Karma

Further Background Material Range of the Analysis Since the issue of free will versus determinism hinges on the understanding of “ not-yet-happenings,” let us focus our analysis, for the moment, primarily on them. Moreover, let us limit our discussion to the Gelug Prasangika...

Review True Sufferings We began our discussion with how the cognition of voidness liberates us from uncontrollably recurring rebirth, samsara. To understand that, we need to understand what actually the true sufferings are that we want to become liberated from. Why is it that...

The Relation between Reinforced and Enacted Karmic Impulses and Inciting and Incited Karmic Impulses  One of the main sources about karma from the Abhidharma Basket is Revealing Karma (Las gdags-pa, Skt. Karmaprajñapti) by Buddha’s disciple Maudgalyayana. In it, Maudgalyayana...

Meditation Practices on the Laws of Karma Yesterday we talked about the laws of karma, the laws of behavioral cause and effect. In terms of karma in general, the main practice entails specifically to restrain yourself from committing any of the ten destructive, or nonvirtuous,...

Review This morning we spoke about the four noble truths in general, and then we presented what Kalachakra adds to this. The main thing that we were emphasizing was a little bit more extensive explanation of the true causes of samsara. And we went through the explanation of...

Review In the discussion of the mental factor of an urge, in which we have borrowed and adapted to the Vaibhashika view the distinction between a performer and exertional impulse that Sautrantika draws, we have seen that urges that affect and drive a consciousness and its...

We were talking about the first link in this chain of dependent arising and we saw that this is the link of unawareness and it has to do with unawareness of how persons exist, both ourselves and others. And the main emphasis that we need to put first is in terms of...

The First Law of Karma There are certain general aspects of karma called “the four laws of karma.” If we ask why these laws work the way they do, it is just the way it is. It is like asking why does everybody want to be happy and not to suffer? It is just the way it is. We...

Inciting and Incited Karmic Impulses  In A Discussion for the Establishment of Karma (Las-grub-pa’i rab-tu byed-pa, Skt. Karmasiddhiprakaraṇa) (Derge Tengyur vol. 136, 144B), Vasubandhu states: Suppose you ask, “Well then, has the Bhagavan (Buddha, the Vanquishing Master...

The Constraints Regarding Five Systems of Natural Order According to Theravada Let me explain a little bit here about karmic and non-karmic impulses so that we have some idea of what we are actually talking about when we talk about karma and the issue of choice. In Theravada,...