We’ve been discussing the worst states of rebirth that we could go to after we die. The very worst of these are the so-called hells, the joyless realms, in which we would be trapped. We would be trapped in the sense that, once reborn there, we would have to remain for a very, very long time. It’s a very difficult state to get out of. We’ve gone through some of the various types of hells, some of the hot hells and cold hells. There are also the surrounding hells, but we didn’t talk about those.
The Occasional Hells
Additionally, there are the occasional hells. The occasional hells have no definite location. Some exist in the vicinity of the hot hells and cold hells, while others exist in the human realm. These hells are like part-time hells. For example, during the day, everything would be normal, and then, at night, things would get really horrible.
That always reminds me of asthma, which I suffer from. Asthma is something that is much worse at night than during the day. During the day, I can breathe normally, but at night, I have terrible difficulty breathing. Although that obviously is not a hell realm situation, it’s an example of what it could mean to have difficulty just part of the day. I guess people who have insomnia have the same thing. They have terrible difficulty at night, being unable to go to sleep.
Rebirth in one of the occasional hells is caused by acting destructively at certain times and not at other times. For example, there are those who might act in destructive ways only at night. During the day, they might be at work and, so, are well behaved. But at night, they might be very negative – fight with their family or others, get drunk, and so on.
The Final Meditation on the Joyless Realms
We have just one meditation left on these joyless realms. It is one that helps us to feel what it would actually be like to be faced with the consequences of our destructive actions. It also helps us to appreciate that the meditations on these joyless realms are not irrelevant.
It says here: Imagine being part of a group of five bandits, three of whom have already been caught, publicly beaten, and thrown into a dungeon or – as happens in some countries – had their hands chopped off. If we were one of the two who were still being sought by the police, would we just rest at ease? Wouldn’t we be worried that we would be caught and that the same thing would happen to us? This is the type of thought we want to have.
In other words, we’ve committed the same types of negative actions that have caused others to be reborn in these horrible situations. Having done the same types of things ourselves and having seen or thought about what others have suffered as a consequence, would we just rest at ease, or would we be moved to try to do something to avoid the terrible suffering that would follow? We would be really strongly motivated to try to avoid such a result. We would wonder, “Is there any way to avoid it?” This is the question we want to ask ourselves because what all of these meditations are leading up to is that the only way to avoid it is to put a safe direction in our lives, to go in the direction of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. What that means is refraining from engaging in destructive behavior, purifying ourselves by doing various practices, and engaging in constructive behavior instead. That’s the whole point of this.
Let us think in terms of this example of the five bandits, imagining that we were part of the gang. If that’s a difficult example to relate to, we can imagine being one of five people who were at the same restaurant and ate the same food. Four of the people slowly get very sick of food poisoning and then die. Think how we would feel: “When am I going to come down with it?”
Participant: I would go to the hospital and get my stomach pumped out.
Dr. Berzin: Well, that’s exactly it. You do purification practice. That’s exactly the analogy – getting your stomach pumped out.
[meditation]
I think that this particular meditation is a little bit similar to the death meditation. Remember, we did a meditation that involved reviewing all the people we’ve known who have died and thinking, “If everybody in history has died, what makes me so special that I’m not going to die?” Somehow, we tend to think that we’re exceptions. It’s the same thing here.
Take smoking, for example. So many people get lung cancer or other sicknesses from smoking, and yet there are those who still smoke. They think, “Well, that’s not going to happen to me.” Or it could be some other type of unhealthy lifestyle, like having a lot of casual, unprotected sex. “Well, everybody else gets AIDS, but I won’t.” There’s the attitude that somehow we will be the exception. But what makes us so different that we wouldn’t suffer any consequences? That, actually, is a very nice thought to dwell on for a few minutes.
Participant: But one has to bring it together somehow with thinking about the hell existence.
