Karma

Let us first examine the main assertions concerning karmic impulses and revealing and nonrevealing forms in the Mahayana Sutra Basket and then, in the next part of this series, in the Sarvastivada Abhidharma Basket. These are the forerunners of some of the main features of the...

Review of Mental Urges in Karmic Actions of the Mind In the previous part of this series, we modified Vasubandhu’s Sautrantika presentation of the division between performer impulses (byed-pa’i las, Skt. kāritrakarma) and exertional impulses (rtsol-ba-can-gyi las, Skt....

How a Mental Urge, and Not a Revealing Form, Functions as a Karmic Impulse for Actions of the Body  Vasubandhu explains in A Discussion for the Establishment of Karma (Las-grub-pa’i rab-tu byed-pa, Skt. Karmasiddhiprakaraṇa) (Derge vol. 136, 144B): Suppose (Vaibhashika) asks,...

The name of this work is The Wheel of Sharp Weapons Effectively Striking the Heart of the Foe. I pay heartfelt homage to you, Yamantaka; your wrath is opposed to the Great Lord of Death. [1] [notes by Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey: see below] (1) In jungles of poisonous plants...

Brief Review  In the first session, we introduced the topic of Karma: Who’s to Blame? We saw that the approach we need to follow is an analytic one in which we examine each of the three components: karma, self and blame. If we want to get a harmonious picture of how these...

The karmic impulses of the body, speech and mind can be further divided into seven types.  Nagarjuna’s Presentation Nagarjuna states in Root Verses on the Middle Way, Called Discriminating Awareness (dBu-ma rtsa-ba’i tshig-le’ur byas-pa shes-rab ces bya-ba, Skt....

The Importance of Analysis We were discussing what Kalachakra adds to our understanding of the four noble truths. And we saw that one of the most distinctive features that it adds is the discussion of the flowing or coursing of the winds of karma in our bodies, our subtle...

Taming the Mind All of us wish for happiness and none of us wish to have any suffering. This is true of everybody, but it is very difficult to come upon all the circumstances that will bring this about. If we look merely at external circumstances, we find it nearly...

The Meaning of Karma There are many explanations of karma in the different Indian Buddhist tenet systems. Let us use the least complicated of them, the main explanation followed by the non-Gelug Tibetan traditions. We also find it in the Gelug explanation of all the Indian...

Review We were talking about how "mind" in Buddhism refers to an activity that goes on with no break, with no beginning and with no end. It is the mental activity of experiencing things and it is an individual, subjective experiencing of things. We are not talking here about...