Public Talk on Karma by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

welcome everyone to the teaching we will be starting very soon um we're running just a little bit behind schedule and uh please sit tight thank you messages in the chat about interpretation welcome everyone welcome everyone to the online broadcast of the sunset cancer rinpoche is teaching on karma we're about to begin the zoom you're in has rooms for french japanese portuguese and spanish consecutive translation when we enabled interpretation please click on the globe icon to choose your language if you need translation to chinese you can find the link in the chat which i'll post again right now i'm turning on interpretation and bringing rinpoche's mic live welcome everyone okay so other year better yes okay so hmm karma subject that has been repeated billions of times and a subject that has been continuously misunderstood billions of times we'll put it here okay um i would say arguably subject of karma is probably the most difficult subject to teach and to understand at um when we talk about karma in the context of cause and effect to the certain extent it's it's acceptable i mean it's chewable so to speak um it's even quite scientific probably the whole business of the the philosophy of karma is actually what many buddhists are kind of proud of we are believer of karma but i think um isn't there a expression called god-fearing nation god-fearing nation i don't think you can really have that kind of expression karma fearing nation i don't think you can have that but people do you know sometimes you know as we talk about this karma we we hear we can pick up buddhist talk as if they are afraid of karma so then we have to be careful here when we talk about gross level of karma such as you know like if you plant rice rice will grow if you plant marigold mary gold will grow i think you know generally people can sort of accept that that level of karma but um once the karma embarks more on the subtle and more refined then karma gets really deep and vast see a buddhist would say something like this um buddhist would say you know we are not you know god did not create us we are created by karma so sometimes this expression indicates that our fate or destiny is in our hand so to speak you see karma our be a byproduct of our karma we are not controlled by god okay but um it's not that straightforward too because it's a bit like before the egg is cooked you can control how much you know what you call it like half raw what you call it like raw soft boil that's right soft boil hard boil you know you can do all of that but once the egg is 99.99 cooked then karma does not mean that it's in your hand so sometimes karma can be can be very very you know tyrannical basically what i'm saying is you know there's you know you you get this sense when the buddhists say oh you know we believe in karma we don't believe in a god who dictate our life you know they sort of exude this oh you know it's in our hand but just be careful when you say this another reason why karma is so difficult is when you talk about karma you have to talk about time obviously right the time when you eat so many chili effect time you go to toilet you understand so you have to talk about some sort of a time oh i must had a bad karma in my past life that's why i'm you know i'm here like this like that you understand so you are talking about a time and this makes it difficult because time is one of one of the vaguest is there such a word most vague thing a most vague phenomena one of the most vague phenomena but one of the force that makes things so real how frustrating you know it's the most ridiculous thing yet it is the thing that makes things so real and painful and exciting and you know so this is why it's difficult [Music] okay another reason why karma is difficult to talk when you talk about karma cause condition effect is very logical now logic is another vagus thing that we have that traps you i know many of you love reasoning and logic i'm sure those who have been to yale and harvard i have to talk to the british people here cambridge people age of what reason renaissance what hair what is it that philosopher voter yeah you guys listen i'm talking to richard dixie by the way oh yeah okay so you love reason you love logic but hear this is the vegas ridiculous thing that makes you trap the most because it's logical it's sensible i can actually go on more but just one more one more reason why karma is difficult karma is difficult especially when we begin to talk about bad karma and good karma because bad and good is like king and the queen of the veg vagueness is there such a word yeah it's like oh my goodness it's a vague it's like wow good bad oh i have to tell you this another reason why karma is difficult basically philosophy of karma is the teachings on chicken and egg which one came first chicken or egg i'm coming back to this one this one is important see when we use the word such as cause and effect not even for a moment we think that the very cause that we are talking is actually a result of another cause this is a this is one of the cause of the fundament of fundamental misunderstanding and mistakes okay before okay one last thing why karma is difficult to underst and teach and understand karma is difficult to understand especially in buddhism because actually the real reason why there is a teaching called karma is because buddhist wants you to understand shuniata that's only reason why there is a karma teaching nothing else nothing else so this should tell you karma is not a destiny karma is not a fate but karma has nothing to do with a