Karma

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 we and others exist. The main emphasis that we need to focus on is ourselves. We saw that there are two levels of...

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 In this formulation, karma is exclusively a mental factor, an urge or impulse. It is the impulse that, while focused on an object, drives the primary consciousness and its accompanying mental factors to engage, in the next moment, in a specific action directed toward or...

Review We need to set the proper motivation; namely, that we wish to benefit all beings and to achieve a state of enlightenment in order to be able to do so. With this motivation, listen to these teachings on The Foundation for Good Qualities with the sincere wish to put them...

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,...

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...

Nonrevealing Forms Can Be Known Only with Mental Cognition When we talk about a nonrevealing form, how is this known? Can we in our practice learn to be able to perceive it? “Nonrevealing” means that it doesn’t reveal its motivation to anybody. It is something that can be...

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 of an extensive explanation of the true causes of samsara, and we went through the...

Explanations of Karma If we’re going to work to overcome karma, to rid ourselves of this compulsiveness in our behavior, we need to know how karma works. There are several detailed explanations of this to be found in Buddhist literature. In general, there is the explanation...