Dr. Berzin: Well, yes. Thinking, “If I live dangerously, I could get lung cancer or AIDS,” is just an example. I’m trying to think of examples that are a little bit easier to relate to than the hells.
Participant: For example, quite a few women get breast cancer, so it is recommended that we examine ourselves regularly – which even I, as a physician, don’t do. That’s not exactly risky living, but it’s not taking preventive measures
Dr. Berzin: That’s a good example. You don’t take preventive measures because you think, “It’s not going to happen to me.” It’s the same thing we were saying before – that most people think that they’re going to live to a nice old age; they don’t think that they’re going to die young. Well, why? There’s no guarantee.
Participant: Don’t leave the house if you want to be super safe.
Dr. Berzin: The house could burn down. Robbers could come in and shoot you. There are all sorts of things that could happen in the house. That also is a good example: Do we take some sort of temporary refuge in something – like staying in the house – that might not really protect or save us in the long run? Or do we look for a more permanent refuge, one that will allow us to avoid suffering altogether? Whether we look for provisional solutions, which are just temporary, or deepest solutions is also an issue.
Karma: The Cause and Effect Relationship between Destructive Behavior and Suffering
We think that we can act destructively without experiencing the effects. That’s what’s underlying all of this. And that gets us into a very, very difficult topic, that of behavioral cause and effect – and whether or not we really have confidence in that. Do I really think that acting destructively will cause suffering for me?
First, we have to look at the definition of destructive behavior. Destructive behavior, which could be a physical action, a verbal action, or a way of thinking, is behavior done under the influence of one of the three disturbing emotions:
- Desire: (a) longing desire – “I’ve got to get it, got to get it”; (b) greed – “I have to have more”; or (c) attachment – “I don’t want to let go”
- Hostility, anger, hatred, aggression
- Naivety – just not knowing and being closed-minded, thinking nothing’s going to happen in terms of the effects of my behavior and so on
If we act, speak, or think under the influence of any of those, we cause future suffering for ourselves. How do we analyze this?
The point is, in order to take these meditations on the hell realms seriously, we need to see that the suffering in these realms is something that we could experience ourselves. The cause for experiencing that suffering is destructive behavior. What is very difficult is to make the connection between the destructive behavior and the result – in other words, cause and effect – and to be convinced of that connection.
Participant: We had a similar discussion last week when we talked about throwing insects out into the cold. I’m not at all convinced that I will actually go to that cold hell. But I do believe that I will experience some sort of consequences.
Dr. Berzin: Why do you believe that?
Participant: Because that action will create a habit in my mind-stream – say, a habit of not caring for other sentient beings. The example of the insects is a bit difficult to relate to, but I think that if I behave badly toward other people, then they or others might behave badly back toward me. On the other hand, if I care for other people, maybe I will set a good example for others. Then everybody will care for others, and someone will care for me in the future.
Dr. Berzin: Of course, there are examples where that kind of thing doesn’t happen in this lifetime. So, one has to have confidence that it could happen in a future lifetime – which is very difficult.
Participant: The first thing that she said is more like a karmic tendency?. The second is more like shared, or collective, karma.
Dr. Berzin: Right. The first was a karmic tendency?. The karmic tendency was to produce the suffering of being cold. So, from the side of your mental continuum, you’re producing a circumstance for others to experience cold, can that act as a cause for you yourself to experience the suffering of being cold?
Participant: I think that, from the side your own mental continuum, you have a concept of coldness that you are throwing others out into. So, this thinking of coldness can act as a cause for experiencing that coldness yourself.
Dr. Berzin: Not necessarily, because throwing them out could be based on naivety. For example, we could not even think about the fact that it’s cold and that the insect is going to experience being cold.
Participant: One could imagine somebody else throwing us out into the cold. So, even if one does not consider what the insect might experience, one could imagine experiencing the same situation oneself.
Dr. Berzin: One could, but I imagine that most people don’t. I don’t think many people would think that because they smacked a mosquito, a giant would be smacking or crushing them in the future.
