A long article, taken from an essay by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. It is of great benefit to anyone who wishes to have a goods understanding of karma. Understanding karma clears away the confusion and brings peace in the life, whereas lacking that understanding causes confusion, blocking us from understanding life, ourselves, other beings, and so it brings harm to ourselves and others. No matter how many eons we study at the very best universities there are, because they have no concept of karma in their curriculum, we will still be blind. They will show us the ocean, but all we’ll see is a big expanse of blank blue. It’s like the universities believe that there is nothing below the surface! Any knowledge not based on analyzing the nature of the mind and its experiences is so limited in this way. No course at university can give us anything of any worth compared to understanding karma. Therefore we need to read as much as we can about karma—there are many books in English now on the subject—and explore it as much as possible. That is where our real life, at the most profound level, is explained. Understanding cause and effect on a superficial level is not that difficult. We can easily see with our own eyes the external cause of something. But going deeper and seeing the main, internal cause is much more difficult. Our neighbour has a beautiful garden. It’s easy to see that they have it because they are rich, but we need to see deeper than that. Why are they rich? What are all the causes and conditions. And the flowers in their garden are so thick and plentiful, whereas our garden is full of weeds and nothing seems to grow, even though we seem to put as much work into it. Why is this? Not understanding karma, we make so many mistakes because we are simply not aware of what is the cause of happiness or suffering. This is the biggest mistake, and the first. Even though some people hear Dharma and have an intellectual understanding of it, because they don’t continually meditate on the subjects, they don’t have much feeling for it, and so they don’t really care and they continuously make mistakes. Reading novels or watching movies is pointless; it doesnt change anything and it just wastes our time and increases our attachment. We read the story or see the film and we get involved, and unless we have some understanding of how underneath the excitement of the heroes’ lives there is suffering, we want to emulate them. Think of all the time people waste on books, movies and television. Hours and hours of wasted life, every day! There are so many better ways to spend our life than that. Reading books on karma, on the other hand, is so helpful because it shows us how we can correct our life, how we can live it purely. Instead of bringing more attachment it brings peace of mind and deep understanding. There are now so many books on karma, such as translations of the sutras or the life story of the Buddha. These books really help our life, not just in a long-term spiritual way, but in a very pragmatic way, such as understanding the cause of a relationship problem. Opening a Dharma book can give us the clue to why we are so unhappy with our partner and give us the key to solving the problem. Observing karma and acting to transform our life is the key to becoming a truly happy person. If we don’t do this, no matter how learned we are—even though we can recite all the sultras and Vajrayana teachings by heart, like having a whole library in our mind—there is still no way to avoid being born in the hell realms. Even with the most advanced psychic powers, being clairvoyant or being able to transform things, we are still heading for the lower realms. This has happened to many Vajrayana practitioners in previous times. They have been so skilful at opening the chakras or the nadis and other highly advanced practices, but because they have not observed karma, because they have not respected it, instead of achieving their goal when they died, they were reborn in the lower realms. Without observing karma we can fall into terrible suffering. There is the story of the mediator in Tibet who did a long retreat, reciting mantras and visualizing the deity for years and years, doing everything well, but he did not observe his karma, and so when he died he was reborn as a hungry ghost, in the fearful aspect of the wrathful deity he had been meditating on. He was in fact what we call Tau, these beings who live on the smell of burning food. His friend, who was also retreating, did sur or burnt-food offerings every night as part of his practice, putting tsampa (barley flour) onto the fire and saying mantras in order to make charity to the hungry ghosts. And so the meditator who died appeared before him one night in the form of Yamantaka, brought by the smell of the offering. He explained that his practice had been so powerful he had this shape, but because he hadn’t observed his karma, he had been born as a hungry ghost. When Atisha was going to Tibet, he was stopped by a very fearful looking being. He saw that it was trying to get to Tibet and that if it did it was cause great harm to the people there. So Atisha offered it torma cake and demanded it didn’t continue its journey. He was able to dispel it in this way. Atisha had been told by his guru about hungry ghosts or hell beings like this, with fearful forms, who has been meditators in a previous life, but who had not observed karma and so had this terrible rebirth. This was a lesson to Atisha about how profound karma is. We are so fortunate. We have met the teachings and we have some idea of karma. Before we stumbled along blindly, trying to be happy, but having no real idea of the causes of happiness and suffering, never really knowing why no matter what we did things still seemed to go wrong and we found suffering while we were looking for happiness. Now we have the perfect, infallible route out of suffering. We can see that whatever happiness we now have is the result of the virtuous actions we have done in the past, and conversely the suffering we feel comes from non-virtuous actions, and seeing that we know exactly what we need to do to correct the situation. How fortunate we are! Here we have the knowledge of the root of all happiness. We have at our fingertips the means to transform any action into the cause of future happiness, simply by recognizing karma and avoiding what leads us to suffering. This is something we can do it continuously in the future, until we reach the ultimate happiness of nirvana and enlightenment. Because of this we are so free. If we wish to be happy we have the tool to make us happy; if we wish to be free from suffering, to never experience it again, we have the perfect tool to obtain that. Before we had this wisdom we were never free. We would try for happiness but our ignorance would lead us to the exact opposite result. There would always be a mistake in everything we did. But now we can sow the seed of happiness with every action. We are incredibly free, so we should feel so joyful. Receiving a whole world filled with precious jewels—a whole universe full of precious jewels—is nothing. Material possessions don’t bring happiness. They don’t show us why we arent happy or help us become