is one of the, there are fifty-two mental faculties. Out of fifty-two, there are five always follow the mind and five sustaining mind, eleven virtuous mind, six root negative, twenty secondary negative and four inter-changeable. So, which makes fifty-two. So, this is one of the mind always following, that’s what Rinpoche is telling, always follow, out of the first five. (Dutch translation) [05:30]

When we say, it is always follow mind means every mind, when it is right, it has to have all these five functioning properly. Eh, five plus five. The first five, if it is not there, something wrong with the mind, loose screw, not only simple loose screw like ours, very loose screw, because this five screws put together make mind function.

Otherwise, mind is neutral, mind is something there but it is nothing. What did I say? It’s something there, is nothing! Hahaha! I mean it not function by itself. It is sort of influenced by all kinds of things and very often you know I used the example and I was very proud of using my example, honestly, of the, of the clean crystal lamp-shade as mind and different colors, mental faculties or emotions are light bulbs. I was very proud to find the example and talking. Then, I realized Geshe Rabten using the same thing for ten years or twenty years before me. Hehehe! (Dutch translation)

When I say mind is there, do nothing, I mean mind is neutral, mind is something, the mental faculties make the mind work, otherwise it is big thing there but nothing happens. The happening is done what we called mental faculties. Mental faculties are not different minds but different thoughts, different emotions. Different thoughts are popping up and making the major mind tilting this way or tilting that way, that’s what happened.

And if one of those five always following as well as these five sustaining missing, then you have a mind problem. Honestly. [10:00] not just simple screw loose but it is a big mental problem. So, which means this SEMBA or the mental faculty I think called ‘mind’ itself, is also called mind – mind-mind and mental faculty mind. And that is always with everybody functioning in order to function the mind. And that’s why it is called always following. (Dutch translation)

And that’s why [11:45] this karma or action is everywhere, everything, almost like pervasive but we don’t want called it pervasive but it is almost like that. Everywhere because when the mind functions, it’s there. And that’s why everything you do make a difference because it is there. (Dutch translation)

But I forgot something. It’s almost like reflection. Whatever the individual act, the reflection in the mirror will come, right? I am not using this as not true existence example. But I am using this as example, whatever we do, it is noticed, it is recorded because if it is mirror or not mirror; whatever you act, when there is mirror, the reflection will be there, just like that, it will be there. (Dutch translation) So, that’s about basically mind, not that karma.

Then, within that you probably make three different division, of course normal language: positive, negative, neutral and all that but that’s normal language but technically it’s called it: SONAM GILEY, SONAM MAI E PILEY, MUI MILEY. So, SONAM GILEY means positive virtuous, not [15:00] I forgot honestly. Anyway, make it positive, easier. Positive, negative and unshakeable, three. (Dutch translation)

Like for benefit ourselves, killing anybody. Like we have a very nice dinner, let’s slaughter the sheep or goat; and that’s killing karma. That is example of negative karma. (Dutch translation) Probably result of that, we will take rebirth in lower realm. (Dutch translation) and then we will seek, we would like to seek good future life and then create positive karma just immediate future life create positive karma and for that result, (Is somebody knocking the door or what? O, that’s right. O, I see.) As a result of that, you may get samsaric god’s life or something which is called fortunate karma. That’s it, fortunate karma. That’s what I was thinking, not that’s just positive, fortunate karma. (Dutch translation)

So, this unshakeable karma is not necessary seeking external neither joy nor suffering but internal meditative joy. Attachment internal meditative joy and gives you rebirth below the third Samadhi stage. (Dutch translation) So, basically positive karma, negative karma and then you have fortunate karma and unshakeable karma.