Participant: That’s again the difference between people who have never heard anything about Buddhism and those who have. All the things that I’ve learned about Buddhist teachings are very helpful. They fit together and have helped me a lot in this life. I don’t know about what has happened in the past or what’s coming in the future, but I can prove that other things that Buddha said are true. So, there’s this feeling that I can trust the teachings on karmic cause and effect.
Dr. Berzin: This brings us to the basic argument that we find in Dharmakirti’s text, which is that if, from our own experience, we find that many of the things that the Buddha said are true, we tend to trust the other things that Buddha said. That is the basic argument. But I’m trying to see if there is a way that we can relate to it besides that.
Participant: What comes to my mind is that if I lie to other people, I automatically think that other people are also lying to me. This is a pattern that I also recognize in other people. If somebody has a certain habit, it seems like they expect other people to have this habit too. If it’s a destructive one, they suffer because of their own negative expectations. Take my former boss. He cheated a lot, and he always expected that anyone who came close to him was going to cheat him. So, he had this habit of thinking he was being cheated, even if he wasn’t.
Participant: It seems that we haven’t talked about the motivation so far.
Dr. Berzin: The motivation. That was what I wanted to get to.
Participant: I was thinking that if you have good motivation, and you say to the insect, “You can’t stay in my room, sorry. I have to put you outside because I don’t have another place to put you,” at least you tried.
Dr. Berzin: If you do it with the motivation that “well, I have to do something. I don’t have hostility. I don’t hate insects. I pray that they have better rebirths, and” – this is the bodhisattva way of doing it – “I accept on myself whatever negative consequences there are from taking a life,” then you do like that.
But that’s not getting into the discussion that I wanted to get into, which is why does acting under the influence of the disturbing emotions produce suffering for ourselves. This is so fundamental. This is the connection between the first and second noble truths.
Participant: If you analyze, you can sometimes trace your suffering back to its source.
Dr. Berzin: Right. That’s why suffering is noble truth one, and the cause of it is noble truth two.
Man-Made Results and Karmic Results
Participant: It’s like when you argue with somebody during the day, and, then, during the night, you toss around in your sleep. You really suffer because your mind is very agitated. You can really see the connection there.
Dr. Berzin: Well, there is a difference between what’s called a “man-made” result (skyes-bu byed-pa’i ’bras-bu) and a karmic result. A man-made result is, for instance, the pain you experience when you bang your foot against the table. That pain is a physical result, not a karmic one. It’s the same thing when you get angry and argue and, then, afterwards, because your energies are all upset, you suffer.
With a karmic result, we’re talking about experiencing the ripening of karmic aftermath – such as potentials and tendencies – that is built up from certain types of behavior. These ripen, at some future time, not only into feeling like repeating the same types of action and experiencing similar things happening back to us but also, in the case of destructive behavior, into experiencing unhappiness. That unhappiness, however, doesn't necessarily have to be associated with painful or difficult situations; it could go together with something we normally enjoy. For example, we could be eating good food, but feel very unhappy. Or we could be with good friends, but feel very depressed. So, with karmic results, we’re not talking about the immediate results of our actions. There’s no such thing as instant karma. The unhappiness that we might experience immediately after doing something is a result of negative things we had done in the past.
These things about karma are really difficult to understand. But, basically, what karma is referring to is what we will experience in the future as a result of acting under the influence of the disturbing emotions. If we are angry all the time, what type of tendency and potential are we building up? Will it be to have a happy state of mind?
Participant: I think that’s the easy point about karma – that if I produce an angry state of mind, I will suffer in some way as a consequence. But the difficult thing for me is to see the connection between throwing an insect out into the cold and being reborn in a cold hell.
Dr. Berzin: What we are doing is creating the causes to experience being cold ourselves.