happy. We can’t buy our way out of suffering. But understanding karma and being able to transform our mind because of that understanding can bring us a happiness beyond anything we can even imagine. So it is countless times more worthwhile than owning a universe full of precious jewels. Through the wisdom of understanding karma we can start to relate how we are happy or suffering now with actions we have done in the past and because of that purify what needs to be purified and accumulating the positive actions that bring true happiness. Recognising our faults from the past doesnt mean we feel guilty about past negative actions; we don’t have to put ourselves down and feel miserable about it. We simply see we have made this and this mistake and determine not to do it again. Guilt only closes our mind and blocks us from future happiness—it has no benefits whatsoever—whereas regretting having done it and determining not to do it again opens the mind up and leads us to purify and become happier and happier. Recollecting negative actions we have done in the past has great benefit. If we don’t remember any negativity we have created, that’s fantastic! Maybe we’ve never done one single negative action and so we don’t need to purify! But if we have, then we really need to do something about the seeds of those negative actions that are there on our mind-stream, and the first thing to do is to remember them. Only then can we really effectively purify them and only then can we be sure we will never experience the suffering results from them at some time in the future. Recollecting our own negative actions, in this way is the door to all future happiness. It might make us feel bad about ourselves, thinking we really are a very negative person, but this will give us the energy to really purify. We have been living in a dirty house for so long and never really seeing the dirt. But now we have, and so we know what we need to do now is give it a really good clean. We want to live comfortably, without health problems; we don’t want dirty clothes and magazines cluttering all the rooms, and dirty dishes and bad smells in the kitchen; we don’t want the bathroom full of germs. Suddenly seeing how dirty the house is, now we can see why we get sick so easily, why we get depressed, why our friends no longer come around. When we go to primitive countries we see the living conditions of the people there. To us it’s so obvious the filthy conditions and the lack of sanitation, the unwashed food they eat and the contaminated water they drink all contribute to them being so sick, and yet they themselves don’t know this. They believe their house is clean and the food they eat is healthy. In the same way, without seeing the negativities we have created in the past, we can spend our whole life believing we are perfect, pure, good, that we never make any mistakes, that we have no delusions, and at the same time have no idea why we have to suffer the way we are. We are just like those primitive people who think everything is clean and who don’t know why they get sick. Trying to hide our mistakes from ourselves, thinking that we have no delusions, when of course we do, doesn’t help at all. Denying there is a problem is no solution. If we do that we blindly stumble from one problem to another, continuously, in relationships, at work and so on, in this life and in our future lives. Only by understanding karma and seeing why we are suffering can we stop this continual round of problem after problem. Understanding Karma Is the Essence of Dharma Practice The Buddha is so incredibly kind and compassionate to have revealed the teachings to us, to have shown us the essence of what is happiness and what is suffering. He showed us that not harming others is the very first step towards the happiness of future lives and then liberation and enlightenment. Only seeking and freedom from harm for ourselves is not the way to end samsara, we need to work for others’ happiness. Revealing this great truth is the incredible kindness the Buddha has shown us. And he has given us the tools to do this by revealing the various levels of vows we can take to protect our mind. All the vows, the pratimoksha vows, the bodhicitta and tantric vows, and lay vows such as the eight Mahayana precepts, and the vows of the ordained Sangha—the 36, the 253, the 365 vows and so on—are all ways to help us prefect our work for other sentient beings, in order to best benefit them. Because everything stems from not harming and helping others, everything comes down to protecting our karma. We need to develop the good qualities of our mind, and that means observing our karma and acting skilfully to only do positive actions. If we are weak and don’t protect our karma, we can’t develop our mind, and more obstacles will come, blocking any chance for realisations. The more we can understand what karma is, the more faith we will have in it and the stronger our determination will be to protect it. Then we will have less obstacles and be able to develop realizations quicker. So everything comes back to karma, to understanding it and to observing and protecting it—avoiding all negative actions and doing only positive ones. That’s the whole answer. However much benefit we can be for others, however much we can achieve our own happiness now and in the future, everything relies on the karma. Everything comes from protecting our karma. Therefore, it is extremely important to meditate on the karma. To avoid rebirth in the lower realms we need to abandon negative actions such as the ten non-virtues, and to effectively do that we need to purify the imprints of past negative actions that remain on our mind-stream and accumulate merit by doing positive actions. We can only do this when we understand the process, how negative action brings negative result and vice versa. In other words we need to understand and have faith in karma, to observe it and protect it. Everything stems from that. Not just avoiding the lower realms, but all happiness in the upper realms and ultimately liberation and enlightenment. When we truly see our own situation, how we have been so unskillful in the past and have such a store of negative imprints on our mind awaiting to ripen, we feel like we have taken poison, like we are on fire, like we have awoken in the middle of a rattlesnake’s nest. We are just a step away from the unbearable sufferings of the lower realms. And we can see how all other sentient beings are the same. Seeing this, unbearable compassion will naturally arise for them. From that compassion, bodhicitta—the mind that seeks enlightenment for the sake of all others—will come, and that will lead to the wish to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible to help all others out of samsara without even a second’s delay. This in turn will lead to a wish to practice tantra, which is the lightning way to achieve our goal. From that enlightenment is possible, the state where we are truly able to achieve perfect works for ourselves and for all other sentient beings. This all comes from the essential practice of meditating on karma and the lower realms.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 00:05:34 +0000
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