free will too destiny no free will now because when we talk about destiny and a free will in the ordinary world it seems that people are talking about a conclusion after an analysis okay sorry to speak very academically but you know this is the only way for now because karma is actually relative is not absolute so you know even you know there are a lot of people who thinks oh you're a buddhist you must be the one you must be those guys who are trying to collect good karma and trying to get rid of bad karma wrong that's a wrong way of putting it buddhist wants to go beyond karma bad or good beyond karma because for from the buddhist point of view karma is an illusion but it's still very powerful the word illusion should not does not it should not make you sort of downgrade karma no it's very powerful illusion is actually very powerful um if i am dreaming a glass of water in my dream the dream glass can hold dream water and in my dream when i drink there's even a time water beginning of the sipping slowly slowly going down through the throat and arrival to the stomach even the time exists in the dream and what suddenly i realized i've been drinking bleach what is it the guide suggested please right yeah suddenly you realize you have been drinking bleach that's called nightmare yes and in that dream yes you could call 9-1-1 and then ambulance can arrive and you can go to the hospital oh not that all of that you can do arrival to the hospital about to die somebody save you all of that you can do in reality not a moment maybe you only napped after a heavy lunge for two minutes and you have not moved from your sofa even for one centimeter so you see so that the logic the what you call it the game even though it's not really happening it has all the impact bad karma good coming in please think in that context see when we talk about predestined or a free will then you are not talking about the dream dream the glass of in the dream the water in the dream the bleach in the dream the nine one one then you are not then you are talking about a true a reality something that cannot be changed isn't it destiny something that you cannot avoid okay so i think um we have talked enough of sort of the overall understanding of the so-called karma generally from from buddhism and perhaps the way i'm explaining may have a little bit of a mahayana sort of flavor now i'm sure i mean there are a lot of questions here probably i will not be able to finish all the answering all the questions but i think um many of my statement i'm making here hopefully is dealing with the questions that you have come up with okay so now to be more specific how do you sort of apply the understanding of the karma as a buddhist now i have already told you that ultimately the goal of a buddhist got nothing to do with collecting lots and lots of good karma and getting rid of lots and lots of bad karma we our aim is to be free from the nightmare free from the illusion of karma that is the ultimate goal but in the meantime for those who have no clue about the illusory aspect of karma they may have a little clue but their habit of thinking illusion as a real is so strong that their intellectual sort of understanding is not enough um those who have the wish to un you know untangle liberate ourselves from this kind of entanglement and bondage of karma what do we do we apply three kind of what we call um discipline we talk about you know in in buddhism we talk about three discipline uh discipline of ethic okay and maybe we will come back to that and then discipline to make your mind malleable or [Music] focused and lastly most importantly discipline to be acquainted and actually realize the truth prajna basically the wisdom out of this three the ethic one pointedness or concentration samadhi and the prajna the third the prajna the wisdom is the most important without the prajna or the wisdom ethic and one-pointedness or the concentration doesn't um it doesn't it really is it's not qualified as the buddhist part let's say because all the discipline whatever discipline you are applying must help you get at least closer to the truth so let's say one of the discipline in the so-called buddhist practice is sitting well that's just one very small one if that discipline of sitting straight is not taking you but in any means if this sitting is not taking you closer to the truth this discipline is not working and just for the sake of those who are new in case there are people who are new let's say the truth of impermanence the fact that we are we are we are going to die we are dying actually this truth need to be realized not only intellectually but practically and things are not truly existing as how they appear this truth need to be understood or realized not just intellectually but practically if a change of season or a sunset makes you um realize than changing nature of our life better than sitting in a temple that method of gazing at a sunset is considered discipline of ethics and the discipline of samadhi or a concentration okay again many times when we talk about karma people seem to only talk about karma related to the body and then maybe some they talk they seem to talk about karma that's related to the speech but hardly people talk think karma related to the mind when in fact karma created by the mind is the most important and most powerful and this is also probably i'm not so you know okay this is probably a big differentiation between the buddhist idea of karma and the so-called hindus idea of karma so minds karma in other words motivation a bright motivation especially motivation such as the bodhichitta wishing to enlighten awaken