The example that I sometimes use is making a mess: If we make a mess, who’s stuck experiencing the mess? We ourselves. We’ve created the mess. If the baby has diarrhea in its diapers – well, who experiences the diarrhea? It’s the baby. So, in a sense, we create the situation of suffering. Now, others might experience the situation of suffering – for example, the person who cleans the baby’s diaper – and the action that brings on the suffering might also be directed at others – for example, smashing, in a fit of anger, all the presents that a loved one gave us – but the source of the suffering comes from what we’re doing, in a sense. We create the circumstance in which to experience suffering. However, how the other person experiences it – whether with suffering or not – is a result of their karma.
I think the disturbing emotion is key here. The disturbing emotion with which we do something acts as the circumstance for the ripening of the karmic aftermath into the feeling of unhappiness that accompanies and immediately follows the action. Acting in a certain way under the influence of a disturbing emotion builds up a karmic tendency. One way in which that karmic tendency ripens is feeling like repeating that same type of behavior. There are also tendencies for the disturbing emotions to recur, but these are not karmic tendencies; rather, they are the tendencies of the disturbing emotions. In any case, if the behavior is destructive, the karmic tendencies are going to bring about unhappiness accompanying whatever we experience.
I have a tendency, let’s say, with anything that annoys me – for instance, a fly or a mosquito. My first impulse is to hit it, to try to destroy it. So, I don’t even think to look for a peaceful solution; instead, I immediately look for a violent solution, which is to smack it. That tendency could manifest not just in smacking mosquitos but hitting my child when it does something I don’t like, beeping the horn and shouting obscenities at somebody whose driving I don’t like, and so on. That’s a very unhappy state of mind, isn’t it?
Participant: I follow you so far, but, then, what about the next life?
Dr. Berzin: Similar types of potentials and tendencies would continue. Some babies, no matter what happens, scream and get very upset. Others are very placid, very calm. So there’s a tendency to feel and behave in a certain way that has continued from previous lives.
Participant: I follow you that far. But do you actually believe that if you eat meat, which you get by slaughtering other sentient beings, you will then end up in a hell where you get slaughtered all day?
Dr. Berzin: Well, let’s not use the example of eating meat. Let’s not get into a whole vegetarian thing, please. Let’s say you are an executioner and your job is to chop off people’s heads. As a result, are you going to have your head chopped off? Well, I don’t know that the result has to be exactly parallel. As I was saying, one of the causes for being reborn in the cold hells is being completely closed-minded. Your mind is frozen – closed-minded and stubborn. So, like that, you experience this completely frozen state. It’s a physical state as well as a mental one.
Participant: What I like about karma – this whole way of thinking – is that it suits my sense of fairness. This is why, from a legal point of view, I don’t have a problem with it. I think it’s only right that what I give out will come back to me.
Dr. Berzin: So, does that mean that there is justice in the universe? And can there be justice in the universe without there being a judge?
Participant: Yes.
Dr. Berzin: Why should the universe be fair? “I was so qualified and worked so hard, but I didn’t get the job. That’s not fair!”
Participant: That’s not what Karsten was saying.
Dr. Berzin: It just “seems right” is what he was saying. It just seems right that if you act in a destructive way, you will experience nasty things happening in return.
Dharma-Lite and Real Thing Dharma Views of Karma
There’s the Dharma-lite version of karma and the Real Thing Dharma version. The Dharma-lite version is thinking in terms of instant karma – that if you’re a very cold person, other people will be very cold to you; if you’re a very warm person, other people will be warm and kind to you. That’s more of an instant karma type of view. The Real Thing Dharma is thinking in terms of future lives.
Participant: But how can you can make a connection between a karmic cause and a result?
Dr. Berzin: Well, I think the only connection that we can make here is in terms of doing something to somebody and then experiencing something similar happening back to us.
Participant: I think that point is difficult because it is not so obvious. The obvious point is that when I act destructively, my mind is already in an unhappy state. That suffering will definitely continue because it leaves some kind of an imprint. Let’s say I get angry. This creates a habit, so I will get angry again. But that similar things will happen to me in the future is not obvious. That point seems to be more a matter of belief.