Sort of this will throw you something little more than, little more than just positive and negative. Something do good is good enough, something do bad is bad; it is little more than that. Something do good is what type of good we are talking about it. Something bad, what type of bad are we talking about it? It is a little more getting deeper in it. (Dutch translation) [20:09]

So, what’s happening is, we wanted to have joy, we wanted to have good life, we wanted to have something great, now, this life. And everything what we consider good wonderful are naturally contaminated. So, although we may be doing something good, but our good may not become good enough because end what you are seeking is not good enough. (Are you with me? Ok) (Dutch translation)

And that’s why, during the initiations, in the preparation or somewhere, they will say don’t seek for the benefit for this life. That’s the reason why they say. Many of you have many initiations, you people are fortunate, honestly. (Dutch translation) And also in that Sakya Shambasila they say, SAMBA SILA SHAMBA MAY, I am sorry, if you have attachment for this life, you are not dharma practitioner. So, that’s what from the karmic point of view, that’s, it’s not that we don’t want joy and happiness in this life. We do want joy and happiness. We don’t want misery. We don’t want problem. But if our little problem substitute big problem that we face in future, we are lucky enough, honestly. That’s what really, it is. (Dutch translation)

And also waste of our positive deeds. It is very hard to make any positive deeds. Really hard, very, very hard. Even the positive deeds we thought we did great, it also had a lot of faults because we are not used to it. It is not in our culture. It is not in our custom. It is not in our blood. So, you know, it is not in our habitual. So, anything, it is sort of very difficult. It is sort of swimming against current, so whatever we have little, if it is [25:00] wasted for simple this sort of: a. which is not even true joy because we don’t have a good example of joy.

So, whatever the joy example we have, example in the sense, sort of role model, whoever you admire, everything you admire so called good, great life. We also have so many faults. And that’s why it may not necessarily be great. Honestly thinking in our life, if we watch other people, you think: huh, if I am that person, what will be, will be. You said, yah, I have fat wallet so, don’t worry about it. Yes, fat wallet comes with the fat problems. Honestly, exactly. Fat wallet comes with fat problems and problems you have to solve it, who else solve it. It’s your headache, honestly.

So that is not what we are seeking for. And you look at comfortable, yah that’s very comfortable life. If I have half of that, I am happy. So when you look at that, if we get that comfortable life, that comfortable life has so many other things come out.

As we see today, very clearly comfortable life will not make you comfortable, make you worry, make you worry so much more and make your kids doesn’t become great, becomes spoilt, doesn’t mature and doesn’t do right. And all of those package comes out with that together which is again not right example, not right role model. Honestly, when you are really looking for something great for this life, comfortable, joy, what can we find it, where can we find it? Look at each and every one of them.

If you become Obama, it is totally full of “f”. Yah, you figure out what “f” stands for. Not the person or problems, everything. Everything, it is. If you become Rockefeller, you will be bankrupt. All of those, there’s really nothing, I am mean, I mean, even that, at that moment is not without suffering. It’s worse suffering, worse problems. (Dutch translation) [31:03]

So, if you waste our difficultly accumulated positive karma – great, fortunate karma, whatever we have, we have good karma. Whatever we have, if we waste it for things like that, then that will be not good. That will be a big waste. (Dutch translation)

Similarly, just for next immediate life, next life, doing something positive for next life is better than something for this life but even then, it is not good enough. (Dutch translation) And that is why, every time it is recommended, all our motivations - for the benefit of all beings, one would like to become fully enlightened, for which I will do this and that. So, that’s the reason why whatever we do, a little, it becomes worth, it becomes good, it becomes solid and that is why motivation at the beginning of every dharmic-karmic activity, whatever we do, at the beginning, having the motivation correction is because of this reason, because of the karmic reason. (Dutch translation)

Not only that, every activity, every function, every thought, every function and if you don’t have any idea of one of the three principals; like the first principal, renunciation; or the second principal, bodhicitta or compassion; [35:00] or third principal, wisdom. If it is not influenced by any one of those and it becomes any positive deeds we do, will also become cause for continuation in samsara; even though it is positive, even though it is fortunate karma, even though it is, it becomes cause for samsara. (Dutch translation)

So, therefore, from the karmic point of view, to our own self benefit, for our own goodness, if you have either one of those three principals, if possible, all three, if not at least one of them will make our every effort worthwhile. (Dutch translation)