all sentient beings with that kind of motivation basically every action you engage become [Music] what we call good karma but this is not the end you create so-called good karma good karma again just to remind you something that takes you closer to the truth but this so-called good karma has to also exhaust okay we take a short break because i need to read the questions 10 minutes break go to toilet hmm okay now um i'll try to be more specific but as i said earlier karma is quite vast and it um not so easy for instance when we talk about bad karma and good karma yes broadly speaking a big generalization you can have things like killing stealing lying these are bad karma also when we talk about the karmic consequences broadly you can say like sickness sadness i don't know um dysfunctional life you can sort of broadly say probably caused by that or it is my bad karma you know very broadly because we human beings tend to think like that oh he's very lucky he has a lot of money you know in that kind of sense because that's very subjective from which from what point of view are we deciding that somebody's lucky just because they have a lot of money um some people say oh he must be he must have a lot of magic because he lived long you know there are stuff like that we human beings think is good like living long [Music] wealthy stuff like that but that's a very very um what you call it big generalization and based on this kind of generalization there are also many specific generalization like some buddhists would think oh if you if you are sick this may be because your dharma practice is sort of gathering up all the what you call it bad karma and make it happen now so that you will not go through these consequences later you know there's that kind of generalization we really don't know this as i've said uh in the past in one occasion i don't know some of you may remember this and since i'm in california i think it's safe to say this you know one could almost say that you know like it is marijuana right marijuana that the phenomena of this grass has brought a lot of people to places like nepal and then subsequently they ended up meeting some great masters so the appearance of the marijuana for some people may be due to a good karma please don't share this to other people the trading of silk from between china and india has probably caused bringing buddhism buddha dharma to china so i'm now as talking as a buddhist so from a buddhist point of view good karma or the bad karma almost always actually always has something to do with how close a certain cause and condition is bringing you to the dharma which is the truth there are guys like jingling bar who would look at some people on earth who have everything all material you know things that a human beings can dream of but not a moment of sound of dharma from jinme lingus point of view the guy has no good karma so to specifically say that a certain you know so and so consequences are result of a bad karma is very difficult to decide going back to earlier i was telling you about cause and effect has a some uh you know you know this um what you call the desert there's this um sense of logic you understand logic in the dream the glass in the dream does hold the water but that does not make that dream glass real in the waking time now now we have we are talking kind of you know we are talking quite philosophical um so those who are not used to this please bear this cause and effect is most many times cause and effect is used as tools to validate something you know in your passport passport which is like the proof of your existence the big part of the passport is the birth date right so you know when were you born in used to be even their father's name mother's name out of them not anymore but you understand okay let me put it another way if you plant tomato only tomato grows if you plant orange only orange grows now this logic then makes us forget that this is illusion because today we plant orange tomorrow orange comes only not a banana if banana comes then we will think okay you know unison so there will be confusion yeah so this kind of legitimizing and validation through logic of cause condition and effect in fact there's a there's another thing that the buddhists usually add cause condition no obstacle result guaranteed planted tomato seed cause conditions such as fertilizer water space so many so many we will talk about condition little later because that's important and no obstacle meaning no insects you know eating the seed or no birds eating the seed then even if you pray no tomato won't work tomato will still grow okay while we are at this we need let's talk about the definition okay let's talk about let's scrutinize cause and condition this is a very very tricky i think this tricky thing has really really caused lots of misunderstanding as i said earlier remember this buddhists don't have thesis that says this is the cause only cause we just don't have that so it's because of this buddhists don't talk about genesis buddhists really don't talk don't like talking about things like beginning they they they scratch their head when the moment you use the words like beginning and end then they they just don't know what to do with you yeah so you're not like in the you know like original cause that's a very that's the buddhists don't understand don't accept that now conditions are myriad incredibly just so vast and this is where things gets so difficult because you cannot you know on a on a very very you know gross level i've already told you you can talk about tomato seed as the real cause fertilizer watering this as a condition but this