Dr. Berzin: Well, but if I yell at others, they will likely yell back at me. If I go around hitting others, they will likely hit me back.
Participant: But it’s difficult to see this in terms of future lives. That’s the problem. I wouldn’t know that person anymore.
Dr. Berzin: We’re not talking about the same person hitting you back.
Participant: That makes it even more difficult.
Participant: If I hit someone in this lifetime, he remembers, “Oh, she hit me,” and then he hits back. That’s pretty obvious. But saying that I’m going to suffer from my deeds three lifetimes later makes me question how this is transported into that future lifetime – and not just for me but in the other person else as well – so that I end up suffering the same situation that I had created for him.
Dr. Berzin: This gets into a whole different level of discussion, which is how karmic imprints are transmitted from one lifetime to another lifetime. I don’t think we really want to get into this discussion at this point.
Understandably, a lot of us have difficulty relating to these meditations on the hells, the ghosts, and the animals and seeing what they have to do with us personally. Of course, it all has to do with rebirth because we’re talking about future lives. This is something that we discussed at the very beginning of this lam-rim course. Everything in the lam-rim is based on the assumption that there are past and future lives. And as we go further and further into the lam-rim, rebirth gets emphasized again and again. So, if we haven’t dealt with rebirth, things will just get more and more confusing, more and more difficult to accept.
In my experience, it can take a very, very long time – decades, even – before we really become comfortable with the idea of rebirth and convinced that it is so, especially if we have not been brought up with that belief. And we might never become 100% convinced of it. But in any case, we can give it the benefit of the doubt. That’s the only way to deal with it. That means having the attitude that “provisionally, I will say this is correct,” and then seeing what follows from that.
So what is the point of these meditations on the lower realms? The point is to avoid the worst types of suffering. The way to avoid it, at this provisional level, is by taking refuge, which means putting a positive direction in our lives as indicated by the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. The first thing that we do to go in that direction is to avoid acting destructively and to act constructively instead.
Participant: But then I come back to this instant karma thing. Seeing how the consequences are connected to our actions is, for me, the most convincing thing.
Dr. Berzin: So, it’s easier to see that acting in a destructive way not only disturbs others around us but that it also creates suffering for ourselves in this lifetime. Fine. Although this is a Dharma-lite version of it, it works. I’ve never said that Dharma-lite is no good. Dharma-lite just isn’t the real thing.
Dharma-lite, for most of us, has to be the first step. Without the Dharma-lite first step, it’s very hard to go further. My whole point about Dharma-lite is that we shouldn’t consider it to be all that Buddhism is talking about. Buddhism talks about much more than that.
Participant: Is Dharma-lite something like Cola Light?
Dr. Berzin: Yes, I’m adopting that terminology from Coca-Cola Light. There’s the light version and then there’s the real thing.
Participant: So, I could take it as a first step.
Dr. Berzin: Right, the first thing you take is a watered-down version. “I can’t drink my whisky straight. I’ll mix it with a lot of water.”
Karma Is an Extremely Obscure Phenomenon
Participant: I’d just like to add to the karma discussion. I asked several teachers about how to be convinced of karmic consequences. They said that it’s not that one has to prove it. From our point of view, there’s no way to prove it. As I understood it, we just take it for granted in a way.
Dr. Berzin: Karma is one of these extremely obscure phenomena that can only be proven by using the same type of logic that Katja did, which is to reason that if Buddha didn’t deceive us about the things that we can prove, either through direct experience or through logic, then there’s no reason for Buddha to have deceived us about karma. We can prove, for example, that the methods for developing single-minded concentration are correct because, when we follow the instructions, we are able to experience it ourselves. Or we can prove that the teachings on voidness are correct because, when we use correct logic and reasoning, we are able to gain a valid inferential understanding of it. But the only way we can demonstrate that the teachings on karma are correct is to demonstrate that the source was a valid source of information.