The mind of renunciation, again I hesitate to use word renunciation because you may think you have to renounce your life and run away, run away like we did in the sixties. (Dutch translation) Our recognition of dis-satisfaction of life was very clearly noticed in sixties, fifties maybe not; sixties and seventies, yes, very clearly noticed. (Dutch translation)

And that’s why people seeking shelter, no, people seeking escape, every type of thing, whatever is possible escapes, we get a lot of religion escapes. Everything: Buddhism, Hinduism, Hari Ram, Hari Krishnam, you name it, every one of them came up just because you want to escape, the shelter, you know because to escape, because dis-satisfaction in life. (Dutch translation)

And then also seeking escape, [40:00] you know of physical escapes, all kinds of things, sort of counter culture, whatever you know, we in the name of freedom. What we did all kinds of things, right?

And also mental escapes, everything – drugs, coffee with K, whatever, all of those. (Dutch translation) And they are not bad, the worst one is commit suicide. Many of them commit suicide. (Dutch translation)

And many of them don’t know what to do and go to military and get killed in war. (Dutch translation) And these are the, I mean, not every military is this, I can’t say that. They say it’s volunteer. They would not say it’s not escape, they say it is volunteer but really, truly thing is this: dis-satisfaction was noticed here and that’s what people do.

And now it is not that extreme, settled down a little bit but still everybody is seeking some kind of escape but still we don’t know what we are seeking. We are, this is generational struggle. (Dutch translation) And many of us are looking for escape. Many of the human beings looking for, looking for some kind of a problem solving thing. (Dutch translation)

Almost every human task if you look at, every human task, whatever, all the scientists what are they doing? They are trying to solve human problem. That’s their goal. The medical science, the physicists, what are they trying to do? Better cure, better way of getting people cured. (Dutch translation)

Architects and engineers try to seek better way of finding a living. Honestly. It’s not necessarily they are trying to make a longer building but build a better way of living, efficiency, that’s what they are doing, right? (Dutch translation) Artists try to express the beauty, showing the beauty through art form. It is solving a human problem. That is everybody doing it: administrative doing it, business people doing it, commercial people [45:00]doing it, non-commercial people doing it, academicians doing it, actually it becomes human goal. That’s what we are doing it. And the spiritualist, like us doing the same thing. The goal is same thing, honestly. (Dutch translation)

We are not holier, they are not dirty. Sometimes we may think, we are spiritual, we are holy people. And yah, some people do and they do think, there are a lot of them, particularly the Hindu, they do think they are holy people. They make you drink their bath water, make you feel clean. They make you drink their bath water, that’s why how they think, they are holier. She doesn’t agree. You may not feel, we may not feel, I may not feel. But there are some spiritual people feel that way. They make you drink their bath water for you to purify. So, that’s if they are not their thinking they are holier, what else? Sorry, honestly, they do. Because they are spiritual, they are holy, yah. (Dutch translation)

So we are all same, looking for solving our problem. Luckily we have the recognition of the dis-satisfaction and the pain and the misery very clearly. That opened up particularly the western society. That’s because of what had happened in the sixties and helped to open up tremendously. Otherwise I am sure the Dutch will never ever pay attention for any of this nonsense like Buddhism. Honestly. (Dutch translation)

Somehow Buddhists carry this, saying, “Hey, it is the karma.” I mean, it is the Buddha who told [50:00], not Buddhists, who told the world. There’s no Buddhist before Buddha, right? It is Buddha who told the world, “Hey I discover there is something which is controlling our life but we created and it function by itself but we have a lot of things to say, to do, un-do, let’s call it karma.” So, Buddha said, “I discovered that. This is one of the key, how we make ourselves happy, better, comfortable, joy.” (Dutch translation)

It is thing that make ourselves responsible. I mean, that doesn’t make ourselves responsible. We are responsible for our deeds and this karma makes it clear. (Dutch translation) So, it is one of the key to make our life better, to make ourselves better life after life. (Dutch translation) That’s it. Bona parte.