is only on the gross level on the most subtle level in india if you are planting a tomato and let's say you have a conditioning fertilizer that is cow dung and this pan this cow let's say just that morning at a plastic can you understand now this condition has impact on this tomato that you are about to eat but even this is a very gross level there is so many we don't know the great great great great great great great grandmother of this cow we don't know where that cow came from maybe new jersey you know there are a lot of new jersey housing i mean jersey cow i think it's called in india yes the jessica do you know jessica motivation of the jessica is because it gives more milk see the motivation there are people in east bhutan i'm sure there are some bhutanese listening to this so there are there are people in east bhutan who prefer to drink what what's the name of this special cow in bhutanese we call them just jasmine bassoon no anyway sorry i forgot a very special cup very little milk but supposedly really precious and nutritious and really like like a gold class level of milk now i'm talking about human attitude human motivation these are all conditions so there are people who are like myself i can sometimes be very very kind of religious fanatic you know so there are people like me who go to india and try to drink indian cow milk because i have this idea that maybe the indians cow's great great great great great great great grandmother may have a glance of a buddha sitting under the body tree wow what a connection you understand what i'm saying so that's how you the motivation plays here that would be so good right this is why people like you know the you know buddhist very religious devotee buddhists they go to places like nepal for instance because somewhere in kathmandu around that place long time ago many many hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years and lifetimes ago shakyamuni buddha he was just a bodhisattva just beginning to practice dharma so to speak and he was a handsome young man with the long hair all of that and one day as he was roaming around in the street he bumped into dipamkara buddha coming towards him the moment he saw the dipamkara buddha he had a goosebump and he had just an amazing feeling towards this buddha and he saw and just he didn't know what to do you know like he didn't know how to do so he quickly took up his hair and placed it on the pothole to let the deepam kara buddha walk you will become the siddhartha muni gautama he prophesies that so many okay many many years later there are people like us no not all the time my devotion is once in a blue moon you know like not all the time when i'm in good mood so to speak when i go to kathmandu or sometimes oh maybe this portal maybe that portal that's where chakra money buddha must have put his hair you know you know so you feel very you feel so precious each and every inch of that kathmandu dusty dirty everywhere urine everywhere you feel you know anywhere could be the place where deepam kara walked and prophesied the shaktimuni buddha so this is what we call motivation motivation in now quickly i will answer this there's this you know because i said earlier if you cook an egg you know you have a sort of a choice soft or hard whatever but if you have cooked 99.99 or even actually fully cooked then what if you want to not cook if you if you if you want to cook if you not if you want to uncook totally cooked egg what do you do do we now have a uh do we have do we now have a chance yes we have and this part is called tantryana because the tantric tantric path does not really tantric part is not quite dependent to the philosophy of cause and effect for a tantric as a you know and again this one i have used this example before so some of you are quite familiar for a tantric it's like um giving a gold gold expert a kilo of ore unpolished dirty rocky not at all shiny kilo of ore to a goldsmith gold expert oh this person is equally happy to gain a kilo of gold he will not judge no no this is not shiny this is not for the goldsmith or a gold expert this is just gold doesn't see the dirt at all another example very experienced chef chef cook when he or she cook an egg even though onion what is it egg whatever mushroom omelette let's say omelette when a chef is cooking an omelet onion mushroom tomato oil put together this chef does not see them separately already already the vision is already the mushroom omelet you see this is how the tantric see to oneself and the others already as the buddha but anyway let's not go in there too much so that's why 100 cooked can be uncooked actually it doesn't end there people will not even bother cooking uncooking all this is a what do you call it um [Music] exhausting leave it as it is okay yes i said karma is very big let's i'm jumping everywhere because we need to sort of try to have at least some kind of meaningful conversation karma is almost like it's maybe the word related is not the right word it's almost like a synonymous to time and therefore whoever talk about karma they have to talk about reincarnation but i just want to give you warning here the english word reincarnation may be not doing the justice or the actual word young see or this kind of you know continuity so i gave you already the example of in the dream if you are drinking glass of water or poison milk depending on what kind of cause and condition not only the glass can hold the milk there's also a seemingly time long time and a short time is irrelevant i mean it's very relative if you are somebody who is who loves ice cream and in the dream you are eating your favorite ice