Participant: I think that these karma teachings came from the Hindu system, not from Buddha. I think it was just that Buddha was born into a situation where this was the standard belief.
Participant: He proved it to himself. On the night of his enlightenment, he reached a state of mind where he could actually see his former lives and confirm that the various actions he had done had led to this and that rebirth.
Dr. Berzin: That’s true. Buddha was able to understand karmic cause and effect straightforwardly, not through inference.
But, come on, every religion teaches that if we act destructively, we will experience suffering. That is an almost universal belief. We find that in all the Biblical religions as well as in Hinduism and Confucianism. It’s just a matter of how one defines destructive behavior and the consequences that ensue.
Participant: Is it in the Pali Canon that if you throw insects out into the cold, you will go to the cold hells?
Dr. Berzin: Well, all the details of karma are usually found in abhidharma, which in Pali is “abhidhamma.” One certainly finds similar analyses in the Pali commentaries of abhidhamma, which came much later. Are they actually in the sutras? Well, yes. In the sutras there are various stories about how so-and-so did something and how this or that happened as a result. There are also the Jataka tales of what the Buddha did in previous lifetimes. Are there particular examples of throwing an insect out the window in the winter? I doubt that because these examples came from India. But I’m not that familiar with all the literature. I would be surprised if the Pali Canon did not include specific accounts of karmic cause and effect. There certainly are such accounts in the Jataka tales.
Participant: Generally speaking, if you have a teacher – particularly one who is known to be a reincarnation of somebody else and who remembers something of previous lives – who says that, from his or her own experience, “yes, there’s rebirth, and yes, there’s karma,” it’s easier to trust the person.
Dr. Berzin: Yes. That’s why the role of the spiritual teacher is emphasized so much. Because of the personal connection that you have and the positive emotions that are involved in that personal connection, you can get inspired much more directly by your teacher than by Buddha. The example is that the teacher is like the magnifying glass that focuses the rays of the sun on kindling.
So, we can relate much more easily to the teacher and be inspired much more easily by the teacher. And if we have confidence that the teacher is not lying to us, then that’s good enough. Then we have to assume that the teacher knows what they’re talking about – 100% about absolutely everything. Well, that’s difficult, isn’t it? There can be very great teachers, particularly Tibetan teachers, who are very uninformed about science, for example, and who have very incorrect ideas about certain things that are not necessarily dealt with in Buddhism. But it isn’t that the teacher is making anything up. The teacher is the filter, basically, of the Buddha’s teachings – so, again, like the magnifying glass. So, we have confidence in the source because we have confidence in the person who is relating what came from the source.
Participant: Normally, you don’t ask the teacher about scientific things. That’s not his topic.
Dr. Berzin: Right, just like Buddha wasn’t here to teach geography.
Participant: It’s always stressed that the teacher can teach you something, but then you have to check it and become convinced of it.
Dr. Berzin: Right. But cause and effect is difficult to become convinced of. Then, of course, there are the examples of teachers who cheat and get away with it.
Participant: I think one has to look inside oneself and not at others. One can miss something. For example, the teacher might have robbed a bank; now he appears to be happy, but you don’t see that maybe he’s not happy on the inside. But one can check within oneself: I did this, I did that, and then this happened.
Dr. Berzin: This is the instant karma view, thinking, “I always act destructively,” or “I’m always filled with longing desire and greed,” or “I just don’t know what’s going on, and I’m naive,” and then looking to see, “Am I a happy person or not?” Chances are that, in most cases, we are not. However, the idea of rebirth is going to occur over and over again throughout the lam-rim. Things will start to get a little strange if, when we start talking about gaining liberation from rebirth and about the twelve links of dependent arising – which describe the mechanism of rebirth – we don’t believe in rebirth. There is a Dharma-lite version of it, but that can get very discouraging because, in most cases, we’re not going to reach liberation or enlightenment in this lifetime. So, in the end, all we’re doing is just trying to improve things in this lifetime.