cream time might go fast and if you hate ice cream and in the dream somebody force you to eat ice cream this time may long last so long and this continuation seemingly okay seemingly continuation is the quintessential aspect of the idea of reincarnation i think i think this is important to know i know many of people think when the moment the word reincarnation is used then they think in terms of okay i'm a human being right now maybe next life i will be become a horse and trot right trout or stuff like that that's fine that's like a very gross level of understanding reincarnation but it's actually much more than that this morning we were very happy some of us and this afternoon maybe we are not happy and this evening maybe we will be happy color manifestations outfit i don't know attitude changing at the same time there's a continuation okay now i will conclude soon why should we understand karma why should we really even bother about it and this is important understanding the karma is important because we all want freedom if you want to if you want freedom you need to understand how the game of course and condition and effect are played rule of what rule of the game you know this how it is being played of course ultimately as a buddhist they don't they don't want to be involved with the game of course that's the game that's the that's the ultimate game i mean ultimate aim but since we have already started to play the game now aiming not to play the game we need to finish the game so to speak oh i forgot one thing it just comes in there your question okay i think people also are interested to know and underst interested to know about karmic connection and karmic debt which is very related yes just as i talked about remember earlier cause an invisible cause and conditions regarding you remember i was talking about the cow and all that this applies here and you may think i'm being very romantic here or i'm being very very called it [Music] it is possible that right this very moment somewhere in bolivia a person who is karmically connected to me because i'm using my hand too much here like this he's feeling it it's possible yes this is and even by that by the time we go into this then people say oh now he's talking about myth and now he's talking religion but okay be be it doesn't matter you can think like that but if you can understand remember the logic of grand great great great great great grandmother of the cow if you apply that i think you will then understand a little bit this because it's happening right now me and some of you i mean some of you are from we never met but here you are sacrificing you know two good hours two to three good hours of a sunday for some people which way which you could have done so many other things like swimming or barbecue or whatever but you are here listening to me so karmic debt maybe you are paying me or i'm paying you or we don't know i'm a buddhist i'm surrounded by buddhist texts yet sometimes i chose to read books like kafka on the shore by murakami i'm reading 10 page 20 page still somebody's making sandwich but i'm still reading karmic debt i'm paying to him or he's paying to me whatever what does this mean this means all system that we believe that this will work socialism democracy election this that we don't know really we think it's working it's bit like the milk in the stream or the bleach in the dream okay lastly by understanding the karma you will realize nothing is independently truly existing in an isolated way and this will help you to have a bigger picture of your life so do you want to be a good manager good leader boyfriend girlfriend father mother parents all this all these understanding karma how the game is played and the rule of the game i think it can help okay so i think this is basically a very very rough attempt to kind of [Music] karma explain the karma in few different angle of course this is very difficult subject and i hope i have answered some of your questions maybe i will take also three live questions yes okay um gazella in portuguese asks if you can talk some more about collective karma is there such a term does it exist very good yes you know this is another big one so um bear in mind first collective is very very uh broad language okay just first just keep this in your head there's about 20 people here and we are all looking at a tree and most of these people are human beings in front of me i think which means that something like this with the leaves and branches that has a root growing you know going inside the earth is being taught as a tree so this is what i'm talking about the collective this is a very big generalization okay because some of here may be allergic to this tree so they have a specific thing going on and lot of people here right now you are not looking at this tree so sorry you don't have the you and bmi we don't have a collective karma to have the experience of seeing a tree but i think we have a collective karma to hear about the tree okay this is just an example and i think a very big one is the virus that's happening right now that may be a very big collective karmic experience we are having is it bad or good wow so difficult to say between human beings i guess we should say it's bad but i had a lot of animal animals and stuff you know they they're having good time you see good and bad very subjective again here and for us follower of the buddha it is our collective karma that shakyamuni buddha came on this earth and his teachings are still alive okay next question there are two questions actually that both are about the relationship between uh good karma and merit so lakshmi asola