Accounts of Reincarnation
Participant: There’s one thing that I found very helpful. There are some scientists who have been looking into reincarnation. They’re very reliable and highly regarded professors. They have collected cases of children who could remember information about past lives. So this is a very scientific and Western style of approach.
Participant: There’s also counter-documentation.
Dr. Berzin: There is scientific documentation of children, who are not necessarily Buddhist, who have remembered previous lives, the details of which have been corroborated. As our friend here says, there are those who remembered previous lives but whose accounts could not be corroborated, so the accounts could have been wrong. We also don’t know the statistics of how many were right and how many were wrong.
Participant: There are many respectable scientists who say it’s bullshit.
Dr. Berzin: Well, that’s not the point. Either you prove it or you disprove it. To say, “I don’t believe it’s so,” is not a disproof. I don’t think there have been any arguments that have actually been able to disprove it. Basically, they just come down to “I don’t think so.”
Participant: There’s one professor, Ian Stevenson, who has written some books about this. But he doesn’t claim to provide proof. He just says that he’s collecting evidence.
Dr. Berzin: Well, what proves something? That’s difficult to say. Just because what a particular person remembers about a previous lifetime is corroborated doesn’t prove that everybody had a previous lifetime. It doesn’t prove beginningless or endless lifetimes.
Participant: My question isn’t whether or not there is rebirth but how karma is carried over to the next life. Is there an article on your website that you would recommend?
Dr. Berzin: The twelve links describe the mechanism quite fully. There are several long articles on the website.
Why It Is Important to Take Future Lives Seriously
We haven’t really progressed any further in terms of the meditations on the ghost and the animal realms, but I think that what we’ve been trying to do here is important, which is to understand why we are meditating on these things, why it is important. Why is it important for our spiritual development? All of this is leading up to developing a motivation. Remember what motivation means. Motivation has, in terms of the Tibetan word for it, two aspects: what we’re aiming for and why. What we are aiming for at this stage of the lam-rim is to continue having precious human rebirths and to avoid having worse rebirths. Why? Because of dread. We dread being reborn in one of these worse rebirth states. We want to avoid that. The method for achieving that goal is to put a safe direction in our lives by avoiding destructive behaviors, which are the causes for rebirth in these worst states, and by going toward positive things. That’s what this is all about. If we’re not aiming for better future rebirths, what are we aiming for here? To improve things in this lifetime? That’s the Dharma-lite version of it.
If it’s clear what the Dharma-lite and Real Thing versions are, and we don’t confuse one with the other, that’s OK. But without taking past and future lives into account, we’re going to encounter many examples where the teachings on karma don’t work – for instance, people who cheat all their lives, get very rich, and don’t suffer any consequences.
So, if we’re really going to think in terms of the initial scope motivation, we need to take future lives totally seriously and really do something to guarantee that our next lives are not going to be terrible – and not just our next lives but all the lives after that. What am I doing that will enable me not only to take advantage of the precious life that I have now but also to continue to have precious lives? We will need many precious human lives because it’s going to take a very long time to reach liberation and enlightenment. So try to keep the perspective of what we’re doing here and where all of this is leading. Getting a better rebirth is not our ultimate goal. Nor is it just to go to heaven.
Also, try to develop some motivation to avoid acting destructively – so, to avoid the suffering that is created by acting destructively. Now, there are different levels of that suffering. There’s the man-made result, the suffering that we would feel immediately after doing something destructive, such as feeling very uncomfortable and unhappy with ourselves because we had screamed and yelled at someone – although not everybody would feel uncomfortable: “I screamed and yelled. I got it off my chest, so now I feel relieved.” Some people are like that. Then there are the karmic results, the long-term results that we would experience some time in the future, such as wanting to repeat the destructive behavior and experiencing unhappiness in other circumstances.