asks is there a difference between the two and from the chinese audience um there's uh the same questions between what both uh accumulating merit or good merit and accumulating good deeds karma merit again is a tricky word i think this english word may be not doing the justice to translate the word punya [Music] okay this is important question so i'm going to explain this a little bit i think this is a fundamental question on ethic isn't it first please keep in your head morality ethic all these are secondary in buddhism if wisdom compassion and the morality are going for a drive wisdom will be the driver compassion sits next next you know vertical front seat morality backseat sometimes maybe in the trunk i'm just sort of exaggerating a little bit to promote wisdom and compassion [Music] um what was the question oh yeah right um so okay so ethic morality um ultimately the you know the buddha dharma which is uh which is really really the quintessence is a non-duality so ethic is so dualistic you understand this is the right thing to do wrong thing to do so wisdom has to basically overtake this there are many reasons for that but one is this how do you define what is a right ethic how do you decide well something very very relative logic huh what you don't like what you what you don't like you don't do others you know i think there's an expression brothers what you know use your own body and existence as an example and what you don't like don't do others that's about all this is yeah relative so i don't like getting punched by somebody so therefore i also don't punch others because i'm assuming that the other person human being doesn't like being punched let's say i've been migrated to mars and there the most intimate intimate thing to do is punch and let's say i'm not i i've been there for 10 years now i mean like one a year okay i'm i'm excused because i don't know the culture or the habit but i've been there for 10 years and i know that you know they love being punched and if i don't punch them i don't know whether it's a good karma or bad karma something to think about you should you guys should think about this okay what's the next question from our chinese audience someone asks can anyone bear the karmic consequences of sentient beings so i think it means like take it on for other sentient beings [Music] okay this one we need to uh be i will try to explain but please uh bear in mind i don't want you to uh sort of hear it in a sort of a theistic way buddha himself said buddha cannot wipe away your suffering buddha can only teach you the way to liberate ourselves from the suffering and the cause of suffering okay but a bodhisattva they pray may all beings suffering come to me for the beginner bodhisattvas this is a quintessential practice but this one serves in many many different level one level bodhisattva are trying to really crush the self-cherishing so on that level another level bodhisattvas are trying to put their feet in the other's shoes that level and ultimately bodhisattvas are learning to actualize there is no self and other non-duality right non-duality so in order to get accustomed to that kind of non-duality attitude they they they use the opposite sort of method and the opposite of our usual thinking for instance usually when we suffer first thing we think about is ourselves but the bodhisattva shot was trained themselves to not think this way yes so the real answer as a power of the bodhisattvas aspiration and the bodhichitta they not only practice to have the all others suffering to themselves it also what they call it it um this is tricky um in a way you may hear this in a wrong way so i'm a bit worried this can elevate others suffering but by the time it reached to so to speak bodhisattvas himself is no more suffering chandra deepa said this very clearly i think for most of our ears it may not fit in statement like for a bodhisattva it is a joy when the suffering of others come to them so it's no more suffering can you understand the logic so don't think that bodhisattva was a masochist or something and it's doable there's a whole training on this if you even if you are the most stingy person first you learn to give with your left hand to right hand i'm serious there's actually a hundred thousand times like this give by the left hand to the right hand then maybe a chewing gum this i made it up chandra deva said vegetable you train and train then one day somebody wants your left arm no problem just as how you have no problem to give up your chewing gum but i don't think the the common people can understand this but it should it's not that difficult to understand actually if you apply a bit of a analysis if you have too much stuffed animal in your house in your living room you know dolls that's taking too much of your space you have not no qualms of giving it away right because you have realized the it's just a stuffed animal it's not the real bear okay that's it thank you so much and um i hope this karmic discussion i hope this act and this works as a beginning of discussing karma karma is very big uh there is a sutra called rice sutra nice shoot i don't know please um you can if you are interested look in to that [Music] you can begin being karma fearing person but hopefully you transcend from karma fearing to karma understanding and then hopefully shrug off all kinds of karma of course the bad karma but even the good okay thank you on behalf of everyone thank you very much rinpoche for this teaching and may you continue to turn the wheel and keep teaching us again and again you

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Published: Sun Jul 18 2021